I called the sheriff’s office next. Sheriff Dale Bruner and I went to high school together. He played tight end. I beat him at arm wrestling in eleventh grade and he’s never let me forget it.
“Jo, I wish I could help you,” he said. “I really do. But it’s his pasture and his gate. He’s not blocking a public road. The public road is underwater. He’s charging people to cross private property. He can do that. He can charge fifty if he wants. I can’t make him open that gate.”
“So what am I supposed to do, Dale?”
“Well,” he said, “there’s always the long way around.”
The long way around was thirty-one miles. Out the back of our road, up over Pickett’s Ridge, down through the river bottoms, around past the old Shaw place, and back up to the highway. All dirt. After six inches of rain, half of it was mud you could lose a truck in. One school morning that way, and you’d spend an hour each direction. And Ardith’s Buick would never make it up Pickett’s Ridge in that mud.
That afternoon I sat on my porch steps and watched the creek.
It was sixteen feet across at the old crossing. Brown and fast, carrying branches and somebody’s blue plastic trash can and a whole lot of somebody’s topsoil.
I’m a pipeline welder. I’ve been one for fourteen years. I’ve welded pipe in the snow in North Dakota and in the heat in the Permian Basin and in the rain in Louisiana with mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. I’ve welded twenty-four-inch gas line that runs through people’s backyards and under highways.
I stood up and walked down to the edge of the water.
My husband, Travis, was on a two-week hitch on a drilling rig in West Texas. He works as a derrickhand. When he’s gone, it’s me and Easton and the dog and a lot of quiet.
I called him on his lunch break. He picked up on the second ring with a lot of noise behind him.
“Hey, babe. Everything okay?”
“Vance is charging twenty dollars a day to cut through his meadow. County says six months for a new crossing.”
“Twenty a day? Vance Tolliver?”
“Vance Tolliver.”
He was quiet for a second. I could hear a diesel engine and somebody yelling about a stuck valve.
“How wide is the creek?” he asked.
I smiled. I’d been married to him for eleven years. I knew exactly where his head had gone, because mine had already gone there.
“Sixteen feet,” I said.
“Bank to bank?”
“Bank to bank, at the old crossing. Good solid ground on both sides. It’s county right-of-way all the way down to the water on both banks. The old road goes right through it.”
“Then build it,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Jo, you’ve welded bigger things than a footbridge. Call the yard. They’ve got junk pipe stacked up behind the shop. Drill pipe’s rated for more weight than you’ll ever put on it.”
“I’d need rig mats for decking.”
“Ask the pusher. Ask Darnell.”
“Travis, I can’t build a bridge by myself.”
“You won’t be by yourself,” he said. “You never are. I’ll be home in nine days. Build it before I get back, and I’ll buy you a steak.”
“Medium rare.”
“Is there any other way?”
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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