Tribe from tribe by The Flying Johnsons

I was the first of the tribe to jump of Covey’s bridge. And that should mean something, something heroic, if tribe is what you could call us. Tribe gave it exclusivity and an element of prehistory like we had joined something that existed even before the neighborhood; the country even. However the tribe had been assembled, we needed to meet, do rituals, add barriers to keep out the weak and the sissies. Otherwise what’s the point? One thing was to get tight with a girl. That was obvious, and when Ernie’s big sister carried me upstairs saying she was going to make me a man, I was secure in my standing. Though if that made me a man, my idea of manhood diminished. So then, we realized the chick thing was lame in that the only way to know was by test and we all had seen porn to bluff our way through and it’s boring being tested anyway.

But a jump off Covey Bridge was legit. And people did. Older guys when the law wasn’t around witnessing. Fear in all her glory. And I was the first to jump. and it rightly scared the shit out of me. The moment looking up there’s the water swilling through the bubbles you yourself made and it is at once triumphant and panicked, like you were stuck in traffic missing the parade of your life, or a dream you can’t tear yourself awake from.

Then you surface and all the silent cheers make you a hero and you cling to that status all day, long after anyone remembers what you did.

The trip to the bridge had a meet-up up time, was elusive, hastily formed around the one ritual so rare. And in the late buzzing afternoon we pealed kids off one by one. Jump or not jump you in, you out.

Then Travis Slots jumps
and didn’t come up.
He wasn’t the shy kid or the friendless kid who we peer pressured. He wasn’t the kid we pushed too hard or picked on. In fact, had we stuck to getting with girls he would have been president.
He was just Travis, cool and unaccountable. Jumped without hesitation.
Splash, never surfaced.
The current slows there but not for long and it’s the deepest at the bend. And I thought of all those bubbles going at his lungs.
And the “oh shit” moment extends and crawls like smoke into other people’s doors, their bedrooms and drags them from sleep crying “please.”
And the tragic jump that says your life is off the rails and bugs still messing in your ears through the sweet swamp toying with your ankles trying to gain footing in a footless mire.
There was the hope in me, willing and unmoored. “He swam under the whole river and lay exhausted but breathing sleeping till morning. He swam around the bend and went to his pop’s house as a joke.
Or at least find a swollen body in the below.

Years ago, I have grown up some, and am walking down a city street struggling with my tie, going to a job interview when I nearly run into a man my age who I swear was Travis. And I said, “you’re alive!”

He glanced at me as if trying to remember something, then smiled like a stranger’s child had taken his hand expecting someone else. “I think you have the wrong person,” he said, and disappeared.

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