Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [196]
She made a moaning sound and put her hands flat on the windowsill, watching as he edged out, testing the sway of the span. It seemed to her he filled his lungs with air. Paralyzed, cut off from him by glass and distance, she may or may not have screamed at him to stop, not to come on. But he came on, carefully inching along the planks, carrying a package of some sort under one arm. He stopped to get a better hold on the rail-rope; he shot an estimating glance across the hundred feet he still had to cross; he shoved the package more firmly under his arm. Below him his shadow paused, buglike, on the shadow bridge. Then it moved. And as it moved, shadow and bridge, bug and boy, began to sway.
Susan’s held breath was choking her. She forced it, clogged with harsh sound, out of her lungs. She saw the shaking sway of the cables communicate itself to Ollie’s knees. He grabbed for the rope with his left hand, the package fell straight down into the river, the lurch of the boy’s falling against the rope kicked the planks sideward, and there he hung across the rail rope with his legs desperately rigid to keep his feet against the planks.
Susan screamed, and screamed again, and was at the rear window tearing at the catch, screaming down toward the windmill, “The bridge! Ollie! The bridge!”
Oliver’s face turned, hung in the heat-shriveled air for half a breath. Then his wrench went flying and he was lunging down the slope in great leaps. She was back at the front window without knowing how she got there. Ollie, still hanging by his elbows across the rope, was just lifting his feet to let the walk swing back under him. He caught it with a knee, both knees. His face turned upward toward her. “Don’t move!” she cried to the glass. “Hold on!” and was outside.
Heat exploded in her face, the small bright terrible image her retina carried dissolved in a red blur. She put her hand against the wall, steadying herself, and felt a bright, distant pain. Someone’s arm-Nellie’s-was supporting her. Something small was whimpering and clamoring down on the ground. Her sight cleared and she saw Betsy. She moved her stinging hand and found that she had thrust it into the rosebush beside the door. “What is it?” Nellie was saying, and then her head snapped around as Oliver appeared, thundering down toward the river, and she saw it all. Oliver was shouting as he ran. On his knees, Ollie clung, patient and small above the curve of swift water.
Susan started down the path, was held back. “Let me go, Nellie!” Clumsily she braced and slid and stepped. The rocks she touched were as hot as stoves, the sun beating off the hillside blinded her, the little flowers of mallow stared up at her like coals. She had to watch the ground, for fear of slipping, but she stopped every few steps to watch Oliver and her son. Nellie, protesting and trying to hold her back, she shook off. Somehow she found herself holding Betsy by the hand.
Oliver plowed through the gravel and leaped up the path to the bridge head. He stooped, steadying the vibration out of the cables while he shouted something at Ollie. Then he started out onto the planks. He moved smoothly and swiftly. His weight sagged the walk, his motion shook Ollie where he clung. Down to the deepest part of the sag, then up. His arm went out, he had the boy hooked tight. For a second they were very still, as if resting.
“Oh, thank God!” Nellie said. She was crying and laughing, and she still clung to Susan’s arm. Susan pried loose her hand, and holding Betsy’s small wet paw she went on down the path. By the time she reached the shingle, they were off the bridge. Evaporating tears were very cold on her cheekbones. She said something gentle to Betsy, transferred her hand to Nellie’s, and held out her arms to Ollie. With one white look upward at his father, he came into them. She could not hold him against her naturally because of her great belly; she had to hold him against her hip. One hand was on his whitey-brown hair. Over the top of his head she looked at Oliver, red with exertion, his shirt wet, his eyes like blue stones. As if restoring the circulation of his hands, he hung them at his sides and shivered the arms from the shoulders.