The Bridges of Madison County Read online

  The blood was in her face. She could feel it. She hadn’t done anything or said anything, but she felt as if she had. The truck radio, indistinguishable almost in the roar of road and wind, carried a steel guitar song, followed by the five o’clock news.

  He turned the truck up the lane. “Richard is your husband?” He had seen the mailbox.

  “Yes,” said Francesca, slightly short of breath. Once her words started, they kept on coming. “It’s pretty hot. Would you like an ice tea?”

  He looked over at her. “If it’s all right, I sure would.”

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  She directed him—casually, she hoped—to park the pickup around behind the house. What she didn’t need was for Richard to come home and have one of the neighbor men say, “Hey, Dick, havin’ some work done at the place? Saw a green pickup there last week. Knew Frannie was home so I did’n bother to check on it.”

  Up broken cement steps to the back porch door. He held the door for her, carrying his camera knapsacks. “Awful hot to leave the equipment in the truck,” he had said when he pulled them out.

  A little cooler in the kitchen, but still hot. The collie snuffled around Kincaid’s boots, then went out on the back porch and flopped down while Francesca removed ice from metal trays and poured sun tea from a half-gallon glass jug. She knew he was watching her as he sat at the kitchen table, long legs stretched in front of him, brushing his hair with both hands.

  “Lemon?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The lemon juice dribbled slowly down the side of a glass, and he saw that, too. Robert Kincaid missed little.

  Francesca set the glass before him. Put her own on the other side of the Formica-topped table and her bouquet in water, in an old jelly glass with renderings of Donald Duck on it. Leaning against the counter, she balanced on one leg, bent over, and took off a boot. Stood on her bare foot and reversed the process for the other boot.

  He took a small drink of tea and watched her. She was about five feet six, fortyish or a little older, pretty face, and a fine, warm body. But there were pretty women everywhere he traveled. Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted. That’s why he found most young women unattractive, regardless of their exterior beauty. They had not lived long enough or hard enough to possess those qualities that interested him.

  But there was something in Francesca Johnson that did interest him. There was intelligence; he could sense that. And there was passion, though he couldn’t quite grasp what that passion was directed toward or if it was directed at all.

  Later, he would tell her that in ways undefinable, watching her take off her boots that day was one of the most sensual moments he could remember. Why was not important. That was not the way he approached his life. “Analysis destroys wholes. Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away.” That’s what he had said.

  She sat at the table, one leg curled under her, and pulled back strands of hair that had fallen over her face, refastening them with the tortoiseshell comb. Then, remembering, she rose and went to the end cupboard, took down an ashtray, and set it on the table where he could reach it.

  With that tacit permission, he pulled out a pack of Camels and held it toward her. She took one and noticed it was slightly wet from his heavy perspiring. Same routine. He held the gold Zippo, she touched his hand to steady it, felt his skin with her fingertips, and sat back. The cigarette tasted wonderful, and she smiled.

  “What is it you do, exactly—I mean with the photography?”

  He looked at his cigarette and spoke quietly. “I’m a contract shooter—uh, photographer—for National Geographic, part of the time. I get ideas, sell them to the magazine, and do the shoot. Or they have something they want done and contact me. Not a lot of room for artistic expression; it’s a pretty conservative publication. But the pay is decent. Not great, but decent, and steady. The rest of the time I write and photograph on my own hook and send pieces to other magazines. If things get tough, I do corporate work, though I find that awfully confining.

  “Sometimes I write poetry, just for myself. Now and then I try to write a little fiction, but I don’t seem to have a feeling for it. I live north of Seattle and work around that area quite a bit. I like shooting the fishing boats and Indian settlements and landscapes.

  “The Geographic work often keeps me at a location for a couple of months, particularly for a major piece on something like part of the Amazon or the North African desert. Ordinarily I fly to an assignment like this and rent a car. But I felt like driving through some places and scouting them out for future reference. I came down along Lake Superior; I’ll go back through the Black Hills. How about you?”

  Francesca hadn’t expected him to ask. She stammered for a moment. “Oh, gosh, nothing like you do. I got my degree in comparative literature. Winterset was having trouble finding teachers when I arrived here in 1946, and the fact that I was married to a local man who was a veteran made me acceptable. So I picked up a teaching certificate and taught high school English for a few years. But Richard didn’t like the idea of me working. He said he could support us, and there was no need for it, particularly when our two children were growing. So I stopped and became a farm wife full-time. That’s it.”

  She noticed his iced tea was almost gone and poured him some more from the jug.

  “Thanks. How do you like it here in Iowa?”

  There was a moment of truth in this. She knew it. The standard reply was, “Just fine. It’s quiet. The people are real nice.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. “Could I have another cigarette?” Again the pack of Camels, again the lighter, again touching his hand, lightly. Sunlight walked across the back porch floor and onto the dog, who got up and moved out of sight. Francesca, for the first time, looked into the eyes of Robert Kincaid.

  “I’m supposed to say, ‘Just fine. It’s quiet. The people are real nice.’ All of that’s true, mostly. It is quiet. And the people are nice, in certain ways. We all help each other out. If someone gets sick or hurt, the neighbors pitch in and pick corn or harvest oats or do whatever needs to be done. In town, you can leave your car unlocked and let your children run without worrying about them. There are a lot of good things about the people here, and I respect them for those qualities.

  “But”—she hesitated, smoked, looked across the table at Robert Kincaid—“it’s not what I dreamed about as a girl.” The confession, at last. The words had been there for years, and she had never said them. She had said them now to a man with a green pickup truck from Bellingham, Washington.

  He said nothing for a moment. Then: “I scribbled something in my notebook the other day for future use, just had the idea while driving along; that happens a lot. It goes like this: ‘The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out, but I’m glad I had them.’ I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll use it somewhere. So I think I kind of know how you feel.”

  Francesca smiled at him then. For the first time, she smiled warm and deep. And the gambler’s instincts took over. “Would you like to stay for supper? My family’s away, so I don’t have too much on hand, but I can figure out something.”

  “Well, I get pretty tired of grocery stores and restaurants. That’s for sure. So if it’s not too much bother, I’d like that.”

  “You like pork chops? I could fix that with some vegetables from the garden.”

  “Just the vegetables would be fine for me. I don’t eat meat. Haven’t for years. No big deal, I just feel better that way.”

  Francesca smiled again. “Around here that point of view would not be popular. Richard and his friends would say you’re trying to destroy their livelihood. I don’t eat much meat myself; I’m not sure why, I just don’t care for it. But every time I try a meatl
ess supper on the family, there are howls of rebellion. So I’ve pretty much given up trying. It’ll be fun figuring out something different for a change.”

  “Okay, but don’t go to a lot of trouble on my account. Listen, I’ve got a bunch of film in my cooler. I need to dump out the melted ice water and organize things a bit. It’ll take me a little while.” He stood up and drank the last of his tea.

  She watched him go through the kitchen doorway, across the porch, and into the yard. He didn’t let the screen door bang like everyone else did but instead shut it gently. Just before he went out, he squatted down to pet the collie, who acknowledged the attention with several sloppy licks along his arms.

  Upstairs, Francesca ran a quick bath and, while drying off, peered over the top of the cafe curtain toward the farmyard. His suitcase was open, and he was washing himself, using the old hand pump. She should have told him he could shower in the house if he wanted. She had meant to, balked for a moment at the level of familiarity that implied to her, and then, floating around in her own confusion, forgot to say anything.

  But Robert Kincaid had washed up under worse conditions. Out of buckets of rancid water in tiger country, out of his canteen in the desert. In her farmyard, he had stripped to the waist and was using his dirty shirt as a combination washcloth and towel. “A towel,” she scolded herself. “At least a towel; I could have done that for him.”

  His razor caught the sunlight, where it lay on cement beside the pump, and she watched him soap his face and shave. He was—There’s the word again, she thought—hard. He wasn’t big-bodied, a little over six feet, a little toward thin. But he had large shoulder muscles for his size, and his belly was flat as a knife blade. He didn’t look however old he was, and he didn’t look like the local men with too much gravy over biscuits in the morning.

  During the last shopping trip to Des Moines, she had bought new perfume—Wind Song—and she used it now, sparingly. What to put on? It didn’t seem right for her to dress up too much, since he was still in his working clothes. Long-sleeved white shirt, sleeves rolled to just below the elbows, a clean pair of jeans, sandals. The gold hoop earrings Richard said made her look like a hussy and a gold bracelet. Hair pulled back with a clip, hanging down her back. That felt right.

  When she came into the kitchen, he was sitting there with his knapsacks and cooler, wearing a clean khaki shirt, with the orange suspenders running over it. On the table were three cameras and five lenses, and a fresh package of Camels. The cameras all said “Nikon” on them. So did the black lenses, short ones and middling ones and a longer one. The equipment was scratched, dented in places. But he handled it carefully, yet casually, wiping and brushing and blowing.

  He looked up at her, serious face again, shy face. “I have some beer in the cooler. Like one?”

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  He took out two bottles of Budweiser. When he lifted the lid, she could see clear plastic boxes with film stacked like cordwood in them. There were four more bottles of beer besides the two he removed.

  Francesca slid open a drawer to look for an opener. But he said, “I’ve got it.” He took the Swiss Army knife from its case on his belt and flicked out the bottle opener on it, using it expertly.

  He handed her a bottle and raised his in a half salute: “To covered bridges in the late afternoon or, better yet, on warm, red mornings.” He grinned.

  Francesca said nothing but smiled softly and raised her bottle a little, hesitantly, awkwardly. A strange stranger, flowers, perfume, beer, and a toast on a hot Monday in late summer. It was almost more than she could deal with.

  “There was somebody a long time ago who was thirsty on an August afternoon. Whoever it was studied their thirst, rigged up some stuff, and invented beer. That’s where it came from, and a problem was solved.” He was working on a camera, almost talking to it as he tightened a screw on its top with a jeweler’s screwdriver.

  “I’m going out to the garden for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  He looked up. “Need help?”

  She shook her head and walked past him, feeling his eyes on her hips, wondering if he watched her all the way across the porch, guessing that he did.

  She was right. He watched her. Shook his head and looked again. Watched her body, thought of the intelligence he knew she possessed, wondered about the other things he sensed in her. He was drawn to her, fighting it back.

  The garden was in shade now. Francesca moved through it with a dishpan done in cracked white enamel. She gathered carrots and parsley, some parsnips and onions and turnips.

  When she entered the kitchen, Robert Kincaid was repacking the knapsacks, neatly and precisely, she noticed. Everything obviously had its place and always was placed in its place. He had finished his beer and opened two more, even though she was not quite done with hers. She tilted back her head and finished the first one, handing him the empty bottle.

  “Can I do something?” he asked.

  “You can bring in the watermelon from the porch and a few potatoes from the bucket out there.”

  He moved so easily that she was amazed at how quickly he went to the porch and returned, melon under his arm, four potatoes in his hands. “Enough?”

  She nodded, thinking how ghostlike he seemed. He set them on the counter beside the sink where she was cleaning the garden vegetables and returned to his chair, lighting a Camel as he sat down.

  “How long will you be here?” she asked, looking down at the vegetables she was working on.

  “I’m not sure. This is a slow time for me, and my deadline for the bridge pictures is still three weeks away. As long as it takes to get it right, I guess. Probably about a week.”

  “Where are you staying? In town?”

  “Yes. A little place with cabins. Something-or-other Motor Court. I just checked in this morning. Haven’t even unloaded my gear yet.”

  “That’s the only place to stay, except for Mrs. Carlson’s; she takes in roomers. The restaurants will be a disappointment, though, particularly for someone with your eating habits.”

  “I know. It’s an old story. But I’ve learned to make do. This time of year it’s not so bad; I can find fresh produce in the stores and at stands along the road. Bread and a few other things, and I make it work, approximately. It’s nice to be invited out like this, though. I appreciate it.”

  She reached along the counter and flipped on a small radio, one with only two dials and tan cloth covering the speakers. “With time in my pocket, and the weather on my side…” a voice sang, guitars chunking along underneath. She kept the volume low.

  “I’m pretty good at chopping vegetables,” he offered.

  “Okay, there’s the cutting board, a knife’s in the drawer right below it. I’m going to fix a stew, so kind of cube the vegetables.”

  He stood two feet from her, looking down, cutting and chopping the carrots and turnips, parsnips and onions. Francesca peeled potatoes into the sink, aware of being so close to a strange man. She had never thought of peeling potatoes as having little slanting feelings connected with it.

  “You play the guitar? I saw the case in your truck.”

  “A little bit. It keeps me company, not too much more than that. My wife was an early folkie, way before the music became popular, and she got me going on it.”

  Francesca had stiffened slightly at the word wife. Why, she didn’t know. He had a right to be married, but somehow it didn’t fit him. She didn’t want him to be married.

  “She couldn’t stand the long shoots when I’d be gone for months. I don’t blame her. She pulled out nine years ago. Divorced me a year later. We never had children, so it wasn’t complicated. Took one guitar, left the el cheapo with me.”

  “You hear from her?”

  “No, never.”

  That was all he said. Francesca didn’t push it. But she felt better, selfishly, and wondered again why she should care one way or the other.

  “I’ve been to Italy, twice,” he said
. “Where you from, originally?”

  “Naples.”

  “Never made it there. I was in the north once, doing some shooting along the River Po. Then again for a piece on Sicily.”

  Francesca peeled potatoes, thinking of Italy for a moment, conscious of Robert Kincaid beside her.

  Clouds had moved up in the west, splitting the sun into rays that splayed in several directions. He looked out the window above the sink and said, “God light. Calendar companies love it. So do religious magazines.”

  “Your work sounds interesting,” Francesca said. She felt a need to keep neutral conversation going.

  “It is. I like it a lot. I like the road, and I like making pictures.”

  She noticed he’d said “making” pictures. “You make pictures, not take them?”

  “Yes. At least that’s how I think of it. That’s the difference between Sunday snapshooters and someone who does it for a living. When I’m finished with that bridge we saw today, it won’t look quite like you expect. I’ll have made it into something of my own, by lens choice, or camera angle, or general composition, and most likely by some combination of all of those.

  “I don’t just take things as given; I try to make them into something that reflects my personal consciousness, my spirit. I try to find the poetry in the image. The magazine has its own style and demands, and I don’t always agree with the editor’s taste; in fact, most of the time I don’t. And that bothers them, even though they decide what goes in and what gets left out. I guess they know their readership, but I wish they’d take a few more chances now and then. I tell them that, and it bothers them.

  “That’s the problem in earning a living through an art form. You’re always dealing with markets, and markets—mass markets—are designed to suit average tastes. That’s where the numbers are. That’s the reality, I guess. But, as I said, it can become pretty confining. They let me keep the shots they don’t use, so at least I have my own private files of stuff I like.