Bridge of Clay Read online

“Here it’s only twelve!”

  “Twenty-four women.” Adelle was really enjoying herself now. “Have you finished blowing up, or should we make it thirty-six?” She readjusted her glasses, and got straight back to work, and Michael returned to the waiting room. After all, there were some abacus beads to shove in a corner, and the Mad magazines to defend. The women would have to wait.

  After a minute, he wandered back over, to a good solid round for Adelle, at the typewriter.

  “Mum?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Can I put Elizabeth Montgomery on the list?”

  “Elizabeth who?”

  It was his favorite repeated TV show, every afternoon. “You know—Bewitched,” and Adelle couldn’t help herself. She laughed and finished things off with a powerhouse full stop.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  In the middle of the small exchange, Michael was too preoccupied to notice Abbey Hanley return, sore-armed and teary, from the doctor’s infamous chopping block.

  If he had noticed, he’d have thought:

  Well, one thing’s for sure, I’m not putting you on the list.

  It was a moment a bit like a piano, or a school car park, if you know what I mean—for it was strange to think, but he’d marry that girl one day.

  Now he approached the river and it was cut and dry, carved out. It turned through the landscape like a wound.

  At the edge, as he made his way down, he noticed a few stray beams of wood, tangled in the earth. They were like oversized splinters, angled and bruised, delivered like that by the river—and he felt another change.

  Not more than five minutes earlier he’d told himself he wasn’t a son or brother, but here, in the last scraps of light, in what felt now like a giant’s mouth, all ambitions of selfhood had vanished. For how do you walk toward your father without being a son? How do you leave home without realizing where you’re from? The questions climbed beside him, up the other side of the bank.

  Would our father hear him coming?

  Would he walk to the stranger by his riverbed?

  When he made it up, he tried not to think about it; he shivered. The sports bag was heavy across his back and the suitcase shook in what was suddenly just a boy’s boyish hand.

  Michael Dunbar—the Murderer.

  Name, and nickname.

  Clay saw him, standing in a darkened field, in front of the house.

  He saw him, as we do, from far away.

  You had to give it to the young Michael Dunbar.

  He had a healthy sense of resolve.

  He got his calendar of great men, but only after enlisting his mother to help him find the requisite twenty-four women—including Adelle herself, who he said was the world’s greatest typist.

  It had taken a few days, and a pile of encyclopedias, but they found the world-changing women easily:

  Marie Curie, Mother Teresa.

  The Brontë sisters.

  (“Does that count as three?”)

  Ella Fitzgerald.

  Mary Magdalene!

  The list was endless.

  Then again, he was eight, and sexist as any young boy could be; only the men made it to his bedroom. Only the men were hung on the wall.

  * * *

  —

  But still, I have to admit it.

  It was nice, in a strange kind of way—a boy living a real life to a sweaty town’s ticking clock, but also having another time frame, where the closest thing he had to a father was a paper trail of some of the greatest figures in history. If nothing else, those men, over the years, would make him curious.

  At eleven, he got to know Albert Einstein, he looked him up. He learned nothing about the theory of relativity (he just knew it was genius), but he loved the old guy with the electric hair, poking his tongue out, midpage, of the calendar. At twelve, he’d go to bed and imagine himself training at altitude with Emil Zátopek, the legendary Czech long-distance runner. At thirteen, he wondered at Beethoven in his later years, not hearing a note he played.

  And then—at fourteen:

  The real breakthrough came, early December, taking the booklet from the nail.

  A few minutes later, he sat down with it.

  A few minutes later again, he was still staring.

  “My God.”

  In previous years, on this last page of the calendar, he’d looked at the Giant, better known as Il David, or the statue of David, many mornings, many nights—but for the first time now, he saw it. He decided instantly with whom his true loyalties lay. By the time he stood again, he couldn’t even be sure how long he’d been there, watching the expression on David’s face—a statue in the grip of decision. Determined. Afraid.

  There was also a smaller picture in the corner. The Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Chapel. The curvature of the ceiling.

  Again, he said it.

  “My God…”

  How could someone create such things?

  * * *

  —

  He borrowed books then, and there was a grand total of three titles on Michelangelo in the Featherton public and high school libraries combined. The first time he read them one by one, then a couple simultaneously. He read them each night, with his lamp burning long into the morning. His next goal was to trace some of the work, then memorize it, and draw it again.

  Sometimes he wondered why he felt like this.

  Why Michelangelo?

  He’d catch himself crossing the street, saying his name.

  Or listing his favorite works, in no particular order:

  Battle of the Centaurs.

  David.

  Moses. The Pietà.

  The Prisoners, or, as they were also called, The Slaves.

  Those last ones always intrigued him for their unfinishedness—the giant figures, trapped inside the marble. One of the books, titled Michelangelo: The Master, went into great detail about those four particular sculptures and where they now lived, in the corridor of the Accademia Gallery in Florence; they led the way to David (although two more had escaped to Paris). In a dome of light stood a prince—a perfection—and flanking him, leading in, were these sad-but-gorgeous inmates, all fighting their way from the marble, unending, for the same:

  Each of them pockmarked, white.

  Their hands boxed up in stone.

  They were elbows, ribs, and tortured limbs, and all were bent in struggle; a claustrophobic wrestle, for life and air, as the tourists flooded past them…all focused and fixed on him:

  The royalty, gleaming, up ahead.

  One of them, titled Atlas (of whom there were many pictures in that library book, from many angles), still carried the prism of marble on his neck, and battled the width and weight of it: his arms a marble rash, his torso a war on legs.

  Like most, the adolescent Michael Dunbar was spellbound by David himself, but he had a soft spot for those beautiful, beaten-up slaves. Sometimes he’d recall a line, or an aspect, to copy out onto paper. Sometimes (and this embarrassed him a little) he actually wished that he could be Michelangelo, to become him only for a day or two. Often, he’d lie awake, indulging it, but knowing—he was a few centuries too late, and Featherton was a long way from Italy. Also (and this was the best part, I think), his art results at school had always been fairly poor, and by fourteen, it wasn’t even one of his subjects.

  That, and his ceiling was flat, and three meters by four.

  * * *

  —

  Adelle, for her part, encouraged him.

  In the years that came before, and the ones that lay ahead, she bought him new calendars, and books: the great natural wonders of the world, and the man-made wonders, too. Other artists—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh—and he read the books, he copied the work. He especially loved Van Gogh�
��s portraits of a postman (maybe in homage to old Harty), and he cut out pictures from the calendars as the months passed by, and stuck them to the wall. He enrolled in art again at school when the time came and gradually climbed past the others.

  He could never let go of that first calendar, either.

  It remained dead center in his bedroom.

  When Adelle joked with him about it, he said, “I’d better get going, anyway.”

  “And where might you be off to?”

  It was the closest he ever came to a knowing grin, recalling the monthly dinner date. “To Walt’s, of course.” He was going out to walk the dog.

  “What’s he cooking tonight, anyway?”

  “Spaghetti.”

  “Again?”

  “I’ll bring you some home.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll be asleep here at the table, most likely.” She gave the ol’ TW a pat.

  “Okay, but just don’t type too hard, all right?”

  “Me?” She rolled a new sheet through the belly of the machine. “No way. A few friends to write to, and that’s it.”

  They both laughed, almost for no reason—maybe just happiness.

  He left.

  * * *

  —

  At sixteen, his body grew, his hair changed shape.

  He was no longer the boy who’d struggled to lift the typewriter, but an aqua-eyed, good-looking kid with dark wavy hair and a fast-looking physique. Now he showed promise at football, or anything else deemed important, which is pretty much just to say, sport.

  Michael Dunbar, however, wasn’t interested in sport.

  He went onto the school football team, of course, he played fullback, he did well. He stopped people. He’d usually check to see if the kid was okay, and he could also make a break; he could set someone up to score, or score himself.

  Off the sports field there was a kindness that set him apart, and also a strange single-mindedness. He would suffer before he’d belong, unable to show himself easily; a preference for greater hope—to find someone who would know him completely.

  As was tradition (in the sporting stakes, at least), girls followed, and they were predictable, in their skirts and shoes and matching booze. They chewed gum. They drank drinks.

  “Hey, Mikey.”

  “Oh—hi.”

  “Hey, Mikey, a couple of us are goin’ up to the Astor tonight.”

  Mikey wasn’t interested—for if Michelangelo was the one man he truly loved, he also had his hands full with three girls:

  First, the great typist—the counterpuncher in the waiting room.

  Then there was the old red cattle dog who sat on the couch with him, watching repeats of Bewitched and Get Smart, and who lay asleep, chest heaving, as he cleaned the surgery, three nights a week.

  And lastly, there was the one who sat in the front right corner of his English class, hunched and lovely, bony as a calf. (And it was she he was hoping might notice.) These days she had smoky grey eyes and wore a green checkered uniform, and hair that fell to her tailbone:

  The waiting room spaceship-crusher had also changed.

  * * *

  —

  In the evenings, he walked the town with the red cattle dog called Moon; named for the full moon camped above the house when his mother brought her home.

  Moon was ash and ginger, and she slept on the floor of the back shed, while the boy drew at his father’s workbench, or painted at the easel—his sixteenth birthday gift from Adelle. She rolled on her back and smiled at the sky when he rubbed her stomach on the lawn. “Come on, girl,” and she came. She jogged next to him contently as he walked through months of longing and sketches, longing and portraits, longing and landscapes; the artwork and Abbey Hanley.

  Always, in a town that turned slowly toward the dark—he could feel it coming for miles—he saw her up ahead. Her body was a brushstroke. Her long black hair was a trail.

  No matter which streets he took through town, boy and dog made it out to the highway. They stood at the strings of a fence line.

  Moon waited.

  She panted and licked her lips.

  Michael placed his fingers down, on the knots of barbed wire fence; he leaned forward, eyeing the corrugated roof, set deep on a distant property.

  Only a few of the lights were on.

  The TV flashed bright and blue.

  Each night, before leaving, Michael stood still, with his hand on the head of the dog. “Come on, girl,” and she came.

  It wasn’t till Moon died that he finally traversed the fence.

  * * *

  —

  Poor Moon.

  It was a normal afternoon, after school:

  The town was slathered in sun.

  She was laid out near the back step with a king brown snake, also dead, in her lap.

  For Michael there was “Oh, Jesus” and quickened footsteps. He’d come round the back and heard the scratch of fallen schoolbag, as he kneeled on the ground, beside her. He would never forget the hot concrete, the warm dog-smell, and his head in her ginger fur. “Oh, Jesus, Moonie, no…”

  He begged her to pant.

  She didn’t.

  He pleaded with her to roll over and smile, or trot toward her bowl. Or dance, foot to foot, waiting for a deluge of dry food.

  She didn’t.

  There was nothing now but body and jaws, open-eyed death, and he kneeled in the backyard sunshine. The boy, the dog and the snake.

  Later, not long before Adelle came home, he carried Moon past the clothesline and buried her next to a banksia.

  He made a pair of decisions.

  First, he dug a separate hole—a few feet to the right—and in it he placed the snake; friend and foe, side by side. Second, he would cross the fence at Abbey Hanley’s that night. He’d walk to the tired front door, and the TV’s blue-blinking light.

  * * *

  —

  In the evening, on the highway, there was the town behind him and the flies, and the pain of the loss of the dog—that naked, pantless air. The emptiness by his side. But then there was the other feeling. That sweet sickness of making something happen: the newness. And Abbey. The everything-equals-her.

  All the way he’d lectured himself not to stand at the barbed wire fence, but now he couldn’t resist. His life was reduced to minutes, till he swallowed and walked to the door—and Abbey Hanley opened it.

  * * *

  —

  “You,” she said, and the sky was bulging with stars.

  An overabundance of cologne.

  A boy with burning arms.

  His shirt was too big in a country that was too big, and they stood on a front path all swarmed with weeds. The rest of the family ate No Frills ice cream inside, and the tin roof loomed, leaning at him as he searched for words, and wit. Words he found. Wit he didn’t.

  To her shins, he said, “My dog died today.”

  “I was wondering why you were alone.” She smiled, just short of haughtily. “Am I the replacement?”

  She was giving him a hiding!

  He fought on.

  “She was bitten.” He paused. “A snake.”

  And that pause, somehow, changed it all.

  While Michael turned to look at the deepening dark, the girl crossed from cocksure to stoic in a few short seconds; she stepped closer, and now she was next to him, facing the same way. Near enough so their arms touched.

  “I’d rip a snake apart before I let it get to you as well.”

  * * *

  —

  After that, they were inseparable.

  They watched those much-repeated sitcoms of previous years—his Bewitched and her I Dream of Jeannie. They crouched at the river or walked the highway out of town, watching the world grow seemingly bigger. They cleane
d the surgery and listened to each other’s heartbeats with Weinrauch’s stethoscope. They checked each other’s blood pressure till their arms were ready to explode. In the back shed, he sketched her hands, her ankles, her feet. He balked when it came to her face.

  “Oh, come on, Michael…” She laughed and plunged her hand down into his chest. “Can’t you get me right?”

  And he could.

  He could find the smoke in her eyes.

  Her mocking, dauntless smile.

  Even on paper she looked ready to speak. “Let’s see how good you are—paint with your other hand.”

  At the highway farmhouse one afternoon, she took him in. She put a box of schoolbooks against her bedroom door, and held his hand and helped him with everything: the buttons, the clips, the descent to the floor. “Come here,” she said, and there was the carpet and heat of shoulders and backs and tailbones. There was sun at the window, and books, and half-written essays everywhere. There was breath—her breath—and falling, just like that. And embarrassment. A head turned sideways, and brought back.

  “Look at me. Michael, look at me.”

  And he looked.

  This girl, her hair and smoke.

  She said, “You know—” The sweat between each breast. “I never even said I was sorry.”

  Michael looked over.

  His arm had gone dead, beneath her.

  “For what?”

  She smiled. “About the dog, and”—she was almost crying—“for crushing that spaceship thing in the waiting room that morning.”

  And Michael Dunbar could have left his arm down there forever; he was stunned and stilled, astounded. “You remember that?”

  “Of course,” she said, and now she spoke upwards, at the ceiling. “Don’t you see?” Half of her in shadow, but the sun was on her legs. “I loved you already then.”

  Just past the dry riverbed, Clay shook hands with Michael Dunbar in the dark, and their hearts were in their ears. The country was cooling down. For a moment he imagined the river, erupting, just for some noise, a distraction. Something to talk about.