Free Covered Bridge by Brian Doyle Page B

how trout would sometimes leap right out of Mushrat Creek and fall through the windows into the bridge!
    And how magic it was when the bridge creaked in the wind.
    And how lovers could meet in there.
    And the drumming of the hooves, and the rumble of the wheels.
    And then some other people would spoil it and tell how a farmer once hanged himself in the bridge becausehis crops wouldn’t grow. Was it true? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was another covered bridge. What difference did it make?
    And then everybody started thinking of Oscar McCracken, but nobody mentioned him. And Ophelia Brown. And nobody said her name, either.
    On Friday of the week when the news came out that they were going to tear down the old covered bridge as soon as one lane of the new bridge was finished, O’Driscoll was ready.
    The night before, I told Mrs. O’Driscoll and him about how Oscar would talk four times a day to his dead lover, Ophelia Brown.
    â€œWe have to save this bridge,” said O’Driscoll. “Not only for Oscar, but for Posterity. In my travels I have learned that without a past, we have no future!”
    Mrs. O’Driscoll rolled her eyes. “What a Romantic,” she said.
    â€œYou’ll get fired,” I said.
    â€œNo, I won’t,” he said. “I’m on the side of right! The side of History!”
    O’Driscoll had a plan.
    Everybody knew that on Friday, about half past one, Prootoo would go to Wakefield to get the money for our pay. The bank closed at three o’clock so she always left in the truck with her husband who loved her, Ovide, to drive down to Wakefield and get the money before the bank closed.
    At 1:30, O’Driscoll started taking the petition around to the bridge workers asking them to sign if they were in favor of saving the covered bridge.
    I was watching him.
    The first person he talked to was the biggest farmer of them all, who was a pretty good mechanic and who was lying under the generator, working on it.
    O’Driscoll lay there under the generator with him. Their legs, sticking out, were the very same.
    They had on the same overalls and the same boots. Almost everybody wore the same-colored overalls. Everybody bought them at the same store. There was only one kind.
    The generator was right beside Prootoo’s shack.
    But the truck was gone. Everything was O.K. She wouldn’t be back for quite a while.
    We were sure Prootoo was gone in the truck to Wakefield to get the pay.
    Suddenly the door of the shack opened and Prootoo stood there listening to O’Driscoll talking to the mechanic about signing the petition about saving the bridge. You could hear him explaining it.
    You could tell that she didn’t know
who
it was under there, but she could hear
what
it was he was saying.
    She had a can of white paint in her hands. She began to lean away over to look under the generator to see who was talking about this petition about the bridge.
    Some of us were watching.
    We knew that if she got down on her hands and knees and looked under she would find out it was O’Driscoll doing the talking and fire him on the spot for trying to start a strike.
    Just then Mr. Proulx’s truck drove up in a cloud of dust. He said in French to her that they had to go. Right now! They were in a hurry! Wakefield. The bank closes at three! Tout d’suite!
    Prootoo then got a very wise and crafty look on her face.
    She didn’t say a word to her husband as he gave her a little kiss on the cheek out the truck window. While he kissed her, she never took her eyes off O’Driscoll’s pants. Then, as she walked around the front of the truck to get in, she deliberately spilled some white paint on the right leg of O’Driscoll’s overalls.
    Then she put the can of paint in the shack, got in the truck, and they took off.
    O’Driscoll, on his back, worked his way out from under the generator.
    â€œThank you, Paddy,” said O’Driscoll.