The Incident on the Bridge (32 page)

A
fter Elaine left to go get the boot Carl's nephew had found, the front desk called Skelly to say a cabdriver wanted to talk to him about a girl he'd picked up on the bridge. African guy, he said he was.

The very same.

Awate Mebrahtu has no receipts to prove he picked someone up right after he supposedly saw the girl. No subsequent fare until one a.m., he says, at McP's. He has a name that no one is going to spell right, ever, and which will mark him as a foreigner. Skelly is amazed that the guy has come into the office at all, that he is sitting in Skelly's presence to talk about a missing white girl.

In what seemed a previous life, on this man's home continent, R. P. Skelly had been Elder Skelly, aged nineteen. Elder Skelly had been the Jesus Man inside homes, on streets, and in cafés, where all the skin was walnut brown like Awate's and Skelly was a pale giant from America.

“You saw this girl?” Skelly asks. “Where did you find her, exactly?”

“On this bridge.”

“Like, the middle or the end or what?”

“Middle.”

“Was she wearing boots? Pink ones?”

He nods. So the boots were right, anyway.

“And where did you take her?”

“It is the football field.”

Skelly holds out a map. “Here?” he asks, pointing to the high school stadium.

The man studies the illustrated map of the island, the red roof of the Hotel Del, the blue grid of streets, the green circles and yellow squares. He turns it clockwise a quarter turn. He points to a green blob shaped like a kidney bean, the outer edge of Tidelands Park.

That
kind of football. “Then what?”

“Do I sit and have a smoke.”

“You do or you did?”

Nodding.

“So right there”—Skelly points to Glorietta, the street that curved away from the bridge and around the green blob—“you stopped?”

“No.” Awate touches the map again: a circle near the blue edge of the cartoon bay.

“You were sitting here, like, on a bench?”

“No bench. The front skirt of taxi.”

“Inside or outside.”

“Outside.”

“The hood. Then what?”

“The girl is walking.”

Skelly nods.

“Along this path,” Awate says. “Under this bridge.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“Under this bridge.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“Yes. The Boat Man.” Not
boat
mun. He says it like two words, not one.

“Who's the Boat Man?”

“He live in the water. I see him two times also before. Coming shore, going out.” Awate holds up both elegant hands and mimes rowing.

“Was the Boat Man rowing when you saw him?”

“No, he is walking. He is walking the same path.”

“What's his boat look like?”

Awate shrugs and shakes his head.

“What about the guy?”

“Guy?”

“The Boat Man.”

“He is a white.”

“Big? Tall? Short? Beard? Bald?” Skelly points to his own thinning hair.

“He is old.”

“Then what?”

“I finish my smoke, I drive.”

“Did you see the man talk to her or anything?”

“No.”

Skelly writes that down. The earth was full of holes that opened up and swallowed things. The hole was there and you could find it, or the hole closed over, smooth as water.

“Thank you, Mr. Mebrahtu,” Skelly says, unable to feel much hope. A Boat Man by definition had a boat. Boats sailed away. South to Mexico, north to anywhere, surrounded by the erasing, swallowing sea.

“There is one thing,” Awate says.

“What's that?”

“It is not on her feet then, the boots.”

“When?”

“She is walking, she is holding boots. Like this.” He holds his hands out to the sides as if in each one he has a boot.

“So she's barefoot.”

“No. She is socks.”

“That's weird.”

Awate stares at him like he doesn't know the word or everything is equally weird.

“It's good, though.” So the boot Carl's kid had found didn't mean a body hitting the water from the bridge, clothes ripping off, boots torn away and floating—which didn't make sense, anyway—all the way to shore.

He walks Awate to the door and shakes his hand, and for a second Skelly remembers the Nigerian sky, foreign and yet benign because in that time and place Skelly had been absolutely sure of goodness watched over by a fatherly God. Then the glass door of the police station closes and he can see nothing but his own reflection.

“T
hat was psycho,” Ted says.

Jerome nods. He's still feeling rubbery. He thought that old homeless guy would want to sue him for sure, but first they'd have to go to the hospital and the man would get tested for rabies and need stitches and who knew what else that would cost a fortune. Jerome's mom would freak. Then maybe Maddy would have to be put down even though she wasn't vicious at all. It was Jerome's fault. Totally his fault. He lets the extendo-leash reel out a little and Maddy picks up a stick and stops mournfully in front of him. “I know,” he says, and she looks sadder.

“What do you think he was doing in there?” Ted asks.

“Something weird,” Jerome says. He should go back in the bushy cave-place and look around, he thinks, but it might be a toilet, just a disgusting place with tissue left all around. “Hold the leash,” he says.

He makes himself stick his head in and sees a sleeping bag unrolled. Jars and cans, various types. A bag of what looks like trash. Just a camp for some homeless guy. At the far edge of the circle, where the branches touch down, he sees a white piece of paper. Small like a card. Probably nothing, but maybe not. He steps over the sleeping bag and picks up a business card that says
SEER: Reuniting Souls in Transit.
That's a weird one. He decides he has to pick up the sleeping bag and look underneath, though he's pretty sure the sleeping bag is going to smell, and he doesn't want to touch it. Maddy is sniffing and whining. He can't see well in the shade but he picks up the sleeping bag and drags it out of the bushes. He bends over and looks at the mashed grass and dirt underneath. There is something wrinkled and crushed: a piece of newspaper. Edges torn, not cut. He picks it up and thrashes out of the branches, Maddy pulling hard at the leash and poking his thigh to be petted, and then he sees. A part of the local paper, the
Eagle,
its colors and type font familiar. What has been torn out is a photo of a girl, and the girl is Thisbe.
LOCAL GIRL SUBMITS SCHOOL PROJECT TO OCEAN FOUNDATION
,
it says. Thisbe grins in the photograph and holds up a clear glass jar. Something floats in the jar, but he doesn't know what it is.

Maddy breathes her hot tuna-can breath and Ted comes up to see, her face worried.

“It was under the sleeping bag,” he tells her. “I think we should tell the police.”

F
rank sees it as he pulls the dinghy across the mud. The boot is uncovered. It will be uncovered every day at low tide. Lying there for anyone to see.

He should pick it up. Who would question digging trash out of the mudflats? But he has a sense of misgiving. He gets into the dinghy and begins to row, and when he turns to look at the beach, a boy is standing there with his skateboard, looking out at the bay. The boy looks directly at Frank, as if he's watching him to see where he goes.

Frank's wrist throbs, and he still doesn't have the impeller. The wind is light. What if Julia is dead? The dog was a sign of something. Something bad.

He stops rowing to press on the bite mark.

What if the boy is still watching?

He is.

He should go back and get the boot. He could pull it out of the mud like a tooth.

He's passing the mint-green sloop with the fake owl on its stern and the light is fading, the water rising,
“All the water will rise and cover us,”
that's what the Seer said. It's not just the boy with the skateboard watching him. Under the bridge he sees two people not moving, just waiting there close together, and beside them is the hulking shape of the same dog.