MARY RUTH

She doesn’t think of herself as a snoop or busybody. She just enjoys keeping an interested eye on the comings and goings in her neighbourhood. It’s really that simple.

Some women are enthusiastic about euchre, others about crocheting warming blankets for the newborns at City General. But Mary Ruth is obsessively committed to knowing as much as possible about the lives of any neighbour she finds interesting.

In good weather, when not much is happening in the neighbourhood, Mary Ruth sits on her favourite bench alongside the main walking path in Citadel Park. It’s always a pleasant few hours imagining the private lives of the walkers and joggers. The Park is excellent practice for her main passion in life – being profoundly interested in her neighbours.

In fairness, Mary Ruth hasn’t always been so fascinated by other people. Keeping the house in order and tending to the back garden had taken up much of her time in years past. And of course, there was volunteering at the General every Tuesday and Thursday morning. But after the sudden death of her precious Arthur five years ago this past April, Mary Ruth let most of the household chores and volunteering slide quite a bit.

She’d never been much of a TV fan but she’d patiently sit with Arthur just to keep him company while he followed the seasonal sports. As for spending more time on the computer, she barely knew how to turn on Arthur’s machine, so these days it just sits there gathering dust on his desk. Besides, if Mary Ruth feels an urgent need to communicate with someone, she’d either phone them or better still, handwrite and post them a letter. 

Mary Ruth has never been one for the social niceties of idle chit-chat about silly things that no one really cares about. So she has few friends who are interested in hearing about her new life without Arthur.

Immediately after his death, she had lots of idle time on her hands. So Mary Ruth took up casual watching of the many comings and goings on the street in front of her house.

At first, it was just a relaxing hour here and there sipping herbal tea, watching what was going on with the neighbours. But casual watching gradually became many hours each and every day. Often Mary Ruth would watch well into the night. After Arthur died, she had little need for sleep so it became her habit to cat nap here and there throughout the day or night. It surprised Mary Ruth that she could sleep so little yet still have so much energy to devote to her new passion.

What had started out as an innocent curiosity about her neighbours was fast becoming her obsession. Mary Ruth preferred to think of it as her new hobby.

In the beginning, Mary Ruth sat in Arthur’s leather recliner which she turned toward the large window in the front room. It wasn’t too long before she realized there was a better view from the upstairs bedroom. So she paid a well-mannered neighbourhood boy to carry the chair upstairs and place it in front of the window. To her delight, Mary Ruth discovered that sheer white lace curtains were perfect for looking out but not to be seen doing it. And her line of sight was excellent - on the left, fully both sides of the street, all the way to the Millers ten houses down; on the right, to Khan’s Variety directly across from Saint Jude’s RC church at the corner of Franklin and River.

Now that she had so much time devoted to watching, Mary Ruth realized there were many interesting things to keep track of. She furiously scribbled almost illegible but detailed observations into one of Arthur’s many empty spiral notebooks she’d found piled on the top shelf of the closet in his office.

Within two months, she’d completely filled several books with random comments about many of her neighbours. She even made detailed notes on interesting strangers who passed by. For example, there was the elderly couple who were always pulled along by a scruffy-looking dog with a twisted front leg. Or the well-dressed older woman who, on the third Monday of each month except December, left unwanted religious pamphlets in everyone’s mailboxes.

Mary Ruth had always worked best with structure and order in her life. Her first notebooks were just too disorganized to make possible a quick lookup of some interesting detail about any of her more interesting neighbours.

There was Jennifer Williams - a separated single mother with a wandering toddler named Violet. They lived down at number 36. Or the elderly Mr Stahl with the beautifully carved wooden cane. Every weekday afternoon, rain or shine, promptly at 2:30 pm, he would shuffle unsteadily to Kahn’s Variety, passing back in front of Mary Ruth’s upstairs window at exactly 3:05 pm. Or the Davis kid up at 104. He cut classes almost every Monday. He returned home after his parents left for work, always with the same mousy-looking girl hanging limply on his arm. This raging hormonal tryst happened so frequently that Mary Ruth came to seriously doubt there was anything limp once the teenagers were behind a locked front door. Of course, and she often reminded herself of this fact, today’s youth have absolutely no moral compass to guide them, so why should she be shocked at their secretive, lusty behaviour?

Mary Ruth started using highlighter pens and bright sticky tabs for tracking those few neighbours who, for one reason or another, were of particular interest. Soon the tab system didn’t work because Mary Ruth was exuberantly adding many pages of handwritten information far too quickly. Her beloved Arthur’s spiral notebooks were filled rapidly. Necessary and efficient referencing and fact-checking, both very important necessities to Mary Ruth’s record-keeping, became almost impossible.

Finally, Mary Ruth hit on an efficient system. She devoted a single notebook or a series of the same-coloured, sequentially dated notebooks to each neighbour she was watching. For example, last Tuesday evening Jennifer was sitting on her porch with a handsome young man. They were drinking and smoking.

Mary Ruth decided that it was fair trade tea from northern India and most likely a joint of marijuana. Mary Ruth wrote the details in Jennifer’s notebook. She also checked earlier notes to see if this man had been with Jennifer before. 

Once she realized just how often eager young men visited on a regular basis, Mary Ruth set aside several back pages of Jennifer’s notebook. She marked this section with a bright yellow sticky labelled ‘Male Friends’. Mary Ruth entered the date and time of each visit, a detailed physical description of the visitor and very important to her, some quickly scribbled speculations about the possible motives the young man might possibly have for visiting Jennifer.

After about five or six months of documenting facts and her speculations about the basic comings and goings of the neighbours, Mary Ruth realized her notebook-keeping hobby just wasn’t as much fun as when she first started. Something more was needed. So she added two important items to her watching and documenting routine.

First, she bought lightweight, sixteen power Bushnell binoculars from Arthur’s friend Tim at Arnell’s Digital Photo and Copy Shop on Rye Street. Mary Ruth could easily hold the binoculars without tiring. The binoculars were capable of remarkably detailed long-distance magnification, so now Mary Ruth could literally get up-close and personal with anyone she chose to focus on. And best of all, she could do it secretly from behind the bedroom sheers which didn’t hamper her vision.

Next, Mary Ruth started writing longer, more enthusiastic notations of her imaginative speculations about the thoughts, interests, motivations, passions and secrets for each of her chosen neighbours. There was just so much to write about that Mary Ruth barely had time to prepare and eat nutritious meals during the day. Her weight fell away but Mary Ruth still took down all the mirrors in her home. The few she couldn’t remove, she papered over with old newspaper and masking tape from Arthur’s supply cupboard. Mary Ruth decided she could stand to lose a few extra pounds. While her Arthur had never come right out and said it to her face, she just knew he preferred her to look as she did in high school when they first met.

Not thinking about the why of it, Mary Ruth enjoyed writing vividly imagined lives for her few chosen neighbours. Each of these unique worlds was based on very little fact but a whole lot of wildly creative fantasy. Mary Ruth, as a silent observer and documenter, began to live more and more within each of these imagined worlds. She had absolutely no second thoughts or moral ambiguity about doing so. Afterall, being an observer and documenter was a perfectly enjoyable and reasonable pastime. No one was being hurt or inconvenienced by her secret fantasies so there was nothing to be concerned about. Besides, since she no longer needed to dedicate most of her daily life to pleasing dear Arthur, she had been blessed with a limitless opportunity to secretly enter into the lives of the chosen few.

One day, Mary Ruth made an important decision. She would focus almost exclusively on the four most interesting individuals on her street. Narrowing down the subjects of her watching would allow her to devote more time to properly document their lives. She could now become more intensely familiar with each of her chosen neighbours. The promise of such intimacy was very appealing to Mary Ruth.

First, was Jennifer - the separated mother of Violet. She was an obvious choice. This young woman had a lifestyle so unlike anything that Mary Ruth herself had ever experienced. Mary Ruth could only marvel at the freedoms and societal norm-busting that Jennifer represented – both in fact and in Mary Ruth’s rich fantasy world. Dope smoking and maybe some low-level dealing given the number of visitors Jennifer had at all hours of the night and day was an attractive activity.

Jennifer’s sexual promiscuity - in Mary Ruth’s world, that was the only word for it – evidenced by the several young, beautiful men who arrived, stayed a night or two then mysteriously disappeared, only to return some months later apparently eager as ever to enjoy the young woman’s company. Mary Ruth speculated that Jennifer supported her lifestyle not only with welfare cheques and reasonable income from dealing dope but also because the young men were probably willing to pay for her time.

Natural beauty and grace - two traits that a younger Mary Ruth could never claim to possess.

A free-range parenting style - often seemed to put the active toddler Violet at risk of falling from the porch steps or being run-down by a passing car. Never having any kids of her own to practice on, Mary Ruth’s intellectually favoured command and control style of parenting was being stretched beyond reasonable belief by Jennifer’s exceedingly laissez-faire approach to Violet’s upbringing and safety.

Next - Ray and Audrey, the married couple directly across the street. Ray was a salesman at Stafford’s Used Auto And Truck Sales in West City. Even though he had been one of Arthur’s closest friends, Mary Ruth disliked Raymond.

Just three weeks before he died, Arthur abruptly traded their perfectly fine ten-year-old Buick for a low mileage bright red truck. Mary Ruth had no interest in cars or trucks but she could read the badging on the truck’s side as well as the next person – Dodge Ram 1500. Arthur told her the truck would be perfect for hauling clutter from their basement to the landfill. He’d also been thinking about getting a fishing boat and trailer so the Ram would do just fine for that rig too. While she had no proof, Mary Ruth suspected Ray profited twice from selling Arthur that useless truck – he got the commission on the truck and another on the sale of Arthur’s Buick.

Mary Ruth believed Ray was long on nice words but very short on ethics. In her world, car salesmen were all cut from the same morally inferior cloth.

To soften tension caused by the sudden purchase of his truck, Arthur encouraged Mary Ruth to drive the Ram 1500 a few times. She had to admit it had more power than the Buick and so many fancy do-dads she just couldn’t count them all. But eventually, she got comfortable taking the truck around town. Since Arthur died, she took it out more often. Otherwise, the truck usually sat in the garage at the end of their side drive.

But it was Audrey that Mary Ruth was most interested in. An attractive, well put together, confident woman in her mid-fifties, Audrey, to Mary Ruth’s way of thinking, was an outrageous flirt. Mary Ruth had been keeping a close eye on Audrey and Arthur since she caught them shamelessly pawing at each other in the garage during the annual neighbourhood street festival on the July long weekend back in 1998.

With her soaring imagination, Mary Ruth had effortlessly created a slowly collapsing relationship between Audrey and her slimeball husband. She truly believed that marriage would end with Raymond’s surprising demise under highly suspicious circumstances. Of course, his timely death would leave Audrey totally free to put some of her flirtatious moves on Kent, the wealthy but lonely widower who lived in the neat, two-storey, green trimmed semi next to Khan’s.

Mary Ruth’s final choice for special attention was Selina – an impossibly beautiful, slim athletic girl of eighteen with long, raven-coloured hair and a smile that would surely melt the most hardened of hearts.

In real-life, Mary Ruth had watched Selina grow up. Her parents, Luis and Sofia, had moved onto the street when Selina was just learning to walk. Over the years, Mary Ruth quietly but deliberately inserted herself into Selina’s life, always stopping to chat with the child, giving her a few quarters every now and then for an iced Slurpy from Khan’s.

Sofia and Mary Ruth became friends. Sofia invited Mary Ruth to all of Selina’s school concerts. In 2006, Mary Ruth had been an honoured guest at the child’s first Communion of the Holy Sacrament in a beautiful service at St. Jude’s. In fact, a photo of a smiling seven-year-old Selina in a white lace communion dress and wrist-length gloves still held a special place on top of the upright Heintzman in Mary Ruth’s front room.

Somewhere in those early years, Selina became Mary Ruth’s imaginary daughter. Of course, Mary Ruth would never admit such a silly belief to anyone. It was her closely held secret.

As Selina entered her teen years, she appeared less willing to stop and chat with Mary Ruth. Whenever she saw Selina leave the house and start down the street, Mary Ruth would hurry out to the front garden, pretending to fuss over her pink Queen Elizabeth roses. She anticipated being able to intercept Selina as the teenager swept by talking and laughing on her phone. But it never happened. Selina had no interest in Mary Ruth or her prize-winning roses.

Mary Ruth came to believe that her precious Selina was just too preoccupied with friends to care anything at all about Mary Ruth’s life. So Mary Ruth returned to watching, imagining and documenting the young woman’s activities from behind the upstairs window. Mary Ruth filled many notebooks devoted only to Selina’s real or imagined social life.

Three months ago, while sitting in the Park, Mary Ruth was surprised to see Selina enter through the Memorial Gate.

Walking beside her, far too close for Mary Ruth’s liking, was a tall, athletic-looking man. His clean-shaven head glistened in the late afternoon sun. On the upper arm closest to Mary Ruth, was a large tattoo in the shape of three barbed wire strands so popular these days with young people. Beneath cutoff jeans, his right leg - knee to ankle - was completely enclosed in a more intricate, highly colourful tattoo. Sitting at some distance from the man, Mary Ruth could not be certain of the exact details. After several moments, she decided it must be an open-mouthed cobra, long fangs dripping bright poison, the scaled body coiled completely around the calf muscle. Mary Ruth involuntarily shivered. She hated snakes. She also had no love of tattoos of any kind.

For the sake of the notes in Selina’s file, she decided to call him Tattoo Man.

Tattoo Man was quite a bit older than Selina. Certainly not a high school senior. His face was darkly stubbled, the upper body covered in a clean but well-worn red basketball jersey. A chain necklace glittered golden in the sun. Mary Ruth had never been a fan of men wearing jewellery of any kind. Except for the wedding band, she had strictly forbidden any frivolous adornment on her late husband.

Mary Ruth couldn’t believe that her precious Selina would even consider being in the company of such a questionable character. Tattoos all over, shaved head, flashy jewellery and several days worth of beard immediately sealed his fate with Mary Ruth.

Tattoo Man was openly smoking a joint. Mary Ruth knew it from observing Jennifer and her male friends. He passed it frequently to Selina who would laugh, take a long drag then blow a blue-white cloud of smoke into the man’s face as she passed it back.

Mary Ruth decided that Tattoo Man was most certainly not the young beau her beautiful Selina deserved. She also knew that Sofia and Luis would never approve of this boorish, pot smoking, tattooed, unshaven hooligan. In fact – and Mary Ruth was even more certain on this point – Selina’s parents likely did not even know about their daughter’s close involvement with this unsavoury creature.

Turning left onto Lakeside Trail, Selina and Tattoo Man moved leisurely off toward the boating pond. Selina stopped abruptly, embraced and deeply kissed the man - a little too passionately for such a public place or so it seemed to Mary Ruth. And then that evil man had the nerve to deliberately slide his right hand up under Selina’s denim half-jacket, beneath the white cropped tank top. Mary Ruth knew with absolute certainty that Tattoo Man was fondling Selina’s breasts. Shifting slightly while pushing down his hand, Selina playfully grabbed at Tattoo Man’s ass before leading him further along the tree-lined pathway.

Once Selina and that horrid man were out of sight, Mary Ruth pulled a small black notepad and red click pen from her purse. That entire distressing scene was definitely going into Selina’s current notebook. Given her rising feeling of outrage, Mary Ruth didn’t trust her memory well enough to recall the exact details later so she wrote them down right then while still sitting on the park bench.  

^{________________}  ¯ ^{________________}

Watching Selina being so publicly intimate with Tattoo Man threw Mary Ruth completely off her daily routine of documenting observations and writing her fantastical speculations about Jennifer, Ray and Audrey.

Mary Ruth reasoned that Jennifer would always be Jennifer and didn’t need close monitoring for the moment. Ray didn’t look well these days so, in Mary Ruth’s mind, he would likely die at any moment. And regardless of what Mary Ruth might say or do to thwart her intentions, Audrey was determined to have joyous sexual congress with the terribly lonely, unsuspecting Kent.

Mary Ruth’s immediate future plans were now clear. Selina must receive her total attention and vigilance to ensure her safety from Tattoo Man. Mary Ruth hoped that Selina would come to her senses and kick that awful man out of her life forever. It was at critical moments like this that Mary Ruth wished her dear Arthur was still with her to offer his wise counsel. Since his death, she had taken to talking quietly to his presence which she believed to be always nearby. Mary Ruth took comfort in a firm belief that when really needed, her Arthur would tell her or give her a sign about the best way to intervene in order to protect Selina. 

^{________________}  ¯ ^{________________}

The following Tuesday afternoon, Mary Ruth was taking a leisurely tour around the block. Since she had temporarily re-focused her watching and documentation activities onto Selina, there was not as much note taking to occupy the days and evenings. So she often strolled about the neighbourhood, forcing herself to chat with strangers or shopkeepers, always on the hunt for the odd bits and pieces she could enter into a new scribbler she simply called ‘The Neighbourhood’.

Sofia was coming out of Khan’s Variety. After a warm greeting, she invited Mary Ruth over for some tea on the front porch. It had been awhile since the two women had actually met in person, so there was lots of news to share.

Mary Ruth deliberately kept her news light and certainly did not share anything related to her hobby. She talked about missing Arthur, how she’d taken to driving his truck around the city and sometimes out onto the busy twelve-lane expressway that passes through the north-east edge. Mary Ruth said that while she had come to enjoy the deep growl and powerful surge of the engine, it was mostly the faint, lingering smell of Arthur’s cigars inside the truck that made the driving pleasurable. It gave her some comfort, she said, even though she had strongly disapproved of him smoking, especially those awful cigars.

Sofia smiled, agreeing that fortunately, Luis had given up smoking his favourite Italian Toscanos when his elder brother Christos died horribly of lung cancer after many years of smoking. Comfortable in their shared belief about the evils of smoking, the two friends sipped their tea in silence.

Mary Ruth asked after Selina, remarking that in recent days she hadn’t seen Selina out and about the neighbourhood. With tears in her eyes, Sofia reported that ten days ago, while Selina was going to meet a friend at a café, she had tripped on uneven pavement and fallen heavily into the roadway. Unfortunately, the fall broke Selina’s right wrist and heavily bruised her face, neck, shoulder and arm. While the injuries would heal with time, Sofia expressed worry that now her daughter was refusing to leave the house, claiming she was too embarrassed to be seen in public with noticeable facial bruising and the ugly cast on her lower arm. Brushing away tears, Sofia sighed, silently shaking her head at her daughter’s extreme reaction to the accident.

Instantly, Mary Ruth’s protective instincts kicked in. She sincerely expressed her best wishes for Selina’s full and quick recovery. If Selina needed a ride to the doctor’s office at any time, Mary Ruth offered to drive her. But while the right words and sentiments were being spoken, her thoughts were racing, her heart seemed to skip beats and her breathing became noticeably raspy. She hoped that Sofia did not notice her physical reaction to the news of Selina’s accident.

It was no accident. Mary Ruth was certain of it.

Tattoo Man, looking as he did and being as rude and aggressive as Mary Ruth had come to believe he was, had surely been the cause of Selina’s injuries. Of course, Selina would make up a fake story to tell her parents. She had to tell them something in order to cover up the secret relationship with Tattoo Man and her abuse at his hands. Something had triggered Tattoo Man’s anger toward Selina and most assuredly she had been badly beaten because of it.

Mary Ruth’s mind was rapidly connecting assorted snippets of information from her earlier fanciful speculations about this dreadful man. There was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that her beautiful Selina had been almost murdered by this hateful man. And just about as bad, Mary Ruth had failed to act sooner on her intuition -  those worried feelings that had first been triggered back in the Park.

Selina appeared unexpectedly in the porch doorway from the front hall. Mary Ruth, startled to see her, immediately jumped up to embrace and comfort this frail-looking young woman. Selina was pale, the purple-yellow bruises on her face a striking reminder of the violent trauma she had been through.

“Miss Sullivan …I …” Selina barely managed the words before she was pulled tightly into the bosom of Mary Ruth.

Certain that she could not be seen by Sofia, Mary Ruth whispered into Selina’s ear – “Oh, my darling child, I will make that man pay dearly for what he did to you. I promise.”

Instantly, Selina jerked away from Mary Ruth as if she again had been struck, her mouth open, eyes wide and wild. “Oh, um … No, Miss Sullivan, I don’t …”

But Mary Ruth was already gone, walking with long, purposeful strides back to her house. Sofia looked up briefly at her daughter in the doorway - mouth wide open, left hand frantically pulling at her hair. Then over to the empty chair where Mary Ruth had been sitting. What had just happened? Sofia began to cry.

Mary Ruth stopped in her front hall and tried to collect herself. Settled, she went to the kitchen and made some tea. She went up to the front bedroom and flipped through recent notes until she found the record of Selina and Tattoo Man’s actions in the Park. In that very moment, the man had sparked something very alarming within Mary Ruth. That evening she had written several pages on what she imagined Tattoo Man’s personality and motivations to be. In light of Selina being attacked, much of what she had written now made perfect sense.

Acting on a hunch after seeing Selina in the Park that day with Tattoo Man, Mary Ruth had taken Arthur’s truck to the library and read up on the psychology of men who abuse women. What she learned caused her to be very frightened for the safety of her beloved Selina. On further reflection, she decided it was best to remain vigilant, recording as much of Selina’s daily routines as she could. She trusted that Selina’s maturity and ample common sense would take over. Whatever was happening with Tattoo Man, Selina would end it quickly.

Now it was clear from Selina’s injuries that Mary Ruth had made a serious miscalculation about the young woman’s ability to see Tattoo Man for what he really was. And for choosing not to act on her apprehension about Tattoo Man, her dear, sweet Selina had been almost killed. So now it was up to Mary Ruth to correct this situation in some appropriate manner. But she had no idea what that would be.

She would ask dear Arthur for his guidance. He never failed her in such matters.

^{________________}  ¯ ^{________________}

Late Wednesday evening, Mary Ruth was in her usual place behind the sheers in the upstairs front bedroom.

As was her habit, she was on watch for any unusual activity on the street that she could record in her notebooks. But her mind was only on Selina. Mary Ruth worried that the young woman might never heal properly in both body and spirit. While she had written extensively about Tattoo Man in her speculative passages, with a growing sense of desperation Mary Ruth realized she didn’t know his real name, where he lived, where he worked or where he hung out when he wasn’t with Selina.

Down in front of Jennifer’s place, a slight shift in the dark shadows drew Mary Ruth’s attention. Odd, she thought. Jennifer and her current male visitor were already inside after an evening spent smoking and talking on the front porch. All the house lights were off. There – it was a dark form moving slowly along the opposite side of the street toward Mary Ruth’s window.

Quickly, she put the Bushnells on the moving shadow, adjusting the fine focus. A person in dark clothing, moving ahead a few steps, stopping and looking toward each house in turn. Mary Ruth realized this person was checking house numbers. House by house. Edging slowly along the darkened street, not wishing to draw the attention of still awake neighbours. She sharpened the focus a touch more.

A sudden gasp. “My heavens, it’s Tattoo Man.” She’d recognize that face anywhere. He was on her very street, now almost directly in front of her driveway. Step. Pause. Step again. Yes, now that he was closer, she was certain it was him. He moved slowly off to her right, stopping beneath the old oak beside the driveway into Selina’s house.

Using the zoom knob on her binoculars, Mary Ruth pulled in tight on the man’s face. Tattoo Man was looking up at the second floor, staring at Selina’s bedroom window. Something pale white suddenly appeared behind the top sash. Mary Ruth shifted the lens just in time to see Selina’s face looking down at the tree. Mary Ruth was certain she saw a quick flash of recognition. Selina’s mouth fell open, then closed. “She’s scared to death of him” Mary Ruth whispered. “And with good reason.”

Just as quickly as it had appeared, the face disappeared. A white blind came down behind the window glass.

Tattoo Man waited for twenty-seven minutes. Mary Ruth timed him so she could be precise in her notes. He moved off toward the RC church then turned the corner, walking south on River.

It was at that exact moment that Mary Ruth realized Arthur had just given her a sign. “Thank you, my darling”, she whispered.

^{________________}  ¯ ^{________________}

The man walked slowly along River, smoking and texting on his phone. The soft white glare from the screen under lit his face creating a ghoulish Halloween effect. He was smiling, maybe even talking to himself.

The Green River bridge split the community into East and West City. It was a long span of crumbling concrete stub walls embedded with rusty, black metal railings, roughly patched asphalt on the roadbed and 1950-era light standards spaced evenly along both sides of the narrow bridge deck. Six to each side, only two actually working, casting pale yellow cones of light.

Nearing the middle of the bridge, in a long stretch of darkness between two faint splashes of light, the man looked up from his phone, twisting slightly to glance behind. The deep growl of an engine approaching from the rear had broken his concentration. It was late, the bridge was deserted so the man was curious.

The truck bucked up over the low curb, launching briefly into the air, then came down hard onto the walkway just in time to smash into the man. The truck was moving very fast. The vehicle slid slightly sideways in response to the crushing impact of the man’s body on the shattering left side headlight, bumper and grill. The fenders and door panels scraped heavily along the wall for several yards causing a bright, brief shower of yellow-white sparks within a high-pitched screech of stressed metal. The driver’s side mirror snapped off and skidded alongside the truck for a short distance. The machine jerked sharply right back into the empty lane of the bridge. The truck straightened and skidded to a stop.

The driver side window rolled down. A face appeared, looking at the exact spot where the man had just been standing. On the bridge walkway, the crushed screen of a cell phone flickered twice then faded slowly to black. Just beyond, a sneaker - lace still tightly tied - lay on its side amidst shards of broken plastic, headlight glass, bent pieces of chrome and ragged bits of bloody clothing.

The impact had lifted the man upwards with explosive force, his clothing ripping partially off. Airborne, the nearly naked body had struck the top edge of the bridge railing. Then, as if in slow motion, it pin-wheeled crazily down into the fast current of the Green River.

The face smiled then slowly disappeared as the window closed. The idling engine roared back to full power. The truck sped away, tires squealing on the pavement, disappearing into the protective darkness of West City.

First Publication: ‘Mary Ruth’ appeared in the Canadian online magazine CommuterLit in two parts – February 21 and 22, 2018.

The Backstory: Where I write my stories, I can look out onto the street in front of our house and see much of the comings and goings of my neighbours. As a result, I’m familiar with many small details of family and neighbourhood life. One day, I asked myself – what if a person with a lot of time on their hands, became obsessively interested in the real and imagined lives of their neighbours? Thus the character of Mary Ruth was born.

Legal Rights. ‘Mary Ruth’ is the intellectual property of the author, Don Herald. No part of this story may be reproduced in any format without the written permission of the author.