The Covered Bridge I Swept for Twelve Years

The Saturday

Saturday was bright and cool with a wind out of the northwest. I decided to wash every window in the house, which I had never in my life done in April.

By a quarter to ten I was at the kitchen sink on the side that looks toward the creek. The sycamores had only a green haze on them, so I could see more of the east portal than I like to remember.

I saw cars pull in. I saw the pale lift of a white dress. I saw a tall man in a gray suit walking beside it very slowly, one arm crooked, and I knew those shoulders better than my own face.

Garland had said at breakfast, “I’m going to the bridge.” I said, “Then go.” He stood a minute looking at the back of my head and said, “She’d like it if you came.”

I said, “I have windows.” He took his hat off the hook, and I heard the screen door shut as quietly as a screen door can.

At ten o’clock I had my hands in the dishwater and my back to the window, and I did not turn around. I stayed that way until the water went cold.

A few minutes after, Garland came up the back path with his hat in his hand and one white petal stuck to the shoulder of his suit coat.

He took it off and set it on the table in front of me without a word, and went upstairs and changed his clothes.

The next morning, after church, where I sat in the third pew and did not meet a single eye, I walked down to the bridge. I think I wanted to see the damage.

There was no damage. There were rose petals down the center of the planks, a few already trampled to a stain, and two bunches of white satin ribbon tied to the rails near the window, their tails lifting in the draft.

I had Garland’s hickory-handled hand broom in my apron pocket. I had picked it off the hook by the back door without thinking. I began to sweep, long strokes toward the west portal.

I cut the ribbons down with my pruning shears and that evening I put them in the burn barrel behind the shed and watched the satin curl up and go black.

I swept it again the next Sunday, and the one after. In June Harlan Aubrey, one of the township trustees, walked out and watched me work and said, “Ivalee, we’ve been trying to find somebody to look after her for ten years.”

I said I supposed I could, as long as nobody made a fuss.

That is how I became the bridge lady of Marrow Ford. Out of spite and a hand broom. I told myself it was duty. Some mornings I even believed it.

Twelve springs

At first I was angry in a clean, hot, useful way. I scrubbed the siding with a stiff brush. I pried up rotten planks and set new ones, one stroke to a nail.

The Hale Creek Covered Bridge Association, eleven members on paper and three who came to meetings, gave me a cardboard certificate. I was proud of it and ashamed of how proud.

Corliss called on a Wednesday at noon, when she knew Garland was at work. I stood in the kitchen with my hand on the counter and counted fourteen rings.

In October I picked up and she said, “Mama, please,” and I said, “I have nothing to say to you that I haven’t already said,” and set the receiver down very gently, and then stood there shaking like a leaf.

After that she stopped calling. I never dialed her number once. I had it on a scrap of paper taped inside the cupboard door, in Garland’s handwriting, and I shut that door every morning when I reached for the coffee.

Garland went to see her. Every Thursday after work, for eight years, he took his keys from the hook and said, “I’m going to see our daughter,” and I said nothing, and he went.

He came back late and did not volunteer a word and I did not ask. I put his plate in the oven.

I knew she had a baby the year after the wedding because Garland became a man who carried a small hand-knit hat in his coat pocket and took it out when he thought I was in the other room.