At The Old Wood Bridge

The rain had already drenched her clothes. She walked with her head down, her saturated hair hanging over her face, and she had her arms wrapped tight around her torso to keep herself warm. She glanced up only slightly as she came to the bridge, trying to judge how much longer she would have to walk before she was home. That’s when she saw the man.

               

He was standing with his hands pressed flat on the railing of the wooden bridge. His shoulders were tense and his jaw was set and his eyes had this fiery kind of determination blazing in them. She paused for a moment and bit her lip as she watched him. He glanced over his shoulder and she offered up a weak smile but he didn’t seem to see her. He curled his fingers around the rail and hoisted himself up. Slowly, he stood up, the whole bridge seeming to creak and sway underneath his weight.

               

“Excuse me,” she said, the wind carrying her voice to him. He turned his head towards her, the movement making him loose his balance for a moment. He held his arms out to his sides until he was steady again and then he looked at her.

               

“Oh,” he said, a tiny sound that she barely heard.

               

“What are you doing?” she called out. She took a few steps closer to him and pushed her rain-soaked hair behind her ears so that she might be able to see him better.

               

“I…” His voice trailed off and his eyes left her face. She followed his gaze down to the angry river. The water was leaping over the many rocks protruding from the surface and the large amount of rain the clouds released was making the riverbanks overflow. Her eyes widened in quiet realization.

               

“You’re weren’t going to jump,” she said, practically pleading him to say no. Their eyes locked again and she saw a deep sadness shimmering in pools of blue. “Were you?”

               

“I don’t know what else to do,” he whispered. She stuffed her hands inside her pockets as the rain began to pound down harder around them.

               

“Come down,” she offered. “You could talk to me, if you wanted to.”

               

He was silent and for a long while the only sounds she could hear was the pitter-patter of the rain and the ferocious roaring of the river. She shifted her weight between her feet and looked away from him for a few minutes as if that might make his decision easier. A different sound floated into her ears- heavy breathing and boots scraping on wood. She glanced over to see that he had climbed down from the railing. He had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his dark hair was matted from the rain and there was such a sadness hovering around his body.

               

“Why did you want to do it?” she asked. For a moment, she thought that maybe she hadn’t actually voiced the question. She thought it might still be swimming somewhere in the confines on her mind because he wasn’t responding. Right when she was about to repeat herself, he spoke.

              

“You ever have anyone make fun of you?” he asked. She shrugged her shoulders.

               

“I guess,” she said. “Mostly when I was younger. It was just silly kid stuff, though.”

               

A hallow laugh escaped his lips. “Ever feel like an outcast?”

               

“All the time,” she said with a knowing smile playing across her face. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

               

“My parents died when I was younger,” he admitted. “And I went from foster home to foster home. Nobody ever really wanted to adopt me, so I just kept on going from home to home. I was too old to adopt, that’s what a lot of people seemed to think. When a couple is looking to adopt they’re usually looking for a baby who they can really raise as their own. They don’t want someone who’s already half-way grown up.”

               

He fell silent. The rain seemed to let up a bit. She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off.

               

“I used to be teased all the time. With every new home I went to there was a new school to attend and even though the building was different and the teachers were different and the classes were different, the kids were always the same. They’d laugh at me for being the new kid. They’d watch me go home with my foster parents and they’d talk about how I looked nothing like them. I didn’t fit in anywhere.”

               

“Didn’t you ever pray?” she asked. “Talk to God? It can make all the difference sometimes. I think it’s because he’s always there and he’s always ready to listen to you.”

               

“I gave up on God a long time ago.” He glanced down at the river, staring intently at the raging water. “When I outgrew the system I got a low paying job and lived in a crappy apartment and I just tried to start over. But, you know, you can never count on the world to support you. When the stock market crashed and the economy went hell my job cut back on pay and I didn’t know how to make ends meet. So I came out here.”

               

“You thought ending it was your best option?” she inquired. He shook his head.

               

“I don’t know what I thought. I just knew that something had to be better than this.”

              

“But death?” she questioned. He shrugged.

               

“Worth a shot, I guess,” he replied. “So what about you? What’s your story?”

               

“I don’t really have one,” she said.

               

“Well what are you doing out here?” he wanted to know. “You going someplace?”

               

“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “Sometimes it’s nice to just take a walk in the rain.”

               

“Oh yeah? Seems pretty depressing to me.”

               

“Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” she said. The corners of the man’s mouth twitched up into a smile.

               

“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose that’s true.”

               

The rain had lightened up a lot at that point. There was just a little drizzle now, small raindrops dancing all around them. The river was calming down and the songs of the birds were starting to drift out into the air, like the strings of a harp plucked at random. A few rays of golden sunlight were struggling to be seen behind the dreary gray clouds.

               

“You should go home,” she told him.

               

“Why’s that?” he said. She smiled up at him.

               

“It don’t think you’re going to go through with it,” she said. “Go home. Get warm. It looks like the worst is pretty much over for you, don’t you think?”

               

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think it is. Thanks.”

               

She shook her hand and waved her hand at him. “Don’t thank me,” she said.

               

He nodded his head and turned on his heel, walking off the bridge and beginning his journey back home. She watched his back as he left and suddenly she realized she had one more thing to say.

               

“Sir?” she called out. He stopped in his tracks and turned his head to look at her.

               

“Yeah?”

               

“Just because you gave up on God doesn’t mean he ever gave up on you.”

               

The smile he gave her was more radiant than the sun, which was now parting the clouds in the sky and shedding warm, beautifully light down on the bridge.

               

“I’ll remember that,” the man said. She nodded her approval and he turned around again and walked away. And when the man was out of sight, she looked up into the sky, squinting her eyes against the near-blinding light of the sun.

               

“How’d I do?” she asked and she could have sworn the sun’s rays stretched down a little farther to touch her shoulders lightly, rewarding her for a job well done.

Author's Note

Sometimes the angels wait until we're in our greatest time of need. And then they fly down right when we need, with the perfect words to help us through our lives.

This was written for a theology project, and I wasn't expecting to love it as much as I do <3 Based on Jeremiah 7:3-7. Comments and crit greatly appreciated, my friends :)