Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

“We have enough,” he told himself out loud as he proceeded on an easy but narrowing path into the woodlands on the high bank of the river. Soon they’d be across and they could rest. His dream became more complicated and more comfortable, more settled, oddly. No huddling round a makeshift fire, no venison, no cold night air, no boat barrow. Instead there was a clearing in the trees, a little soddy built of boulders and wood and earth, a narrow bed, and just the two of them, asleep, a curl of smoke from their shared hearth, his fingers wrapped around her toes.

The light was weakening when they reached the bluffs where the falling torrent from the lake had etched a deep, unclimbable gulch into the hillside. They could go no farther on this bank of the river. Franklin, not wanting to wake Margaret before he’d delivered her to a safe place, left her sleeping in the barrow while he went in search of access to the bridge. From lower down the path he’d spotted its slatted wooden sides swaying high above the water. A fall from it would be fatal. But once he’d reached its level, the bridge seemed to have disappeared. He had to clear away some wood and debris from the deep undergrowth and pull aside a screen of branches. It could not have had much use in recent months.

Thankfully, the bridge was wide enough for the two wheels of the barrow, and it seemed firm, too, despite the swaying. A little weight would steady it. The crossing actually was easier than he had feared. The planking of the bridge was smooth, and sagged slightly downward toward a lower mooring on the far bank. Franklin had to concentrate only on keeping a good line with the leading tip of the barrow and trying not to let himself or his load tilt to the side. He was not fond of heights. He’d never been a boy for conquering trees or swinging out on ropes. He counted heartbeats as they went across, taking one step for every other beat, and hadn’t reached a hundred before he was able to bump his load over the last impediment, a strut of raised wood, and put his feet and the barrow wheels on solid ground. His first step in the east. He should have felt proud of himself. Triumphant. Mightily relieved. He should have felt brave. But he did not. Rather, now that he no longer needed to be determined, he counted himself weak, dishonest, craven, and troubled by disloyalty.

Something had happened that he did not truly understand. Not the slaughter in the village — he’d never have an explanation for that, except what he had always known, that life hangs on a spongy spider’s thread that can stretch only so far but then is bound to snap. Not his own unexpected secrecy about the bridge, his failure to inform the other travelers. Not even the likelihood that, even if Jackson had managed to survive, he would never take another step at his brother’s side, or slip his long arms into the sleeves of his own goat coat. No, what troubled Franklin from the moment he reached the east side of the bridge was the fear that he had made a big mistake, that where he truly should be traveling was westward, back to the family hearth, back to Mother waiting at the center of abandoned fields. If instead of taking the path eastward down Butter Hill that morning, he and Margaret had fled westward, heading back to his mother’s house, then his brother — and all the people of Ferrytown — could be alive in their imaginations, at least. They could forward him by their best hopes to the coast and then propel him by wishful thinking (quite a gusty friend) toward the new lands over there. If Franklin still hoped to be a true and dutiful son, he should take Margaret back home with him to introduce her to his ma, to have those ancient hands touch his and hers and give their blessing. A mother could expect no less. How had they ever left her there?

Franklin looked back along the woodwork of the bridge. For the moment, it seemed to him that crossing the river had been an act of abandonment. Certainly he was not able to contemplate his own journey eastward anymore with much degree of hope or self-respect. But equally he recognized the nonnegotiable truth. Going home was not an option. It’s fearful men who go back home to be with Ma. Only the crazy make it to the coast.

Franklin shook himself. So he’d be crazy then. He’d force himself to be. He’d not allow himself to fail. He had — again — to do the mean and foolish thing. Not out of spite, more spite, toward the other travelers. What did it matter to him whether their journey to the coast was easy or hard? Not simply to protect the safe side of the river from the burning one and keep the flames from skipping across the bridge like imps. He meant to cut himself off from his own timidity.

He took the sharper of his two knives and went back to the bridge. It was slung across the river and tethered only, on the eastern side at least, to several sturdy tree trunks. It would not be a complicated task to cut it loose. The mooring ropes were thick and greasy, toughened by the weather, but they responded to his blade, each strand and ligament springing back as Franklin severed its tension. The whole bridge slumped to one side when he had entirely cut through the first rope. Anyone crossing it would have been tipped into the water far below. The second rope was easier and springier, as the weight on it had doubled. Soon the secret bridge was freed from its eastern shorings. With a little help from Franklin’s powerful shoulders, it slithered and bounced down the rocky bluff above the river, breaking up a little as it fell and then finally settling in the water.

There was no longer a secret bridge from Ferrytown. There was instead a steep, timbered slide into the river on the western side of its coulee. A dangling trail of timber. But not even that for long. The racing waters began to tug on the severed end of the bridge, smashing the planks against the rocks. Within a month, much of the debris would be swept away.

“We have enough,” Franklin said aloud again. He was thrilled and appalled by what he’d done, in equal measure. But he did not want to examine his feelings too deeply. He’d have to put his doubts behind him and concentrate only on the journey. There was a job to be done: to find a safe place in the forest or beyond where they could pass the night. He had to make the most of what little light remained. Once more he put his weight behind the barrow with its obliging, well-oiled wheels and made good their escape from Ferrytown by climbing up through sunshine along the river bluff until he reached the eastern shoreline of the lake, the silver pendant that he’d only glimpsed before from Butter Hill. He’d never seen a spot more beautiful.

This was no place for a barrow, especially such a heavy one with a fragile human cargo. A sledge would have been better: a sledge loves mud. Or even a rowboat, though preferably one with oars — and an oarsman — tough enough to scull through mud and leaves.

The downpours that only three nights previously had shaken the vapors out of Ferrytown lake might have dried out in the open country around the settlements and on sloping ground. But on the east bank of the river, where the water table was high, the going was wet. The flat forest paths beyond the wooden bridge and the lakeside were still drenched and swollen. Here, away from the thin, rolling soil of the mountain passes and the well-drained scrubland of stocky junipers and tangled laurels that labored for existence on the lower slopes, rain could not drain easily or quickly. Where could it go? It had to settle in and spread itself and deepen.

These wet, silt-rich forests, a mixture of chestnuts, marsh oaks, maples, and hickories, which at this time of the year were exchanging green for oranges and reds, were distended with water and therefore so fertile and tightly undergrowthed in places that not even a mule could pass. What might look from a distance like startled outstretched hands were antlers of pink lichen, a breathtaking and magical sight, especially in this dusk, with the sun finding angles through the hammock to pick out strips of foliage and blaze its reflection in puddles. Even this late in the day and this late in the year, the sun’s heat was strong enough to coax a gauzy vapor from the forest floor.