When I Found You

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  She hung it around his neck. Didn’t even hand it to him and let him slip it on himself. Nat felt like a five-year-old holding still to have his mittens pinned to his snowsuit. It was putting him in an increasingly foul mood.

  “So, is Uncle Mick going to be OK?”

  Gamma’s slapped look. A face full of horror. “Well, of course he is. How can you even ask such a question?”

  How can I not ask it? Nat thought. How can you not ask such questions? But of course he kept those thoughts to himself.

  • • •

  “Oh, shit. Where’s my cat?” Jacob asked.

  “I don’t know. Downstairs, I think.”

  They were in bed, on lights-out. So neither was sure if they should move or not. And they spoke quietly.

  “I have to get her in my room with the door closed. Otherwise my mom will throw her outside for the night. Especially when Janet is here.”

  “Who’s Janet?”

  “Her girlfriend she yaks and gabs and gossips with for half the night.”

  “I didn’t know there was somebody here.”

  “I’m not sure if she’s here. I just know she’s coming.”

  “I’ll go find the cat,” Nat said. Mostly because he liked the cat, and wanted an excuse to pick her up again. She always purred when he picked her up. He liked to hold her to his ear for a moment, listening to that soft motor.

  “I can be quiet.”

  He padded downstairs.

  Sure enough, Jacob’s mom had a girlfriend over. He could hear them talking in the kitchen as he searched the living room. He was able to gather that Janet had a gentleman friend. And that she was furious with him.

  “Jacob, is that you?” The screechy sound of Jacob’s mother’s angry voice.

  He hadn’t been quiet enough.

  “No, ma’am,” Nat said, sticking his head through the kitchen door. “It’s me. Nat.”

  “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I was looking for Buttons.”

  “Well, you better find her, too. Because if I find her first, she’s going outside. Janet is allergic to cats.”

  Nat wondered whether Janet’s allergies explained the box of tissues on the table between them. Or whether Janet had been crying. Maybe it was both.

  “You’re Nat?” Janet asked. As if it made you very famous and distinguished to be Nat. As if Nat were a truly unusual and remarkable thing to be.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Janet turned to Jacob’s mother. “Is he—”

  Jacob’s mother shot her down with a look. A disapproving look and a slight shake of her head. As if to say, don’t. As if to say, under no circumstances finish that sentence.

  Silence.

  “Am I what?” Nat asked. Rather bravely, he thought.

  “Nothing, dear. Run find Buttons and then go back to bed.”

  Nat backed out of the room. Walked very slowly to the bottom of the stairs, where he knew he would be shrouded in darkness.

  There he sat. And listened.

  “So, that’s the boy.”

  “Yes. That’s him. Poor little bugger. I feel so sorry for him.”

  “I don’t blame you. Can you imagine? Your own mother. Trying to murder you.”

  “Well, it wasn’t murder. Exactly. Bad neglect, I suppose.”

  “Are you kidding me? You must be kidding me! Bad neglect would be if she never changed his diapers. It was freezing cold out in those woods. It’s a miracle he didn’t die. Does he even know the whole story, do you think?”

  “I don’t know what he knows. His grandmother forbids everyone to talk about it. Jacob says he told him once, and that Nat said he knew, and didn’t act like it was any big deal. Denial, maybe. Or maybe he was too young at the time to understand. Jacob says the kids at school sometimes make taunting remarks. And that four or five times Nat’s gone home to his grandma and demanded to know what they mean.”

  “How does Jacob even know that? Do they discuss it?”

  “I think those were just the times he was right there. So you can imagine how often it must happen if he’s overheard it four or five times in the six or seven years they’ve been friends.”

  “What does his grandmother say?”

  “She lies to him. Says the people who say such things are mistaken. Or that he misunderstood.”

  “That’s wrong, I think.”

  “Well, what would you do? If you had a boy his age who had such a horrible thing like that in his past, what would you do? Would you tell him a thing so awful?”

  A long silence.

  “Whew. I don’t know. I’m just glad I don’t have to know.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. Now get back to what you were saying about Geoffrey.”

  • • •

  Nat slipped out of Jacob’s house, still in just pajamas and bare feet. Padded down the freezing sidewalk for half a block, to home. Opened the front door with the key around his neck.

  Then he went upstairs to Gamma’s bedroom, a room he had only three times entered, and began looking around to see what he could find.

  He likely could not have put words to what he was looking for. But in his gut he felt there must be something. Pictures of his mother. Letters from her. There had to be something. And Gamma kept everything. She was not one to throw sentimental items in the trash. Or just about any items, for that matter.

  He opened her dresser drawers but found only humiliating personal undergarments. He closed each drawer again, touching nothing, so Gamma would never have to know he had looked.

  He looked on her closet shelves and found only shoes and hats. Again, he left no evidence of his intrusion.

  He looked under her bed and found a wooden cigar box.

  He pulled it out. Brought it under the light. Opened it.

  Inside were a few papers. Not nearly enough to fill the box. On the very top was a folded clipping from a newspaper. Yellowed with age.

  Nat unfolded it.

  It was the headline story, dated 3 October 1960. Two days after his birth. The headline read, in shockingly large, bold letters, “ABANDONED NEWBORN FOUND IN WOODS BY LOCAL HUNTER.”

  The jittery sensation that had haunted Nat’s stomach since he’d stood in Jacob’s kitchen was blasted away by the news. It felt good. It felt good to replace nervousness with shock. Because shock, at least in this moment, felt like nothing at all.

  He had even stopped shivering from the cold.

  He skimmed the article.

  Lenora Bates. His mother’s name was Lenora.

  Richard A. Ford. His father’s name was Richard A. Ford. So why wasn’t his name Nathan Ford?

  He had a mother and a father. Somewhere.

  And on the night of his birth they had discarded him.

  Were they still in prison? Or had they served their time and been released? And disappeared without so much as a word to him?

  He scanned down to see about the man who found him. He wanted to memorize that name as well. But he was only referred to as “a man on a duck-hunting outing with his dog.”

  Nat started over and read the article word by word.

  When he had finished reading, he refolded it carefully and held it in his left hand while he slid the cigar box back under the bed with his right. Then he took the article with him to his room, where he packed a suitcase with only the most essential of his belongings. Jeans and underwear. Tee shirts. His baseball mitt. The article.

  The phone rang, and it startled him.

  He ran downstairs and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Nat! Oh, thank God! We didn’t know where you were.” Jacob’s mom.

  “I forgot something at home.”

  “Are you coming back right now?”

  “Yes. Right now.”

  He hung up the phone and walked back upstairs, where he changed into jeans and warm socks and shoes. And a jacket he didn’t like very well, because the one he did like had been left at Jacob’s.

  He let himself o
ut, locked the front door carefully. Stopped at the curb and threw the key-on-a-string down the storm drain.

  He chose a direction more or less by feel and began to walk.

  • • •

  It was unclear to Nat how long he had walked, or where he was headed. He knew only that the suitcase was heavy, and he had to keep transferring it from hand to hand.

  He followed dark streets until they opened up on to the train yard. Which he assumed would also be deserted. Every place he had walked since leaving home had been deserted.

  The entire world was asleep, he thought. But not the train yard.

  Here a huddle of four men stood around a fire built in an old oil barrel, warming their hands and laughing. A couple more men sat in an open freight wagon of a still train, their legs dangling and swinging over the edge.

  They all looked up to mark Nat’s arrival.

  He walked closer. Liking the idea that someone lived here, and used the night for something other than sleeping.

  “Well. Who do we have here?” one of the men asked. Viewed up close, they looked poor. Their coats and beards were untended, to say the least.

  “Nobody,” Nat said.

  “Perfect,” the man said. “You’ll fit right in.”

  • • •

  Nat sat on the edge of a freight wagon, dangling his legs over the edge. Staring into the leaping flames of the fire. Letting it hypnotize him. Burn all the thoughts out of his head.

  He watched little lights swirl in the air above the oil barrel, thinking that some were sparks and some were fireflies, and that it was hard to tell them apart.

  But no, it was too early in the season for fireflies. Or was it?

  Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

  The old man sitting next to him was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He held the bottle out to Nat.

  “Snort? It’ll warm you up.”

  “OK.”

  He accepted the bottle. Wiped off the mouth of it with his sleeve. Pulled a swallow. Coughed. All the men were watching and they all laughed at him.

  “Where do you go when you jump on a train?” Nat asked the old man.

  “Anywhere I damn please,” the man said.

  “That sounds good.”

  “It has its advantages.”

  Another younger man, standing warming his hands at the fire, said, “Has its advantages for us. But maybe you’d best go home.”

  Nat said nothing.

  “Where’s your family, boy?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “Well, what’ve you been doing up until now?”

  Nat shrugged. “Just living with a stranger, I guess.”

  “Maybe a stranger is better than nothing at all.”

  “I guess I used to think so,” Nat said. “But I don’t any more.”

  21 March 1973

  The World

  When Nat woke again, the train was moving. The door to his freight wagon had been closed without his knowing it, and the train had departed. And there was no one else in the car except him.

  Good, he thought.

  He scooted over to the door. A crack about an inch or two wide allowed light in. And allowed him to see out. And he watched the world go by.

  He saw mountains in the distance. He had never seen mountains before. And massive sheets of icicles hanging on rock faces. He saw fields of cows and sheep, and horses running in a big paddock with their tails raised like flags.

  He saw the dankest, most depressed corners of cities. The junkyards and train yards and stacked cargo containers and chain-link fences and steel railroad bridges.

  And then, the country again, with its barns and tractors and silos and irrigation ditches separating neatly tilled fields.

  He watched for hours, which turned into watching all day. And never once felt bored. How could he be bored? It was the world. It had been here all along, but no one had invited — or allowed — him to see it. Did they think he didn’t care about the world outside his miserable little city? Or was the world just like everything else? Just another secret to be kept from him?

  His stomach felt empty and achy, but it seemed worth the sacrifice. No people. No school. No lies.

  He would find food. He would beg it, or steal it, or work for it, but he’d find a bite somehow before the sun went down. That is, if this train ever stopped.

  One way or another he would get by.

  22 March 1973

  Over

  He woke in the pitch dark with a start. Still inside that freight wagon. Still unfed. Teeth chattering from the cold. His hip ached where it pressed against the cold metal floor. His mouth was dry, and he worked hard to wet his parched tongue with his own saliva.

  He could hear the doors of train wagons being banged open. That’s what woke him. And the noises were moving closer.

  He wondered if there was still time to slip out and get away.

  The huge cargo door slid open with a clang.

  Nat squinted into a light. A light was being shined on him, and he threw a hand up in front of his eyes.

  “OK, son,” a big male voice said. “Your vagabond days are over. Grab your things and come with me.”

  23 March 1973

  Nothing

  “You scared the living daylights out of me!” The old woman shrieked the words too close to Nat’s ear, making him wince. Then she raised her hand and struck him. Hard. Right across the ear, causing the inside parts of his ear to ache. “And Jacob’s mother. She was responsible for you. Do you know how scared she was?”

  Another vicious smack, again on the same sore ear.

  He looked up at the cops. As though they might be some help to him.

  If Nat had smacked someone that hard, they would probably have arrested him all over again. Lectured him on how violence was wrong, and never solved anything.

  But apparently grandsons were fair game.

  The cops just raised their eyebrows at him and said nothing at all. But their looks seemed to say Nat deserved all that and more.

  “And why? Because I left without you? Because you thought you should be allowed to come along? That is the most selfish behavior I ever heard of!”

  Nat flinched. Guarded his ear with both hands. But she kept her hands at her sides this time.

  “Is that why you did it?”

  Nat said nothing.

  “Answer me!”

  Still Nat said nothing.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

  “Nothing,” Nat said.

  • • •

  “You know, you’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later,” she said on the long drive home.

  She had estimated it would take her nineteen hours of driving to get back, and did Nat have any idea what all that gasoline would cost? Not to mention the wear and tear on the car?

  He did not. Nor did he care.

  “Sooner or later you’ll have to say something.” That’s what you think, he thought.

  “Why didn’t you give them your name? If you’d told them your name I would have gotten the call yesterday. But no, you said nothing, and I had to wait another day while they matched you up with missing-child reports from all over the country. And poor Jacob’s mother just about died a thousand deaths waiting. She felt so responsible for you. Why didn’t you just tell the police who you were?”

  Because, Nat thought, if I had wanted to get back to you, I wouldn’t have hopped a freight train to begin with.

  “And then poor Mick’s wife had to take two days off work to stay home with the kids because I had to come home and report you missing. And they can ill afford that cut in income. Especially now, with poor Mick in the hospital. You know, I’m beginning to think you’re one of those selfish children who just always has to be the center of attention. Poor Mick doesn’t even deserve my attention when his appendix bursts, because it always has to be all about Nat. Is that how it is, Nat? Because if that’s how it is, I will not tolerate that. I
will not raise some spoiled little child who feels he’s the center of the entire solar system, and that we’re all supposed to revolve around him like he was the sun. So, is that how it is with you?”

  Nat said nothing.

  “Why won’t you speak for yourself?”

  Because you don’t listen, he thought.

  “And now what am I supposed to do? They still need help at Mick’s house, but now I don’t dare leave you alone. Because I don’t know if I can trust you. Well? Can I? Can I trust you?”

  Nat said nothing.

  “Well, it wouldn’t even matter if you said I could. It wouldn’t help. Because I’d still never know if it were true. For all I know, you might just be lying.”

  Imagine that, Nat thought. Imagine not knowing if the person you know best in the world is telling you the truth or lying to your face. But he didn’t say any of that. Of course. He said nothing.

  “Well, this is going to be a long drive,” she said.

  Nineteen hours of this and I’ll go crazy, Nat thought.

  But she continued to talk. And he continued to ignore her. He just looked out the window and watched the world go by, in case he didn’t get to see it again for a very long time. And for nineteen hours and more he said nothing.

  30 September 1974

  The Man

  “I hope you don’t think I’m going to get all soft and break that promise I made to myself,” she said. “Because I’m not. I said it and I meant it. No presents until you get your grades up above failing.”

  He was lying on his back on the couch, watching TV. A show he didn’t like. And pretending to ignore her. And pretending that receiving no gifts from her did not in any way hurt. She was standing over him, partially blocking his view. Railing at him. Which is why he was watching a show he didn’t like. So it wouldn’t bother him when she made him miss it.

  He said nothing.

  “You probably think I’ll feel sorry for you tonight or in the morning. And that I’ll run out and get something. But I won’t. Because a promise is a promise.”