by Lia Purpura
Here, I am escorted to Dreamland for barbeque, and with Brian, my student, eat my first banana pudding. Here, A. T. Grime, Flight Lieutenant, wrote, “anxious experiments are being carried out by the devoted Mr. Davies, our Dietician, with the object of providing an acceptable Yorkshire Pudding à la Tuscaloosa, to satisfy the palates of our gourmets.” “This I think is typical,” he continued, “of the efforts made by all at this school . . . to make your pilgrimage a memorable experience.” The banana pudding is so sweet, so custardy, full of bananas and cakey white fluff, so heavy and childish, if I’d grown up with it, I’d miss it too, when abroad.
Here, in 2008, the assistant in charge of visitors is a “Fifi.” Here, in 1942, the novices en route to becoming pilots first class were “Dodos.” Fifis and Dodos. What a menagerie this land raised up.
Here, the novices have their own games: flag-football with elaborate e-mail invitations. “As you can see, we at the UAEDFL—University of Alabama English Department Football League—are incredibly dedicated to our sport; we always give 110% and we play hurt . . . come this Saturday at 11 and feel the RUSH.” Here the cadets’ training program offered “archery, horseshoes, swimming, tennis, tumbling, softball, volleyball, boxing, relays, calisthenics and, for recreation, golf, checkers (chinese and regular), chess, cards, music, reading, singing, and movies.” Posted at 10:59 one night: “After incessant whining on the listserv and the occasional snide (yet sheepish!) remark in the graduate student lounge, the English Department comes up with an unbelievable plan to raise money by playing flag-football.... Can this ragtag band of writers, researchers, instructors and critiquers settle their views on Derrida before it’s too late?” And stanza one of an eleven-stanza poem, called “Cadence, Exercise” by cadet J. S. Peck goes:Throughout the U.S. Armies wide
Stand formations side by side
Their contempt they’ll never hide
for Calisthenics!
Here’s Flight Lieutenant Garthwaite, R.A.F. Administrative Officer, in his monthly bulletin “Over to London”: “To those at home we send our sincerest hopes for the future. Although not on the field of battle ourselves, we do but gird ourselves for the great and final overthrow of Naziism. Let us hope and trust the coming year will see this war through . . . and . . . not a little by the fruits of our learning over here.”
Yes, here they learned their recitations: maximum speeds and service ceilings; flight ranges, fuel capacities, and armaments carried by the Arvo Lancasters, Armstrong Whitleys, and Bristol Beaufighters they’d be flying over the skies at home, soon, soon.
Into this vacancy, something asserted. Something strange—that is, real—and insistent was here. The land didn’t mean to be torn and tar-covered, wasn’t meant to sprout stock farmers, farm women, and ranchers. The land asked to be considered, and seriously. The land wanted to speak—past the bunkers of rolled insulation, past the earth-eating backhoes, and yellow concoction my farmer (okay, working stiff, bare hands in the poison, then wiping his nose) force-fed the grass. Here the land must have been green by the runways. Some of the big trees still here must have seen it. It must’ve been lush once, before hotels started turf wars along Marriott/Hilton lines, and thick vines choked the trees, and the tractors came and the hot blacktop poured, so the SKUs of Big K—hundeds of thousands—might take root and flourish.
I was returned—but not to an Eden, for there were airstrips and the screams of takeoffs, supply roads were laid down for fuel and equipment, the contrails of jets streaked the air, burned, scented, inscribed the quiet so the feel of the whole experience—the desire to serve, the fear of serving—would return whenever humidity, fuel, barbeque combined rightly for the novices.
I was returned, but more in this way: someone dreamed of getting the word, high over Berlin, to top-speed it east toward the Polish border, the Führer, he’s there!, it’s the hamlet of Gierloz, fix your sights son, load, steady, and——. Someone considered the glory, the fame, posing for photos with requisite wounds. Family pride, shining future. The world’s gratitude. Because the boys must have thought it, because I had the thought, it must have been lingering. The thoughts must have held on, hovering, jittery, wanting some rest. But nothing cadet was marked on the land, not poems or pudding, jaunty caps, homesickness. Instead, here were lots, grids, boxes, all manner of automata—doors that opened without human touch allowing the body to float right on in and get down to the business of buying.
Here’s where the splintered, close barracks were raised—and then razed, plowed under into a new kind of cloverleaf: blacktopped, clovery only from air.
When the land would not speak and my characters failed, when the land was muffled and my characters stock, this piece was born.
Here is my seed. Here is my search, trail, map of convergences.
Here is the thing I made in place of—what, exactly?
What did I find myself wanting? Something simple and telling—say a shop revealing the “character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence. . . .” Even better (all this from Thomas Hardy), a “class of objects displayed in the shop windows . . . Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bell-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the ironmonger’s; beehives, butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and plough-harnesses at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows and mill-gear at the wheelwright’s and machinist’s; horse-embrocations at the chemist’s; at the glover’s and leathercutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’ knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs. . . .” Oh, boots to lace up against scalding and scraping! Commerce boiled, reconstituted—made rhythmic with breath, heavy with being.
I wanted a footpath, a field-edge—a sidewalk. People at ease with neighbors and chatting. A simple plaque at the site of—whatever : Here the cadets of 42E sat to eat their first grits. Scrap of wing or propeller on the Hilton’s faux mantle. Fins and Flippers next to every Gideon’s Bible.
What did I find? Some Februaries that matched—one then and one now; some novices each with their good fights and good words, their gratitudes, civilities, and homey soft puddings.
I wanted to know what happened here, on land like this.
Now I know.
People learn to fly through it. And then they go home.
Jump
It’s a small thing that holds me.
On the sign that reads Last Death from Jumping or Diving from Bridge, June 15, 1995, it’s the or I can’t shake. Why fuss with ambivalence when real mystery abides: here stood intolerable grief or failure. Sheerest abandon, joy in a long summer evening. A dare. Need for adventure /a history of. Why work at precision when, hitched as they are to Death in this fragment, both Jump and Dive convey a misjudging of depth, of current, ignorance of rocks below the dark water, and, with “June” added, an insistent sun peaking the river with camouflage ripples. And isn’t it Death that I, passerby, secret entertainer of edges and precipices, should instead linger over—approaching, riding, then putting behind me the impulse as I cross the bridge, daily this winter?
Someone thought to be personal about it, not slap up an ordinance “By order of” and “with a $$$ fine.” No organization (Bridge Jumpers Anon) claimed the sign; it’s not a fraternity service project or probationary do-good feat. That unadorned “Death” is no stat-like “fatality.” “Or” is a move to cover the bases, and observed here, now, mid-February, the slightest warmth coming on, barest inflection of sweetness in air, the river still frozen—it opens up all kinds of questions.
Imagine the onset of summer in Iowa, each day in June the light and soft air a surprise, a relief from the long winter’s cold. It’s been twelve years now since the sign’s announcement. The bare facts are holding, but time folds the story back into “the past.” None of my friends here remember the death. When I stand on the bridge thinking “twelve years ago now” the form of an actual body in air, in water, is vague and the best I can do to buoy the body i
s shirt-puffed-in-wind, corona-of-hair-floating-behind.
Twelve years ago now. Where’d the story go?
One in which no one moved quickly enough. Because he was the athlete. Because she, such a practical joker, would surface any minute, any minute for sure. No one moved off the bridge, tearing a path through the tangle of cattails and blackberry to plunge in and help. Or everyone tried, but she was under too long. Or he stood by himself in the early pink dawn, and the act, intended to purify—the cold water awaken, the silence exalt—was planned as a private moment.
Around the sign, around the inconclusive or—because of the or, the pause it stirs, the space it opens—fragments and conjectures gather: the last person was drunk. The last person, despondent, tied a brick to her ankle. The last person could swim but not well and didn’t account for the rain-swollen currents, for a current at all, it looked so mild, as it does now, even in February. The last person was pushed, wasn’t ready and twisted around to protest. The last person hit her head on the railing, unconscious before she entered the water. The last person trusted his body, young as it was and accustomed to pleasure. And below were the snarled, sharp nests of dumped cable. Roots of river plants tough as rope. She cut her arm on a broken bottle and fainted and fell over the edge. He misjudged the span’s depths and hit the concrete foundation. She didn’t imagine construction debris. She thought the vertigo was over for good a long time ago. He looked up to say he was fine, just fine, but his mouth filled with water and he panicked and choked. She jumped, but midair turned it to swan dive—wanting the grace to set her apart, and to best all the plain summer cannonballers.
I’m not doubting it happened; I believe someone died. It’s just that the sign complicates, suggests many competing things at once: by “last death,” that there had been previous ones. (But those aren’t listed.) And how to be sure if the sign-maker kept up with the project, if “last” means “final” and not “last recorded”? Or if the span of twelve years suggests precautions were taken—and they worked, problem solved. You might even assume, if you’re inclined to optimism, that the sign, in a crude and grim sort of way, is reassuring: that it’s now very safe to jump. Or—given the sign’s plain-spokenness, its weird departure from officialese—someone got fed up with the jumping and used the occasion to blunt-force the message, to speak to kids “in their own language” and “to this day” (see how solid that phrase, how it makes time behave and ties up the story) the tone is off-kilter and not to be trusted, since, as kids know, authority keeps its ear to the ground and cooks up new methods of sounding native. And so, ahistorical and inconsistent, chummy in ways that feel fake, the sign frays and unfocuses; offers, then snatches away. Which accounts for the queasiness I feel standing before it.
Without a story, the fragments won’t settle.
Possibilities crowd in and distract.
Without the stability of a tale-handed-down, one rushes to make things, rushes the blankness as if it were naked, suddenly stripped—indecent, embarrassed. In need.
Conclusions assert.
Stances take root.
Here’s one now, a very unpleasant stance that I’d rather let go—but I’m trying to stay alert, catch the forms of response coming in. So, though I’m cringing, I’ll present it in full: there on the banks, in the sun, in June, however enticing, I’d have been careful. Judged correctly the depths. Known my strength and its limits. I’d never have taken such a stupid risk. Because look, right below, how the eddies gather. Anyone could see that means sunken stuff’s present. It might have worked as a simple jump (I’m leaning over now, calculating: a feet-splayed or bicycling-around kind of jump, to soften the impact) but not as a dive. No way a dive would’ve worked—and here comes the stance’s fullest expression, I feel it, the coo, the assuring, calm sense of righteousness-and-exemption firming up: she must have been drunk. That’s the kind of dumb thing you do when you’re drunk—just jump, crash through the conventional—childish, careless . . .
. . . as if I’ve never been careless, lit, held by an ocean, a force late at night erasing my path, rolling it, sealing it up behind me: just come. As if I’ve never been successfully beckoned. As if I’d never beckoned myself, oceanically forceful, convinced by desire and absolved by it, sharply alive and powered by very pure, bright shots of impulse.
Such a sign, in all its uncertainty, opens up another way, too, so I might look again at the riverbank, how green and sweet, and tangled with blackberries. The cattails taut and near bursting (I’m working toward a new attitude here, a mildness I hope to cultivate), the sun releasing the loamy, rich scent of days ripening fast. There’s been rain and the river’s high and quick, and only a little silty. Breeze lifts my hair, my shirt, reaches around, I’m in summer’s good hands and some hasp is removed, latches unclicking, sun unfolding white handkerchiefs on water and other commodious tricks of time, flexing, cajoling here, enter here....
And here’s the new edge I walk up to, new stance to counter the impatient, first one. I’m trailing it, picking through marshes and dunes. It comes forth in this way, by recalling the lighthouse at Cape May Point, New Jersey. The 275 stairs inside are steep and twisting and once you start climbing, you can’t turn back, it’s too narrow and there are others behind you. In the heat, the scent of iron lifts, scent of all who have rested cheeks, laid foreheads against the burnished handrail, wishing it into a better one, a familiar one along the boardwalk (there, far below on the beach they can’t see, leaning as they are against this one, praising its steadiness, hoping it will go on reliably holding).
Last year, after climbing to the top, I couldn’t make myself step through the door and onto the walk. Things break. All the time. Unhinge and unbolt. Hairline-crack. Salt air scours and pocks and gnaws down. Hail full-throttles. Sun dries to dust all it touches.
Why must I consider this, daily?
This summer, though, I stepped right out with my son and walked evenly all the way around. I did not look straight down, but neither did I focus on my safe and near cuticles, wrist, wrist hairs, jacket zipper. I walked out and caught the wind, full in the face. No back to the wall, no inching and praying. Last year, I couldn’t bear to see my son out there, but wanting to encourage bravery I said nothing and stayed inside and got busy reading a plaque so he might go freely around holding his father’s hand, happy in the fierce wind.
But this year—just fine. I don’t know why. Except that I’ve let go of a lot recently. I think it’s made me lighter—which might have meant more easily dizzied, more easily lifted and blown away. But instead I got one of those good, hearty paradoxes, one you can hold and gaze at, like the-emptying-that-fills, and feel more solid and certain for.
And here, my first stance, the ungenerous one, mingy and full of judgment gives way. Releases. So I might imagine things differently: that he wanted to fly; she was eager to change, not mince through her days; he followed a spoor hopefully, silently—as I have, spoors of thought, wily ones, supple and leading away, leading to all kinds of precipitous points; she wanted to slip the foundering pace of routine; that which overcast him he was ready to shed, or to drop through and be cleansed of; she meant to restore all that lay festering, and let regret go, into the soft and aureate breeze.
Some stories are so much a part of a place, that the place is singed, stained, impressed with their very particular light. A story gone to lore constructs atmosphere, makes up “the place where X happened” and people will, or decidedly won’t say they live near it. Will or pointedly will not tell such a story. Such a story is very much like the biggest tree in the yard, whistling, swaying, dropping its envelopes of light through windows and onto the living room floor—you own it but don’t think in those terms, until someone says, “That’s a nice tree you have,” and then it hits: how strange to consider “I own a tree,” a presence you live with, beside, under. Are shadowed by. That shadows you in. Real lore, I mean. Not like the characters and their spectral antics you hear about on touristy ghost walks in
old port cities—stories a guide tells for a fee. Of ghosts, I imagine, who are worn thin (thinner than usual ghost-gauziness) by the same nightly shtick, the guide’s delivery paced to group shuffling, mystery dosed out, creepiness tuned to hang in the air: “and to this day, no one knows exactly where X. . . .” Stuck in a story gotten not-at-all-right, night after night, ghosts who would otherwise knock about and rattle some rafters for kicks might think it best to stay quiet.
So how to read a sign like this, bent on recording and telling something, but not a story. And even now, if I say “recording” I realize how careless the sign is with facts: if it listed fatalities over the years, with zeros included to account for times when no one went over, then it would be clear: someone was watching, the totting up would be real. Ongoing. Believable. And “June 15” would register relief, and be more truly a memorial. But the sign is so sketchy, it feels, instead, like attention dropped off and interest waned. And in that way, the jumper/diver, the subject of one particular moment—a moment en route to being tale-worthy—passed out of mind.
But it hasn’t passed out of mind. Not for me. The moment, the story, the last death has been nagging.
It’s June now. Four months have gone by since I first stood on the bridge and imagined some stories, tried out some stances. The sign’s small, no bigger than a sheet of notebook paper; its simple red letters on white metal, its modesty and starkness read differently early or late in the day: when strolling and I know to anticipate it; when hurrying past and it startles. All this time I’ve been thinking it over, trying to figure out how to read the thing, trying to locate what’s been lost and unsaid.
To that end, my field research might go like this:
As soon as I jumped, I regretted it. I could hardly breathe and kept last-ditch praying: “Please be over, please be over.” The freefall was awful; it went on forever, though it must’ve been only seconds. I felt my brain rise against my skull. I felt my ribs shift, my stomach unmoor, my cheeks go loose. I teared up and couldn’t see. I heard nothing but wind and couldn’t scream.
