See page 49 of THE OLD PLAN.
Good luck.
Michael Dunbar
Page forty-nine.
That was where it explained the importance of digging a trench across the forty-meter width of the river—to be working, all times, on the bedrock. As first-time bridge builders, it stated, they should go beyond where experts would, to be sure they weren’t taking chances. There was even a sketch: forty by twenty meters.
He read that passage many times, then paused until he thought it:
Forty by twenty.
And God knows how deep.
I should have looked at that pile first.
He’d lost a whole day of digging.
* * *
—
After a brief search, the key opened a shed behind the house, and when Clay went in, he found the shovel, lying benignly on the workbench. He handled it and looked around. A pick was also close by, and a wheelbarrow.
He walked back out, and in the last light of evening-afternoon, he made it to the riverbed. There was now a perimeter marked with bright orange spray. He hadn’t noticed from being inside all day.
Forty by twenty.
He thought it as he walked the borders.
Clay crouched, he stood, he watched the rising moon—but soon the toil invited him. He half grinned and thought of Henry, and how he knew he’d count him down.
He was out there all alone, as the past behind him converged—then three more seconds, and, now.
The shovel and splice of the earth.
In the tide of Dunbar past, they intersected, Michael and Penelope, and of course it started with the piano. I should also say it’s always been a kind of mystery to me, this starting-out time, and the lure of lasting happiness. I guess it’s like all our parents’ time together—their lives before they had us.
On that sunny afternoon, here in the city, they pushed the instrument down Pepper Street, and watched each other in glimpses, and the piano movers bickered:
“Oi!”
“What?”
“You’re not here for your looks, you know.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“It means push! Move it this way, idiot. Over here.”
One to the other, secretively: “The pay’s nowhere near enough for putting up with him, is it?”
“I know, no way.”
“Come on then! The girl’s putting more into it than you two combined.” Now to Penelope, from the upright girth of the piano. “Hey, do you need a job by any chance?”
She smiled, mildly. “Oh, no thanks, I have already a few.”