My bridge at the Columbus road—
Folks sobered up instant – even tobacco spit halted in flight to hear—
—and any proceeds from its use will henceforth belong to the city of Cleveland in perpetuity
* * *
At the revelation folks looked to Mr Clark’s carcass as if he might sit up in his undertaker-paint and explain. Mayor Frawley cussed some and Dog laughed his dust-laugh before screeching TWO BRIDGES OR NONE to the delight of certain Ohioans.
Summer.
There is a plague of rascal teachers in the west. Traveling men with no prospects and no manners and just enough hold of their figures to teach you C-A-T and D-O-G. Some come and stay for a month without spending one day sober. But even if you done all your learning in the worst shouting-school with the rascalest teacher you would see the wrong in TWO BRIDGES OR NONE. You cannot count to two without passing through one. Two makes more than none. If two bridges is preferred to none, then one bridge is halfway as good.
Unless one bridge offends your pride.
* * *
Cloe Inches did not busy herself with church-talk or promenading or temperancing. She did not indulge in anything but whiskey for digestion and to thk thk thk thk at a dozen dozens of tasks every day.
At the invitation of Mrs Batsab Basket, Cloe once went to the women’s talking society, where they had lyceum debates as they worked at sewing. Afters Cloe dragged me behind the barn so that we could have a pipe – we hid as Mrs Tab would have ruptured to see a female use tobacco.
Cloe told me that the talking society were worse torture than whipping. I already spent half my life sewing for s___’s sakes You cannot tell me this were leisure A blue cloud wrapped her up. I would rather listen to the boring bits of the Bible ten thousand times than another talking society
* * *
Cloe Inches were too much of a Stiles to shirk chores, and too much herself to endure the yoke of home life. Something just burned Cloe up inside, and every so often the burning directed her outward behavior. She did not have the holiness, though she went to sermons on Sunday and knew her Bible and prayed. A trouble with Cloe were that she liked to ask questions more than is considered polite. She would lawyer you about the rightness of God’s law and of the Bible lessons. We had plenty of the holiness people in Ohio, and Cloe would press them on why right were right and wrong were wrong. The holiness folks did not care too much for that.
There is appetites apart from holiness that set a person burning, but finery or flattery did not appeal much to Cloe either. I was never sure exactly what did appeal to her, apart from being left to choose for herself.
The highest consequence of Cloe’s burning will were that once or twice a year she would run off from home to some other place. A country place or a city place, it did not matter. As long as it were not Ohio city. She would hop aboard an empty wagon headed home from market or talk a farm wife into sharing her horse. Or she would just walk off.
It is too much to list each escape but some notable instances:
She run off to the Shakers at North Union Pond and worked in their broom factory.
She run off to the Toledo swamp and worked at an inn on the roadside.
She rode on a canal boat to Cincinnati and seen how Germans done.
She run off to the Mormons at Kirtland.
* * *
She would not warn us before she run off, and she never sent word from wherever she gone, but she would always come back before two months were out, wearing the same frock she left in and a sheep’s smile. Like she were sorry for running off and for coming back all in one. She always brung a souvenir from her travels. A cloth cap from the Shakers. A clever wooden box from the Cincinnati Germans. From the Mormons at Kirtland she had a patch of man’s hair with a little bit of skin and gummy blood underneath. I did not ask how she come by that.
We never much commented on or scolded her running, the better everyone would forget it. We would all say how glad we were to have her home, and before too long she would give us a tale after dinner, before Mr Job took up the good book. The tales had amusement and wonder – Cloe could yarn – in Cincinnati she had seen a man killed by a circus elephant – the departed had been teasing the creature by yanking its ears – it were agreed by all witnesses that the animal acted justly – she said a man’s mashed brains look no different from a pig’s.
The story of every running-off ended the same way. After she spent her purse she would seek a position, and find herself at the same work she done at the homeplace, stooped over the same washtub or butter churn, working the same bend into her spine. She wanted some other way of using herself up, only she did not know it to say.
After her return from Kirtland we had a pipe and she shown me her Mormon scalp. There were a gray hair or two among the chestnut color. I could imagine its former owner were sore and sorry to have met Cloe.
Did they try to put you in a team of wives?
They did not try twice Out come a bush of blue smoke.
You are just like Agnes She will not work beside another creature
I mind other creatures less than I mind the yoke
* * *
I do not blame Cloe any. Yokes are forever going out of style. Folks bust loose for a garden of reasons – cash or kin or madness. It is an inheritance all the way back to Genesis.
* * *
If you only known this country by our decorations you would expect we had eagles falling out of every branch – kept as pets – dined on their eggs all week and their meat on Sundays. The whole nation is tarted up with eagles – flags and banners and broadsides and news papers. Fancy furniture has even got eagles carved into it. Like Columbia did not know how to sign her name and made an eagle mark instead.
I do not know what moved the national fathers to make eagles the national creature, when we hardly to never see them. Perhaps old Philadelphia and Newyork was plagued with eagles, the sun veiled by flocks of them, the streets whitewashed with their mess. In Ohio the only eagles we seen were in the distance and making in the other direction. There were a justice to the national symbol always absconding.
Before all the bridge trouble, we crossed the Cuyahoga by ferry. For a penny old Alf Farley would float you over at Centre-street. For a penny more he would take a horse or wagon, and for another penny on top he would sell you a bag of peanuts. It were good to have the peanuts as Alf took his leisure in getting across.
By the first of June, the late Mr Clark’s bridge were ready. We marked this new crossing not by peanuts but by cakes and band music and promenading back and forth. The two mayors shook hands at the center and pretended there were no bad blood between the cities. It was a fine performance but it did not keep.
Before the dawn of the second day of Mr Clark’s bridge, misbehavior commenced. A sign appeared at the Ohio side.
TOLL FIVE CENTS.
PEANUTS ONE PENNY.
No one minded the sale of peanuts – the ruinous toll was the issue. This were five times what Alf had charged for the same number of rivers – and it was noted with sour grumbling that the bridge minder were not collecting a toll from farm wagons.