“Weglowski?”
We shake hands briefly. His hands are huge and rough, a workman’s hands. But his grip is gentle, almost like a woman’s. From behind the desk, the clerk is watching us. Weglowski and I leave the hotel. The morning is gray. He leads me to a white pickup truck that seems intentionally camouflaged for the climate. The door is lettered in black paint:
“My truck,” he says, with a note of pride in his voice.
I climb into the cab beside him. I notice for the first time that he is wearing brown, high-topped workman’s shoes with his blue business suit His socks are white, like his truck. He starts the engine and begins driving out of town, westward, toward the bridge. He does not speak again until we are halfway there. Then he says, “We look at bridge first, okay?”
“Sure.”
“No?”
“Sure.”
“To see how much explosion we need.”
“Whatever you say. This part of it is all yours.”
“Well, is yours too,” Weglowski says. “You help, no? So is yours, too.” He nods briefly and rams the accelerator to the floor. He is an expert driver, and he knows the road intimately, but he terrifies me nonetheless. On one hairpin turn, we narrowly miss a bus coming from the opposite direction, but the dynamiter only laughs as the bus rolls by not a whisker’s breath away. When we come to the bridge, he seems not to notice it He does not diminish his speed, the pickup truck is roaring right past Henderson Gap.
“That’s the bridge,” I say.
“Yes, but no park. Is better after.”
He drives perhaps half a mile beyond the bridge, rolls around a curve at fifty miles an hour, abruptly jams on the brakes, and makes a sharp right turn off the road and into a scenic overlook with redwood picnic tables. He parks the truck near a huge white boulder, and says, “Now we walk.” We get out of the truck and start down the road. He walks briskly and swiftly. I have difficulty keeping up with him on the packed and rutted snow.
“In Poland, walk maybe five, six miles each day,” he says. “Very good for health.” He nods soberly. “Long time. From Poland.”
“How long have you been here?” I ask. “In this country?”
“Fifty-one year. From after first war. How old you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take guess. Go on.”
“Sixty-five?”
“Seventy-eight year old!” he shouts, and laughs. “Good, no? I look seventy-eight?”
“No, you don’t.”
“Damn right! Healthy like a horse, Sygmunt Weglowski. How many children you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eight!” he shouts, and bursts into laughter. “That’s good screwing, no?”
“Yes, very good,” I say.
“Very good, damn right!” He is still walking quite rapidly, and I am beginning to get a stitch under my heart. “Too fast?” he asks.
“A little.”
“We slow down. Have all day, no? Look at bridge, pick spots, figure out. Nice and slow. Is Polish proverb, ‘Slow better, fast worse.’ I cannot say in English. But we go slow, is better.” He is walking more slowly now. He looks at me solicitously. “Is better?”
“Much better.”
“Good.” We walk silently for perhaps another hundred yards. Then, abruptly, he asks, “You kill him?”
I debate answering him at first, and then I decide to play it straight “Yes, I hope to.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Bad man,” he says, and spits into the snow. “Better dead. Alive is worse, no? Worse for you, me, everybody. Worse for country. You kill him, is better.”
“I hope so.”
“Oh, yes!” he says and spreads his hands wide. “Of course. Weglowski think so.”
The air is bitterly cold here on the mountain. I am looking ahead to the morning the train arrives. I am chilled even in my heavy overcoat, and I am beginning to think in need clothing more suited to the task. Weglowski, wearing only his business suit over a white shirt, seems warm as toast. I must ask him his secret
“Was time,” he says, “two, three years ago, was hope. No more. No hope. Is either kill him, or leave America. But come from Poland to escape, no? So now must leave again?” He shakes his head. “No. Is better kill him. You do good thing, Sachs.”
“Would you do it?” I ask.
“I am do it, no? I wire bridge for you. We partners, Sachs. General contractors,” he says, and bursts out laughing again. “I wire, you push, boom! Is happy days again.”
When we reach the bridge, he becomes immediately serious. He studies it from the road, walking back and forth to view it from various vantage points. He is entirely without grace, a short squat brisk little man whose motions are jerky and rapid. When I explain my needs to him, he listens carefully, nodding and saying, “Good” as I go over each point I tell him that I want all of the bridge to fall into the ravine, not just any one section of it Moreover, I want it all to collapse at the same time. I cannot risk, for example, the western end of the bridge standing after the eastern end falls; this would present the possibility of our man escaping before his car plunged into the ravine. The demolition, then, must be complete and simultaneous. Weglowski seems to understand. He nods seriously, and then climbs over the highway guard rail and starts down into the ravine.
He seems to know what he is about In his broken English, he explains that this is a fixed arch or hingeless-type bridge, with both ends of the arch rigidly anchored at the abutments on either side of the ravine. It is the arch that supports the tracks above it The arch, in turn, is held in place by the concrete piers embedded in the eastern and western slopes of the Gap. Weglowski plans to set two charges at these opposite points where steel joins concrete, plus a third charge at the very center of the arch — where the keystone would be if the bridge were built of stone. I listen, barely understanding. What is more, I do not have to understand, I do not have to know. The only thing I must know is how to detonate the explosives. The rest means nothing. So I listen, but I do not care.
I do not care.
She looks, my Abigail, weary around the eyes. She has looked this way ever since the afternoon we received word that Adam had been killed in action. When I come into the hotel room, she is sitting by the window, staring out at the bell tower. She turns to me, and I see her eyes first, and the weariness there. I long to go to her in that moment, to hold her close. I do not. And I wonder why.
“I’m still here,” she says.
“I see that”
Her face looks clean-scrubbed and fresh, the way it did when she was a young girl, except for the weary lines of sadness around her eyes. Again, I feel the impulse to kiss her eyes, to kiss away the lingering grief, to transform her again into the Abigail I knew when she was seventeen, to make of her that spirited girl again. But I do not And again, I wonder why.
“Sam,” she says, “there are things to talk about”
“I know.”
“Here or where?”
“Let’s walk,” I say.
“All right” She goes to the closet and removes from it the ocelot coat She does not bother with the hat or the muff. Instead, she ties a black kerchief around her head, and pulls on a pair of leather gloves. As we are going out of the room, she says, “There were two telephone calls for you. While you were gone.”
“Oh?”
“A woman named Hester and a woman named Sara.”