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Beneath the Red Bridge

Jon Brunette

    When his friends yelled, John stood on the old metal pipeline and tightened his ratty tennis shoes. He took off his shirt and threw his baseball hat. Wobbling, John leaped off the platform. Waving behind him, he held his hands upward. After his body suspended just off the rail, he plunged into the water. Quickly, his eyesight blurred into black shadows and his limbs moved painfully. A pinprick told him that a sunfish jabbed its fin into his foot through his shoe. When he popped back, he belched liquid. A tree limb brought him to the muddy shoreline.
    John stood on Red Bridge with his female friend. With her, all anxiety evaporated into a shallow puddle below the sunshine of her friendship. After he admired the lake, he said, “When I first jumped off that platform, I had never jumped off a bridge before.” He said, “My friends had all jumped; naturally, they wanted me to jump.” He said, “They had all jumped off Arcola Bridge, too. I’d die if I jumped off Arcola Bridge.”
    Sasha looked at the lake below a ribbon of moonlight. “If I jumped off a bridge, I’d drop as quickly as a brick. I can’t doggy-paddle or float properly.” She said, “When I had to swim in school, I always held the rail; I just walked until I couldn’t anymore. Everyone had to swim in the pool; otherwise, they failed the class.” She bowed her head as though it still embarrassed her. “Mostly, I just sat on the bench.”
    John said, “I’ll teach you to swim.” He said, “In return, you teach me what you taught Wolf.” Sasha lifted an eyebrow. John said, “I heard about you and him; he told me what you did to him. Why won’t you take me to bed?” John said, “Unlike him, I haven’t walked that bridge yet. And I lost a lot of friends when you and Wolf did; my buddies”—he snorted—“took his side. How could I defend you?” When Sasha shook her head, her friend held her arms tightly. “Why not touch me like you touched him?” He said, “I’ll learn eventually; in fact, I’ll probably learn from you.” He said, “Why should I wait?”
    “I won’t take anyone to bed anymore.” Sasha said, “I won’t get pregnant before college like my friends did.” She said, “I’ll live in celibacy until I die—or, at least, until I find a husband.” Keeping her eyes off John, she sat on the pipeline. Her feet slipped; she repositioned her body. “Why’d he tell you anyway?”
    With his body tense and his face hot, John pushed Sasha off the metal platform. As she yelled shrilly, pollen blew off a thousand dandelions, insects flew everywhere, and the knobby branches around Red Bridge billowed loudly in the breeze. When Sasha hit the water, John walked back to his Ford. While he sat on the hood, he bowed his head. Finally, he crept towards the rustic edge. Below a spiral of liquid, Sasha had disappeared completely.
    He walked off the bridge. As he did, a branch brushed his back. The clammy object stopped his feet as if he stood in thick mud. Wet leaves brushed his neck with the fluffiness of cotton not the slipperiness of plant. Slowly, he turned to look at the wet and brittle branch. Expecting a tree, he looked into the black eyes of Sasha. Below her hollow eyes, which looked as lifeless as her body, her slack mouth dribbled thick knots of seaweed. Gurgling filthy water, she spoke throatily, and from the Bible: “‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’”
    Before the tender heart broke inside the teenager, John spoke as someone condemned by a jury before the lethal juice killed him. He said, “Now, I’m truly alone.”

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