Crossing King Philip’s Bridge, he recalled, from a high school history class, King Philip’s ultimate fate. How his uprising was put down by the colonizers and how Philip, also known as Metacomet, was subsequently beheaded, his skull displayed on a stake for twenty-five years as a warning to other Native chiefs against reclaiming their lands. He felt every footstep over the rail ties as he crossed, wood cut from another time, hammered into place to carry the living toward whatever traps them.
