his Chevy and turned back to the stranger. “You’re pretty close. The bridge is only about two miles from here.” Then, after twenty years of living the close life, a life of circumscribed behavior and. hidden feelings demanded by a rural culture, Francesca Johnson surprised herself by saying, “I’ll be glad to show it to you, if you want.”
Why she did that, she never had been sure. A young girl’s feelings rising like a bubble through water and bursting out, maybe, after all these years. She was not shy, but not forward, either. The only thing she could ever conclude was that Robert Kincaid had drawn her in somehow, after only a few seconds of looking at him.
He was obviously taken aback, slightly, by her offer. But he recovered quickly and with a serious look on his face said he’d appreciate that. From the back steps she picked up the cowboy boots she wore for farm chores and walked out to his truck, following him around to the passenger side.
“Just take me a minute to make room for you; lots of gear ‘n’ stuff in here.” He mumbled mostly to himself as he worked, and she could tell he was a little flustered, and a little shy about the whole affair.
He was rearranging canvas bags and tripods, a Thermos bottle and paper sacks. In the back of the pickup were an old tan Samsonite suitcase and a guitar case, both dusty and battered, both tied to a spare tire with a piece of clothesline rope.
The door of the truck swung shut, banging him in the rear as he mumbled and sorted and stuffed paper coffee cups and banana peels into a brown grocery bag that he tossed into the truck box when he was finished. Finally he removed a blue-and-white ice chest and put that in the back as well. In faded red paint on the green truck door was printed “Kincaid Photography, Bellingham, Washington.”
“Okay, I think you can squeeze in there now.” He held the door, closed it behind her, then went around to the driver’s side and with a peculiar, animal-like grace stepped in behind the wheel. He looked at her, just a quick glance, smiled slightly, and said, “Which way?”
“Right.” She motioned with her hand. He turned the key, and the out-of-tune engine ground to a start. Along the lane toward the road, bouncing, his long legs working the pedals automatically, old Levi’s running down over leather-laced, brown field boots that had seen lots of foot miles go by.
He leaned over and reached into the glove compartment, his forearm accidentally brushing across her lower thigh. Looking half out the windshield and half into the compartment, he took out a business card and handed it to her. “Robert Kincaid, Writer-Photographer.” His address was printed there, along with a phone number.
“I’m out here on assignment for National Geographic,” he said. “You familiar with the magazine?”
“Yes.” Francesca nodded, thinking, Isn’t everybody?
“They’re doing a piece on covered bridges, and Madison County, Iowa, apparently has some interesting ones. I’ve located six of them, but I guess there’s at least one more, and it’s supposed to be out in this direction.”
“It’s called Roseman Bridge,” said Francesca over the noise of the wind and tires and engine. Her voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else, to a teenage girl leaning out of a window in Naples, looking far down city streets toward the trains or out at the harbor and thinking of distant lovers yet to come. As she spoke, she watched the muscles in his forearm flex when he shifted gears.
Two knapsacks were beside her. The flap of one was closed, but the other was folded back, and she could see the silver-colored top and black back of a camera sticking out. The end of a film box, “Kodachrome II, 25 36 Exposures,” was taped to the camera back. Stuffed behind the packs was a tan vest with many pockets. Out of one pocket dangled a thin cord with a plunger on the end.
Behind her feet were two tripods. They were badly
Diane Duane & Peter Morwood