Daikaijuzine

Perish Sutton started building a bridge in the middle of the high plains, in the middle of the prairie, the middle of nowhere, a nowhere somewhat north of Broken Bow and somewhat south of Ainsworth, Nebraska.

It was not a tall bridge, more like a boardwalk such as run through seaside dunes or across marshes, but Perish Sutton’s bridge was nowhere near the ocean, and the grasses that whispered beneath it were parched dry by summer winds.

Now, it does rain on these plains; rain comes, and hail, in magnificent storms. The skies darken, the clouds gather themselves up in columns and towers, the wind dances madly, and you can taste fury on your lips. Storm chasers will lick their lips when they tell you about their last pursuit; they’re remembering that taste.

But even those ecstatic encounters between earth and sky don’t produce enough rain to warrant a bridge, wandering northward in a wavering line. Perish’s creation wasn’t an arch bridge, though parts of it arched like a cat stretching, and it wasn’t a suspension bridge, though cables ran through it here and there, as if those portions of the bridge had been darned by an inattentive monster spider. In places the bridge had weights and counterweights, but no engineer would want to call it a cantilevered bridge, either.

“Whimsical, installation art, reminiscent of the work of Christo,” was how the Lincoln Journal Star described it. Jennifer Marshall wrote those words; she drove out from Lincoln to see the bridge and to interview Perish. But there wasn’t an interview, really; there was just Jennifer watching Perish as he nailed planks into place. All Perish said by way of explaining his efforts was that he had seen a bridge in his mind’s eye, and he was trying to build what he had seen. This persuaded Jennifer that it must be art.

Somehow a rumor got started that Perish was burying a silver key underneath each supporting pillar of his bridge, and for a while the bridge couldn’t advance, because Perish had to spend all his time re-sinking those pillars and pushing back the piles of dirt dislodged by midnight treasure seekers. Jennifer asked him whether the rumor was true.

“Of course not,” he said. “I don’t have money for that many silver keys. The keys I bury are made out of stone.”

Several storms passed over during the time Perish was working, and two times tornados touched down nearby, but the bridge was never damaged. Perish worked on it for months.

One day, instead of continuing the bridge on its journey north, Perish built a tapering ramp down to the ground, to match the one he had built some forty miles to the south, where the bridge began. Then he climbed up onto the bridge and started walking south.  Portions of the bridge were stiff and still, others creaked and swayed. After twenty miles he stopped and sat down, leaning his back against a pillar.

That portion of the bridge happened to be just visible from route seven, and around sunset Scott Prentice pulled over to the side of the road and came to take a look. Perish was still sitting there, looking out across the prairie with eyes barely open.

“So what’s the story?” asked Scott. He had a right to be abrupt; he was 87 years old. “Normally a bridge goes from someplace and to someplace. Yours goes from nowhere to nowhere.”

“Hop up,” said Perish. He didn’t offer Scott a hand, and Scott didn’t need one. He hoisted himself up onto the bridge. It shifted beneath his feet like the deck of a ship. “Look south,” said Perish. Scott looked. The bridge stretched on and on, disappearing into the horizon.

“Look north,” said Perish. Scott turned and looked north. In that direction too, the bridge lost itself in the horizon.

“My bridge is infinite,” said Perish.

Scott opened his mouth to quibble, but at that moment the sun sank out of sight, and the rising tide of darkness filled his mind and lungs. He saw how it was: waves of grass, breaking against the night sky, which in turn sent waves of darkness breaking against the earth. Darkness lapped at the bridge, the grasses lapped at the bridge, but the bridge was balanced between the waters; it was a road, a path between earth and heaven.

“Where to?” asked Perish.

Scott gazed heavenward. Stars were coming visible. That streak in the sky would brighten into the Milky Way as the last hints of twilight faded.

“There,” he said.

Perish got to his feet.

“Let’s go, then.”