The Next To Last Summer

It's 28 feet down from the lip of the trestle to the deep lazy pool below, but it might as well be a hundred the way the brain sees it, hoping, perhaps, to turn you back. 

It's July now, or maybe August, so time is growing shorter -- it didn't seem like a big thing at the start of the summer, but that was before the kid from out of town. 

The dead kid. 

Chuck's showboating cousin come out from Chicago to our little glacial river, with its unseen currents and hidden rocks -- rocks you knew about only because the older kids had shown you where it was safe as they cannonballed off the railroad bridge and plunged into the waters below, bobbing back up twenty yards downstream before swimming to shore, gleaming in their bravery and the late afternoon summer sunlight, golden then on their faces.

Chuck’s cousin didn’t want to hear about rocks or be told what he could do, his bravado goosing his adrenaline into a fast, running dive headfirst to get the attention of the girls. 

But he didn’t pop up like a cork, like he was supposed to. His dive had taken him just a couple of feet to the left of where the water was deep and clear to where it wasn’t, and just like that his neck was broken and now the bridge was strictly off limits – the parents had even taken turns policing the riverbank when they could and were full of admonishments to be safe when they couldn’t.

But summer is already moving too fast toward its end, as are the chances to test your mettle and yes, to show off for the girls...

And so sure, the dead kid is there in the back of your mind as you toe the edge – the way he went from one minute being seventeen and alive to just…not being anymore; you unconsciously shuffle your feet a little more to the right, making sure you’re lined up dead center with the pool below.

A breeze rifles through the high maples, the shadows of their leaves dappling the sparkling water below, and you know it’s time; it’s 28 feet down, and the shock of the water is harder and colder than you expected, but the river is clear and deep as it carries you safely toward the girls on the beach.