Being with Georgette #18

Georgette said, “Look, the moon.”

The full moon reflected off the wide, lazy bend in the river out on the flats south of town. The lone remaining span of the old steel bridge cast the shadow of its trusses into the flow of brilliant moonlight.

I drove to the end of the new concrete highway bridge and pulled the truck onto the wide shoulder at the bridge head. The fishing access parking lot below teemed with trucks and headlights and men milling around.

“What’s everyone doing here?” Georgette asked.

“Fishing season opens at sunrise.”

“Let’s get up the hill before the moon moves.”

***

The moon had moved by the time we reached the gazebo at the top of the hill, but it had moved to a more advantageous view from that vantage point. It flooded the river with light.

Georgette sat at a picnic table and said, “When is sunrise?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Can you make a fire?”

“No.”

***

Our third-grade teacher, Mr. Turner, had jumped from the old steel bridge on St. Patrick’s Day. Steel bridges and leprechauns always remind me of the Mr. Turner and the old battle axe who took his place the rest of that school year.

Georgette snored. Her head was in her arms crossed on the picnic table.

I shook her and said, “Let’s get you home. You have school in a few hours.”

She stood and looked at me, then she looked at the moon and then back at me. “I don’t like what that place did to you.”

“There was no place.”

“You’ve been gone almost a year.”

“I went to my own place.”

“And you didn’t write me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wrote to you every day, but I didn’t know where to send the letters.”

“I’d like to read them.”

“I burned them on our birthday.”

***

We crossed the fishing access parking lot, now lit by the growing pink light of dawn. Fishermen stood on the river bank waiting for the sun to peek over the mountains.

“There’s one already fishing,” Georgette said.

“The game warden gets a head start.”

***

Georgette climbed into the truck and gave me a clumsy kiss as I held her door.

“What’s that for?”

“No one else would have gotten up so early to pick me up.

“Your parents would have.”

“But then they’d know where I was all night.”

“They’ll know anyway.”

“I’ll tell them I was with you.”

***

When we rounded the bend in the highway near the garden center, the silhouette of the mountain range loomed before us.

Georgette let out a barely audible gasp when the first rays of the sun broke over the crest of the mountains.

She said, “It’s like the signal of a fresh start, a new beginning.”

I hesitated a moment too long before saying, “And it happens every day.”

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Originally published May 9, 2021