Pattie Seely

Lenny

When my Lenny jumped off the bridge at Broad Street into the Genesee River, it was early spring. Snowmelt rushed over the dike there raging toward the Main Street overpass. Passersby said it was a funny thing the way Lenny seemed suspended in space for such a long time, as if he had slowed time itself just by his jumping, as if he were a kite buoyed in the wind, and then suddenly the wind died and Lenny plunged into the cold, rushing waters of the rocky gorge.

Later, much farther north and after the waterfalls, near Seneca Park, Lenny rose up out of the muddy waters and floated to the riverbank where the rescue workers, after some risky climbing down the ravine, easily lifted his limp and broken body from the riverbed.

Not far from where they carried Lenny’s body up out of the glacial gorge, muskrats were fixing their lodges damaged by the snowmelt. The first litters of the year were already old enough to feed from the platforms, and it seemed like muskrats were everywhere, young ones and old ones, their brown-glossy fur slicked back from their heads as they worked in the red sunset. They carried sticks and brown river grasses in their mouths, their big front teeth holding in the loads.

I could see the muskrats working even from the top of the rocky, tree-covered bluffs where I waited for the first sight of Lenny’s body as it rose out of the gorge. I wondered how fearsome it would look, for I had never seen a drowned body. I wondered would I recognize his face, with its eyes the color of blue flowers washed out a little, as if by bright sunlight, with its narrow cheekbones and high forehead, where thin wisps of white hair hung down always needing to be brushed away. Would it help, I wondered, seeing it in the low light of sunset? Would it look ethereal, the way things do in the day’s afterglow?

I wondered many things that evening, waiting for Lenny, as I watched the muskrats work. One of the sleek animals swam over to something floating in the river and pushed it toward the lodges and up onto the feeding platform. Then I saw that it was one of Lenny’s loafers, a brown, scuffy leather, but pretty new-looking in the late river light. One of the young ones stuck his head into the shoe and couldn’t get it out right away, and in the twilight he struggled to free himself, his webbed feet kicking the water. Finally his head came out suddenly and he slipped back into the river. It was the cutest thing I had ever seen and then Lenny came into sight carried on a stretcher and I walked over to him and kissed his blue, open mouth. He really did look peaceful.

Pattie Seely lives and writes in the old sand basin of Lake Ontario outside Rochester. Her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Orion Magazine, Amelia Magazine, Buffalo Spree, Acorn, and Dark Sky Magazine.