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Tuesday, 19th July.
The man, when I first saw him, sat above The Aeu. The bridge he was perched on was crumbling, the bottom made of brick and coloured red where the overlay and tack coat had worn thin. From beneath the bridge, on the left bank, a fire raged. It spewed thick smoke through the riled air and into the face of the figure on top.
From his arms, an infant girl – swaddled in a leather coat – clutched onto his hair. Her eyes were most of her, in my memory, so strikingly green that they seemed to clash with the dust in her hair and her unpigmented skin. She never babbled. On first glance, she seemed content to simply exist without fuss or displeasure. It was hardly worth it, in my mind, to look again but I did and, on second glance, she was crying softly into his shoulder. It was so unlike an infant that it took me by surprise, and I stopped in my tracks, my drenched tarpaulin bag clenched tightly in my fist.
I was watching off the side of the bridge long before the man arrived. I watched him watch me with curiosity, wondering why, how, when, who. But he knew, as I did, that no answers would be granted. Each wreckage I saw, floating down the river, held something I believed I had forgotten.
Memory is a funny thing, really. When you think about it deeply and realise that you’ve hardly any control over what that thing in your head deems important or not. In school, I had never been a man with good habits. Not that I was terrible, at least I hoped not, but that it never occurred to me to try being anything other than mediocre – I faded into the background. Maybe, it occurs to me now, it doesn’t matter to be thinking of the past.
Still, I looked over the bridge, into the water that snapped at my feet, and I counted each wreckage. I did this for a while. Long enough to get to about two hundred. Then I lost count and started over.
A roof tile. A single roof tile. Really, as I’ve mentioned, it’s silly what sparks a memory.
But a roof tile is what my brain decided on.
I remembered my best friend. We grew up together, Sam and me. We walked for hours, often waiting for each other perched over the same bridge. He was two years younger than me, I’d tease him for it endlessly, but somehow still taller. I would always conveniently forget that when we fought. I don’t suppose he’s alive anymore, probably not.
One day, we were on my roof, watching the stars. There was this one tile we had to be careful of but there was a fence along the edge of the roof leading on to the gutter, so we didn’t think it was dangerous. We had brought a telescope but found it was far too hard to position correctly while balancing it on our knees and we ended up getting a clearer view without it. Sam was always claiming to know the stars, I don’t think he knew I knew the real star names. I just liked to hear his voice. He would go on for hours, with fake facts and stories that I know he pulled right from the air around us.
At some point, bearing in mind that we were two teen boys who were drunk on whatever we’d found that night, I must have said something daring. Next thing I know, he was close to chucking himself off the roof to prove a theory. I didn’t know what to do so, with decidedly un-sober hands, I grabbed his leg. Well jokes on me, I managed to pull him back to between us, where he landed on the one loose tile we’d been avoiding and slipped. Sam fell right off the roof and landed headfirst in a bush. He survived, thank God, but we both got a real scolding when we came back in drunk as all-hell raving about some: ‘He’s dying!’
I loved that man.
After the roof tile, after I realised why that memory sparked, more kept coming. A window box, a knitted doll, a book and then a few more.
The doll took me by surprise the most. For one, I would have assumed it would sink in the water, but then what do I know? I’m no scientist. And two, I thought, seeing it out the corner of my eye, that it was my childhood doll.
I don’t even know why I got a doll. My father was never the type to get one for me, neither was my mother. So, in all honesty, I have no clue where I got it from either. But I had it, whether I knew why or not, and I was attached to this thing. It was old, tattered. One old eye, one I can only assume used to be a button based on the other one, was missing. The hair was thready at best, and she looked like she was balding. Still, I was attached to it.
It was thrown out when I was seven. Like I said, my parents had never been the type to break free of the stereotypes. They replaced her with a flurry of other objects and things that I can’t remember because they never quite held the same importance in my mind. I threw a funeral for the thing, lighting a candle and stealing a plate and sending it off down the river with prayers and well wishes to her soul. After that, I never quite connected with my parents again, at least not in the same way I used to.
I believe her name was Margaret.
The window box struck me as odd too, I think that’s why I still remember it even now. It struck me as odd because, as opposed to the others, no one story fell on it. It simply felt nostalgic in a way that stuck me right between the ribs.
If all I have is time though, I suppose an attempt to narrow it down might help.
I guess it would be my girlfriend. More so, the image I loved her for.
Elenor wasn’t my first girlfriend, not some childhood friend. She was more recent; someone I’d met who, for the first time, seemed to clash with me in just the right way. We saw eye to eye when we needed to.
The first time we went out, I was attempting to escape through my window. In the movies they always make it seem so easy, but my attempt was the furthest from it. At first it was the window itself. I didn’t notice it until the next day but the stone she threw had cracked the glass, if only a little. Not that it mattered, it didn’t seem to faze my mother. Then the mechanism of the window. It didn’t open all the way, one of those ones that open just a little bit to let the air flow. But I’ve mentioned I was short, and I may have mentioned being thin for my age. It wasn’t even an issue.
We got out, eventually, going to sit on the bridge over the Aeu. We’d brought a candle but ended up using our torch. It was less romance, more flinching at every noise that could be one of our parents. We never got caught though. I think if we were, they found it cute more than anything. Young love, naïve love.
The window box, that was my point. I really should get to that now before I run out of time.
Elenor loved to garden. The first time I ever met her was with a shovel in hand, attempting to plant some Azalea in her window box. She looked so happy, smiling, eyes slightly crinkled and the sun on her skin. Elenor was beautiful.
And before she left, she asked I remember her like that, like we used to be. So I’ll be gracious and spare you the details of the fights. That’s not what I want to remember now anyway.
I’m running out of time here.
I took a step closer to the silhouetted man. He saw me out of the corner of his eye, I know he did. And I saw his face, all red and foggy in the haze blowing east from behind him and his eyes were red-rimmed with tears.
I dropped my bag to the floor with a soft sound and knelt beside it. With my sight fixed on the man with the child, I fumbled with the zip for quite some time before standing back up. It was open, all I needed to do was reach in… but something held me back. Something told me to refrain, whether it be the smoke clouding my judgement or divine intervention. Something told me to talk to him.
I turned to face the watching man as he climbed the steps beside me. I don’t know why I did that, to be honest. Some sort of empathy for the guy, knowing what he came here to do. He sat down beside me and Erin stared at him with wide eyes, like she used to do with me. Those beautiful green eyes I’m not afraid to admit I cried at the first sight of.
He wasn’t sitting close, not close enough to be a threat, and there seemed to be no weapons in his reach.
“Hello.”
It felt too simple for the man in his camo-print, with his bag and his ideals and his backup. He wasn’t the man I had imagined and built up in my mind. He was just a man. But I didn’t say anything back to him, my focus never left him but my eyes still faced forwards. It wasn’t a bitter action to him. I knew exactly what would happen if he left orders incomplete.
And I don’t know why I chose that moment, but I turned to face my village down the Aeu.
The places I knew, the ones I grew up in, up in flames and crackling softly by the echoes I heard in the valley. The school I learned in, the church I prayed in. My last prayer, wasn’t it for peace?
I watched, aghast, as the remnants of my life were discarded down the river. Of course, I knew it had been happening. I knew I had only minutes to live before the men hunted me down. That was why I came here.
I don’t know what I expected.
The man chose then to turn around.
Every instinct hard-wired into me told me to fight back, but this wasn’t the full-frontal attack they’d trained us for. Instead he simply… stared, looking off into the distance at our work. In horror, in contempt. But he wasn’t fighting, he wasn’t the violent man I’d been expecting. He was just a man.
Then, to my surprise, he offered me the child.
The decision felt final. Before, there was a feeling – if a small feeling – that I could escape. That there was a chance to. After handing over my child, the only thing left to tether me here, I felt it all. The impending doom and the knowledge that today would be a very special day.
In the fear, there was a strange relief. One that felt like I’d chosen well, that my child would grow up.
He held her out to me and I, mustering all my courage, held her against my chest. The coat smelled like smoke, like the man. She cooed softly in my arms before settling down against me.
I looked up to meet the man’s gaze, expecting anger, resentment, hatred or bloodlust. Expecting violence. But I found none, simply finding resignment.
“…”
I meant to say something, anything. A rejection, an excuse, to shove her back into his arms at the very least and shoot him dead there and then. Why couldn’t I find it in myself to? I was weak, I realised in that moment, so very weak.
“Will you take care of her?” I finally brought myself to say.
He looked back at me with a curt nod and a murmur of an ‘aye’. Then he turned away, leaving me sitting by myself on the ledge. It felt colder without Erin against my chest and I white-knuckled the brick beneath my palms. All of a sudden, the drop felt much deeper, the spray colder and bitter and biting.
I heard a rustle. The army-man had placed my daughter in the leaves by his bag and knelt beside both. He reached into the tarpaulin, producing, ever so slowly, a black case. Each gold buckle unclasped with a click and by the time I realised what it was, it was too late to run.
There was no chance to back down now. I had him pinned where I needed him and he was stunned in shock. Just pull the trigger! That’s all I had to do. I dragged the pin back… I aimed.
I gritted my teeth and put my finger to the trigger.
And released it…
I let it go.
He took the chance to flee, his heels hardly scraping the concrete beneath his boots, and I took chase. I ran after him for a long fifty metres before my hand caught his shoulder and my gun barrel found his head. The man was unconscious in a second.
I dragged him backwards to the bridge. Maybe I was prolonging the inevitable, maybe I was hoping he’d wake up. But he never did.
I positioned him on the ledge of the bridge, directly above the water’s deepest point where it churned and formed a whirlpool below us. Then I let go. I let him fall limp and drop off the bridge with a sickening clap as he hit the water hard.
My lungs burn. The water splashed around me, and I know in a moment I’ll be sucked underneath and drown. I’m kicking at the water futilely, it won’t matter. Shock will set in, and I’ll be gone before I know it.
I want so badly to give up. Every so often I’m letting myself go limp, but my body forces me rigid, and I spring back the second this cursed water touches my face.
Knowing I’m dying either way doesn’t make it easier to give up.
Strange, isn’t it. I always assumed it’d be easier that way.
Well, the mind works in unknown ways.
Maybe I do too.
Goodbye.
I turned to face the child, briskly walking to her side. She’s a funny thing. Small, precious, grabbing at the bag laid beside her. It’s empty now. What’s she grabbing at?
I observe the gun in my hand, turning it backwards and forwards.
The men downstream specified no survivors.
Shame to waste a bullet on such small game.
Log 53, Day 41.