Ricky's River

Ricky’s River1

Ricky made a boat out of paper and threw it off a bridge. “Fly, mister, fly!” He shouted as it fell like a bird from a nest, fluttering madly all the way down, down to the river rushing and waving, splashing through, around, and under the footbridge. Fortunately for the passengers of his little boat, who had been looking forward to enjoying a pleasant day cruise, they didn’t exist, and were therefore spared the agony of toppling and turning through miles of windy blue air molecules and drowning facedown in a soggy, newspapery mess. They would have drowned too, because none of them could swim, and Ricky didn’t know how to make paper life jackets. Ricky laughed and laughed and watched his boat swirl and dive and sink through the chain links of the fence guarding the edge of the bridge, his fingers grasping the metal in white excitement, until the last poor victim was overcome by the dirty tide and roar of the angry water. It swallowed the small boat, regurgitated, and swallowed again, this time for good. Ricky stopped laughing as his boat disappeared and stared, blankly and deeply, in an irritated calmness, letting the river run by. It always ran, never stopping, never resting, never running out of water. Run, run, run. Faster, faster. 2

“Go go go!” Ricky jumped up and down in excitement and screamed at a stick passing under the bridge, floating and tossing with the waves. He ripped his shirt off and hurled it over the edge to race the speeding branch. “Go shirt!” Go stick!” But the shirt soaked and sank like the boat and like everything else Ricky ever threw in. The water hated Ricky, it never shared and it never gave anything back, no matter how much Ricky shared with it. Ricky pounded and shook the fence and yelled at the river in fury.3

His mother sighed and walked briskly over to him after a mere minute of peace. Shouldn’t this sort of behavior be abating by his age? She took his wrist in her overstressed hand and pulled him back home, shirtless, screaming the whole way.4

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Years passed by, but the days stayed the same. It was summer again, and the summer sang of joy and life through petals on flowers and leaves on trees, too many to count and too green to try – green and green against a bright blue sky, like a ceiling holding all the heat and happiness in; like a wide high ceiling with a bright yellow light bulb that never goes out. Summer is color and movement; it is smells and noises that confuse your senses into bliss and meld your days together like rushing, frolicking water. Summer is for running and exploring and for taking the rivers of life on one at a time, sailing down them for the sheer danger and adventure of it.6

Ricky stood quietly in the summer air, staring straight up in the middle of a small grove, and counted all the green leaves he could see. “One, two, three, four, five…” he spun slowly as he counted and tilted his neck back and back until he fell backwards into a pile of sticks and leaves and plants growing in the black, living grime of the forest floor. He laughed and did a dirt angel, just like his mother told him so many times not to, or else he’d get his clothes dirty. His mother! He sat up quickly and looked around. No, nobody there; he was still free. He could see the trees and the grass and the rocks, and sometimes the squirrels that darted around him trying to keep unseen, almost as curious as he was, but no mother. In the sudden silence birds twittered and Ricky listened. He could hear a rumbling and a splashing not so far away and it made him remember. What was making that noise? That was why he snuck away, away from his mother reading her long, boring book without pictures or even good words on that disgusting park bench. Ricky was finally free from his mother’s always watching, always commanding eye! It never left him alone. Never let him do what he wanted, and all he wanted to do was explore, without someone to tell him what not to touch, what not to pull, what not to jump on or lie in or smell or throw or chase or eat or make into pancakes or put into his pocket or smear all over something else. So he had been careful, pretending to play with a small lizard rescued from the annoying, bubblebrained geese. He’d knelt exactly behind her, making noise and talking to the lizard, then less noise and whispering, then sneaking off into the forest to follow the faint sound, the sound of speed, the sound of an adventure he hadn’t had since he was small. 7

Ricky got up quickly, paused to grab a short three-leaved plant and rub it in his hands until it fell apart in shreds, and then ran off clumsily, dodging trees as if they were linebackers ready to tackle him, or mothers ready to scold him. “Watch out!” he yelled, and he hit a rather large oak hard with his shoulder. It spun him around and he fell down again onto the ground, crying out in pain. Then he quickly put his hands over his mouth and stifled the cry as he heard it, heard her in the distance.8

“Ricky, Ricky where are you?”9

She knew he was missing. He got to his feet in an instant and smiled a devious smile with shifting, adventurous eyes. Now it was a chase! Would he find what he was looking for, the sound that was so loud and splashing everywhere around him, or would she find him and take him back, and probably make him sit in the car with the doors child locked and the windows only rolled down halfway? Who would win the race?10

“Ricky!” he heard again. “You need to come back right this instant!” She was getting closer. Ricky’s expression suddenly became serious and he tiptoed away from her voice, careful not to make so much as a peep. He walked quickly and kept looking back over his shoulder for a hint of blue jeans or pink blouse. Nothing, not yet. He walked and crept along, and suddenly he was not in the forest; his feet were no longer standing on dirt, instead they crunched rocks and sand. Ricky stopped and stared down, then slowly, slowly raised his head.11

There it was.12

The river! Water came up within five feet of him, calm near the shore but bubbling, spinning, jumping out near the middle and crashing into three posts holding up a small footbridge. Ricky remembered. He had been here before, at the banks and over the bridge. He used to play on the edge and throw things in, all sorts of things, rocks and sticks and sometimes little paper boats made out of newspapers. So this was what was making the sound! Ricky had forgotten that rivers were so ferocious; he hadn’t been this close to one in years. In the pictures, rivers were blue and they didn’t move, just sat there on the page, but in real life they were brown and white and ran by in a blur, so you couldn’t watch just one of the waves no matter how hard you tried. 13

The river wasn’t as fast as it used to be though, or at least as he thought it used to be. Maybe he was just bigger now. He knew his tall, lanky body was smaller a long time ago, with smaller hands and smaller feet. He just got new shoes last week, big white shiny shoes. He liked them, but he felt sad for his old shoes and still wore them sometimes even though they hurt his feet. And he couldn’t fit in the tubes or the slide at the playground anymore either. “Yeah, I’m getting bigger,” he said out loud, and then looked around to see who had listened. Nobody, like usual. Nobody but the rocks and the grass and, of course, the river. The river babbled back in its own, wet language, and Ricky watched, just stood and watched, forgetting about everything else.14

Then something caught his attention. It was a raft, a small, brown, wooden raft that bumped along down the river, halfway over to the other side where the water wasn’t so violent as it was on Ricky’s side. Four young people, two guys and two girls, used paddles to steer themselves around and keep the raft from drifting too close to any rocks. Wow! It looked like so much fun! Ricky stared at them in awe as they maneuvered closer and closer to the bridge straddling the water, floating expertly and avoiding the quickest parts of the river. They were like pirates, commanding the water and daring it to challenge them. What an adventure! 15

But suddenly it didn’t look so fun. The raft went to pass under the bridge, too close! It struck one of the concrete posts and tipped slightly to one side. The people on the raft screamed, and one of the girls fell off, barely catching the side to hold on. The raft scraped around the post to the far side, and the two boys were rubbing against it, trying not to flip the raft. And suddenly there was red on the concrete. Blood! Ricky watched in terror as the raft somehow became stuck, wedged up against the bridge, with the four helpless people on it. He looked around frantically; nobody else was around! Nobody on the bridge, no one else coming down the river, no person on either bank. Where was his mother? It was just Ricky on the shore and the four people trapped in the middle of the river on a raft. The three on the raft were lying or sitting in defeat; the girl was still clinging desperately to the side. At least one of them was bleeding, badly! 16

Ricky looked around once more, firmed his mouth and squinched his eyes. He made a decision. If no one else was around, he, Ricky, would have to save them. He could swim out to them, unstick their raft from the bridge, and they would float back safely to the shore. He would be a hero! But this was no time to have pride in what he was about to do. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you, I’m coming!” he shouted. One of them yelled something back, but he couldn’t hear what it was. Ricky jumped into the water, shoes, clothes and all; it was cold and the river pressed hard against his legs as it went by. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted again, and they stared at him, waiting to be saved. He got into the water up to his knees, and began to wonder. How was he going to help them? He had just remembered he didn’t know how to swim, and the river’s current was pulling at him hard. But he would have to, somehow. Who else would?17

He paused in defiance of the waves splashing all around, and took another step forward. Ricky took a step, but he suddenly slipped; there were no more rocks to step on – just water! He fell, and the current took him quick, down, under, downstream. The river twisted his body in sickly circles; water slapped and tore at his skin taking him somewhere, away. His head finally broke the surface a hundred yards farther, well past the bridge and the rafters who weren’t even looking at him anymore. He choked and coughed, then was under again, up again. Now he was close to the middle of the river, flailing his arms and kicking his legs and gurgling for help, even further from the bridge. Ricky, splashing helplessly, got one last glimpse of the adventurous blue sky and wonderful, yellow summer sun, and was taken down by the river once more…18

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“What was that guy doing?” asked one of the young college boys tanning out on the homemade raft, which at the moment was tied with strong, blood-red ropes around one of the posts holding up the bridge and rocking gently with the waves of the river.20

“He’s nuts,” said a blonde girl, hanging off the side, submerged to the neck in the water. “I went to grade school with him; he was crazy then too – always screaming about something or other.”21

“You think he’s alright?” the boy asked, looking over at a woman searching for something on the shore. “Looked like he fell or something.”22

“Nah. Sure he’s fine.”23

“Hey you all, look at this!” another one of the tanners exclaimed. “I found it; it was floating down the river, got caught between the raft and the bridge.”24

“Hey, neat.”25

The tanner held up a small boat, a small white and soggy boat, made from newspaper and paper clips. He set it gently back in the water and let it go, watching for a moment as it was taken by the river. It raced quickly along with the current, bouncing and jumping with the rapids, playing with the water and laughing upon its surface. Then the tiny boat slipped just a little and was slapped hard on the side by an onrush of white, rabid foam. It stalled a split moment in shock and tipped over sideways, spilling a single passenger out into the vengeful, merciless waves.26