THE CRY OF THE BRIDGE MOTH

Chris had worked on the bridge, THE BRIDGE, from the beginning. He was a nobody in school, his family died early, and he was set adrift in the magnificent city of San Francisco.

He had worked at some minor roles in high school, mostly picking up trash in the parking lot overlooking Fort Point, but at the age of twenty he got his first job out on the "GREAT SPAN OF LIFE" as he thought of it to himself, and he usually kept his thoughts to himself.

By the age of thirty he had established himself as a bridge-scraper, the underside bridge-scraper, and over the years had acquired a friend.

As an underside bridge-scraper he was suspended each day in a metal mesh net which his friend helped he get into each morning, and out of each night. There he would spend the day, scraping and sanding, snug in his thermal suit and face mask, pleased to be one with the bridge.

Chris worked on those places that couldn't be taken care of by the enormous scraping and sand blasting equipment which were suspended from tracks, one on each side of the bridge.

It took a year to paint this bridge. Millions and millions of gallons of paint, but to do the underside of the bridge, one paint car started on one end, and another started on the other end on opposite sides of the bridge. There they would be, moving every day, spraying and covering everything, automatically.

Chris talked to his friend every morning for a few minutes before he got into his net and was swung into position. His friend became the official person to help him with his morning and evening ritual. Several times the friend was sick, and Chris just relaxed and remained overnight.

The net was a close knit wire, and after he had lain for some time in it, he shaped it to his body.

Chris would have been cold except for his thermal suit and the steel structure that blocked off some of the constant wind. But because of the structure, many of the other workers were not even aware that he was there. To passing ships the net was so small, it was unnoticeable.


Chris worked at this job without a single day's absence for years and years, twenty, twenty-five, with his one friend helping him into an out of the net. Sometimes he would even ask his friend not to help him get out at night. He would lay in the dark and watch the great ships move below, and he would gaze at the lights of the city.

At times Chris would stay for even longer periods: he had learned to cut down on his body needs.

Then one day there was a mix-up. Chris's check didn't arrive at the bank. When Chris went in to find out about his check, no one seemed to be able to locate it. As a matter of fact there weren't any records on him at all, and no one knew him.

Chris asked humbly that his pay card be found and left saying, "Somebody remember my name."

One young clerk named Stanhope took down his name and promised to straighten things out, but the note was blown into a waste basket several minutes later by casually dropped papers. The clerk remembered his promise the next day, looked for the note, grunted, and went back to dreaming about being the chief engineer of the bridge.

That night Chris's friend was sick. The next morning Chris had asked a stranger to help him into the net and into position. The stranger hardly noticed Chris. He was more concerned about the new job he had accepted in Oakland. That night Chris' friend died.


And all this time the painting machines were moving. On the following day the painters on opposite sides met at the net and went by in a cloud of awesome rust-red spray.

The years went by; the sprayers passed the net again and again; the young clerk, Stanhope, ambitious, fulfilled his dream of becoming chief engineer.


As a clerk, Stanhope had started the habit of walking the bridge at least once a day. Now as the man in charge of its structure, he would walk the bridge, awed by the fact that he was caring for "THE GREAT LINK OF LIFE" in one of the movements of modern civilization. As a child he would walk with his father, also a bridge engineer, but of wooden bridges, who carried a thin metal probe to look for weak spots, wood rot. He had inherited that probe, relished poking at the steel girders and smiling to himself.

The chief engineer had just passed the first tower on his daily stroll. He had casually poked his "rot finder" at the tower and pressed. He didn't even pay attention when it sunk-in three inches. He even walked on several feet before he reacted. "He had been dreaming," he thought to himself, but went back and tried again. His own father had overlooked dry-rot only to be crushed by the same bridge.

This time when he pressed the probe, it slid in to where his fingers touched the metal. Stunned, he tried in other places, faster movements, then faster. Finally, remembering his father, he rushed off the bridge and immediately convened the bridge commission.

When he told them of his findings, there was laughter, then anger for wasting their time, then threats against his job if he continued the "nonsense" as they called it.

It was only after he said that he was joking, but that he wanted to show them something that would please them, that they decided to go to the bridge. Once there, he pushed his rod up against the steel and pressed it in easily. Back in their meeting room they called the Highway Patrol and had the bridge closed off.

In the next few days they studied the bridge, they had pictures taken by plane, they hid away from the cries of the mayor, the public.

Only after examining each and every picture closely, did they begin to realize that there was a bulge under the bridge that didn't belong on the original structure. They searched through their files and called people out of retirement. Finally an old bridge superintendent remembered the net and that at one time they had a man assigned to scrape away the old paint that the sand-blaster couldn't get. "That man left suddenly," said the superintendent, "without even giving notice, and I couldn't find anyone to replace him, so we discontinued the position."

"What was his name," asked the engineer.

"Who knows," answered the superintendent.


A search through the files revealed nothing.
The chief engineer requested that the present superintendent have the net removed, but he wouldn't go out on the bridge, and neither would any of his men.


Stanhope decided to do the job himself. Followed a little way by a few reporters, he took a steel-cutting power saw and lowered himself in one of the carts. He started cutting at one end of the net cautiously. As the blade cut through the wire mesh, a fine rust-red powder fell toward the bay. When the saw had cut half-way along the net, a membranous structure began to emerge, and then gradually a leather wing, then a rust-red colored beast with the head and body of a moth. But the face: He remembered: the old man's face. It was the old man who…………….

Stanhope continued to cut. The creature rolled out of the net and fell, plummeted downward shaking off the rust-red dust, turning golden-red and crying out with a vibrancy that visibly shook the bridge, "Somebody remember my name!"

Then, slowly, the moth spread its wings and flew aloft, soaring high and out of sight
The chief engineer and the reporters had also felt the vibrancy and ran for the end of the bridge.

And the bridge? Did it crash in a grinding of girders and plates and twisting wires? No. There was an awful silence as the girders and wires, bolts and plates came together….collected…… into a great cloud of rust-red dust and then……….slowly

BLEW OUT TO THE SEA.