The Footbridge Grandpa Built Twice

It was right about then that Kristen came down the path.

She had a thermos in one hand and a stack of paper cups in the other, and she walked slow, the way you walk into a room where people might stop talking. Nobody stopped talking, exactly. But it got quieter.

She didn’t say sorry. She didn’t say anything at first. She walked straight to Grandpa’s chair and knelt down in the pine straw and poured him a cup of coffee and held it out to him with both hands.

He took it. He looked at it. Then he looked at her.

“Black?” he asked.

“Two sugars,” she said. “Grandma Loretta told me, my first Christmas here.”

That was eleven years ago. I hadn’t known Kristen had been paying attention at that first Christmas. I’d thought she’d spent the whole day wishing she was somewhere else, and maybe she had, but she’d heard Grandma Loretta say how Grandpa took his coffee and she’d kept it.

Grandpa drank about half the cup. Then he said, “Thank you, Kristen,” the same way he’d thank anybody, and she stood up and poured cups for Brett and me and set the thermos by Grandpa’s chair, and went and sat on the stacked boards by herself to watch.

What Kristen Said

She stayed most of the morning. She didn’t help, and nobody asked her to. Around ten, Brett took the boys up to the house for a snack, and I came over to fill my cup from the thermos, and she said it without looking at me.

“The man said it was rotten all the way through.”

“I know.”

“He bounced on it, and the far end gave, and he said it could go any time with the boys on it.” She held her cup in both hands. “Jack’s leg was still pink from the stitches. I just saw it give.”

“I know, Kristen.”

“I should have called your grandpa,” she said, looking over at him in his chair. “I thought it was just old. I didn’t know about the bus, or your daddy, or the war. Nobody ever told me any of it.”

That last part hit me hard, because it was true. In eleven years, not one of us had ever sat her down and told her what the bridge was.

“It was one soft end of one stringer,” I said. “And the board on top of it.”

“Brett told me.” She pressed her lips together. “He told me a lot of things when he got home.”

“He wasn’t ugly to you, was he?”

“No.” She almost laughed. “Your brother doesn’t get ugly. He just gets quiet and disappointed, and it’s a whole lot worse.”

We sat there a minute. Down on the bridge, a mockingbird landed on one of the new rail posts and looked around like it had paid for it.

“I’m paying for the rails,” she said suddenly. “The last of the lumber. I already called the man in Beulaville. It’s three hundred and ten dollars and he’s bringing it Wednesday. Don’t argue with me, Leanne.”

I didn’t argue. Part of me wanted to say I’ve got it, the way you do when you want to stay the one who was right. But it was her yard and her boys and her bridge now, and she wanted to put something into it.

“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”