Deep Falls

I’ll never forget the last time I saw my friend Tom. It was the day before I left for university, late August of 1920. Though thirty years have passed, for some reason I can remember that day better than most of last week. Tom, up until I left, was my best friend. As close as a brother. And the fact that we endured the horrors of war, miraculously in the same section, only tightened our friendship. Of course, Tom wasn’t the only friend I had. It’s just…he was a little detached and so we got along all the better. I don’t think the war had as much of an effect on him as it did everyone else; for some unfathomable reason, he would get most excited when we went on night raids or when we hid for our lives during bombardments. The crazy bastard would whoop and cheer and yell, “Oh shit boys that one was close! Who wants to bet the next one’s closer?” followed with a bold chuckle and a wide grin. The others in the section and I weren’t sure if we were surprised that he survived or not surprised because he survived. He did get shot, in the arse once, for exposing himself to the enemy during one of their attacks. Did he complain? Not at all. Only laughed and said it served him right. That was Tom in his best of moods.

It was an early Saturday afternoon when Tom, John, Danny and myself, got together. (John and Danny were brothers who missed the war by going to school, and so were naïve and soft compared to Tom and I. At least that was my opinion of them.) Free from any responsibilities, Tom and I stole two bottles of whiskey from a cart outside a shop and went to our old hangout, from our younger days of mischief, in the woods by the river. We met John and Danny already there roasting sausages and potatoes on a nice fire. That’s when I remembered that I forgot my pipe and tobacco on the desk beside the door at home. So I had to run back, leaving the brothers to handle Tom and his personality.

I snuck through the window of my room to avoid being caught by Mother, who, I thought, would surely keep me from a quick return. My room had a different feeling; the same feeling it had before I went to France. It was tidy and two suitcases rested by the bed, packed with my things. My fishing gear lay in the corner and I remember looking at it for a moment-suddenly smelling the river and the fresh fern I packed the fish with. But it didn’t last long. The moment rushed over me and left as I looked elsewhere. I crept to the door and listened, something I’d done a thousand times in my youth before sneaking out, or sneaking in. And for a moment, I didn’t want to go to university. I didn’t want to leave Tom or my little town by the river. It felt like my entire adolescence had been stolen away from me-and it had been as far as anyone, that disapproved of the war, was concerned.
No noise or murmurs from the floor below could be heard and so I opened the door and tiptoed down the stairs, out of habit. My concentration was all on the desk by the door, which was in view, and so I didn’t see the small pile of books at the side of the steps, halfway down the flight. Half of my heel landed upon the edge of the pile and I lost footing. I avoided doing the splits by, as elegantly as possible, tumbling down the stairs, cursing the whole way. And out of the kitchen came Mother.
“Christ child! What ARE you doin’ falling down the stairs like that!” She cried.
“Ah shit mum, who put the books there?” I yelped.
Looking up at her, I saw she had been reading. She was wearing her delicate glasses that she only used for reading and sowing. But also I noticed a dark damp patch along her front.
“I’m wearing my tea now that ye’ startled me so!”
“But the books mum, who-”
“Oh never mind the books, come sit with me, I might not see much of you before your gone.”
She said before bringing me to the kitchen. As I presumed, she kept me from my friends, as all mothers do when they know, somehow, that you’re getting into unruly fun. I spent a half hour listening to Mother cry and laugh and talk about my growing up so fast and going off to school and all that sort of stuff that makes you blush and almost cry because you love your mother so much. But you don’t cry because it would only make matters worse. I knew it was going to be worse the next day, and so I saved my tears for then. Before she let me go, she made me promise to keep out of any serious trouble and said if she has to come get me at the police station, then God have mercy upon my soul and so on. Clutching my pipe n’ tobacco tightly, I ran as fast as I could back through the woods to my friends, mostly in fear of finding Tom with two empty whiskey bottles and two unhappy brothers.

When I was close enough to hear the boys laughing, I moved as stealthily as possible to sneak up to them. When I managed to get within a stones throw, I saw the brothers playing cribbage on a rock, with logs for seats, and Tom was bending over the fire. I made a dash at Tom, but before half the distance was cleared, Tom whirled around, and to my astonishment, hurled a burning stick at me! I threw myself to the ground out of the way of the flaming missile just in time.
“Fuck Tom, that’s a bit much.” Said Danny
“Oh it’s nuthin’ Danny boy,” Tom giggled, “Mister Corporal James Finn has dodged far worse in
his day.”
The four of us drank the whiskey in long meditated sips. We smoked our pipes while talking about times before, during, and after the war. We talked our way to the present and when the whiskey was gone we were stuck with deciding what to do. At that point we were quite tight, and Tom was trying to knock me off my log with his feet.
“We could go for a swim.” I said, a bit too enthusiastically.
The sun was breaking through the leafy canopy, warming us, along with the whiskey we drank. I felt very heavy and dizzy and knew that I would quickly sink once in the water, but the thought of the cold river and a chance to thrash my eejit best friend was much more enticing than laying in the hot dust-all the while being taunted by that same eejit. At my suggestion I noticed Tom had stopped his aggravations, and gone to thinking with an intense look in his usually bright light eyes. Then, with a very determined tone, which usually meant he had something incredulously ingenious in mind, Tom said,
“I know what we are going to do.”
“Oh no, ” Said John, “None of your bright ideas Tom, we want to live through the weekend-or at
least go through the night without seeing the inside of a cell.”
I smiled and before emptying my pipe, took one last long draw, blowing large donuts while listening to Tom’s idea.
“You know Deep Falls, down by where our pa’s used to fish for the big trout?”
We all nodded half assuredly, knowing all too well where this was leading.
“Well,” Tom began, with the biggest smile I had seen on him all day, “We’re going to ride them.”
At that moment I think the brothers wished they never met Tom or myself, because their expressions worsened from the mention of the falls to the suggestion of riding them. I’m sure, in their minds, they heard Tom say, ‘Let’s kill our selves jumping the falls, I’m sure it would be a swell time.’ And if they hadn’t, they reacted as if they had.
“That’s it, you’re gone off your rocker by Christ.” John said, while standing up.
“It’s true,” Started Tom, “But I bet it has never been done before, and everyone in town will
remember us. And James is leaving tomorrow for his precious university.”
Though he respected me for it, Tom never liked the fact that I was leaving for school. He resented institutions and always made a point of living how he liked before handling responsibilities, unless of course they were in his favor.
“As much as I think it’s a smart way to get oneself dashed upon rocks and eaten by lil’ fishies, the
whiskey and some dastardly voice is telling me to go through with it.” I said, while slapping Tom on the back.
“That’s my lad!” Tom cheered.
“You two are real assholes.” Danny said, “But you know I’ll have to see you boys pull it off.”
Shaking his head, John mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch, and it was the last thing I heard come out of him for many months.

We ditched the fire and walked down the well-worn path to the river. Not more than a few hundred meters down river were the falls. They were called Deep Falls because no one ever discovered how deep the pool at the bottom was. They just knew that it held the largest trout than anywhere else along the river.
After shedding some clothes and handing them to the brothers, we told them to wait at the bottom and to keep a sharp eye for us on the way down. Tom and I waded out to the middle of the invigorating river. John took a moment to watch us then jogged after his younger half.
“Tom,” I said, “I’m gonna miss you.”
“Shut up.” He said, and then let himself float downriver.
I wasn’t sure how to take what he said. With the frequent surges of water in the face, eyes, and ears, it’s hard enough to think of anything other than the river and guiding oneself around rocks and whirlpools. I caught up to Tom halfway to the falls and asked, yelling, over the deafening crash of water, if he was still willing to go on with it. To this day I know it was a stupid question. He only looked at me and grinned that grin I remember seeing so many times during those, how does one say, ‘exciting’ moments in the war.
Deep Falls are at least five or six stories high. The river runs so strong that the water is thrown twenty feet past the rocks directly below the edge of the cliff-Tom wasn’t much of a thinker when it came to the physics of things. I knew we had to be moving darn fast if we wanted to make it as far past the rocks as the water. So we swam. Before going over, the water along the edge was very smooth. There weren’t any rocks, which was lucky for us. I remembered looking into the sky just before lunging forward with my legs, pushing myself as far out of the water as I could as the current swiftly carried me over. I lost sight of Tom soon after going over. At first my line of sight went from the sky, to further down the river, where I thought I saw John and Danny standing at the shore. (But for all I know it was imagined) I pitched forward more than I wanted to, into an awkward diving position. It was an incredible feeling, falling with the endless shoots of water. Fifty some odd feet go by faster than expected; a sudden smash against the pool’s uneven surface stole every wisp of air I tried holding. I must have plunged into that water straight as a log, because I went deep, deep down. It was dark and cold. I lost sense of direction and wasn’t sure which way was up. But before I made any decision, I hazily caught glimpse of something pale in the murk. Desperately trying to keep from swallowing water in place of fresh air, I made grasps for what I saw. My hand felt a smooth slimy rounded object. I clenched tight and having regained my equilibrium gave all my might to kick my way to the surface. Just before I felt I was going to black out, something grabbed me from under my arms and lifted me out onto the mucky shore.
When my vision stabilized, I looked at what was in my hand. It was a skull about the size of my own, save for a large hole punched out, doubtlessly, by a rock. Grime and algae clung to the majority of it; I never understood how I saw it under water so deep. My only guess is that it was sitting on some shelf created by the falling water, and I saw it on my swim up without even realizing which way I was swimming. Before I could react, yells from Danny pulled me back to reality.
“Where’s Tom!” He was shouting.
My only guess was that the force of the falls was keeping him under. Without considering the situation, I leapt into the water, down where the might of the falls was concentrated. My hands swept something solid and through the bubbles I saw Tom’s body churning in the swirling current. I hugged his waist as best I could and forced my way out from under the sucking death of the waterfall. I must have passed out. I opened my eyes to the pale wide-eyed face of Danny. His arms up in the air, hands closed in a double fist, about to thump my chest. But he stopped and fell backward, hands under his head.
“My god…” He said.
My head throbbed and I sat up. Tom’s body lay a few feet away. John was nowhere to be seen. I moved next to Tom’s body and was about to take his pulse, when his arms thrust forward at me, and he screamed. I swear I nearly shat myself.
“Now THAT was a fucking ride! Eh boyo!” He yelled.
I was speechless. But where I had no words, Danny couldn’t hold back.
“That’s the end of it Tom, you…you god damn lunatic! You son of bitch!” Danny screamed, “You
think that was funny? I wish you had fallen to your death…THAT would have served you
right…No good son of a bitch.” And with that Danny marched away.
Tom shook the water from his sandy colored hair before he said to me,
“Holy shit James, I feel great.” And whooped and cheered like he always did.
“Tom,” I said as serious as I could, “I’m afraid we weren’t the first ones…” I pointed to the skull I had found. It lay on its side some feet away, exposing the hole in the back of it, along with stringy globs of algae. Tom crawled over to it and took it in his hands. He scraped the green muck of it with his nails and looked at it. Grim face to grim reaper. I’m not entirely sure why, but the effect that had on him was more than I can say than the effect the entire war had on him. Tom stood up and walked into the quivering pool amidst the mist from the falls. I watched him dive under and come back up just a few moments later, without the skull. It was the heaviest moment I’d ever had with Tom.

Tom and I stayed in our wet clothing, and walked in silence, holding our dry clothes under our arms. The sun was creeping low to the horizon when we reached the main road through town. And when we got to my corner he looked at me and said,
“Are you going to write?”
“Only if you’ll write back.” Our shadows grew long upon the ground as we stood and looked at one another, until he broke the lone sound of the wind in the long grass,
“We’ve never had to say goodbye, you know.”
“Save it for tomorrow.” I said, “The day has been long enough.”
He nodded without looking at me. I sighed and started walking home, usually I’d have mentally prepared myself for Mother, but my thoughts were all on Tom. Intuitively, I looked back over my shoulder. He was staring at me, and a slight grin had taken the place of the firm mouthed frown he had on the way to town.
“I’ll miss you too, you bastard.” He yelled, before turning and walking his way home with the sun at his back. All I could do was smile, even though the thought of the skull was lurking somewhere within the gloom of my mind, and most probably his.