TALLAHATCHIE BRIDGE

THE FRIENDSHIP OF TWO GIRLS ONE SUMMER IN MISSISSIPPI

  Some days the change your life.  Forever there was then, and we can only live in the after.  I have lived my life with a sorrow that came to me on the third of June yesteryear.  I had been away at school and had gotten into town just in time for dinner.  I was sitting with my folks having summer fixins, when as i remember pa almost laughing as ma said it.  Billie Joe Mcallister done did murder on herself today.  And so my world ended where i thought it had begun.

  That summer before i was walking home, last day of school and all.  Crossing the Talli like I've done a 1000 times before. Its a bridge that serves its purpose but nobody put no love in her making.  But every once in  a while God sees fit to shine a little extra light on her. Like the day i first met Billie Joe.  she was throwing rose petals to the waters fat from the last of the spring rains.

  They say this bridge is cursed, she said to me....nobody knows why, just a thang that is.  You can feel it cant you.  This bridge is alive, its becoming part of us the longer we stand upon it.  A we start to want what is wants.  And what does a bridge want i wondered.  Bridge wants to be in the water, to be part of life.  Not just standing above it all the time watching life go by.  Our eyes turned down to the swelled rapids.  Calling us to belong.  And so i throw the flowers and let them join the river to break the spell.  

  I had never paid no mind to Billie Joe before.  She's a few years older than me.  She helped my brother find a frog to put down my dress one time.  But when her pa got sick she took to farm and lost time for fun things.  But Papa Joe could never have had a son that could run that farm like she could.  She says she comes here once a week to listen to the bridge whisper and cast petals in the water.

 This became our special time that summer.  A moment she could be free of the world and her thoughts could go where no woman should sometimes.  But it was ok cause this was our time for crazy thinking, and asking questions that can only be answered by God.  And so I'd sneak away for a spell, telling no one, hoping Billie Joe might join me on the ridge.  Everyday i spent with her was like leaning a new color and the world becomes a more beautiful place. 

  I said telling no one but telling Brother Taylor on Sundays aint like telling.  Because by summers end i was doing my fair share of confessing.  My mama had got me into a good school up north so i could get a right proper education.  I didn't wanna go.  I didn't wanna do anything but spend the rest of my days up upon the ridge with Billie Joe.  But she doesn't want me to.  She says this town is dying and i gotta get on that train going north and never look back.  

  And so i did,,,,so i hadn't heard any of the goings on in town till i was sitting back home.  Billie Joe was just one small bit of gossip.  Mama seemed like she was gonna gimme the history of everyone of our neighbor's mishaps and adventures these past months.  But i didn't hear much at all.  I couldn't wait to have spent enough time with them that i could get away.  And once i did i ran.  I ran to the Tallahatchie grabbing flowers as i went. 

  She had said to me that there was this place with miles of waterfalls.  She said that the falls of Iguasu was the most beautiful place on earth.  but i was the most beautiful thing walking.  And so i got to the bridge, my hand heavy with flowers.  I found a carving...THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING WALKING. I knew then that this is where she jumped.

  I could hear the bridge whispering to me now.  But i cast the flowers into the waters instead.  i walked home ever so slowly.  I vowed never to come back to that bridge again.  For next time i was sure the whispers would call my broken heart to the waters as well.  The walk home that day was the longest walk I've ever taken.  The walk home that day was the longest walk I've ever taken.  The following days the longest of my life.  Till i could go back to school and leave Choctaw Ridge behind.

  But years later I would hear about Emmett Till.  Seems he fell in love with a woman he could never have.  Some good ole boys found out about it and helped him to his grave.  Dangled him from the Tallahatchie.  And I wonder, I wonder if he heard those whispers as they put the rope around his neck.  Did he feel the waters calling him as it rushed below his feet.  And i wonder...how many more lovers hearts have been claimed by the Tallahatchie Bridge.

 JUNE 29 2013