EVIDENCE

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

Short, Part 2 Preview                                                      

AUGUST 1987

             It was a nice sunny day in the small town of Blaj, Romania. P, who would turn three at the end of September, was walking hand in hand with his seven year old cousin Joanne. They were coming back from the corner store on Gheorghe Lazar street, walking towards his grandma’s house where he lived. The sky was blue and all the hills and trees surrounding the small city where he lived were green and vibrant. It looked like an image right out of a fairytale to the two year old who had no idea about politics, the communist government that had Romania and its people in a choke-hold since the late 1940s, or any of the evil that filled the world into which he was born.

             They started walking across the bridge over the Tarnava river that ran past the town. The bridge was roughly seventy-five meters long and nine meters tall, P later found out. The water wasn’t much more than a meter deep and it was dark with a strong current. As they were walking across the bridge, without a care in the world, P didn’t hear that somebody was coming from behind. Suddenly, two strong arms picked him up and the next thing P felt was the speed of the wind on his face as he flew down closer and closer to the dark water. He was falling face first yet he felt like he was flying to the side, and he landed with a loud thud, chest first, on the single, small, sand dune towards the opposite bank of the river. The hard landing knocked the wind out of him, and he immediately felt  a sharp pain in his left arm as he got mouthful of sand and water. The sand dune was so small that his legs hung over the side in the water. It seemed much faster to P now than it did a few moments ago from atop the bridge. He was wondering what had happened as he heard his cousin screaming. He tried to lift himself but his left arm was limp, sending shockwaves of pain through his tiny body, and he couldn’t move. He lay in the sand gripping on to the dune with his right arm so that the fast dark water wouldn’t sweep him away.

             As the water flowed over his legs on one end he was spitting sand out at the other. He lay there helplessly, face down in the sand with half of his body on the small sand dune and half in the water. His arm really hurt. It was limp and it was so painful to move. He cried. He looked up over his right shoulder and wondered if anybody was going to come get him before the water did. He saw people coming on to the bridge and looking down at him over the railing. They all yelled the same thing, “Don’t go in the water kid, don’t go in the water!”

              Why would I go in the water when I can’t even move and I don’t know how to swim, he thought to himself. These people must be really stupid thinking I’m that stupid. That’s the last thing I would do. He looked up in pain and asked himself, who threw me over? Who would do something like this to me, and why? What did I do? He  saw more and more people coming on the bridge to look down at him and not one came to help him. He still wondered if anybody would come and lift him out before the current swept him away. He tried calling out but only sand came out of his mouth. His arm was sending sharp pangs of pains through his body every time he moved. Crying, he lay there hoping that someone would come to pick him up. He felt completely helpless.

             People were still coming to look over the bridge. They all yelled at him, telling him not to go in the water. These people are idiots thought P to himself, why don’t they come and get me already if they want to help so much. He laid there covered in sand unable to move and asked himself, what’s wrong with all these people, why are they just standing around and not helping me? He looked at all the faces starring down at him and he wondered if whoever threw him was looking down as well. He felt hurt physically and emotionally. He couldn’t understand why anyone would do this to him nor why none of the people gawking came to get his broken body out of the water. If he were bigger and saw a broken baby in the water he’d go help him.

            These people are pieces of shit he thought, they are willing to let me drown instead of helping. What’s wrong with them? He was angry because he didn’t know who threw him and he was angry with everybody on the bridge that just stared stupidly. He didn't know if he was ever going to get out of this mess. He lay in the sand for what seemed like an eternity, the fingers of his right hand digging in to the sand so that the water didn’t drag him off,  knowing that if it did it was all over. Feeling like the helpless toddler that he was, he kept holding on with his good hand, his fate in the hands of people that would rather see him drown in front of their eyes than help him back up.

             By this time there must have been close to fifty people on the bridge all looking  down at him. What a bunch of  donkeys he thought. Then P saw a red tractor pull up. The tractor was driven by a ‘tzigan’, a gipsy. He jumped out of the tractor’s cab and hurried over to the side of the bridge and down the grassy bank. Finally a good person, thought P, as he waited for the last man on the bridge to be the first one to save him from the cold water streaming over him. The gypsy got to the water’s edge, quickly rolled up his pants and walked into the waist-deep water. He came over to the little dune and picked baby P up in his arms and walked out of the river. Finally! P was still covered in sand and mud from head to toe, and he was shivering after the exposure to the water. As the man lifted him, his left arm hung painfully limp to his side. Once back on the shore and on dry land, P was wrapped up in a blanket and put into the back of someone’s car.

             P still couldn’t understand why this happened to him or who did it. He was angry with himself because he didn’t even catch a glimpse of the person who had thrown him off the bridge. He wondered how he hadn’t heard the person sneaking up behind him and felt like a big loser for not knowing who it was. At that moment he learned his first life lesson; Always be aware of what’s going on around you, and always watch everybody around you. He swore he’d never let someone get him from behind ever again. He didn’t want to feel like the sucker he felt now, he didn’t even do anything to make it harder for his almost-killer. He had made it so easy that he may as well have jumped into the river himself.

            The car stopped at his grandma’s house about a minute later, the bridge being no more than half a kilometer from the house.  His grandma, shocked at his appearance and in a state of nervous agitation, brought him to the washroom and put him in a plastic tub where she washed the sand and mud off him with a towel. He heard the people who had come into the house with him telling her that his arm was broken. P wondered how the nice sunny day turned ugly so fast, the shooting pain in his injured left arm coursing through him at every touch. He was still in shock, unable to understand why he was thrown off a bridge. Confused at why someone had just tried to kill him.