One evening Jimmy and I walked over to the swamp on the north side of
the tracks near Union Station, down by the Mohawk River. The sky was
a deep pink in the west and a gorgeous bank of clouds rolled up over us and
then east down the valley. We were
excited to be out and walking with each other, laughing and holding hands. But later on our way back, Jimmy was so
depressed he was hardly able talk. I
didn’t know what had happened. It was
like he'd heard his death sentence since we started out that evening. “You
don’t want to marry me, Mary,” he said. “There are too many people following
me.”
I’d heard this before but I never said
anything. I thought if I ignored it
maybe he would stop saying such things.
But it was really beginning to bother me, to scare me.
“Jimmy Bean,”
I said, “you tell me that all the time.
Why don’t I ever see these people?”
“I don’t know, Mary.
Didn’t you see that group at the swamp?
Didn’t you hear them?”
“No, Jimmy,” I said,
“I heard no people. I heard no
such thing.”
Jimmy shook his head. We were crossing the bridge over the railroad
tracks and he climbed up on the sooty girder and said, “Mary, if I jump down on
the tracks, I want to you go home and not tell anyone.”
“Please,
Jimmy!’ I pleaded with him.
“Just go on with your life,” he said. “You’re better off without me.”
“Don’t be crazy!
Come down here, Jimmy.”
But he wouldn’t come down and I talked and talked to
him for an hour before he climbed off the girder.
Jimmy worked in the building next to mine and I
began to hear stories about him going crazy at work and running across the
factory floor as if someone was chasing him.
One afternoon he suddenly jumped up from his bench and took off down the
aisle. Jumping to the side to miss a man
pushing a table full of spools, Jimmy caught his shirt on a mandrel sticking
out from a finishing machine. He was
moving so fast it tore his shirt half off him, but he didn't stop until he was
down the stairway and out in the yard, where they found him hiding behind a
metal bin. Some men from the front
office put him in a taxi and sent him home.
He borrowed my cousin’s Chevrolet and drove us to
Sylvan Beach in late August and on the way home I snuggled up to him. Just as we were going over the bridge at Verona, I don’t know what came over me, but I knew he was
going to pull the wheel and send us off the side of the bridge. I don’t know how I knew, I just did.
When he pulled the steering wheel down to the right, I immediately
pulled it up from the bottom with both hands.
He said there had been a dog on the bridge, but I didn’t believe him and
for the first time I was really afraid to be with him.
