The Bridges of Madison County

At his home in Bellingham, Washington, Robert Kincaid places photographic equipment, a suitcase, food cooler, and guitar into his pickup truck—he calls the truck “Harry”—and drives east toward Minnesota, stopping now and then to note interesting places or take a quick photo.

A loner and constant traveler, he sometimes wishes for a dog as a companion, but a dog would suffer during his months’-long absences. His itinerant work life already has taken a toll: His wife left him nine years earlier.

Robert stays overnight at a cheap hotel in Kalispell, Montana. He wakes, goes for a jog, and continues eastward. In North Dakota, a “spare, flat country he found as fascinating as the mountains or the sea” (6), he shoots black-and-whites of farm buildings. In Minnesota, he stops at Hibbing to visit the iron mines, then spends time in the beautiful Superior National Forest.

He’d like to be married again, but his work would get in the way. Now and then, he and a woman, a creative director at an ad agency, get together for an evening. One day she said to him that there’s a “creature” inside him that contains his hidden depths, but she can’t reach it. Neither can he, but, as a youth, he collected words that evoked his depths, like “woodsmoke” and “highway” and “ancient,” until his walls were covered with such lists. Despite a high intelligence, as a student he was “indifferent,” and his mother and teachers would meet to discuss his untapped brilliance.

After high school Robert joined the army, where he was assigned to a photographer as his assistant, and he found his profession. After the army, he found work in fashion photography, and he dated some of the models. He moved on to magazine work, but when war intervened, he became a Marine and photographed battles in the South Pacific. After the war, he moved to Washington state and worked for National Geographic, shooting photos around the world.

He drives south from Minnesota and searches for the seven covered bridges in Madison County. He finds six and takes pictures; the seventh, Roseman Bridge, eludes him. He stops at a house to ask directions. A woman rises from the porch to meet him. Something about her makes him do a double take, then a triple. He’s drawn to her. 

At the end of World War II, Francesca—age 25, university-trained, and teaching at an Italian school for girls—agreed to marry the American sailor Richard Johnson because so few Italian men were left alive and unbroken, and because it seemed a sensible marriage. Richard brought her to Iowa, where she raised their children, Michael and Carolyn.

The narrative jumps forward, 20-some years after Robert’s Iowa visit. On her 67th birthday, a rainy morning in autumn, Francesca remembers her husband, Richard, who died eight years earlier, for his “sturdy” and “steady” ways. Friends from nearby visit with cake and conversation. Her children, Michael and Carolyn, called to say what they always say: that they can’t make it this year. They each have busy, successful lives. Though they want her to move near them, to New England or Florida, respectively, she insists on staying in the old Iowa farmhouse.

As she does every year, Francesca brings out a large envelope—mail from Robert Kincaid that includes photos, a manuscript, a copy of National Geographic, some magazine clippings, and a handwritten letter that expresses his love for her and for the “third person we have created from the two of us” (24). One of the photos shows Roseman Bridge; the other portrays her, leaning against a fence post, dressed in t-shirt and jeans. She notices that she appeared very attractive at age 45, better in that photo than any time before or since. Deliberately, she calls to mind every moment of their encounter and every detail of him—the way he touched her, his tall and lithe body with its silvery-disheveled hair, his effortless physical grace, and how profoundly she loved him.

The narrative shifts back to the time of Robert’s visit, as Francesca remembers sitting on the porch, barefoot in jeans and a faded shirt, drinking iced tea, her husband and children away at a state fair, when Robert drives up. She walks down to his truck as he gets out, and something about him reminds her of a shaman. He asks shyly for directions to Roseman Bridge, and “she felt something jump inside” (29). It was atavistic and elemental, simple yet powerful. She tells him the bridge is nearby. On impulse, she offers to show it to him.

She grabs her boots. They drive Harry to the bridge. On the way, Robert explains his plan to photograph the covered bridges for National Geographic. Francesca is strongly aware of Robert’s physical presence. He offers her a cigarette and, for the first time in years, she takes one. He holds the lighter for her; as she lights the cigarette, she gently touches his hand.

They find the covered bridge, and Robert gets out of the car to do some scouting. Francesca watches as he walks down the lane, pulling a camera from a knapsack with a smooth expertise that she finds compelling: “[H]e seemed to move over the ground with unwasted motion” (36). He studies the bridge from different angles and then enters it. Francesca puts on her boots and follows. Inside the bridge, she sees through a crack that Robert is standing below on rocks midstream. He waves and climbs back up.

Inside the bridge he hands her a bouquet of wildflowers as a thank-you. He asks her name, and she tells him. He notices her slight Italian accent. They drive back to her house; she invites him to have iced tea, and he accepts. She has him park his truck behind the house. They go into the kitchen, and she prepares the tea; she feels his eyes on her.

They sit and smoke cigarettes; each time Robert lights a cigarette for her, she touches his hand. He explains further his work as a photographer who travels the world on contract for the Geographic, sells photos to other magazines, and, when the pickings are lean, does corporate photography.

He asks about her life, and Francesca tells him about her degree in comparative literature and her years as a teacher in Italy and Iowa. Her husband Richard prefers, though, to provide for her, so she became a full-time housewife. She likes Iowa—the people are hard-working, friendly, and helpful—but it’s not her dream life. This is the first time she has admitted it to anyone.

She invites him for dinner, and he accepts. She suggests pork chops and garden vegetables, but he’s not a meat eater, so she tells him she’ll get inventive. He goes out to the truck to manage his film stock while Francesca goes upstairs to shower. She peers out a window and watches him wash up and shave at a hand pump, his lean body different from the slightly soft ones of Iowa men. Francesca dresses simply and ties her hair back loosely but adds a touch of perfume. She puts on the hoop earrings that Richard deplores.

Downstairs, Robert cleans his Nikon cameras at the kitchen table. He offers Francesca a beer from his cooler, and they toast the day. She goes out to the garden to collect items for dinner. Robert watches her leave; already he struggles with his strong attraction to her sensuality, intelligence, and something else he can’t quite name. She returns with the vegetables. He offers to help, and she sends him for a watermelon and potatoes just outside. He gathers them quickly, his movements so smooth she thinks briefly of him as “ghostlike.”

They stand side by side, chopping vegetables. Francesca switches on a small table radio to a Country music station and turns the volume down. She mentions the guitar in his truck; he brings up his musician ex-wife, and she feels a stab of jealousy. He talks of “making” pictures rather than taking them like an amateur, and how he’ll turn the covered bridge into something different that reflects his own perspective. He often struggles with magazine photo editors, whom he considers artistically timid.

Listening, Francesca realizes that Robert lives in a world much more adventurous, and more creatively literate, than her life of farms and families and little romance of any kind.

They sit while the stew simmers. The kitchen feels quiet and intimate. She tells him about her life in Italy, and about her current family. All this personal talk makes her feel guilty. When the food is ready, they eat, and Robert compliments her twice on her cooking. 

Francesca doesn’t know what to do next. Robert solves the problem by asking her to go for a walk with him. They step out onto the pasture just after sunset, the moon high in the east. He looks up, talks about the quality of light at dusk, and quotes a poem: “The silver apples of the moon / The golden apples of the sun” (61). She says it’s by Yeats—a poet she tried, without success, to teach to Iowan children years earlier—and she feels moved that he appreciates such things.

They return to the house. Francesca pulls out the never-opened brandy bottle and the unused brandy glasses. Robert watches her, suddenly wanting her in his arms; he unsuccessfully struggles to brush the thought away.

He rises to leave—he must be up early to shoot the bridge at dawn—and thanks her for the fine evening and the brandy. Privately, he wants to shout at her husband to wake up and appreciate her, but instead he walks out to the truck. Francesca follows and they say a demure goodbye. She watches as he drives away. Back inside, she strips naked and examines her body in a mirror, deciding she still looks good. Her husband only wants perfunctory sex once every several months; she’s his “business partner” more than anything else. She yearns for more.

Francesca dresses, writes a note, and drives it to Roseman Bridge, where she tacks it up for Robert to find in the morning.