The Footbridge That Beat the Toll Gate

Why Not Just Call Somebody

I know what you are thinking, because I thought it too. Call the county. Call the sheriff. Call somebody.

I called the county barn Thursday at noon from the job site. The man who answered was polite and tired. He had four other crossings out in the same district.

“We’ll get an engineer out to look at it,” he said. “But I’ll be honest with you, ma’am. With the culverts and the permitting, you’re looking at six months. Maybe more if it rains again.”

“Six months,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am. Before school starts back in August, if we’re lucky.”

And the sheriff could not do a thing about it, because it was Vance’s pasture and Vance’s gate. A man can charge you to cross his own land. He can charge you anything he likes. You can just decide not to pay it.

I could pay it. I am a pipeline welder. I make good money when I am working, and I was working. Twenty dollars a day was not going to break me.

But Ardith cleaned houses in Shawnee for thirteen dollars an hour and raised three kids by herself. Twenty dollars a day was a hundred dollars a week. Over six months that was more than her car was worth.

And there were two other families on our road who were stretched just as thin, and one grandmother raising her grandson on a Social Security check.

Ardith

Thursday after work I walked down to Ardith’s place. She was in the yard taking sheets off the line, with her littlest, Josie, sitting in a laundry basket like a little queen.

“You paid him,” I said.

“I paid him.” She snapped a pillowcase and folded it in half against her chest. “What was I going to do, Tamsin? Keep them home six months?”

“No.”

“I already called my boss. I can go in later and stay later. But the kids have to get to the bus, and he knows it.” She looked at the creek. “He knows every one of us has to.”

Josie held up her arms, and Ardith picked her up, basket sheets and all. Josie is four and goes to the pre-K program in town. She rides the same bus with her two big brothers.

“You know what she asked me this morning?” Ardith said. “She asked me if we were poor now because we have to pay to go to school.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I just stood there in her yard with the sun going down orange behind the oaks.

“Don’t do anything crazy,” she said.

“I’m not going to do anything crazy,” I said. “I’m going to do something heavy.”