These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

On the way to an art workshop for kids that she teaches for extra income, Viv drops off Parker and Sheba at the Añejo as Zan’s shift ends, and in the car driving home Zan pulls off the road at the old railroad bridge down the road. The canyon abounds with competing legends all ending with the same conclusion, that the bridge is haunted, the only matter of contention being by whom, the ghosts of displaced Indians or the victims of devil rites or crazed hippie killers. This is the bucolic canyon from which, forty years ago, Charles Manson fled because it was too weird for him.

Parker has been jonesing to see the railroad bridge since he noticed it one day from the car on the way to the ocean. But because it’s dusk, when the canyon light fails so fast and the heat so quickly turns cold, the boy doesn’t want to linger, as he and his sister and father stand in the middle surveying the decayed wood and listening to the sound of the creek beneath them. Up one corner of the bridgehouse runs a ladder to the rafters. From the apex of the frame, Zan and the kids have a view of the canyon and whatever should roll in from the ocean.