The Guardian Angel
The sun had just set, although from his blistery perch atop the cold, lonely pier it was difficult to say with certainty. The heavy storm clouds created a low ceiling, which had obscured all sunlight throughout the late afternoon. Now that the snow was beginning to fall, it cast a magical glow across the steadily graying bay where, most days, blackness followed quickly on the heels of the setting sun.
Do it. Go ahead. Do it.
The youth pressed both hands to his ears, pasting the damp, scruffy brown hair that protruded under his toque onto his cheeks, in an attempt to snuff out the voices.
“Stop!” he pleaded. “Leave me alone! I’m here, ain’t I?”
He stomped around aimlessly, incapable of discerning whether the ululation all around him was merely the wind whistling across the lengthy, concrete pier, or if the voices were trying to finish him off. He pushed his hands harder against the sides of his head. “I gotta make them stop.”
For most of his seventeen years, the prevailing thoughts in his young mind had been pleasant, even pleasurable—especially in high school where he discovered a talent for repairing and restoring vintage automobiles. Even the shop teacher had called him one of the most gifted young mechanics that he had ever seen. Not long afterwards the unwanted voices began to take hold.
Squinting to shield his eyes from the wind-driven flurries, he twisted his neck to the left, where the massive pier extended nearly a quarter of a kilometer into the expanse of ocean that squeezed into the bay. Below him, the shore of his native province was being slapped repeatedly by the icy surf, white-capped and steadily advancing like an infantry brigade. With wobbly knees, he took several tenuous steps along the pier, his head bowed humbly in deference to the Maritime wind, while from somewhere in the nether regions of his mind one question continued to poke through the confusion that had become his reality.
Did he really want to do this? A part of him tried to talk himself out of it. Christmas was his favorite time of the year and it was just over three weeks away.
“I got to!” His mouth voiced the words but his gaze fell slowly downwards while the sad, blue eyes begged desperately for an alternative. “It’s the only friggin’ way,” he added quietly.
He stared down into the frigid water smacking against the pier and staggered slightly. The swells were making him dizzy and the voices continued to taunt him onwards.
Is it deep enough?
Feet first or head first?
None of those questions mattered anymore. He was going to jump off a couple of hundred feet out, where the water was probably fifty feet deep and the undertow would carry him away where the voices could never follow. He was going to have the last word.
A flicker of light from the guardhouse startled him. He squinted and stared in its direction, scanning to the left and to the right for a minute or two, but saw nothing. Moreover, the fog, which had been easing into the bay, was beginning to reduce the visibility.
Good, he thought. Another half hour and no one will see a thing.
But first he had to move the car so that the guy in the guardhouse could see him drive away. With a steadying hand on the railing, he descended from the ice-splattered pier and a minute later he slumped back into the front seat of the old Fairlane that he had restored so beautifully before the voices laid claim to his attention. This car and what it represented triggered a feeling of regret.
But for guys like me, that’s the way it goes sometimes, he thought as he manoeuvred the vehicle slowly down the slippery dirt road that ended at the remnants of the base of the old bridge that used to link the island parkette to the mainland before the pier was built to serve the same purpose. There, the car would be out of the view of any inquisitive eyes that might be snooping from the guardhouse. Several large snow banks had accumulated down there and he parked behind one of them, sitting motionless for several minutes, staring at the gray horizon that was rapidly blending into the murk of the approaching snowstorm. He was going to miss that horizon the most. That line, where familiarity dropped off into the unknown, had always seemed to him like a threshold that separated the rest of the world from his beloved province—the most beautiful province in the entire country, as far as he was concerned. That horizon seemed to say to intruders ‘cross me only if you dare’. A second pang of regret hit him but one of the voices interceded.
The doctor doesn’t care about you. She just gives you pills.”
There was so much he still wanted to tell the psychiatrist; but it was all going to be left unsaid. She would never get to know the person he really was—the intelligent person—the person with potential—the gifted young mechanic. And he knew he could have made it too, because his mother kept all his report cards.
“I was a good student, I was. The report cards prove it.”
But when the voices started to appear, they brought the confusion and the inattention that drove him out of school with them. Now he was going to get even.
He threw open the car door and squatted just inside the water’s edge. Then he took a few steps, allowing the surf to lap over his rubber boots, washing away the footprints as quickly as he was making them.
A strange nostalgia rippled through him as he watched his footprints disappear with the retreating surf. One time he had walked along this very beach hand in hand with a girl—his one and only girlfriend; but on that day the sky was clear, the sun was hot, the footprints were paired and lingering. There were also no voices back then.
He flung his arm into the air. “Go away!” he yelled, and an anger borne of humiliation swelled inside him, raising his motivation dramatically. He continued along the slippery, snow-covered path towards the pier, crouched low so that the spotlight from the guardhouse could not betray him.
The previous night’s tide had etched several icy rims onto the frozen sand in an artistic pattern a few feet above the shoreline, and this caught his attention; but the snow was falling more heavily and it would soon bury them too. The forecast called for eight inches before sunrise.
Forgetting his caution, he took a few steps into the water and looked back. As the snow grew heavier, it began to attach itself to his eyelashes, the way it did when he was a kid. A smile washed over his face, relieving the tension that dominated his youthful features. Strange how the simple things that had always turned him on were every bit as appealing even now! Another moment of doubt flickered through him. Maybe he should wait an hour or two, if only to marvel at the beauty of an Atlantic winter one final time.
Beyond his peripheral vision a shadow fluttered, distracting him. He glanced about but nothing caught his eye. A few seconds later it fluttered again and he looked up to see a woman on a boulder about one hundred feet behind him, where the beach met the foothills at the bottom of a cliff. She was crouched in a sitting position and her long, yellow scarf was blowing over the edge of the rock. Where had she come from? He hadn’t noticed anyone from atop the pier. Perhaps she had come from the gatehouse. Or maybe she had been hidden in the increasingly dense fog.
He thought she might be looking at him; but, not wanting any attention, he tore his gaze away immediately.
Damn!
He would have to wait until she left. In the meantime he needed to look occupied. He stepped out of the water and walked along the shoreline, away from the woman, pretending to skip stones across the surf. His legs were getting heavier and heavier and, when he reached down to slap at his shins, he saw that the dampness on his jeans had started to freeze.
“Go away, lady, please just go,” he mumbled. “I wanna be alone.”
In a slow jog, he backtracked along the shore to the other side of the old bridge’s base and climbed onto its concrete foundation, several feet below the roadway, to sit behind one of the pillars that linked the bridge to the shore.
“She can’t see me over here,” he told himself. He pressed his back against the rear pillar and noticed how quiet it was between those columns, not at all like the din on the pier. The wind co
uldn’t penetrate the deep snow banks down there, and the fog had nowhere to settle either.
Every so often he stood up to peer around the outer column. The woman’s silhouette was still there, perched motionless on the boulder, the flapping of her yellow scarf the only discernible movement.
Why doesn’t she leave, he thought? What could she possibly want to come here so late at night for, sitting there like a statue? Where is her car? Leave already!
She’s not going anywhere, the intrusive voice said. You’re a loser.
“Shut up! Just shut up.” His hands flew back to his ears. It was time. He couldn’t wait any longer. He climbed down from the bridge’s footing and followed the dirt road back up the ramp towards the pier. The sky darkened momentarily as a storm cloud passed in front of the moon and he instinctively looked over toward the boulder. The silhouette was gone.
Thank God, he thought. It’s about time.
His nose had been dripping onto his upper lip and he fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. Something had latched onto the hanky and fell awkwardly from the pocket. To his horror, it was the St. Nicholas medal his mother had given him. It disappeared into the snow beyond the edge of the dirt road.
“Oh no! Gotta find it! I gotta find it!”
He hurdled the barrier at the side of the road and sank into the deep white mounds that had been steadily spawned by the wind over the past few days. “Please! I gotta find it,” he repeated, digging feverishly. He dug some more, in ever-widening circles, like a miner searching meticulously for his treasure—but still no St. Nicholas medal emerged from the overturned snow.
With clenched fists he started shaking, looked around frantically, his jumbled thoughts racing every which way, when something in the water caught his eye. His hands relaxed suddenly and his breath caught in his throat. His mind was gripped by a moment of crystal clarity that ripped through the muddled thoughts.
“Oh my God!” he blurted. Someone was floating face down, a yellow scarf trailing behind. Instinctively he ran into the water, knees splashing almost to his chin, processing his cardiovascular profile as he remembered it from his days on the track team. He figured he could last only a few minutes in there. He had to pull her out on his first attempt.
Those first few sprints brought him into water up to his thighs. A couple more steps and it reached his stomach. Ignoring the shivering that kicked in to help preserve his core body temperature, he willed himself to start swimming toward her, his drenched overcoat nearly dragging him under. There was no turning back now. He had to make it. A human life depended on it.
No, he told himself. Two lives.
In a reflex action, he lunged toward the woman, grabbed her coat, and flipped her onto her back. She was older than he first thought. Straining under the weight of their wet clothing, he treaded the water furiously towards him with his one free arm. “Pull!” he repeated over and over, dragging the unconscious woman behind him, her head barely above water. “Pull for your life. Pull! Pull! Pull!”
The next thing he knew, the two of them were lying on the frozen shore. He made sure her mouth was clear and immediately began CPR, just like the track coach had taught him. She didn’t respond. Terrified, he straddled her and began to pump frantically on her thorax, the weight of his upper body adding power to the thrusting of his arms.
From the gatehouse, the guard could see the man’s head bobbing up and down on the other side of the snow bank. He turned on the floodlight and ascended his tower part way to get a better look. The man was on top of someone, pounding furiously away. Grabbing his baton, the guard ran toward them.
“You there! Stop that! Release her immediately!” he yelled. In a split second the guard tackled the young man off the woman.
“No! Don’t! You don’t understand—” he started to say, struggling to keep the guard from straddling his torso.
“Tell it to the cops, kid.” The guard unfastened the handcuffs from his belt and reached for the youth’s wrists.
Just then a gurgling cough heaved out of the woman and water trickled down the side of her face and along her neck. She moaned and began to stir. As her breathing stabilized, her coughing became less and less congested.
“She was drowning, mister, honest, she was drowning,” the boy told the guard. “I was only doing mouth to mouth.”
The guard released his hold. “Oh! I guess this is your lucky day. Help me get her inside and I’ll call the paramedics.”
The two men carried the woman into the guardhouse and covered her with blankets until the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. The guard filled out a report, gave the youth some dry clothes and released him. Moments later, he was running after him again.
“You there! Son! Wait!”
The youth turned around to see the guard jogging toward him with his hand extended.
“Is this yours? It got entangled in my shoe’s buckle and the lady said it’s not hers.”
The guard was holding the St. Nicholas medal.
The boy’s face lit up. “Yes.” He snatched the medal from the guard’s hand. “Yes, yes, it’s mine. It’s from my mom.” He clutched the medallion tightly to his chest and hobbled away.
“Hey kid!” the guard called out. “The lady called you her Guardian Angel.” Then, with a snicker, he added: “Maybe you should buy yourself a lottery ticket.”
The youth didn’t turn around and he didn’t reply. He simply disappeared into the blowing snow, and with him any trace that he had ever been there.