The Water Under the Bridge

Freshman year of college, at nights during the warm months when I couldn't sleep, I'd change into shorts and a long-sleeve t-shirt and go running. I'd run straight out the dorm and down Neeley toward the White River, and then I'd run along the path that led past the river, along the railroad tracks, to the south side of town. I'd race the trains as they came along, or jump in fright at the first bark of a dog. Some nights--at midnight, three a.m., whenever--I'd run as far as the graffiti murals the city had sponsored on the concrete walls abutting the path, on the stretch of the track just past the bridge, where once during the spring the area was so flooded Travis and I had to turn back; the water was up to our hips. I stopped running so late, eventually, after several people were murdered that year.