“When you lose your objectives, hopes, destination, and home, living becomes tiring,” Jack added. “You should understand that well enough.”
I nodded in agreement.
“The only escape from this abandonment is death. No one wants to die, it’s just an option they choose because they see no other answer.”
I’d brought that gun to my head countless times in front of the campfire at night. I’d thought I might wake up if I pulled the trigger. Perhaps being in this world was a dream, and I’d wake up once I died. Being in this world not knowing the path I should take, or even what I should do, fumbling through the blackness without even any moonlight, was just—
“Say, did you know?” Jack interrupted in an excessively bright voice. “When they make huge bridges like this, a small town gets built around it. The craftsmen and their families move in entirely and live there for years as they build it.”
He looked around the area.
“Sure, there’s nothing around now, but there used to be houses upon houses. I was brought up here. Strange, ain’t it, to think my hometown’s a bridge. The house itself’s gone, but I grew up watching him build that bridge. Pops’s head was full of nothing but bridges, though, so I rebelled. Didn’t want my life decided for me. I’d have ended up a bridge builder too, at that rate.”
“I left twenty years ago,” he continued. “I was living it up and then the world fell apart like this. It was too late, but I sent off a letter anyway. I figured I’d meet up with Pops here one more time, square things up before the world ended.”
He looked at me and laughed bitterly.
“The witch told me that Pops died before he read my letter. He probably wouldn’t have come either way, though. He’d have forgotten his worthless son by now.”
“That’s...not true.”
“It’s fine, don’t let it bother you.”
He looked up at the bridge steadily for a moment, then murmured just loudly enough for me to catch that he’d wanted to build bridges when he was a kid.
“Did the witch actually say that he died without reading your letter?”
Jack didn’t answer, just shrugged. Something tugged at me, like I knew the piece that fit into this gap.
Suddenly, as if someone had clapped me on the back, the sense of unreality lifted and the world solidified in front of me, along with a strong conviction. The feeling might just have been because I wasn’t from this world, or maybe someone had preordained this moment long in advance. Perhaps it was all just some strange coincidence. I didn’t know the truth, but there was one thing I did know. I knew that someone else had been headed to this deserted place with nothing else around.
I raced for the door like something was pushing me forward, scrabbling for the back door of the Kettle and fumbling with the handle before finally managing to open it. Nito had taken out most of the luggage, but the box of unbreakables was still in there, with my clothes and other sundries and...a piece of folded paper.
I yanked that out and offered it to Jack, who had come to inspect my craziness in puzzlement.
“What’s that?”
I didn’t answer. It might have just been my own delusion, but my hands still shook at the premonition I’d had.
Jack frowned and took the paper, then unfolded it. He looked down at it wordlessly, falling to a seated position and covering his mouth. Eventually, I heard him weeping, unable to keep himself under control.
It was the map. The map that I’d found in that truck at the side of the road. The map that had the station on it, the town, and then the neatly drawn picture of this bridge, circled several times to mark it as a destination.
The truck’s driver had been coming here. Here, not to the town based on some rumors of a witch, but past that town to the bridge itself. I didn’t know what exactly he’d been heading here for, but I knew there were two people in this world that this bridge had been more than a bridge to. For them, it was a source of precious memories and a place to call home.
I looked away from Jack to the bridge itself.
Yeah, it’s a pointless world, I thought. Each and every person had lost something. Still, there were people living their lives as best they could. How strong were they that they could keep going like that, despite the pain of having lost what should have always been there for them? I stood there for a while, vacantly watching the clouds drift by.
The sobbing eventually stopped and Jack stood up, wiping at his reddened eyes.
“That picture is definitely Pops’s. Where’d you find it?”
I looked at the map he was holding and pointed to the area where I thought I’d found the truck. He mumbled in acknowledgment before looking up at me.
“Say, I’ve got a request,” he told me. “Let’s make a trade.”
He took out the scuffed metal cigarette case from his breast pocket and offered it to me.
“Would you take me back to that town? Looks like I’ve got somewhere to go.”
I nodded and took the case from him. Jack clapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re a lifesaver, peddler.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They were people that went to remote villages in the past, trading for necessities. And, well, you’ve given me something I needed.”
There was far less hidden behind his smile than before.
Peddler, huh? That didn’t sound so bad. It felt better than just considering it as having been given something, or having taken it for myself. Instead, I was only taking care of it, looking for someone else somewhere that needed it before handing it over. That fit much more nicely, somehow.
“I actually took some of the water and fuel from the truck I found the map in. I’ll give it to you. You’ll need it if you’re journeying again.”
“That’d be great,” he answered after a pause. “Are you sure, though?”
“Yeah, I was just taking care of it for a while.”
Sure, I’d used some of it, but I could cover the difference with what I had from Vandyke.
“Let’s head back to town, then,” I suggested.
“Ah, would you mind waiting? I want to look at the bridge a bit more... Don’t look at me like that, I ain’t gonna jump. I gotta go meet Pops, so I need something to tell him about, that’s all.”
I watched him head off toward the bridge. He was walking steadily, so I figured he’d be fine. I got back in the driver’s seat to wait. There was something I had to do when I got back to the town. The song and the witch’s words spiraled around my head.
“You don’t have a question to ask?”