The Bridge
Nate Detty

Stan walked slowly along the side of the bridge, pulling
his long trench coat tighter around his torso in a futile attempt
to keep out the bitter cold. It was a beautiful night. A crescent
moon hung in the clear, dark blue sky. The only obstruction to
his view of the stars was the faint glow of light pollution which
perpetually fogged the city’s nightscape. The impediment to the
stars made him miss home more than anything else. He closed
his eyes as he walked and pictured the night sky back home.
His thoughts inevitably turned to a quick drive out into the
countryside, to parking on the river bank and lying in the bed of
his old Chevy with Valerie, his high school sweetheart, while The
Killers’ “Midnight Show” played in the cab, and they looked up at
those stars.
He stopped walking and leaned on the railing of the bridge
as he thought about that night and what it had meant. He had
been sixteen. His driver’s license had been still warm from the
printer when he stuffed it into his pocket and jerked the keys
from his father’s hand before he ran out the door to that white
truck. He barely heard his father shout something about twelve
o’clock somewhere behind him. Being the first with the freedom
garnered by the possession of a license, he went out with the
boys first. They did what teenage boys typically do with a 4×4
in rural Nebraska: they tore through muddy fields; they spun
the tires on the gravel roads; they even hit a crossroad with
enough speed to get all four of those tires off the ground. After
dropping his friends off one by one, he drove to Valerie’s and
parked up the street, close enough to see the window of her
basement bedroom but far enough that he wouldn’t be noticed
by her parents. He had thought it would take more effort to
convince her to sneak out and go for a drive, but one text was all
it had taken. He remembered the rush he felt when he saw her
window open while he was still waiting for her reply, the way his
nervous energy encroached upon crippling fear and mingled with
uncontrollable excitement to make his heart race like it never had
before and rarely had since. They drove through the country in
silence, his arm around her, her head on his chest, the windows
down, and the cool summer wind flowing through the cab.
They spent the rest of the night under the stars in the bed of his
truck where they made awkward love for the first time in their
young lives. She cried after, he told her he loved her, and then he
held her as they looked up at the stars until the first rays of the
morning’s light began to taint the night. His dad was waiting
up for him when he got home, and that violation of his father’s
trust had earned him another six months before he was allowed
to drive again. “Worth it” was how he had always finished telling
that story.
Now, eighteen years later, he stood in the middle of a
bridge on the other side of the state, staring out at a freezing,
motionless river flanked on either side by the twinkling lights
of two different cities, desperate to remember how he had felt
that night and wishing he could see the night sky over his home
town just one more time. He placed his hands on the railing
and leaned out to look down at the half-frozen water. He had
reached the middle of the bridge before stopping, just far enough
from either side that the reflections of the light didn’t reach
where he stood. Instead, he gazed down at a smooth sheet of
unforgiving darkness. How cliché this is, he thought as he stood
there, unsure of whether he was attempting to gather the courage
to jump or to walk away. He lost himself as he stood there and
drifted away from reality. Clarity left his thoughts, replaced by an
indistinguishable murmur that drowned out the shuffling noises
of an approaching visitor. He had no way of knowing how long
he had stood there when a sudden, unexpected, deep and harsh
voice spoke up, bringing him back to reality, “You gonna jump?”
He snapped his head to the side to see a homeless man
standing before him. The man had long, graying brown hair that
was dirty and unkempt, with a long scraggly beard to match.
He wore a light green coat that was too big for his frame and
stained in too many places to count. His jeans and shoes, just as
dirty as his coat, were ragged and holey, and his smell of booze,
sweat, smoke, shit, and piss pierced even the dead winter air. In
one hand he carried a fast food cheeseburger with one bite taken
out of it, the greasy paper wrapper folded back to reveal the
greyish meat, and in the other, he carried a cheap plastic bottle of
whiskey. The lid was missing.
“Who the hell are you?” Stan asked, ungrateful for the
company.
“I’m Frank,” he said. “You gonna jump?” Frank asked again.
“That’s the plan,” Stan said before he turned back to the
river.
From the corner of his eye, Stan saw Frank follow his gaze
and look down over the bridge at the cold, murky river and take
an eager bite of cheeseburger.
“What a cliché,” Frank said around his mouthful of halfchewed burger.
“I thought the same thing,” Stan said.
They stood side by side looking out over the water, silent
except for the smacking of Frank’s lips as he hungrily devoured
an obviously infrequent meal.
“Are you going to try to stop me?” Stan asked without
looking up from the river.
“Nah, man. I’m just here for the show,” Frank said.
Stan chuckled and noted the lack of any real effect the
stranger’s contempt had on his resolve. From the corner of his
eye he saw Frank take the last bite of his burger, wipe his mouth
on the back of his hand, crumple up the paper, and toss it over
the side of the bridge. Together, they watched it drift down to the
river. Once the wrapper reached the water, Frank put the whiskey
bottle to his lip, tilted his head back, and took a long pull before
he let out a rasp of breath and shook his head.
“Why, though?” Frank asked.
“Why what?” Stan asked, although he knew what Frank
meant.
“Why you wanna kill yourself, man. Why you gonna jump?”
Stan took a deep breath and kept his gaze fixed on the
river. The two men once again stood in silence, Frank taking the
occasional pull from his bottle, Stan contemplating the answer to
Frank’s question.
“It’s not what you think,” Stan finally said, his eyes not
moving. “I’m not depressed, or sad, or lonely, or any of that shit
people always assume when someone kills themself.”
Frank looked at Stan, then down at the river. “You sure,
man?” he asked.
Stan’s stare never left the water as he once again thought
about the night with Valerie in the bed of his truck. He saw that
night as the last time he had felt hope for his future, the last time
he had felt excited and eager about what life had in store for him,
the last time he had seen tomorrow as a wonder instead of just
another chore to be done.
“I’m sure,” Stan answered. “I was happy once. I’ll spare
you the details, but I lost that. I sank into a depression that
has consumed most of my adult life. It went away. I can’t
even remember when, but I woke up one day, and I wasn’t
sad anymore. Nothing replaced that. I haven’t had a genuine
emotion in years. Nothing makes me sad, nothing brings me joy,
nothing excites me, disappoints me, intrigues me. Nothing. The
realization that I’ve already experienced the best my life has to
offer had no effect on me. Not even the prospect of ending it can
phase me now. But I go out every day and put on this fake smile
and go through my life like the good little boy I am supposed to
be. That facade is freaking exhausting, and I’m tired. I’m just…”
He took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and hung his head.
“Tired.”
“That’s messed up, man,” Frank said.
Frank took another pull from the bottle and held it out for
Stan. Stan took his own long pull, handed it back to Frank, and
the two once again stood in silence staring at the river. After
several minutes, Frank gestured towards the river where he had
thrown his wrapper and then spoke.
“That’s the first thing I’ve eaten in weeks,” he said. “It’ll give
me diarrhea later, and I won’t have it in a bathroom or any toilet.
No, I’ll be doing that squatted down in some alleyway, praying
like hell that I don’t get caught, that no one sees me having
diarrhea all over their alleyway and tries to chase me away with a
broom. You ever try to run away from someone who’s hitting you
with a goddamned broom while you’re having diarrhea? No, you
haven’t. You get it all over yourself.” He paused. “I tell ya, man. I
don’t like smelling like shit.”
Frank reached into his deep coat pocket and pulled out
a lighter and a cheap pack of cigarettes. From the pack, he
produced a cigarette that looked as though it had been rolled in
grocery store bag paper. He lit it up, took a long drag, and let the
smoke out into the night.
“Three of my toes are black,” he continued. “I think it’s
frostbite. The hospitals are required to treat me, and by that, I
mean, I’ll lose my toes. If I’m lucky, I’ll keep my foot. I’ll get
a few hours in a warm bed, probably a meal or two, but as fast
as they can, they’ll throw me back out to freeze off more body
parts.” He paused to take another drag of his cigarette and
went on. “You know that bar, Tarts, I think it’s called, right up
the street from here? No, you probably don’t. That’s not your
scene. Anyways, you don’t even want to know what I did for
thirty bucks out back of Tarts tonight. Thirty bucks, man. That’s
apparently what my dignity costs now, and no one looks me
in the eye. Not even you, man. How messed up is that? Here
you are ready to jump off this bridge, to kill yourself, and still
thinking you’re too good to even look me in the f***ing eyes.”
There was another long silence and the two men stood
shoulder to shoulder as Frank’s words hung in the air. “Are you
gonna jump?” Stan asked Frank, breaking the silence.
Frank looked at Stan, flicked his cigarette out over the
bridge and answered, “Not a chance man. I’m full tonight. The
whiskey keeps me warm. I got smokes. I got like seven bucks
left. I’m fine.” He reached his hand up and patted Stan on the
shoulder. “You’re tired,” he said. “You got it rough, my brother.”
Frank patted Stan’s shoulder one last time and walked
behind him. Before walking away, he placed both hands on the
railing, leaned over it, and looked straight down.
“It’s pretty deep here, man,” he said and pointed towards
the bank. “You may want to head towards the side, aim for the
rocks, you know?”
Stan stood in silence as he watched Frank slowly saunter
down the bridge and out of sight without looking back. It wasn’t
what Frank had said that angered Stan, or the way Frank had all
but dared him to go through with it. It was the way that Frank
had walked away without even looking back that really pissed
Stan off. Who the f*** is this guy, Stan thought, seething over the
thought of Frank daring him to kill himself and then walking
away so nonchalantly, as though his actions had no consequences.
Stan wondered if Frank would feel any remorse if Stan did jump.
Stan imagined the outcome of his jump. He pictured Frank
walking along the bank of the river in the morning light still
carrying the bottle of whiskey, the lid still missing. He saw Frank
look out into the shallow river, and he saw Frank’s unshifting
expression when he noticed Stan’s broken body lying mangled
and lifeless amongst the rocks in the shallow water. He watched
as his imaginary Frank waded into the frigid water, inching
closer to Stan’s body until he could see it bloating and the skin,
much paler in death, puckered from bathing in the cold water.
He imagined Frank kneeling down next to the body as if in
remorse. Then Stan’s imaginary Frank suddenly reached out
and pulled the wallet out of the lifeless Stan’s back pocket. Stan
couldn’t even imagine someone caring about him.
He turned back to the river, unable to think of anything
but Frank. He wondered where Frank had wandered off to,
how Frank would be spending his evening. Again, he was able
to imagine Frank very clearly. This time, though, Stan couldn’t
help but imagine Frank waddling down an alleyway as fast as he
could with his pants around his ankles, losing his bowels behind
him as he fled from an old woman in a black, ankle length dress,
her long gray hair tied up in a bun and swinging a broom at the
defecating runner as she screamed, “You get out of here, you
filthy man!”
It started as a single chuckle. The involuntary lurch in his
ribs and chest seemed almost foreign to him. Then came another
slightly larger lurch, and a gleeful sound escaped his lips. Slowly,
he started to recognize the undeniable signs of a serious case
of the giggles. He tried to stop them, but again saw the absurd
scene of Frank trying to pull his tattered pants up as he ran away
from the angry old woman, and he lost it. The giggles grew into
raucous, guffawing laughter, and soon Stan was doubled over
in the middle of the bridge, holding his ribs with one hand and
the railing of the bridge with the other, laughing uncontrollably.
He laughed loudly and violently, like a man who had finally lost
his fledgling grip on reality. He laughed until it hurt, until his
throat was raw, and the guffaws turned into coughs and desperate
gasps for air. He laughed until the heaving and lurches made
his ribs ache. He laughed until his aching ribs, raw throat, and
coughing brought tears to his eyes, and then he cried. He gave in
immediately when the tears started. He dropped to his knees and
wept in great heaving sobs.