Several years ago, while walking a trail along Monument Creek in downtown Colorado Springs, I came upon a scene in which EMTs were pulling the body of a dead person out of the water beneath a bridge. The scene was cordoned off, so I had to observe from a distance and couldn’t see much detail. Yet my morbid curiosity gave way to imagination, prompting me to write about what I saw, and to share a little piece of fiction.

I originally posted it on Facebook and got a few likes. One included a comment from an old friend, Danny Moore, who claimed he was disappointed because he thought there should be more to it, like a real story. I thank him for his complaint, as it was the motivation for my first short story, which triggered a collection of them. Here is an excerpt from “The High Jumper” in which the narrator investigates the death of a homeless man.

He lay in the creek between two large rocks, his body motionless amid a froth of swirling sticks and plastic bottles. There was no blood, no sign of foul play, just the limp body of a Caucasian male in a plain brown jacket, under-dressed for the early April Colorado weather. This had been a tall man, well over six feet. Most peculiar were his deformed hands — three fingers on each, webbed near the knuckles, tapering to claw-like tips. He lay in the water face down, the back of his jacket billowing atop the cold spring current.

Crouching, I managed to get enough leverage to grip him under his arms and pull him up and onto the sand bar.

As I turned him face up, it was evident the bloating had dulled his facial features, as if the man had left the body years ago. He appeared to be about 60 years old and surprisingly muscular despite signs of malnutrition. Judging by his hole-ridden, overworn boots, he was much traveled. I searched his pockets for ID, finding nothing but a key chain ornament engraved with an image of Pike’s Peak, and a bookmarker with a St. Jude prayer on it issued by St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

I waited there contemplating the dead man as the morning sun warmed the creek bed and clumps of snow fell like over-ripe fruit from the trees lining the creek. Joggers paused and gawked from the trail above as the EMTs descended the shallow banks to retrieve the body. As they lifted him onto the gurney, a choir of pigeons suddenly startled and scattered helter skelter through the air. For some reason, those men seemed small compared to the long and lanky body they struggled to deliver from the creek bed.

St. Mary’s Church, known for its charity toward the homeless, was just upstream from the bridge under which the man’s body had been found. I was able to speak with one of the priests, who told me that their mission helps hundreds of homeless people every week, providing meals, counseling, and recommendations for shelters. I described the tall man with the deformed fingers, but he could not recall. However, the priest informed me of a camp downstream – a small community at the bottom of two steep banks. The only access to it was a crude walking trail along the creek, which was especially hard during the strong spring currents.

I set out that afternoon on a makeshift path of sand bars, exposed tree roots, and flat rocks. After about a mile of stilted travel along the swift-running creek (and having thoroughly soaked both my shoes) I arrived at the camp. It consisted of several plastic tarps cleverly fastened among trees at the bottom of two cliffs. As I approached, a gray-haired, leather-faced woman peered at me suspiciously from an open flap. Excusing myself and holding out the bookmark and the keychain, I asked her if she knew the owner. As she glanced at the items, her eyes darted away, as if she had seen something across the stream. She stared blankly into that space for some time, then uttered almost imperceptibly, “Hermie.” There would be no last name offered, only a long silence.

“Wait,” she said as I turned to leave. The old woman emerged from her tent and limped over to a shopping cart filled with God-knows-what. After digging through its contents, she returned, handing me an oversized plastic bar soap container, the contents of which made it feel heavy. Waving me off, she returned to her tent. As I turned and began the trudge back upstream, I could hear the muffled sounds of sobbing or laughing, I could not tell which. A moment later, I heard a piercing wail – an un-earthly sound. At the same moment a great blue heron flew up from a cove on the opposite bank, careened around a bend and disappeared.

Writer/musician Pete Howard lives in Dunkirk. Send comments to odyssmusic20@gmail.com