Thaddeus Roderick hated life. Well, to be fair about it, he only hated his life.Every night he’d go to bed grumbling and he couldn’t remember the last day he was happy to see the sunrise. Nobody had told him that life would be fair or a bowl of cherries but had they even hinted that it was going to contain a fraction of the misery his life held, he would have flung himself off the Solomon Grundy Bridge long ago. Had he been able to glimpse what the future had in store for him, he damned sure wouldn’t have become a mail carrier.
The Solomon-Grady Bridge spanned the Abiqua Creek, connecting the towns of West Solomon and East Grady about ten miles upstream of where it hooks up with the Pudding River. The two towns had incorporated back in the twenties to become Solomon-Grady but the stubborn residents on both sides of the river refused to acknowledge that fact and had held fast to their East and West distinctions and all of those born and raised in Solomon-Grady knew the bridge as the Solomon Grundy.
As a kid, the Solomon Grundy Bridge had provided Thaddeus and every other soul who had the fortune to grow up in the area, with hours of entertainment. Wagers of all sorts were made over what fell faster, where the high water mark was, the biggest fish pulled over the rail and most importantly, how many had leaped to their death over the years. There wasn’t any real evidence or newspaper reports supporting that anyone had ever committed suicide from the bridge, but everyone was convinced that ghosts swam in the creek as everyone had heard of someone’s distant relation’s friend who had jumped into the cold water.
There wasn’t a kid in a thirty-mile radius who hadn’t spat from the Solomon Grundy or thrown a bottle or some odd piece of debris over the rail and there was much speculation about what lay at the bottom of the Abiqua between two support columns. Some said a fortune in gold had been tossed over the railing by daring bank robbers who had passed through the area but no one believed the rumor to be reliable enough to check. It was also bandied about that Grady Mills, an evil kid from up on Griffith Peak had even thrown a puppy off the bridge. There was little doubt that this had happened due to the fact that Grady was serving a life term up in Walla Walla for killing his mother. It was the only murder on record for the two towns.
At times the Abiqua was nothing more than a babbling trickle, other times it was a raging concern depending on how warm the spring was up in the Cascades. When the water was easing along, spit took four seconds to travel from the bridge’s guardrail to the surface of the creek and another five to float under the bridge come out on the downstream side. Whenever the Abiqua was trying to crawl out of its banks after a hard spring melt, it could swallow a cigar store Indian and reduce it to splinters before it popped out on the other side of the Solomon Grundy. These weren’t simple observations; these were facts based on experiments that Thaddeus had conducted himself.
Thaddeus couldn’t remember a time when he’d crossed the Solomon Grundy without spitting over the rail but the cigar store Indian was a one-time thing and was something he would always regret. Every morning, as he made his rounds, Thaddeus would look down as he passed Cromwell’s Candies, at the brown stain on the sidewalk where the wooden Indian had once stood, and allow a grave-creeper to climb his spine. Since before there were paved streets in the two towns, the solemn Indian had stood a silent watch over the Grady side of the Solomon Grundy. It had seen every stick, stone and wad of spit ever put over the side until the day that it was his turn to make the four second trip to the Abiqua. Had any puppies been thrown from the bridge, he would have known the truth.
Thaddeus hadn’t tossed the Indian over the rail out of meanness or malice, he just wanted to see if the fall into the Abiqua would be an effective method of terminating his own existence. Many times he’d thought of leaping off the upstream side of the Solomon Grundy, but the horrible image he saw of himself bobbing to the surface, broken but alive, on the downstream side had kept his feet on the bridge and off the top of the guardrail. Sometimes, whenever the Abiqua was violent and angry, he was sure he could hear an Indian off in the distance calling to him from the spirit world, telling him that the rocks beneath the foam would splinter him quickly and spit him out dead on the other side.
The thought of leaping from the Solomon Grundy wasn’t born of self-loathing or inner demons, it was brought about by suffering. Thaddeus did a lot of suffering.
In West Solomon, which happened to be situated on the east side of the Abiqua was Levi and Franklin Ford Motor Company, the largest auto dealership in Medicine Bow county. On the west side of the Abiqua, in East Grady sat Harrington Chevrolet, the second largest auto dealership in Medicine Bow county. Both were the bane of Thaddeus Roderick’s existence and the cause of his downfall.
When Eli Franklin Sr. owned Levi and Franklin Ford Motor Company and Zachariah Harrington Sr. owned Harrington Chevrolet, the televisions in West Solomon and East Grady had been saturated with thirty-second commercials featuring fast-talking salesmen in chicken costumes or red-wigged clowns in plaid suits screaming about once in a lifetime deals and sales extravaganzas of the century concerning the latest Fords and Chevys. This was just fine by Thaddeus, in fact, he found the spots entertaining but when Freddy Franklin, former star halfback of East Grady High and Zac Harrington, former star quarterback of West Solomon High, took over their father’s automotive empires, everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Freddy and Zac were quick to realize that TV advertising was expensive and the more they shelled out for time on the tube was less they could squeeze into the pockets of their cheap suits, so they began to look for cheaper methods to inform the good citizens of Solomon-Grady of which deals were too good to be true and what sales were too insane to pass up.
One winter, not long after the death of Zachariah Harrington Sr., young Zac traveled to Portland for the automotive sales convention that was held annually at the Portland Holiday Inn. There he met some of the sharpest and most sophisticated Chevrolet men in all of Oregon. All of them were brilliant and filled to bursting with sales techniques and gimmickery, but one stood out more than the others, Fast Eddy Garret of Garret’s Wheels and Deals located just south of Portland at interstate exit one eleven on the frontage road, shined like a two karat cubic zirconia.
What made Fast Eddy stand out from all the rest, besides his canary yellow suit and powder blue shoes, was the four by seven-inch card that he was constantly waving in the faces of the other car dealers. On that card was stapled a key and an assurance that it was the one key out of fifty thousand most likely to start a brand new car at the Fast Eddy Sale-A-Palooza. It was the future of auto sales and Zac was quick to recognize its genius. Besides a case of the clap, which he later shared with his lovely wife Phoebe, the former head cheerleader of West Solomon High, Fast Eddy’s idea was the single most important thing Zac took away from his weekend at the Holiday Inn. Which was coincidentally, Thaddeus was to later pinpoint, the weekend that Thaddeus Roderick’s life turned to shit.
Harrington Chevrolet’s new ad campaign hit both West Solomon and East Grady with a vengeance. Zac had Quality Printers, located in East Grady, print up twenty-five thousand cards, one for every man woman and child in Solomon-Grady, including the elderly. Zac gave a promise to Bob, the head printer of Quality Printing that this was only the beginning. Zac also had Jim, the key foreman of Topnotch Hardware, in West Solomon grind out twenty-five thousand car keys. Jim was also promised a shit ton of future business. To show their appreciation, both Bob and Jim promised Zac their firstborn.
The key campaign was a resounding success. Everyone, including the elderly, showed up at Harrington Chevrolet on the day stated on the card with their key in hand. One lucky citizen was going to drive away a new car.
The dealership was packed to the gills. There were free hot dogs and popcorn and every car on the lot was priced to move. There was an elephant ride and monkeys on leashes and every Tahoe was guaranteed at below sticker prices. The place was filthy with red-wigged clowns in plaid suits and crawling with fast-talking salesmen in chicken costumes all promising to forego their commission. Harrington Chevrolet sold more cars on that one day than they had in any previous month since Zachariah Sr. had founded the company back when Christ was a corporal. Esmerelda Sussex, a second grader at East Grady Elementary won herself a brand new Camaro.
The only people in Solomon-Grady who weren’t smiling on that day was Freddy Franklin, who was frog green with jealousy and Thaddeus Roderick, who had a crick in his back from delivering twenty-five thousand cards with keys stapled to them. Before the big sale at Harrington Chevrolet, Thaddeus and junk mail had existed in relative harmony. It was a symbiotic relationship, Thaddeus delivered the junk mail and the junk mail assured Thaddeus of job security.
Not to be upstaged by Zac Harrington, the very next month Freddy Franklin had Quality Printers print up larger cards, larger by two inches in each direction, and promised Bob there would be more to come next month. He also had Jim at Topnotch Hardware grind out twenty-five thousand keys in solid brass. He thought the brass keys would make Zac’s aluminum keys seem cheap and give the good folks of Solomon-Grady the impression that Fords were better than Chevys. Both Bob and Jim pledged their second born to Freddy Franklin.
Freddy’s blowout was no less effective than Zac’s had been the month before. The car lot was packed shoulder to shoulder. It was so full, in fact, that the elephant had trouble giving rides and the monkeys on leashes kept getting tangled up in everyone’s feet. The clowns in plaid suits kept losing their red wigs and the fast-talking chicken-salesmen had trouble catching their breath. The lines for the free popcorn and hot dogs were endless, but everything was priced below the MSRP and Freddy cleaned up. Gladys Nightingale of the West Solomon Home for the Elderly won herself a new Mustang. It was the first thing she had ever won in her one hundred and two years as a resident of West Solomon.
Thaddeus had thrown his key over the railing of the Solomon Grundy Bridge, his back hurt too much to make the walk to Levi and Franklin Ford Motor Company and driving a car just made it hurt worse. As he watched it fall into the churning waters at the base of the bridge he wondered who the Levi of Levi and Franklin Ford Motor Company was. Junk mail and Thaddeus were at odds. Junk Mail had drawn first blood.
And so it went from one month to the next, the cards got bigger and the keys got heavier. Zac and Freddy had both decided to stop at gold plated keys as the price of gold had gone through the roof and the next logical step, solid gold keys, would have cut too deeply into their profits and that meant less money to squeeze into the pockets of their cheap suits.
Soon, everyone in Solomon-Grady drove new to fairly new cars, none older than a couple of months. Used car dealerships sprang up around the outskirts of town due to an overabundance of trade-ins in the area. Though their cards were not as big, nor their keys as valuable as Zac and Freddy’s, places like Ralph’s Rent To Own and Billy Bob’s Taters and Tires also held monthly key contests minus the elephant rides and monkeys on leashes. Bob and Jim had moved into matching glass chateaus up on Griffith Peak where the views were so scenic that only the wealthy could afford to look at them. Thaddeus Roderick and junk mail had become sworn enemies.
As Solomon-Grady grew into an automotive mecca, Thaddeus succumbed to compressed discs in his back and ultimately lost his job as a mail carrier. He walked with a stoop and often had tears in his eyes from the pain. Bushrod Johnson, former star linebacker of Solomon-Grady Junior College had replaced Thaddeus. The young man carried the key filled mailbags with a graceful ease, seemingly unaware of their weight. A dumb beast of burden with more strength than sense was what Thaddeus thought each day as he watched the young man fill his mailbox with cards and keys.
Embarrassed by his broken down condition, Thaddeus would wait until young Bushrod had turned the corner at the end of the block, before emerging from his house to collect his mail. He would then make the miserable half mile trek to the Solomon Grundy Bridge through a fog of crippling pain, all the while ignoring the looks of pity the townsfolk would send his way.
Whether or not the Abiqua was a babbling trickle or a raging concern, each day, from the center of the Solomon Grundy, Thaddeus would commit the unforgivable sin of mail carriers the world over and toss his mail over the rail.Off in the distance, an Indian would call his name, “Thaddeus, it’s only a four-second drop.”
After I looked for Solomon-Grady and Abiqua Creek, finding only the creek existing in Oregon and being a rather short and small one at that, I realized that such a place was truly fiction. Still, from all the references regarding what happened off the bridge, I have a real strong feeling that as a young man, Borne Wilder participated in such great shenanigans and contributed greatly to the pollution in the creek below. ;-)
You certainly wove a likely tale that small town America can identify with in many ways. Both your character development and use of phrases like, "filthy with clowns," endear me to your writing ability.
Although the ending is left wide open with no real exciting twist, it is a rock solid story that I enjoyed greatly.
May I offer you a Round the World Cruise of a lifetime for the price of a novel?
Not only do the seas roll on but two romances,a death at sea, uncovered past lives, history uncovered in Brazil, caves in Australia, poetry in Senegal, the Lux Mundi
'Coruscated Confabulations' is a collection of stories and experiences, most of which took place in prior decades. They are taken from or based upon real events, with a certain admixture of fictional embellishments.
Helios is an award winning novel about a brilliant inventor of new technology, a fallen CEO seeking redemption, and an idealistic youth who comes of age in corporate America.
Thaddeus Roderick hated life. Well, to be fair about it, he only hated his life.Every night he’d go to bed grumbling and he couldn’t remember the last day he was happy to see the sunrise. Nobody had told him that life would be fair or a bowl of cherries but had they even hinted that it was going to contain a fraction of the misery his life held, he would have flung himself off the Solomon Grundy Bridge long ago. Had he been able to glimpse what the future had in store for him, he damned sure wouldn’t have become a mail carrier.
