Balancing Act: How Fear Ground My Loyalty to a Halt
The steel girder juts out high above the ravine like a tightrope suspended between mountains. The river carves a path below the bridge, bolstered by the snowmelt of a mild winter. February’s sky is sleepy and thick, and its matte gray surface swallows the last rays of sunlight. My best friend stands in the center of the foot-wide beam, ten stories high and a third of the way across the structure. A cigarette rests between his fingers and rises to meet his lips. Deep, lung-filling drags billow smoke from his nose and mouth. He’s exhausted. I stand 100 feet away, paralyzed with fear that he’ll jump.
Ten minutes earlier, he promised he’d be safe; he wants to live and tells me he’s just going for a walk. The pit viper of paranoia in my stomach disagrees and won’t stop striking. I know he won’t jump. I’m sure of it. We know each other too well — the way brothers know brothers, below the skin. We’ve been injured together, fought together, cut our hands and smeared the blood of our palms together. Promises were made as children — promises I planned to keep. But the wind may push him, or he may lose his footing. Balance is not guaranteed.
I stand near the edge of the beam, where steel meets dirt, and take my first step. The wind slams against my shoulder and shoves me forward. I should be there with him. With each step, the semi-trucks rumble overhead, shaking the structure and decimating my confidence. We’ve driven this bridge so many times: trips to see family in New Jersey and Philadelphia, holidays with grandparents, time with my cousins. I take a second step: no railing, no tether, no safety net. The beam’s linear structure and the pitch of the earth below create a 45-degree angle, increasing the delta between my feet and the earth. 10-inch holes, cut in the steel for air passage and spaced every few feet, leave me nauseous and ready to burst. He knows how to do this; he knows how to silence his fear. I don’t. My seams are starting to tear.
His mother just died from a layer cake of cancers, each attacking her body with its own brand of destruction. I was there with him at the funeral, remembering the woman who gave him life and a vision for the world. I was also there six years prior when she was diagnosed — when we were just kids — desperate to make sense of girls, puberty and social circles. And I was there four years earlier, too, when the world was joyous and the fear of death had yet to find us. She’d take us to a nearby lake and we’d swim for hours, jumping from the dock and digging for clay beneath the sandy shoreline. We’d shape the clay into geometric objects, dimpling the sides with the press of the thumb. Once we were happy with our creations, we’d carry our shapes home and bake them in the oven until they were firm. She’d smile over us as we marveled at our finished works, proud in a way only mothers can be.
Heel, toe, heel, toe: The world’s most terrifying sobriety test. Each step drags the ground farther away. I follow after him, hell-bent on being there. At her funeral, I promised myself I’d be a shoulder, a pillar, a mountain of unending support. In his room, at the bar, in the middle of a 12-inch-wide steel beam standing over a ravine — I’d be there. He’s momentarily broken, but not shattered. He’s the embodiment of perseverance. She was iron tough and her blood runs through his veins. I’m not tough — not today, at least. I’m no more than a mound of melting cookie dough on this goddamn beam.
My mind races and I feel my feet rebelling against the brain’s directives. Delicate steps shift to an old man’s shuffle. Fear has a way of increasing our gravity, making us heavier, and pulling us toward the surface. Don’t sneeze. Don’t cough. The bile in my stomach rises like mercury and climbs into my throat. The taste is horrid. I look up at my best friend and extend my arms out sideways for added balance. He appears to be staring at some nondescript cluster of particles in a far away universe. I imagine his view disassembling nature into its smallest parts, tugging at its connective tissue and dissolving any objective sense of meaning. I’m barely breathing, terrified that a misstep will send me plummeting into the abyss below. A gust of wind rattles my marrow, but he simply looks past it and takes another long drag off his Marlboro. A cloud of smoke pours from his lungs and twirls in the air. He’s not of this world. Not today. Fear has left his body.
Each step increases the number of broken bones if I fall. 20-feet high equals broken legs. Three or four steps forward and we’re adding in a cracked pelvis. Around 35-feet high, we’re talking about a broken back and a severe head injury. A few feet more and death takes the wheel. Any fall moving forward ends in a calamitous thud, followed by a violent tumble into the frigid water below.
He didn’t ask me to follow him. In fact, he may want to be alone. “I’m just going for a walk,” he said. We’ve done crazy things before, from cliff jumping to high-risk bouldering, but this I can barely handle. The next few steps are a flurry of confusion. Why am I following him? He doesn’t need me and I’m too weak to bear my own weight, let alone his. He needs time and reflection. My childish sense of loyalty keeps me walking toward him in the last throes of effort. But when I reach a height of 45 feet, my brain slams on the breaks. My knees lock up, my heart rate spikes, and my feet screech to a halt. For the first time, I’m crippled by a wave of pure terror. I bend forward, white-knuckling my hands toward the beam and clutch whatever surface I can find. The knobby rivets dig into my palms as I look down toward the river. I sink into a frog squat, then pop each leg, one by one, out and over the beam into a straddle…and exhale. My friend continues his walk, step by stoic step, toward the center of the bridge. He strides with his arms crossed, pensive in his approach. If he falls, he dies — but to him, the outcome is of no consequence. “I’m just going for a walk,” he told me.
I sit and wait, watching as he nears the centerline of the bridge. He walks the curved beam, following its downward slope toward the concrete pylon. He’s patient and careful. Once his feet find the concrete, I exhale fully, vomiting the air from my lungs in relief. As he approaches the ladder that climbs to the catwalk, and onwards to the parapet above, fear seeps from my pores and finally leaves my body. And when his fingers wrap around the first rung, I start believing that we’ll make it home tonight to sleep in our own beds.
I twist my midsection and lift one leg over the beam to begin turning around. Halfway through the pivot, my legs sit side-by-side and dangle over the edge like a child resting on a kitchen counter. I stare down at the earth, at certain death, then hear the patter of my best friend’s feet as he saunters across the catwalk above. In him, I see life, certain in the same way as death, but more immediate and filled with promise. He will conquer his pain. He will survive this loss. He will use it to make something beautiful of his remaining days. I swing my legs back over the beam and begin the slow process of scooting toward solid ground. It’s far from graceful, but eventually I stand and walk the remainder of the beam back to the abutment. When my feet touch the earth, I sit down and plunge my fingers into the dirt. He went for his walk and now he’ll be okay.
