We lower to bridges, whatever the bridge must cross. Before the bridge is built, if we can find the photo we see ourselves half-submerged in a tropical river whose name is also lost in that watery sac known as memory. Our diesel truck has stalled, mid-crossing. We should have waited a little longer for the river to subside, rivers rising or falling before our eyes--where else would it happen--in response to rainfall conditions higher up. As it is, we spent hours there, eating papaya, sleeping, staying out of the sun if we can.
(Once, an Irishman, my predecessor as driver of the school truck, stalled in this same spot. Remembering a drunken afternoon with an Aussie, the main mechanic at the government station of Kupiano, Papua New Guinea, while he (the Aussie) overhauled the engine on one of the his trucks, the Irishman managed to dis-assemble the school truck engine enough to pull the injectors, dry them and the cylinders manually, put it all back together, and drive on to Moresby with a truckload of schoolkids. (Maybe I've got the diesel mechanics wrong here, but it was a remarkable performance by this Irishman, Watson, who normally wouldn't know how to hitch a lid to a teapot.))
I hear they've built a bridge there now. Maybe this one we'd have to rise to.
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