Bound by the Bridge Keeper

For two years I have run the same route across Alder Street bridge, and for two years a man has stood at the midpoint and watched me pass. He has never spoken. I have never slowed down. Then the storm took the railing, and I went into the water, and something that was not a person pulled me back onto the deck. His name is Bram Calloway. He is the keeper of this bridge, and he cannot leave it, because the bridge is a door and doors need someone to hold them shut. My sister's hospice is on the other side. The detour costs forty minutes I don't have. So we made a deal: he walks me across, and I bring him something from the far bank. Coffee. A newspaper. A photograph. Every crossing changes him. Every crossing I survive builds a debt in a currency he won't name. And the toll has always been a life.