Excerpt from the award winning 2023 novel Community Board by Tara Conklin, used without permission, pages 164-168
[ Blogger’s note: The footbridge, Brother Crispin, the fatal accident and the story of building it are all real. Darcy Clipper and Marcus Dash-La Grand are of course fictional. Community Board is a novel ]
[ . . . ] After an hour or two of pointless internet browsing, we heard a noise. / / / What the—? said Marcus, jumping up. That sounded like glass breaking. / / / Glass? I said, eyes still on the seven-bed, ten-bath villacurrently going for $12.7 mil on St. Barts. Um, I don’t think so. / / / I thinkit came from inside the house, said Marcus.
The boys were at camp, due home in time for. Harriet had taken the week off for a trip to the Cape. Burt and the crew had already left for the day. There was alarm in Marcus’s voice, but it seemed distant, not close enough to touch me.
I don’t think so, Marcus, I said. No one’s home. You’re imagining it. / / / I am not imagining it., Marcus replied. We both paused, listening. Silence. / / / See, it’s nothing, I said. Probably your neighbor just dropped a pitcher of margaritas and the glass broke. Hey, can we have some margaritas? / / / But Marcus wasn’t listening to me. his head and then disappeared through the patio doors.
I stayed where I was, wondering about the tulip lady and was shereally in trouble and was I becoming a conspiracy theorist? And who wants to live in a house with ten bathrooms? And did Omar think I was definitely a fool or could I remedy the situation? And wow, Omar’s shoulders did look nice in his uniform. and maybe I was ready to meet his dog, and I bet his dog would love me. Basically, I was thinking about myself and not about Marcus or the noise that had, indeed, come from inside. Five minutes passed. Then ten.
Marcus? I called. / / / No reply. / / / Marcus, Are you making margaritas? / / / No reply. Marcus? Salt on mine! / / / Silence. / / / Marcus? / / / I pushed myself up and wandered inside. / / / Where are you?
I found Marcus in the front living room. He was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. The picture window was cracked, jagged, with dusky air and mosquitoes floating into the room. Broken glass from the window littered the floor and in the middle of it all was a brick wrapped with a scrap of paper.
What the hell? I said. / / / This is not free speech. / / / I tiptoed through the glass, picked up the brick and unwrapped the paper. Go home faggs, I read slowly. But look—I pointed to Marcus. They misspelled fags—they put two g’s. / / / Marcus smiled grimly. They’re homophobic and they’re bad spellers. What is wrong with people? / / / I don’t know, I said, and the words felt pathetic and small. Some people are just so—so—so—
Crappy? Marcus finished my thought. Ignorant? Angry? Hurtful? he continued, his voice rising. Xenophobic? Homophobic? Racist? Full of hate? Crazy, lazy, stupid, resentful afraid? He paused. Some people are all these things. My brother is homophobic, to cite one example. Dan’s mother is racist—she loves her grandsons, but she can’t stand me. He inhaled deeply and shook his head.
Marcus, I asked, what should we do? / / / We surveyed the broken window, the shattered glass, the streak of dirt where the brick had skidded across the carpet.
Well, he said. Let’s clean up before the boys get home. And then we’ll call Officer Omar. And then we’ll finish plans for the tower and the paintball course and show Jake. and all these fuckers that Dan and I are not going anywhere. We are already home.
CONSIDER THE CHINYINGI footbridge, National Geographic, October 1997. The Zambezi River stretches sixteen hundred miles across southern Africa, from the central Zambian wetlands to the Indian Ocean. It’s wide and wild and very difficult to cross. One night in 1971, a Roman Catholic priest, a nice old nun and three Zambian apostates tried to cross from the town of Chinyingi to the Zambezi’s western bank. It was a notoriously perilous stretch due to the strong current and unpredictable winds. That night, the current surged, the priest navigated poorly and the boat sank. All five perished. News of the tragedy reached a neighboring mission run by a man named Brother Crispin. The deaths moved him. Crispin was a priest, not an engineer, but he began collecting cable and pipes from nearby copper mines. He began sketching and calculating and scheming. Over the course of the next five years, Brother Crispin designed and helped build a seven-hundred-foot-long bridge across the Zambezi River at exactly the spot where that fateful boat overturned. The bridge still operates today, a slender reed of cables and rope, just wide enough for single-file passage over the churning, dark water below. How did Brother Crispin manage the feat? Many had tried to bridge the river; all had failed. Why did the death of his colleagues affect him so deeply? Was it a shudder of recognition—there but for the grace of god go I? Was it regret? Anguish? Guilt? I wonder about Brother Crispin. I wonder about the circumstances that led him to step outside himself and build something grand and enduring, a monument to an emotion that to this day remains hidden from view. A creative solution to a problem that no one but the creator would ever fully understand.
—Are any other parents concerned about this Baby Yoda character? Is he a drug lord? Or gang leader? My kids keep mentioning him but they only laugh when I ask for an explanation.
—Help needed: I’ve looked in every Little Free Library in town for porn but no luck. Where exactly did someone find those Bad Baby magazines?
—ALERT: The avocados at price chopper are rock hard. Don’t bother.
—Neighbors, I took the most wonderful nap yesterday. Have you napped recently? I cannot recommend it highly enough.
—Darling, do you remember the early summer rains? Do you remember the sound on the roof? I watched you fall asleep, I blessed that rain for how it soothed you.
—Darling, I’ll be with you soon.
THAT SATURDAY, I MADE MY weekly chocolate delivery. Fanny was snoozing in her wheelchair on the lawn when I approached on tip-toe. Just as I lowered myself into my chair, she sat bolt upright and gripped my arm. / / / Darcy, Fanny said, I must get home. I must. Today. Now. She was more agitated than I’d ever seen her. Are you here to take me home? / / / Fanny looked one way, then the other. A nun loitered near the duck fountain. Fanny narrowed her eyes. [ . . . ]
Lost in Mist 