the bluffs, pt.1: veteran calls

Many might not know this about me, but I've nearly died on numerous occasions. For example, no fewer than ten times I've walked, happy-go-luckily, into face-high orb-spider webs and very nearly died each time.  For another example, also no fewer than ten times, I've walked, somnolently, into shin-high bed-frame corners and thought surely it was over; and if it weren't for having two shins, one to bash on the return trips, undoubtedly it would've been the end, goodnight, sweet prince, exhume my tibiae and remember me well.

  

With less frequency, say, once per, I hung myself by the neck through the foot loop of a rope swing--not fer any horse thievin' ner stage coach banditin', just on account'a bein a real ignoramus is all--and I swung . . . and swung . . . out over a ravine and its piddling creek just a few feet below my Reeboks finding no purchase in the clouds or God's thin air. It could have been a hundred feet for all the difference it would've made in my ultimate strangulation. Like any good human pendulum acted upon by gravity and slow asphyxiation, it became increasingly less likely that I would successfully pull-off the Houdini-esque escape which I was successfully pulling-off, thank you very much, just give me a second, in my oxygen starved imagination.

And then I died. Well, nearly.  Listen, if it had been horseshoes, Wyatt, that'd been that and dern yer eyes.  But just then my big brother stretched a branch from the crumbling slope, his Reeboks finding no purchase in the dust and dead leaves, and with one last stretch and reach, from the exertion of which I nearly expired, limbs lolling and lungs flat, but in nick of time I caught hold and my brother hauled me in.  Exhausted, we let ourselves butt-slide to the piddling creek and it could've been a real rip-roarer for all the difference it would've made to us, me blue-faced, he red-faced. For his trouble of brave and timely rescue but certainly not on account unshakeable terror on my part, I nearly let him see me cry. Nearly.

So, there was that time.

And, there is this time:

On the shore side of the river, children dash into the shallows, kicking water intentionally into the faces of siblings and indiscriminately against the bare chests of shivering strangers.  A mother in a struggling tube top and cutoff yellow sweatpants exhorts her three or four to stay in sight and "for the love of . . . Chriiii-aap, quit splashing those strangers!"  It becomes clear that "in sight" includes and is limited to an arc whose radius emanates from a beach chaise, also struggling, and its sidecar beer cooler.

Farther out, four teens play a version of  "chicken" in which the preliminary goal seems to be keeping their cigarettes lit at all costs until ultimately the traditional submersion is achieved.  I watch amused as the girls pull one another's hair for all's-fair leverage and punch one another's breasts to shock-and-awe effect. I watch stupefied as the taller one topples, goes under and emerges, puffing her cigarette to life. 

"Like to see you do that again!" says the lounging mother, drawing deeply from a fresh Bud. If not her youngest then her smallest child has dog-paddled clear across the river some fifty yards unwitnessed (though to his credit, in full view of the chair and cooler) and begun an ascent of the bluffs.  The same bluffs to which my three younger brothers and I had come this sunny morning to climb and hurl ourselves from.

In the planning stages last night, the outing struck me as grade-A; after all, didn't they know their big brother was a veteran cliff jumper, and from heights twice as perilous as the purported forty foot . . . what did they say they were "bluffs"? Well, then, I call.

Morning comes and I immediately set-to devising a list of excuses to bow out. The list doesn't grow much beyond where I already got last night lying restlessly in bed, devising a list that weighed anchor right about here: didn't I remember the last time I attempted such a feat? The air paddling? The canting, slanting, and plunging? And NOT plunging as well-advised, toothpick style, rather toothpick style into a one-eighth somersault then into an overcorrected quarter gainer, into the flail, and lastly into the uncorrectable church-pew entry.

Many of you might not know about church pew rigidity.  The best way to explain is semi-circularly.  You know that way in which you expressly do not enter a glass-placid quarry lake from eighty-feet aloft? How it's precisely the way in which you expressly do not allow an usher to seat you from eighty-feet aloft? That's the way.

And that's the way, pious and lissome, I alighted from aloft. Back when their big brother earned his wings.  Didn't they know or I remember? And that's how far my list of excuses has come in ten fretful hours . . . whiplash for week.

One by one by one by me, we pile in the SUV. We arrive at the river thirty minutes later equipped to the gills with fresh smokes and cold Dews. We turn into a crunchy parking area. I see the water, a few gamboling children, but no bluffs.  I see an outcrop of boulders along the farther side bearded with lichen, grown through by stunted saplings, but no bluffs. I had called and I had won. 

We crunch into an open parking space. In the new angle, my face moves into the shadow of the bluffs.  The SUV moves into the shadow of the bluffs. Northwest Arkansas moves into the shadow of the bluffs. Smokes and Dews conspire to complicate a bowel situation. Threat Level Whiplash.

"Did I ever tell you boys about the time?"

"Last night," one or one or the other answers me.  That long ago, huh? I think. "From twice the height," another recalls. Was it twice? Maybe one and half. What's fractions amongst formerly  homeschooled brothers?  "Veteran, was it?" OK, that was the baby, the youngest, the perpetually five. Yet somehow getting older while I'm just getting old.

My belly sallies forth with its threat of revolt.

"Easily twice. Two and a half," I say.

With aplomb, I flick my butt into my closed window, coolly swat coals into mere embers on my bare legs, and burst into the shimmering morning just as soon as someone comes around to let me out--my door's latch is broken on the inside, didn't they remember?

"It's go time, boys."

Be sure to come back next week for the stunning of conclusion of “The Bluffs.”