When I was a boy, I lived in a cabin at the bottom of Wayamachee Valley, which, though huge to my eyes, was little more than an overgrown ravine.

My father was a conjure man. His business took him all up and down gorge country, tending to the sick, finding lost cattle, and dowsing. He would wake up before the sun and go about the house collecting his tools, his eyes wide and gleaming in the pale marsh light that he carried on his fingers. By the time the sun was up, he would have placed his tools carefully in a worn leather sack, the rattle wrapped in the fur of a marten, all of the balms and simples tied and tucked into their proper places. Often he would be gone for a week or more, carrying his craft through the valleys and along the ridge tops. People used to see his silhouette on the high ridges, a tall dark man with an old top hat perched on his head, like a significant crow.

When I was thirteen my father decided that my education, before then left to the books he brought home in exchange for his work, should begin anew in the woods. I had harbored dreams of leaving the valley and going to school, becoming a railway engineer and working on the big new railroads out West that we read about in the paper. But for Father, my path was clear: I would become a conjure man.

We never talked very much, aside from his teaching and my occasional protests. I trudged around gorge country in his wake, mumbling charms to myself to memorize them, and when I thought Father sufficiently far away, cursing under my breath. I kept meaning to tell him that what I wanted was to be an engineer, not a conjurer, but when I looked at his face I could never say it.

In a few years I had learned passable conjuring, and Father sent me out on my own rounds. I was by then resigned to becoming a conjure man, although still harboring faint dreams or steel girders, rivets, and steam.

Sometimes I would do my job by conjure. But sometimes, I would do a job by book learning. When the Larisons' chickens were being raided every night because they lost the fox fur charm my father had given them, I did not make them another, because the Larisons were always losing things. Instead, I put their hen house up on stilts, with a thick board for a ramp, and told them to take up the board at night. I remember hiding under the porch and watching the fox as it hopped and jumped trying to get in, and finally went home with its belly empty.

One time I was siting a new well, and instead of stripping a willow rod and waiting for a pull, I looked over the lay of the ground and examined the deep-rooted plants to find the best place for water. And another time, when a stream kept undercutting a field, a small dam just uphill kept the crops from being swept away. I was proud, then: even my father would have had trouble doing that by conjure.

I was spreading ashes over the Murcheson's vegetable patch to promote fast and healthy growth when the news came to me. I quickly dusted off my hands and said the last words of the charm.

"Ben Conjure," said Goodman Murcheson to me, "I remember when you were just a little one your father traded with me for a book about trains. Did you ever read it?"

I smiled. "Yes, Mr. Murcheson, it was always one of my favorites. You must have been sorry to part with it."

"Well, I reckon I would have paid whatever your father had asked. He found my littlest -- well, George isn't so little any more -- when he had fallen down that old mine shaft a couple miles down the Humble Valley road."

I smiled, and waited respectfully.

"The reason I spoke of it is that the train is coming to Little Crow -- just as soon as they finish the last bridge. Folks around here have been talking about nothing else for weeks."

I could only stand with my mouth hanging open as if to catch flies. Mister Murcheson laughed.

"Well, boy, I think you have done enough here. Let me burden you with a blanket for your mother, and perhaps you can go home through Little Crow."

I left hurriedly, covering the ground in long strides, humming the tunes for quick traveling under my breath. Little Crow was forty miles from there, but I arrived not too long into the summer twilight.

Now that I live in the city, Little Crow seems in my memory to be just the crossing of a path and a dirt road with a few houses to hold them together. But it had a bar and stable whose straw was always available to rest a conjure man, and a little store, and a church whose white steeple thrust into the sky like a tiny image of the nearby mountains as though to illustrate the difference in scale between God's work and man's. Little Crow was situated in a pass between two mountains, and had a deep gorge on one side.

I sprinted across the town, a trip that would barely take a moment at a slow pace, and nearly flung myself into the gorge. Squinting across, in the twilight, I could make out the unfinished span of a bridge. And on this side I could see fresh and gleaming rails, waiting for the bridge to reach out to them. I whooped, then, and jumped up, dancing at the edge like the Fool in the tarot.

Back at the bar, I got a good meal and drink in exchange for making sure that the bar man's barrels would stay sound, and bolted my food as though I were starving. My head was full of steam and steel, and it screamed with the whistle of a train. I did not take the clean straw at the bar, but instead took my pack and bedded down beside the tracks.

In the morning the train workers emerged from their camp on the far side of the gorge. In the morning I also was able to see that the bridge, instead of being half-finished, was half-destroyed. Far more of it lay in the stream at the bottom of the ravine than spanned it at the top. I made my way across a simple rope bridge that still crossed the gorge, noting my father's mark and charm as I did so, and made my way to the cabins that had been constructed, I presumed, for the engineer and the foreman. The workers watched me as I passed, and murmured to themselves in a language I did not understand but which I presumed was Chinese from their appearance. Two men I took to be the foreman and the engineer were arguing as I approached.

"The reason the bridge fell in yesterday must have been your slipshod work. There can be no other cause." This from a scraggly man with the stub of a pencil tucked behind his ear.

The shorter, stouter man answered him. "Now, it ain't my workers, it's your plan. See, we've built that same damn bridge three times now, and built it well."

"Your workers are all Chinese, and shifty. We can't trust them to do the job."

"Now, don't you go ratting on my workers. They may not be white like you and me, but they work hard, and I check all of the work myself. So if you're saying that I..."

The tall man broke in. "I certainly wouldn't imply any such thing. Perhaps it is merely an unfortunate coincidence that this bridge has fallen into that gorge three times!"

It was at this moment that the taller and scruffier man noticed me, and seized upon my appearance as a way to cut short the argument. "Here now, we have a visitor, and we are ignoring him."

I stuck out my hand. "I'm Ben Conjure."

The scruffy man shook it. "My name is Mister O'Toole, and this is Foreman Giles." I shook his hand as well. "Ah, I should have said, I am the engineer, by which I mean, I plan the bridges."

I nodded. "I am familiar with what engineers do. I'm sorry, but I really couldn't help overhearing. Your bridge keeps collapsing?"

Mister O'Toole rolled his eyes. "Well, it wouldn't, if it weren't for those damn Chinese workers -- "

"How many times do I have to tell you -- "

I spoke quickly to forestall another argument. "I've always been interested in trains. Perhaps I could be of help?"

At this, both men turned back towards me. O'Toole spoke first. "What, if I may ask, profession are you apprenticed to, boy?"

"I'm a conjure man." Mister O'Toole gave a little snort. "But I've read a lot of books about bridges."

"I'm sure you have," said O'Toole, "But this is a matter for expert engineers, not for conjure and superstition. Go back to your woods, and leave the building for real engineers."

I felt my face flush, and muttered some words of excuse before I fled.

Mister Giles caught up with me just on the other side of the gorge.

"Mister Conjure, wait."

I turned. "Do you want to ridicule me more? Laugh at the backwoods conjure man?"

The foreman threw up his hands. "Wait, wait, I didn't run after you to tease you. Since I started working on this line, I've seen some things..."

I blinked as the steam went out of my tirade. He continued.

"About fifty miles back, there's a town by the name of One Horned Cow. We had to run along the side of a mountain to get to it, and the damn thing kept sliding down on the tracks. Well, I was complaining about it at dinner with the minister, and after I did, well, the minister said he would just have to go have a talk with the mountain. I thought it was the most foolish thing I had ever heard, but this was the minister, so what could I say?"

"What happened after?"

Foreman Giles's face took on an expression of wonder as he continued. "Well, the next day, the minister and I went out to the track, and climbed up to almost the top of the mountain. And then he just sat right down and started talking to it, telling it that a train running around it would be like a necklace, make it more beautiful."

I nodded. Sometimes my father would have to talk to the earth, to make it accept a well without caving in on it.

"After that, we didn't have any more trouble with avalanches. So I think maybe it would be worth my while to see what you can do for me, whatever O'Toole thinks."

The next morning's light found me down in the gorge, looking at the foundations of the bridge and the splintered wood of the wreckage. The little stream trickled underneath and through it, conversing happily with itself. The foreman came with me.

"Did you set the foundations on stone? The earth near streams can be shifty."

"That we did, and deep too. Good quality concrete: I mixed it myself."

I picked up the splintered end of a beam. "How about the wood? Was it left to dry, or used green?"

Mister Giles looked a bit injured. "Dry wood, of course. There's nothing wrong with the work on this bridge."

I dropped the wood, and squatted by the water. "How about Mister O'Toole? Has he built many bridges?"

"Well now, I've heard tell he's very good -- and on this line, I've seen him build ten bridges, each one as sound your arm, and not a one the same as the one before. I know I said something about the plans, but I don't really believe it."

I thought back to the books I had read. "Did you see the bridge fall? How did it break?"

Mister Giles thought for a moment. "Well, I saw the second one we built here give way. And I wouldn't swear to this, but I thought right before it went I saw it twist, like the wringing of a hand towel, and then it just plain flew apart in the middle. Damnedest thing I ever saw." He stood for a moment, then continued. "And just before that, I saw a mirage on the bridge, it looked like it was covered with water, and the air was twisting above it. I used to see them when I was working out west, when it was hot as a frying pan."

I felt the world turning from what I had wanted it to be, and sighed. "I think I know what your problem is, then, and it isn't the plans, and it's not the workmanship." Foreman Giles looks puzzled. "I'll show you," I said.

I took from my pack some willow wands and wove them together into a braid. Then I placed two large flat rocks in the stream and the willow braid across them, as a little bridge.

I began to sing in a loud tuneless voice. "This is a bridge, Mister Stream, crossing you from one side to the other. This is a bridge, and people are going to walk across it, high above your water -- "

At this, the bank on one side suddenly caved in beneath the rock, and the willow wands were thrown into the water and swept away. The stream chuckled to itself. Behind me, I heard a rustling sound, and turned.

Mister Giles had just pushed his way through some bushes at the base of the slope, and was standing with his mouth open.

"Mister Foreman," I said, "your problem here is that the stream doesn't want to be bridged. It's a wild mountain stream, and wicked."

The foreman only crossed himself, and said, "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it." We both looked into the stream for a long moment. "What can you do about it?"

"Well, I can try to set my conjure against the stream's. I can ward your bridge, place the signs on it for wholeness, service, and strength. Then we'll see."

Mister Giles nodded, and we both stood quiet again, considering the willow wands as they twirled past rocks in the flow.

I sent word to my father that I had accepted a big job, though not what it was. I wasn't sure he would approve, and in any case it wasn't his business. As the bridge went up again, I was always on it, placing signs and charms on every beam and seeking songs on the nails to guide them to the best holding points. Foreman Giles told the engineer that he had taken me on as a worker, to replace one who had run off the week before, not that one had. Every night I lay in my tent, listening to the incomprehensible speech of the other workers and trying to remember a little more of what my father had taught me.

The bridge grew and took shape over a month, a graceful arch of wood and iron. We reset the foundations and dug them deep, with charms to tie them to the bones of the land underneath. We cut timber, and I sang songs over it to keep it from warping. The Chinese workers soon grew to respect me. They called me "siao hua tuo," which means young doctor. Perhaps part of their respect came from the herbs I gave them to soothe overworked muscles, and from the man who I cured of a coughing flu with boiled medicines.

At the full of the moon, in the middle of the night, the attack came. I suddenly awoke, feeling water washing over my bones, and I knew the stream was trying to destroy the bridge. I leapt from my blankets and raced to the gorge, bare feet twisting and slipping on the gravel. So much of me was in that bridge that I felt each attack as though it were a blow. My feet burned, and my bones ached. I tried to think of words to say to ward off the wild water, but nothing came to me through the pain. For hours I lay there, water washing though my soul and eroding my innards, until almost at dawn half a dozen nails flew out of the bridge, each one feeling as though it were being ripped from my flesh. The arch shuddered once, and then collapsed into the stream. The noise of it brought out the others, and they watched as the last pieces fell into the happy, laughing water. Mister Giles swore, and O'Toole turned on him angrily.

"Damnit, we're going to build this bridge if I have to replace every one of your workers, Jack. I'm not going to be -- "

"I'm telling you, it's not my workers..."

Thankfully, I fainted before I had to hear the rest of that argument again.

I lay with a fever for almost a week, delirious with pain. The foreman put me on the cot in his cabin, and some of the workers tended to me. I would wake up and scream that the water was washing the flesh from my bones, for that is what it felt like to me. And I was cold, cold as a mountain spring, despite a mound of blankets and the fire roaring on a summer night. They kept me filled to the eyebrows with hard liquor, but I couldn't keep anything down but a little water. I was not freed of pain until my father arrived.

I awoke to see him pacing next to me, humming and whistling at the same time and snapping his fingers. When I coughed, he turned to me and saw that I was awake. As I watched, a weight passed from his brow. He finished his song and whisked the air with a dried bunch of flowers before speaking.

"That was foolish of you, to put so much of yourself in a battle against the water. You are lucky that Mister Giles thought to send for me, or the flow would have worn you down until your soul was like a river rock with a hole clean through it." He turned away and left the cabin.

By the next day, I was feeling well enough to walk around, and so I went in search of my father. I found him in Little Crow, stroking the lame leg of a dog, and whistling.

"Father. I worked so hard at that bridge. Why couldn't I keep it up against the water?" He only whistled, and stroked, and patted the dog on its head. "I tried all of the charms I could remember. I sang the songs to make the iron hold true. I did everything I could."

My father stopped, and the dog shook out its leg once, twice, and ran off. He stood.

"And how much did you remember? You never were very much for paying attention. Your head is always full of steam, steam from these foolish trains." I began to bluster, but he held up his hand to silence me. "I think you should just leave this bridge. The mountains don't need the train. The town doesn't need the train. The trees don't need any trains. Leave it as a lesson learned." He walked away.

I ran after him. "That's not fair! How many times have you told me that if you set yourself to do something, you've got to keep going until you succeed?" He continued walking, and I skipped about him like a crow harassing a hawk. "You always wanted me to be a conjure man. Well, now I want to be one, for the first time, and you say I should just give it up?" I screamed at him. "Maybe I should just take the train back down the rails and become an engineer, keep my bridges up the honest way!"

He turned then, his face sad. "That's what you've always wanted, isn't it? You never had the courage to say it, but you have always wanted it. Maybe you should."

It was a few minutes before I could say anything. "Father." He did not turn away. "Father, I don't know what I should do. But I want... I want to keep this bridge up. I want to bring the train to gorge country. And I can't do it myself."

He stood silent, watching me, and said nothing.

"Father, will you help me do this conjuring?"

"If I do, what will you do after the bridge is done? Will you take the train out of the mountains? Or will you stay here and conjure like your father?"

I shook my head. "I can't say. I don't know. But I'll think about it."

He looked straight into my eyes for a moment in thought. "I guess I will, then."

"The secret, or course, is to realize that water is strong. It wears down mountains," Father gestured to indicate those surrounding us, "and digs deep rifts." We were walking along the bottom of the ravine, right under the old rope bridge.

He looked up at it. "I know you don't pay the most attention, but tell me, did you notice many markings on the rope bridge?"

I shook my head.

"That is because they are not needed." He took my shoulder and whispered into my ear. "The stream thinks that the bridge is destroyed. Water is strong, but foolish. And we'll fool it again."

We climbed out of the ravine and went to meet with Mister Giles, who took us both on as workers, again telling the engineer nothing. For a month we worked on the bridge, but during that time my father made no charm and sung no songs aside from what he would do to ease the workers. I watched, and waited for him to do something dramatic, but he didn't.

Finally, the bridge was once again almost complete. Foreman Giles came to us, concerned.

"The bridge is almost finished, and what have you done to protect it?" He wrung his hands. "I know it will fall down again tonight -- this is the farthest we have ever gotten on it."

My father tapped tobacco into his pipe, lit it, and puffed a cloud of smoke before answering. "This bridge... it is built according to the plans of Mister O'Toole, correct?"

Jack nodded, and my father continued. "You must bring us those plans, tonight, at dusk. Then we will fool the water."

"Well, I guess I can take them from the cabin, say I was going to study them for tomorrow."

My father nodded. "Do that. Ben, we must first get some things from the bridge, and make some preparations."

We went to the bridge, and my father took out his knife. He first carved a handful of long slivers from a timber. Then he gathered up some nails, and tore a few strands from a rope.

"Don't just stand there gawping, Ben. Help me gather enough to work with."

I took out my knife and set to work, suddenly understanding.

That night, the foreman brought us the plans, and we crept down into the gorge. With us, we brought candles to see by, and the scraps off of the bridge. At the bottom, Father spread the plans out on a large flat stone, and bent to read them.

"Ben, you sing to the stream, keep it calm and distracted while I work." I splashed my feet into the cold water, and let it play with my toes as I hummed. Father turned back to the plans.

He puzzled over them for perhaps twenty minutes before speaking. "I can't make head or tail of these drawings. I can see the bridge in them, but I can't see how it comes from them." He picked up a scrap of wood and slashed the air with it. "And if I can't see that, the stream won't be fooled."

"Maybe I can try. I've read plans before, in my books."

Father looked at me for a moment, and then threw up his hands as though to say, why not? He took off his shoes and splashed into the water, taking my place. I went to the plans.

They were more complicated than the ones I'd seen in books, for certain, but there was something the same about them as well. As I looked, my hands moved and my knife flickered, building a model, and I sang without words as I worked. I felt the conjuring coming up through me and around me as I had never felt it before. In perhaps an hour, I was done, and father splashed out of the stream. His eyes were wide in the flickering light of the candle.

"You've done it." His voice dropped to a whisper. "This will trick the wild water. Help me set up a base for it." We pulled a few rocks into the stream and set the model on top of them. Father winked at me.

"Oh, Ben!" he said, "Our bridge is done! I'm glad that mean old stream didn't have the chance to wreck it." He smiled at the model, and then leapt across the stream as though crossing over the tiny bridge. "We can cross on it from one side to the other!"

I leapt after him. "Yes sir, this is certainly the finest bridge that I've ever seen. I'm glad we're finished." Father and I leapt back and forth over the little model several more times.

Suddenly, there was a rushing noise, and a burst of water washed over the rocks and swept the little model away.

Again, father spoke loudly, this time with sadness in his voice. "Oh no! Our bridge has been washed away. What will we do?"

I smiled at him, because the water could not see us in the dark. "I don't know, Father. I guess we will just have to give up."

Father nodded, grinning. "Yes, yes. This stream is to strong for us. It is such a wild and noble torrent, we were foolish to ever try to bridge it."

I rolled up the plans, and we crept out of the gorge, suppressing laughter, until when we reached the rim we both had to collapse on the ground howling. In the morning, I myself drove the last nail into the bridge, and then we laid the down the ties and connected rails from one side to the other.

Foreman Giles made sure that I got to ride in the engine of the first train over the new bridge as it steamed proudly into Little Crow. The foreman made the same offer to my father, but he politely declined, saying that his feet were good enough.

Afterwards, the foreman came to talk to me.

"Ben. I know that you are interested in trains and I was thinking..." He brushed his hands on his coat and continued hastily. "I was thinking that my brother teaches at a college back in Philadelphia, and I could have him put in a word for you, maybe even put you up for a while until you could get your bearings?"

My eyes felt as though they had grown as big and round as sunflowers. Mister Giles looked at me expectantly, and I realized I had been standing there for some moments without so much as blinking.

"Yes, Mister Giles, yes, I would very much like that."

He grinned. "After what you've done for me, its the least I could do." He stuck out his hand. I shook it. "You could go in on the very first train, with me, if you want."

"I certainly do!"

Behind me, I heard my father turn to go.

It was late at night when the train started back, but as I was loading my belongings, I saw my father standing by the rails with his tall black hat on his head, long shadow cast ahead of him by moonlight.

"Father, I..."

"You are leaving. Why didn't you tell me?"

"It is my choice." I looked at the ground and continued. "And I didn't want to have to argue with you about it --" I looked up, and suddenly noticed he was nodding in agreement. My words died in my throat.

"It's true I wanted you to become a conjure man." My father walked toward me, taking his battered hat into his hand. "I hoped you would make the same choices I did, but you are not made for them. I hoped those things, but I know it is better that you grow in your own way than that I twist you to mine. My path is a path of wood and water, while yours is the path of steam and iron."

I smiled. "Thank you, Father. I am glad to have your blessing."

He embraced me fiercely. "Take it, then, whatever road you choose to travel. Take my blessing, and take my pride in you."

He held me for a long moment, until the shrill blast of the train's whistle startled the night. I climbed onto the train, and waved at him as it pulled away.

To this day, whenever I finish a bridge, I put my mark and charm on it. And next to those, I put my father's.