William Maxwell’s “With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge,” writes Peter Orner, is about the “weight of guilt.”
As a 12-year-old boy growing up in Lincoln, Illinois, the narrator in Maxwell’s story commits “an act that haunts him for the rest of his life.”
He had been a good kid who went out of his way “to help elderly people across the street who could have managed perfectly well on their own.”
He and other Boy Scouts organize a group of younger Cub Scouts. Rather than teach them the ropes about the Scouts, they use the opportunity to initiate the boys.
What follows is an act of cruelty that so many decades later, the narrator is still thinking about.
It appears that even all these years later, the narrator not only hasn’t forgotten these vivid memories, but he still feels guilty for them.
He is still after some kind of atonement. All these years later, he is still grasping at that.
He feels guilty because, even though he was just a child when the incident on the bridge occurred, that cruel act has other complicated implications. He’s carrying that around, too, and the burden is heavy.
“What the story does, ultimately,” writes Peter Orner, “is instruct him on the dangerousness of his own heart.”
Peter Orner is the author of the essay collections Still No Word from You and Am I Alone Here? His story collections are Maggie Brown and Others, Esther Stories, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge. His novels are Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College where he directs the creative writing program.
