villagelogs | Watch that your match doesn't hit that bridge

Entry tags:

Watch that your match doesn't hit that bridge

characters: Raylan, Doc and Malcolm
location: 1306 and then, the Chasm
date/time:Afternoon of day 20
content: Bridge building and possibly bad ideas

If there was one thing that Raylan had that didn't get enough love, it was redneck ingenuity. Ever since he'd seen the chasm and what lay beyond, Raylan was plagued by the best part of humanity, curiosity. People had yelled across the crack, thrown things, god knows what else, but Raylan failed to see a single attempt to cross it. He was sure he wasn't the first to have the idea - not with as many smart people around, but he had the goods to act on it. The wood that he'd collected with Max and with Doc separately, hadn't been a small amount of boards, some of which came with their own nails. A little destruction of a framed wall or two gave up little chunks of 2x4 that he figured would work well for support and several hours in the garage with Malcolm had produced a 'bridge' that was about 14 feet long. He wasn't sure it was long enough but they could see.

"Okay, set your end up on that bucket," he instructed Malcolm with a nod at the reinforced wood that they'd nailed together, lifting his own onto his carefully placed bucket. Malcolm had been a big help, making things move more quickly than he could have alone and he'd well put the man to work holding and hammering. "We just gotta see how much it bends under weight."

He hadn't really laid out what the glorified gangplank was for but that didn't matter, right? Didn't matter that he was going to cross the chasm into unknown territory.

"How much do you clock in at?" he asked Malcolm with a jut of his chin. "We can start with you then go onto me. I figure I got at least a good twenty pounds on ya." No, he really didn't.

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"Covers more ground that way. Pick a house, any house with a garage, scrounge around." The direction came with an aimless waggle of his finger as he broke off towards the far side of the street. Raylan needed the space, without a doubt. More talking was not going to solve the stoked embers in his stomach or the urge to hit something that simmered in his palms.

He wasn't mad at Doc or Malcolm per se; their concerns were valid to a point. Still, more roadblocks did little to help his disposition. He needed a win, any win and felt more than a little strung out by his own frustrations. The silence and isolation, the simple task to busy his hand a welcome distraction from himself was a good thing and he could take out a little steam on things carelessly batted off shelves, like an irritated cat.

Yeah, they don't need to bear witness to Raylan sulking. Doc has fallen into a comfortable kind of quiet on his own, walking around inside an abandoned house, leaving only wet footprints in his wake. He is more careful, picking up and putting down possessions he thinks of as still having an owner that might come back for it. He is used to that vagabond life, drifting from one place to another, never having anywhere to call home or anyone to call family. Not until recently, anyway. With every turn and every unfamiliar piece of technology he comes across it becomes cemented into him how he is always an intrusion on someone else's space. In someone else's timeline. He has broken enough things in his own time, and space. He doesn't need to be breaking more.

He chances upon a good sized reel of rope from a modern galvanised anchor, still on its spool. Turning it over in his hand, he taps it against his palm a couple of times before taking one last look around and stepping outside.

Doc rejoins Malcolm, following his footprints - yes, he's memorised their different footprints - where he can't see the young man's silhouette, and hands him the rope once he's caught up to him.

"Between the three of us, Mister 'Most Expendable', you would have the most experience with restraints to know if this'll snap or hold the weight of the plank." Yeah, Doc knows it'll hold. But he habitually leaves these openings for Malcolm, these little doors ajar for him to sneak a few words in, just the tip of his shoe until he's comfortable to start talking.

Malcolm is always pleasantly surprised when they come to him for any kind of expertise or help. This marks the second time today, after Raylan asked him to help build the bridge.

The house he'd been in had yielded nothing of use, but when Doc hands him the rope, he turns it over in his hands, examining it carefully, pulling on it to test it. Questions from Doc or Raylan were to be given proper consideration, not pat answers.

"Looks like braided nylon rope." He looks at Doc. "Good quality. Suggests nautical applications: anchor line or towing. Makes sense, since we're near the sea. Should hold the bridge easily."

He glances around. Yes, he's looking for Raylan.

"I hope Raylan found something because the house I was in didn't have any."

It was sulking. A private sulking that would let him come back with a little less intensity in his eyes and a little less tension in his jaw. He was being an asshole; he knew it. No reason to take it out on everyone else. It wasn't their fault he wasn't at home, it wasn't their fault he was lonely and frustrated.

Raylan took a few minutes more than needed, just to push and batter himself back down into the box he'd lived in all his life. The garage he'd chosen didn't have much more than some rope meant to hold down a tarp but he brought the messy coil with him as he ambled back towards their primary site. Looked like Doc found something more substantial than what he had - good. Anything to result in less arguements.

"Find somethin' decent?" he asked with a gesture towards the larger coil. "It gonna work for our purpose?"

He purses his lips and nods a few times, seemingly more keen on studying Malcolm than the rope. There may yet be hope to salvage today.

Turning to glance over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps crunching up the snow, Doc steps to the side to give Raylan some space to come in closer.

"It should work fine. Shall we?" He still doesn't have a good feeling about this. He'd gotten an up close and personal look at the extent of Five's bruising, after all. But at least they're likely a safe enough distance away and extending a fourteen footer olive branch should hopefully not provoke that kind of response.

Malcolm watches Raylan for a moment. The Marshal has put a mask on while he was in the house; Malcolm can see he's swallowed the tension that was working his jaw before he left them.

"It's got a little bit of spring in it," Malcolm told him about the rope. "That's good because that makes it more durable. The hardest part is going to be getting it up on its end at the edge."

Raylan looked between them and nodded.

"I figure we tie off the end of the bridge, middle of the rope and have two of us pull on equal sides while the third lifts and pushes. Otherwise we stand it up on this side, have two of us hold the rope ends and slowly lower it. Drawbridge style, like suggested," he said with a gesture towards Malcolm before looking at Doc for his thoughts.

Well it would take a lot of strength to lower it in a controlled, steady fashion. It's heavy and bulky and if anything were to happen to any one of them in the next minute or two, it wouldn't bode well for the other two, or the plank. Doc mulls it over for a bit before nodding a few times.

"That first idea seemed safer. We can nudge it out nice and slow. Soon as it starts to bend, the rope can hold it up."

“For safety we’ll want to make sure we’ve all got a good grip on the rope. If we have to take the weight of the bridge suddenly, it’ll require all of us. If there’s any danger to any of us, we let it fall. Agreed?” Malcolm suggested.

"Sure," Raylan agreed with a gesture towards the damned thing. "Let's get her tied and over. Seems like Malcolm might know a bit more about knots than the rest of us, you wanna take lead on the tyin' off?"

He wasn't trying to say anything but.. Malcolm did have more extensive knowledge on that then they do.

"Sooner we get it over, sooner we can go talk to Five."

Doc is most definitely making a face, the one with raised eyebrows and a teasing little smile as he turns and looks at Malcolm, suggestiveness all but evident in his expression even though he says absolutely nothing, gesturing with his hand to the plank. Why yes Malcolm. Do take lead on the knots.

He plucks his filed down butter knife out from where it's tucked behind his back. It's not as sharp as it needs to be to cut lengths of rope easily but a bit of sawing should still be able to cut through.

Malcolm glances at Doc, but isn’t sure what that look means. He steps over, taking the end of the rope and tying a knot that he knows won’t slip. Cowboy safety remains his priority.

Raylan saw the look too, eyes narrowing a little bit as he tried to figure out what it was. For all the jokes that had been given.. were Doc and Malcolm a Thing? He hadn't specifically avoided thinking about those kinds of possibilities; none of his business and not really a curiosity, but now that the idea had settled down...

Once the rope was measured out, tied and cut, Raylan stood back. "Rope's'll probably take most of the weight towards the ends of it - who wants to take the ass end of this thing?"

Well. With Malcolm believing Raylan and Doc are a thing, Raylan thinking Malcolm and Doc might be a thing, and Doc trying to get Malcolm say his thing to Raylan, they've really come full circle.

"I can do the heavy lifting," he offers as he steps back to give Malcolm some more room to work. "Unless either of you know your way around ass ends better," he quips with a shrug as he starts walking down the length of the plank.

Malcolm still had a little of the nervous energy that the argument had brought to the surface, shifting from one foot to the other, wringing his hands as they decided who would do what, but once Doc took the far end, he looked at Raylan.

"So we're taking the rope?"

Raylan scoffed a sound at Doc's little joke, though it didn't quite make it to his face and he nodded at Malcolm. "If you're happy with the knots, we'll take front end, let Doc take back end and hope."

He picked up his side of the rope and wrapped it around his wrist a few times. "Doc can call start since he's holdin' the back end. Gonna be real weird at the start."

When the other two gentlemen have stepped away from the plank a bit, Doc picks up his end and shifts it so it's pointing straight across the crevice. To give it a hard shove and just keep pushing when the momentum picks up would be easy, but a surefire way to send it flying off their side of the cliff. Making it a controlled, slow and steady extension across is going to take strength and a few long minutes of hands staying plunged in the snow.

Should be fine though. He trusts them. Staying crouched, he waits until they give him a nod or some other recognisable signal before he breathes out a sigh and gets ready to go.

"Let's keep her nice and steady. We go on three." And assuming there aren't any hesitations or protests, he counts them down. "One... two... three."

Malcolm mirrors what Raylan does on his own side, glancing back for Doc's signal, then following their lead.

They manage to get it reasonably lined up and moving steadily, only catching now and then on bumps on the ground or on rocks.

It wasn't as hard as he thought it might be, lifting the end of the bridge up once it was hung over the edge, but it was an interesting way to go, letting a little bit of rope out as Doc pushed. He nodded a little bit at Malcolm now and then, adding, "Alright, slow, slow."

The further they got, the harder it got, forcing him to turn his feet into the snow for better leverage as his shoulders worked. But it looked like it would make it, if they didn't fuck it up.

"Almost there, keep goin'."

As expected, starting her off was easy, but once they reached the halfway mark - took a lot longer than he was expecting; 14 feet's a hell of a lot longer when you're pushing behind it - he's finding he needs to hold it down as much as he needs to push.

It approaches dangerously close to the edge and he's trying not to focus on that,

"Just lift a lil' higher," he says, trying his best to ignore the big gaping hole in the bottom half of his vision and eyeing up how it's holding at the other end. Once it finds some perch on the other side, a hard push gets it firmly across with a foot to spare on either side, and he can heave a sigh of relief. He's probably going to feel it in his knees tomorrow.

"Well that was easy."

Once its seated, Malcolm loosens his grip on the rope a little, looking back at Doc then over at Raylan.

“I hope the last foot of ground on each side is stable. The shadow man won’t be a factor if the edge of the hole crumbles and brings the bridge down with it.”

"Yeah, it coulda done with another couple feet on each end," Raylan agrees as he unwindes and drops the rope, chewing the inside of his lip as he surveyed his work. Not too shabby though, if he did say so himself, to eyeball it so well.

Finally, he looked over at Malcolm before looking at Doc and shifting to face them a little more fully with his body. "The edges should hold. How long we supposed to give him to cross? However much daylight is left?"

God it felt stupid to put this up and then just walk away from it. It felt even more stupid to stand around arguing about crossing it when they were going to start losing light soon.

"Seems alright so far." They haven't seen anything crumble or crack off while they've been here and Doc's stood right at the edge, albeit with his back turned to the crevice. He thinks it's fairly solid, for a medium-term solution for getting across anyway.

"If it doesn't come over in the next few minutes it probably won't be coming over at all, but. We can wait it out." Maybe it'll only come when they leave. No one knows for certain.

"I don't think he's not come over here yet because he can't," Malcolm said. "But maybe he'll cross if he thinks it might stop us from going over there."

"Shoulda brought a bottle of moonshine," Raylan says lowly, hands on his canted hips as he stared across at the house holding the figure at the window. "He ain't gonna come across on his own. He ain't gonna cross at all."

Raylan looked over at Doc. "Let's go talk to Five then, see what he knows and if that figure wasn't out of the house when he got lobbed back over like a tennis ball then I'm comin' back and I'm crossin' this damned bridge." The bridge was gestured at with a finger before he turned on his heel and started back towards town.

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