The Last Tarantella

The summer solstice was a week gone, and the heat had settled into the Arkansas backwoods like a sickness. I was hauling a load of antique furniture from a dead woman’s estate in Pine Bluff down to a buyer in Shreveport, and my GPS had rerouted me onto a county road that the map showed as a thin gray vein. It was a two-lane affair cut through loblolly pines, with a barbed-wire fence on one side and a drainage ditch on the other. The local name, I learned later, was the Pea Ridge Trace, and it crossed under an old iron railroad bridge, built in 1903, that hadn’t seen a train in forty years. The road was so narrow that only one car could pass beneath the rusted latticework at a time, and I was approaching it just after ten o’clock, my headlights cutting through a haze of gnats and humidity.

I was driving slow, maybe twenty-five, because the curve before the trestle was deceptive, and the pavement had cracked into a crazy quilt. That’s when I saw her. She was walking ahead on my right, on the broken shoulder, her back to me. She wore a knee-length dress of pale, shimmering fabric that fluttered like moth wings, and white stockings that were smudged with dirt. Her hair was short, bobbed, and her stride was odd—heavy, labored, as if her shoes didn’t fit or she wasn’t used to them. Even from behind, I felt a wrongness, a static crawl on my skin. I braked, easing to a crawl, and as I drew alongside, the dome light inside my cab flickered. She turned her head, and her face was pale, the eyes empty, and she smiled—too wide, with too many teeth. My heart seized.

I should have floored it, but my foot was numb. I rolled to a stop just past her, and in the rearview mirror, I saw her not walking but gliding, her feet not moving, closing the distance in two heartbeats. She pressed her palm against the back window, and the glass frosted over in a bloom of ice. Her voice, when she spoke, came from inside the cab, as if she were sitting beside me: ‘You’re late.’ The radio, which had been silent, crackled to life with a scratchy 1920s dance tune, a tarantella. My hands shook, and the engine died.

I fumbled for the keys, but the ignition was cold. The woman tilted her head, and the temperature plummeted. My breath plumed. She whispered, ‘The bridge wants its toll, mister. It’s been a long wait.’ I saw her in the side mirror, and she was no longer smiling; her mouth was a black seam, and her eyes were pools of oil. The iron trestle ahead began to groan, a deep metallic moan, as if the bridge were breathing. Behind her, the shadows under the trees stretched and swirled like living things.

I finally got the engine to turn over, and I floored the gas. The truck lurched forward, tires spinning on loose gravel. The woman didn’t move, but the bridge’s iron lattice seemed to tighten, narrowing as I approached, the space between the pillars shrinking like a closing throat. I aimed for the center, and as I passed under, the roof of the cab scraped against one of the lower crossbeams, sending a shower of rust and sparks. In the rearview, I saw the woman standing at the southern end, her dress fluttering, and she raised one hand in a slow, deliberate wave. Then she was gone, but the tarantella kept playing, looping from the speakers, until I slammed the radio off with my fist.

I drove for an hour, my knuckles white, and finally stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of a town called Hope Mills. The clerk, an old man with sunken cheeks, took one look at me and said, ‘You come down the Pea Ridge Trace?’ I nodded, and he shook his head. ‘She got you too, huh? The bride. They say she’s a victim of a 1925 train wreck, killed on her wedding night. She waits under that bridge for a groom who never showed. But she’s not particular anymore.’ I looked down and saw a smear of old blood on my sleeve, and in the station’s flickering light, I noticed the back window of my truck had a crack shaped like a handprint. I paid for my gas and left, but as I pulled away, the radio turned on by itself, and the tarantella began again. I drove straight through to Shreveport, and I haven’t driven at night since.

But sometimes, on humid summer nights, I’ll catch a whiff of that stale perfume, or hear the faint rustle of chiffon, and I know she’s not done with me. I’m just another toll on that forgotten road, and the bridge is always hungry.