Outerbridge Reach Read Online Free PDF Page A

ESIDE THE S OUND , under the brightening sky, Browne dug in along the shore, planting one foot in front of the other, breathing the sour iodized sea air. He ran with three-inch weights behind his fists, pumping, working the hump of sinew around his shoulders, stretching his legs. Three miles down the beach, the stack of an enormous power plant flashed a red warning beacon from its summit. The lights over the chain-link fence at the plant’s perimeter were Browne’s halfway mark. Panting, he strained to bind his thoughts to the plain rhythm of breath.
    His chief regret had always been leaving the Navy. He was aware that this was the fair price of a rational decision, hardly more than nostalgia, a kind of luxury as regrets went. He would not have thrived there. Pushing harder, he turned his face into the breeze, saw the clean line of the Long Island shore and increased his pace. Ahead, the lights of the plant fence went out, then flashed on again as a cloud passed across the risen sun.
    Running, Browne felt a pang of expectation in his breast. He felt suddenly outsized by his own hunger, by a desire that filled the new day from sea to sky. When he reached the power plant fence he ran beside it. The harsh squares of the fence and the ugly metal sheds behind it made him feel vaguely captive and violent. He turned off and went back the way he had come.
    â€œWhat are you waiting for?” he whispered as he pumped over the soft sand. He could not seem to outrun the thing that had settled over him.
    In the littered cul-de-sac at the end of his street, he walked off the run and tried to put his mind at rest. After a little while, the anguish and disorder he had experienced began to seem like an illusion. Running could stir things up. It was just another Sunday, he decided. He jogged down to the cigar store for the paper and trotted home with it under his arm. On the way he passed a few solitary walkers and nodded good morning to all. Each person he passed paused to look after him. Browne found himself the only one awake in the house. He tossed the Sunday
Times
on the kitchen table and called up the back stairs to his sleeping wife and daughter.
    â€œWake up, people! Pancakes!”
    He mixed some pancake batter and diced a few Granny Smith apples in with it.
    â€œWakee, wakee!” he shouted.
    When no one appeared he vaulted up the stairs to his daughter’s room and banged on the door. Maggie was down from school for a long weekend, and it occurred to him that he should make an effort to spend part of the day with her.
    â€œMag! Up all hands! Time to jump off, my young friend.”
    When there was no answer he prepared to assault the door again. His daughter’s scream arrested his hand.
    â€œGoddam it,” she cried from inside, “get out of here! Leave me alone!”
    â€œNow listen . . .” Browne began. He was surprised and hurt. It was hard to be reasonable. “Listen here, Maggie.”
    â€œLeave me alone!” the girl shrieked. She sounded utterly hysterical. “Leave! Me! Alone! Leave me the fuck alone!”
    As she had recently discovered, Browne could not abide her using such words.
    â€œOpen the door, Margaret,” he demanded. He tried the door but it had been locked from the inside. He rattled the knob, resenting the absurdity of his position and quite aware of it. “Don’t you use that kind of language to me!” Her adolescent wrath made him feel brutal and ridiculous. He pursed his lips in frustration.
    Maggie raised a pitiable moan.
    â€œPlease! Please go away.”
    â€œNo, I won’t go away,” Browne said. “Nor will I stand here talking to a door.”
    The door of the master bedroom opened and Anne came out into the hall wearing a woolen bathrobe.
    â€œOwen, let it pass.” She came up to him and took hold of his hand, referring to their tenderness of the night before. “Maggie’s had some kind of social crisis.