AUGUST 2009

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Leaps of Faith
By Shilo Morlang, Jun 11, 2009

That guy, I gotta tell you, when he jumped off that building—nah, fuck that. He flew. I tell you. I think that’s what made him do it. Take that chance. And for awhile, Jesus Christ, he had it. I mean, he actually fucking flew. It was beautiful. But then...

I don’t know. I was walking down to Macy’s, down on the corner of Grand, to buy Tina these new boots she’s been wanting but not getting on account that we still like to eat and have a place to sleep at night, and that’s when I saw it. All them people. Standing there on the corner, standing and staring up at the sky. Yeah I got excited. I thought there might be space aliens or some shit. It’s been a long time since I was a part of something extraordinary. So I took my place down there in the mix. All us rubbernecking like turkeys, our heads tilted way back, mouths wide open—if it had rained we would have all drowned. So we’re standing and looking up and police are there and firetrucks too and they’ve got them great big spotlights they turn that hum so loud you think you might go deaf or your insides will just rattle apart. That beam of light goes up and that’s when I see him. Some poor schmo in this cheap looking suit. He’s just walking around up top the Macy’s, stalking back and forth, like some big cat at the zoo. People are pointing up at him, women cup their hands over their mouths. Mothers are covering their children’s eyes with their free hands. But none of us were going nowhere. We had ourselves a show!

Some fat bastard got on his bullhorn and tried to talk our man down. But you could hear it in his voice, and I mean it was amplified, he didn’t come right out and say it, but you could hear it, loud and clear—he wanted him to jump. Hell, we all wanted him to jump. It sounds awful, but I think we get so damn numbed up sometimes, we need a thing like that to save us.

There was no saving our guy. We could see him taking off his tie, taking off his jacket, he wasn’t about to make anything easy. He had us.

The cops, they send a couple guys into the Macy’s. Plain clothes. Maybe try to talk him down, maybe shoot him. Who knows?

He did, I think. The way he took out his cufflinks and rolled up his sleeves, he was prepared. From up there I imagine he could see everything. God, I was jealous. He sat down and started dangling his feet over the edge. Here I was about to buy Tina a pair of boots we couldn’t afford because it’s been so long since I’ve been able to give her anything, and this guy’s about to give everything away. How can I compete with that? Mothers started turning their kids round backwards so they wouldn’t see nothing. Poor kids were stuck seeing everything stretched out, elongated in the glass of the Barnes and Noble cross the street. They gotta grow up sometime.

The guy on the bullhorn was yelling: “Whaddya want? What can we do for you? How can we make sure nobody here gets hurt?” I think it was taking longer than he really wanted.

The man upstairs was looking pretty irritated as well. He was scratching his head, kicking his feet against the side of the building, like a kid sitting on top of a wall. Then he kicked off one of his shoes, just let it drop the eighty feet to the crowd below. He could have killed someone. A couple people screamed, like they hadn’t been waiting for something to fall out of the sky. We were all lying to ourselves. Except for him. He just didn’t seem to care. Not anymore. After he dropped the shoe he seemed calm. I don’t know if it was him threatening us or what, but he took off the other shoe and set it next to him. Just set it lengthwise way up there on the ledge. Or maybe that was just another threat. We’ll never know.

He rubbed his feet awhile, took off his socks, then looked up behind himself. He stood up and everyone gasped, but weakly. We gasped like you do at the circus during the trapeze act. It’d be different if you couldn’t see the net. He turned his back on us and people were upset. It was the plain clothes. Someone yelled: “Jump, asshole!” I understand the frustration, but can you believe it?

The man upstairs disappeared for awhile. It was only a couple seconds, but I gotta tell you, it felt like forever.

And then it happened. All we saw was his back, and a leg stepping onto nothing but air and he was off. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of! He didn’t ball up, didn’t reach out to nothing and try to save himself. He just spread his arms and dropped. He flew! People were taking a step back, then a couple forward. Mothers grabbed their children and pulled them close. The kids looked up. And then...

I was far enough back I didn’t get sprayed but some poor schmo a couple rows ahead of me got whacked in the face by the left hand. Goddamn thing popped right off. People were silent, like in the middle of a Holocaust movie when there’s just nothing to say, and then they started screaming and crying and the cops were pushing people back, trying to get to the hand and anything else that flew off, and some people were just too in shock and couldn’t move for what they just saw, and they got their skulls cracked open or just thrown on the ground and handcuffed. And I heard two women talking about it. One said: “How?” The other: “Why?”

I bought Tina the boots, but I haven’t given them to her yet. Truth is we’ve been having kind of a tough time of it lately. And since I haven’t given her the boots I’ve never been able to tell her the story, and I’m not really sure I ever want to. So I think I might just hang on to them. Keep them hidden in that old suitcase in the closet. She can have them if she decides things are no longer working out.