Through Time

The Bridge at Devils Creek

The midday sun hit the galvanized roof of the tool shed with a dry, white glare that made the edges of the yard blur into nothing. Walt spat a brown stream of Red Man into the gravel and wiped his chin with the back of a thick, grease-stained thumb.

The hydraulic breaker on the Cat excavator chattered against the grey flank of the overpass abutment. It sounded like a pneumatic drill in a granite quarry, violent and steady, sending a dull thrum straight up through the soles of Walt’s work boots and into the aching small of his back.

He liked the noise. The noise meant work getting done.

Then the pitch changed.

It was not the high, ringing shriek of carbide teeth biting into steel rebar. It was a dull, wet crunch, like a spade sinking into a rotten stump two feet underground.

The excavator operator, a kid named Miller whose face always looked like he had just rolled out of a sack of flour, cut the throttle. The sudden silence in the creek bottom felt heavier than the engine roar had. A flock of grackles lifted out of the dry corn across the drainage ditch in one black, rustling wave, cleared the telephone wires, and didn't come back down.

Walt walked over. The rubber treads of the machine smelled like hot oil and scorched rubber.

"Something's weird," Miller said. He did not kill the diesel. It sat there idling, shaking its iron frame with a rhythmic, low-frequency cough. "Bit didn't bounce. It just... went in."

Walt crouched. He didn't use his knees—too much grease in the joints for that—he just squatted on his hams, resting his forearms on his thighs. He reached out and brushed a handful of gray concrete dust away from the fracture.

The hole was the size of a dinner plate. Inside it, the aggregate wasn't crushed limestone and river gravel.

It was pocket watches.

They were packed tight together in the gray matrix, shoulder to shoulder, millions of them jammed into the dry concrete of a bridge that had sat half-poured since the summer Reagan got reelected. And every single one of them was ticking in erratic, staggered sync, their tiny gears whining against the stone.

The smell hit Walt then. It wasn't dust. It smelled like a root cellar that had been boarded up in October and opened in July. Cold air, damp wool, and something copper-sharp, like an old coin left under a porch rail.

The air didn't just get cold. It went dead.

One second, the August humidity sat on the back of Walt’s neck like a wet wool blanket. The next, the heat was sucked straight out of the drainage ditch as if someone had yanked a plug in the bottom of the creek bed.

Walt’s breath puffed white against the gray concrete of the abutment.

Miller dropped the heavy grease gun he had been holding. It hit the crushed limestone with a dull clank. The kid’s arms jerked up, hugging his chest inside his stained canvas vest, his teeth coming together with a sharp, dry click.

"Jesus, Walt," Miller said. His voice was thin, rattling loose in his throat. "Jesus Christ, look at the weeds."

The tall Johnson grass lining the drainage ditch had stopped its frantic shiver in the midday wind. Every blade locked stiff, sheathed in a sudden rime of white frost that crept up the stalks like salt crawling out of damp earth.

Down in the concrete cavity where the breaker bit had punched through, the smell changed. The wet, cellar-damp stench of old wool and copper pennies vanished, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and deep winter ice. The pocket watches packed inside the matrix stopped ticking. They didn't slow down; they locked dead upright, like clockwork teeth frozen mid-turn.

Walt slowly pulled his hand back, wiping his palm against the leg of his Carhartts as if he had touched something greasy.

"Miller," Walt said. His voice sounded flat in the dead air, stripped of all its gravel. "Go get the flatbed keys out of the ignition."

Miller didn't answer. He just turned and bolted, his work boots kicking up dry clods of dirt against the rear tire of the excavator.

Walt stayed down by the abutment for a three-count, watching the frost crawl another six inches up the concrete seam like white ivy. He stood up slowly, letting his lower back pop with a dry, sharp ache, and walked back toward the Ford flatbed idling by the tool trailer.

The heat inside the cab should have been stifling, an oven baked by four hours of Kansas sun through plate glass. Instead, the steering wheel felt like a horseshoe pulled out of a snowbank.

Miller was already behind the wheel, his hand trembling as he jammed the brass key into the ignition cylinder. He twisted it forward.

The starter didn't grind. There was no slow, dying wheeze of a battery giving up the ghost. There was only a sharp, heavy clack, like a deadbolt sliding home in an empty hallway.

On the dash, the digital clock flickered out. The analog needle on the fuel gauge dropped below empty and stayed there, trembling violently against the peg. Then, the factory radio came alive on its own, hissing with a harsh, unmodulated burst of white static that made Walt’s teeth ache.

Underneath the static, a voice was talking. It was low, flat, and recorded on cheap magnetic tape that had stretched and warped decades ago.

"...all units clear the span. I repeat, all units clear the span. The footing is sliding south. God forgive us, we couldn't brace the forms in time..."

Miller slammed his palm against the steering wheel, his breath frosting the side window in a ragged gray circle. "It's dead, Walt. The whole electrical box is dead. Look at the dash."

Walt leaned his weight against the passenger door, his fingers hooked over the rolled-down window frame. He didn't look at the dash. He looked past the hood of the truck, down the long, arrow-straight stretch of county gravel that led back toward US Route 56.

The gravel road was gone.

Fifty yards out from where the flatbed sat, the road simply stopped. It ran straight into a towering wall of dead, brown corn stalks that stood ten feet high and packed so tight together you couldn't slip a pocketknife between the leaves. The stalks weren't swaying in the wind. They were leaning inward toward the bridge, their dry husks rustling with a dry, papery sound like thousands of tiny, muffled watch gears ticking all at once.

Walt pulled the crumpled pack of Camels from his breast pocket, shook one loose with a flick of his wrist, and stuck it between his lips. He didn't light it. The yellow plastic BIC stayed in his palm, cold as a pebble pulled out of a frozen creek bed.

With his other hand, he reached down into the deep, heavy pocket of his canvas work coat.

His fingers brushed against the brass casing before he closed his fist around it. He pulled it out into the cabin's pale, dead light.

It was a heavy thing, an antique pocket watch with an open-face dial and a tarnished silver chain dangling like a dead vine. When he had pried it out of the concrete matrix back by the abutment, its tiny inner springs had been locked stiff in the rime frost.

Now, sitting on the dusty vinyl seat between them, the casing was warm. Hot, even.

Inside the glass face, the tiny black hands weren't frozen anymore. They were spinning backward. They whipped counterclockwise with a frantic, blurring speed that sounded like a mechanical cricket trapped behind glass, clicking off seconds that had already happened forty years ago.

Miller stopped twisting the ignition key. His breathing hitched, shallow and wet, fogging the passenger window in jagged streaks. He stared down at Walt’s palm.

"Where'd you get that?" Miller whispered.

"Wall," Walt said. His voice was a low, dry scrape.

The ticking didn't sound like gears anymore. As the hands spun backward, the rhythm deepened, shifting from a high metallic clatter into a heavy, resonant thud. It sounded like a massive pendulum swinging deep beneath the limestone riverbed.

Outside the truck, the wall of dead cornstalks leaned an inch closer across the gravel lot.

The static in the cab did not hiss anymore. It spat, sharp and rhythmic, like grease popping in a hot skillet.

The speaker factory dash shuddered, whining with a high, thin feedback that set Walt’s teeth on edge. The voice that came through was clear, young, and raw.

"Walt," the radio said.

Miller jerked backward, his shoulder blades hitting the rear glass of the cab with a dull thud. "Walt, who the hell is that? Who's on the box?"

Walt didn't answer. He still held the open-face pocket watch in his palm, the second hand frozen hard at twelve o'clock, dead vertical against the tarnished silver dial.

"You left the tailgate down on the Dodge back in July, Walt," the voice rasped. It didn't sound angry. It sounded tired. "You left it down, and you let the grease gun roll out right into the culvert. Cost your old man three dollars to replace it. You remember that?"

Walt’s thumb pressed harder against the brass casing of the watch. The metal was burning cold now.

July of nineteen-eighty-six. A rusted-out Dodge Ram with a slipping transmission. Nobody else had been in that field except him and his father, thirty miles from here, six weeks before the bridge pour ever started.

"Turn it off," Miller breathed, his voice cracking into a high, childish squeak. He reached blindly across the dash, twisting the volume knob. The knob came off in his hand, a little square piece of black plastic. The radio didn't get quieter. It got louder.

"You shouldn't have kept driving south, Walt," the speaker hissed. "You shouldn't have turned the truck around at the county line."

Walt did not look at Miller. He kept his eyes locked on the tarnished brass casing in his hand.

"I remember," Walt said. His voice sounded like gravel shifting under a heavy tire, flat and completely devoid of panic.

"Who are you talking to, Walt?" Miller whispered.

"He's talking about the Dodge," Walt said, still looking down at the pocket watch. The second hand remained frozen hard at twelve o'clock. "Back before the state even cleared the right-of-way for this span. My old man bought that truck off a bootlegger in Junction City."

The radio hissed with a low, wet rhythm, like someone breathing into a telephone receiver.

"You shouldn't have come back, Walt," the speaker rasped.

Walt swallowed hard, his throat dry as bone. He raised his eyes from the watch and looked past the frosted windshield, straight into the impenetrable wall of dead brown corn where the county gravel road used to be.

"I didn't come back for the bridge," Walt said to the empty cab, his voice steady. "I came back because I wanted to see if the hole ever filled up."

Miller didn't answer. His face had gone the pale, greenish shade of a cheap butcher's wrap.

"I'm done," Miller said. It came out in a thin, ragged gasp. "I am done, Walt. I'm getting out of here."

Before Walt could turn his head, Miller jammed his shoulder against the driver-side door. The latch gave way with a sharp, frozen pop. A blast of sub-zero air rushed into the cab. Miller tumbled out onto the running board, caught his balance, and bolted straight for the wall of dead, towering corn.

Miller hit the wall of stalks at a dead sprint. There was no sound of breaking stems, no rustle of dry leaves. It sounded like someone diving headfirst into a stack of heavy wool blankets.

The ten-foot-tall wall didn't part. It swallowed him.

One second, Miller's red canvas vest and heavy shoulders were right there; the next, there was only a dull, muffled thud. The stalks closed over the gap instantly, knitting themselves back together so tight and seamless that you couldn't tell where a man had just vanished.

The absolute silence returned to the cab.

The air inside the Ford’s cab turned heavy, dense, and smelled sharply of damp earth and wet wool. The factory radio crackled once.

It was Miller.

The sound came through the small black speaker grill right above the ash-tray, flat and close.

"Walt?"

The voice wasn't panicked. It sounded hollow.

"Walt, why'd you take so long?"

The glove compartment latch clicked, slipping its catch with a small, metallic snap.

Walt did not look at the glove box. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, staring past the heavy white rime of frost coating the inside of the windshield.

On his left, the passenger-side window ceased to be a window.

The glass didn't shatter. It simply lost its reflection. The view of the dead cornfield dissolved, replaced by a dark, amber-tinted glass that looked like the curved front of an old tabletop radio cabinet.

Reflected in that dark curve wasn't the inside of the Ford flatbed. It was the interior of a dimly lit diner booth somewhere else entirely. A green plastic basket of greasy paper napkins sat on the center of a Formica table. A neon sign outside blinked an erratic red rhythm through venetian blinds.

The man in the reflection was younger, his face lean and hard-bitten, with grease smeared across his cheekbone and a half-smoked Camel dangling from his lower lip. He was looking down at his own hand, pressing his thumb against an antique pocket watch.

Walt slowly raised his own hand—the one holding the cold, dead watch—and pressed his palm flat against the interior of the glass.

In the reflection, the younger man did the exact same thing. A flat, gray smudge of skin met glass, separated by four decades of empty air.

The amber tint of the diner reflection shivered, the bruised red neon of the sign flickering once, twice, and then steadying.

With a low, protesting groan of dried grease and rusted hinges, the passenger-side door swung wide open.

The raw, uninsulated noise of a crowded room spilled across the floorboards: the sharp clatter of heavy white ceramic coffee mugs slamming onto formica tabletops, the low rumble of men talking over idling diesel engines, and the scratchy twang of an old jukebox playing George Jones.

Walt sat completely still, his palm still pressed flat against the amber glass. The cold brass of the pocket watch in his other hand gave a single, violent shudder.

Walt curled his thick fingers tighter around the tarnished brass casing and tried to turn the crown.

The metal did not give. With a sharp, metallic ping that sounded like a spring snapping inside a locked box, the winding stem sheared off in his fingers.

The second hand on the dial lurged forward with a sickening, ragged jerk, ticking off the seconds with the speed of a runaway engine. On the dashboard, the dead factory radio erupted into the high, piercing squeal of open feedback and the frantic voice of a county dispatcher screaming over a two-way radio.

"...all units on the south approach, get off the span! God damn it, the forms are buckling! The whole west abutment is sliding into the creek bed, move, move, move—"

The floorboards beneath Walt’s heavy work boots gave a long, shuddering groan of stressed timber and wet earth.

Walt did not hesitate. He pulled his arm back and hurled the broken brass casing of the pocket watch straight through the open passenger door, casting it out toward the freezing gravel lot.

The watch left his palm with a dry, weightless blur.

The second it hit the ground, the roaring din of the 1986 diner vanished, sliced off mid-note. On the dashboard, the screaming dispatcher's voice flattened instantly into a harsh, dying hiss of white static, then clicked off entirely.

The sub-zero chill that had turned Walt's breath to white frost across the windshield broke like glass.

A wave of blistering, ninety-five-degree mid-August Kansas heat rolled through the open door, thick with the smell of diesel exhaust, scorched dust, and dry earth. Outside the windows, the wall of dead, towering cornstalks wavered, dissolved, and snapped back into the familiar, sun-baked green rows of the shelterbelt swaying sluggishly in the afternoon wind.

Down in the drainage ditch, the rust-colored creek water was moving again, sluggish and brown, bubbling over smooth limestone rocks under a blinding, high-noon sun.

Walt sat alone in the idling Ford flatbed. His boots rested on the rubber floor mat. His hands gripped the steering wheel, slick with a sudden, hot coat of sweat.

The cab was dead silent, save for the rhythmic, low-frequency cough of the diesel engine shaking its iron frame.

Miller was sitting right beside him in the passenger seat, wiping a thick, flour-white forearm across his sweaty forehead, staring out the windshield with wide, blinking eyes.

"Jesus Christ, Walt," Miller muttered, his voice trembling as he spat out a piece of dust. "Did you feel that? The temperature just dropped twenty degrees for a second. I thought I was gonna freeze right here in the cab."

Walt didn't answer. He slowly lowered his gaze to his right hand.

His palm was empty. The calloused skin was dry, smeared only with a faint smudge of gray grease from the steering column. Out by the south abutment, the hydraulic breaker on the Cat excavator chattered against the gray concrete wall, violent and steady, sending a dull, normal thrum straight up through the dirt and into the soles of his work boots.