Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

sky reaches high and cloudless into the heavens, the pallid morning sun glaring down off the shimmering steel-gray shoals like endless streamers of cellophane. The gurgle of distant barges, pushing southward toward Cape Girardeau, Cairo, and Memphis, wax and wane under the chatter of geese.

From his vantage point high above the tangled foliage of the riverbank, sitting on the gravel shoulder of Illinois 96, the Great River Road, in his Crown Victoria Prowler, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup, gobbling a sugar-glazed pastry, Illinois State Trooper Wayne Ganz marvels at the vastness of his beat. Today it seems he can see all the way to Kentucky.

Days like these, Trooper Ganz—a tall drink of water in his late twenties with a smart razor-cut under his gigantic Stetson—sometimes likes to sit up here and take stock. He likes to take stock with a nice cruller in one hand and a hot cup of joe in the other. He likes to gaze out across the mighty Mississippi, the squawk box turned down so he can think in peace, think about how he made the right decision getting out of the limestone business.

His father had worked himself to a slow death down in the Quincy carbonate quarry. Died with a lungful of dust. Same story with his grandpa. Not Wayne. Young Wayne Ganz had different ideas. He had dreams and schemes that took him all the way to the Academy.

And the Highway Patrol.

And here, today, high atop this scenic slice of God’s real estate.

To his immediate west, on the Iowa side of the river, about a mile away, Ganz can see the massive gray cake layers of the Carbonate Amalgamated Quarryworks. Every time the young trooper lays eyes on that gouge in the earth, he inwardly shudders. He could have easily ended up there, working in that godforsaken quarry, down in the bone-white misty nether regions, on the conveyor, or up on the loader in the baking sun.

Ganz looks away, shaking off the melancholy thoughts, gobbling the rest of his fried dough.

About a quarter of a mile to the south, he can see the old August Derleth suspension bridge reaching across the great muddy Old Man. A century old, its rickety spans weathered by river rot to a moldy black, the bridge is an offense to the eye, a black scar on the sleepy little postcard villages on either side. For years, Ganz has been hearing rumors that hamlet elders are tearing it down in favor of a new turret job for the barges, but the thing just stubbornly remains, year after year, swaying in the winds, the stone-haulers taking chance after chance across its creaking ties.

Ganz freezes in his seat, his Styrofoam cup halfway to his mouth.

He stares at the bridge.

At first it looks as though a hapless motorist has pulled over halfway across the bridge with car trouble. From this distance, the green minivan looks like a species of Matchbox car, the sun glinting off its tinted windows. But something about the sight makes Ganz’s gut tighten. The driver is just sitting there behind the wheel, not doing anything, maybe talking on a cell phone, maybe consulting a map. But why stop halfway across the bridge?

Ganz has heard stories about the Derleth bridge. Local folklore. Whispers of a curse. Suicide Bridge, some of the yocals call it. And indeed there have been more than an inordinate number of incidents over the years. One poor soul tried to jump last March and got hung up on the lower cables like a trussed-up Thanksgiving turkey. Back in the mid-nineties a pair of kids went off it in a suicide pact, hitting the rocks below.

Sheriff’s police found pieces of them as far south as the Festus locks.

The trooper puts his coffee down and starts up the prowler. Something about this guy is wrong. In the distance Ganz can see the dark-green minivan sitting there in the sun, midway across the Derleth, the driver’s door opening.

Ganz puts the prowler in gear. The engine growls, and the rear wheels chew gravel.

Something is definitely not right about this guy: nobody stops on the Derleth if they don’t have to.

Andrew Kornblum turns the ignition off and summons all his strength. It takes a massive amount of will just to slide out from behind the steering wheel and push himself outside.

He plants his feet on the bridge-walk—a narrow ribbon of planks running along the ramshackle deck—and he takes a tentative step away from the car. The bridge is deserted. No traffic whatsoever. He leaves the door open. The wind, redolent with fish stink, whistles in his face. The span pitches gently beneath him.

Looking down through the gaps, he can see the churning whitecaps a hundred feet below the span, the ceaseless waves smacking ancient stone slabs.

It all seems hyperreal, his senses on overdrive, every odor, every sensation excruciatingly vivid. And maybe that’s a sign he will complete the task this time. The first time, in the garage, with the vacuum cleaner attachment duct-taped to the exhaust pipe, there was a whiff of reluctance to it, a sense of theatrics.

He moves slowly around the front of the Caravan, like a sleepwalker, never taking his eyes off the gunmetal currents beneath him.

His heart hammers in his chest. He can smell the river, and he can hear the tattletale call of shorebirds, and he can taste the bitter copper on the back of his tongue. This is real. This is going to happen this time.

This is going to be the end of Andrew Kornblum.

He strides along the bridge-walk, looking for an access point.

The guardrail is high and fringed with concertina wire. But there has to be a place of egress somewhere, maybe near a guide wire, a spot from which the workmen climb up to repair the aging towers.

Kornblum feels the anguish dragging him down like a black stone in his chest as he hobbles along in the wind. He feels the weight of his estranged family, the absence of his little girls,