The Bridge

Issue 49 • Spring 2024 • Fiction

First place winner in the Spring 2024 Contest Issue judged by Jenn Givhan

In that year, I remember you as always worried I would die. It got to the point that some nights, if you hadn’t heard from me, you’d call three or four times, just to make sure I’d answer. On a night I was in a bad mood, I’d let my phone ring and ring and ring, and I’d imagine you pacing in your house, or your wife walking into your office, asking if something was wrong, and you, unable to say, brushing her off with the cold calmness only she and I knew.

In that year, I was much more worried about other things, like getting into grad school or having extra money for drugs. I was much more worried about you and I and about the two of us in Mexico City in autumn–the imaginary trip we had been planning for a time when things were more “settled”–a word you used often. Mexico City, tiled houses, museums, all with money and privacy we didn’t have at that moment. I worried about the promises you wouldn’t or couldn’t keep, and the hesitation I felt on nights we weren’t together.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot again. Do you remember looking down at the river and its forest before we got in the car that night? There was a new moon, a great big empty sky above us, and it was so dark that the view from the hills of the Westside reminded me of how the ocean looks from a redeye flight. A black-ink nothingness. I thought of the plane to Mexico City, and the window seat I’d have.

Do you remember exactly how the road looked? In dreams, I see it like I’m there. It’s 80 degrees, but there’s a snowstorm of sorts–the seeds from the cottonwoods that grow in the river’s sandbanks blow past our windshield. It’s beautiful, the way it tunnels around my car. You drive, and my hand is on your thigh. Our faces glisten with sweat, lit only by my headlights reflecting off the road.

In the hours before, we had stood in the park that looks down at the river that separates the first half of the city from the second. We leaned towards the eastside mountains, talking here and there about different futures–things we thought would work out, things we didn’t. Mexico City. We said things without really saying them, and it felt like everything would be okay, nothing bad was on the horizon. That’s what I remember thinking.

I’ve been replaying it all in my head again, from start to finish. We are getting too touchy to stay in the park and move to cross the river to your temporarily empty house. There’s no one in your house, no one on the roads. If the rapture happens, I hope they take everyone but us. This city is so quiet during the week.

We hit the bridge fast, doing 60 or so. We laugh, hum to the radio. Sunflowers wave at us from each side of the road’s barriers. I watch them glow as we pass. Our only audience. It’s an Alice in Wonderland kind of magic as we cross from the Westside to the Eastside.

I know we are looking at each other much more than we are looking at the road. I
guess that’s how it all happened. I imagine swerving all over like we own everything, like we’re drunk. Happy and stupid.

And then we hit her.

We didn’t see her; she lies in the dark on our right-hand side. She’s in such a way that when we went over her, we can’t understand what’s happened, or what we’ve just felt. I gasp, you slam on the brakes. I think, must be someone’s fucking bumper. Drunk drivers often leave evidence of their six tequila sodas in the medians and shoulders of the city.

In fact, I never told you this, but a couple months before that, I’d done something similar. It was a few drinks at one bar, a few shots at the next. Two A.M. came quickly, and the bar ejected me and the scraggly regulars. I stumbled to my car.

Hard to say what happened between me backing out of the lot and me hitting the stop sign only a few blocks away. Sobering. My headlight was busted, and I slept in the car that night. I cried the whole way home in the morning. I told you later the damage was from someone backing into me. You never questioned it.

So, we had hit her, and we are parked on the bridge. I watch you squint into the rearview mirror. You are worried, this time about my tires. So, you get out to check. I follow.

You, slightly ahead of me, stare at the roadway and what we’ve just hit. You make a sound I’ve never heard again and can still hear now–a sickened and strangled gasp that sometimes comes to mind when I’m in bed alone.

She’s lying there, in the red of my taillights–a small, fragile woman surrounded by a pool of black. The river and its forest. Her hair is caked with dirt and tar, her eyes open to the sky. You can feel this thing in dead people–a vacuum around them. I had never seen a body before.

You walk slowly to her, kneel, and set a hand on her face. Your motion shocks me and I pull you back.

“Don’t touch her!”

You whisper, cold-calm. “She’s still warm. She’s still–”

“No, she’s not. She isn’t.” I suppose I was whispering too, even though there was no one around. This city is so quiet during the week.

“We should call someone…”

To be honest, I wasn’t thinking of her, as you and I proceeded to stand above the body in silence. I was thinking of cops and reports and my name being written down and your name being written down. I was thinking of handcuffs, impounded cars. I was thinking about your wife answering your allotted phone call. I was thinking if you’re here, who am I supposed to call? Trials. Jailtime. No School. No Mexico City. How had we not seen her? How had we killed her, just like that?

“I want to go home–let’s just go home.” My heart is going to explode. I know I wasn’t whispering anymore.

“What are you talking about? We have to call 9-1-1.” Your calmness annoys me. 9-1-1? Handcuffs? Jailtime?

Sometimes I have this power. Like that of a mother whose child is trapped under a car. But it’s not good like that–it’s dark, strong, and controlling.

“I’m calling 9-1-1.” I watch as you pull out your phone, and I let my power eat me. You can’t even unlock it before I snatch it from your hand and throw it against the bridge’s barrier. Why didn’t you say anything? You just pick the phone up, look at it, and look at me. I see you trying to reflect the evil gaze I give you. Or maybe it was just confusion in your eyes… I know sometimes you didn’t recognize me either.

When you do try to speak again, I shush you and feel my hand across your face. I’m still sorry about that, hitting you after we hit her. So hard my hand burned.

“We are leaving.”

It’s funny to me how sheepishly you follow, despite how much bigger you are than me, how much more mature we both think you are. Suddenly, I think you’re pathetic, small.

There’s nothing wrong with the car, how weird is that? I drive, and we are silent. I wonder what you are thinking, and what you think about me. Are you horrified? Disappointed? I think you’re scared, too, like I am. Handcuffs. Jail. Prison.

The next part is not as vivid. We pull up to your house. You get out alone. I tell you to call me. Impossible, given your phone has been destroyed. You can’t, but you say you will anyway. I say something like call me, just don’t tell anyone about this, please, please, please, please, please. We’ve just killed a woman, haven’t we? I can’t–oh God–please, please, please. Just call me later. We are crying.

You kiss my head through the window. The lips don’t feel like yours. I watch you walk through the black hole of your doorway. You never call, and another passerby finds her, the woman we killed.

But we hadn’t killed her.

The sun rises and I learn she had already been dead–murdered by a boyfriend who had already confessed, just in time for the 7:00 news. Her name was Martina Hull. Twenty-four, mother of one. I’d imagine you’ve looked into it too. Or have you avoided it all this time?

They had fought that night, Martina and her boyfriend. She tried to jump out of his truck while it was speeding across the bridge. Well, he had swerved to be sure she’d fall. He was trying to teach her a lesson. He didn’t know if she was dead, but he panicked, or so he says. He was scared she’d call the cops, so he backed over her and took off, his wheels striking her a second time. Articles on the subject are sparse. Most refer to Martina as “the victim” or simply “a woman.” It was the 50^th murder that year in the city.

As an act of contrition, I followed the case religiously. I even sat in once at the trial. That part began a year later, and the day I went, the murderer gave his testimony, said how much he loved Martina. How he would give anything to have her back. He even cried. He called out to her son–his son–and said he was sorry, so sorry. The kid was six. It was sickening, pathetic. I left during recess and didn’t go back. The jury found him guilty, he got eight years.

In everything I found on the case, there was never any mention of another culprit. Never mentions of another car, or anyone else who could have been responsible. The cops probably didn’t even look, despite our tire marks, the glass of the phone.

Sometimes I feel lucky, absolved. I don’t think of it much. Other times, I still want to turn myself in. In my head, I go to the police station and scream “I did it, I killed Martina Hull.” I take the fall for both of us. After all, you had tried to do the right thing once, and I didn’t let you. Did you ever think about turning yourself in? Even in my head, the cops laugh, usher me out, or have me admitted to a hospital instead. “Case is closed.”

I’d left you at your house that day in June. What did you do then? Did you call someone, tell them what had happened, who you had been with? Or did you crawl into bed, like I did, unable to sleep? When your wife got back some days later, did you confess it all to her? Did you promise to never leave her side, or hurt her in any way? Did you see one woman in the other?

Autumn came. No school. I didn’t even finish the applications. No Mexico City, of course. All my fears grew into a reality.

You never called, we never talked, but I did see you again, just once, at the grocery store you always refused to go to and I always go to. You weren’t alone. She was there with you. Your wife. You looked a bit uptight, but otherwise unaffected. I hid at the end of an aisle, watching you put your arm around her shoulders, watching her put the meat in the basket. She pushes the cart, you pull. She’s pregnant. I left without buying anything.

When the new year came, your fear almost materialized and didn’t. I had a party at my house. I overdid it, overdosed. No one had seen me crawl to my bedroom and when I woke up, I was covered in my own vomit and blood. I could then only crawl to the bathroom, sit in the shower, and let the water pour over me for hours. My house was full of passed-out strangers who would eventually wake up, piss in the yard, and leave. I was alone eventually, sweating and gasping. I thought of your check-ins. If you had called, I would have answered. Maybe your phone was still broken. You never called. It was a Tuesday, actually. This city is so quiet during the week.

I cross the bridge daily, from my grandmother’s house where I live now, to work, or to AA, or to NA, or to something. Back and forth, back and forth, past that spot where the sunflowers waved at us that night. Past the place where the body was found. The sunflowers make me sick, actually. They are so arrogant. But how deranged is it that they make me think of you more than her?

Lately, it’s funny which memory I’ve been replaying most. After I left you, I got home and walked through my own blackhole doorway to the kitchen. I stood shaking over the sink. A fly buzzed and landed next to my hand. I was quicker than it–I crushed it under my palm. I thought of your face, the sting of my hand. A wave of nausea came over me so quickly I ran back out the door and threw up in the yard. What had the little thing ever done to me besides feed on the trash I didn’t want?

I didn’t want to clean the mess then, worried you might call while I was outside, standing there, unhinged with the hose blasting at four in the morning. Instead, I crawled into bed, didn’t sleep, and the vomit sat there for weeks, attracting dozens or hundreds more flies until the monsoon rains washed it away some time later.

Contest Judge Jenn Givhan on “The Bridge”:
The point of view gripped me, relentlessly, with its tonal flexibility, teetering precariously between urgency and vulnerability, its self-destructiveness and tenderness flashing and disappearing. I felt pulled in immediately, let in on a secret. I felt for the narrator, even as she reveals and sometimes revels in her darkness. The language and situation are so tightly rendered. A devastating piece.

Issue 49 • Spring 2024

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry