His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“You called Trackwork Ted that once—when you saw him at Gallery Road. You took two young jockeys to see him, remember? To watch him, and learn to ride?” But now Clay looked away from the windshield, and out the window instead. Those reams of empty space. “Once, she told me the story.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ennis McAndrew, and he drove on very thoughtfully. “Those jockeys were effing worthless.”
“Effing?”
“Worthless.”
But then they returned to hurting again.
There was guilt for enjoying anything.
Especially the joy of forgetting.
* * *
—
When they made it to the turnoff, Clay said he could take it from there, but Ennis wouldn’t have a bar of it. “I want to meet your father,” he said. “I want to see this bridge. Might as bloody well…We’ve come too far for me not to.”
They drove the open hill, then turned down into the corridor, and the eucalypts were always the same. They were gathered, and waited around down there, like muscled-up thighs in the shade. A football team of trees.
When McAndrew saw them, he noticed.
“Jesus,” he said, “look at them.”
* * *
—
On the other side, in the light, they saw him in the riverbed, and the bridge remained the same. No work had been done for several months, since I’d sunk to my knees in the dirt:
The curvature, the wood and stone.
The pieces stood waiting for this.
They climbed from out of the truck.
When they stood by the riverbed and looked, it was Ennis who’d spoken first. “When it’s finished, it’s going to be magnificent, isn’t it?” and Clay was matter-of-fact.
He answered only “Yes.”
* * *
—
When they opened the trailer, and brought the animal out, they walked him down to the bedrock, and the mule looked dutifully around. He studied the dry of the river. It was Clay with a pair of questions.
“What?” he asked the animal.
“What’s so unusual about this?”
Well, where’s the bloody water?
But Clay knew it was coming, and at some point, so would the mule.
* * *