Goodbye, Old Friend

            by Russell Hilken

 

            I peeled my eyelids from my gluey pupils and rolled onto the cold linoleum floor.  The distant saw mill thudded out its incessant chatter and I knew that it was a weekday.  Much closer, a dog barked.  Three people barked in response to quiet it.  Behind that I heard my parents on the front porch shifting occasionally and speaking in low voices.  They were interrupted frequently by the squabbling woodpeckers that populated the telephone poles.  My sister sighed heavily, now in the last throes of slumber.  I crawled from my sleeping bag, making a beeline for the bathroom.  Ah, what relief!  Few feelings are more annoying than having to get up to void your bladder.

            I rubbed my eyes as I left the bathroom.  Bright sunlight pierced the tattered blue blinds and cast short bars on the checkered white floor.  The bedroom was still cool, but the porch was sure to be powerfully hot, thanks to its vulnerability to the sun.  I tried to get my pants on without waking my sister in the bed nearby.  Bumping the dresser, I solicited a disapproving groan from her.  With my pants on, I stumbled into the bright kitchen, squinting as I closed the bedroom door with a grand squeal.  I heard her turn over in exasperation and tell me, under her breath, how much she liked being woken from her sleep.

            Sorry Louise.

            The kitchen was not much bigger than the bedroom.  On one side of the room, a small window faced out from the house, and underneath it stood a small table covered in an ugly white tablecloth.  Across the room was the stove and water heater.  The door I had just come through stood next to an old, rusted wood-burning furnace.  I stood for a moment wondering what to eat for breakfast. 

            As I made my way outside onto the porch, the bare soles of my feet were grateful for the warm, wood surface and they tingled happily.

            “Morning,” I yawned.

            “Hey there pal.  You sleep OK?”  Dad asked.  Sure, I nodded.

            I settled into one of the weathered pieces of deck furniture and soaked in the warmth.  The air was almost completely still.  The short hand of the clock had not even passed the ten, and already the people sought the shade, unable to suffer the dry, lip-cracking heat.  I looked down the row of cabins to see if anyone else was up yet, and as usual, I was the first of my peers to emerge. 

I looked over the lawn in front of the cabins.  “Lawn” would be a generous euphemism.  Really it was about an acre of dried weeds.  A gravel driveway cut the weed patch in half, the south side being reserved for the makeshift croquet court.  Across the field sat the houses of the owner and caretaker, both dwarfed by a huge redwood in between them.

Someone’s dog trotted onto our porch as if it lived with us.  When I petted her, her fur was still warm from the journey to our house.  When she realized she had the wrong address, she ran off again, looking for her home.  This sense of community was present in the humans as well.  We came and went from our neighbor’s cabins, eating from their fridges, using their utensils, as if we were on some kind of a commune. 

I let my mind wander over the field, down the hill and through the woods to our special little piece of the Navarro River, where I would surely find myself later today.  My thoughts swam through the cold stream and up the opposite bank.  They climbed onto the road and up to the trails where my dad and I went for our bike rides.  We wound through hidden back roads, getting dangerous looks from the locals protecting their special gardens in Northern California.  My daydream came back up the river to our field then out the other way towards Hwy 128 and Lemons Market, our fueling station for sugar and ice cream.  I knew I was in heaven.

I knew I was in Philo, a tiny Northern California town just south of Mendocino.  It was our annual summer destination.  Our circle of close family friends packed their mini-vans every year to spend a week swimming, playing croquet and potlucking.  The parents did all the work; my only task was to relax.  We had been coming here longer than I’d been alive, and we had only missed one year.  It was a week rooted in profound tradition.  The same people came each year and stayed in the same cabins.  We always brought too much food, and all we left with was a sunburn and a big box of peaches.

Every year, we remembered our past adventures and conquests.  There was the year when we discovered the jumping rocks.  And that time Alex got trapped under the raft.  ‘Member how we broke the old play structure?  Yeah we ravaged that thing.  Or what about the bridge? 

One year, the summer before seventh grade, we were tromping around on the far side of the river and we came upon a narrow trail through the poison oak.  Naturally, we followed it for about a quarter mile, crying out as the pine needles and sharp twigs assaulted our tender feet.  Crossing an old fire-road, we came across our most magnificent and memorable discovery. 

She was simply a very old suspension footbridge.  Her wooden pylons were rotted and sore, and the cables hung off her like rusted moss.  She had holes in her platform, the sand paper coating now ragged and torn.  Fifty feet below the decrepit platform sat the rocky riverbed, staring at the once-proud bridge.  A new-fangled, “better” bridge had been built years ago to accommodate vehicles and slowly the footbridge had lost her patrons.

But the five young boys didn’t notice the dangerous state of the structure; they only saw an invitation.  Truckee, being the oldest and heaviest, took the first tentative steps.  With our admiring eyes stuck on his every movement, he soon gained confidence and walked to the center, the least stable part, and looked back at us.  But he was not satisfied; the center was not enough.  He kept going, all the way to the other end where he hit a locked gate.  With that, the challenge was on.  We all walked the length timidly until we stood in a huddle at the opposing side.  Who could top that?  What was more dangerous than just walking the bridge?  Kyle and Truckee had the same idea and raced out to the middle sending the bridge back and forth.  Once in the center they stood facing each other and started shaking the bridge.  The platform swayed, groaning under this unexpected stress.  After a few moments of this stupidity they quieted and we walked out to greet them.  It was clear that they were equally daring, so what now?  We all looked over the edge to the rocks below.  We started throwing anything we could find.  We threw burning matches, giant rocks and hefty logs and watched them plummet to earth, shattering in an impressive display of vandalism.

I chuckled to myself as I recalled that episode, but the empty spot in my stomach brought me back to the present.  Mom had gotten up from her reading and was moving around the kitchen.  That could mean only one thing: pancakes.  Excellent.  I, too, stood and went into the kitchen with the intention of helping her.

“Oh no, hon, take it easy, these’ll be done in a second,” she responded to my offer of help.  Who can argue with that?  I grabbed a book and resumed my position outside, not really reading, just focusing my attention on something besides the field.  By this time, my sister had surfaced and was standing in the doorway, dizzy and bleary-eyed, not quite done with this battle with wakefulness.

Within a few minutes we sat with warm plates in our laps, trying not to spill too much syrup.  This was a futile effort for me, and by the end of the meal I had a sticky path running down my chest.  Since my mom had made the food, I had to clean up.  This was no problem though; I just put on my headphones and danced around the warm kitchen with the dripping plates slipping from my hands.

Pretty soon people started assembling before going down to the river.  The kids were always the first ones to the river in the morning and the first to leave in the evening when the air cooled and the water darkened in shade.  Preparing for the river was a long process that could easily take over an hour to complete.  First someone had to take the initiative to get off their porch and wander by the cabins, recruiting fellow swimmers.  This person rarely got far.  Usually they stopped at one of the cabins to eat with the family or least hang out for a while.  Even once the recruiter had made his or her rounds, nobody else exactly jumped out of their seats.  They had only just started the mental battle; the toughest and most gruesome fight of all.  The potential river-goer had to put down their book or music and actually stand up.  If they could accomplish this feat, they would change into a bathing suit and sandals.  With so much skin exposed, sunscreen was an unpleasant necessity, and after all this hassle they hadn’t even packed a cooler yet.

With cooler in hand and a towel over the shoulder we ambled down to the river in pairs or triplets, but never in large groups.  The path passed the tin shed that housed the car of the caretaker and wound down a small hill.  At the bottom of the hill, nestled in the trees, were the sawmill and old barn.  These buildings seemed ancient and the various vehicles and machines inside them were intriguing in their decrepitude.  Who stood in this shack in the heat of summer toiling over the anvil?  What were those belts and cables on the roof?  And why did these people leave their pickup truck here to rot into the ground? 

Past the dilapidated artifacts, the trail entered the trees.  The giant redwoods stood proudly; glad to provide us with a little break from the sun.  It was dark here even in the afternoon, and it was especially scary at night, a place where many of our most terrifying legends had been born.  The path became a narrow track on the side of a very steep hillside overgrown on both sides by poison oak.  At the finish line, the track opened onto a short set of stairs and out to the beach.  Our side of the river, the “beach”, was really just a large patch of rocks with a few weeds peeking through the cracks.

We dropped our towels close to the water, where the rocks were smaller, and stumbled over the unforgiving rocks into the cold stream.  No matter how hot the day was the water was always cold.  I gasped as the water tickled the edge of my shorts and again when it lapped my belly.  I knew I had to go all in at once; you can’t take it inch by inch, but that was not so easy.  Green chunks floated by, over the murky plant life at the bottom.  Finally I gathered my courage and dove in.  The air rushed out of my lungs as my muscles seized up in the sudden cold.  I resurfaced with a splash and a loud whoop, and ducked under again as soon as I had my breath.

The opposite bank was on a steep incline, but was covered in soft, golden sand.  To roll in this hot sand after the frigid water gave a wonderful feeling, even if it resulted in a layer of moist sand covering every inch of your body.  I lay in the sun, swatting bugs from my face and daydreaming about nothing in particular.  A couple of my friends came to join me, and we sat and chatted, fidgeting with twigs and sand piles.  The kids had always liked this side of the river, this separation from the parents, where we could talk about anything and cuss as much as we liked.  Privacy was not a big issue for our conversation today, though.  We talked about music, which bands were cool and which ones sucked.  We talked about colleges, comparing notes on a subject that was prominent in our minds.  Eventually our talk found its way back to the old bridge. 

Somehow she was special to us all.  We hadn’t seen her in a couple of years and we all missed her like an old friend.  She was the vehicle for every little boy’s fantasy, to find something dangerous take a pee off the side. 

I stood, rubbing the sand off.  “Let’s check it out.  Why not?”  We glanced warily at the adults reading on the other side of the river; we weren’t supposed to visit the bridge.  The long way offered more secrecy, so we snuck upriver a ways.  Here was a great rocky clearing with the new bridge towering above us.  Out of view, we trekked over rocks and through brushes until we found our path. 

“The bridge is sweet; we haven’t been here forever,”

“I know, I wish Truckee was here, that fool would do anything!”

“Hey!  Let’s get some shit to throw, that’s the best part,”

We reminisced about our adventures with our friend.  The closer we got, the more excited we became.  We hit sticks against trees and enjoyed the loud crack and shattering of wood.  We pushed and laughed and threw things.  When we finally reached the end of the trail leading up to our companion, we stopped.

“Who’s gonna go first?” someone asked.

“Screw it, lets all go at once,”

“Yeah, I’m sure we won’t die,” I said sarcastically. “First one there goes first!”

We tore up the trail in a cloud of dust.  Riley was first, only just ahead of me, and we had to stop to breath and make cracks about the others.  When everyone arrived, we assembled to watch Riley make the expedition.  We looked up in unison and stepped back in shock.  Oh no.  What did they do? 

A menacing length of chain was draped across her mouth, preventing entry.  On the chain was a sign declaring: No Trespassing!  Stapled onto one of the wooden columns was a red flag with one word printed on it that went straight to our hearts and burned a hole.  Condemned.

The platform was riddled with holes, some of them big enough for many bodies.  The suspension cable had snapped off on the other side and dragged the bridge down at a crooked angle.  Two of my friends leaned on the cable and looked out over the damage.  I just sat on the ground and flicked pebbles at the sign.