M Sellars: Never Burn A Witch

Sun shone brightly down upon the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and a warm spring breeze playfully wove itself through the green painted trusses that made up the superstructure of the Old Lady. The man lingered for a long while at the join of two of the metal beams where they created an inverted triangle. His gaze held fast across the muddy brown waters of the Mississippi river to the rock levy that caused them to roil and whitecap in a shallow defined arc across the full width of the river.

Nearby, a strikingly beautiful woman clad in a photographers vest commanded a pair of leashed canines to sit and stay. Brushing back her unruly mane of long red hair, she then brought a camera to her eye. Carefully bringing it to bear on the nearest of the pair of gothic looking water intake towers that rose majestically from the river on the south side of the bridge, she depressed a button and the shutter clicked, followed by the whirring motor drive as it advanced the film within.

The man cast a glance in her direction and allowed himself a brief, thin smile as she gazed back at him. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a stone and worked it in the palm of his right hand with his fingers. If one listened close, he could be heard whispering softly as he looked hard at the smooth rock.

“In you I place my fears, my regrets, and my guilt,” he almost chanted. “From you I retain my hopes, my dreams, and my strength. With you I cast away the negative and keep only the positive. I am one. I am whole. I am free.”

At the end of the third repetition, the man drew back his arm with a twist of his body then thrust it rapidly forward, casting the stone into the spring air. He watched on as the burdened rock fell in an arc until it disappeared from sight and made the tiniest of imperceptible ripples in the water below.

The woman had moved close and now slipped her arm in about the man’s waist and laid her head against his shoulder. The man allowed himself a short relieved sigh as he hooked his own arm around her and pulled her tight.

With a short whistle they called the dogs that had been waiting obediently and continued lazily across the span of the pedestrian bridge. Among the faded graffiti that marred the asphalt, a fresher, brighter grouping of spray painted lines, only months old, resided where the man had been standing.

A circle, decorated with hash marks along the side arcs, and encompassing a large letter X that was bisected by a large letter P.