Bridge of Clay

“Here,” he said, “it’s the end.” He pointed at the TV. “They’re shooting him back to Mars.”

A voice came quietly between them. “It’s Neptune, idiot.”

Clay and Michael Dunbar, they grinned and turned, to the woman behind, in the hallway. She was in her oldest pajamas. She said, “Don’t you remember anything?”

On that particular morning, the milk was off, so Penny made pancakes, and when the rest of us came in, we argued, spilt orange juice and laid blame. Penny cleaned up and called over: “You spilt the bloody orange chooce again!” and we laughed and none of us knew:

So she dropped an egg between Rory’s toes.

So she lost control of a plate.

What could that mean, if anything?

But looking back now, it meant plenty.

She’d started leaving us that morning, and death was moving in:

He was perched there on a curtain rod.

Dangling in the sun.

Later, he was leaning, close but casual, an arm draped over the fridge; if he was minding the beer he was doing a bloody good job.

* * *

—

On the other side, on the incoming fight with Hartnell, it was just as I’d thought, it was great. In the lead-up to that seemingly ordinary Sunday, we’d bought two pairs of boxing gloves.

We punched, we circled.

We weaved.

I lived in those giant red gloves back then, like cabins strapped to my wrists.

“He’s gonna kill me,” I said, but my dad, he wouldn’t allow it. He was truly just my dad back then, and maybe that’s all I can say; it’s the best thing I can tell you.

It was moments like those he’d stop.

He put his boxing-gloved hand on my neck.

“Well.” He thought, and talked to me quietly. “Then you’ve gotta start thinking like this. You have to make up your mind.” The encouragement came so easily to him, as he touched the back of my head. It was all so very tender, very sweet. A lot of love beside me. “He can kill you all he wants to—but you’re not going to die.”

He was good at before-the-beginnings.

* * *

—

For Penny, it kept coming on, and for us it was vaguely noticeable. The woman we’d known our whole short lives—who had barely had a cold—was sometimes looking shaky. But as fast, she’d ward it off.

There were moments of apparent wooziness.

Or sometimes a distant cough.

There was a sleepiness midmorning, but she worked so long and hard—and that, we’d thought, explained it. Who were we to say that it wasn’t the working at Hyperno—the proximity of germs and kids. She was always up late with her marking.

She was only in need of rest.