Down by the river

On a hot July afternoon, I stepped into the cool waters of the Russian River and looked around through my cheap sunglasses.
              The vineyards, lining the river’s banks, seemed the same as ever. So did the rocks studding the bottom of my feet. So did Jack and Katy, the closest friends of my mother and father.
            As I took in my surroundings, Jack raced into the river and splashed some water at me. I escaped his attack by diving deep into the river. I swam towards him and grabbed him from beneath the water, trying to dunk him. When I surfaced, Josie, Jack’s daughter, laughed at my attempt.
            That morning I had driven with Josie and Jack and Jack’s wife, Katy, to this spot on the Russian River from Berkeley. I’d been here five years running, for a summer party staged by friends of my parents, Jules and Mary. The party lasted through the forth of July weekend. There were usually about 30 to 40 people and this year was no exception.+
            But this was the first time I’d come alone. My parents had stayed home. I was out from under their watchful eyes.
            Now, as I stood in the river, Josie beaming at me, I realized why everything seemed so different. Being here without my parents, I felt strangely liberated, like a new person.

            To be sure, I felt a little scared. At seventeen years old, and without my talkative parents, I could not avoid speaking with the many adults gathered on this pretty spot inside of the Clos Du Bois winery. As I joked with Jack, who was now teasing me about trying to dunk him in the water, I realized that today something new and perhaps even dangerous might happen.           
            I saw Maxine, a girl about my own age, across the lake and glided over to say hello. Ordinarily I might not be so bold, but I was here alone.
            “Hi,” I said.
            “Hey.”
            Before I could say anything, another girl swam up and splashed her.
            “Hi,” I said awkwardly to this new girl.
            “Liam this is Corey,” Maxine replied.
            “What’s up,” Corey said.
            “You go to Albany High with Maxine?” I asked.
            “Yeah,” she replied.
            “How is Albany High?” I asked.
            Maxine and Corey giggled to each other.
            “We should go set up our tent,” Maxine suggested.
            “Max, we didn’t bring a tent,” Corey said. “We’re going to sleep under the stars. Right?”
            “Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Maxine said.
            I got the feeling that she didn’t want me to know they were planning to sleep in the open.
            The girls whispered to each other then Maxine swam towards the shore. Corey walked back towards me, her body emerging from the water revealing a green-striped bikini, which clung to her smooth skin.

            “How do you know Maxine?” Corey asked.
           I wasn’t sure what to say, but I liked that Corey was talking to me. Then, nervous around her, I joked that Maxine and I had once gotten drunk together.

 “Are you serious?” she asked.
            “No, I’m kidding,” I said. “Her mom and my mom are friends.”
            “Cool,” she replied, relieved that I was joking.
            “Where do you go to school?” she asked.
            “Berkeley High,” I replied.

 “You’re going to be a junior?”

“Nope,” I said. “Senior.”

Then Corey asked me a question that, had my mother heard it, would have set off alarm bells in her brain.

 “Who,” Corey asked, “have you come to the party with?”

 “I’m on my own,” I answered.

Then Corey gave me a sly grin and said, “So am I.”

                                                             *

 

Maxine and Corey sat next to each other in the grass near a tall oak tree. Maxine strummed her guitar and Corey sang along. I enjoyed watching them play. They looked cute sitting together. It was after dinner and getting dark now. I walked over to them.

“What are you two up to?” I asked, lying down next to them.

 “We’re just relaxing before we go down to the river for the bonfire,” Maxine replied.

 “You guys sound really good,” I said.

 “Thank you,” Corey responded modestly.

 “Maxine told me that you play guitar. I play drums in a band.”

 “Wow that’s really neat,” I said, surprised. Corey moved closer to me. Her orange hair brushed against my shoulder.

Corey pressed against me and whispered, “Maxine and I are planning to go to the river to smoke before the bonfire. Wanna come?”

Hearing the word “smoke,” made me nervous. My parents wouldn’t like the idea of me smoking weed, especially with girls, but they weren’t around, so I felt like taking a chance.

“Yeah sure,” I said. Maxine heard me.

“What did you tell him Corey?” she asked, her voice quivering.

 “That we we’re planning to smoke later and Liam can come along.”

“I guess so,” Maxine said. “Only one thing, Liam. You can’t tell your mom, because she would tell my mom.”

 “I won’t say a word,” I said seriously.

Nevertheless, I was starting to feel that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m a good kid. I try to stay out of trouble. I’d never smoked pot before. Still, I had doubts about simply towing the parental line. That didn’t sound like real living to me. I thought to myself, “smoking pot with cute girls isn’t part of my daily routine, but maybe it should be.”

“Max don’t worry,” Corey said. Then she broke into a laugh and added, “Your mom probably already knows you smoke pot.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Maxine cringed.

 “That isn’t funny, Liam. But OK. Let’s go to the river now, before the rest of the crowd arrives.”

“I’ll just grab my things and then we can go,” Corey said. She walked over to her mattress on the grass and unzipped her bag. She pulled out a small pouch and a colorful pipe and shoved them into the pocket of her brown sweatshirt.

 It was dark now, though the moon shone brightly. I grabbed my flashlight and blazed a path to the river.

We looked for a secluded spot to smoke.

 “Over there looks fine,” Corey said, pointing to a small group of trees about one hundred feet from the shores of the river.

 Corey took her weed and pipe out of her pocket. She grabbed a pinch of weed and put it into the bowl and lit a match. I turned on my flashlight to help Corey see, illuminating her pale face in the dark. She put the flame into the bowl of the pipe, igniting the weed. Corey put her lips on the end of the pipe and inhaled. Then she exhaled blowing the smoke out in a stream, which shot towards my face. The smell hit me. It was not a familiar smell but I recognized it.

“Liam, do you want a hit?” Corey asked. I got nervous again. Because I’d never smoked before, I didn’t even know how to toke from a pipe. My parents had never taught me and I suspect they were happy about my ignorance of the ways of weed.

 So I faced a cross in the road of my life. One way faced the past, and the ignorance imposed on me by my mom and dad. The new route led to freedom, intoxication and perhaps self-destruction.

I took the pipe from Corey, motioned her to light, and then I took a blow.

                                                                *

The sky was darker now. The stars were present in great number. The moon shone brightly in the distance. I was lying down under the open sky on an air mattress with Maxine and Corey. I was awake. I was thinking. I was in a bed, for the first time of my life, with girls my own age.  I could be thinking about these girls but I was not. I was actually thinking about me. Me.

 In that very instant, the entire course of my life seemed to flash before my eyes. I saw myself as a little boy at this very river, my father holding me in the water, trying to teach me how to swim. I saw myself, only a little bigger now, fishing for crawfish with a small net. I saw myself at the river again, running the rapids in an inner tube and crashing against a large sharp rock, getting dragged under the water, gasping – and my family friend Jack saving me. As a teenager, again in the tow of my parents, I sat around a campfire, roasting marshmallows with Maxine, then younger like me. I remember coming to the river after Maxine’s father died and feeling sad along with everyone else that Walt wasn’t here. And finally I saw myself two years earlier enjoying a Mexican folk band performing for Jules and Mary, my parent’s friends and the people who staged this party by the river every year. Jules was fifty that day, and he danced crazy
to the music and I remember asking Maxine whether we’d ever be that crazy when we grew up.

Then I snapped back into the present. Maxine was pointing to the sky, identifying the constellations for Corey. I wanted to kiss one of them, before we all fell sleep but, honestly, I couldn’t decide which one to kiss. There was something bigger going on, than kissing, I could feel it. Lying in the darkness on the bed, I realized that I became a man. I was happy to be myself. I was glad to have something of my own. Down by the river, outside of the gaze of my scrutinizing parents, I took a giant step into the unknown I now call adult life.