The Bridge

I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a remote peninsula in those days, nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay... and very Old World. The buildings were quaint, the roads narrow, the infrastructure bootstrapped and aging. It could be a spooky place for a kid of six, with its endless forests hiding the sky, and its twisty rivers hemming one in at every turn.

To reach my mom’s mom’s house, we had to cross one of these rivers, a small tributary of the bay. Almost hidden in dense forest was a single-lane bridge that crossed it. This bridge, in this Old-World place, was constructed of rope and wood planks. It was like something out of an old matinee adventure movie.

Well, I’d seen these movies. So I knew that if you found yourself at a precipice where a rope and wood-plank bridge was your only way across the river, you were in deep trouble. I mean, movies being what they were then, legions of aboriginal warriors, in full battle dress, and oddly, heavy Hollywood makeup, with wretched shrunken heads dangling from vines worn as necklaces, would soon burst from the tree line, in hunt of our heads. And there was a good chance that as that happened, and we tried to make our escape across this rickety bridge, it would collapse, as if it had survived all its years just to have a bit of fun with us, in the moment, and at our expense.

And here’s the kicker. The bridge was named Suicide Bridge. And it wasn’t named Suicide Bridge because people jumped off it. It wasn’t high enough for that. It was named Suicide Bridge because when you looked at it, your first thought was that it would be suicidal to attempt to cross it in a car.

Well, my mom, like me, was a little scared of this bridge. Not because of the movies, or its name, but because of the weight of the car and the people in it. So, as we approached the bridge, she pulled the car over to the side of the road, and to reduce weight, she let those who might live, that being my two brothers, out of the car.

But not me. Because, as I said, she was a little scared too. She wanted someone to stay with her. And since I looked most like her, she concluded I’d be the one to take to a watery grave with her. This was her take on the order of things, I suppose.

Now, the worst part of crossing Suicide Bridge was the first part, when the weight of the car settled onto the first length of bridge, causing it to sag, creating a plunging effect. That set off the rocking, side-to-side like a hammock in a windstorm, while the sound of slowly stretching rope encouraged my fears. But off we went, across its length, as unnerving popping noises rose from the wood planks, seemingly in orchestration with the flickering of thickly veiled sunlight that fell through the green canopy overhead.

Onward we soldiered, mom and me, plank by plank, until we came to the far side of the expanse, quite safely. When we’d crested the landing, once more on firm terra, we looked back across the river for my brothers, but they were nowhere to be seen. Mom called out. There was no reply. Then, we thought we heard a faint drumbeat… maybe a chant, and maybe, even, a faraway cry for help… or maybe not. Mom looked at me, and I at her, silently asking ourselves an unspeakable question. Are there Matinee Headhunters in these woods? A long moment passed, suspending reality, as we again looked to the deserted opposing shoreline. Then, as one, we turned back to the other, shrugged, and exclaimed, “There’s pie at Grandma’s!” And so we carried on.