The Other End of the Bridge

The shed’s weathervane always pointed south, its flying goose rusted still.

In the loft of that shed sprawled baskets of onions, harvested by the migrant crew that passed through my uncle’s farm every autumn: exotic men, full of song, and –as we naively thought– enviable for their muscular physiques. We never wondered where they’d come from and where they went after their stop at the farm. We didn’t wonder where they might be spending their nights as they worked there.

At least half the onions would be left for the winter months to ruin. Mere children, we likewise didn’t wonder why they were left to rot or what happened to the rest of the crop. None of that mattered except that in spring, the sound baskets all gone, we boys would punch the bottom out of one of the gooey baskets. Then we’d hang it on the shed wall.

The lane that ran by, all dirt and rock, canceled any effort to bounce a basketball in any semblance of rhythm. We spent more time fetching the ball from the tall grass than playing our chaotic games, though that really didn’t matter much either. Each of us knew we wouldn’t be putting many shots through that makeshift hoop even in better circumstances.

And so on into full summer, when the air got too thick for play in the midday sun, when even the barn swallows flitted out only to kiss the cattle trough, either sipping the water or picking off the midges that always danced above it, then winging back to the building’s shade, as quickly as they could.

Nothing kept us from the water, though. I could reminisce on mischief we got into now and then, but why bother? None was vile. I can’t recall any hateful talk, the kind so common these many years after, the kind our spiteful Commander in Chief so enjoys. No, our pranks and our teasing were parts of the love we felt for one another, though we wouldn’t have named it that. I recall no fond embraces, no melodramatic avowals of affection.

An unedited, rosy narrative– the sort that typified the Hardy Boy books we all devoured– would show us delighted with what we had, especially one another’s company. A band of brothers, all so much alike! The only boy who stood slightly apart, though we never mentioned it or really pondered it for that matter, was Charlie, who had no father. His dad had been killed in a war five or six years before, an eon to ten-year-olds, half our lifetimes ago. Charlie had trouble in school.

I can easily picture how our clan would run across the little wooden footbridge, then splash and whoop on the pond’s far side, where the deeper, cooler water lay.

Of our raggedy gang of eight, only three still walk the earth.

Just now, even as a freak spring snow blows in and whitens our meadow downhill, I remember crossing that bridge with those dear friends. I’m startled by the sudden onset of my tears.

Sydney Lea is a Pulitzer finalist, Vermont Poet Laureate, founding editor of New England Review, and recipient of his state’s highest artistic distinction, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Now Look is his latest novel, Such Dancing as We Can his most recent volume of personal essays, and What Shines his sixteenth and most recent poetry collection. A new and selected poems is due in 2027.