I make the bridge. I watch it rise, long and steadily and I realize I’ve been running downhill for the last mile. I make it halfway up the wood and the bile comes — an olive green blast that cuts through the wind. I stumble forward, still puking, and then I go down. My gagging is so loud and so external I can’t believe it’s me.
Finally I stop. The rain may have stopped before, I don’t know. I’m on my knees, the last wave of heaves gone. The bridge cables rise and seem to bend over me like ribs. I’m inside a mile of skeleton. Inside. I’ve been inside all along. Swallowed long ago. I never knew. I never wanted to know. I’ve been dumb and wanting inside a giant sea belly. The sky is calm. The world has cooled because I’m inside — no weather. The city sprawls endlessly in every direction.
There’s someone ahead of me on the bridge, not too far away. Close enough to see the bob-bob of her ponytail as she ascends. She runs like Claire. She looks as though she’s moving quickly, but she isn’t covering much ground at all. She must have been close when I went down. It’s too late for her to be alone on the bridge. It’s not safe. I stand up and start running again — just fast enough to close the gap a bit. Just close enough to keep an eye on her.
I close on her quickly. She bounces up and down, going through the motions of running without really doing so. Black sport bra. Black short shorts. Blonde hair. She’s long legged, and as I close I see her hamstrings and calves contract and release.
I’m on her hip and she turns. She doesn’t startle. She smiles and waves in time with her gait. She speeds up and tries to stay with me. We run together, make the plateau and wind around the center pillar, me every few steps pushing the pace just a hint. She breathes heavily and lengthens her stride — less bounce. She exhales through her mouth, pursing her lips as if to focus her overall effort. We hit the downhill. She shakes her head, whipping her hair across her face like a horsetail.
“Go.”
She waves toward Brooklyn. She pats her sternum and feigns a wheeze.
“I’m okay. Go.”
She waves again. I find a new gear, and then another. And I’m fast again. But now I feel solid, like one muscle exerting one effort with no memory of the effort before. I make a promise, out loud, to whoever may be listening. “I will do it. I will get the money. Then I will go. I swear it.”
Tomorrow I will go to work and do whatever it is I need to do. The vertical iron rails flash by quickly, giving fleeting glimpses of the road below and the river beyond. I remember riding the streetcars with my mother after work and how the fences would start to blur as the train gathered speed. The metal would flicker with light and the images of the world beyond as though I was looking into the lens of some old, dimmed projector. She’d shift her legs and the grocery bags at her feet would complain. And not knowing I was watching her, she’d sigh, and her miles and her age would show in her face and sit on her shoulders. She’d involuntarily start to hum or even sing, “People get Ready.” The memory fades back to the black water, the rails — so real that I reach out for them. And it’s just me going fast and the bridge and the water, sleeping Brooklyn in front and tomorrow in my head. The dead are quiet now, soon they will be gone, for that is the price of empire.
II. Big Nig
If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
6
C had looked at my knees one morning. We were staying at an inn and had gotten up early to watch the World Cup final from Korea. I was trying to walk quietly down the groaning steps. My legs were stiff, having danced with Claire the night before at her cousin’s wedding, and I had to use the rail. There’s not much worse, socially, than being a brown person on the dance floor at an otherwise all-white event. I don’t like dancing anywhere, certainly not sober. And to have them watch me shift my weight, conservatively on creaking knees and ankles, emulating the sexual act with their Brahmin jewel while flanked by my children, X every so often slamming into me like a blitzing linebacker. Claire thought it was fun.
C watched me struggling and wondered aloud if Ronaldo’s injuries had been worse than mine.
“Worse. Much worse.”
“What did he do?”
“One year a fractured tibia. Ruptured patellar tendon the next.”
“That’s bad?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s better now?”
“Yes.”
“Good. They need him.”
We were alone at the start — seven o’clock. It was a chilly New Hampshire mountain morning. And as the den began to fill with guests and the morning warmed, C left his sweater on, sensing from the crowd that they, for a reason he couldn’t understand, were rooting for Germany. It was tense going — more people entered, sat, voiced their opinions, and talked about their children’s teams or their own former athletic glory. And even when his hero broke the scoreless tie, he remained silent. He looked around nervously and pressed a bit closer to me on the couch — trying to read my expression. I patted his head. One woman kept looking from C to the television, trying to link him to the Brazilian players who celebrated. She wouldn’t look at me. When Ronaldo scored the second goal to seal the victory, C couldn’t help himself. He jumped up, tore his sweater off to reveal the homemade shirt. He pointed into the air, waving the index finger slightly — just like the man on the TV — and ran out of the room, triumphant.
Still no sleep. It’s amazing what happens when the adrenaline tapers off, the endorphins disappear. I sit on the bed in the dark kiddie room and feel the pulsing, dull ache of twenty years of long distance running, hundreds of soccer games, hundreds of slides on hard-packed infields, fence jumping, sprints down alleys, nightsticks to the ribs and handcuffs, knees threatening to collapse while playing with the kids on a Brooklyn schoolyard’s asphalt top. They, unknowingly undercutting me, me not wanting to trample them. Then later, C watching me pop Motrin and sit on the floor strapped in ice.
I get ready to leave before Claire can call to wish me a happy birthday — to ask me what I’m doing. I feed Thomas three pellets. He’s slow to react. They start to sink into the bowl. I want to give him more. The food instructions say that he should eat fresh pellets taken from the surface of the water, but they also warn against overfeeding. I’ll give him more later if those aren’t gone.