Michael Malone - Weebly

Without speaking, Polly Hedgerow and Luke
Packer walked side by side along the rotary that circled
the town green where Elijah Dingley sat, still laughing
despite the disasters that had set upon his namesake.
Under heavy rain and heavy traffic, Falls Bridge had
finally given way and tumbled down the waterfall, just
as everyone had been predicting it would do for
decades, and its splintered beams now bobbed in the
Rampage. Carl Marco had already intimated privately
to Arthur Abernathy, first selectman, his willingness to
replace the loss with a modern bridge entirely at his
own expense, a new old-fashioned Marco Bridge to
welcome the world to Dingley Falls.
Apart from the bridge, Dingley Falls looked the
same, but nothing was as it had been. Stores and offices
wore mourning. Wreaths, donated by Carl Marco,
marked the doors of the police station where death,
passing by, had paused. At Arthur Abernathy's order,
the flag of Dingley Falls's post office (which, the town
was surprised to hear, it would soon be losing because
the government was losing money on it), the flag that the
postmistress had raised each work day for eleven