Sammy and Charlee stood looking over the balustrade on the iron bridge at the great drop into the stream below. Sammy's gob of spit was still falling into it. Down at the bottom of the gorge, the stream was running fast, swollen with winter snows now thawed.
“What is that, like two hundred feet?” said Charlee, her forehead knuckled with concern. That simple face, frank and uncomplicated. Just worried, is all.
“I'm not worried,” said Sammy, responding to her expression, not her question. “It looks way worse than it is.” A forced courage catching at his voice like a hesitant song.
“Three hundred maybe,” said Charlee. “Not safe at all.”
”It's safe enough if you time it right and dive in just the right position.”
”Not really safe, though, Sam.”
Sammy and Charlee had come to be somewhere between friends and sweethearts, an indeterminate state which would have to be resolved and made more definite some time soon. It was the last spring before school was out forever, their last year of being considered in any way children. It was the last year of peace before great war, though they didn't know that then. We didn't know it then. We all thought there was time, plenty of time.
Sammy stripped to his underwear. Charlee watched him. Her face, still so frank and uncomplicated, showed that she was intrigued by his lean body. She reached out to touch him as he turned to place his clothes neatly on a pile next to his worn-out shoes in the roadway. But she hesitated and pulled her hand back without making contact, and he never saw the hand held out to him. She pulled her hand back enfolded to her chest as he turned again to face her.
“It's decided,” said Sammy. “It's safe enough. I'm gonna jump. You can't stop me.”
“Didn't say I was gonna stop you,' answered Charlee. “Just sayin' it's not safe.”
She ventured a grownup word: “Reckless, kinda. You’re bein’ reckless.”
Sammy clambered over the balustrade and stood with his heels balanced on the outer ledge, his hands stretching behind him hanging onto the railing. To fall below now, all he would need to do would be to let go.
He looked down, then he looked back. There was a rough edge to his voice that was almost like hatred as he spoke to her: “It's gonna be fine, it's not far and I know how to dive."
It hurt her, that edge to the words. She didn't understand why he hated her. She didn't ask him to jump. Didn't want him to jump. She looked down over the balustrade and considered how far it was. About two hundred and eighty feet, she guessed. Ninety meters - they were doing metric in school.
A man was riding his bicycle across the gorge bridge. He didn't know them, they didn't know him. He stopped his bike, placed a foot on the ground, and called out to Sammy: “Hey, kid! Don't jump! You'll be killed!” He dismounted. “Don’t be so reckless! Climb back over. I'll help you.”
He was speckle-haired and middle-aged, though Sammy and Charlee thought him old, since he was older than their teachers, older than their parents. They didn't have grandparents. Few in that valley live long enough to be grandparents.
Sammy said nothing but his face expressed contempt as the man approached, his bike on the roadway next to Sammy’s piled clothes and busted shoes. “Come on, boy!” The man reached out to grab Sammy, who flinched away from his grasp and let go of the railing.
He fell into the emptiness awkward as a ragdoll, and after a slow tumble in which he looked back up briefly at the watchers as if he were their accuser, he splashed under the water. The stream closed over him in silence.
Together the stranger and the girl leaned over the railing to look into the deep below. The waters were running fast, swollen with winter snows now thawed, and the bubbles that rose to the surface floated downstream for only a moment before they too were merged into the common flow. There was no body to be seen.
And now the stream rushed towards the valley far off in the lowland and its union with the big river, and then more slowly the river proceeded on towards the swelling sea. Charlee tried to imagine what the coast looked like as she thought of Sammy’s journey and where he might end up.
==== { PRECIPITOUS / END } ====
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Supratika
If I were suddenly rich, then I could buy an elephant, and a place for the elephant to stay, and an elephant keeper - a mahout - and a veterinarian specializing in the ailments and the psychological vulnerabilities of elephants, and an annual subscription for a membership in the National Elephant Owners' Club, and a whisk which is a way to signal to the…
A Crowd
With a stormfront advancing, he countermanded orders and called a halt to the attack. Artillery preparations fell fruitless, forlorn as unheeded thunder.
Recklessness, lust, rebellion, and folly. The quintessential pillars of youth. Makes for a good read, my friend.
I could relate to Sammy a lot since as a young boy, I made risky decisions. Nice prose my friend.