The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

  "I don't know where you are, but you're living right now somewhere on this earth and one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright . . . and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. Before too long? Please?"

  So much of my childhood is forgotten, yet that moment at the gate, word for word, stayed.

  What can I tell him about her? Dear Dick: What do you know, twenty years have passed and I'm still alone.

  I put the notebook down and looked out the window, not seeing. Surely by now my tireless subconscious has answers for him. For me.

  What it had was excuses. It's hard to find the right woman, Richard! You're not so malleable as once you were, you've been through the open-minded stage. Why, things you've chosen to believe, things you'd die for, are to most people funny, or mad.

  My lady, I thought, she'll need to have found on her own the same answers that I've found, that this world is not remotely what it seems, that whatever we hold in our thought comes true in our lives, that miracles aren't miraculous. She and I, we'll never get along unless ... I blinked. She'll have to be exactly the same as met

  A lot more physically beautiful than me, of course, for I so love beauty, but she'll have to share my prejudice as well as my passion. I couldn't imagine myself falling into life with a woman who trails smoke and ashes everywhere she goes. If she needs parties and cocktails to be happy, or drugs, or if she were afraid of airplanes or afraid of anything, or if she weren't supremely self-reliant, if she lacked a taste for adventure, if she didn't laugh at the silly things I call humor, it wouldn't work. If she didn't want to share money when we have it and fantasy when we don't, if she didn't like raccoons . . . oh, Richard, this won't be easy. Without all of the above and more, you're better off alone!

  In the back of the notebook writing forward, as we rolled in overdrive along Interstate 65 between Louisville and Birmingham, for three hundred miles, I made a list: The Perfect Woman. By the ninth page I was getting discouraged. Every

  line I wrote was important, every line had to be. Yet no one could meet ... I couldn't meet those standards myself!

  A burst of objectivity like cruel confetti around my head: I'm ruined as a mate even before I make it to advanced soulhood, and advancing makes it worse.

  The more enlightened we become, the more we can't be lived up to by anybody anywhere. The more we learn, the more we'd better expect to live by ourselves.

  I wrote that as fast as I could write. In the blank space at the bottom of the last page I added, barely noticing, Even me.

  But change my list? Can I say it's wrong? It's OK if she smokes or hates airplanes or if she can't help gulping down a glass of cocaine now and then?

  No. That is not OK.

  Sunset had been on my side of the bus; now there was dark everywhere. Out in that dark, I knew, were little triangle farms, tiny polygon fields not even the Fleet could land in.

  You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.

  Ah, The Messiah's Handbook, I thought, wherever was it now? Plowed under, most likely, in the weeds where I had thrown it the day Shimoda died. With its pages that opened to whatever a reader most needed to know. I had called it a magic book once, and he had been vexed with me. You can get your answers from anywhere, from last year's newspaper, he had said. Close your eyes, hold any question in mind, touch anything written, and there's your answer.

  The nearest printed paper on the bus was my own wrecked copy of the book I had written about him, the page-

  proof last-chance that publishers give writers to remember that diesel is spelled with the i in front of the e, and was I sure I wanted this to be the only book in the history of English ever to end with a comma.

  I put the book on my lap, closed my eyes and asked. How do I find the one most dear, most perfect woman for me? I held the question bright-lit, opened the book, put my finger down and looked.

  Page 114. My finger rested on the word "bring": To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

  A flash of ice dropped down my back. I hadn't practiced this one for a long time; I had forgotten how well it works.

  I looked in the window turned night mirror by the seat-light in the bus, watching for a reflection of what she might be. The glass was empty. I'd never seen a soulmate, I couldn't imagine how to imagine her. Should it be a physical picture I hold in my thought, as though she were a thing? Just this side of tall, is she, long dark hair, eyes seacolor skycolor enchantment knowing, a changing loveliness different every hour?

  Or imagine qualities? Iridescent imagination, intuition from a hundred lifetimes remembered, crystal honesty and steel fearless determination? How do I visualize those?

  Today, it's easy to visualize them; then, it was not easy. Images flickered and vanished, though I knew I had to hold images clear to make them appear alive around me.

  I tried, tried again to see her, but only got shadows, ghosts barely slowing through the school-zone of my thought. I who could visualize the smallest details of anything I dared imagine, could not vaguely picture the one that I wanted to be the most important person in my life.

  One more time I tried to see her, imagine her there.

  Nothing. Lights from a broken looking-glass, shifting darks. Nothing.

  I can't see who she is!

  After a time I gave up.

  Psychic powers, you can bet on it: when you want 'em, they're out to dinner.

  No sooner had I fallen asleep in the bus, tired as death from the ride and the effort to see, a mind-voice shook me, startled me awake:

  "YO! RICHARD! If it'll make you feel any better, listen! Your one woman in all the world? Your soulmate?" it said. "You already know her!"

  three

  M. GOT off the bus at 8:40 A.M., in the middle of Florida, hungry.

  Money was no concern, as it would not be for anyone with so much cash tied into their bedroll. What troubled me was, What happens now? Here's warm Florida. Not only no soulmate waiting at the bus-stop, but no friend, no home, no nothing.

  The sign in the cafe, when I entered, said that it reserved the right to refuse service to anyone.

  You reserve the right to do absolutely anything you want to do, I thought. Why put up signs to say so? Makes you look frightened. Why are you frightened? Rowdies come in here, break things up? Organked-criminals? In this little cafe?

  The waiter looked at me and then at my bedroll. My blue-denim jacket had one little torn place on the sleeve where

  the string was coming loose from my mending, the bedroll had a few tiny spots of grease and clean oil from the Fleet's engine on it, and I realized that he was asking himself if now was the time to refuse service to someone. I smiled hello.

  "How you doin', there?" I said.

  "Doin' all right." The place was nearly empty. He decided I'd pass. "Coffee?"

  Coffee for breakfast? Aak! Bitter stuff . . . they grind it out of bark, or something.

  "No thank you," I said. "Maybe a piece of that lemon pie hotted up for a half-minute in the microwave? And a glass of milk."

  "Sure thing," he said.

  Once I would have ordered bacon or sausage for this meal, but not lately. The more I had come to believe in the indestructibility of life, the less I wanted to be a part of even illusory killings. If one pig in a million might have a chance for a contemplative lifetime instead of being skrockled up for my breakfast, it was worth swearing off meat. Hot lemon pie, any day.

  I savored the pie, and looked out the window into town. Was I likely to meet my love in this place? Not likely. No place is likely, against odds in the billions.

  How could I already know her?

  Accordin
g to the wisest souls, we know everyone everywhere without having met in person-not much comfort when you're trying to narrow your search. "Hi, there, miss. Remember me? Since consciousness isn't limited by space or time, you'll recall that we're old friends. . . ."

  Not a likely introduction, I thought. Most misses know that there are a few strange folks in the world they want to

  be a little cautious with, and that is definitely a strangefolk introduction.

  I brought to mind every woman I had met, going back years. They were married to careers or to men or to different ways of thinking from mine.

  Married women sometimes unmarry, I thought, people change. I could call every woman I knew . . .

  "Hello," she'd say.

  "Hello."

  "Who's this?"

  "Richard Bach."

  "Who?"

  "We met at the shopping center? You were reading a book and I said that's a terrific book and you said how do you know and I said I wrote it?"

  "Oh! Hello."

  "Hi. Are you still married?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, it's certainly been nice talking to you again. Have a nice day, OK?"

  "Ah . . . sure will . . ."

  "Bye."

  There is better guidance, there has to be, than going through that conversation with every woman . . . When the time is right I'll find her, I thought, and not a second before.

  The breakfast came to seventy-five cents. I paid it and strolled into the sun. It was going to be a hot day. Probably lots of mosquitoes tonight. But what do I care? Tonight I sleep indoors!

  With that I remembered I had left my bedroll on the seat of the breakfast-booth in the restaurant.

  A different life, this staying on the ground. One doesn't just tie things up in the morning and toss them in the front cockpit and fly off into one's day. One carries things around by hand, or finds a roof and stays under it. Without the Fleet, without my Alfalfa Hilton, I was no longer welcome in hayfields.

  There was a new customer in the cafe, sitting in the booth , I had left. She looked up, startled when I walked to her table.

  "Excuse me," I said, and lifted the bedroll lightly from the other seat. "Left it here just a bit ago. I'd have left my soul if it wasn't tied on with string."

  She smiled and went back to reading the menu.

  "Careful of the lemon pie," I added. "Unless you like it not too lemony and then you'll love it."

  I walked into the sun again, swinging the bedroll at my side before remembering that the United States Air Force had taught me not to swing any hand that was carrying something. Even when we carry a dime, in the military, we do not swing our hands with it.

  On impulse, just seeing the telephone in its little glass sentry-box, I decided to make a business call, to someone I hadn't talked with in a long time. The company that had published my book was in New York, but what did I care about long distance? I'd call and reverse the charges. There are privileges in every trade-barnstormers get paid for giving airplane-rides instead of having to pay for them; writers get to call their editors collect.

  I called.

  "Hi, Eleanor."

  "Richard!" she said. "Where have you been?"

  "Let's see," I said. "Since we talked? Wisconsin, Iowa,

  Nebraska. Kansas, Missouri, then back across to Indiana, Ohio, Iowa again and Illinois. I sold the biplane. Now I'm in Florida. Let me guess the weather in the city: six-thousand-foot thin broken stratus, high overcast, visibility three miles in haze and smoke."

  "We've been going wild trying to find you! Do you know what's been happening?"

  "Two miles in haze and smoke?"

  "Your book!" she said. "It's selling very well! Extremely well!"

  "I know this seems silly," I said, "but I'm stuck on something here. Can you see out the window?"

  "Richard, yes. Of course I can see out the window."

  "flow far?"

  "It's hazy. About ten blocks, fifteen blocks. Do you hear what I'm saying? Your book is a best-seller! There are television shows, they want to have you on network television shows; there are newspapers calling for interviews, radio shows; bookstores need you to come and autograph. We are selling hundreds of thousands of copies! All over the world! We've signed contracts in Japan, England, Germany, France. Paperback rights. Today a contract from Spain ..."

  What do you say when you hear that on the telephone? "What nice news! Congratulations!"

  "Congratulations yourself," she said. "How have you managed not to hear? I know you've been living in the underbrush, but you're on the PW bestseller list, New York Times, every list there is. We've been sending your checks to the bank, have you checked your balance?"

  "No."

  "You should do that. You sound awfully far away, can you hear me all right?"

  "Fine. It's not underbrush. Everything west of Manhattan, Eleanor, it's not weeds."

  "From the executive dining room I can see to New Jersey, and beyond the river it looks awfully brushy to me."

  The executive dining room. What a different land she lived in!

  "Sold the biplane?" she said, as though she had just heard. "You're not giving up flying?"

  "No, of course not," I said.

  "That's good. Can't imagine you without your flying machine."

  What a frightening thought: never to fly again!

  "Well," she said, getting back to business. "When can you do the TV things?"

  "I'm not sure," I said. "Do I want to do them?"

  "Think about it, Richard. It would be good for the book, you could tell quite a few people what happened, tell them the story."

  Television studios are in cities. Cities, most of them, I prefer to stay out of. "Let me think about it," I said, "and I'll call you back."

  "Please call me back. You are a phenomenon, as they say, and everybody wants to see who you are. Do be nice and let me know as soon as you can."

  "OK."

  "Congratulations, Richard!"

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Aren't you happy?"

  "Yes! I don't know what to say."

  "Think about the television shows," she said. "I hope you decide to do some, at least. The big ones."

  "OK," I said. "I'll call."

  I hung up the telephone and looked through the glass. The town was the same as before, and everything had changed.

  What do you know, I thought. The journal, those pages sent almost on whim to New York, a best-seller! Hurray!

  Cities, though? Interviews? Television? I don't know . . .

  I felt like a moth in a chandelier-all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly.

  On impulse I lifted the telephone, coded my way through the maze of numbers required to reach the bank in New York and convinced a bookkeeper that it was me calling and that I wanted to know the balance in my checking account.

  "Just a minute," she said, "I have to get it from the computer."

  What could it be? Twenty thousand, fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand, dollars? Twenty thousand. Plus eleven thousand in the bedroll, and I could be very rich!

  "Mr. Bach?" she said.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "The balance in that account is one million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars and sixty-eight cents."

  There was a long silence.

  "You're sure of that," I said.

  "Yes, sir." Now a short silence. "Will that be all, sir?"

  Silence.

  "Hm?" I said. "Oh. Yes. Thank you. . . ."

  In motion pictures, when we've called somebody and they

  hang up, we hear this long buzzy dial-tone on the line. But in real life, when the other person hangs up, the telephone just goes quiet in our hand. Awfully quiet. For as long as we stand there and hold it.

  four

  . FTER A while, I put the telephone back into its holder, picked up my bedroll and started walking.

  Has it ever hap
pened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of a system that is rewarding those people with every ticket . . . the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice-cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone!

  Glorious moments in art, in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror.

  Book-buying, ticket-buying are ways to applaud, to say thanks for nice work. We're joyed when a film, when a book we love hits the best-seller list.

  But a million dollars for me? Suddenly I knew what it was to be on the other end of the gift so many writers had given me, reading their books since the day I sounded out for myself: "Bam-bi. By Fe-lix Salt-en."

  I felt like a surfer resting on his board, all at once some monster energy wells up, grabs him without asking if he's ready and there's spray flying from the nose of the board, from midships, then from way aft, he's caught on this massive deep power, the wind pulling a smile around his mouth.

  There are excitements indeed, having one's book read by many people. One can forget, charging mile-a-minute down the face of a giant wave, that if one isn't terribly skillful, the next surprise is sometimes called a wipeout.

  five

  M. CROSSED the street, got directions from the drugstore to a place where I might find what I needed; followed can't-miss-its and Lake Roberts Road under Spanish-moss branches to the Gladys Hutchinson Memorial Library.

  Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we're throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.