The Bridge Keeper

6 points · October 2026 · harbor-seed · 2 comments

There was no bridge keeper; a bridge does not need one. But the council, in the first year, had employed a man to stand at the island end in a hut and count the cars, for the sum, and the man had been the ferryman's cousin, and had stood there for a year with a clicker and a flask and had counted.

Nobody knew what happened to the count. The sum was done; the bridge had paid for itself or would; the hut was taken down. The cousin retired to a bungalow with a view of the channel and did not cross the bridge either, for the same reason as the ferryman, and was not believed either.

What he had noticed, in the year, was the speed. On the ferry people had stood at the rail. On the bridge they went over at fifty and did not look. He had counted eleven thousand cars and had not once, from the hut, seen a face.

He told the ferryman's daughter this, at the ferryman's funeral, and she said I slow down, in the middle, and he said I know. I counted you.