The Footbridge Grandpa Built Twice

The Fourth Saturday

The last Saturday was the warmest morning yet. The pollen had washed out of the air, and the branch had cleared to that tea brown color it runs in good weather.

The rail cedar was stacked on the bank, raw and smelling sweet. Brett was there, and the twins were already sitting on the stack. Grandpa had me set his lawn chair in the same spot as always, and he pointed at me the moment I picked up the mallet.

“Rails go on the inside of the posts,” he said. “Pegged, not nailed. You know that.”

“I know that.”

“And the end post on the near side.” He pointed again. “Leave it six inches tall.”

I looked at him. “Six inches taller than what?”

“Than the others. Leave it tall.”

I didn’t understand why, and he didn’t explain. That’s the other way he taught me, my whole life. Sometimes he didn’t ask how. Sometimes he just said do it, and you found out later.

We worked all morning. Brett and I fit the rails, and the boys handed up pegs. I knelt on the deck and drove every one, and twice Grandpa made me pull a peg and drive a new one because it had gone in crooked by a hair.

Around eleven, I drove the last peg into the last rail.

I sat back on my heels. My hands were blistered and my knees were bruised purple from four Saturdays of kneeling on boards. I looked down sixteen feet of new cedar on Grandpa’s old sills, every joint pegged, and I could not say a word.

Grandpa said it for me. “That’s a bridge,” he said. “That’s a good bridge.”

Then he did something he hadn’t done in four Saturdays. He got up out of his chair.

Two Dates

He walked down to the near end slow, one hand on Brett’s arm, to the tall post. He stood there a minute. Then he took out the old bone handled pocketknife he’s carried since before I was born, and opened it.

He started carving into the face of the post, just below the top.

None of us said anything. The boys came and stood right at his elbows, and he let them. He worked slow and careful, the blade turning out little curls of red cedar that fell on his shoes. It took him a long time. His hands aren’t what they were.

When he stepped back, it said 1971.

He wiped the blade on his pant leg. Then he bent down again and, right underneath it, he carved the other number. This year.

He folded his knife and put it back in his pocket and looked at the two dates, one on top of the other, for a long time.

“Your grandma would want both on there,” he said. “She’d say the second one counts just as much as the first. She always said things built twice were built by two sets of hands, and that was better.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why I wanted the post long. Wanted room for both.”

Brett turned around and looked out at the branch for a while. I didn’t look at anything. I couldn’t see very well right then anyway.