Ghost Story

The doctor turned and fled, and reached the other side of the street without mishap. He continued his birdlike run down the left side of Main Street, elbows hitching, coat twisting out behind him, and Webb was sufficiently unsettled by the look the doctor had given him to stand staring at him open-mouthed until he realized that he was coatless and a block from the restaurant.

3

In Dr. Jaffrey's mind a perfect image had formed, far clearer than the buildings past which he fled. This was of the two-lane steel bridge over the little river into which Sears James had once thrown a blouse wrapped about a large stone. The fishing hat lifted from his head in a buffeting wind, and for a moment that was clear too, sailing handsomely through gray air.

'I'm going now,' he said.

Though on any normal day John Jaffrey could have gone straight to the bridge without even thinking about which streets would take him there, this morning he wandered about Milburn in a growing panic, unable to find it. He could picture the bridge perfectly-he saw even the rivets with their rounded heads, the flat dull face of the metal-but when he tried to picture its location, he saw only fuzz. Buildings? He turned into Market Street, almost expecting to see the bridge lifting up between Burger King and the A&P. Seeing only the bridge, he had forgotten the river.

Trees? A park? The picture the words evoked was so strong that he was surprised, leaving Market Street, to see about him only empty streets, snow heaped at the curbside. Move on, doctor. He stumbled forward, righted himself by leaning against a barber pole, went on.

Trees? Some trees, scattered in a landscape? No. Nor these floating buildings.

As the doctor wandered half-blindly through streets he should have known, tacking from the square to Washington Street on the south, then over to Milgrim Lane and down declining Milgrim Lane past three-room wooden houses set between carwashes and drugstores into the Hollow and real poverty where he would be as close to unknown as he could be and still be in Milburn (here he might have been in trouble if it hadn't been so cold and if trouble hadn't become a meaningless concept to apply to him), several people saw him go. The Hollow people who saw him go thought he was just another crazy, doomed and oddly dressed. When he accidentally turned back in the right direction and crossed back into quiet streets where bare trees stood at the ends of long lawns, those who saw him assumed that the doctor's car was nearby, because he had begun to move in a slow trot and was hatless. A mailman who grabbed his arm and said, 'Man, do you need help?' was shocked into helplessness by the same wide-open gaze of terror that had stopped Bill Webb. Eventually Dr. Jaffrey wound back into the business district.

When he had twice circled Benjamin Harrison Oval, both times going right past Bridge Approach Lane, a patient voice in his mind said Go around once more and take the second right turn, doctor.

'Thank you,' he whispered, having heard amusement as well as patience in the voice he'd once heard as inhumanly toneless.

So once more, exhausted and half-frozen, John Jaffrey forced himself to move painfully past the tire-repair outfits and muffler centers of Benjamin Harrison Oval, and lifting his knees like a wornout milkhorse, at last made the turn into Bridge Approach Lane.

'Of course,' he sobbed, seeing it at last, the gray arch of the bridge over the sluggish river. He could trot no further; by now in fact he could barely walk. One of the slippers had fallen off, and the foot it had covered was entirely without sensation. He had a flaming stitch in his left side, his heart thudded, his lungs were one vast ache. The bridge was an answered prayer. He trudged toward it. This was where the bridge belonged, here in this windy area where the old brick buildings gave way to weedy marshland, here where the wind felt like a hand holding him back.

Now, doctor.

He nodded, and as he drew nearer he saw where he could stand. Four big scallops of metal, themselves cross-hatched by girders, formed an undulating line on either side of the bridge. In the middle of the bridge, between the second and third metal curves, a thick steel girder protruded upward.

Jaffrey could not feel the change from the concrete of the road to the steel of the bridge, but he could feel the bridge move beneath him, lifting a little with each particularly strong gust. When he reached the superstructure, he pulled himself along on the rail. After reaching the central girder, he gripped one of the rungs, put his frozen feet on the bottom rung, and tried to climb up to the flat rail.

He could not do it.

For a moment he stood there, hands on one rung and feet on another, like an old man hanging from a rope, breathing so heavily it sounded like sobbing. He managed to lift his slippered foot and put it on the next rung. Then by using what he felt was surely the last of his strength, he pulled his body up onto it. Some flesh from his bare foot adhered to the lower rung. Panting, he stood on the second rung, and saw that he had two more rungs to go before he would be high enough to stand on the flat rail.

One at a time, he transferred his hands to the next highest rung. Then he moved the slippered foot; and with what felt like heroic effort, moved the other.

Pain seared his entire leg, and he clung to the supports, the bare foot lifted into cold wind. For a moment, his foot blazing, he feared that shock would tumble him back down onto the bridge. Once down, he would never be able to climb up again.

Delicately he put the toes of his still-flaming foot on the rung. It was enough to hold him. Again he transferred his numb arms. The slippered foot went up a rung-by itself it seemed. He tried to pull himself up, but his arms merely trembled. It felt as though the muscles in his shoulders were separating. Finally he threw himself up, assisted he thought by a hand pushing upward in the small of his back, his fingers luckily caught the rung, and he was nearly there.

For the first time he noticed his bare foot, bleeding onto the metal. The pain had increased; now his entire left leg seemed to be in flames. He put the foot down onto the flat rail, and held tightly with both exhausted arms while he moved his right foot beside it.

The water glistened feebly beneath him. Wind buffeted his hair, his coat.

Standing before him on a platform of gray wind, dressed in tweed jacket and bow tie, was Ricky Hawthorne. Ricky's hands were clasped, in a characteristic gesture, before his belt buckle. 'Good work, John,' he said in his dry kind voice. The best of them all, the sweetest, cuckolded little Ricky Hawthorne.

'You take too much guff from Sears,' John Jaffrey said, his voice weak and whispery. 'You always did.'

'I know.' Ricky smiled. 'I'm a natural subaltern. Sears was always a natural general.'

'Wrong,' Jaffrey tried to say. 'He's not, he's…' The thought died.

'It doesn't matter,' came the light dry voice. 'Just step forward off the bridge, John.'

Dr. Jaffrey was looking down at the gray water. 'No, I can't. I had something different in mind. I was going…' Confusion took it away.

When he looked up again, he gasped. Edward Wanderley, who had been closer to him than any of the others, was standing on the wind instead of Ricky. As on the night of the party, he wore black shoes, a gray flannel suit, a flowered shirt. Black-rimmed spectacles were joined at the bows by a silvery cord. Handsome in his theatrical gray hair and expensive clothes, Edward smiled at him with compassion, concern, warmth. 'It's been a little while,' he said.

Dr. Jaffrey began to weep.

'It's time to stop messing around,' Edward told him. 'All it takes is one step. It's simple as hell, John.'

Dr. Jaffrey nodded.

'So take the step, John. You're too tired to do anything else.'

Dr. Jaffrey stepped off the bridge.

Below him, at the level of the water but protected from the wind by a thick steel plate, Omar Norris saw him hit the water. The doctor's body went under, surfaced a moment later and spun halfway around, face down, before it began to drift downriver with the current. 'Shit,' he said: he'd come to the one place he could think of where he