Bridges
by Perry McGee

"What the hell is this?" Manny asked.

"Looks like a suspension bridge," Ralph answered.

And damned if it wasn't a bridge; a big one too. Funny thing, there were no roads leading to or from it. It spanned maybe two hundred feet over a dry gulch. A nice tarmac for a surface, graceful fretted finials adorning the uppermost poles, and absolutely no reason to be there.

"What the hell?" Manny repeated.

I understood his sediment exactly; I mean, why was there a shiny new bridge in the middle of the forest? Trees grew all around it, grasses and foliage covered the long-undisturbed area everywhere around it, and unless I was crazy, there was a tollbooth at the far end.

Ralph asked, "Wanna walk across it?"

"Hell no, damn thing might be haunted or something," I replied. There we were, the middle of Seneca Forest deep in the heart of Ohio, staring at a bridge that should not have been there. "Hell no," I repeated.

So Ralph walked across it. The tarmac was about a foot off the ground with a perfect straight edge and a double yellow line running from this end to the other. He walked about twenty feet before yelling, "Come on you chickenshits. See? It's okay.

Manny followed, then I followed too.

Out footfalls were barely audible as we waltzed forward. About midway, I saw that the thing I earlier thought was a tollbooth was positively a tollbooth. And as we drew closer, we saw a tollbooth man inside. He wore a blue uniform and sported a very long white beard and scraggly white hair.

"Hidee ho neighbors, and what can I do fur ya today?"

Manny and Ralph were speechless, so I volunteered with, "What the hell is going on? What is this bridge doing here?"

The tollbooth man said, "Well, you're on the South Sandusky Bridge. If you turn left up ahead, you'll go to Cleveland, if you turn right, Cincinnati."

Ralph said, "There ain't no damn roads!"

Manny and I shook our heads in agreement. Any damn fool could see that the bridge began and ended against the tree line. It was hard enough walking through the forest, let alone driving a car.

The tollbooth man said, "Two bucks please."

I scratched my head. Two bucks? Did he mean for all three of us or did he mean each? And as if he read my mind, he said, "Each."

So we paid him. He thanked us and wished us Godspeed, then sat back and unfolded a newspaper in front of himself.

"Now what?" Manny asked.

"Well, we're paid up, let's go."

We hit the bridge's end looking for a highway or even a damn yellow brick road, but all we saw were trees, shrubs, and pellets of deer poop. I asked, "Left or right?"

Ralph said, "I ain't never been to Cleveland, let's turn right."

We turned right, and after six days of walking came to Cleveland city limits.

Manny was the first to admit: "I'll be damned. That old coot was right."

Visit the Author's web site:
Perry McGee's Storytime Village
(http://www.geocities.com/theironsponge/)