The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story Read Online Free Page A

The big ones."
    "OK," I said. "I'll call."
    I hung up the telephone and looked through the glass. The town was the same as before, and everything had changed.
    What do you know, I thought. The journal, those pages sent almost on whim to New York, a best-seller! Hurray!
    Cities, though? Interviews? Television? I don't know . . .
    I felt like a moth in a chandelier-all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly.
    On impulse I lifted the telephone, coded my way through the maze of numbers required to reach the bank in New York and convinced a bookkeeper that it was me calling and that I wanted to know the balance in my checking account.
    "Just a minute," she said, "I have to get it from the computer."
    What could it be? Twenty thousand, fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand, dollars? Twenty thousand. Plus eleven thousand in the bedroll, and I could be very rich!
    "Mr. Bach?" she said.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "The balance in that account is one million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars and sixty-eight cents."
    There was a long silence.
    "You're sure of that," I said.
    "Yes, sir." Now a short silence. "Will that be all, sir?"
    Silence.
    "Hm?" I said. "Oh. Yes. Thank you. . . ."
    In motion pictures, when we've called somebody and they
    hang up, we hear this long buzzy dial-tone on the line. But in real life, when the other person hangs up, the telephone just goes quiet in our hand. Awfully quiet. For as long as we stand there and hold it.
    four
    . FTER A while, I put the telephone back into its holder, picked up my bedroll and started walking.
    Has it ever happened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of a system that is rewarding those people with every ticket . . . the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice-cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone!
    Glorious moments in art, in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror.
    Book-buying, ticket-buying are ways to applaud, to say thanks for nice work. We're joyed when a film, when a book we love hits the best-seller list.
    But a million dollars for me? Suddenly I knew what it was to be on the other end of the gift so many writers had given me, reading their books since the day I sounded out for myself: "Bam-bi. By Fe-lix Salt-en."
    I felt like a surfer resting on his board, all at once some monster energy wells up, grabs him without asking if he's ready and there's spray flying from the nose of the board, from midships, then from way aft, he's caught on this massive deep power, the wind pulling a smile around his mouth.
    There are excitements indeed, having one's book read by many people. One can forget, charging mile-a-minute down the face of a giant wave, that if one isn't terribly skillful, the next surprise is sometimes called a wipeout.
    five
    M. CROSSED the street, got directions from the drugstore to a place where I might find what I needed; followed can't-miss-its and Lake Roberts Road under Spanish-moss branches to the Gladys Hutchinson Memorial Library.
    Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we're throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.
    Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they're encoded holograms of a decent man: Trustee from the Toolroom, The Rainbow and the Rose. The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives, if we want, in the privacy