Our father carried her from the car, and for the first time, she actually let him—and next morning we all heard it, before first light had hit the house:
Penny was playing the piano.
She played through the sunrise, she played through our fights. She played through breakfast, and then long past it, and none of us knew the music. Maybe it was a misspent rationale, that when she was playing she wasn’t dying—for we knew it would soon be back again, having swung from wire to wire.
There was no point closing the curtains, or locking any of the doors.
It was in there, out there, waiting.
It lived on our front porch.
When Clay ran back from McAndrew, our father was standing with Achilles.
He asked if Clay was okay.
He told him he’d really missed him.
“You didn’t build while I was away?”
“No.” He patted the mule, but cautiously. “There could be thousands of people working on this bridge, and the world could come to see it…but they’d all know who it belonged to.” He handed him the lead of the animal. “You’re the only one who can finish it.”
* * *
—
For a long time, Clay stood outside.
He watched Achilles eating.
Evening would soon be upon them.
There was one thought overpowering him, and at first he didn’t know why.
I think he just wanted to talk to him.
It was the legend of Pont du Gard:
Once, in France, which wasn’t even France then—it was the ancient world—there was a river that proved unbeatable. That river, today, is the Gardon.
For centuries, the people who lived there could never quite finish a bridge, or if they did, the river destroyed it.
Then one day the devil strolled into town, and made an offer to the villagers. He said, “I can build that bridge for you easily! I can build it in a single night!”
And the villagers, they almost cried.
“But!” The devil was quite beside himself. “The first one who crosses the bridge next day is mine to do with what I please.”
So a meeting was held in the village.
It was discussed and finally agreed.
They took up the devil’s offer, and watched in total rapture, in the night, as he tore stones from up on the mountaintops, and anything else he came by. He threw and juggled the pieces, and made arches in twos and threes. He made that bridge and aqueduct, and in the morning, he awaited his payment.
He’d made his bargain; he’d lived up to it.
But the villagers, for once, had outsmarted him—and set a hare free over the top of it, as the first one to cross the river—and the devil was infuriated:
He picked up the hare and smashed it.