Red like Gold
By Taylor Flickinger
I wanted to go to Colorado for the long weekend. A trip away from people, I told Natalie. A real vacation. But Nat wanted to go to California, said she liked the beach. There are beaches in Colorado, I said, and the water doesn’t kill you like it does in California. A real beach, she said. I asked her what that meant. She shrugged and said beaches have oceans.
So we took our kids to California. On the first day, right after we unpacked from the long drive, Nat said she wanted to see the bridge. Okay, I told her. I’ve seen it, and it’s disappointing. Just a big red thing. God knows why we call it golden, it’s not even yellow. Why do we call things by what they’re not? Nat and I got in an argument once, when we were first married. She thought coconuts were actual nuts. It’s a fruit, I told her, but she just wouldn’t believe it. Nuts have two layers, I said, coconuts have three. I even drove to the supermarket and bought a coconut, still in its husk, just to show it to her. See, I said, a fruit.
It’s in the name, she said. Coconut.
We ended up going to the bridge, driving nearly an hour just to get to it. We left late because Nat couldn’t find the stupid camera. I told her to leave it, there would be too many people to get a good picture anyway. But she kept looking. She said how else would we remember the trip without a few pictures?
Nick and Mitch cried the entire way there. We should have turned around right then. I should have turned the car around, packed up, and driven to Colorado, to the mountains and the trees and freshwater lakes. God knows I wish I had, but I didn’t. Nat turned on the radio to distract the kids, and twenty minutes later they were quiet.
The sun was setting when we pulled into the parking lot. There were a lot of people, most of them with cameras taking pictures of the not-gold bridge. Walking around, looking out at the ocean. Cars passing by. A fog was starting to roll in, painted pink and orange from the setting sun. The clouds looked like breaths of fire. I wanted to leave then. I was hungry, and the boys must have been too. I didn’t want to walk out on the bridge. We saw it, it’s not like it changes from red to gold if you walk on the damn thing. But Nat insisted, and the boys wanted to throw rocks into the ocean. Fine, I told them, just don’t hit anyone. Imagine, seeing someone getting hit in the head with a rock that fell from so high. Imagine trying to live knowing that you basically killed someone.
I guess what matters is that we went. We walked on it and had a fine time. Nat took pictures as the boys threw their rocks and counted the seconds until they hit the water, leaning over the railing to watch. 1… 2… 3… 4… Nat didn’t like that. Come on, she said, I’m worried the boys will fall. I told her the boys were fine, that they aren’t stupid enough to jump. But I swung Nick up into my arms anyways and grabbed Mitch’s hand, and we finally started to leave.
Wait, Nat said, we forgot to get a picture with everyone. I rolled my eyes, but Nat was already walking up to someone, asking to take our picture. But before she got more than a few words out, some middle-aged guy pushed past her, almost knocking her over. I admit it, I lost my temper. I turned around and yelled something at him, but not to be nasty, I just wanted him to understand that the bridge wasn’t going anywhere, or the ocean or the city. I wanted to tell him that nothing was going anywhere, that he could take his time to take as many pictures as he wanted without pushing anyone out of the way. But right when I yelled out he looked at me the way Nat looked after she miscarried. I mean, he stared at me with starving eyes for three or four seconds, but it felt like it would never end, I just couldn’t look away. Eventually he blinked like he was waking up. He looked out over the ocean, glanced at me one more time, and jumped over the railing, just like that. He just fuckin’ jumped without even stopping to think about it.
Someone screamed when they realized what happened, but the man had already jumped for God’s sake and nothing we could do would change that. Mitch and Nick were watching his arms flail like he hoped to learn to fly. Nat’s mouth was open, her eyes dull with disbelief. I picked up Mitch in my other arm, somehow found Nat’s hand, and started pulling my family away before we heard it, the wet noise of his body smacking the black water like so much wet cement.
The car was quiet as we pulled away from the parking lot. Nat started crying when we passed an ambulance, lights flashing as it sped toward the beach below the bridge. I gripped the steering wheel, starring at the broken yellow lines painted on the road. When we got back, I got the boys ready for bed while Nat sat stiffly on the couch and stared through our hotel window at the night. Kids were swimming in the pool outside, playing while their parents sat quietly in the hot tub. Their muffled shrieks and splashes were the only noise. I was remembering how the man just jumped, how his body made that slapping sound, how someone started taking pictures as we pushed through the crowd. Nat said she was going to our room after the boys were in bed, but I wanted to watch tv to clear my head.
I turned it on and sat down. The news was on. They were talking about the man who jumped off that red bridge. I raised the remote to change the channel but stopped when they put up a picture of the victim (their word, victim). It was taken just two weeks before he jumped. He was wearing an orange vest and holding up a fish as big as his arm, leaning in like he wanted to kiss it. I remembered how he looked at me right before he jumped, like his brain had done it long ago and his body was hurrying to catch up. I thought of how I was probably the last person he ever saw and wondered if he thought of me before he hit the water. I remembered how quiet the crowd got right before he hit, like his fall was a prayer and the slap of his body against the black ocean was the amen.
I didn’t like looking at the picture, so I closed my eyes as the program continued. They talked about how five percent of people survive the fall, but most of them drown anyway because it’s too goddamn hard to swim with busted bones. Some of them manage to swim but die from the cold, and the ones who somehow survive everything talk about how they regret jumping the instant their feet leave the bridge. I turned the tv off then, imagining it was me that jumped, kicking with shattered legs as icy blackness pushed into my burning lungs.
The kids outside had stopped swimming. I sat in the quiet darkness for a long time, it could have been hours, just sitting there feeling the weight of my body, the sofa pressing against me, the breath in my lungs, the heaviness of my life.
Did you know it’s both? Coconuts, I mean. A fruit and a nut. And a seed, apparently. There’s always something else. I looked it up after California because it felt important, I can’t remember why. I don’t think I ever told Nat, but maybe that doesn’t matter.
Anyways. When I went upstairs Nat was still awake. She wanted to talk about it, she said that we could have done something and the boys saw him fall and we should have stopped him because maybe he had a family like ours. I told her about the way he looked at me right before he jumped, how it wouldn’t have mattered what we said. He jumped a long time ago, I said. I told her about the picture of him I saw on the news, how you’d never recognize him as the man we had seen. Two completely different people, I said. It was like a lie, I said, or something close enough to break your heart.
Stop it, Nat said, so I turned the lights off and lay down, looking at the way the darkness covered everything around me. We both sat there for a long while, both of us awake, and I couldn’t help but think about how I counted the seconds before he hit the water. 1, 2, 3, 4. He just jumped, cool as autumn.
About the Author:
Taylor Flickinger is a senior at Brigham Young University studying English and Creative Writing. After graduating, he plans on getting an MFA and eventually a PhD in creative fiction. He works as a teaching assistant for two non-fiction writing classes, though he's most passionate about writing short fiction. Aside from reading, writing, and teaching, his hobbies include analog photography and cooking.
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