The Legend of Bastien - Chapter 21 – The Other Side of the Bridge

 

The Legend of Bastien

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 21 – The Other Side of the Bridge

 

What happened in Bastien was big news for a little while.  But as always, even big news gets replaced by bigger or more recent news, and even in a town like Bastien, life had to go on. 

The state didn’t abandon the town of Bastien completely though.  An agency was set up inside the courthouse to help anyone in the town who was interested in relocating to somewhere else.  At first, nobody expected anyone to take advantage of it, but there were more bitter memories in the town concerning the Bastien family than most people realized.  That, and the allure of what might be just over that bridge was a powerful one.  One by one, entire families went into that courthouse to inquire about what might be available for them in the outside world. 

 

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The entire Bastien family was buried in the same section of the town cemetery that held all the rest of the Bastiens before them.  But where the rest of those graves had elaborate headstones and markers, this time all the Bastiens got nothing more than small markers.  Just enough to say who had been buried there, when they had been born, and when they had died. 

Elijah’s son Noah had created all those small grave markers for the family, while his father worked on a different one.

Early one morning, a truck stopped at the end of the bridge, and Elijah and Noah struggled to lift a specially carved stone from their truck.  They set it down just off the end of the bridge, not far from the chasm where Chrissy had fallen.  The face of the stone had been chiseled smooth.  Like a tombstone, words were etched into the smooth face of the rock:

 

Chrissy

We’re sorry

Thank you for saving us

Please forgive us

 

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Someone knocking on the kitchen door during breakfast was nothing new to Hugh and Bea Stockoff.  It happened a lot.  Day or night.  Hugh got up to answer it and was surprised to see Burty standing there with a large bunch of wildflowers in his hand.  Burty coming to the house for anything wasn’t just unusual, it was unheard of.  But carrying flowers?  “Burty?  What’s up?”

“I need some time off,” Burty told him.

Bea, now seeing who it was and noticing the flowers, came up behind her husband.  “Flowers?”

“Time off for what?” Hugh asked.

“I heard there’s a grave marker for Chrissy out by the bridge.  I want to take these there for her.”

Once again, Hugh noticed that Burty was still referring to Chrissy as a her.  As usual, he didn’t try to correct him.

“I’ll work, extra-long later today,” Burty added quickly.  “Twice as long.  I just need time to walk out to the bridge and back…if I can find it.”

Hugh looked down at the flowers in Burty’s hands, then back to his face.  “Burty, don’t worry.  You won’t have to work a minute more than normal.  And instead of walking, I’ll drive you there myself.”

“Not yet!” Bea interrupted.  She looked at her husband.  “Not until I’ve had a chance to pick some flowers of my own to take out there.”

Hugh nodded.  “Sounds like a good idea.”

Shortly after, the stone out by the bridge became like a Mecca for many of the people of Bastien, as wild and homegrown flowers seemed to pile around it everywhere.

 

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The people of Bastien didn’t own anything in the town.  Everything was owned by the Bastien family, which made matters even worse as the authorities tried to sort everything out.  Strangely, the people of Wisconsin, and the entire United States, seemed to open their hearts to the poor people of Bastien.  One by one, the cattle trucks rolled in, and the farmers moved out.  Family after family left the town in search of a better life, most of them already having jobs to go to that were found by the agency trying to help them.

Eventually, enough people left that it became obvious that nobody in the town could stay there, not without any kind of supporting structure that the community had provided. 

Principal Pomeroy left to become a math teacher in a high school in Minneapolis. 

Elijah Shultz wasn’t a licensed mortician, but a mortuary in Milwaukee offered to take him and his son in and help them get their licenses.

Tess left with Fred and Betty Tucker who had been offered jobs as assistant managers in a large store in Madison, Wisconsin.  Tess had been promised a job in a nearby bank as one of their tellers.  She would live with Fred and Betty for a short while until she could manage to make it on her own.

As they approached the bridge on their way out of town, Fred stopped his truck and they all got out to stand in front of Chrissy’s marker stone one last time.  The ground was littered with flowers, all withered now, but the outpouring from the entire community had been nothing less than incredible.  Tess sobbed as she got back into Fred’s truck, and he left the town of Bastien behind…for good.

 

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Eventually there came a day many months later, when the authorities crawled through every last inch of Bastien.  In the end, they came out and declared there was no one left.  The engineers walked out onto the wooden bridge to begin laying their explosive charges.

 

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The words on Chrissy’s marker at the bridge said:

Chrissy

We’re sorry

Thank you for saving us

Please forgive us

 

In a pale-yellow house just off the main street, an ethereal hand labored hard to finish scratching something permanent into the real-world wall of the living room in the house:

I forgive you.

The ghostly hand finished the difficult task just as the explosions in the distance began.  As the bridge fell into the chasm, and the town of Bastien fell into legend, the ghost of Chrissy dissolved into the peaceful world of heaven.

 

The End

 

And possibly the end anymore stories I post on this blog.  Maybe.  I won’t post it unless I finish something.

 Love to you all.

Karen