The box might have fallen and bounced out of sight, so I walked toward the centre of the bridge, where, by leaning over the railing, I could look back beneath it. I swept the beam wider. Everything within the circle of its light appeared as bright as day. I passed it back and forth across the concrete walkway, from the edge of the wire fence to the painted yellow strip where the edge of the walkway met the canal waters.

Seeing nothing, I turned the light back to the edge of the fence itself, holding it on a place where the fence had been detached from the metal pole supporting it, creating an opening. I remembered the stories of boys clambering beneath the bridge to leave pennies on the metal platform when the bridge was raised, and returning after it had lowered and been raised again to retrieve the coins, flat and thin and misshapen. The fence had been built to keep them out, but I have always believed very little can keep twelve-year-old boys from entering anything they choose to enter.

I kept the light moving until I saw the metal box lying among the trash and gravel inside the fence, where it could not possibly have fallen. Someone had carried it there, and at the edge of the circle of light, I saw who it might have been.

Actually, I saw a pair of shoes, and I moved the light as far up the rest of the man, who was lying on his stomach, as I could. He was near the base of the bridge supports, which rose three or four feet above him. There was something awkward and unnatural about the way he was lying there. Nobody’s legs stretched out at those angles, even in a deep sleep, although I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping because I was unable to see beyond his shoulders.

I suspected it was the pervert, but even perverts deserve consideration. I kept shining the light back and forth to get the man’s attention, without success. Leave him for somebody else to find in the morning, I thought. Or do something now. Which is what Gabe would do. Which is what I did.

I walked to the end of the bridge and aimed the light up at the bridge operator’s window. He seemed to be reading a book or newspaper, and it took several sweeps of the light across the window before he looked down at me with more curiosity than before. I began waving at him, launching one of the more inane conversations I have had with a man.

Swinging the window open, he leaned out, and I shouted over the sound of the trucks passing above us on the high level bridges, “Hey!”

He, naturally, answered, “What?”

“There’s a guy down here.”

“A what?”

“Some man.”

“A can?”

“A man. A guy.”

“Who?”

“What?”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. But I think he’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I think he’s sick.”

“You think it’s a trick?”

“Sick! Sick!”

“What, he’s puking?”

“No, he’s sleeping.”

“Is he drunk?”

“Is he what?”

“Hey, are you drunk?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“What’re you doing all alone on the bridge at this time of night? You were just here half an hour ago. You gonna jump or what?”

“Thanks for your concern. Look, there is something wrong with this guy. At least call the cops or an ambulance.”

The bridge operator gave that some thought. I saw him reach for what I assumed was a telephone. “Where is he?” he called down.

“He’s inside the fence.”

“Where?”

“Inside the fence. There’s a hole there.”

“There’s not supposed to be anybody in there.”

“Well, he’s not supposed to be looking like he’s dead, either. But he does.”

“Like he’s what?”

“Dead. I mean, maybe he isn’t, but—”

“What’s he wearing?”

“Blue plaid shirt, khaki pants—”

“He’s not dead.” The operator leaned back inside his office, brought the receiver to his mouth, said a few words into it, then stuck his head out the window again. “I’ve told that guy a dozen times to stay the hell out. Wait there. I’ll be right down.”

He emerged from a landing just beyond his window and trotted down metal steps that ended on another landing below the level of the walkway where I stood. He was older than I expected, with a fringe of grey hair above his ears and around the back of his head, making a fuzzy frame. His face was softer and friendlier than it appeared at a distance through the window. He stood at the edge of the stair landing, squinting toward the area beneath the lift bridge before looking back at me. “This place’d drive you nuts. Guys sleeping under the bridge, couples having sex, kids putting pennies on the platforms, last week some guy’s shooting a gun down here.” He dropped his eyes and lifted them back to mine again, having liked, I assumed, what he saw. “Lend me your light, will you?” he said, stretching a hand toward me.

I walked down the steps to hand it to him. He turned it on, swept it across the rubble inside the fence until he located the man, then began descending to the level of the canal walkway, shouting, “Hey! Hey, you!”

I followed him. He had my flashlight, after all, and I felt safer with him than standing alone on the bridge.

“Watch yourself,” he said, and he shone the light on the ground ahead of us. I stayed well back from the edge of the canal, following a few steps behind the bridge operator. When we reached the opening in the chain-link fence, he shook his head and made the same “Tch, tch, tch” sound my grandmother used to make when reading about disasters in the newspaper.

He knelt and shone the light through the opening in the wire fence and toward the bridge supports until it reflected back from the soles of the man’s shoes. “Hey, Charlie,” the operator called. Did this mean he knew the man’s name? “Hey, asshole. Get up and get moving. The cops are on their way. I warned you about this, damn it.” Bent from the waist, he duck-walked through the opening in the fence. As he stood erect on the other side of the fence, he winced and placed a hand at the small of his back before raising the light again. “You okay?” he said. His voice had lost its commanding tone. “Have you … holy shit.”

He was standing between me and the man on the rubble, so I moved to one side to see whatever it was that made him respond that way. By the time I did, he had swung the light from the man to the bridge supports, each made of square concrete as wide and high as a refrigerator and topped with thick steel pads. The light climbed up the support directly in front of the man’s body. Unlike the others alongside it, this one was shiny and red, the blood thicker and congealed among matter at the top, where the weight of the lift bridge rested on it, and I was just understanding what this was, or what it had been, when he swung the light back to the body. This time it wasn’t the shadows, or the angle, or the thick rubble the light illuminated. This time it was clear to me and to the bridge operator, and eventually to the police, whose sirens announced their arrival on the lift bridge above us, that the man was not only dead but headless.

12.

“Okay, okay, okay.” I kept repeating the words like a wind-up doll, although nothing was okay. Everything was crazy. Everything was out of control. A man who had spoken to me less than an hour ago was dead, his head crushed into a thin film of jelly beneath hundreds of tons of steel when the bridge descended. I needed time for my brain to catch up with the rest of the world.

I was in the back seat of a police car, my hands fluttering in front of my face. Tom Grychuk, for that was the name of the bridge operator, sat next to me, staring at the lake, his chin on his hand. Flashing red, yellow and blue lights from a dozen or so cars, ambulances and trucks crowding the parking lot next to the lift bridge lit up the area like a misguided bush party.