The Bridge

by K-Nice

Sitting under the bridge was dangerous and illegal so they did it every week. The Fullcrest Bridge was and old overpass, parallel to the sweet Mississippi, in a lonely neighborhood. The river wound its slow, shifting way through the city much like the four teens. The bridge was on the opposite side of town to the Air Force base where they lived but they made the trek, regardless of the heat. Three guys and a young girl went there Fridays after school to watch the sun set and take their chances with vice. The oldest wasn't even old enough to buy alcohol, but Scott's bookbag sagged with the weight of Seagrams 7.

As life-long military brats, the four siblings strove to break free from the rigidity of Air Force life. Their father, who spent more time in the cantina or the brig, than he did at home, was why they had to cross town before wallowing in corruption. Everyone recognized Major Christopher Summers, the hot shot Special-Ops pilot and many also knew his children by sight.

The first time they came to the bridge, they had tried to purchase a pint of booze. They weren't particular--they had been willing to take anything the guy at the corner store would sell them. He was an old man, wiser than they could imagine. After years of operating his overstocked store, he knew all the tricks by heart. He quickly saw through the gruff voices they employed, and even their height. It didn't work.

Then they found another way. Scott was just barely old enough to buy cigarettes, which were kept on the wall behind the front counter. One pack of Marlboros was all Scott asked for, but by a skillful proof that Jeremy's hands were quicker than Old Man Logan's good eye, they always managed to walk out with a bottle of bourbon or scotch or brandy.

The warmth of the sun was oppressive. Alex, Jeremy and Rachel waited for their brother outside the store in the stifling New Orleans' swelter. On this Friday afternoon, he bought two packs of Marlboros. They walked together, attracting no more that then usual attention for a group of happy young people wasting away the late afternoon. The anonymity was an interesting phenomenon and Scott found that he enjoyed it. He was tired of being asked when he was going to join up and follow in his father's jet exhaust.

Ambling down deserted streets, they approached the bridge with caution. There were signs to discourage loitering which gave them momentary pause. They slowed less than a block from their destination to indulge the rush of adrenaline that came with law-breaking. Alex and Jeremy enjoyed it most of all, longed for it in fact, but the sensation always left Scott feeling a bit uncomfortable. Rachel was just glad to tag along. When they reached the bridge they climbed the embankment that led to the highway above them.

Scott didn't even bother to sit before he began working the cap off. It fell silently on the cracked concrete and rolled lazily down the incline, landing in the dry grass that bordered the pavement. The warm, golden-brownness of the liquid glowed in the light of the setting sun.

He brought the bottle to his lips. Wrapping them gently around the opening, Scott tilted the bottle up slowly, building that electric anticipation. The first, sweet sense of burning passed through him like a shiver from hell. He always relished those first moments of pleasure before he was consumed by his ravenous need for more.

He looked down with mature, just-now-getting-my-wisdom-teeth amusement at his younger brothers and sister. They were a few feet away, sitting lower on the inclined bank that he thought wise. It constituted a tactical error, the kind that would tug at his mind until he corrected them. Anyone in a passing car could see them and call the cops. He realized he should suggest that they move. He thought about it for a second and realized he didn't even care what happened to him anymore. What was jail, just another prison? He had lived behind concertina wire all his life, so he could drudge up no fear of four walls and a bunk. Besides, NOPD didn't have time to run in teenage loafers.

He would warn them, if only they didn't look so peaceful. Rachel's laughing eyes followed Jeremy, who was darting around on those agile feet of his, and generally annoying Alex, who seemed content to read his Tom Clancy novel and brood about how long it would be before he could enlist. They had adjusted well to the changes that were constantly wrought on their lives. Even the biggest change of all.

Rachel had been just four years old when it happened. She felt none of his pain. Jeremy and Alex were a bit older but they too seem oblivious. They were just a bunch of kids, smoking their cigarettes on a steamy August afternoon.

Scott thought about the coldest day he had ever experienced. When he was two, they had been stationed in New Orleans, and they always seemed to drift back there every few years. Though they had lived in Alaska, New York and other places where it was dangerous to spit in January but he did not think about those times.

The memory was not clouded with years, but was a fresh as his mother's lips when he had kissed them in her coffin. The cool winter rains had made the other mourners shudder with cold. But the cold he felt started not with the wind that had blown through his coat, nor with the steady pounding of the coldest rain he had every experienced, but in his heart.

The ice had started to form in the car, on the normal afternoon that had ruptured his life and stolen his love. He had felt unnaturally cold as his twelve-year-old frame was thrown forward and then backward. He grew colder as his called his mother and received no answer. He had almost thought Bobby Drake was around, that scrawny prankster he had known at a base in Texas who always stuffed ice down Scott's swim trunks. Then he had remembered that this was New Orleans, and in an instant he had known the truth.

The cold stayed in him for all the years after. No matter what the chaplain said, or how many absent-minded man-to-man's he had with his father, his heart still felt frostbitten. He had loved his mother, with an strange intensity and exclusiveness that was usually reserved for lovers, and missing her tore at his very core. It ripped through his childhood and left him wanting, searching for any sort of release, any source of warmth. Several months ago, he had found it in the den at Colonel Xavier's New Year's Eve party.

The air that his lungs made cold was warmed by the liquid gold that he poured down his throat. The edges of his heart were melted by the liquor's burning taste. The need for release soon outweighed his liking for the taste and signaled his urgent and unquenchable desire for more. He drank, watching his brothers and sister carefully, envying their contentment. He drank more and started to ignore them.

As a tractor-trailer passed overhead, the bridge rocked and shed pebble-sized chunks of concrete from its belly. Scott watched as their shadows lengthened and the darkness grew cooler, as forgetting the past became a reminder of the things gone by.

He sat there, growing wearier with every swallow. His mind filled with those moments he was trying most desperately to ignore. The most vivid images centered on the car crash, his mother's death and more frightening than that, his life before that forsaken day.

He remembered the times his mother had watched him practice his cello for hours on end; the time she had strung lanterns from the back porch of a Nebraska farm house so his birthday party would look like a Mardi Gras parade. Scott remembered how she had stood by and pretended not to notice when he had thrown her aside for the momentary pleasure of pulling Jeannie Grey's hair when her family would visit.

He remembered the crash. He had been sitting next to her when the care had been hit--hard--from behind by an errant pick-up truck. They had been coming home from a shopping trip of some sort--Father's Day gifts for the number one ace pilot. He closed his eyes and felt the brakes failing, the car being rammed forward into the unyielding concrete embankment. Her neck had snapped. He imagined that he had heard the sound it made, a sickening crack or crunch among the grinding noises of metal mauling metal, but he knew he hadn't, except in his dreams.

The cold, unforgiving silence was his mother's only answer to his cries that day. He knew that it was the only time she had not responded to his voice with the melody of her own.

Scott's eyes watered and he took another drink. One that might last him until the dreams started again. He stared blearily at an indentation on opposite embankment and kept swigging until the pain was as dull as an icicle on a summer day.

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