A gentle hint of November traveled almost imperceptibly on the steady northwest wind.
“Winter’s coming early this year,” he thought.
It had been years—43 to be precise—since he stood on the Terrytown side of the old Montrieux bridge.
Looking out across the dilapidated structure, disturbing memories came scraping over the bridge’s floorboards traveling alongside the brittle, muted leaves which were now congregating in ever greater numbers.
In theory, it was ridiculously simple. In reality, it was even easier. Just apply a bit of force higher than the center of a man’s gravity and that was it.
Standing silently beneath the grey autumn skies, he could still hear the sound of the old man hitting the dry river bed some 50 feet below.
“It’s not the fall that kills you,” he remembered thinking, “but the sudden stop is a real bitch.”
The local Terrytown paper reported the incident as an accidental fall–one of those unfortunate things that just happen; especially to an old man who spends far too many hours sitting on a bridge’s railing drinking from a paper bag.
Even after all these years, he couldn’t help thinking how different things would have been had the authorities only known that he–one of the town’s golden boys–had pushed a homeless man to his death for no other reason than to see what it was like to watch another person die.
Watching an oak leaf carom off the bridge’s cast-iron railing and disappear over the edge, he further wondered what it would be like to be locked in a free-fall from which there would be no return.
“I guess I’ll find out soon enough,” he thought.
Turning into the teeth of the wind, he cinched his overcoat tight. Heading toward the car, the corners of his mouth broke into a gentle, crooked smile.
Montrieux Bridge, northeast KS
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