Katherine J. Patterson - Bridge to Terabithia

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BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIABRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
By Katherine Paterson
DEDICATION:
I wrote this book
for my son
David Lord Paterson
but after he read it
he asked me to put Lisa's name
on this page as well,
and so I do.
For
David Paterson and Lisa Hill
Banzai.
ONE - Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.
Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity. Good. His dad had the
pickup going. He could get up now. Jess slid out of bed and into his overalls. He didn't worry
about a shirt because once he began running he would be hot as popping grease even if the
morning air was chill, or shoes because the bottoms of his feet were by now as tough as his
worn-out sneakers.
"Where you going, Jess?" May Belle lifted herself up sleepily from the double bed where
she and Joyce Ann slept.
"Sh." He warned. The walls were thin. Momma would he mad as flies in a fruit jar if they
woke her up this time of day
He patted May Belle's hair and yanked the twisted sheet up to her small chin. "Just over
the cow field," he whispered. May Belle smiled and snuggled down under the sheet.
"Gonna run?"
"Maybe."
Of course he was going to run. He had gotten up early every day all summer to run. He
figured if he worked at it - and Lord, had he worked-he could be the fastest runner in the fifth
grade when school opened up. He had to be the fastest-not one of the fastest or next to the
fastest, but the fastest. The very best.
He tiptoed out of the house. The place was so ratty that it screeched whenever you put
your foot down, but Jess had found that if you tiptoed, it gave only a low moan, and he could
usually get outdoors without waking Momma or Ellie or Brenda or Joyce Ann. May Belle was
another matter. She was going on seven, and she worshiped him, which was OK sometimes.
When you were the only boy smashed between four sisters, and the older two had despised
you ever since you stopped letting them dress you up and wheel you around in their rusty old
doll carriage, and the littlest one cried if you looked at her cross-eyed, it was nice to have
somebody who worshiped you. Even if it got unhandy sometimes.
He began to trot across the yard. His breath was coming out in little puffs-cold for
August. But it was early yet. By noontime when his mom would have him out working, it
would be hot enough.
Miss Bessie stared at him sleepily as he climbed across the scrap heap, over the fence,
and into the cow field. "Moo," she said, looking for all the world like another May Belle with
her big, brown droopy eyes.
"Hey, Miss Bessie," Jess said soothingly. "Just go on back to sleep."
Miss Bessie strolled over to a greenish patch - most of the field was brown and dry - and
yanked up a mouthful.
"That'a girl. Just eat your breakfast. Don't pay me no mind."
He always started at the northwest corner of the field, crouched over like the runners he
had seen on Wide World of Sports.
"Bang," he said, and took off flying around the cow field. Miss Bessie strolled toward the
center, still following him with her droopy eyes, chewing slowly. She didn't look very smart,
even for a cow, but she was plenty bright enough to get out of Jess's way.
His straw-colored hair flapped hard against his forehead, and his arms and legs flew out
every which way. He had never learned to run properly, but he was long-legged for a ten-
year-old, and no one had more grit than he.
Lark Creek Elementary was short on everything, especially athletic equipment, so all the
balls went to the upper grades at recess time after lunch. Even if a fifth grader started out the
period with a ball, it was sure to be in the hands of a sixth or seventh grader before the hour
was half over. The older boys always took the dry center of the upper field for their ball
games, while the girls claimed the small top section for hopscotch and jump rope and hanging
around talking. So the lower-grade boys had started this running thing. They would all line up
on the far side of the lower field, where it was either muddy or deep crusty ruts. Earle Watson
who was no good at running, but had a big mouth, would yell "Bang!" and they'd race to a
line they'd toed across at the other end.
One time last year Jesse had won. Not just the first heat but the whole shebang. Only
once. But it had put into his mouth a taste for winning. Ever since he'd been in first grade he'd
been that "crazy little kid that draws all the time." But one day - April the twenty-second, a
drizzly Monday, it had been - he ran ahead of them all, the red mud slooshing up through the
holes in the bottom of his sneakers.
For the rest of that day, and until after lunch on the next, he had been "the fastest kid in
the third, fourth, and fifth grades," arid he only a fourth grader. On Tuesday, Wayne Pettis
had won again as usual. But this year Wayne Pettis would be in the sixth grade. He'd play
football until Christmas and baseball until June with the rest of the big guys. Anybody had a
chance to be the fastest runner, and by Miss Bessie, this year it was going to be Jesse Oliver
Aarons, Jr.
Jess pumped his arms harder and bent his head for the distant fence. He could hear the
third-grade boys screaming him on. They would follow him around like a country-music star.
And May Belle would pop her buttons. Her brother was the fastest, the best. That ought to
give the rest of the first grade something to chew their cuds on.
Even his dad would be proud. Jess rounded the corner. He couldn't keep going quite so
fast, but he continued running for a while-it would build him up. May Belle would tell Daddy,
so it wouldn't look as though he, Jess, was a bragger.
Maybe Dad would be so proud he'd forget all about how tired he was from the long drive
back and forth to Washington and the digging and hauling all day. He would get right down
on the floor and wrestle, the way they used to. Old Dad would be surprised at how strong he'd
gotten in the last couple of years.
His body was begging him to quit, but Jess pushed it on. He had to let that puny chest of
his know who was boss.
"Jess." It was May Belle yelling from the other side of the scrap heap. "Momma says you
gotta come in and eat now. Leave the milking til later."
Oh, crud. He'd run too long. Now everyone would know he'd been out and start in on
him.
"Yeah, OK." He turned, still running, and headed for the scrap heap. Without breaking
his rhythm, he climbed over the fence, scrambled across the scrap heap, thumped May Belle
on the head ("Owww!"), and trotted on to the house.
"Well, look at the big Olympic star," said Ellie, banging two cups onto the table, so that
the strong, black coffee sloshed out. "Sweating like a knock-kneed mule."
Jess pushed his damp hair out of his face and plunked down on the wooden bench. He
dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into his cup and slurped to keep the hot coffee from scalding
his mouth.
"Oooo, Momma, he stinks." Brenda pinched her nose with her pinky crooked delicately.
"Make him wash."
"Get over here to the sink and wash yourself," his mother said without raising her eyes
from the stove. "And step on it. These grits are scorching the bottom of the pot already."
"Momma! Not again," Brenda whined.
Lord, he was tired. There wasn't a muscle in his body that didn't ache.
"You heard what Momma said," Ellie yelled at his back. "I can't stand it, Momma!"
Brenda again. "Make him get his smelly self off this bench."
Jess put his cheek down on the bare wood of the tabletop. "Jess-see!" His mother was
looking now. "And put on a shirt."
"Yes'm." He dragged himself to the sink. The water he nipped on his face and up his arms
pricked like ice. His hot skin crawled under the cold drops.
May Belle was standing in the kitchen door watching him.
"Get me a shirt, May Belle."
She looked as if her mouth was set to say no, but instead she said, "You shouldn't ought
to beat me in the head," and went off obediently to fetch his T-shirt. Good old May Belle.
Joyce Ann would have been screaming just from that little tap. Four-year-olds were a pure
pain.
"I got plenty of chores needs doing around here this morning," his mother announced as
they were finishing the grits and red gravy. His mother was from Georgia and still cooked like
it.
"Oh, Momma!" Ellie and Brenda squawked in concert. Those girls could get out of work
faster than grasshoppers could slip through your fingers.
"Momma, you promised me and Brenda we could go to Millsburg for school shopping."
"You ain't got no money for school shopping!"
"Momma. We're just going to look around." Lord, he wished Brenda would stop whining
so. "Christmas! You don't want us to have no fun at all."
"Any fun," Ellie corrected her primly.
"Oh, shuttup."
Ellie ignored her. "Miz Timmons is coming by to pick us up. I told Lollie Sunday you
said it was OK. I feel dumb calling her and saying you changed your mind." "Oh, all right But
I ain't got no money to give you."
Any money, something whispered inside Jess's head.
"I know, Momma. We'll just take the five dollars Daddy promised us. No more'n that."
"What five dollars?"
"Oh, Momma, you remember." Ellie's voice was sweeter than a melted Mars Bar. "Daddy
said last week we girls were going to have to have something for school."
"Oh, take it," his mother said angrily, reaching for her cracked vinyl purse on the shelf
above the stove. She counted out five wrinkled bills.
"Momma" - Brenda was starting again - "can't we have just one more? So it'll be three
each?"
"No!"
"Momma, you can't buy nothing for two fifty. Just one little pack of notebook paper's
gone up to - "
"No!"
Ellie got up noisily and began to clear the table. "Your turn to wash, Brenda," she said
loudly.
"Awww, Ellie."
Ellie jabbed her with a spoon. Jesse saw that look. Brenda shut up her whine halfway out
of her Rose Lustre lipsticked mouth. She wasn't as smart as Ellie, but even she knew not to
push Momma too far.
Which left Jess to do the work as usual. Momma never sent the babies out to help,
although if he worked it right he could usually get May Belle to do something. He put his
head down on the table. The running had done him in this morning. Through his top ear came
the sound of the Timmonses' old Buick - "Wants oil," his dad would say - and the happy buzz
of voices outside the screen door as Ellie and Brenda squashed in among the seven
Timmonses.
"All right, Jesse. Get your lazy self off that bench. Miss Bessie's bag is probably dragging
ground by now. And you still got beans to pick."
Lazy. He was the lazy one. He gave his poor deadweight of a head one minute more on
the tabletop.
"Jess-see!"
"OK, Momma. I'm going."
It was May Belle who came to tell him in the bean patch that people were moving into
the old Perkins place down on the next farm. Jess wiped his hair out of his eyes and squinted.
Sure enough. A U-Haul was parked right by the door. One of those big jointed ones. These
people had a lot of junk. But they wouldn't last. The Perkins place was one of those ratty old
country houses you moved into because you had no decent place to go and moved out of as
quickly as you could. He thought later how peculiar it was that here was probably the biggest
thing in his life, and he had shrugged it off as nothing.
The flies were buzzing around his sweating face and shoulders. He dropped the beans
into the bucket and swatted with both hands. "Get me my shirt, May Belle." The flies were
more important than any U-Haul.
May Belle jogged to the end of the row and picked up his T-shirt from where it had been
discarded earlier. She walked back holding it with two fingers way out in front of her.
"Oooo, it stinks," she said, just as Brenda would have.
"Shuttup," he said and grabbed the shirt away from her.
TWO - Leslie Burke
Ellie and Brenda weren't back by seven. Jess had finished all the picking and helped his
mother can the beans. She never canned except when it was scalding hot anyhow, and all the
boiling turned the kitchen into some kind of hellhole. Of course, her temper had been terrible,
and she had screamed at Jess all afternoon and was now too tired to fix any supper.
Jess made peanut-butter sandwiches for the little girls and himself, and because the
kitchen was still hot and almost nauseatingly full of bean smell, the three of them went
outside to eat.
The U-Haul was still out by the Perkins place. He couldn't see anybody moving outside,
so they must have finished unloading.
"I hope they have a girl, six or seven," said May Belle. "I need somebody to play with."
"You got Joyce Ann."
"I hate Joyce Ann. she's nothing but a baby."
Joyce Ann's lip went out. They both watched it tremble. Then her pudgy body shuddered,
and she let out a great cry.
"Who's teasing the baby?" his mother yelled out the screen door.
Jess sighed and poked the last of his sandwich into Joyce Ann's open mouth. Her eyes
went wide, and she clamped her jaws down on the unexpected gift. Now maybe he could have
some peace.
He closed the screen door gently as he entered and slipped past his mother, who was
rocking herself in the kitchen chair watching TV. In the room he shared with the little ones, he
dug under his mattress and pulled out his pad and pencils. Then, stomach down on the bed, he
began to draw.
Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his
muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body. Lord, he loved to draw.
Animals, mostly. Not regular animals like Miss Bessie or the chickens, but crazy animals with
problems-for some reason he liked to put his beasts into impossible fixes. This one was a
hippopotamus just leaving the edge of the cliff, turning over and over - you could tell by the
curving lines - in the air toward the sea below where surprised fish were leaping goggle-eyed
out of the water. There was a balloon over the hippopotamus - where his head should have
been but his bottom actually was - "Oh!" it was saying. "I seem to have forgotten my glasses."
Jesse began to smile. If he decided to show it to May Belle, he would have to explain the
joke, but once he did, she would laugh like a live audience on TV.
He would like to show his drawings to his dad, but he didn't dare. When he was in first
grade, he had told his dad that he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He'd thought his
dad would be pleased. He wasn't. "What are they teaching in that damn school?" he had
asked. "Bunch of old ladies turning my only son into some kind of a..." He had stopped on the
word, but Jess had gotten the message. It was one you didn't forget, even after four years.
The devil of it was that none of his regular teachers ever liked his drawings. When they'd
catch him scribbling, they'd screech about wasted time, wasted paper, wasted ability. Except
Miss Edmunds, the music teacher. She was the only one he dared show anything to, and she'd
only been at school one year, and then only on Fridays.
Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff
Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about,
even to think about very much. Her long swishy black hair and blue, blue eyes. She could
play the guitar like a regular recording star, and she had this soft floaty voice that made Jess
squish inside. Lord, she was gorgeous. And she liked him, too.
One day last winter he had given her one of his pictures. Just shoved it into her hand after
class and run. The next Friday she had asked him to stay a minute after class. She said he was
"unusually talented," and she hoped he wouldn't let anything discourage him, but would "keep
it up." That meant, Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best
that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the
knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one
could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.
"Sounds like some kinda hippie," his mother had said when Brenda, who had been in
seventh grade last year, de- scribed Miss Edmunds to her.
She probably was. Jess wouldn't argue that, but he saw her as a beautiful wild creature
who had been caught for a moment in that dirty old cage of a schoolhouse, perhaps by
mistake. But he hoped, he prayed, she'd never get loose and fly away. He managed to endure
the whole boring week of school for that one half hour on Friday afternoons when they'd sit
on the worn-out rug on the floor of the teachers' room (there was no place else in the building
for Miss Edmunds to spread out all her stuff) and sing songs like "My Beautiful Balloon,"
"This Land Is Your Land," "Free to Be You and Me," "Blowing in the Wind" and because Mr.
Turner, the principal, insisted, "God Bless America."
Miss Edmunds would play her guitar and let the kids take turns on the autoharp, the
triangles, cymbals, tambourines, and bongo drum. Lord, could they ever make a racket! All
the teachers hated Fridays. And a lot of the kids pretended to.
But Jess knew what fakes they were. Sniffing "hippie" and "peacenik" even though the
Vietnam War was over and it was supposed to be OK again to like peace, the kids would
make fun of Miss Edmunds' lack of lipstick or the cut of her jeans. She was, of course, the
only female teacher anyone had ever seen in Lark Creek Elementary wearing pants. In
Washington and its fancy suburbs, even in Millsburg, that was OK, but Lark Creek was the
backwash of fashion. It took them a long time to accept there what everyone could see by
their TV's was OK anywhere else.
So the students of Lark Creek Elementary sat at their desks all Friday, their hearts
thumping with anticipation as they listened to the joyful pandemonium pouring out from the
teachers' room, spent their allotted half hours with Miss Edmunds under the spell of her wild
beauty and in the snare of her enthusiasms, and then went out and pretended that they couldn't
be suckered by some hippie in tight jeans with make- up all over her eyes but none on her
mouth.
Jess just kept his mouth shut. It wouldn't help to try to defend Miss Edmunds against their
unjust and hypocritical attacks. Besides, she was beyond such stupid behavior. It couldn't
touch her. But whenever possible, he stole a few minutes on Friday just to stand close to her
and hear her voice, soft and smooth as suede, assuring him that he was a "neat kid."
We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds. Beautiful Julia. The syllables
rolled through his head like a ripple of guitar chords. We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and
me. "You're the proverbial diamond in the rough," she'd said to him once, touching his nose
lightly with the tip of her electrifying finger. But it was she who was the diamond, sparkling
out of that muddy, grassless, dirty-brick setting.
"Jess-see!"
Jess shoved the pad and pencils under his mattress and lay down flat, his heart thumping
against the quilt.
His mother was at the door. "You milk yet?"
He jumped off the bed. "Just going to." He dodged around her and out, grabbing the pail
from beside the sink and the stool from beside the door, before she could ask him what he had
been up to.
Lights were winking out from all three floors of the old Perkins place. It was nearly dark.
Miss Bessie's bag was tight, and she was fidgeting with discomfort. She should have been
milked a couple of hours ago. He eased himself onto the stool and began to tug; the warm
milk pinged into the pail. Down on the road an occasional truck passed by with its dimmers
on.
His dad would be home soon, and so would those cagey girls who managed somehow to
have all the fun and leave him and their mother with all the work. He wondered what they had
bought with all their money. Lord, what he wouldn't give for a new pad of real art paper and a
set of those marking pens - color pouring out onto the page as fast as you could think it. Not
like stubby school crayons you had to press down on till somebody bitched about your
breaking them.
A car was turning in. It was the Timmonses'. The girls had beat Dad home. less could
hear their happy calls as the car doors slammed. Momma would fix them supper, and when he
went in with the milk, he'd find them all laughing and chattering. Momma'd even forget she
was tired and mad. He was the only one who had to take that stuff. Sometimes he felt so
lonely among all these females - even the one rooster had died, and they hadn't yet gotten
another. With his father gone from sunup until well past dark, who was there to know how he
felt? Weekends weren't any better. His dad was so tired from the wear and tear of the week
and trying to catch up around the place that when he wasn't actually working, he was sleeping
in front of the TV.
"Hey, Jesse." May Belle. The dumb kid wouldn't even let you think privately.
"What do you want now?"
He watched her shrink two sizes. "I got something to tell you." She hung her head.
"You ought to be in bed," he said huffily, mad at himself for cutting her down.
"Ellie and Brenda come home."
"Came. Came home." Why couldn't he quit picking on her? But her news was too
delicious to let him stop her sharing it. "Ellie bought herself a see-through blouse, and
Momma's throwing a fit!"
Good, he thought. "That ain't nothing to cheer about," he said.
Baripity, baripity, baripity.
"Daddy!" May Belle screamed with delight and started running for the road. Jess watched
his dad stop the truck, lean over to unlatch the door, so May Belle could climb in. He turned
away. Durn lucky kid. She could run after him and grab him and kiss him. It made Jess ache
inside to watch his dad grab the little ones to his shoulder, or lean down and hug them. It
seemed to him that he had been thought too big for that since the day he was born.
When the pail was full, he gave Miss Bessie a pat to move her away. Putting the stool
under his left arm, he carried the heavy pail carefully, so none of the milk would slop out.
"Mighty late with the milking, aren't you, son?" It was the only thing his father said
directly to him all evening.
The next morning he almost didn't get up at the sound of the pickup. He could feel, even
before he came fully awake, how tired he still was. But May Belle was grinning at him,
propped up on one elbow. "Ain't 'cha gonna run?" she asked.
"No," he said, shoving the sheet away. "I'm gonna fly."
Because he was more tired than usual, he had to push him- self harder. He pretended that
Wayne Pettis was there, just ahead of him, and he had to keep up. His feet pounded the
uneven ground, and he thrashed his arms harder and harder. He'd catch him. "Watch out,
Wayne Pettis," he said between his teeth. "I'll get you. You can't beat me."
"If you're so afraid of the cow," the voice said, "why don't you just climb the fence?"
He paused in midair like a stop-action TV shot and turned, almost losing his balance, to
face the questioner, who was sitting on the fence nearest the old Perkins place, dangling bare
摘要：

BRIDGE TO TERABITHIABRIDGE TO TERABITHIABRIDGE TO TERABITHIABRIDGE TO TERABITHIA By Katherine Paterson DEDICATION: I wrote this book for my son David Lord Paterson but after he read it he asked me to put Lisa's name on this page as well, and so I do. For David Paterson and Lisa Hill Banzai. ONE - Je...

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