THE JUMP
Bernie Bourdeau

            Tyler stared down at the gang from atop the black iron skeleton, and understood a simple truth. If it wasn’t for Eleanor’s tits, he wouldn’t be here. He knew better, but just couldn’t help himself.

            Downstream, beyond the hydroelectric plant, rows of brick houses jammed against each other, lining the streets of his new neighborhood like a mouthful of decaying teeth. Before moving here, Tyler had never imagined a neighborhood like this. Johnny Cash’s voice, drifting through the opened windows above the cracked sidewalks, warned passersby about falling into a ring of fire. Every girl on the block owned Roy Orbison’s hot new 45, Crying, and usually did so while it played. The boys smoked cigarettes and drank beer. Some of the girls even opened their mouth while kissing. And then there was Eleanor: last night, she had let him feel her through her blouse while she leaned against the warm bricks in an alley between houses. Nice girls didn’t let boys do that. But Eleanor was a nice girl: his mother had told him so. Up on the hill where he’d come from, the nuns taught the consequences of impure thoughts and deeds. Down here, everyone went to public school. He’d asked his mother about switching when he entered high school in September. She’d reminded him the new President was Catholic.

            Tyler hugged a metal upright to his chest as tightly as he’d hugged Eleanor in Pig Alley last night. The solid steel against his crotch stoked memories of her thigh rubbing between his legs. He stole a glance down at her, the only girl in the gang, the only girl in the neighborhood to wear the skimpy new bathing suit they called the bikini. She was the most beautiful girl Tyler had ever met. He hoped he wouldn’t die up here or in the ditch below. Last night’s sins weighed on his soul. If he didn’t confess them before he died, he would spend eternity in hell. The boys in the gang jabbed shoulders and feet against the four piers of the tower. “Jump, ya big sissy!”

            He had stepped around the shards of smashed beer bottles on the cement base; handed his moccasins to Eleanor, and climbed. Now he couldn’t move, and he had no reason to believe anyone would come to save him. The swift ditch churned below. Near his head, tight black wires with rusty spots hummed a familiar tune he could not name. This annoyed Tyler, who knew the title, artist, and lyrics of every top-ten song since 1956. His wet bathing suit clung to his butt. His wiener, alive earlier because of Eleanor’s tongue in his mouth, now shriveled. He hoped no one would notice. If God would let him live, he would never touch a girl that way again.

             “What’re you a little baby?” someone shouted. The hum grew louder, the pitch higher, the beat frenetic. The ditch narrowed, current accelerated. Tyler looked down; wondered if it was even possible to retreat. His eyes were drawn to Eleanor’s bathing suit. He imagined her without the top. Maybe she read his mind. She waved. Wires cracked. A smattering of jumbled lyrics floated by, just beyond reach. “I love you, Tyler.” Eleanor’s words sliced through the cacophony as if she were God rendering an opinion on the tower of Babel. The shock jolted him, loosened his grip.

            He jumped, pushing forward as he’d rehearsed. Clear the base: water, not cement. Air rushed by. His feet split the surface. Quiet descended upon him. At the slimy bottom, he flexed his knees. Tyler thanked God. He’d jumped. And lived to tell about it. He began a mental list of schoolmates he would tell. They would all be impressed; maybe wouldn’t believe him. Good: he’d have Eleanor vouch for him. That would shut them up quick.

            The current slammed him downstream. He straightened; thrust himself toward the surface. His head bobbed above the roar of the flood. He struggled to fill his lungs. Ahead loomed the bridge, the rope, and an almost-naked Eleanor. For a fleeting moment, he panicked: imagined the torrent sweeping him like a twig in a deluge, beneath the bridge, past the rope; dashing him against the iron grates that snagged the chaff from the screaming turbines below. Then the rope brushed his shoulder and he grabbed. He climbed to the bridge, the jumbled lyrics now clear: the Del Shannon hit, Runaway. I wonder: why, why, why, why, why; she ran away, and I wonder where she will stay… Eleanor said they should meet after dark. Why not? He could always go to confession tomorrow.

            The gang sauntered onto the bridge. Tyler noticed it right away: They didn’t swagger. The cocky look, a permanent fixture on their faces now gone. Eleanor looped an arm around his waist. “Well, boys?”

            Dicky Lemay shook his head. “You’re crazy, man.”

             “Yeah, nuts,” Joey Rogalo chimed in.

             “He’s brave. You guys are a bunch of chickens.” Eleanor was the only kid Tyler knew who talked to the gang that way. She was almost a junior, and if that wasn’t enough, her older brother took care of any boy who crossed her, beating the kid to a pulp and dumping him in Pig Alley to die. Tyler hadn’t actually seen any of the battered bodies, but he knew from the nuns there were many things he should believe that he’d never witnessed.

             “What’re you kids doing in there?” The words were barely audible over the rush of the current. A man unlocked the chain link gate they’d scaled.

             “Power company,” Joey said

            The boys bolted across the bridge; disappeared. Tyler wanted to stay; tell the man what he’d done. Eleanor yanked his arm. “Come on, Tyler.” Once off the bridge, they ran along a rutted dirt road lined with brush and weeds. Eleanor pulled him through an opening. They descended a narrow path to the river edge. Tyler looked around, lost, and disoriented. Eleanor rubbed her body against his. “Stay with me. I know the way.” He followed, his eyes fixed on her wiggling behind. She stopped, and turned. “Do you know you’re the only one to make that jump?” She pulled his head to hers and tried to suck his tongue into her mouth. He gasped for breath as he’d done moments earlier. “I like a brave man.” Tyler liked the sound of Eleanor’s voice. Another voice in his head whispered ‘sin.’

            That night he kissed her open mouth and rubbed her boobs. When he felt her hand on him, down there, it was as if the black wires at the top of his tower had zapped him. She guided his hand down along her blouse and into her unbuttoned shorts. His fingers touched silky fabric. He had never touched a girl’s underwear before, except for his sister’s and she wasn’t wearing them. This was different: the girl of his dreams had opened the waistband of her underwear and now coaxed his fingers inside. The terror was too much to bear. Tyler froze: just as he’d done at the top of the tower, staring down a passionate current that threatened to engulf him. Eleanor tugged his hand gently. Tyler looked into her eyes, searching for approval, praying for a reprieve. Her smile made him feel gooey inside, but that and her head nod could move his hand no lower. She thrust her hips forward, even stood on tiptoes. His fingers clung to the warm skin near her belly button as if anchors in a rising tide. A moment passed. Eleanor kissed his cheek. “You’re a nice boy, Tyler.” She removed his hand and led him from the alley into the park across the street.

            Later that night Tyler lay on his back, eyes wide open, on the top bunk in the room he shared with his two brothers, the music from his transistor radio earphones filling his brain. He memorized her every movement, every word she had told him. He wasn’t sure what to make of the hour they’d spent in the park, but one thing was certain: he was no longer a boy. Tyler wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Part of him wished he had never left Pig Alley; wished he’d never leaped into the murky undertow of older girls.

***

            The next morning, the guys came around looking for him. Tyler hung with them. They asked him what it was like. He described the thrill of the jump.

            Dicky LeMay smirked. “We meant doing it with Eleanor.”

            Tyler felt a shock. A line from a movie he could not name popped into his head. “I’ll never tell. Ask her.”

             “Didn’t have to,” Joey said. “She bragged.”

            Tyler’s chagrin was short lived. Just before dark, Eleanor came by and invited him to come to the alley. When they were alone, she said, “I like you a lot Tyler. You’re real sweet. But I want a boyfriend more my own age. You can be my friend, OK?”

            Tyler could not speak. There were things he wanted to say and do. But brave men didn’t cry or beg, especially in front of girls.

            After dark, Angela asked him to go for a walk. They strolled in silence for a few minutes, Tyler wondering what Eleanor was doing at that moment. Angela took his hand. “She wasn’t right for you.” Angela pulled him into Pig Alley and kissed him with her mouth open. The next night he took a walk with Judy and ended up in the same place, kissing her and feeling her boobs. Neither girl loosened her shorts. His baby sister’s best friend, Darlene, started hanging around. Tyler ignored her as much as possible. The day she asked him to go for a walk he ruffled her hair and went in the house. He put off going to confession and receiving communion. Everywhere he went, Tyler cast a wary eye for Eleanor’s brother.

***

            Three days after Halloween, Angela intercepted him on his way home from school. “Eleanor dropped out of school. She’s going to have a baby.”

            Tyler felt as if Darlene’s older brother had punched him in the gut again for being a smart mouth. “A baby?”

             “A baby, Tyler. What do you have to say…?” Angela looked into his eyes. “…about that?”

            Tyler looked away. There was nothing he could say: not to Angela, not to anyone.

             “You have to call her, Tyler.”

            Although Tyler intended to call, he was growing increasingly annoyed by people telling him what he must do. “You know, Angela, she broke up with me.”

            Angela’s face turned red and her mouth opened as if to say something. She closed it, turned and stalked off.

            After nearly a dozen attempts to talk to Eleanor by phone, he stopped calling. He knocked on her door. Her brother met Tyler at the door with a punch in the mouth, an elbow to his ribs and a kick in his behind. He told Tyler he would kill him if he came anywhere near Eleanor. Although Tyler had expected that reception, he felt an obligation to Eleanor.

            Tyler never did speak to Eleanor. He never touched Angela again; or Judy, or any other girl his age in the neighborhood. The gang showed up less frequently at first and then not at all. Tyler felt as if all eyes were upon him, as they’d been when he stood atop his tower, no one realizing he had no place to jump. The exception was Darlene. During those difficult weeks, it seemed any time he was alone, or feeling low, Darlene was nearby to talk to him or just listen, though he didn’t have much he could say.

            The day after Thanksgiving, Tyler trudged along River Road through a heavy snowfall delivering his morning newspapers. His tower loomed through a downy haze in the distance. The memory of the jump and its aftermath had the power to warm him, even in a storm.

            The missing fence was the first sign that something was wrong. Tyler ran up the road. A set of tire tracks in the snow led to the gap. He stood on the flattened chain link fence and traced the tracks to the edge of the swift ditch. He dropped his bag of newspapers and sprinted to the nearest house. It was a precaution, he told himself. The driver had probably escaped and already reported the accident. The police would thank him for the report; tell him everything was under control. After the call, he retrieved his bag of papers and waited.

            An hour later, the divers found the car a few yards downstream, the driver door open. Tyler recalled the force of the current slamming against his body as he pushed to the surface looking for the bridge, the rope, Eleanor. A policeman made a joke about swimming on such a cold morning. Tyler vomited.

            Later that day he learned the car belonged to Mr. Kingsley, Eleanor’s father, who reported her missing. The news didn’t make Tyler sad. He felt no sorrow; no remorse; no guilt; no shame. He desperately wished to feel something: anything. That had to be more bearable than the nothing he felt at that moment.

            They found Eleanor’s body two days later, lodged in the iron grates above the turbines. The day before the wake, a senior boy at Tyler’s school, St. Joseph High, was found lying in McDonald Park badly beaten. The boy told police he could not identify the assailant .Tyler served as altar boy at Eleanor’s funeral and felt her brother’s eyes burning holes in him with their angry glare. Tyler cried like a baby when they rolled the casket down the aisle and out of the church.

***

             “A penny for your thoughts,” Darlene said.

            Tyler and his wife of nearly forty years stood on the steel bridge the power company built over the canal to allow public access to the new Falls View Park. Upstream stood the old wooden bridge where Eleanor’s body once commanded his rapt attention. The span crumbled with rot from decades of neglect: fate’s molt whisked away on an unrelenting current–detritus against the grates standing sentry at the end of the wash. Beyond it Tyler’s tower jutted erect, daring all who would challenge it: bigger, sturdier, more threatening than he’d remembered. “Just thinking about the neighborhood and some of the old gang.”

             “More tall tales of Tyler and raging currents?”

            Tyler turned to face her. “I did jump from that tower.”

             “I know. My cousin saw you.”

             “So, after all these years you admit it: you do know the truth? Why—”

             “About Eleanor.”

             “Huh?”

             “You and Eleanor; I know the truth: She lied to the gang about you and her.”

             “Where’d you hear that?”

             “Eleanor: the day she broke up with you: the same day she told me you were more my speed than hers.” Darlene looked into his eyes and shook her head. “She was the envy of all the girls; shame what happened to her.”

            The revelation made Tyler laugh. Eleanor had branded him with some woman’s ‘good housekeeper’ seal of approval. “And you never said a word?” He felt as if Darlene had read his diary.

             “Why? She was right.”

            He turned away and pointed to his tower. “So I’m at the top of that tower over there, and I can hear the wires humming a vaguely familiar tune. I think the song is about living, daring, invincibility, and immortality, but I don’t know the lyrics. Someone shouts above the hum, and I realize, whatever the words, the song is about me. I jump. The lyrics pop into my head, but by the time I’ve got them straight the music stops.”

            Darlene pulled him to her; thrust her pelvis against him. She leaned over. “Just like that? The music stopped?”

            Tyler turned, seized his wife’s hips, and drew her close. “I guess it was for the best,” he whispered.

            Darlene’s lips were warm and moist against his neck. “Really?”

            He knew she didn’t believe him. He’d never been able to explain to her that short but magic summer of life when feats of daring were routine, all things were possible, and the world’s horizons looked like a pair of unbuttoned shorts, a smile and a beckoning nod. Eleanor had shattered his illusions the night she’d laid next to him in the park, explained the facts of life and extracted a promise he’d quickly come to regret.

             “You never got over her, did you?”

             “I guess not.”

            Darlene’s sliver of truth about him and Eleanor failed to capture the story, which was not that, despite Eleanor’s and his best efforts, his first real sexual experience would be years in the future and with Darlene. The real story was the one Eleanor had told him that night in the park, the one he had sworn he would not repeat. That story had skidded to an end on a wintery morning, plunging to the bottom of the swift ditch along with Eleanor and the unborn baby her older brother had fathered, stranding Tyler in an eternal purgatory, unable to lighten the weight of the awful truth without violating his sacred oath.

            In his head, Del Shannon cried out: My little runaway; a run, run, run, run, runaway.