This a memory set to music

Did he or would he have jumped off the bridge?  He more than me, for sure, I should make a point of that.  He would simply smile and go ahead a do a thing, while I would just talk about it.  

He had that secret, soft, impish smile.  I remember that most about him.  A smile, and a fella of few words.   We were same sized, same schooled, but as different as oil and water.  He wouldn’t want to be noticed, while I craved notice.  He doggedly got named a “first string” offensive guard on the high school football team and would thrive on getting in the dirt and muddy.  I should have liked to be spotless and interviewed by the sports reporters.  Of course neither of us would be.  He, not noticed, me not nearly talented enough (2nd string).  His body was what mine would never become, as his was muscled because of early athletic activity, mine came upon athleticism lately,  after early fondness for music playing and reading.   It’s hard to bend my relationship to Ade around “now or never,” but there is a sweet sadness to the tone of one of Elvis’ popular song that particularly contributes to the the sound-track  of my teenaged years.  To be fair a condensed and prophetic meaning is in the entire lyric, but particularly in the first verse of the song.  “tomorrow will be too late.”  Little did we care that there was going to be a tomorrow, nor that what tomorrow would bring.  We certainly believed ourselves as immortal. 

Just like the song, and just like the Viet Nam War itself….the sadness of this time has glided along past me now almost like the impossible drift in the song’s lyric.  “Just like a willow we would cry an ocean, if we lost true love and sweet devotion”.  What did that mean?  The implication is that a loved one is not true, and this wasn’t the case with Ade and I.  But rather, our relationship was entirely on the surface of things, neither deep nor defined.  We were simply: chums and playmates.  We didn’t think at all about what songs we loved meant.

I cite the song’s lyrics because these days I can look them up.   

It’s now or never

Come hold me tight

Kiss me my darling

Be mine tonight

Tomorrow will be too late

It’s now or never

My love won’t wait

When I first saw you

With your smile so tender

My heart was captured

My soul surrendered

I’d spend a lifetime

Waiting for the right time

Now that your near

The time is here at last

It’s now or never

Come hold me tight

Kiss me my darling

Be mine tonight

Tomorrow will be too late

It’s now or never

My love won’t wait

Just like a willow

We would cry an ocean

If we lost true love

And sweet devotion

Your lips excite me

Let your arms invite me

For who knows when

We’ll meet again this way

It’s now or never

Come hold me tight

Kiss me my darling

Be mine tonight

Tomorrow will be too late

It’s now or never

My love won’t wait………..

We were in love with adventure not each other, but if truth is to be told, what I remember now of Ade is his smile.  It really was tender, and it was genuine and infectious.  This the most memorable thing about him.  He wasn’t a talker.  He wasn’t really a natural athlete either.  He sure wasn’t a singer.  But his teenaged spirit was filled with impish joy.  Of us all, he was the first to jump.  Of us all, he was the first to go ahead and sign up for the Vietnam, while the rest of us were finessing our way around the draft.

I can’t clearly remember now why Adrian Merriman was the first to jump off 

that old railroad bridge, or why we decided jumping off it was the thing we should do.    It was very much in what, in retrospect, I’d describe as entirely typical of Ade’s character.    None of the others of us would  have  jumped, but once he did we of course had to do it.   He wasn’t flashy, in fact he was often almost invisible. He wouldn’t ever have been picked out of a lineup, or be noticed before any of the rest of us.  He was always an instigator.  He’d never be caught at any deviltry.  But without bragging or being noticed he would lead the way.  No-one remembers that he typically was out front but turns out he was all action.  He’d attack things with a shrug. “ Don’t you see, it has to be done, hell let’s get on with it.”  Or maybe a, “Oh…let’s do it!”

Now none of us were conscious of being  sweet on any of the others of us.  We were part of a blindingly heterosexual world  We just somehow gravitated towards each other, and each of us had a quality which was characteristic of fundamental parts of the group.  I was a talker, a spinner of tales.  Jim (who was playing guitar) was the musical one, matine handsome, and ….Rick, well Rick was there because his mom would let us stay in his family’s “bunkhouse”” and his dad drove a Porche.  He’d always buy the cigarettes.    The additional fragments of Elvis’ song that I remember clearly now is the one I’ll forever associate with Adrian.  The lyrics smooth and deceptive:  “It’s now or never, my love won’t wait.”  I had talked about what we hypothetically should try.    Jim had learned the chords to play it.  And Rick always had an answer to not being willing to do anything.  But Ade simply went for it.  He jumped from the middle of the bridge into the river.  One minute we were all four standing together drunkenly singing at the top of our lungs, and the nest minute he was gone.  Jim used the legitimate excuse of protecting his guitar.   I was simply shamed into it by Ade’s pluck as well as suddenly moved by the song’s refrain, “tomorrow will be too late…(.it’s now or never, my love won’t wait.)  I can almost also hear us all, and especially my dad later asking, ….”.if your friend jumps off a cliff, would you go ahead and do it too?”  If the friend was Ade Merriman, yes, I probably would and yes, I sure did. 

There’s a poignance in all of this, in retrospect.  First, what drew us to risks, illicit drinking, and danger?  Because we were teenaged boys in a group what else would you expect of us?  The group’s pure peer pressure was its own toxin.  There was never enough excitement in our little town, so we created as much illicit fun as we could with a strong tincture of real danger.  We weren’t immortal after all.   The eeiry truth, when I look in my highschool yearbook, Adrian Marriman has vanished from it, too. What happened to him? Disappeared into the mist of Vietnam? His memory far more of worth than one moment of poignant bridge tunes set to a haunting tune.