“Jumped,” they said—though I doubt he jumped. “Jump” is what a kid does when he’s happy. “Jump” is what a child does on a trampoline, or when catching a ball, or when entering a swimming pool. The word itself is fun. “Ju,” like the release of a springboard, then the flat, startling revolution of heels to the ground: “mp.”
Maybe they used this word, instead of “fell”—I’m sure it was more of a falling—or perhaps “slipped,” because it invokes some sort of affirmation. You don’t just “jump” from a bridge and plummet 70 feet to your death on the cold bank of a river about as inviting as the concrete floor of a bar in the winter. You surely don’t do it for height or distance, as a child might do off a bench or swing set at a park, drawing lines in the sand each time to measure his success.
But now, a new term to accompany this already unsettling word: This time, “bounced.” Again an unusual, playful word. I hadn’t realized that he never made the splash, until I spoke with a professor, who had walked that very bridge cautiously and reverently, but with a feeling of hope—as if on a balancing beam—every day on his way to school, years ago.
“He could never get a damn thing right in his life, the poor guy. He didn’t even make the river. He bounced.”
Maybe he intended it this way. I have heard it rumored that he waved on his way down, before he took his final bow. Perhaps he saw the irony. There, on that bank, body like a wrung-out rag, eyes still and gazing, he niched himself a place in history where he might watch the river flow, but never drink again.
