The rest of the dinner conversation was pleasant but one-sided. She didn’t know anything about Karen Maraschino, Senior Writer forAdventure Escape Magazine,or the events of November 1942. So, she kept the conversation focused on the sheriff. He was amiable enough and answered her questions, yet he was somewhat vague with his answers. He was raised in a little town “not far away” and went to a community college, but never specified where. He joined the Army Air Corps, hoping to become a pilot, but never got his wings. When Goldie asked why, he simply shrugged, “Didn’t work out.” He remained in the Air Corps doing what he described as “other stuff” until March of 1942. Then, he was discharged, but again, he didn’t explain why. He came to Sparkledove shortly thereafter. He had a local sweetheart named Lila and fell in love with both her and the town’s Victorian charm. But by the time he’d returned from service, Lila had moved away. Goldie asked if they wrote to each other while he was in the army, and he responded, “Some.” By pure chance, he met the mayor, Charles Banyan, having lunch at Clancy’s Bar & Grill, and the two hit it off. Between Eli’s community college education, military service, and youth, the mayor decided he’d be a good candidate to replace the town’s elderly sheriff, who had recently passed away, and offered him the job. Having no other prospects, he accepted the offer and took to the role and townspeople like a duck to water. That was nine months ago. He was twenty-eight and, according to Banyan, one of the youngest sheriffs in the state. While, in a way, this was a lot of background, it left as many questions as answers.
Eli kept Goldie company throughout her meal, and she was grateful that the conversation didn’t involve any further questions about her former boyfriend. After dinner, he said goodbye and limped his way through the hotel lobby and out the front door. Goldie, meanwhile, was called over to the registration counter and informed that Charles Banyan had called and left a message that he’d pick her up at 4:00 p.m. for Thanksgiving dinner the following day. She borrowed the first aid kit, went upstairs, saw that the bathroom at the end of the hallway was empty, and decided to take a long, hot shower. As she stood in the curtained bathtub with the water running down her, she checked her body to see if anything was different. Everything seemed the same except the hair situation. Then she started to think about other things. Did women shave their legs in 1942? Did they shave under their arms? Had tampons been invented yet? Had Pamprin? She obviously had some things to figure out.
After returning to her room, she got dressed in a fresh blouse and slacks, changed the wrapping on her hand, and by 7:30 p.m., she found herself bored out of her mind. She had no internet, cell phone, TV, or radio, and she hadn’t even seen magazines in the lobby.
“No wonder men went off to war,” she said in ignorance. “There’s nothin’ to do.”
She wondered when she went to sleep whether or not she’d wake up the next morning in Sparkledove, back in present-day Manhattan, or somewhere else in another time.
The 60s might be good,she thought.The Beatles, Stones, go-go boots, bellbottoms.She was a devotee of music from the 60s, 70s, and some of the 80s and had a romantic, although not entirely accurate, understanding of those decades.
By 8:10, she couldn’t stand to be in her room anymore. Her hair was mostly dry, so she stuck a piece of gum in her mouth from the pack she’d bought in Denver and grabbed her coat. She discovered there were gloves in her pocket as she went downstairs, returned the first aid kit, and then started to take a walk around town.
In the quiet of the evening, and now having had all day to process what had happened to her, Goldie had time to organize her thoughts. She still clung to the belief that she was in a coma, and this was all just an elaborate dream. But her cut hand and the length of time she’d been in this “dream” contradicted that. Dreams were random and flitted from place to place. This had been one long, continuous sequence of events. Then, she thought about praying. She looked up at the sky while walking and quietly murmured: “I suppose there’s somethin’ really important I should say about now, but I got nothin’ except, ‘What the fuck?’” Then she noticed all the stars and her breath disappearing against an endless black canvas of faraway twinkling white lights.
“Wow,” she admitted to herself, cracking her gum loudly. “Nice.”
She walked away from downtown and found herself on a street where old house after old house seemed to have a story to tell. Through the window of one, she saw a man tending a blazing fire in the fireplace and smelled the pine logs from the smoking chimney. She passed another house where children had made turkeys from cut-out handprints on paper and were taping them to a window. Everyone had a home. A sense of place. Everyone except her.
She came to the end of the street that connected to the final cross street of town, which was called Bridge Street, and looked around. Across the street and some fifteen yards beyond it was a twenty-foot embankment that went down to the steadily flowing river that was a major reason for the town being built in the first place, she remembered from her library research. The river was about forty feet across, and just beyond its other side was the tall, looming shadow of a huge mountain, looking black and ominous.Probably crawling with bears and wolves,she thought. She noticed the river had a bend about two hundred yards away, and when she turned and looked left to follow it, she saw that Bridge Street led straight into the covered bridge that Sheriff Johnson had mentioned at dinner. It was fifty feet in length, had a wooden, red-painted exterior, a wood-shingled roof, a nine-foot-high clearance, and a wood-plank floor reinforced by steel girders underneath. From a distance, it looked like a long, skinny barn with two tall, glassless windows on either side of its middle where people walking could stop and enjoy the views. She saw all this detail at night thanks to three large, clear glass two-hundred-watt light bulbs that hung down on metal poles from the wooden rafters, not unlike the circular light fixtures she had seen earlier that day in the Denver bus terminal. She assumed the inside of the bridge was lit so people walking or those with horse-drawn carriages could navigate their way after dark.
Goldie had to admit Eli Johnson was right. The bridge was very pretty. She walked down the street toward it, and although she wasn’t one to use words like “charming,” she concluded it was certainly that. As she stepped onto the structure and began to walk its length, chewing and cracking her gum as she did, she thought about the movie,The Bridges of Madison County,that she and Markie had watched one night on Netflix. She really liked the love story, but her boyfriend thought it was sappy and lost interest.
Her footsteps echoed on the wooden planks as she slowly strolled over the river. The water beneath her didn’t babble like a creek or stream, so she assumed it must’ve been deep. She came to the viewing windows in the middle, then turned left and looked at the downriver view that paralleled the town. The window had a low, wooden windowsill about knee level and was two and a half feet wide by five feet high. Gazing out at the view, she instantly understood why the windows were there. She saw moonlight silhouetting the mountain at the far end of town, but its looming shape blocked out the rising moon itself. Between the backlit mountain, stars above, river underneath, and the Norman Rockwell-like covered bridge, it was practically a magical scene straight out of an animated Disney movie. Goldie stopped chewing for a moment, leaned out of the window slightly, stuck her face into the cool pine-scented air, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here, but, at least in this moment, she was grateful. After a full thirty seconds of admiring the view, she turned and continued on her way, walking and chewing her gum. As she did, she saw a dirt road just beyond the far end of the bridge that turned left, then went up a slight incline into some woods, but she didn’t see any houses, lights, or signs of civilization.
Maybe that leads to one of the minin’ operations that used to be here,she speculated. It had to go somewhere.
She arrived at the opposite end, looked at the dirt road that went left, then decided she’d done enough exploring for one night. Turning to go back the way she came, she suddenly stopped with surprise. Standing at the same viewing window where she had just been was a man in a lightweight, red plaid jacket, blue slacks, and brown lace-up boots. He was standing and looking at the river. He was in his mid-thirties, had a high forehead, and stood looking out the window forlornly. He paid no attention to Goldie and, indeed, didn’t even acknowledge she was there. He just looked out of the same window at the evening.
“Oookay. This is awkward,” she said to herself. She thought it odd that her footsteps had echoed throughout the bridge when she walked, but she never heard this guy coming. After a few pensive moments, she decided that, of course, other townspeople or visitors would be interested in such a landmark, and she must’ve been too lost in her thoughts to hear his approach. So, she cleared her throat to let him know someone else was coming, then started to walk back the way she had come on the opposite side of the bridge.
As she came nearer, she wondered if she should speak to him. Say: “How’s it goin’?” or, “Happy Thanksgiving.” But her New York City instincts told her to keep walking. She figured he was paying her no mind because he wanted to be alone, which was fine by her.
But just as she was passing the stranger, he grabbed the side of the glassless window, raised a leg, and stepped up onto the low windowsill.
“Hey!” Goldie called, stopping.
The man ducked his head to clear the top of the window, then leaned his entire body outside. Only the tips of his fingers from his slightly extended arms holding onto the inside of the window frame kept him from falling forward.
“Hey, mister! Don’t!”she yelled.
She started to run across the bridge toward him. But as she did, the man’s fingers let go, and he fell forward. The bridge was approximately fifteen feet above the river, not high enough for someone to commit suicide unless the person jumping couldn’t swim, or the river was shallow, and they struck their head on a rock. Or, possibly, the river had a strong current that pulled people under. All of these thoughts raced through Goldie’s mind during the three seconds it took her to reach the window. When she got there, she looked down, open-mouthed. She saw nothing. No man, ripples of disturbed water, nothing.
“Where’d he go? Why wasn’t there a splash?” she asked out loud. She looked at the quiet, slowly moving current. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
She turned and ran down to the end of the bridge where she had originally started, then rounded its corner and went about halfway down the embankment looking for the man, which was difficult to do considering the darkness, incline, and brush. Grabbing the branches of a bare lilac bush with her sore left hand to steady herself, she looked around the shoreline, searching for the man. As she realized no one was there and the water was quietly serene, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“No,” she said. “I didnotjust imagine that!”
Becoming a little frightened, she turned and went back up the embankment.
“No!” she repeated, chewing her gum rapidly to control her fear. She reached the top of the embankment and turned defiantly to look at the river. “We’renotdoin’ this! This ain’t no episode ofSupernatural!”
She brushed some small branches and leaves off her coat and looked back toward the houses she’d passed by earlier to see if there were any cars on the streets or people out walking. Everything was quiet. She briefly considered reporting what she’d seen to Sheriff Johnson, but then decided against it, figuring he probably thought her strange enough already, considering the events of that morning.
“I’m in a Hallmark movie on LSD!” she declared. She took a deep breath, spat out her gum, then turned and started walking back toward her hotel.
Five
