the namesake jonathan bitz I. The boy’s name was Friedrich. But mostly he went by the name, Freddy – according to the conventions of everything shortened. Shorter. Short. Down where the Big Thompson River cuts under the Merchant Street Bridge and its mildewing arches, stands the Joaquin County School yard. Here, in the middle of the day, in a town devoid of stop signs, a sandwich of sound crunches: its bread bottom top is the lunchtime chimes of the school bells. The meat in-between is the stampeding river waters. And in the void separating the tangible is an ever-morphing song: Freddy… Freddy… said he wasn’t ready… Said he… Didn’t like Teddy… With rhyme and meter the children chanted these nonsensical songs – according to the conventions of all the pendulum playground swings swaying; of feet shuffling in game; and hopscotch skipping on the black top. Freddy-bear, teddy-bear, slip-slopped his dirty hair… From Corrupt Coleman’s house, where one could look down and into the school yard at lunchtime, one could see a potpourri of images fluttering: Children playing games, talking, normalizing… But if one scanned the yard with intent they would find the young Friedrich, off and away from the others. An outlier on a graph of millions. On some days Friedrich could be seen, whimpering and wiping his eyes under the shade tree at the edge of the yard. But it wasn’t as though he was ever hovering over a new or abrupt grief. Instead, Friedrich cried because he couldn’t think of what else to do – to fill up that incalculably lonely void in his abdomen. Friedrich despised his name. Formally or informally. Friedrich or Freddy. Spoken or screamed. And worse, Friedrich knew of no other kid in their whole desolate town that shared his same, horribly misshapen name. But when Friedrich was thirteen, he was given his birth certificate and told that he wasn’t just Freddy A. Lorman. No, he was Friedrich Alton Geist. An orphan child. And all at once, Friedrich knew not his age in years. He only knew that he had lived for an indeterminably long time. The light was orange that day. It came in sideways, past the quaking aspens and through the Venetian blinds. It spilled onto the floor like the decaying wreck of a linear history in bones. There was no sound. No words. No explanations. Friedrich raised the certificate up to the slanted light as if it were written in invisible ink. At the bottom was scrawled, “Named after the great thinker, writer and philosopher”. Before he could ask, they told him two things: That they were not his biological parents and, that was his mother’s hand. All Friedrich had of her was at the bottom of that certificate – a sloppy hand, still shaken after giving birth to something she didn’t even want. More than the curiosity of who his mother or father is – the prospect that some one else shared his name made Friedrich’s gut balloon with hope. So inflated he became, that his parent’s Victorian home was no longer large enough to hold him. II. Accompanied by the grin of a lonely lottery luck and the stride of the evening river tide, Friedrich was in a near-skip, half-trot down past the sandlot, in his stroll along Merchant Street. Hey, Freddy, Freddy… The baseball boys in the outfield chanted, one-by-one as Friedrich passed – to the tune of “hey batter, batter…” Loping in to the county library just before the springtime dusk, he leaned over the counter and hollered to the backroom. Mrs. Peck took the perfunctory call and shook her head. “I don’t know how we would find that out, Freddy… A philosopher?” Then, just as Freddy placed his orphan hands on the front door glass, to walk back out – he heard Mrs. Peck’s voice, “…But you might want to ask Mr. Coleman… He knows about these things…” Corrupt Coleman? “…yes, Freddy… He lives at the Merchant Street Bridge…” III. In the seven o’clock nights after the Spring solstice, the light is long through the Big Thompson Valley. In through the green trees it comes, broken and scattered by the branched fingers of God. And down Merchant Street, from just past Corrupt Coleman’s house, wafts the thick scent of waffle cones on these calm, ghostly evenings. It was always as if some in the town were preparing for an invasion just before they drifted off for sleep. They made waffle cones. Then locked their business doors. But on anybody else’s map, this little dot was, by all accounts – a ghost town. Nearly uninhabited. Forgotten about by the history of the outside world, save those that were curious about the paranormal. And so it was that Friedrich walked into it all – the exploding sunset and the shadows of the trees grown tall. Deeper into the desolate Merchant Street, with its dusty, cracked window shops and falling facades, all you could hear was the Thompson churning and burning downstream. Friedrich knew where Coleman’s house was, but the overgrown evergreens and the man that wasn’t ever seen – was all too intimidating for a boy of Freddy’s age. So, instead of pushing himself out of his complicated loneliness and into the world, Friedrich picked a perch on the Joaquin County Church’s tall steps, below the birds nesting high above – where he sat and listened to all the silent voices in his head. Here Friedrich sat, as he did all those days of his life at lunchtime. He sat somehow, with great oddity – loving his fate. Loving that he wasn’t among the children who were expected to play sports. Or till the fields in the summer. Friedrich felt fortune in the fact that his parents were never his parents – and that they never even pretended to be. For years on end, Friedrich was left to his own devices, to roam. Then, just as Friedrich was melting into the still-life around, he caught a spark in the way that a prospector catches a glimpse of a vein of placer gold. In one of the last patches of river-run spring sun, something off and across the still street scene, moved. From around the corner the sight flowed, in a flowery yellow dress and clipped-crop brown hair: It was a girl in a half-trot – wavering like the reflection in the grocer’s windows that she passed. There were only a handful of girls in Joaquin County that were anywhere near the same age as Friedrich – and she wasn’t one of them. In her prance around the corner, Friedrich noticed that under her dress were not white legs that danced up the steps to church like everybody else. Instead, the girl was donning blue jeans below. And leather boots. A kooky suit. With rhythm and rhyme the girl skipped down past the Grocery Market to the side of the Liquor store’s door. There she began to pace with her head down. Dancing she seemed to be, without a sound. Friedrich leaned in closer, listening for the music. But there wasn’t anything more than the jay’s nesting, the river gorging and the famous Joaquin County cicada’s buzzing. IV. In the last flood of the day’s sunlight, the girl leaned into an angle – up against the maroon bricks of the liquor store. She crossed a calf over a shin and stood like a Bakelite mannequin staring into the sun. Then, in one short second – everything changed: The girl dipped her head into her shoulder and squinted into the light. It seemed as though she was peering right into the shadows. Right at Friedrich. But then, just as quick as Friedrich could freeze, the girl twirled around. One full revolution later and she stepped to a stop and started rolling her wrist on her elbow’s pivot as if she were winding her arm like a watch. It took a long second for Friedrich to realize this, as it struck him queerly, but: the girl was dancing. And the way her head seemed to lurch so carefully forward, coupled with the strange and incessant winding of her arm – it was as if she was collecting potential energy – and readying to launch off her stage. Towards Friedrich. Hastily Friedrich rose from the steps, spilling the quiet grains taken for granite from his socks. On the tips of his sharp nerves, he aimed his backwards cowlick in the direction of Corrupt Coleman’s house – where, if he had half the courage at all – he would just peer-in on his way home. Here, there was a dividing line, a driving line, more abrupt than any yellow line: The demarcation between the sunny and the shady side of the street. Never toting this division, Friedrich ducked his head even deeper and drug on. V. “Hey!” Is what he would tell his children her first words were. “Hey…” her voice cooed again. Slower this time, as if she had stopped dancing. Friedrich lifted his iron head and looked back at the girl. “Where are you going?” She bellowed as she stepped off the curb into the vacant street. “What’s your name?” She questioned, her voice soaring now – pleasant and even, as if she knew that the whole town was sleeping and that there was freedom in letting the wind carry her words. Friedrich only reached deeper into his pockets. His suspicions rallied in a gust. Nobody ever asked Friedrich questions. “You live around here?” She asked, closer now. Weaving she was, along the invisible path to Friedrich. Friedrich stopped. “Yeah…” he answered – embarrassed that she froze him in the shadows. Friedrich wondered: If they were across the street in the sun, would he rise or even melt? She tipped the top of her head up to him. With her eyes wise, she looked into Friedrich as though she had lost something in the iris of his eyes. And instead of backing away from the boy, as so many had done before – the girl was nodding. “My name’s Lily,” she announced proudly. VI. With one suspicious eye leaning toward her, Friedrich slowly egged out of his shell. “I haven’t ever seen you before…” “No, I’ve never been here.” Friedrich moved toward the center of the street, and Lily followed. And in unison, the pair began walking down the yellow line together – single file. “I came to stay with my uncle,” Lily said, balancing now, down the center line. “What is your name?” She asked, staring away and down toward the watery slopes of the Big Thompson. Friedrich stopped and turned back to the girl. He scraped the heel of shoe on the street as an answer to her question. And then, slowly he followed suit and glanced down to the banks of the river. “You’re shy, aren’t you?” Lily asked, “Aww…” She waited for a reaction, and then when none came, “I think that’s kind of sweet.” And her cheeks blossomed with candy apple red. And while Friedrich’s courage was faltering in a litany of ways – he was certain of one thing: That, like all the apparitions of antiquity that came before, Lily too had somehow managed to rise like the Joaquin County sun – up and into Friedrich’s solitary ring of horizons. Even then, in that first visit, the frail shoulders of young Friedrich could feel Lily beginning to bend him. Shape him. Like she was going to be around for a long, long time. Even into the next lifetime. Yet, before spring would even have a chance to slowly melt into summer, Lily would disappear. Never to resurface again. VIII. Friedrich slowly warmed to Lily as the sun fell away for the night, and the houses of the town faded their lights to black. And under the clear crash of the soft leaves of the maples and acacias alike, Friedrich and Lily walked. But only one was surprised by this attention. Of course, the frail and timid Friedrich searched and scanned every phrase of Lily’s for intent; and aim. He was certain, that at any moment his trust would bust. But for hours on end, as the two walked the desolate and dark streets of the town, talking about everything that encompassed their lives – the words came easy. Albeit, the bulk of conversation was grown from the tip of Lily’s tongue. “Yeah… I like living in the city. There’s lots to do. Movies and parks and stuff… but it’s nice out here. It’s quiet. And there aren’t a lot of lights…” “My uncle stays up late. He said it was better if I came back then. So he could work, or something… He’s a brilliant man. But kind of strange, you know?” But even that wasn’t what was carrying the curious pair down the placid streets of Joaquin County. No, at least not for Lily. For her, her vehicle was something even lighter than words. Something more ethereal and foreign to the young Friedrich: Intermittently, Lily would find occasion to dance. And it wasn’t a snap of the wrist, click of the heel quiet prance. That night, on their third trip over the Merchant Street Bridge, Lily commented on the water below their feet. And as she did, she loped into a slow circular gallop. “You ever wonder about people in a flood? You see them on T.V., and they just get carried away by the current.” Bouncing around the at once stationary Friedrich, she seemed to be looking over her shoulder, through the dark; and into the water. “You ever think, gawd… Can’t they just swim to the side?” To even his surprise, Friedrich replied – with the age and wisdom of many lives lived, “that’s where a person’s will isn’t enough…” Lily stopped. “Exactly. Water is some powerful and terrifying stuff.” “Yeah, it is. Powerful. It makes things like canyons, miles deep…” “Ah. A song. Do you hear it?” Lily cupped her hand up at her funnel shaped earlobe. Then she began to trot again, slowly swimming back into her galloping circle. Despite the dark of the night Friedrich could see her, and the trail she left all around him, like the fuzzy corona of the sun. “Where do you hear a song?” Friedrich asked. “The water… Come. Dance with me.” Lily grabbed Friedrich’s limp hands and swung them out and into the dark space between them where only the safety of night hid them. But Friedrich froze. “Aw, c’mon…” Lily exclaimed. “You can dance…” “No. No, I never learned.” “You don’t need to be taught, silly. Everybody knows how to dance.” Backing up a clumsy two-footed step, Friedrich replied, “I don’t have any rhythm.” “Sure you do. Everybody does. Since the womb, you know rhythm.” Surprised by her strength in smarts, Friedrich asked, “How old are you?” Quickly, Lily responded with, “What’s your name? You never told me.” “You never asked.” “Maybe I didn’t ask for a reason…” And as Lily drug Friedrich around in circles on the Merchant Street Bridge, he slowly began to lift and shift his weight – from leg to leg. Here it was dark. Only streetlights off and down the street illuminated all that was uncomfortable for the boy. Here, in this rush of watery music and the still of the entire night, he found solace in this strange apparition of a girl. Upon closer examination, Friedrich could hear his heart pounding, bleeding blood and finding rhythm beyond all his raw and shrill nerves at the tips of his fingers. Never before had he been touched like this. IX. “So you wanted to dance, because of people dying in river floods?” The young boy asked, trying to push their talk into humor. But the young girl didn’t respond in words. Instead, Lily pulled Friedrich softly by the hand, leading him down and off the bridge – to the path that cut down and around to the river. Right next to Corrupt Coleman’s house. In a whisper that was a tight and forceful as a soft gale, she queried, “What’s your jig?” “Okay, my name’s Fred–Friedrich,” He caught himself. “My name’s Friedrich.” “Wow. Somebody gave you that name for an important reason…” Still with their hands interlocked, Lily skipped down the banks, to a clearing next to the river. She released Friedrich from her elastic grip and turned back to the boy. “Show me your jig.” “What’s a jig?” Friedrich replied. “Like Irish people do. You know, a jig. Like how they dance.” “I don’t know…” Friedrich was becoming nervous. Like she was going to force him to perform or act, or play. Things that he had never been asked to do before. “Like you’re running in place or something…” And with that, Lily began a quick mock demonstration. “Like this…” she said as she was elegantly clicking her heels and throwing her weight up and erect. Her knees high in the tall, engulfing grass. “I can’t do that…” Friedrich sighed. Disheartened, the boy turned and stepped toward the churning waters of the Big Thompson. The day had been long and he hadn’t the faculties to process it all. Not here, not now. In a space where he had never been. With a girl that held his hand… As if he had finally crossed into a right of passage that he didn’t know existed – he was mystified as though he were coming into the bright lights of the world all over again. In this moment of processing the giddy gut of girls and heat and… the birth certificate. His name… “My name is Friedrich. And I think I like it…” he spun around, ready to confess and tell all with a vigor that he had never mustered before in words. But she was gone. “Lily?” Friedrich looked around. He fell to his haunches, as if he could see her glow from much lower down. But she was gone. Like an apparition she appeared. And like all the ghosts of the sepia days, she fall back into the void again. As if she never were. X. When Friedrich found his empty bed later that night, he fell asleep to fuzzy images of Lily dancing in the dark flower night around him. Here was the biography of a fever. And when Friedrich awoke the next woke morning and rolled from his bed, he rose fresh with ethereal visions of a ghostly girl he once loved, but never knew. He pulled his shirt from his heart. Here was the biography of delusion and fright. Eating breakfast in the silent kitchen of his house, Friedrich conversed with the figures passing through the kitchen, as he had done for his previous verbal years of life – with parents that were no warmer to him than faceless hotel attendants were to guests that they will never see again. “Corrupt Coleman? Why would you want to go there?” They asked him. Friedrich looked blankly down at the table. Instead, and before he was even done with his food, Friedrich left the hotel lobby and tipped his invisible cap to the concierge on his way out and into the day. Today, Friedrich was going to find his fate in his namesake. XII. Corrupt Coleman’s house sat on the hill overlooking the County school yard. But on this weekend day, the yard was even more desolate than the town itself. All the cars were parked in their dirt lots. And only the rush of the river could be heard. And so young Friedrich walked, nearly invisibly, down Merchant Street, and then he cut the hill next to Coleman’s house and dropped down to the banks where he lost Lily the night prior. With his head down, he looked around – as though evidence of her ghost would be found on the ground. Somewhere in the tall blades of grass. After a cursory survey of the banks, and without any evidence in hand – Friedrich closed his eyes. And remembered her. Her words. Her dance. And in a fury of scent, sound and memory, Friedrich began – for the first time – to dance. Remembering Lily’s conception of a jig, Friedrich dug in and kicked his knees up. He stopped and glanced around for eyes. And laughs. And new rhyming songs of nonsense and irritation. Then, he continued… XIII. “See?” Friedrich stopped. He whipped his head around. “You can dance.” He looked up the hill. Up the river. Down wind. “I told you…” It was coming from above. Friedrich looked up. And in the center of the melon morning sun, Lily stood on the bridge, peering down at him. A bright disk of light like a halo around her small face. And with that, Friedrich cracked his shell – oozing outward in a brave pose. “I need your help…” He said, with the mysterious feel of lifetimes filling-in his holes of confidence. “I’m all yours,” Lily replied, pertly. And then disappeared. Friedrich stood, paralyzed. And in a few confusing seconds of time, Lily reappeared, scooting down the hill toward the banks of the river; and Friedrich. She was dressed as she was the day before - but this time the dress was flowing white, and her pants underneath were striped. Friedrich laughed behind his eyes. He had never seen something so beautiful and strange. And when Lily reached him, he stepped out of the bridge’s shadow – back into the open, bright light of the day. Unfrozen. Melting. “So,” Lily said on the approach, weaving her way into a dance, “you need help?” Her elbow wrenched elegantly into her ribs and she began – as she did all the night prior – winding her arm like a watch. Gaining momentum. This time – handing some over to the young boy. In concert with a loud breeze and the tickling sound of the tall grass kissing each blade of the next, Lily lightly squeezed Friedrich’s hand. The trees clapped and chattered their approval. Unfreezing, Friedrich said, “I have to go somewhere today that…” And he only winced once before he said, “I’ve been too scared to go to.” “Scared? Like a ghost?” She replied. Smiling tenderly. “Yes. Up there…” Friedrich pointed up the hill, just over the crest – toward Corrupt Coleman’s house. Lily sighed inside a laugh and squinted. “Up there? To that house?” “Yes.” “That’s my uncle’s house,” Lily cooed. She pursed her lips and lifted like a marble, their clasped hands, a little higher. XIV. After his lengthy explication, of the need for his visit – coupled with a statement to the effect of the entire town’s apprehensions of Corrupt Coleman – Lily squeezed his hand a little tighter. She raised it to her lips and quietly said, “there’s nothing to fear. Come. Here.” And the young boy followed in the gown of her windswept scent. The steps were rickety, but they didn’t fall through. And with Friedrich’s hand inside hers, he followed her lofty gait up and through the front door. Just like that. He did not even have time to build, and then destroy, his courage. Nor did he even knock at Corrupt Coleman’s door, as he had orchestrated so many times before. And then it all unfolded, nearly beyond words. “Uncle?” Lily bellowed into the dark house, her hand still in the young boy’s. “Yes, dear…” Came the return call, down the short entry hall. “C’mon,” Lily said, pulling Friedrich along. And then the pair came to a doorway. And in a room buried in books, an old man sat at the back. In a rocking chair, the old man’s white hair sparkled in the reflection of the boys eyes. Suddenly, the boy flushed with warmth. And uncommon ease. “My friend wants to ask you something…” Lily said, grinning and at last – gently dropping Friedrich’s hand from hers. Timidly, the young boy looked down to the old man. “Mrs. Peck told me that I should come talk to you…” He looked over to Lily for reassurance. Old man Coleman tipped his head down and looked over the top of his spectacles. “I need to find out about a thinker, err – a philosopher, that has the first name of Friedrich…” the young boy said, his throat tightening with the noose of fright and fever. “Freed-rich?” Coleman pronounced phonetically. “Yes, do you know who that could be?” The boy was ready to backpedal. “If not, I’m sure I could find some other…” “Herr Nietzsche.” Coleman closed his book in his lap. “Neet-cha?” The boy enunciated. “Why do you only know his first name?” Coleman asked. “It is who I am named after.” Coleman inhaled a deep and stately laugh. “Huh. Well, at any cause that I can find, I would be glad to talk about my friend.” “Your friend?” “Ah, yes. Just a small joke, really. Herr Nietzsche is long dead, I’m afraid.” “Dead?” “Yes, in 1900, he died.” The boy looked for his next question. But, before he could, the old man opened his wrinkled palm and gestured to the chair by the window. “You want to know about one of the most misunderstood men of modern time? Because I would be happy to tell you.” “Misunderstood?” Friedrich perked-up. As though that were all the bait that he needed to bite. Already he felt a kinship with his namesake. “Yes, during and after his life, I’m afraid. Kind of like myself. Nietzsche though, he actually realized this and wrote about living his life as a ghost. He was certain that he wouldn’t be understood during his life.” Coleman paused. “And he was right. And it wasn’t much better immediately afterward. But, in the end, he influenced all the thinkers that came after him.” The flood of blood coursing through the young boy was intoxicating, like he had already heard the story in his crib. Or lived it somehow before. Familiarity was burning hot behind his eyes. “Nietzsche was a beautiful writer. And his thoughts covered enormous terrain.” Coleman paused, this time surveying the young boy. “For you, however, I will give only the important and simple pieces. And when you are older, you can come back and I will give you the whole book.” Friedrich nodded. “Nietzsche spent a lot of his time concerned with the dichotomy of weak versus strong pessimism. He said that yes, the world can be a fearful, at times lonely, and other times, troublesome place to live. But, he said – amor fati.” Friedrich lipped the words. Amor fati. He looked to the back of the room, wishing Lily would move closer. But she didn’t. Instead, she shook her hand like a tambourine, and the great gospels came to life in some silent song in her head. Friedrich could hear her quiet feet keeping time on the floor. “Little Lily has heard this all before…” “Uh-huh.” Lily replied in rhythm. “But, I want to hear it again.” She looked directly to Friedrich. “Amor fati,” Coleman continued, “Means love your fate. It means, take what you are given and find what’s beautiful within it. It means that, when others create opposition for you – you find a way to find your place within that. In anything, there is something precious and beautiful to hold.” Friedrich flashed on the children in the school yard. And in the parks. And in all the places that he no longer went. “After he survived the Franco-Prussion War, Nietzsche even said, ‘what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’ Nietzsche was always concerned with an idea that he called, ‘will to power’.” Coleman paused, waiting for signs of comprehension. And the young boy took a few seconds to digest the words. Then, Coleman continued, “By this he meant that all life, all existence, is about progression. About evolving. About change. Nietzsche was a big proponent of change. Agreeing with a thinker of antiquity, Heraclitus, Nietzsche believed that you can never step into the same river twice…” Quickly, the boy jumped, “Why not?” “Because the river is always changing. In every second, new water is moving into new spaces…” And the Big Thompson’s great charge downstream was beginning to make sense. And really, it all was: Lily and her aptitude to find beauty even in the destructive powers of the great river waters. Here Friedrich thought back to Lily’s comment on the flood, and the people perishing in them. And then he thought about what she did immediately afterward: She danced. And while Friedrich struggled to follow everything that the old man was saying – he didn’t understand all of his words – he knew that he could come back to these ideas through other words. Through other books. “Nietzsche was sickened by the rationalist model of epistemology. Meaning that he didn’t think that we could always know everything about the world. That some things are not going to be known, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves that we can know it all. And in this, we should, once again, love our fate, and dance…” Friedrich looked back to Lily who now had her tambourine hands flat down, as if she were holding back the ground. Still bouncing back and forth to the silent music, she danced with her eyes closed. Coleman followed Friedrich’s gaze. And after he allowed the young boy to look into her, long and hard, the old man offered, “There’s reason to dance in any occasion.” He inhaled. “You just need to find that reason. And I think that’s about enough for you today. If you can swallow all that, then you’ve done more than most…” Friedrich, still listening to the raspy, old words of Coleman lost himself in the thought of Lily. And how she may have already swallowed all these words and more. The young boy lost himself in the shadows of light and dark, swirling around on the girl’s body as if it were knowledge and compassion alike. Staring into her, he surged with the heat of peace and love and every vacant space in his body filled with the desire to find the joy in everything around him. Suddenly even Coleman’s house became brighter. The titles on the bindings of the books became legible, the patterns in the rug – discernable. And Coleman, brighter. “But, one last thing.” Friedrich smiled at the old man. “The Eternal Reoccurrence.” “Yes?” Friedrich’s eyes seemed to say. “Herr Nietzsche believed that one should live this life as though they were going to live the same life a million times over.” Coleman flipped his brows up. “Means you should find the beautiful in everything you can. And do right, every time it’s afforded to you…” Friedrich, feeling his legs weakened, stood despite the saggy knees. “I go to school, just down the hill there…” He pointed out the window and across the river. “I know. I’ve seen you a lunchtime. Under the Oak tree…” XV. When Friedrich left Coleman’s house that day, he did so with Lily. And while the rest of the days they spent together were fuzzy, and as an old man he had trouble recalling them – he did recall the last time he saw Lily. They were standing on the banks of the Big Thompson, with the weight of everything past and future standing atop their concentration. He knew she would have to leave. And she knew it much better than he. And in a veil of everything beautiful and pleasant under the Spring sun of the Joaquin Valley, Lily leaned into Friedrich. And with both their eyes closed, they met each other at the lips. And with her tambourine hand, Lily waved and shook her fingers in the air as Friedrich had never been kissed before, or since. And when she told Friedrich to close his eyes, he knew what to expect. For when he opened them, Lily disappeared back into the sepia history of words and knowledge and memories. And when Friedrich looked around he wasn’t young anymore. He slipped off his shoes, and without reservation – Friedrich stepped into the river.