There was the delirium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds. It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness.
—Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900), from The Red Badge of Courage
HIS only lifelines were his taxicab and the three-kilometer long suspension bridge that joined his town to the busy city across the strait and served vehicles for almost three decades.
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He has been a taximan for fourteen years. After achieving his course in Driving in a Technical - Vocational university in his town, he claimed his driver's license at the town hall. "At last," he exclaimed, while brandishing his driver's license at his jovial handicapped, aged mother. He signed up being a taximan under a famous mass transportation agency in town, experienced intensive training for a month, and finally became an official taximan. He's content with his job, earning from 2,000 to a sweet 30, 000 pesos every month. He is transporting passengers from his town to the city across and vice versa, and along this track he will never miss the renowned one-kilometer suspension bridge.
Center Bridge, as it was called, was one of the beautiful bridges ever he saw in his lifetime. It was both the bridge and the scenery around it that makes it special for the taximan. A kilometer before the bridge's townside entrance, the highway is zigzagging and sloping downwards, surrounded by tall trees, healthy shrubs and bushes, and huts where nature-loving people live by staying away from the downtown area and chose to feel the fresh air coming from the strait blowing to the town's outskirts. At the bridge's entrance, a rocky cliff rises meters from the surface of the strait. The marine blue waters lick the limestone cliff and create intricate patterns after months. Then, as the taximan drives on the bridge, the cool sea breeze blowing from the ocean through the strait soothes him, giving him an aura of hope and ecstasy. The bridge, made up of pure steel and cement, is supported from below by robust pillars. These pillars have vertical extensions that rise six meters above the bridge's platform, and each of these is connected to the others and to the bridge's parapet by sturdy metal cables. Deep down, the ocean's wild current slows down to almost peaceful stillness as it flows through the strait, past the steep cliffs, and under the bridge. Then, at the bridge's cityside entrance, a Memorial Park is built as a commemoration of the construction of the Center Bridge.
After almost three decades since it was constructed, after carrying the weight of countless vehicles that tread on it, from the two-wheeled bicycle to the ten-wheeler monsters, after surviving hundreds of storms and thousands of tremors, it is now gradually losing its former magnificence ... and strength.
"TAXI!" a handsome city teenage boy held his hand out towards the highway and called the attention of the taximan, who was in the city at that moment.
