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100% True - Mostly

Thomas Elson

    A bright August morning. The rains have ended. Summer classes are completed. Grades posted. Our final year in law school begins in two weeks.
    Standing on my apartment balcony facing West, reveling in the cool morning breeze, wondering whether I should go swimming here, or head over to the adjoining complex to stare at the congregation of scantily-clad bodies around its pool, I hear -
    “Hey! Mike! You busy?”
    Standing on the sidewalk, looking up was Jack – a married law student whose heavily-laden wife masked her discomfort and embarrassment by joking she was eleven months pregnant.
    “Let’s go down the Shunganunga,” said Jack.
    The Shunganunga, technically a bourne - a bone-dry riverbed cluttered with large rocks and thirsty trees, was known mainly for its proximity to a beer joint where complaining and fretting law students congregated. Now, after a two-day downpour, it was overflowing its banks and rushing into the Kaw River, then the Missouri, which ran to the Mississippi, then dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. The stuff of legends.
    “How? You get a boat?”
    “No. I cobbed a tractor inner tube.”
    “How long is it?”
    “I have no damn idea.”
    At that stage I had no idea if I was going, but I owed the guy. He had set me up with a few amiable young women over the past two years, and one especially amiable six-foot regional model.
    Two hours later. One tractor-sized inner tube webbed in the center with a rope, and we were afloat on the Shunganunga drifting our way toward the confluence with the Kaw. “Inhale,” said Jack. Pine, elms, wet grass, and fresh rain overlaid with a musty odor of ancient earth and the detritus accumulated for generations. Two kids, too young, and too dumb, to worry about what’s jutting beneath the currents or reaching from the banks. No oars. No paddles. Only stripped tree limbs to push us from shore or overhanging trees.
    One bend. One dip in the river’s flow. The current swished us along as the inner tubes bounced from rock to rock and tree branch to tree branch.
    A few close calls. Our morse code staccato of earthy epithets. More excitement. Jack on one side. Me on the other.
    Branches shot up and out. Missed the first one. Avoided the second. Diverted from the third. Jack disappeared after the fourth. All I could see was his wedged left foot and twisted knee. The rest of him, I hoped, was still attached. Attached but underwater? How long could he last? He was going to drown, unless I could stop this damn thing and pull him up.
    A downed tree extended from the shore, but I had lost my make-shift oar. I grabbed at a branch – pointless. If I let go, we’d continue down river. If I held on, I would not be able to raise Jack out of the water. He could drown. I released us back into the torrent.
    Another thick branch. Straddling the inner tube, I caught a branch with my stomach. The tube stalled. My hands now free, I was able to grab Jack’s leg. I pulled. His head rose. He gasped. Inhaled. Exhaled - and with that exhale spewed river water straight at me.
    Jack oriented himself quickly, then helped haul the tube from the water. We plopped the tube on shore, and us onto the wet grass. The ground felt safe.
    Moments passed.
    “What next?” Jack asked.
    “I’ll untie the webbing; make a couple of loops around the tire for us to hold on to.” No thought. No hesitation. No contemplation.
    Within minutes, back on the Shunganunga, headed toward the Kaw River. Happy and proud. Blissfully unaware of what was beyond the next bend.

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