Around and About with Richard McCarthy: Of lone walkers and tolling bells
A little while back, I drove south out of Northampton on Route 91, and took the exit to the South End Bridge that connects Springfield to Agawam.
A man who looked to be about 40 years of age, with a full backpack, was walking on the bridge sidewalk, also headed toward Agawam. I have driven on that bridge many times over the years, and rarely see people on foot.
Maybe it was that rarity of pedestrians on the bridge that made the man seem a lonely figure. Or maybe it was the way he was walking. He had his head down and determination in his long stride. There was nothing buoyant or leisurely in his step, and no taking in of scenery.
The thought came to me that he wanted to jump off the bridge.
Before the reader decides that such a thought on my part could have been put aside immediately as the product of an overactive imagination, I should say I have some history with someone taking their own life by leaping off that bridge. A kid who was part of my extended high school crowd jumped off its rail into the cold, swollen, early spring waters of the Connecticut River before our twentieth class reunion had taken place.
Anyway, the bridge was heavily trafficked that morning, with vehicles moving along at a good clip. I didn’t know if any other drivers took special note of the walker, let alone had the thought he might be intending to jump. If they did, there was no way of knowing because they all sped by him. There is no stopping on that bridge, no emergency lane.
I passed the walker, and then monitored him in my rearview mirror for as long as I could see him. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other at his own good clip, no seeming interest in his surroundings. By the time I lost sight of him, he was at or past the apex of the bridge, and had not gone to or even looked at the rail.
As I came to the Agawam side of the bridge, I asked myself if I should do more and what that more might look like.
I could call 911, but there was no ostensive reason for me to report that the walker was intending to jump off the bridge. He wasn’t acting erratically, nor, as I said, had I seen him even look at the side of the bridge. I could picture a 911 dispatcher asking me, “What is it, sir, that causes you to think he might attempt to jump off the bridge?” and my only being able to answer that he didn’t have a bounce in his step, and seemed determined about something.
What I did was keep on driving down the road. I remember thinking there were plenty of cars now driving by him on the bridge, the drivers of which could call 911 if he showed signs of jumping. I also remember thinking that the sense of resolute purpose I saw in his walk could have come from his belief he would somehow find a better life on one side of the bridge than he had on the other.
How much my decision to drive on was influenced by my potential tardiness in a scheduled meeting with some friends in Agawam, and how much resulted from “evidence-based” scrutiny of the facts, I wasn’t absolutely certain of then, and I’m not certain of now.
Typically I like to make my columns neatly wrapped packages. But with this column, I have no such closure.
In days of old, church bells were rung to announce a death, a “death knell.” The English poet John Donne famously wrote of our intertwined fates: “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In the above instance of the lone trudger on the bridge, I thought I might be hearing the toll of a bell. I just didn’t know whether the sound was coming from his mind or my own.
Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
