Eureka (16 page)

Buses. There were no buses. Otis had a vague notion that Greyhound was about the only bus company left in Kansas, and they sped by the small towns on the interstates from Kansas City west across the state to Denver, and south to Wichita on into Oklahoma. Buses were something that went with Red Ryder, Cushmans, cast-iron fire engines, and wet dreams. In the ’40s and ’50s, the crimson-and-cream buses of the Santa Fe Railway’s bus company, called Santa Fe Trailways, had been the major form of transportation in and out of Sedgwicktown for Otis, his family, and most everyone else he knew. The bus had stopped at Hutchinson’s Rexall in the center of town on Harper Street, across from city hall, the bank, and most everything else that mattered. Until college, Otis had left on every major excursion of his life aboard one of those roaring machines that spewed black smoke and blared with the sound of air horns and hissing
brakes. They were the magic chariots of escape, of tomorrow, of glory, of somewhere else. Now they were mostly no more.

And there came the first sign warning of the detour ahead for the Chanute River Bridge.

BRIDGE CLOSED AHEAD I MILE—FOLLOW DETOUR SIGNS.

The large black letters were emblazoned on a three-foot-square orange metal sign.

The signs grew in size and intensity as he got closer, the last being:

DANGER AHEAD. ALL VEHICLES MUST TURN LEFT.

There was a barricade made of orange barrels and heavy board slats across the road. Otis saw a red Dodge pickup and a blue Oldsmobile in front of him turn left as they’d been told.

But Otis decided not to do as he’d been told. Why not at least take a look at this old bridge? He was in no hurry. Deputy Canton had clearly turned up nothing that required a highspeed chase of a Cushman down old U.S. 56.

No car could make it around the barricade, but on the right—the north side—there was a gap large enough for him and his scooter to squeeze through. Otis dismounted and walked himself and pushed the scooter through the small opening.

Then he got back on the scooter and started riding. He could see the outline of bridge spans about a hundred yards ahead. There were the remnants of houses and stores on both sides of the road, but nothing that was still alive—structures or people. What small signs of life and business that may have remained had obviously departed with the closing of the bridge. The barricades made regular access impossible.

There were more barriers and warnings at the bridge, which Otis again walked his scooter around.

The last sign had the harshest words of all:

DANGER! BRIDGE UNSAFE!

PROCEED NO FARTHER!

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED!

STATE LAW!

At a glance, the bridge resembled something from truly ancient times. The half-circle steel girders that swooped up twenty-five or thirty feet on both sides were solid rust. So were the metal struts and stanchions and heavy wires that had been strung between and through the girders for reinforcement.

The bridge’s narrow two-lane road appeared to be wooden planking, much of which was split, broken, torn, or rotted away.

The metal girders rose out of blocks of cracked concrete supports. On the right, faded and neglected, was a two-foot-square bronze tablet embedded in the concrete. Otis walked over and read it.

Above it was a smaller green-and-white metal sign swinging loose by a single screw. It said:
CHANUTE RIVER.

Otis stepped onto the bridge, being careful to put his feet down on what looked to be the most solid planks. He looked through the girders to the water of the Chanute River below. It was a long way down—fifty, maybe seventy-five feet—and the river was wider here—sixty yards at least—than Otis had expected. He must have driven over this bridge several times when he was younger, but he didn’t recall it being this high or the river being this big or running this fast. Maybe it had rained upriver somewhere and the runoff had flooded the Chanute.

The current was really strong. He watched several cotton-wood limbs and what resembled a couple of large oil cans appear from upriver and quickly disappear below him and the bridge.

The only noise was that made by the flowing of the river.

He saw a few birds in the trees on the riverbank. They looked like meadowlarks, the state bird of Kansas, a fact that he had had to memorize in the sixth grade, along with the state tree, the cottonwood; the state motto,
Ad Astra Per Aspera
—”To the stars through difficulties;” the state colors, blue and gold; the state flower, the sunflower; and the state song, “Home on the Range.”

Now, Otis. Sing, Otis, sing.

He began to sing in a southern nasal twang as loud as he could:

Then he stopped and switched to the other song of Kansas:

There. He had done it. He had sung again. He had sung, and his words were still reverberating and echoing out there somewhere for the birds and any other living things around to enjoy, if they so desired.

He had never really ever sung a song—
any
song—by himself
since graduation day from high school. He had been the star male singer of Sedgwicktown High School, crooning a. la Mercer at assemblies and gatherings, particularly “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” from the movie
The Harvey Girls
, That song was big everywhere but most particularly in small-town Kansas, through which the Santa Fe, as it was simply called, ran up, down, across, and through. Otis’s ability to carry a tune with some skill was an accidental gift. Otis had joined the high school chorus because his mother made him, and he expected to mostly hum with the other boys behind the singing of the girls. But the chorus director, a woman named Alma Stockton, whose main job was to teach math, heard something special in Otis’s voice. Alma Stockton told him many times that, for her money, Otis sang the Santa Fe song better even than Johnny Mercer, and he could probably make a living and life just singing that one song if he wanted to.

But Otis stopped performing after high school. He did not sing even a word of anything except later, as a Eureka civic leader, when he mumbled hymns at the First Methodist Church and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Rotary, sporting events, and similar gatherings.

Now he had sung alone again as Johnny Mercer.

A crow, clearly attracted by the stunning beauty of the singing, landed on one of the girders that crossed over the bridge from one span to the other, high above Otis.

“Or are you a hawk or an eagle or a blackbird or a vulture instead of a crow?” Otis said to the black bird. He had never been good at distinguishing the really big ones. They all looked like crows to him.

He hoped it wasn’t a vulture. He hoped there wasn’t a carcass of a dead animal around that had drawn the attention of this bird, whatever its species.

He considered firing off a BB or two at the bird.

No, no. That bird wasn’t hurting anything up there. Besides, it clearly appreciated the singing. So why bother it? But Otis was overcome with satisfaction in realizing for certain that he could have scored a bull’s-eye on the bird’s head if he chose to. He was that good with his Daisy rifle.

That was Buck, the marksman runaway singer—and an old cowhand? That reminded him of the Mercer song Pete Wetmore had said was his favorite.

Thinking maybe he was doing it in Pete’s memory, Otis sang it loudly:

Otis looked ahead to the end of the bridge, to the other side of the river. It wasn’t really
that
far. The left side of the bridge’s roadway seemed in better shape than the right. Fewer of the planks were missing or rotten. It was obvious that through the years, the
winds and rain and snow from the north had hit the other side of the bridge first and done heavier damage.

If he was careful, he could drive his Cushman across. The alternative would be to go all the way back to the detour turnoff. What a silly and unecessary waste of time that would be. Onward, Otis.

Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay, Buck.

He walked the scooter over to the left and confirmed that the planking looked much stronger and in better condition here.

Okay, Cushman, let’s go.

He mounted the scooter, kicked the motor started, and began a slow, steady, careful putt-putt toward the other side of the river, keeping the scooter as close as possible to the metal span. Just in case.

Just in case he had to grab on to something.

No problems the first ten yards. He heard some cracking sounds but gunned the scooter quickly before anything happened. At twenty yards, not quite halfway, he spotted a missing plank ahead, right in his path. He swerved gently to the right and moved past it and then turned back onto his route.

Onward, Buck.

He felt terrific. He felt so good, so accomplished, so daring, so brave, so satisfied just knowing he could still sing a song like Johnny Mercer, blow the head off a big black bird with a BB if he chose to do so, or maneuver a motor scooter across an ancient, closed, dangerous bridge.

He saw the reflection of a flashing blue light coming from somewhere behind him. He turned to see what it was.

Crack!

The sound of splintering wood shot up from below the scooter’s front tire. Otis jerked the handlebar hard to the right and threw the throttle all the way forward.

He felt the scooter giving way underneath him, the front first and then the whole machine. He desperately reached out to the side with his bare left hand for anything—a wire, a girder. Anything that he could hold on to, anything that would keep him from following the scooter down into the rushing waters of the Chanute River.

He had something in his hand. He wasn’t falling. He held on as tight as he could. His body, from the waist down, was dangling through the roadway. A huge hunk must have come loose and given way. Maybe he could pull or swing himself up. He began to twist his body around so he could also grab something with his right hand.

“Hey, friend! Hold on! I’m coming!”

Who is that?
thought Otis.
The voice is familiar. The deputy? What did he find on his computer check about me? Why is he here?

Otis reached forward with his right hand. His left hand slipped free.

And down he fell. He screamed only once and only one word: “No!”

In the few split seconds it took him to hit the water, he tried to think of something from the fourth year of his life and saw off to the left what looked like his red scooter in the water, being rushed away by the current. Or was that a mirage? Wouldn’t it have sunk like a rock?

Then he crashed into the water, feetfirst. The impact jarred loose the Chiefs helmet from his head. He continued down into the water like a rock.

Goodbye, helmet, Cushman, Red Ryder, wet dreams, Johnny Mercer, and life.

Water rushed into his mouth and nose, and he could no longer breathe.

E HEARD A VOICE.
A man’s.