Passersby thought nothing of the pilgrimage of a half dozen children on their way to a Saturday matinee, or to play some game in the park, or wandering aimlessly on a sunny afternoon. Norah, Sean, Sharon, and Dori walked while Mark and Lucas trailed in lazy circles on their bicycles. No one stopped them. No one inquired as to their destination. The children moved invisibly among the men and women busy with their quotidian cares, mired in the Steel City blues.
The boys parked their bicycles at the corner, and the group stepped single file onto the bridge, Norah on point and Sean bringing up the rear. At the apex of the span the apostles stopped and leaned their arms against the railing to stare out at the river rolling underfoot. Birds on a wire, they perched and waited. In the distance a coal barge looked like a toy boat pushing dirty trays downstream. A station wagon slowed, the driver staring their way before moving on. Limber as a spider monkey, Norah lifted her body until she was seated on the rail and facing the others, her feet dangling in the air, her fingers wrapped around the bar for balance. Blind to the open sky, the fall behind her, the river at her back. A breeze caught her hair and sent it spilling across her eyes, and she let go with one hand to push the stray locks behind her ears. “If you have existed,” she said, “since the beginning and shall be forever, then the cares of this life are little more than a sigh in time. And yet, we worry over every problem large and small. Instead of trusting our troubles will pass as we will continue.”
The five faces below her twisted with uncertainty. Sharon winked into the sunshine, and the others shielded their eyes against the blinding light with salutes. Below, the river darkened like spilled ink. The wheels on another passing car clipped a pothole and made a sound like the pop from a gun. “It's a perfect day,” Norah said. “For flying.”
In the first vision, Sean saw the others join her, steady themselves like tightrope walkers on the rail, arms twirling; and balanced in a line, heads cocked to the middle, they listened to her instructions. Backlit, the five silhouettes stood stark against the whiteness, and at her command, every child leapt out into the void, hovering momentarily as the wind pushed against their outstretched limbs and bowed chests, still and perfect and beautiful for one moment before plummeting, silent and swift as stones, into the water, striking the surface with knifing explosions, sinking to the bottom, slowing, bobbing, coming to rest in the silt, a look of disbelief written in their eyes, their bodies borne by the cold undercurrent. In the second vision, they lined up again like fledglings, spread their arms, and glided up, full of bliss and surprise, spiraling into the deep blue sky until, like the angels, they disappeared into the heavens and were gone forever. In both cases, he stayed behind on the bridge, watched them sink or swim the sky, powerless to join them and fixed to the spot by his doubts and fears.
Like a swimmer crouched to dive into a race, she had brought her feet to the rail and was holding on by her fingers and toes. The other children on the walkway were poised to rescue her, but no one moved. A delivery van with a rose painted on the door squealed to a halt, and Norah turned her head toward the sound. Sean reached for her, grabbed her arms. Blood pulsed through her veins, the echo of her frightened heart. “Stop,” he said. “Just stop and come down. I believe you—”
She cried out and let herself collapse to the walkway, her wrists cuffed in his fingers. The driver of the stopped van had opened the door and stuck his bald head above the window, too stunned to abandon his seat. He knew these children, his neighbor's granddaughter and the boy. “Are you crazy?” Delarosa yelled. “You kids get the hell off this bridge. What are you doing up here anyway?”
“We're learning how to fly, mister!” Mark yelled.
“From an angel,” Sharon added.
“Get offa here before one of you breaks your neck or falls off.”
After Sean let go of her wrists, his grip left a red welt against her skin where she had been bound and now was unchained. Pat Delarosa waited until the group, following Sean's lead, made it to the corner, and he opened the back door, releasing the perfume of bouquets just as the red and blue police lights began to flash against the steel framework of the bridge. Without complaint, they surrendered.
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