January 2007, Minneapolis, Minnesota under the 5th Street bridge

By Christina Robert

A man was pulled from the icy waters of the Mississippi today.

It was a cold January day in the heart of Minneapolis. A sudden drop in temperature the week before had brought winter back with a vengeance, and suddenly, our strangely balmy season had snapped back into its rightful place. It was as if Mother Winter had suddenly woken up after a long nap and been reminded of where she was and the duties to which she must attend.

The man had picked the drop-off under the 5th Street Bridge to journey onto the ice, in search of a better place to be. I was out for a run, to clear my own head, and had happened upon him and this point in his life. But I didn’t make the call. No frantic moments fumbling for my cell; no fear rising up in my throat, as he took that one last deliberate step onto ice that would not hold him. There were others who had seen him, watched and worried, waiting for the rescuers to come.

“Did he jump?” two young boys on bikes asked when they stopped beside me to watch. Unflinching, they kept their eyes on the firemen in their heavy jackets and diving suits. They looked unafraid, fascinated by the drama before them.

“I don’t know,” I answered, but I had my doubts – the firemen surrounding his now rescued body were all directly below the monstrous bridge that shadowed the scene. A concrete retaining wall separated the mighty river from a scenic bike path where we all stood, watching the scene unfold.

It was down below where they had worked to pull him out. As I approached from a distance, I had seen the dark spheres bobbing out on the ice. Men in suits, submerged, surrounding his form. He must have fallen in. The ice was too thick for him to have floated downstream following a leap from above.

I walked further past the scene, looking back as I ventured forward. I wanted to see his face. I wanted to know more. I moved next to a man on a bike who stood, studying the scene. He looked at me briefly, yet compassionately, when I joined him. Funny how these things bring people together.

“Did he jump?” I asked.

He shook his head and kept his gaze fixed on the ice, the firemen, the body on a slab. “He held on.” He glanced back at me with an almost desperate, pleading look. “He wanted to go in, but he held on.”

The look in the viewer’s eyes seemed to beg for an explanation. His eyes returned back to the spot in the river from where they had pulled the man, where he had clung to the rope for life, now only a short-lived memory. A half-moon break in the icy floor marked the place where he had first slid into the frigid waters. Icy stones, cracked sheets of half-frozen water; the shoreline was strangely silent, yet it breathed with a life of its own.

“His will to live must have been stronger than his desire to die,” I said. The man nodded and looked back again. His face relaxed, and he looked a little relieved.

Below, on the river’s edge, the firemen scurried around like restless flies, adjusting blankets and ropes, preparing for a final hoist onto solid ground. They lifted on three, and he came up, prone on a backboard. With four firemen lifting, he seemed heavy. They carried him up a small set of stairs and onto the path, where a stretcher and ambulance were patiently waiting for the transfer.

As they wheeled him past me, I looked closely. I looked for signs of poverty, of homelessness. The bottoms of his white tennis shoes stared me in the face; they looked strangely new. His large, plaid button-up flannel shirt flapped over the edge of his makeshift bed and over his body, which had been hurriedly covered in thin cotton sheets. They rolled him across the snow yards from where I stood. I could not see his face, yet I imagine that it was red and wilted, the blood still returning to their vessels after a shock and a cry.

I took one last look at the man, as they closed him into the van, and then I walked away, not unchanged. Those shoes will likely stare me in the face for years to come, and the ice will remain a reminder of the brittleness of life.

Christina Robert is a graduate student in family social science who is devoted to learning and teaching about social-justice issues. Originally from Washington, D.C., she currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her cat, Sophie, and her Border Collie, Maddy.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, October 8th, 2007 | Email This Post

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