A Bridge to the Stars

  'I'm glad you'll soon be running away,' he says.

  Ture eyes him scornfully.

  'Before I run away I'll make sure you climb over that arch,' he says. 'You got caught before you did what you'd promised to do.'

  'I'll climb over the bridge tomorrow night,' says Joel. 'I'll stand on the top and pee all over you.'

  Then he runs off. He can hear Ture laughing behind him.

  I shall climb over that arch, he thinks indignantly. I shall climb up and stand at the very top and pee all over his head. The Secret Society is mine, not his.

  My task is to find a dog heading for a distant star. Not creating fear in people who in fact only feel sorrow.

  Ture is so odd, he thinks. He uses so many words. You can never be sure what he's thinking. He's not like the rest of us. No doubt he's rich. He doesn't go to school . . .

  As he turns a corner The Old Bricklayer comes driving past in his lorry. Joel stops and waves, but The Old Bricklayer doesn't see him. Joel watches the red rear lights gleaming like animals' eyes in the darkness.

  Adventure, he thinks. This is where it's to be found! Simon Windstorm, No-Nose, Four Winds Lake . . .

  And the dog.

  The dog running and running inside his head . . .

  Samuel is snoring away in his room. Joel gets undressed and creeps into bed.

  Is he dreaming about the sea? Joel wonders. Dreaming about Jenny or Sara? Or is he dreaming about me?

  He looks at the hands of his alarm clock glowing in the darkness.

  Twenty-four hours from now he'll have climbed over the iron bridge. Scrambled up one side of the arch, stood up on top, unzipped his fly, and then scrambled down the other side.

  He'll show Ture von Swallow how you conquer a bridge. Then Ture can run away if he wants, but he'll never be able to claim that Joel Gustafson is a coward.

  What was it he'd thought the first time he saw Ture on the rock by the river?

  That he was an unpleasant, smirking stranger? Somebody who made him angry on sight? Well, now Joel will show him. Joel will sort him. . .

  He checks his alarm clock. Nearly two.

  Climbing over the bridge arch is dangerous, he thinks. It's not allowed because it's dangerous.

  He suddenly feels scared. What has he let himself in for?

  Can he think up something else to do, so that he doesn't need to climb? The only thing would be to take the shears and cut back the rest of the plants growing up No-Nose's wall.

  But he can't do that. He would never be able to survive seeing her open the door again and stand barefoot on the cold steps.

  Exhaustion is rolling over him in waves.

  It's a long time to tomorrow, he thinks. So many seconds that he can't possibly count them all.

  He's on the point of falling asleep when he hears No-Nose's trombone again. He can see her swaying in time to the music as she plays. All those repeated notes, over and over again.

  He remembers what she said: Don't promise me, promise yourself.

  I must write up everything that happens in the logbook, he thinks. I promise to do that. I promise myself not to forget.

  The following day Joel falls asleep at his desk again, but he wakes up so quickly that Miss Nederström doesn't notice. His eyelids are so heavy that he has to sit with his head in his hands, and hold them up with his fingers.

  After school he hurries home. He lies down on the bed and sets the alarm clock. He can snatch an hour's sleep before he needs to start lighting the stove.

  He's very tired, but he can't sleep. He imagines himself staring up at the iron railway bridge. It gets higher and higher even as he watches. In the end it looks to him as if the top of the arches disappear into the clouds.

  He sits up in bed.

  He knows he can't do it.

  If he falls off the bridge, he'll die. Just like Evert did when the tree hit him.

  But what can he do?

  The only thing he can think of is not to go out tonight. Not to go out at all until Ture has run away.

  But what had Ture said? That he wasn't going to go away until Joel had climbed over the bridge?

  His thoughts are buzzing around in his head. Is it really all that dangerous, climbing over the bridge arch? Provided he holds on tightly and doesn't look down? He's good at climbing trees, after all. He never falls, never gets dizzy.

  Of course I dare do it, he tells himself, and discards the frightened thoughts. It's the thoughts that are scared. Not me . . .

  When his dad comes home the potatoes are ready.

  Samuel has a cold. He's coughing and shivering and thinks he has a temperature. He goes to bed as soon as he's finished eating. Joel takes him a cup of coffee.

  Samuel suddenly starts talking.

  'Joel,' he says. 'As soon as you leave school we'll go away from here. We'll move to somewhere with a harbour.

  I can't stand these forests any longer. I want to see the open sea. As soon as you leave school, we'll move.'

  Three more years, Joel thinks. Only three more years!

  Joel jumps up on the bed and sits astride his father.

  'Is that definite?' he says. 'Absolutely definite?'

  His father nods. Yes, it is.

  'But you're too heavy to be sitting on me like this,' he says.

  Joel moves and sits on the edge of the bed.

  He has so many questions.

  Which sea? Which town? Only three more years . . .

  'I think I must get some sleep,' says his father. 'I feel as if I've got a temperature.'

  He closes his eyes, and Joel goes to sit in the window. One year, two years, three years. He tries to work out how he can make those three years pass as quickly as possible.

  The summers always pass quickly. So do the springs. It's the autumns and winters that are so long. Especially the winters, that never seem to end. Time always passes more quickly after Christmas than before.

  He realises that the three years will pass very slowly. There's nothing he can do about that.

  Then he starts thinking about the railway bridge. It's out there in the darkness, waiting for him.

  The scared thoughts come creeping up on him again, but he sends them packing. I'll show that Ture, he thinks. I'll show him all right . . .

  His father is fast asleep when he tiptoes out into the darkness, shortly before midnight.

  It's grown colder again. The snow under his feet is frozen. The sky is clear and full of stars, and the new moon hovers over the wooded hills. He pauses to look at The Plough. It's the only constellation whose name he knows.

  In the southern sky is a constellation called The Southern Cross. His dad's told him about it. Sailors used to navigate by that constellation a long time ago. You can stand on deck and look at The Southern Cross. In the middle of the night when a warm breeze is blowing.

  He finds that hard to imagine. Standing to look at stars without it being cold.

  He approaches the bridge.

  If Ture is waiting by the goods wagons, he can carry on waiting there until it dawns on him that Joel has gone straight to the bridge.

  He stares up at the arches and tries to make them shrink by looking at them. They are not so high, not so narrow as they seem.

  It will take three minutes to creep over an arch.

  Maybe five.

  Five minutes isn't very long.

  It's such a short part of your life that you don't even notice it.

  Now he can see Ture running towards him from the direction of the marshalling yard.

  Joel suddenly finds it hard to keep his fear at bay again. He sees that Ture has the pair of shears with him.

  That makes him angry, and when he gets angry his fear starts to go away. It doesn't vanish altogether, but it grows smaller.

  'You could have left the shears at home,' he says.

  'Stand in the middle of the bridge and I'll pee all over your head.'

  Ture smirks.

  'You'll never climb over the arch,' he say
s. 'You'll slither back down again.'

  'We'll see about that,' says Joel. 'Go and stand in the middle.'

  Ture shrugs and heads for the middle of the bridge.

  Now Joel is alone with the bridge.

  It's bigger than ever now.

  Joel stands by the abutment and gazes up at one of the arches soaring up into the darkness. Underneath is the frozen river.

  OK, it's just a matter of climbing. Not thinking. Not looking down.

  He clambers up onto the parapet, next to where the arch begins. If he stretches both arms out he can just reach far enough to cling onto the sides.

  That's what he must do. Press up against the centre of the arch, hold on tightly to the two sides, and slowly ease his way upwards.

  He lays his hand on the iron. The cold immediately penetrates his glove. He closes his eyes and starts edging upwards.

  Like a frog, he thinks. Like a frog trying to get away from a beast of prey that's just behind him.

  The iron rivets are scraping against his knees.

  First he moves one hand, then the opposite leg. Then the other hand and the other leg. Slowly, slowly . . .

  He's surrounded by silence.

  He closes his eyes and keeps edging upwards. One hand, the opposite leg.

  The iron is extremely cold and already he feels frozen to death. Every time he eases himself upwards it becomes harder to keep his fear at bay.

  Why am I doing this? he asks himself in desperation. I'll never do it. I'll fall down and kill myself. . .

  Then he hears Ture shouting to him.

  Only then does he realise how high up he is. Ture's voice sounds so far away.

  'Come down,' he shouts. 'Come down . . . '

  Why should he go down? Is Ture so afraid that he'll succeed?

  He keeps on edging upwards like a terrified frog. The rivets are digging into his skin and he can feel that his arms are starting to go to sleep.

  Oh, Dad, he thinks. I'm not going to make it. You'll have to come and help me . . .

  He notices that the arch is beginning to level out.

  Then he comes to the very top. Now he'll have to start going downwards. Now he'll have to climb headfirst.

  Panic strikes.

  He can't keep going.

  He clings on with all his strength. He can't move.

  Neither forwards nor backwards.

  It suddenly feels warm down one of his legs. He doesn't know why.

  He shouts out, just once, a piercing shriek into the darkness . . .

  He has no idea what's happening down below.

  He thinks he can hear The Old Bricklayer's lorry. Or is it No-Nose's trombone, perhaps?

  Otto is standing there, laughing. Miss Nederström is there as well, and she's angry. The whole bridge is full of people laughing. The whole school are down below on the bridge, pointing and laughing . . .

  He can also hear his father's voice.

  But his dad isn't laughing. He's shouting something, but Joel can't hear what it is because the voice is coming from so far away.

  The voice is slowly getting nearer.

  Now he can hear that his father is quite close.

  'Lie completely still. Don't move at all, Joel. Don't move . . . '

  Why is he saying that?

  Joel is incapable of moving. He'll have to lie here at the top of the arch for the next thousand years . . .

  Now his father's voice is right behind him.

  'Don't move,' he whispers. 'Lie completely still . . . '

  Then something happens that he'll never forget, for as long as he lives.

  His dad takes hold of Joel's back, so tenderly.

  He can't see a thing because his face is pressed up against the cold arch. But even so, he knows it's his father's hand. There's only one hand like that in the whole wide world.

  He feels the hand and hears his father's voice behind him.

  'Creep backwards. Slowly. I'll hold on to you . . . '

  Joel starts to return slowly to the ground.

  He's no longer clinging on to the axis of the earth. He's going slowly back to the ground.

  He edges slowly down with his numb arms and legs.

  All the time his dad is whispering reassuringly to him.

  At last he feels the bridge parapet against his foot.

  His dad lifts him down and hugs him tight. Then he's lifted into the cab of a lorry and it's The Old Bricklayer sitting behind the wheel.

  Ture is hanging around outside. Joel can see that his face is different. Ture is scared.

  His father carries him up the stairs. Mrs Westman is watching from her doorway. He hears his dad telling her about an accident that didn't happen.

  Then he's in his own bed and Samuel is rubbing his feet.

  He drinks something hot, and then all he wants to do is sleep . . .

  But before he goes to sleep he wants his dad to tell him about the sea.

  About breakers and dolphins, and the warm monsoon winds that come from India . . .

  It still feels as if he's clinging on to the cold iron arch.

  His dad tells him about the warm monsoon winds, and only then can he start to loosen his grip on the freezing cold arch.

  Then everything becomes a dream.

  Celestine grows out of her case and turns into a big sailing ship bobbing in the swell as the sun starts to set. She's waiting for a wind to blow. Joel is in his hammock below deck. Swaying slowly from side to side, deeper and deeper into slumber . . .

  8

  The following day Joel found out what had happened.

  When he woke up his dad was sitting on his bed, and through the door he could see Mrs Westman busy with a saucepan in the kitchen. Even before his dad rolled up the blinds Joel knew that spring was on the way at last.

  He could tell from the birds chirruping outside the window.

  He no longer felt cold when he woke up, but his knees were sore and when he felt under the covers he found he had scabs on both his legs.

  Samuel hadn't gone to work in the forest that day. He'd stayed at home, sat on Joel's bed and talked to him.

  It was Ture who had realised that Joel would never be able to get down from the arch. He'd run towards the streetlights and before long Simon Windstorm had come trundling up in his lorry. Ture had stood in the middle of the road, waving with both hands. Simon Windstorm had barely been able to understand what Ture said, partly because he was so agitated and out of breath, and partly because of his odd dialect.

  But Simon had understood enough to grasp that an accident had taken place, or perhaps was about to take place.

  They'd driven to the railway bridge and he'd seen what looked like a bundle of clothes clinging on to the top of the arch. When he asked who it was up there, Ture said it was Joel Gustafson, and Simon gathered it was the boy who had been with him to Four Winds Lake. He'd left Ture on the railway bridge in case anything were to happen, then driven to the house where he'd dropped Joel a few days previously.

  As he didn't know which was Joel's door, he'd knocked on all of them. Old Mrs Westman had been scared to death and hardly dared to open up. She'd just peeped out hesitantly through a narrow crack. Samuel had answered the door, full of cold and with a temperature. When he heard that Joel was stuck on top of one of the arches on the railway bridge, he'd barely paused to get dressed. He'd pulled on his trousers over his pyjamas, and forgotten to put a sock on one foot. Joel could remember the rest, more or less, himself.

  His dad had climbed up behind him and helped him down. Then Simon Windstorm had driven them home in his lorry.

  Now it was morning.

  Mrs Westman had knocked on the door as early as five o'clock to see if she could help them with anything. She'd lit the stove, and sighed and tutted at the terrible accident that had very nearly taken place.

  But Joel was asleep.

  He'd shouted out in his sleep several times, as if he'd been climbing up the arch again.

  His dad carried the w
orn-out old armchair into Joel's room and stayed there all night, wrapped in a blanket.

  Simon Windstorm had stayed for a coffee, but as Joel was asleep and it was clear that he didn't seem to be ill, he'd driven home in his lorry. That was at about four o'clock.

  Before leaving he'd told Samuel that he and Joel had been to the little lake they called Four Winds Lake. He also told Samuel some of the things Joel had told him about.

  They had no idea where Ture had disappeared to, with his shears. They didn't even know who he was.

  But why had he been on the bridge in the middle of the night with a pair of shears? There are a lot of things that Samuel wants to ask Joel about, but he decides to wait a bit. Just now the most important thing is for Joel to understand that he's not still stuck on the top of that arch. He has to grasp that it's only a memory. Something that's over and done with. Something he might not be able to forget. Nor should forget. But it's in the past now.

  Joel listens to what his father has to say.

  But even as he does so, he's thinking about something entirely different. He's thinking about the dog he saw that night.

  The dog that had stopped, sniffed the air and looked all around, as if it were scared of something.

  Without knowing why, Joel suspects everything that's happened has to do with that dog.

  He has to find the dog.

  Maybe his dad could help him to look for it if he explains how important it is for him to find it?

  His knees hurt and he'd rather not think about what had happened during the night.

  It's something important that he can't understand.

  What happened up there when the arch flattened out at the top? What happened when he was beaten by the bridge?

  'A penny for your thoughts,' says his dad.

  Joel shakes his head.

  'I'm not thinking about anything,' he says.

  That's a silly answer. Nobody can think about nothing. But he doesn't want to share the thoughts that are buzzing around in his mind with anybody.

  His dad looks tired.

  Joel wonders why he isn't angry. He ought to be. Joel could have fallen off the arch and killed himself.

  'You could have killed yourself, you know,' says his dad, as if he'd been reading Joel's thoughts. 'I'd never have got over that.'

  Those were his exact words.