heard a clunkada, clunkada, clunk as a vehicle drove over the bridge.
“I guess they know which parts of it will support them,” I said. The car stopped and somebody got out. He clumped over the bridge until he reached the hole I’d left behind. He gazed down through the hole to the river below.
“Howdy!” he said.
“Hi!” Twiggy and I chimed back.
“Old bridge gets older every day,” he said.
“Yeah, bridges do that,” Twiggy said.
“Havin’ fun down there?”
“Yeah, we are,” Twiggy answered.
Just then the man flinched like something hurt his eyes. He jerked back and we couldn’t see him when he stood up. He bent back down.
“What’cha doin’ with a headlamp on?” he asked.
“Snipe hunt!” Twiggy said. “They’re attracted to light!”
“Uh huh, yeah, right,” the man said. “Well, y’all take care down there.”
“Okay.”
After the man left I said, “Snipes don’t like light. You have to hunt them at night and they like bacon.”
He just looked at me as if he didn’t understand a word I said.
We waded around and Twiggy shined the light from every spot around ground zero that we could stand safely. My pants got soaked. The water was cold but after a while we got used to it. I was getting a stiff neck from looking up at the bridge. Then an idea hit me like a bright light in the darkness.
“Twiggy?”
“Yeah?”
“Where were you standing when you talked to that man?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. Why?”
“Well, figure it out. I think you shined the light on the cache while you were talking to him. He was talking to us just fine and then something hurt his eyes. Like a bright light appearing all of a sudden.”
“We should have seen it if that happened.”
“Not if it happened really fast and the reflection went through the hole.”
“If the reflection went through the hole then there has to be a direct line from where that guy was standing and the cache. Go up and stand where that guy was standing. I’ll walk around down here and try to line up on the hole again.”
“Okay.”
I waded to shore, climbed out, then climbed the bank to the side of the road and walked out onto the bridge. I looked around to be sure there were no cars and then looked for the hole my leg had gone through. I found it and waited for Twiggy to find it from underneath. I could hear the swooshing of his steps but I couldn’t see him to guide him to the right spot. While I waited I felt around the hole for anything plastic, metal, or loose. I didn’t know a lot about geocaching but I did know the container had to be retrievable. They didn’t plan on it being found through a nonexistent hole, but I still thought maybe I could touch it if the light from the flashlight had been spotted reflecting off of it.
“I see your arm,” Twiggy said from below.
“Yeah, it even has a forearm,” I joked.
His swooshing zeroed in on the spot where he saw my arm.
“Okay, stand up and do whatever that other guy was doing,” he said.
“He was just looking down through the hole. Walk around and look up like you are talking to me,” I said.
“I am talking to you.”
“Well, move the light around a bit and let me adjust my position.”
Unfortunately, my Geometry 101 class taught me that the likelihood of finding the exact angle to spot the reflection was slim. Repeating the feat was almost impossible.
I heard tires crunching on small stones and looked up to see a police cruiser pulling up to the bridge. It stopped and an officer stepped out.
“Good morning!” he said.
“Good morning,” I answered as I picked my way off the bridge.
“Hank Conrad was at the market and said there was folks on the old Miller Bridge. He was worried about you falling through or something. I just thought I ought to warn you that the bridge is old and unstable.”
“Okay, well… thank you. I think we’re fine. We’ll be careful.”
“What are you doing?”
Gulp, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t lie to an officer of the law.
“We’re geocaching,” I said.
“Geocaching? What’s that?”
“There is a container hidden here and we have the coordinates to find it, except that our GPS ran out of power. We know it’s somewhere close so we’re looking for it.”
“What makes you think there’s a container on the old Miller Bridge?” he asked.
“Somebody hid it here and posted the coordinates online.”
“And you believe them?” he asked.
“Oh yes! It’s a popular hobby. People do this all over the place.”
“What’s in this ‘container’?”
“Umm… I don’t know yet. There’s a log book that we sign…”
“Gabby! What are you doing? Watch for the light!” Twiggy called up from below the bridge.
“And some little things so we can trade if we want to.”
“Things?”
“Yeah, like little toys, foreign coins, erasers, that kind of thing.”
“Why do you do this?”
“Just ‘cause it’s fun.”
I wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining it to him. I thought I might know more about geocaching in a day or two but right now I could only tell him the very basics.
“Gabby! Where are you?”
“Who is that?” the officer asked.
“My friend. He’s looking under the bridge and I’m look on top.”
“Well, be careful. That bridge has rotten boards. The residents have reinforced it but there are still places a person could fall through.”
“Okay,
