At The Bridge – Excerpt

Paul Klemperer (c) 2021

To join the Tribe I had to be willing to accept certain challenges.  At first they were simple acts, at once tests of my commitment but also obviously beneficial to the Tribe.  Collect wild asparagus from a fallow field owned by an ornery farmer.  He might shoot some birdshot at you if he saw you, but chances were nothing would happen.  And everyone got some asparagus. 

But later challenges were not so clear cut.  They were more like riddles, not simple commands.  I was sent to talk with a man whose dog had bitten a child.  But the child had snuck into the man’s yard to steal some tools from his toolshed.  When the dog suddenly attacked, the kid left a trail of wrenches on his way to the fence.  Was the dog vicious? Yes.  Did the man have a right to keep a vicious dog to protect his home? Probably.  Did I have the answer? Not really.  Only afterward, I realized that I had been chosen as a mediator because I was still an outsider.  I had no obvious allegiances, which made me a useful arbiter to lower the temperature of the situation.  I listened to both sides and summarized them to the Tribe’s Council.  I never learned the final outcome, and I thought later that this might have been part of the test; to act without ever knowing the results of your actions.

Now the Council had brought me to the bridge.  There was a certain amount of rigmarole and ritual involved.  I was made to fast for a day.  Then they blindfolded me, escorted me into a vehicle, and drove me a long distance.  When we stopped and the blindfold was removed I saw we were at the edge of a canyon, so we must have been driving southwest.

The Tribal Council had designated a lieutenant, an intense and wiry man maybe a few years younger than me, as my guide.  Perhaps being my guide was his own test.

Now my guide indicated the bridge with a sweeping gesture.  I was supposed to do something, but what?

A month ago I would have assumed I was meant to cross the bridge.  That was a scary enough prospect.  It was a rope bridge, with rickety wooden slats, probably ill-maintained.  But what was the purpose of crossing it? On one side a path led up between weathered limestone crags to the ledge of the canyon.  On the other side of the bridge, a similar path led away.  There was no obvious destination on either side, just empty high desert scrub.  Between the canyon walls was a daunting thousand foot drop.

But my guide hadn’t brought me to the path, and pointed at the bridge entrance.  We had stopped at a particular curve in the canyon that gave a view of the bridge from the side.  What was the message, what was my test?  To walk the bridge, knowing that both sides were the same?  To avoid the bridge altogether, and find another way?  I knew that the Council expected me to think, not just obey instructions.  Most of the lessons of the past months had involved me letting go of my preconceptions, my habits from previous tribes.  Every action had meaning, but the meaning depended on where you were, and who you were with.

I turned to my guide and asked, “Who built the bridge?”  Of course, he didn’t answer, but it seemed important to ask the question.