第8章 The Flood

And Miles, reading the poem by moonlight at the west end of the flood-tested bridge, felt the last plank of the paper bridge slide into place in his chest, and he stood at the edge of the deck with the water down enough for the crossing and the poem burning in his pocket and the east bank dark across the water, and he understood that the crossing was coming and that it would happen soon and that the paper bridge had been built for this, and that the river, brown and patient and full of kept things, had carried them all the way to this moment, and that the moment was the beginning, and the beginning was now, and that he was ready, and that he had been ready since the first letter, and that the only thing that had been missing was the going down of the water, and the water had gone down, and the bridge was standing, and the poem was in his pocket, and the crossing was before him. And when the flood had gone down and the water had fallen back from the planks and the bridge stood up out of the shallows streaming and whole, Wren came to the east end on the first clear night and found the water down enough for the crossing, and she stood at the edge of the deck with her heart doing the new arithmetic and her feet not quite ready, and she understood that the crossing was not something the letters could do for her, that the last plank of the paper bridge had to be walked by her, in her own body, across the water, and that the walking was the whole of it, and that she was ready, and that she had been ready since the first letter, and that the only thing the river had been waiting for was the going down of the water and the standing up of the bridge and the first true step of the first true crossing, and the stepping was the beginning, and the beginning was now. The flood came in early October, a week of rain that turned the Hales from brown to a roiling gray and the shallows at the bend below Cold Spring into a fast-moving channel that stood halfway up the bridge's planks, and the flood was the first real test of the paper bridge, the first thing that had ever threatened it from outside, and Wren came to the east bank on the third night of the flood and stood in the rain and looked across the roaring water and could not see the west bank at all, and her heart did the new arithmetic that it had been doing all month, and the arithmetic said that the bridge was being tested and that she could not help it and that she had to wait. She waited three days. She came every night, stood on the east bank in the rain, looked at the gray roaring water where the bridge should be, and could not see the bridge, and could not see the letters, and could not see anything but the flood, and the not seeing was the worst of it, worse than the flood, worse than the fear, because the not seeing meant she did not know whether the bridge was still there, whether the paper bridge was still standing, whether he was still on the other side writing letters that the flood was carrying away unread. On the sixth night the flood began to fall, and the water began to recede from the planks, and Wren came to the east bank and saw the bridge, standing, half-submerged but standing, its planks dark and streaming, its ropes tight, its deck still holding, and she understood that the paper bridge had been built to withstand water, that the letters had been sealed in their bottles, that the sentences had been folded small and closed in wax, that the bridge had been built out of paper and the paper had been built to survive the river, because the river was the whole point of the bridge, and a bridge that could not survive its own river was not a bridge at all. She knelt at the east end of the bridge on the sixth night of the flood, in the falling water, and she found the bottle. It was under the last dry plank, the plank that had stayed dry through the whole flood, and it was not her bottle, and it was not empty, and she opened it with hands that were cold and trembling and read the letter by the last light of the dying storm. The letter said: the bridge is still here. I am still here. I thought about you the whole time the water was up. I could not write to you because the water would have taken the letters, and I could not let the water take your letters, so I waited, and the waiting was the worst of it, because I did not know whether the bridge was still standing on your side. I know now that it is. I know the paper bridge can survive the flood. I know because it is still here, and I am still here, and you are still there, and the water is going down, and I am going to keep writing, and I am going to keep being here, and when the water is down enough I am going to cross. Wren read the letter twice in the falling rain, and then she put it in the dry pocket over her heart and she knelt on the planks of the flood-tested bridge and she wrote her answer, and the answer said: the bridge is still here. I am still here. I knew you would wait, because the paper bridge is built of waiting, and the waiting is the paper, and the paper is the bridge, and the bridge is us. Cross when the water is down. I will be here. I have been here. I will always be here, on the east bank, at the end of the paper bridge, waiting for you. And the flood went down, and the water fell back from the planks, and the bridge stood up out of the shallows streaming and whole, and the two letters crossed the river one last time in the falling water, and the paper bridge, tested by the flood and found whole, waited for the water to go down enough for the crossing that both of them knew was coming, and the crossing was coming, and the waiting was almost over, and the river, brown and patient and full of kept things, had carried them to this, and the river did nothing by accident.