Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [203]
Well, you must. There’s no one else to be had.
Something moved just inside the corner of the cliff, beyond where the juniors’ tent used to stand. Moving to the extreme left of the window, she could see half of Mrs. Briscoe, sitting on half a rock inside the edge of shade. As she watched, the left hand lifted a flat bottle, bottle and lips met in a long kiss, the hand lowered the bottle and tucked it under the edge of the long skirt.
Oh my goodness.
In a fury she craned and peered. For a time Mrs. Briscoe leaned almost out of sight, as assuredly she thought she was. Then she leaned back, her face turned down and across the river. Her left hand rose in a hoo-hoo sort of wave. Susan’s eyes followed the gesture, and there was Ollie coming out onto the far end of the bridge.
She made a moaning sound and put her hands flat on the windowsill, watching as he edged out, testing the sway of the span. It seemed to her he filled his lungs with air. Paralyzed, cut off from him by glass and distance, she may or may not have screamed at him to stop, not to come on. But he came on, carefully inching along the planks, carrying a package of some sort under one arm. He stopped to get a better hold on the rail-rope; he shot an estimating glance across the hundred feet he still had to cross; he shoved the package more firmly under his arm. Below him his shadow paused, buglike, on the shadow bridge. Then it moved. And as it moved, shadow and bridge, bug and boy, began to sway.
Susan’s held breath was choking her. She forced it, clogged with harsh sound, out of her lungs. She saw the shaking sway of the cables communicate itself to Ollie’s knees. He grabbed for the rope with his left hand, the package fell straight down into the river, the lurch of the boy’s falling against the rope kicked the planks sideward, and there he hung across the rail rope with his legs desperately rigid to keep his feet against the planks.
Susan screamed, and screamed again, and was at the rear window tearing at the catch, screaming down toward the windmill, “The bridge! Ollie! The bridge!”
Oliver’s face turned, hung in the heat-shriveled air for half a breath. Then his wrench went flying and he was lunging down the slope in great leaps. She was back at the front window without knowing how she got there. Ollie, still hanging by his elbows across the rope, was just lifting his feet to let the walk swing back under him. He caught it with a knee, both knees. His face turned upward toward her. “Don’t move!” she cried to the glass. “Hold on!” and was outside.
Heat exploded in her face, the small bright terrible image her retina carried dissolved in a red blur. She put her hand against the wall, steadying herself, and felt a bright, distant pain. Someone’s arm-Nellie’s-was supporting her. Something small was whimpering and clamoring down on the ground. Her sight cleared and she saw Betsy. She moved her stinging hand and found that she had thrust it into the rosebush beside the door. “What is it?” Nellie was saying, and then her head snapped around as Oliver appeared, thundering down toward the river, and she saw it all. Oliver was shouting as he ran. On his knees, Ollie clung, patient and small above the curve of swift water.
Susan started down the path, was held back. “Let me go, Nellie!” Clumsily she braced and slid and stepped. The rocks she touched were as hot as stoves, the sun beating off the hillside blinded her, the little flowers of mallow stared up at her like coals. She had to watch the ground, for fear of slipping, but she stopped every few steps to watch Oliver and her son. Nellie, protesting and trying to hold her back, she shook off. Somehow she found herself holding Betsy by the hand.
Oliver plowed through the gravel and leaped up the path to the bridge head. He stooped, steadying the vibration out of the cables while he shouted something at Ollie. Then he started out onto