The Spirit

At mention of the word Bigfeet, John Moon turned toward Helder. What did white men know about spirits? His spirit had returned for him at last.

He looked back at Jason, his hand resting on his belt midway between his medicine bundle and the knife.

13

Duane Woodard was stuffed against the rear door of the van with his legs crowded up by the luggage piled in the center. The van was being boxed violently around the road by wind bursts. He could barely see through the little wedges carved out of lashing snow by the windshield wipers. Delbert was hunched over the wheel, trying to see the road through this cauldron of ice.

This whole thing is arranged exactly bass ackward, Wood­ard thought in disgust. The bears aren’t half as dangerous as this storm. The van lurched, and his overnight bag fell from the top of the pile to his feet.

How they got down the road without tumbling end over end was something Duane Woodard would never understand. The road leveled out, and presently he glimpsed the two red bridge reflectors.

Now that bridge is covered with ice. It’s like a skating rink on top there. He wondered if he should close his eyes, as some of the other passengers were doing, but decided he might need to see what was happening.

All the passengers had slipped on their overcoats. Duane pulled his pile jacket from the luggage and angled one arm into it. He was straining for room to get the other arm in when he saw something dark, lit for a fraction of a second by the brake lights, scurry past the rear window.

A man, he thought in amazement. There’s a man out there!

The reflectors slid to both sides of the van and they were on the bridge. Duane zipped his coat up.

The windshield cracked into thousands of starred frosty fragments held together by safety gum. Delbert touched the glass. The ventilator window by his head exploded inward, and a rock hit his skull.

Delbert slumped over the wheel, throwing the passengers out of their seats and sending luggage tumbling in every direction. Duane Woodard grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. He opened the door, letting in wind and snow and the rumble of the river far below.

In the red glare of the taillights he saw a long crack break the mantle of ice and snow on the surface. The bridge is going, Duane thought dully. Goddamned bridges, nobody knows how to build them any more. The van hit the railing, tumbling the passengers to the floor as they tried to climb out the door. Duane Woodard popped out to the ground with a heavy impact that knocked the wind out of him.

The rest happened so fast that Woodard was unable to reconstruct the events in order. The rear wheels were churning fountains of snow on him as he crawled past the widening crack in the road. The railing crumpled like tinfoil, its stanchions breaking loose. The van flipped over the side; the wheels, deprived of traction, screamed for a second in mechanical agony; then there was a metallic splash, followed by the drumming of metal struts, concrete blocks, and railings falling into the river.

Duane scrabbled, like an ant trapped in an ant lions’ collapsing cone, to the highway as the serrated crack became a chasm in the center of the bridge. Under the twin forces of wind and swollen, rushing river water, it crumpled in on itself and flew to pieces. It was not until Woodard had caught his breath and turned around, expecting to see more escapees climbing to their feet, that he realized he was the only one to get out.

The speed of the catastrophe benumbed him. He looked down at his feet, his torn jacket and ungloved hands turning into frigid lumps of marble in the cold.

A final hunk of concrete gave way and tumbled down into the gorge. The bridge was not just weak. The bridge had been sabotaged.

Being a hopeless optimist, Duane was certain that somebody must have gotten out through a window after the van hit the water. He tramped around the ground, looking for a path leading into the gorge.

With a furious yapping, a ball of snow-­fuzzed canine fury surged out of the wind.

“Hey, boy,” said Duane Woodard, kneeling down and coaxing the dog. “Who do you belong to?”

Feet crunched through snow off to his side. A black cloud burst out of the storm, a boulder held high above its head. Woodard did not have time to wonder why it looked like a bear or smelled so ghastly as the rock slammed down. Adrenaline triggered by the ferocity of the attack impelled him to jump sideways as the boulder socked into the snow. The figure closed long fingers over its rough edges and picked it up again.