Bridge over Yoknapatawpha River Anse couldn’t cross in As I Lay Dying (Location)

Reached by a lane that goes past Tull's house and barn, the bridge was built in 1888, and "the first man to cross it was Peabody coming to [Billy Varner's] house when Jody was born" (89). It is at this site that the Bundrens have to reckon with the flood. Despite Whitfield's reports that the the bridge is out they seek to cross there. When they arrive they find, at the end of Tull's lane and between the swollen levees, the bridge is "mid-sunk and logs and such drifted up over it and it swagging and shivering like the whole thing would go any minute" (124). Even in its ruined state, however, it still recognizable: "But it was still whole; you could tell that by the way when this end swagged, it didn't look like the other end swagged at all: just like the other trees and the bank yonder where swinging back and forth slow like on a big clock" (138). Near the bridge is the ford by means of which people got across the river before 1888. Now it is hard to find and risky to use, but Darl recognizes that they are on the ford when "I felt the current take us and I knew we were on the ford by that reason. . . . What had once been a flat surface was now a succession of troughs and hillocks lifting and falling about us, shoving at us, teasing us with light lazy touches in the vein instants of solidity underfoot" (147-48).