The Bridge

Chapter 1

The sounds of the river and the birds, the wind and the crickets, all seemed to fade into the background over time, but the clang of hammers and anvils never did, even in the still of the afternoons. While the animals took shelter from the hot sun, the workers laboured on.

Calls split the air and the man at a coal furnace straightened up briefly to look at the structure spanning the river. Behind a thick, canvas apron and long work gloves, his skin rippled with corded muscle, holding a sheen of sweat and a liberal coating of grime.

Without taking his eyes from the structure, he pulled one hand out of a glove and wiped his brow quickly. Blue eyes, far from unusual amongst the Quebecoise workers, stood out startling and clear against soot-streaked skin.

A huge team was accompanying a section of the bridge as it was moved into place to be lifted. Horses strained and men hooked the carrying cables around it. This was as much an art as a science, hard-won lessons in safety mixing with an intuition of which cable might be a bit weak, which specific place on the beam might be best for the cable. The men shouted to one another without looking up, the language of the jobsite and their familiarity with one another helping them move as one unit.

The man at the furnace slid his hand back into the glove and rotated one shoulder with a wince before reaching into the furnace with tongs. Amongst the flames, rivets were heating, and he selected one of just the right shade.

He cast a glance over his shoulder before tossing the glowing rivet through the air. It whistled in a neat arc before it was snatched out of the air by a Catcher with an expert maneuver of an ash-lined leather bucket. The boy flashed a smile before turning to hold the bucket out to a Holder-on, who set the rivet in place on one of the steel beams.

As the Holder-on steadied the rivet, another man gave it several heavy strikes with a hammer, flattening it permanently in place.

By the time the head of the rivet was flattened, the whole operation was beginning again, another rivet already in the air. There was no time for rest at this worksite—or for rubbernecking, no matter how impressive the feats as men hauled great pieces of steel skyward.

On a hill overlooking both the river and the site, a large man stood with his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. His eyes were fixed on the bridge, and there was a frown on his face. He shifted slowly but continuously: crossing his arms, then putting his hands back in his pockets, shifting his weight.

The man with the hammer wiped at his brow with one sleeve and took a sip of water from a nearby jug before looking up. He frowned as well when he saw the man in the suit, and waited for the other to look at him.

When the man in the suit cocked his head in a silent question, the Hammerer looked around the worksite. Evidently reassured by what he saw, he gave a nod back to the man in the suit, who relaxed slightly. He wandered away in a slow circle, watching his shoes, lost in thought.

Behind him, a temporary building served as the office for the construction site. Inside lay piles of documents and sketches that never could be kept neat—this wasn’t some city office, after all, but one on an active site, where any set of schematics might need to be pulled out at any time.

The clop of a horse’s hooves sounded, and a whistle split the air.

The suited man looked up to see a young telegram boy on horseback, both horse and rider sweaty from the trip.

“Can I help you?” The man cleared his throat; between the dust and the heat, it was dry.

The boy held up an envelope. “I have a telegram for the site engineer.”

“That’s me.” The man strode over to take the telegram, and, as he tore it open, looked over to where the beam was now being lifted.

The groan began so slowly that it seemed to come from inside the bones of those present. Men began to turn and look before they knew what they were looking at, and the site engineer -scanning the telegram- lifted his head like a deer listening for footsteps. The horse pranced nervously, and the boy reined it in sharply.

There was a pause while the world seemed to hang in complete stillness…and then the groan rose to a metallic screech, accompanied by the indrawn, horrified breath of every man on site. The site engineer burst into motion and sprinted for the slope, but even as he was moving, so was the bridge: sliding, twisting, toppling—

Chapter 2

Ben leaned forward and rubbed at his eyes. He had a headache developing at his right temple, and his stomach wasn’t feeling too good. Skipping breakfast had been a mistake.

Staying up until 2:30AM, drinking expired beer, probably hadn’t been the greatest idea either—but, hey, it was his senior spring. He had a few good leads on jobs, he didn’t have any tough classes this semester, and the weather had been fantastic. He figured he might as well take full advantage of the freedoms of university life while he still had the opportunity to do so.

Up at the front of the classroom, Professor McLeary had switched to a black and white photograph of a man with a heavy moustache and round, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Rudyard Kipling,” McLeary told the class, “had referred to engineers in some of his earlier poems and stories, which is why the Institute felt he would be the ideal person to fashion a ritual for the Iron Ring ceremony.”

Ben wondered if Kipling had known that his work would one day be used to inflict a slow death by boredom on engineering students. He rubbed at his face again and considered putting it down on the cool surface of the desk.

“Hey.” Tyler gave a hiss and nudged him with an elbow. “I’m about to come up on that corner again.” His fingers were flying over the keys of his laptop, but he wasn’t taking notes. Instead, he was guiding a pixelated car through a crowded city, running lights and avoiding pedestrians by a hairsbreadth.

That was, when he did miss them. It seemed to be a 50% chance of whether or not he tried at all, and his eyes kept straying to the timer in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Ben eyed a few of the stats. “You’re going to have the po after you if you keep hitting people.”

“If I keep going around them, I’m not going to beat your time,” Tyler shot back, not looking up from the screen.

There was a hiss from a few rows ahead of them and both boys looked up to see a girl with short, black hair, glaring at them. Esther Emami was one of the top students in their year, and she had a definite reputation…as a robot. She’d been here all four years, but Ben had yet to see her at a party.

Sorry, Ben mouthed.

She sighed and turned back to her notes.

“—Based on one of his poems,” Professor McLeary was saying, “called ‘The Sons of Martha.’ It refers to the engineers who toil without end, in order to make the world function smoothly, while their counterpart, the ‘Sons of Mary,’ enjoy the fruits of their labour.”

“So, why are we trying to be the Sons of Martha?” Ben asked Tyler in a whisper, with a frown. “That sounds like a bad deal.”

“Huh?” Tyler didn’t look over. “Almost there, almost—dammit!” As he tried to get around a hairpin turn, his car spun out against a side wall, and was now shown in stylized pieces with his character standing, incongruously, in the middle of a cloud of pixelated smoke.

Ben guffawed.

There was a sudden silence in the room, and most people turned to look at the two of them.

Professor McLeary blinked rather owlishly. “What was that, Mr. O’Betany?”

Ben wished he could sink through the floor. Tyler was smirking at him, and Esther seemed torn between being glad that he’d finally gotten caught, and annoyed that he’d managed to interrupt the lecture again.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “I was, uh—sorry.” He looked at the professor. “Nothing to add, professor.”

“Mmm.” The man nodded and turned back to the screen. “Where was I? Yes. Rooted in Luke, Chapter 10 of the Bible, the parable of Martha and Mary. That’s all for today, please read Chapter 23 for our next class. I will also be giving you details on your final projects, so make sure not to skip—”

Ben had already tuned out. As soon as the lights came on, he shoved his books into his backpack and jiggled it a little to make them sink down through the morass of crumpled assignments and old chip bags. Around them, students were talking and taking their time leaving; this was the last class of the day and, with the school year winding down, the classroom full of seniors was taking things easy.

“Come on.” Ben kicked at Tyler’s foot while he zipped up his backpack and turned back to his own laptop.

“Dude, wait.” Tyler snapped his fingers to get Ben’s attention. “Check it out. The Redsuits are throwing a backyard keg party!”

Ben leaned over to see a party invitation. A group of engineering students in red jumpsuits, decorated with a flare, along with a couple of photos of a backyard, some Jell-O shots, and assorted hints of debauchery. The gallery of photos came with a post inviting junior and senior engineering students to a backyard keg party to celebrate the end of the semester.

The Redsuits were notorious on campus. As the official Welcome Week team for first-years, they were made up of students from all subcategories in the engineering program at McMaster. While they were, unsurprisingly, some of the highest-achieving students, their numbers also included some of the top partiers of the department, who seemed to approach “work hard, play hard” as a mantra.

There was a house on Sterling Street where at least a few of the Redsuits lived every year. Their parties were legendary, and Ben had no idea how some of them managed to do so well in school after the late nights they regularly pulled.

“It’s going to be epic,” Tyler said, drawing out the last word. “Like half of them are graduating, or something, so they’re going out with a bang. Matt said that there’s gonna be some pub crawl thing, but instead of bars, we hit all the houses on that block? And—during finals. This is like the warmup.”

“Right.” Ben grinned. “Well, if they’re going to warm up before the main event, we should, too.” He and Tyler might not be Redsuits, but they’d made enough friends amongst the group that they were invited to all the parties—and Tyler was right, this was exactly the year to go out with a bang. Then he stopped. “Wait, but…”

“What?” Tyler closed his laptop and slid it into his bag.

“Our Materials assignment.” Ben tipped his head back and groaned. “It’s due tomorrow and I haven’t even started it. Have you?”

“Nope.” Tyler snorted to show what he thought of that idea. “Anyway, who cares? We’ll do what we did last time.” He gave a meaningful nod at Esther.

Ben swallowed.

“What?” Tyler gave him a look. “Come on. What?”

“Last time was supposed to be the last time.” Ben leaned over to speak more quietly. “And we nearly got caught because you didn’t change it enough. Remember?”

“So, I’ll change it more this time.” Tyler didn’t bother dropping his voice. He looked over and rolled his eyes when he saw that Ben was still hesitating. “Jesus, stop being a little bitch and hurry up. They tap the kegs at five and I gotta shower.” He nodded again at the girl in front of them, and finally dropped his voice. “And she’s getting ready to leave.”

Ben squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, but he had already made his decision. He shook his head and opened the command screen on his laptop with a few well-practiced keystrokes. His fingers were a blur until he hit enter emphatically, and a moment later, Esther’s desktop showed up on his screen, mirrored from where her laptop was still open a few rows down from them.

Her desktop background was a picture of Esther with a dog—or, rather, Esther nearly hidden by gigantic dog, grey-haired and shaggy, that was sitting in her lap. The picture was superimposed on a pink background decorated with flowing typography: “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. -Amelia Earhart.”

Ben opened up her documents folder. He knew the file path to follow from the last time he had hacked Esther’s computer, but he was struck all over again by the exquisitely well-organized filing system. Her Materials assignment was hanging out in the neatly organized documents folder, under Assignments, Engineering, Senior Year, Spring, and Materials. Ben grabbed it and noticed that the document hadn’t been opened for days. When he checked, however, the assignment was fully done.

Apparently, she had finished it with a minimum of fuss. Ben shook his head. He was impressed despite himself.

“Damn,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” Tyler was jiggling one foot impatiently.

“This girl is smart.” Ben gestured at the assignment. “How’d she finish this so fast?”

Tyler reached out to press Ben’s laptop closed. “She probably has no life.”

Ben had a hard time disagreeing with that, so he shrugged.

“Is that it?” Tyler drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Right. Yeah.” Ben shook himself and looked away from where Esther was now packing up her pens, notebooks, and laptop.

“Sweet. Let’s go.” Tyler was already halfway to the stairs. “If we’re gonna pregame, we gotta move.”

Ben laughed as he followed.

An hour and a couple of shots later, the two of them were squeezing their way into 100 Sterling Street, a rental property lovingly referred to by its tenants as, ‘The Century Club’. It was once a lovely, brick house in a posh neighbourhood, but the property owners had since gave up trying to clean it fully between each group of university students. The lease on this particular house was passed down each year to the leading member of the Redsuits, though Ben didn’t have the first idea how they managed to get the landlord to renew. The walls were pockmarked with everything from nail holes, of old pictures, to larger holes that looked like they might be from hammers or fists.

Out on the patio in the back, a group was cheering an intense game of flip cup, between a first-year and a senior. The first-year was tall and broad-shouldered—a starter on the football team, if Ben remembered correctly—but he couldn’t yet match the skill or alcohol tolerance of his opponent. He was currently ahead, but it wasn’t looking good for him.

On a stage in the corner, some of the BioMed seniors were giving an impromptu performance, rocking out on guitars and drums while students formed a mosh pit in front of the stage.

Tyler grabbed a beer for Ben and the two clinked rims before draining the cups in one long gulp.

“Woof.” Ben grimaced. “They didn’t spend much on beer, I see.”

“You’re doing it all wrong.” Tyler shook his head. “If you drink fast enough, you don’t taste it. Shots?” He disappeared toward the house without waiting for an answer.

Ben was grinning when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket, saw MOM on the screen, and declined the call with a sigh. She was calling to check up on plans for after graduation—and he had precisely zero intention of discussing that at a party. His mother was going to be earnest and tell him all about how he really should be sending in more applications, no matter whether Ben lied to her or not about how many he sent.

He had intended to send in a few. He had most of his materials together. That had to count for something. And he’d start working on it soon. He knew he had to; the last thing he wanted to do was hear his mother get all intense about it.

Someone stumbled drunkenly into Ben and he reached out a hand automatically to catch them. It was a girl, her brown hair falling loose around her shoulders. She gave an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry.”

“Falling for me already?” Ben raised an eyebrow at her. He’d seen one of the Redsuits use that line a few weeks ago, and he’d practiced it in his room a few times since then…like a total nerd.

But whether it was the beer or the practice, the girl giggled. She sipped at her own beer and looked up at Ben through her lashes.

“Hey.” Tyler was back with shots, and he gave a grin as he came up beside Ben. “Who’s the cutie, Ben?”

“We hadn’t been introduced yet.” Ben smiled at her. “So, what’s—”

The crowd behind them moved suddenly, and someone jostled Tyler forward. One of the shots, dyed bright blue, splashed across the girl’s shirt.

She gave a hiss and brushed at the liquid, which was already seeping into the shirt. “Seriously?” she demanded, and stalked off.

Tyler winced and watched her go before presenting Ben with the empty shot glass. “Sorry, man,” he said solemnly. “I guess you…lost your shot.”

“Ugh.” Ben groaned.