PART ONE - One Hundred and Three

“PART ONE:

Boarding

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which,

if persevered in, they must lead . . . ”

—Charles Dickens”

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE:

James Bridge

“We have two cemeteries and no hospitals—so drive carefully”, read the sign coming into James Bridge. The population at the time was marked at a firm 2022.

Outsiders built homes in its vacant lots, leaving neighbors scratching their heads, wondering what spell The Bridge cast over those not born there. Surrounded by vineyards and two hours northwest of Sydney, it was a highway town passed through on the way to somewhere better.

Bobby Deakins, the local mail carrier, laughed when he read books about people in small communities knowing everyone and their business. “Not true of The Bridge,” he often said to his son, a boy defined by naivety. Their town was its own schoolyard—with cliques and bullies, princesses and nerds. People didn’t mingle much. It seemed it was only he who knew what postcards were sent where, whose magazine subscriptions were to be slipped under the Welcome mat and not left face-up on the veranda.

On Sunday, the twelfth of November, he attended a morning service at St. Joseph’s with his wife. Watched the Australian Grand Prix on his old Panasonic television, despite reception so shitty it looked like the cars were racing their eighty-one laps in snow. He listened to a football game on a transistor radio forever tuned to 2HD—noneof that young’un shit, thank you! After all this, an afternoon nap with a damp cloth over his eyes. By Monday the town changed, word having spread.

The editor of the Bridge Bugle failed to get his cover story completed in time for the early printing, so it came out in Tuesday’s paper instead. When Bobby saddled his motorcycle that morning, he did so with a heavy heart. The Bugle’s front page listed the names of the dead, and he delivered those names door to door. The editor stood at the threshold to his office, cigarette in hand, face as white as the pages his namesake was printed upon.

Bobby Deakins looked at the sign on the way into town and hated it for its cheeriness.

Drive carefully!

“Fuck me,” he said.

That Tuesday morning, he also wanted to add, We have an unmanned police station and nobody really knows anyone and we’re grieving and why don’t you take your cameras and fuck off.

Bobby always assumed the worst killer on those streets were the streets themselves. In Memoriam wreaths were pinned to telephone poles all over town. When the roads were wet, they could be murder. He believed this before what happened, before Liz Frost.

Over the next three weeks, Bobby Deakins attended more funerals than he had ever been to in his life.