At Spences Bridge by Harrison Kim

Cody uploads the video of his day from his phone to the computer and does a voice-over.

“Other people try to draw us into their nightmares,” he states, “My video will show you what it’s like to travel alone.”

The video opens with a shot of snaking trains beside the river at the hamlet of Spences Bridge. Poplar trees bend in the wind on either side. Cody edits out the train roar and shows, in silence, the flutter of yellow sage flowers above the tracks.  He then segues into a burnished black pine forest, seared away by a fire several years ago, the puffy ash settled into the ground.   

He mixes shots of cracks along the brown bluffs above the hamlet with images of the lines in his own face.  He likes to tell his viewers he’s part of this place, as rugged and wrinkled as the land.

“Cracks open up,” he says in his voice-over.  “To measure time and experience.”

He shows the Number 800 logging road climbing high over the bluffs and the Thompson River canyon. Trains roll by on either side of the river below.

Atop the bluffs, where the road runs across a plateau, the sky’s a great dome and under it, as Cody speeds up the film, the wild-patterned clouds shoot across.

He stopped the van up on the plateau this morning and took a short hike along a deer trail, then stood among the charred trees, everything quiet except for a ringing in his ears. Even in the hushed, burned over forest, that ringing always lay underneath.  It would stop if the wind blew loud and hard enough.  Cody stood quiet and listened. An engine noise sounded from far off.

Cody felt less tense now, up in the hills away from Mike T., the other permanent occupant of the dusty Spences Bridge motel.

“Always trying to hump me into his world.” Cody mused.

At sunrise, Mike stepped right up to Cody’s open motel window, slopping his coffee, slurring his words.

“That’s the only thing I hoard is hubcaps man, I got them all over my walls, you should check it out.  I got one off a 56 Dodge Royal Lancer rusted out down a logging road.”

“Did you take my hubcaps?” Cody asked.  “Someone stole them last night.”

“I didn’t steal your hubcaps, man, what a joker!”

Cody moved to Spences Bridge to be by himself.  He’d told Mike that at least a dozen times, but out here in the country, he couldn’t afford to piss anyone off.

“What makes me so important to him?” Cody thought. “Right by my door first thing in the morning.”

“I think maybe it was my crazy wife stole your hubcaps,” Mike said.

Mike’s puffy faced wife Lana survived in a dented trailer next to the abandoned wooden church, built right up against the railroad tracks.  Cody pictured those tracks, with his videos of the train engines roaring past. 130 hits on his site in the past week and considering the new algorithms that wasn’t easy to attain.

“What if it’s Mike making 120 of those hits?” he wondered, thinking of the church steeple with the cross still strong and sticking out the top.

Mike was still talking, “Lana thinks she’s got rattlesnakes under the floorboards, she can hear them shaking their tails at night.  Last time I was there she held her cane out, tapping.  You listen good, man,” Mike kept talking.  “But I can hardly hear you. You’re always whispering.”
“I have to drive to Ashcroft for an ice cappuccino,” Cody said.

“You already had a coffee,” Mike told him.  “I saw you sitting out here earlier.”

Cody nodded.  People always wanted to talk. You couldn’t get away from them.  After that, their thoughts, what they said, overwhelmed his mind.  That was even worse than the listening.  He went back to his bedroom, grabbed the car keys and bolted out the door, telling Mike “I need at least three coffees.”

He backed the truck out, watched the motel and the tiny almost abandoned settlement by the river disappear behind him, only a bit of woodsmoke rising.

Now, up on the plateau, the engine noise roared closer.  Cody filmed the trees in the wind, mixed it with the motor cacophony.   An ATV came into view.  Cody recognized Mike’s bald egg-shaped head, his long and bristly beard tied up with red ribbons.

Mike stopped the machine and lifted his leg, held it up for a moment, then moved it over the seat.  He stood with care.

“How did you know I was here?” said Cody.

“Pure coincidence,” Mike said.  “I’m searching for hubcaps.” He kept the engine running, pulled a bottle of vodka out of his saddlebag.  “Want to try some of this?”

“I stopped drinking a year ago,” Cody said.  “I think I told you.”

“Yeah, I heard.”  Mike grinned, held the bottle between his knees and leaned against the ATV.  “We can be buddies without the juice.”  He grabbed the bottle and opened it,

Cody smelled the alcohol on the wind.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said.

“Running away?” Mike’s grin grew wide, then disappeared.  “It’s not good for a man to be alone all the time.”  He rubbed the top of his head.   “I got three steel plates in here.”

Cody nodded.  Every day, Mike reminded him of the steel plates in his cranium.

“Pretty remote area,” Cody said, and retied his boots.  “I’m gonna walk in circles,” he continued.  “It’s a ritual.  We all have rituals.”

Mike took a swig of his vodka and turned off his machine.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll stay and watch your vehicle.”

Cody shrugged. “It should be okay.”

Mike walked around the truck, in a half-circle.  He stopped, then walked back the other way.

“You got a lot of expensive equipment in there, man.”

“No-one’s going to steal it up here,” Cody said.

“There’s one thing I wanted to say,” Mike called to him. “It’s about my wife.  I told you she kicked me out of that trailer, but I left on my own accord.  There was no force involved, it was my decision, I couldn’t live with all the mess.”

“That makes sense,” Cody said.  “Nobody got hurt.”

“No one should have to live with mess,” Mike continued.  “Her mind is like her trailer, all full of holes.”  He laughed and stared at Cody.  “You have insight, man.  You are a spiritual guy, I know it.”  He looked around.  “You understand, from your look, and your voice.  You whisper low, but it’s truth.  I mean, how did I find you?  I didn’t know where I was going.  Just hopped on the ATV and rode uphill, never know what friends you’ll come across, man.”

Cody nodded. 

“I’m gonna drive back to the valley,” he said.

Mike lifted the vodka to his lips.

“Not gonna drink more than a swallow. Sure you don’t want some?”

Cody walked to his van and started it up.

“I guess you’re not into walking in circles,” Mike said.

“I have to drive now,” Cody yelled, and took off down the 800 road. 

On his You Tube site, Cody emphasizes that he’s living in the Thompson River Valley to get away from people, but the only thoughts currently racing through his mind are about Mike. Did all the concussions and operations on Mike’s head give him a sixth sense?   Is that how he always knows where Cody is?

“Either he’s obsessed or he’s jealous or both,” Cody concludes, and locks his door.

He uploads his video onto You Tube.  It’s about five minutes long, distilled from all the footage of the day, Cody’s voice-over states “even in the most isolated places, there are still problems, even a man standing by himself in the wilderness can have a ringing in his ears.”

Cody goes to bed on his narrow six-foot cot trying to think past the constant sound.

He wakes up in the morning and considers two sets of twenty push-ups.  One thing about stopping drinking:  You must fill your time with other activities.  He keeps his frying pan clean and a sharp double-bladed axe by his bed, maintains a stack of firewood two cords high. 

He checks his phone and walks outside.  Something brown drips from his van.  Cody goes over to inspect.  There are bubbles, and grime, and a shininess on the driver’s door.  “Looks like dish detergent,” Cody says to himself.

He’s about to go back inside for his camera, but Mike appears around the corner, carrying a full cardboard box.

“Would you like an apple?” Mike says, “I just picked these off my ex-wife’s tree.”

“Someone poured dirty water all over the side of my van,” Cody says.

Mike lowers his box, walks round the van, inspecting closely.   “It’s likely Lana mistook your van for my ATV.”  He nods.  “I’m sorry man, she gets angry, then she gets confused.  She invited me back last night cuz I bought her a couch someone dropped off the side of the highway.  It’s not in bad shape.”

“That was lucky” Cody says, “about the couch,” still trying to be agreeable, although now there’s pressure in his head and indeed a constant growing hum.  “I don’t like people sneaking around at night,” he says, “kind of like your wife doesn’t like those snakes under the floor.”

 Mike inspects under the van, then pushes himself up.  “Sure you don’t want an apple?  The tree’s eighty years old stood by the church all these years, the richness of the soil in this flesh, man.”

Cody opens his mouth, shows Mike his lack of teeth.

“I can’t eat fruit,” Cody says. “I do better with soft pears. Rather than nightmares.”

“What a joker!” Mike laughs.

Cody sits watching his video from yesterday.   The scenery slips away.  He watches a close-up of the river current, swirling and powerful. Time’s opening in front of him like a black hole.  He’s been fluttering and falling like leaves from a dry Aspen tree.  

He forces his eyes away from the screen, and into a mirror.  He pulls back his cheek to view the inside of his mouth.

“Missing teeth represent a lack of bite,” he thinks “I wish I had more of it.”

He peers down his throat, the hole seems to go on forever.  He looks back at the screen and checks his You Tube account again.  It’s called “The Way I see the World.” 

 18 views came in since yesterday, and a “Like” from two anonymous people.  No comments.

Cody stares outside, observes the gravel parking lot of the motel. On the other side of the road lies a satellite dish between two trailers.  Beside one of the trailers stands the abandoned church and he sees Lana, bent over, pulling a large purple couch into its open front door.

“I’m going to go into Ashcroft, and buy an ice cappuccino,” he says into his built-in computer microphone. 

He needs to move, right now, along that main highway.  Time to slip away, drive by himself, keep parallel to the white lines, with the dash camera working.  He’ll roll another video all the way to Ashcroft and push away his nightmares.  He walks out the door.  Mike’s standing just outside, holding two beers.

“It’s lonely here in the wilderness,” Mike says.  “Come sit down on my side of the motel.”

“I’m going to Ashcroft,” Cody tells him.

He walks around Mike, checks his car, it’s sagging on one side. Cody looks down.  A flat tire.  He hears the ringing in his ears again.

“Maybe only the air’s gone out of it,” Mike says.  “I hope it’s not my wife playing tricks again.”

He grins at Cody.  “She needs some help,” he says, “She’s a bit out of control.”

“I try not to become involved with other people’s family matters,” Cody says, and he looks at the beer shining against the sun.

“When you live here, it’s hard not to be a friend,” says Mike.

Cody examines the flat tire.

“If I find a stuck nail, this is serious sabotage.”

“A minor slowdown.  I can help you fix it.”

Mike holds out the beer again.  Cody looks at it, the brown glisten of the glass and of Mike’s face and the edges of his teeth as he smiles. 

“People call you the video cowboy,” Mike says.

“You’ve watched my videos?” Cody asks, and Mike grins.

 “Every day.”

Cody wonders where the plates in Mike’s skull fit together.  He gazes over at his car, sagging in the parking lot. It’s going to be a long time before he buys a cappuccino. He stops, turns, reaches out, grabs the beer and puts down a swallow.  It’s not cold, but the taste lingers.

“Kinda early in the morning to start this,” he says, and lifts the drink a second time.  “What is it you want, Mike?”

“We could make a video, a video about a search for a certain rare hubcap, an accessory hubcap for a 1939 Chevrolet, across all the ghost towns and hidden car dumps in this land.”

Mike pulls out a six pack of Blue.   His voice doesn’t slur that much this morning.  “It’d be like touring all the pawn store and antique shows.  We could start by filming my own hubcap wall.”

“Is that six pack cold?” asks Cody. 

“Yeah,” says Mike, “It sure stopped my dizziness this morning.  But that’s not important.  I’ve been thinking about this video idea since before you arrived.  I knew you were coming, man, before you even got here.  I’ve had this dream a long time, man.”

Cody pops back into his room, to grab his computer.  He brings it out as across the road, Mike’s wife emerges from her trailer, leaning on her cane.  She waves the cane in their direction.  Cody lifts a beer in an early morning salute.  The ringing in his ears finally stops as the two drinkers get down to business. Lana pulls more items into the old church.

The roaring of another train comes from up the valley; Cody and Mike stay immersed in their activities. The trains go by so regularly here neither of them even glance up.

Harrison Kim

Image: A train taking a big curve with trees and hills all around. Dark and moody from Pixabay.com