“Hey Mrs. Whyse, you’ve lived here for a
while, right?”
“All my life,” she says.
“Do you know anything about that old
railroad bridge—the Billy Jones story?” I ask.
Mrs. Whyse sets down her lunch and cocks
her head. “That old legend?”
“Yeah,” I say as I sit down to join her. “How
does it go again?”
“It’s said that if a couple writes their names
on the old bridge at midnight, they will be
together forever. Kids were doing it so much
that the bridge looked trashy, so they finally
sandblasted it clean last summer.”
That must mean the names I saw on it were
added after that.
But why would Patricia say not
to go there at night if writing on the bridge brings
couples luck? Where does the curse fit in?
I try not
to think about what I saw in the water. “What
does that have to do with the curse?”
“Supposedly Billy Jones jumped off the
bridge when his girlfriend broke up with him,”
says Mrs. Whyse. “Some people say that he set
the curse as he jumped.”
19
