A Bridge of Years

Twenty


Tom was out of bed as soon as the alarm registered. Joyce reached the door ahead of him.

The machine bugs had assembled these alarms from a trio of hardware-store smoke detectors. The noise was shrill, penetrating. Tom and Joyce had slept in their clothes in anticipation of this; but the actual event, like a fire or an air raid, seemed unanticipated and utterly unreal. Tom stopped to fumble for his watch, working to recall what Ben had told him: If the alarm sounds, take your weapon and go to the perimeter of the property, but mainly he followed Joyce, who was waving impatiently from the door.

They hurried through the dark of the living room, through the kitchen and out into a blaze of light: fifteen sodium-vapor security lights installed in the back yard, also courtesy of Home Hardware.

Beyond the lights, in the high brush and damp ferns at the verge of the forest, he crouched with Joyce—and Doug and Catherine, who had beaten them out of the house.


The alarms ceased abruptly. Cricket calls revived in the dark of the woods. Tom felt the racing of his own pulse.

The house was starkly bright among pine silhouettes and a scatter of stars. A night breeze moved in the treetops. Tom flexed his toes among the loamy, damp pine needles: his feet were bare.

He looked around. "Where's Ben?"

"Inside," Archer said. "Listen, we should spread out a little bit . . . cover more territory."

Archer playing space soldier. But it wasn't a game. "This is it, isn't it?"

Archer flashed him a nervous grin. "The main event." Tom turned to the house in time to see the windows explode.



Glass showered over the lawn, a glittering arc in the glare of the lights.

He took a step back into the shelter of the woods. He felt Joyce do the same.

But there was no real retreating.

Here was the axis of events, the absolute present, Tom thought, and nothing to do but embrace it.