The Covered Bridge I Swept for Twelve Years

“I was wrong,” I said. “No. That’s not all of it. I told you that you cheapened your vows. The only cheap thing was me.” My voice had gone to a rasp.

“You gave me the one thing you had that I loved. You stood on it and offered it to me. And I called you a thief.”

Corliss gripped the bridge rail until her knuckles paled.

“I wanted the town to see what I made. That’s all it ever was.”

She was crying now, silently, the way she did even as a girl, her face perfectly still and the water running. “Mama, I should have just walked across. I was so afraid you’d close the door.”

“I would have,” I said. “Twelve years ago and four. I did, at the church, with the ham.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

“I said that to you at your father’s funeral. I will carry that sentence until I die.”

“Mama.”

“I am not asking you to say it’s all right. It isn’t. I have missed twelve years of my granddaughter.” I looked at Josie beside me, solemn as a judge. “I did that. Nobody else.”

Corliss came the rest of the way. She knelt on the oak planks in her good jeans and put her arms around my neck, and I put mine around her, and we stayed with our foreheads together in the middle of Hale Creek bridge while the creek went on under us, indifferent and loud.

She smelled like laundry soap and the hospital, and like my daughter, and I had forgotten a person could.

After a while she said into my collar, “Daddy stopped right here, you know. Right on this board.”

“I know he did.”

“He said, ‘Your mother is going to come around. And when she does, she’s going to be furious with herself for about a week.'” She gave a damp, shaky laugh.

“I think he was off by eleven years and fifty-one weeks.”

I laughed so hard I had to let her go. Josie started giggling into her sleeve, and then all three of us were sitting on the floor of a covered bridge in the middle of a school day laughing and crying like fools.

From the west portal came Miss Larkin’s voice, saying quietly to the children, “Yes, they’re all right. Yes, I’ll tell you later. Eat your crackers.”