One Lane Bridge: A Novel (5 page)
Read One Lane Bridge: A Novel Online
Authors: Don Reid
“Yes, I do. I have a daughter not much older than Lizzie.”
“Then you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you. You try to move my girl from that room, and you gotta kill me to do it.”
J. D. knew he meant it. He would have to bring the doctor to Lizzie. He only hoped he had time. If one day on his side of the bridge was two years on hers, he didn’t. But maybe it wasn’t quite so simple an equation. In the past twenty-four hours, nothing had been. He would have to try. Maybe he had time. Maybe he did.
J. D. recalled nothing of the thirty-minute drive back to Hanson. One second he was crossing the one lane bridge, and the next he was pulling into the parking lot behind the Dining Club. His eyes had apparently been on the road, but his mind was on Lizzie and how to explain it all to Karlie. He knew there was a young girl across that bridge who desperately needed medical attention, but he had no way of proving that to his skeptical wife. He had promised to tell her all about it when he got back, but what would he say? He felt like the little boy in a joke he had heard. When the boy’s mother asked him what he had learned in Sunday school, he said they had talked about Moses and how when he got to the Red Sea he had his army build a pontoon bridge and carry all the people across the water. Then he had his army blow up the bridge so the bad guys couldn’t cross. His mother said, “Are you sure that’s what they taught you this morning?” And the little boy said, “No, but if I told you what really happened, you’d never believe it.”
He sat in the car and wished he still smoked.
The last employee exited through the back door just minutes before Officer Bobby Caywood pulled up alongside J. D.’s van. They got out of their vehicles and walked into the restaurant together. J. D. was thankful for the company as it gave him a few more minutes before he had to talk to Karlie alone.
“Hey, honey, Bobby’s here,” J. D. called as he locked the door behind him.
Karlie came out of the kitchen and said, “Hi, Bobby. Are you ready to do this?”
She didn’t look at J. D. He knew her well enough to know that while he was gone, her thoughts had congealed to a cold silence—and he was in for a rough night. And his mind was more on how much of the truth he could tell Karlie than on the money they were here to protect. The whole truth just might prompt her to commit him before morning. And he wasn’t even sure what a half-truth would be at this point. But he had to push those thoughts away. They were here to mark bills and catch an embezzler, a disloyal employee. They were here to bring the hatchet down while Lizzie Clem lay dying somewhere in the 1940s. What was he thinking? He couldn’t possibly tell Karlie that. A girl died sixty-five years ago, but she was still alive tonight? Maybe he
did
need to be committed. And what had Caywood just said to him?
“Did you hear me, J. D.?”
“No, I’m sorry, Bobby, I didn’t.”
“I said, would you put a mark on these bills? I’m going to mark them, and I want you to also. Keeping it all on the up and up so there’s no chance for a mistake.”
“Sure. Karlie, do you want to mark them?”
Karlie was nowhere to be seen. She had gone back into the kitchen to turn out lights and close pantry doors. She was keeping her distance. When J. D.’s mind returned again to the business at hand, Officer Caywood was talking again.
“… does their shift end?”
“What’s that?”
“The girls that open up in the morning. What time does their shift end?”
“One o’clock.”
“Okay, why don’t I meet you over here at five minutes to one tomorrow afternoon? We’ll stop them as they leave the building and take them into the office and make our move. That way the evening shift will be here on the floor, and whatever happens doesn’t disturb business.”
“Sounds good to me.” J. D. raised his voice a little and said, “Sound all right to you, honey?” But “honey” wasn’t responding. The only answer he got was another pantry door slamming somewhere in the back and another light being switched off.
J. D. drove Karlie to the Kroger parking lot to pick up the BMW they had left there that morning. Words were not exchanged, but the feelings were heavy in the air. Karlie opened the car door and was about to get out when she finally found her voice.
“J. D., are we going to go home and go to bed and never talk more about where you were all evening? Because if we are, I don’t think I can take it.”
“I don’t know where I was.”
This elicited no response—only a stony stare and silence.
J. D. continued, “I went out there and, honey, you have to believe me. The bridge was there. The one lane bridge. I drove over it, and the house was there. And the man was there and the daughter. But the woman … the woman was dead. I talked to the girl. She’s sixteen now, and she’s in bed like her mother was before, and the man looks old and tired. And … and it’s two years later. They’re both two years older, but only a day has passed.”
J. D. could only see shadows on his wife’s face, but he didn’t have to see her clearly to know what was in her mind. The sobs that began to rock her body told him all he needed to know. He couldn’t blame her. He reached for her, but she didn’t move toward him. She just kept crying until he suddenly realized he was crying too. Tears he hadn’t felt since his father’s funeral eight years ago were running down his cheeks and falling on his hands. His wife was sick with concern, he was confused and scared, and their marriage was in danger of crumbling around him as surely as was everything he had come to know as normal. His mind was full of questions and empty of answers. But he couldn’t ignore what he had seen with his own eyes. His wife needed the man she had two days ago, but a young girl somewhere out on Route 814 in 1942 needed a doctor, and he was the only person on earth who could help her. If indeed this was still earth.
J. D. wasn’t sure either one of them slept that night. He knew for certain they didn’t talk, and he was almost certain neither of them drifted off. Even a restless sleep—the kind that lasted for only minutes before he found himself looking at the alarm clock for the twentieth time that night—would have been welcome. But he heard every automobile that passed, every boom of a teenager’s heavy-duty car radio that jarred the walls of the house, and every door shutting at the neighbor’s from dawn on. At six thirty he climbed out of bed as quietly as he could, showered, dressed, and went to the kitchen to watch TV and drink instant coffee just to kill time until he was sure his old friend Jack Hamish was out of bed and at the drugstore.
At eight forty-five he walked into Alden Drugs and waited till Jack was off the phone. When Jack looked up and saw J. D., he motioned for him to come behind the counter and up the steps to his office. J. D. smiled and followed the instructions, sitting down in front of the big, old wooden desk full of files and papers. He looked at the framed diplomas and licenses on the wall and the framed pictures of Jack’s two nephews on the desk.
He and Jack shared a long history. They had sat directly across the aisle from each other in the first grade, and Jack enjoyed, almost from day one, kicking J. D.’s books out from under his desk every time he passed. After the fourth time, J. D. returned the kick and sent Jack’s books flying across the aisle just as the teacher looked up. J. D. was caught and punished, and that day at lunch Jack had come up to him and apologized for causing trouble. Their friendship began in that moment and lasted through grade school, high school, and college.
They still ate lunch together a couple of times a week and played poker together every first Friday of the month. Jack Hamish was his closest friend, the one he would confide this baffling situation to even if Jack couldn’t help him. Or maybe he could. Jack was a pharmacist and exactly what J. D. needed at this very moment. But he dreaded trying to explain
why
he needed him.
“Hey, buddy, how you doing? Sorry to keep you waiting. Want some coffee?”
“No. I’ve had plenty.”
“You look like you’ve been up all night.”
J. D. gave him a half smile and admitted he had. Then, to answer Jack’s question of why, he began to tell his story as honestly and as convincingly as possible.
“I was out riding in the country a couple of days ago and broke down out on Route 814. You know where that is?”
“Maybe. Is it out there where …?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” J. D. interrupted. “It’s about eighteen miles northeast. Anyway, I was driving the Triumph, and I broke down and didn’t have a signal on my cell. So I went up to a house and an old farmer met me in the yard.”
Jack’s grin went as wide as his face. “Is this going to be a farmer’s daughter joke?”
J. D. cut him off. “No. I wish it were. He had a daughter, but she was like fourteen years old. And he had a wife who was sick in bed, and they were as poor as dirt and needy as any family you’ve ever seen. Like those families our Sunday school class used to shop for at Christmas when we were kids. They needed food, but the old man was proud and kind of ran me off when I offered to help. So I came home and told Karlie about them, and we bought them some groceries and went out there yesterday morning. And here’s where it gets strange. They were gone. They weren’t there any longer.”
“They had moved?” Jack asked with a slight shrug.
J. D. looked at his old friend a long time before he answered. So long that Jack became uneasy. “So what is it? Had they moved or not?”
J. D. rubbed his face, feeling the sleepless hours that lay behind him. He chose his words as if he were a lawyer defending the case of his life.
“They had disappeared. They were gone. Their house was gone. A store was where their house was. And even this enormous old one lane steel bridge you had to cross to get to them was gone. Just … gone.”
Jack’s wide smile was gone too. His lips were tight, and his eyes were slits as if he was trying to see into his friend’s mind. J. D. watched every twitch in the face of the friend sitting across the desk from him. He was imagining every thought that was going through his old buddy’s brain. He knew Jack would try not to be critical or judgmental, and at one point he even expected a punch line from his lips to ease the tension. But that didn’t come. After a long couple of seconds past comfortable, Jack said, “I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I, buddy,” J. D. said with a heaviness he was sure even Jack had never heard before.
Jack looked down at his desk as if the answer was somewhere in its disarray and then slowly brought his eyes up to meet his friend’s. He spoke in a tone and a manner usually reserved for trying to make a point with a child.
“You found a farmhouse and a family one day, and the next they were all gone. What exactly are you trying to tell me?”
“What I’m
really
trying to tell you is what I haven’t actually told you yet. If you think I’m ready for the nut bin now, wait till you hear the rest of it. I went back again. That time I was able to cross over and this teenage girl—her name is Lizzie—told me what year it was while I was out there. It was 1940 the first time I went and 1942 the second time. And then when I cross back over that bridge, heading home, it’s
now
again.”
Jack stared straight into his eyes and said, “Hey, you’re Michael J. McFly. and you just cracked the time barrier. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah, something like that—except I’m not kidding. I’m dead serious. I was there, and I talked to these people, and I went back the second time and saw them again. Jack, you know how we’ve talked so many times about how we’d like to go back in time, and if we could where we’d like to go to and what we’d like to see?”
Jack leaned back in his worn, high-back desk chair and crossed his hands in his lap. “Yes, my friend, but we were playing a game of what-if.”
They heard a bell ring, and Jack stood up. “I’ve got a customer. Wait here.”
J. D. sat in misery while his friend took Mrs. Marguerite Troller’s empty bottle of Atenolol and told her it would be ready in thirty minutes. Then just as he was about to come back up the steps, someone else came in looking for Zeasorb powder and an ear syringe. All of this took only four minutes, but to J. D. it seemed an hour. When Jack was finished, he came back to the office, closed the door, and said in a low voice, “Okay, so what if I believe you? What do we do?”
Not “what do you want me to do” or “what are you going to do,” but “what do
we
do.” Jack Hamish was a true friend.
“I know how crazy all this sounds, Jack, and I appreciate you listening. Here’s the deal. The girl is sick. She ran a nail through her foot. All the way through it. And there’re lines already starting up her leg. And that’s bad, isn’t it?”
Jack was as serious now as his friend across the desk. “Could be septicemia.”
“What’s that?”
“Blood poisoning.”
“One day on this side of the bridge equaled two years on the other side. If that holds, the girl will be dead before we can get to her. I just have to hope and pray that part of it doesn’t hold. Her daddy wouldn’t let me bring her with me to see a doctor, but he can’t refuse medicine if I take it out there and give it to her. Well, I suppose he could. He could fight me giving it to her, but I would have to find a way to do it anyway and worry about the consequences later.” J. D. paused and looked at his friend. “What medicine do I take her?”
Jack rubbed his head with both hands and said, “Some form of PCN.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m sorry. Penicillin.”
“Talk to me in simple terms.”
“Well, there’re all kinds of penicillin. You could find a doctor and ask him for a prescription for, I don’t know, benzylpenicillin for instance. He could give her a heavy dose of that, and that should take care of her.”
J. D. looked at his old friend long and hard. The silence across the desk was finally broken when the pharmacist said, “What? What else do you want me to do?”
“Get a doctor?” J. D. asked sarcastically. “Go back over the bridge and find a doctor in 1942, and get him to give me a prescription, and then go somewhere and get it filled? Is that what you’re saying I need to do?”
Jack was waving his hand in the air. “Wait. Go back. Did you say 1942?”
“Yeah,” J. D. said, more as an angry commentary on Jack’s attitude than as an answer.
“There was no penicillin in 1942. Not for the public, anyway. It had just been discovered and introduced to the U.S., but it was all being used on the soldiers. The public saw hardly any of it till after the war. This girl is not apt to get a prescription as there probably is none to be had on the home front, if you follow what I’m saying.”
“Jack, if you follow what
I’m
saying, none of that matters. I’m not going to look for a doctor back there. I’m going to take the medicine with me in my pocket. All I need is for you to go over to one of these shelves and give me a bottle of whatever you think will work, and we’re in business.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not gonna happen, amigo. I don’t give drugs to friends, and you know that. Never have. Never will.”
“And I’ve never asked you for any. But you have to admit this is kind of a special situation.”
“‘Special situation’ is an understatement, old friend. It’s a crazy situation and a crazy request. And if anyone else came to me with this story, I’d report them and have them locked up before lunchtime.”
“So you think I’m crazy too?”
“Of course I think you’re crazy, and apparently someone else does also or you wouldn’t have said ‘too.’”
“Karlie.”
“Good woman.”
And then everything came to a standstill. The little office above Alden’s Drugs was silent, and the two friends, who had never run out of something to talk about in forty years, were suddenly mute. Neither moved, and neither blinked. J. D. was the one with the most to lose, so he spoke first.
“Will you help me?”
“Do what?”
“Will you give me a bottle of penicillin?”
“No. But I’ll go out there with you and take a bottle.”
“Thank you, buddy. You don’t know what this means to me.”
Jack shook his head and smiled. “You want to go right after lunch?”
It was J. D.’s turn to shake his head. “No. We can’t go until after supper. We need to arrive at the bridge at exactly twenty minutes after seven. I think that’s why Karlie and I couldn’t find it. I think it has to be a certain time of the day.”
“You really are crazy, aren’t you, J. D.?”
J. D. stood up to leave, and they shook hands. Something they seldom did. As he went out the door of the office, he said over his shoulder, “You’re the Jonathan to my David. I owe you one.”
“Big time,” Jack assured him.
“I’ll pick you up at six forty-five.”