Not just another wild man

Not Just Another Wild Man

Falling forty or fifty feet to your death is no way for an eighteen-year-old to die. It’s no way for anyone.

Before I joined the service, I used to hang around a tight group of guys I’ve mentioned in other stories—and probably will again, depending on where this one ends up. I could never get enough of that crowd, but I didn’t stick to them exclusively. There was always spillover time, and that’s when I wound up running with other wild men. One of them was wilder than all the rest.

Henry “Hank” Price was a world-class hell-raiser—no fear, quick to react to conflict, and he’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. But that wasn’t what defined him. What defined him was that he loved life, loved a good time, and lived to laugh. And if Hank considered you a friend, he’d go to the mat for you without thinking twice.

I was home on leave, about eighteen myself, the night this story took place. After a concert, Bobby Orrange and I were hanging around the Harvey’s on Christina Street, about one in the morning. There were maybe thirty or forty of us outside—that kind of loose crowd that forms after a show when nobody’s quite ready to go home.

Bob and I were standing there eating fries, talking about nothing, when I spotted Hank in line inside and mentioned it to Bobby. Bobby knew Hank, but he didn’t run with him much.

While we were outside, this guy came up to Bob. Bob had long red hair and a pale look that drew attention—the kind of easy target bullies seem to sniff out. The guy shoved him and told him to get out of the fucking way, just loud enough that everyone nearby could hear it.

He picked the worst possible moment.

Just as he made that mistake, Hank was coming out the door with his food in his hands. In a blur, the food hit the ground just before the bully did. The guy tried to get back up—confused and angry—but Hank was already on him, grabbing him and throwing him across the trunk of a car.

Hank beat on him until a couple of us stepped in and said it was enough. The bully was done, wobbling on his feet, and someone walked him away into the dark.

Hank was old school: no fear, act first, ask questions afterward—if at all.

That same don’t-tell-me-no attitude was what got him banned from the States. One night at customs on the Blue Water Bridge, they refused him entry because he didn’t have ID. Most people would’ve accepted that as the end of the night.

Hank just treated it as a problem to solve.

From then on, every run to Port Huron for last call followed the same drill. Just before the customs booths on the Canadian side, at the last turnoff, Hank would get out of the car. While the rest of them rolled forward toward the bright lights and questions, he slipped away from the roadway and started down the steel and concrete bones of the bridge—a forty- or fifty-foot climb toward the ground under the span.

They’d answer the usual questions, act straight, and once they cleared customs and hit the U.S. side, they’d swing down underneath the bridge and pick him up like it was the most natural thing in the world.

After a while, it stopped feeling crazy and just became how Hank crossed.

Everyone else showed a passport.

Hank climbed.

The night he died, I wasn’t with them. I heard the story later. A bunch of them decided to head over again to make last call in Port Huron. Same plan as always. Same bridge. Same routine.

When they reached the usual spot before customs, Hank got out of the car. Janis a girl we’d been partying with —asked if she could go with him. Maybe she was drawn to the danger, or maybe she just wanted a story of her own.

Either way, Hank naturally agreed.

What I know about the rest comes secondhand.

Hank put her on his back to make the climb easier for her and started down. At some point, his grip slipped. Maybe the metal was wet. Maybe his luck just ran out.

They fell together the rest of the way.

The boys in the car carried on across the bridge, answering questions, getting waved through the booth like a hundred times before. When they turned off to go pick Hank up under the bridge, expecting to see him grinning in the dark, there were flashing lights instead.

An ambulance was already there.

That was how they found out something had gone terribly wrong.

She survived, but just barely. About a week later, after she came out of a coma, she filled in the details—Hank, the climb, the slip, the fall.

Hank, sadly, didn’t make it.

Even now, nearly sixty years later, every time the bridge comes into view—the steel arch, the lights, the slow line of cars inching toward customs—it isn’t the structure or the border that comes to mind.

It’s Hank.

Wild, fearless, shrugging off rules, climbing down into the dark with a girl on his back, trusting his hands and his luck one more time.

Looking back, we were all naturally sad, and we passed the time trading Hank stories. The funeral was huge. Part of it was because of who Hank was. Part of it was a bunch of teenagers being handed an excuse to pretend we were adults for a day—some of us closer to grown up than others.

The rest of us, the not-so-bright ones, celebrated his life the way he’d lived it instead of learning from his death.

There are still a few Hank stories left in the tank, but these days it’s quieter when I think of him.

Hank’s life was cut short; I was allowed a much longer one.

Janis spread the rumour that Hank

let go wanting to commit suicide which was ridiculous.

When I pray for his soul, I figure Hank might’ve spent some time in purgatory—not because he was mean or cruel, but because he was reckless.

He was good at heart.

I hope one day we’ll meet again in a better place.

But hopefully not any time soon.