The Honest Truth

by Dan Gemeinhart

  “Yeah.” I let my forehead drop against the cool of the window. All the thoughts I’d had walking had followed me inside. Like ghosts, haunting me. “But dogs die,” I said quietly, almost to myself.

  The man took another sip of his coffee.

  “Sure. Course they do. But their dyin’ don’t make their livin’ worth any less.”

  I smiled, kind of.

  “My mom said something like that once.”

  “Yeah? Must be a special lady.”

  “Yeah. She is.”

  My eyelids were as heavy as my feet had been on the road. My heart, too.

  “You’re tired.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Nah. Go ahead and rest if you need to.”

  I woke up some time later, surprised that I’d fallen asleep. Beau was tucked in beside me, snoring. The truck was slowing down, and the man — Wesley — was rolling down his window. I rubbed at my eyes and squinted out the windshield.

  In front of us was a little building, like a ticket booth. A great wooden sign stretched above all three lanes of the road. Mt. Rainier National Park, it said in bold, capital letters. I could see someone in a park ranger uniform standing in the ticket window. The rain was really pouring now.

  “I need to give you money, right?” I asked groggily.

  “Nah. You may want to duck down, though.”

  Without asking any questions I undid my seat belt and slipped down in front of the seat.

  Wesley pulled up to the window and slowed way down but didn’t stop. I was crouched low enough that I could see the top of the ticket window, but not the person inside.

  “Howdy, Sheila.” Wesley’s voice was low and casual.

  “Well, hey there, Wesley. Looks like you brought the weather with you.”

  Wesley chuckled. “Yeah, I guess. Sorry about that. You have a good afternoon, now.”

  The truck sped up and the window rolled closed, and I crawled back up into my seat. Wesley had his hand flopped lazily over the wheel.

  “You work here?”

  “Well, kinda. I’m a biologist for the park service, so I do work in several of the parks up here in the Northwest.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  “Few miles more to Paradise,” he said.

  “All right.” Sharp little fists of fear punched my stomach from the inside. Paradise. Where it all really started. Where it all really ended.

  Wesley dug into a paper bag sitting next to him on the seat and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap. “You hungry?”

  I looked at the sandwich, and before I could stop myself I licked my lips.

  Wesley laughed. “Go on. I ain’t got much of an appetite. It’s ham and cheese. No vegetables or nothing. Share it with your dog if you want.”

  My stomach, despite all its sickness and worry, rumbled. In a few miles, a few minutes, I’d be making that last, big hike up a mountain. I needed to eat. I took the sandwich.

  “Quite a storm,” Wesley said, leaning forward over the wheel to look up and out the windshield. “I pity any fool trying to climb the mountain in the next couple of days.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about Jess, playing cards for hours with me when I was too sick to leave my bedroom. Holding my secrets for me.

  “Would even be hard for any rescue teams to make it up,” he added.

  I chewed on the sandwich and handed every other bite to Beau. He wolfed them hungrily from my shaking fingers. The country music still leaked softly out of the stereo. It was a lady, singing slow. She sounded sad.

  “You’re just going up for sightseeing, huh?” he asked. “All by yourself?”

  I swallowed a chewed-up lump of meat and bread.

  “Yeah.” I was thinking of my mom, falling asleep in the chair by my hospital bed.

  The wheels beneath me hummed. The rain tapped and pattered on the roof, the windows, the hood. My chewing slowed down, down to the pace of the mournful country song from the speakers. Beau was beside me, and the mountain was getting ever closer, and I wanted everything to never go back and never go forward from there. I wanted all the clocks everywhere to stop.

  And, for a slow, warm moment, they did.

  “I just come over from Spokane,” Wesley was saying. I was only half listening. “Through Wenatchee. Little town there. Other side of the mountains.” My ears twinged at the sound of my home but not enough to pull me all the way out of my quiet.

  “There’s a boy missing from over there.”

  My teeth stopped their chewing. My last bite of ham and cheese turned to glue in my mouth. I could feel him eyeing me out of the corners of his eyes.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yup. Went missing day before yesterday. Just disappeared. That whole side of the state is talking about it.”

  I managed to start chewing again, enough to get the bite down. My stomach went back to its sick churning. My headache, which had almost fallen asleep when I had, woke up and hollered in my skull.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. Wesley nodded and took another sip of his coffee. “Where do they think he is?”

  “They’re not sure. Spokane, they thought, but couldn’t find him there. Thought he was in Moses Lake for a bit. Last I heard they’d thought they tracked him to Seattle, but that’s as far as they got. They don’t have a clue.”

  So Jessie hadn’t told. She’d kept my secret.

  Wesley looked over at me, then back out the windshield. I gave the rest of the sandwich to Beau.

  “Kid’s got his dog with him, they say.”

  My hands squeezed into nervous fists. I looked out the window at the slashing rain and didn’t say anything back. The windshield wipers swiped back and forth, keeping the storm from blinding us.

  “Well,” I said when the silence got too heavy. But I didn’t have anything else ready to say. I was going to say, “I hope they find him,” but it was such a lie I couldn’t get it out. I licked my lips and closed my eyes. “I hope he’s okay,” I finally added.

  “Uh-huh. Me, too.” Wesley’s voice was soft and growly. And thoughtful.

  We drove on for five, six minutes without saying a word. I kept my forehead on the cool glass and my left hand on my dog and argued in my mind. He knew. He must know. He was taking me to the police. No, maybe not. Maybe he was the world’s dumbest biologist. There’s plenty of dumb people in the world. Or maybe he knew and he didn’t care.

  Here’s what I don’t get: why anybody would try to stop me. All I wanted to do was die. That’s the truth.

  “I had a son, once,” Wesley said. I concentrated on keeping the sandwich down in my stomach. “Good boy, too. Strong. Funny. Big, loud laugh.” My ears listened to his words, but my tired brain was working on something else. A plan. Somewhere near the top, I’d say I had to go to the bathroom. He’d pull over and let me out. It was dark, with the clouds and the storm.

  “He joined the army so he could go to college. Smart kid. There weren’t nothing I wouldn’t do for that boy.”

  I’d go behind some trees and run, me and Beau. By the time he started following, if he even did, we’d be long gone. I nodded, against the glass.

  “When he got sent to Iraq it about killed me. I ain’t really the worrying type, but I swear I didn’t sleep a full night from the moment he shipped out. He was just so far away. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t do anything for him. I couldn’t take care of my boy.”

  It would mean more walking. A longer climb. But if I waited until we were almost there, it wouldn’t be that much more. And it was my only choice. Wesley knew exactly who I was. I was going to have to escape.

  I noticed that Wesley had stopped talking. I looked over at him. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyebrows pinched together. I could see his bottom lip shaking, just a little. But his voice, when he spoke again, was still smooth and low and even.

  “And when I got the knock on my door, I knew what it was before I opened it and saw the uniforms there. I knew. And they told me. The
y told me my boy was dead. Thousands of miles away, dead.” I kept my eyes on him, and he kept his eyes on the road. His were wet. His next words weren’t quite so smooth, not quite as low and even. “A daddy is supposed to keep his kids safe. He’s supposed to protect them. That’s all there is to it. That’s the truth. And I couldn’t help my boy.” He breathed in and out through his nose.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He nodded. “Me, too.” He looked away, out the other window, and took a deep breath and then faced forward again.

  “I saw Mark’s parents on the news. The missing kid’s, I mean.”

  I almost flinched at the sound of my own name.

  “They sure looked scared. And sad. I felt real bad for ’em.”

  I swallowed, then swallowed again. I knew I had to be sad or mad. One or the other. I made my choice.

  I dug my fingernails into my palms. I curled my toes into tight angry balls in my shoes.

  “I bet he’s fine,” I said, and my voice was as hard and mad as the storm outside. “I bet he’s just fine and doesn’t need anybody’s help.”

  Wesley raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. He tilted his head to the side in a little shrug.

  “Maybe. Or maybe not.” He licked his lips, and his voice dropped down. “Thing is, they just announced that this kid is sick.”

  The last word hung in the warm truck air like a rough poke with a sharp finger.

  “Got cancer, apparently.”

  I breathed tight breaths through my nostrils and gritted my teeth together. I hate the word sick. I hate the word cancer.

  “Had it awhile, they say. Fought it hard. Thought he had it licked. But then …” Wesley’s voice broke off and he took a breath. “Well, they say it just come back. Recently.”

  I hated the way he said that. It was the tone of voice people use to say crappy things like I’m so sorry.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. Trees zoomed past me, black and gloomy in the storm light. I tried to look at each one.

  “Yeah. It’s too bad. But the docs say he’s still got a shot. He might still lick it, they say. But if he doesn’t get in soon for more treatment, well … well, that’ll be it. It’ll come back for good. And that’ll be it.”

  I swallowed a bitter lump in my throat.

  “That’s too bad,” I said again, my voice scratchy. My fingers dug deeper into Beau’s fur, scratched down into his skin and pulled him toward me across the seat. He stretched up and licked my arm, gently. I spoke in a whisper, but I think Wesley heard me: “But it always comes back.”

  I cleared my throat and looked over at him.

  “They said all that? On the news? They told everybody that?”

  “Mm-hm. Just this morning.”

  My tongue licked angrily at my lips.

  “Isn’t that personal? Isn’t that private? Why is that everybody’s business?”

  Wesley shrugged.

  “I s’pose they were just trying to get everyone looking, let everyone know how serious the problem was —”

  “It’s his problem,” I interrupted, maybe sounding harsher than I meant to. “It’s no one else’s problem. Maybe they should just leave him alone.”

  There was more silence. More of nothing but the rain and the tires and the engine and the radio and the sound of us three breathing there together. I rested my head back against the window.

  It was Wesley who broke the silence.

  “So what do you suppose he’s doing, that poor sick kid?”

  I wanted to pull Beau up into my lap and bury my nose in his fur and hug him and not answer. But I kept my forehead pressed to the window. And I left my hand resting on my dog. And I closed my eyes.

  “I bet he’s going off to die,” I said. “Climbing a mountain, maybe.”

  Wesley blew a breath out through his nose, and I think he nodded.

  “And why would he go off and do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s tired of being ‘that poor sick kid,’ ” I said, throwing his words back at him. Anger made my words stronger. “Maybe he wants to be the hero for once. Maybe he’s had everything else taken away from him. His friends. His family. His future. All the stuff he wants to do. His life. So maybe all he’s got left is his death. That’s all that he’s got. And so he wants it.”

  “You think he wants it?”

  I closed my eyes harder.

  “No. But he’s got it. And hospitals suck. And treatments suck. And friends watching you be sick sucks. And watching your parents cry sucks. So maybe he just wants to climb a mountain and disappear.”

  I opened my eyes and looked right at him.

  “Maybe that’s all he wants. Or at least all he gets. And maybe they should let him have it.”

  Wesley nodded. He grimaced. Shook his head.

  “Life’s a tricky thing, idn’t it, son?” His voice was pained. “Figuring it all out, I mean. For all of us. We’re all in this thing together. But sometimes there’s just no knowing which way to go.”

  I didn’t say anything. Sometimes even the right answers sound wrong if you don’t like the question. That’s the truth.

  “So what do you think a fella should do? A fella that maybe finds this kid walking along a road, and he knows what this kid has and he knows what’s going on? What should he do?”

  I kept my eyes on Wesley’s face. My voice was soft. It wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t angry anymore.

  “I think he should pick him up. And help him. He should take him where he needs to go, so he can do what he needs to do.”

  In the speakers, a guitar twanged. A man’s voice cried. Outside was rain and darkness.

  “I never got to help my boy,” Wesley said.

  I looked away, back to the storm outside.

  “Maybe you can help this sick kid.”

  Dark day spent alone.

  Pacing, crying, thinking hard.

  Somewhere a lost friend.

  She watched the news on the TV. Only a quick mention of Mark, a little update before the weather. The phone number to call. She had it memorized.

  The bigger news now was the storm. Coming down from the north. Freezing temperatures, high winds, lots of precipitation. A winter storm in late spring, they said. Unusual. Severe. Dangerous.

  “Authorities are suggesting that people stay off the roads and indoors,” the announcer said. “Only travel if you need to.”

  There was a map of the state, showing the clouds moving and the snow falling. Snow only in the mountains, they said. That was supposed to be good news. She looked at Mount Rainier on the map. Lost in white.

  “Oh, Mark,” she whispered to the screen.

  She wondered if his parents were watching. She hoped not. They didn’t know where he was, but no matter where they thought he might be, having your kid lost in a storm must feel worse.

  “It’s getting ugly out there, folks,” the weatherman continued. “But it’s going to get a lot worse.”

  Jess was struck by a sudden, terrible thought. What if he wanted her to tell? What if he needed her to tell? What if he was huddled somewhere, shivering and terrified, wondering why she hadn’t called for help?

  What if she was supposed to rescue him?

  Shivering, searching.

  Doubts and fears like clouds and snow.

  Lost inside a storm.

  We sat in his truck in the parking lot, looking up at the Paradise Visitor Center. It was a huge wooden building with a great slanting roof divided up into parts. Even though winter was long over, there was still some snow in piles around the building. The parking lot was mostly empty.

  Up here, up near the end of the road, up near the top of the mountain, the wind was a living thing that shook the truck and snuck through the gaps in the door. The rain pelted the roof. Where it stuck on the windshield I could see it mixed with snow.

  We sat in a waiting kind of silence. Wesley kept looking at the visitor center and the clouds and the rain and chewing on his lips. He wouldn’t lo
ok at me.

  “You ever been to Rainier before?” he asked.

  “No. I was going to, with my grandpa, but …” I trailed off. I sighed, feeling more sad and tired than anything else. “He was a big climber, my grandpa. Always said he was gonna take me up Rainier when I got better. It was this great secret thing we were gonna do together. But just when I got better, he got sick. His kidneys. And he never got better.” I blinked slow and tired, remembering. “He was like this big, strong hero, and he just kind of faded away. For months, lying there in the hospital, just getting smaller and grayer and weaker, hooked up to all those tubes. It was like … It was like looking at myself. Seeing my future. You know what his last words were to me?”

  Wesley shook his head.

  “He said, the day before he died, ‘I never wanted to die like this.’ And he made me promise. Promise I’d climb Rainier for him.” I looked out, up toward where the mountaintop was hiding behind clouds. “Course, he didn’t know I was gonna get sick again. But a promise is a promise.”

  Another gust shook the truck, reminding us of the cold world outside.

  “How can I let you do it?” Wesley asked at last, still looking away. “How can I let you go when I know … when I know …” His voice cut off and he rubbed his mustache roughly with one hand.

  I knew it was gonna take a lie to get me up there. I swallowed and looked over at him.

  “I’m not trying for the top, sir. I know there’s no way. I’m just gonna go up a bit, maybe try to get above the clouds so I can see the top. For my grandpa. Then I’ll come right back down and everything’ll be fine.” I patted my backpack. “I’ve got everything I need. Gear and food and everything. I know what I’m doing.”

  Wesley looked over at me, his eyes pained and his face worried. I didn’t like doing this to him.

  “Please,” I said. “I’ve gotten no choices. For my whole life, no choices. Let me choose this. Let me have this one thing before all my choices get taken away again.”

  “You could go with a guide, though, son, or I could go with you, or —”