XXXIII
Bridgeport dreamed in its rock-hemmed niche alongside the swiftly flowing river. The summer sun beat down into the pocket between the tree-mantled cliffs with a fierceness that seemed to squeeze the last hope of life and energy out of everything…out of the weather-beaten houses, out of the dust that lay along the street, out of the leaf-wilted shrub and bush and beaten rows of flowers.
The railroad tracks curved around a bluff and entered the town, then curved around another bluff and were gone again, and for the short span of this arc out of somewhere into nowhere they shone in the sun with the burnished sharpness of a whetted knife. Between the tracks and river the railroad station drowsed, a foursquare building that had the look of having hunched its shoulders against summer sun and winter cold for so many years that it stood despondent and cringing, waiting for the next whiplash of weather or of fate.
Sutton stood on the station platform and listened to the river, the suck and swish of tiny whirlpools that ran along the shore, the gurgle of water flowing across a hidden, upward-canted log, the soft sigh of watery fingers grasping at the tip of a downward-drooping branch. And above it all, cutting through it all, the real noise of the river…the tongue that went talking down the land, the sound made of many other sounds, the deep muted roar that told of power and purpose.
He lifted his head and squinted against the sun to follow the mighty metal span that leaped across the river from the bluff-top, slanting down toward the high-graded road-bed that walked across the gently rising valley on the other shore.
Man leaped rivers on great spans of steel and he never heard the talk of rivers as they rolled down to the sea. Man leaped seas on wings powered by smooth, sleek engines and the thunder of the sea was a sound lost in the empty vault of sky. Man crossed space in metallic cylinders that twisted time and space and hurled Man and his miraculous machines down alleys of conjectural mathematics that were not even dreamed of in this world of Bridgeport, 1977.
Man was in a hurry and he went too far, too fast. So far and fast that he missed many things…things that he should have taken time to learn as he went along…things that someday in some future age he would take the time to study. Someday Man would come back along the trail again and learn the things he'd missed and wonder why he missed them and think upon the years that were lost for never knowing them.
Sutton stepped down from the platform and found a faint footpath that went down to the river. Carefully, he made his way along it, for it was soft and crumbly and there were stones that one must be careful not to step upon, since they might turn beneath one's foot.
At the end of the footpath he found the old man.
The oldster sat perched on a small boulder planted in the mud and he held a cane pole slanted river-wise across his knees. An odoriferous pipe protruded from a two-weeks growth of graying whiskers and an earthenware jug with a corncob for a cork sat beside him, easy to his hand.
Sutton sat down cautiously on the shelving shore beside the boulder and wondered at the coolness of the shade from the trees and undergrowth — a welcome coolness after the fierce splash of sun upon the village just a few rods up the bank.
"Catching anything?" he asked.
"Nope," said the old man.
He puffed away at his pipe and Sutton watched in fascinated silence. One would have sworn, he told himself, that the mop of whiskers was on fire.
"Didn't catch nothing yesterday, either," the old man told him.
He took his pipe out of his mouth with a deliberate, considered motion and spat with studied concentration into the center of a river eddy.
"Didn't catch nothing the day before yesterday," he volunteered.
"You want to catch something, don't you?" Sutton asked.
"Nope," said the old geezer.
He put down a hand and lifted the jug, worked out the corncob cork and wiped the jug's neck carefully with a dirty hand.
"Have a snort," he invited, holding out the jug.
Sutton, remembering the dirty hand, took it, gagging silently. Cautiously, he lifted it and tipped it to his mouth.
The stuff splashed into his mouth and gurgled down his throat and it was liquid fire laced with gall and with a touch of brimstone to give it something extra.
Sutton snatched the jug away and held it by the handle, keeping his mouth wide open to cool it and air out the taste.
The old man took it back and Sutton swabbed at the tears running down his cheeks.
"Ain't aged the way she should be," the old man apologized. "But I ain't got the time to fool around with that."
He took himself a hooker, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and whooshed out his breath in gusty satisfaction. A butterfly, fluttering past, dropped stone-dead.
The old man put out a foot and pushed at the butterfly.
"Feeble thing," he said.
He put the jug down again and worked the cork in tight.
"Stranger, ain't you?" he asked Sutton. "Don't recall seeing you around."
Sutton nodded. "Looking for some people by the name of Sutton. John H. Sutton."
The old man chuckled. "Old John, eh? Him and me was kids together. Sneakiest little rascal that I ever knew. Ain't worth a tinker's damn, old John ain't. Went off to law school and got him an education. But he didn't make a go of it. Roosting out on a farm up on the ridge, over there across the river."
He shot a look at Sutton. "You ain't no relative of his, are you?"
"Well," said Sutton, "not exactly. Not very close, at least."
"Tomorrow's the Fourth," said the old man, "and I recollect the time that John and me blew up a culvert in Campbell Hollow, come the Fourth. Found some dynamite a road gang had been using for blasting. John and me, we figured it would make a bigger bang if we confined it, sort of. So we put her in the culvert pipe and lit a long fuse. Mister, it blew that culvert all to hell. I recollect our dads like to took the hide off us for doing it."
Dead ringer, thought Sutton. John H. Sutton is just across the river and tomorrow is the Fourth. July 4, 1977, that's what the letter said.
And I didn't have to ask. The old codger up and told me.
The sun was a furnace blast from the river's surface, but here, underneath the trees, one just caught the edge of the flare of heat. A leaf floated by and there was a grasshopper riding on it. The grasshopper tried to jump ashore, but his jump fell short and the current grabbed him and swallowed him and took him out of sight.
"Never had a chance," said the old man, "that hopper didn't. Wickedest river in these United States, the old Wisconsin is. Can't trust her. Tried to run steamboats on her in the early days, but they couldn't do it, for where there was a channel one day there'd be a sand bar on the next. Current shifts the sand something awful. Government fellow wrote a report on her once. Said the only way you could use the Wisconsin for navigation was to lathe and plaster it."
From far overhead came the rumble of traffic crossing the bridge. A train came by, chuffing and grinding, a long freight that dragged itself up the valley. Long after it had passed, Sutton heard its whistle hooting like a lost voice for some unseen crossing.
"Destiny," said the old man, "sure wasn't working worth a hoot for that hopper, was it?"
Sutton sat bolt upright, stammering. "What was that you said?"
"Don't mind me," the old man told him. "I go around mumbling to myself. Sometimes people hear me and think that I'm crazy."
"But destiny? You said something about destiny."
"Interested in it, lad," said the old man. "Wrote a story about it once. Didn't amount to much. Used to mess around some, writing, in my early days."