Leaving Blythe River: A Novel

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Ethan stopped. Wished he hadn’t started with this. He didn’t want to say the next thing. In fact, he refused to.

  “Don’t tell me,” Jone said. “Let me guess.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said. A few deep breaths. “I think that would have been enough to hate him for. But it wasn’t the worst part. It was the look in his eyes. She looked away. She scrambled to get more clothes on and get herself together. My dad just looked right into my eyes. Not at my mom—she’d run out of the room anyway. He was just looking right at me. And it was so awful, what I saw there in his eyes. It was so bad that I just ran out. Out into the street in Manhattan in the middle of the night. And I got in trouble doing it, too. I almost got myself killed. I kept thinking of that look in his eyes, but I couldn’t wrap words around it. Even in my head. I could still see it, and I could still feel what it made me feel. But I couldn’t describe it. But now that I’m looking back on it—which I hate like hell to do, by the way—it seems easy to say what it was. He was proud. He was looking into my eyes with this fierce pride. Like he was telling me, ‘Look what I can do that you can’t. Look what I can get that you couldn’t. Look who’s the man here.’”

  Jone waited briefly, to see if Ethan cared to go on. He didn’t.

  “Sounds like he has a real problem with women. And with his own self-worth.”

  “Oh, his self-worth is fine. He thinks he’s worth more than everybody else.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “Trust me. I know him.”

  Ethan looked down at the gray figure of his nearly dead father and felt vaguely guilty. As if he were kicking a man when he was down. So down.

  “No. That’s not how it works. People with really good self-worth think they’re the same size as everybody else, and they never make anybody else feel small. Any time somebody tries to act like they’re more than you are, deep down they’re afraid they’re less. Otherwise they’d have nothing to prove.”

  Ethan looked at his father again, then past those ravaged legs and into the cave-like space in which he’d been hidden for so many days. The sun had shifted, lighting up more of the space, and Ethan saw five energy bar wrappers scattered in the dirt. Along with his father’s hydration bladder in its pack. He felt an overpowering urge to reach in there and pick up the wrappers. Tidy the area. It was a strange, out-of-place urge that Ethan could only imagine sprang from a deep desire to move past this conversation.

  He stayed put. Stayed in.

  “I believe you,” he said. “But I still hate him when I replay that moment.”

  “It’s a true thing, what I just told you, but it’s not the kind of thing that changes everything when you first hear it. It might be the kind of thing that can help you put your hate aside over the years. I’m not suggesting you need to welcome him back into your life with open arms as the years go by. Some people just plain aren’t worth it. Whether this one is or isn’t, that’s for you to judge. I’m just advising you to let go of the hate in yourself, because you’re the one swallowing that poison every day, not him.”

  Ethan didn’t answer, because he didn’t know how. Because it wasn’t years down the road. It was only now.

  “Next tell me what you love about him,” Jone said.

  Ethan laughed. It felt strange and out of place.

  “That’s a little trickier.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t, though. Because here we are.”

  Ethan made up his mind to try. But it felt as though everything he reached for had changed.

  “It’s hard,” he said. “When I was little, he was kind of a hero figure. He was all brave and strong, and going on these huge adventures, and doing all these nice father things for me. I would’ve told you he was the best dad in the world. I know I would have. But now I look back and everything looks different. Like the Everest thing. When he was twenty-four he made it to the top of Mount Everest. There’s this huge blown-up picture of him in our living room. Well, there was. My mom took it down. Since we found them on the couch right underneath it and all. He’d taken his oxygen mask and his goggles off so you could see it was him. He had one of those suits on that make you look like you’re in outer space. And he had all this ice in his beard. He had a beard back then. And his skin was all red. My mom would always look at that picture with me and tell me my dad was this really brave guy. This heroic guy. Now I look back and all I can think about is how I was born while he was gone, and he missed it. He’d been planning the thing for a year, and he wouldn’t reschedule. He left my mom seven months pregnant to go on this expedition. I think at the time the odds were something like one in seven of dying on Everest. Out of all the people who moved up from base camp, for every six who summited, one died. It changes from year to year. But he left my mom home alone to have me and maybe even raise me. Some hero.

  “And all the great dad stuff he did. Taking me to the zoo and the circus. And getting girls’ phone numbers all the way. It was a great way to use a cute little kid. It was like the equivalent of having a puppy. Great icebreaker, you know? To start a conversation. Especially with those pretty young women who get misty-eyed and in a hurry to have kids every time they see a toddler.”

  Ethan stopped. He felt drained. Tapped out. Like there was nothing much left in him to say.

  “But you loved him,” she said. “And you still do.”

  “Well. That’s the problem with some dads, I guess. You love them when you’re too little to know they don’t deserve it. And then when you grow up and know better, the love doesn’t just go away.”

  “No,” she said. “It doesn’t. What about your mom?”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you get the support you need from her?”

  “Not really. She’s a pretty nice person. But she’s into that extreme sports thing, too. She kind of . . . she values being tough. So her idea of giving me what I need is kicking me out of the nest and telling me I’ll feel better when I’m flying.”

  Ethan looked over his shoulder, down into the valley. It made him a little dizzy, but he kept looking. Kept trying to be somewhere else.

  “The river looks like silver,” he said.

  “Yeah. It’s real pretty when the sun hits it just right like that.”

  “Can you imagine slipping off that trail and seeing all the way down into that valley like that? And thinking you were about to fall all the way down?”

  “I’d rather not imagine it,” she said. “He’s actually swallowing water now. It’s a weak effort, but it’s keeping it out of his lungs. I might even squirt a little water right in his mouth and see if he can take it.”

  Ethan watched her place the sip tube of the filter bottle between Noah’s lips, which she gently closed around it. She gave the bottle a tiny squeeze, and Noah’s jaw moved slightly, as if to try to react. And he swallowed. Ethan could see his Adam’s apple jump.

  “That’s a real good sign,” she said.

  They watched him drink in silence for a few moments. One tiny, weak swallow at a time.

  “I feel weird now,” Ethan said.

  “Weird how?”

  “Like I told you too much about myself. I mean, stuff that was too personal. That was too hard to say.”

  “Okay,” Jone said. “I’ll match you hard for hard. This thing I been doing. Wetting his mouth with water from a cloth. That’s a bad flashback situation for me. Because that’s something I had to do for my husband when he was dying.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. How did he die?”

  “He had cancer. In his throat. Well, he had it lots of places by then. But he could hardly swallow. He was on hospice and he was at home. He insisted on being home. No heroic measures, you know? He wouldn’t put up with lying in a hospital on IV fluids. He was miserable and he was ready to go. I was just trying to keep him comfortable at the end. It was hard for him when his mouth got too dry. He hated the feeling. So I had this stuff the hospice lady gave me, in a tube, that I could swab around in his mouth to keep it moist. B
ut also he liked to be able to suck on a wet cloth. Just enough so he didn’t feel parched. Not so much that he had to swallow. That’s why I trusted myself to put some moisture into your dad’s mouth while he was unconscious. I know how to do it without getting anything down his throat. I have a lot of experience.”

  Ethan waited to see if there was more. Apparently not.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say besides I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to say. Just stuff that is. Or was. No matter how we wanted it to be.”

  A long silence. Minutes long. Maybe five or ten minutes. Or even twenty. Ethan wanted to ask her what time it was. Or to move around enough to be able to see her wristwatch. But instead he just sat.

  Then he decided to jump up quickly and take care of those wrappers. It didn’t quite pan out. He’d stiffened up a lot in the sitting. But in time he did make it—painfully—to his feet.

  Jone watched him without comment for a time.

  As he reached in and gathered up the last of the wrappers she said, “Interesting time for housekeeping. Or cave-keeping in this case.”

  “They were just bothering me,” Ethan said. “I can’t really explain why.”

  “I’m all for not littering the wilderness,” she said.

  Ethan stuffed the wrappers into his pocket. Pulled the hydration pack out, as if they’d want it later for something.

  Then he had no choice but to sit with Jone and his barely alive father again.

  “There’s still water in this bladder,” Ethan said.

  “I’m sure he had opportunities to refill it with snowmelt and hail. That’s why he’s alive.”

  “Why didn’t he drink what he had, then?”

  “Hard to drink after you’ve passed out.”

  A long silence. Jone filled it.

  “He’s a handsome man, your dad,” she said.

  “Yeah. Maybe too much so. But I don’t know how you see that. I mean, looking at him now.”

  “Actually, I was basing that on a time I saw him in town.”

  “Oh.”

  Ethan looked over his shoulder at the silver river again. The sun was hitting it in a slightly different spot. Now it was an S-shaped bend that shone and reflected light like a newly minted dime.

  “Was your husband a handsome man?”

  “Not really. Not so’s people would stare at him wherever he went or anything. I liked to look at him.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry for yours.”

  “But my dad’s not dead.”

  “That’s not the loss I meant. I was talking about the one where you found out the dad you loved so much wasn’t really worth all that love you’d invested.”

  “Oh,” Ethan said. “That one. Yeah. Thanks.”

  Then he didn’t say more. Partly because he didn’t know what more to say. Partly because he didn’t want to cry. Not in front of Jone. Not in front of his father. Even though his father was likely unconscious, and his eyes were closed. Still, Ethan didn’t want to take a chance of giving Noah the satisfaction.

  “Tell you something else about me,” she said. “A little secret. I’m not seventy. I’m only sixty-seven. Nine years older than Sam. I just like the look on people’s faces when they see what good shape I’m in and how much I can do, and then when they hear I’m seventy. It’s only a mild exaggeration, and it’s only a lie if I’m not doing all the same stuff in three years. But I will be.”

  “Oh,” Ethan said. Because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Now that I made that little confession, you got anything you want to tell me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like about your age?”

  “No,” Ethan said, half laughing. “I really am seventeen. I’ll show you my damn birth certificate if you like.”

  “Dang. I really thought . . .” But then she trailed off. As if she had lost the thread of the conversation in midsentence. “It’s here,” she said.

  “What’s here?”

  She pointed. Out toward home, and up.

  Ethan followed her finger, but saw nothing. Just brilliant blue sky. But a second later a movement caught his eye. A tiny object that could have been a close insect or a far-off plane.

  “Wow, you’ve got good eyes,” he said.

  “Actually, I heard it.”

  “Oh. I thought that was just something the wind was doing. Is it help?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s the copter. We all get to go home.”

  At that exact moment Ethan felt the tears let go. And almost more. He almost could have lost his bladder control in that moment if he hadn’t been careful, which seemed odd, because it was not a moment of fear. It was the sudden lifting of it. Relief from the pressure of a fright that Ethan didn’t realize had been crushing him so completely.

  Maybe only at the moment it lifted was he able to feel the full weight and depth of it, and it startled him.

  And maybe something about the word home.

  In any case, he won the battle with the bladder and lost the one with the tears.

  The medevac helicopter was red and white, unless it was yellow. Ethan would go back over details like that almost obsessively in the days that followed, usually when he wished he could sleep. And would continually be surprised by how the emotion of the moment muddied everything. Except the emotion of the moment.

  The copter hovered above them, higher than Ethan would have guessed. Or wished. Maybe to keep its rotor blades as far away from the sheer rock face as possible.

  It was loud. So loud that if Jone was saying anything to him, he wasn’t hearing it. And it brought its own little windstorm, one that flattened them down from above. It blew the spare bandana Jone had loaned him out from under his baseball cap and blew it down to the valley floor, where it would be lost forever. Unless some city kid was riding a mule who got her hoof stuck in it. A disjointed thought, but one that reminded Ethan that the strange encounter with the fleece jacket was not something that happened every day.

  Then two men in jumpsuits and helmets were coming down to them, both at the same time, both clipped to the same cable, and with nylon bags and something that looked like a kid’s toboggan. Ethan had to look up into the sun to see them, and by the time their boots touched down, almost all he could see was spots in front of his eyes.

  They unclipped from the cable, and the metal disk at the now-free end of it rose and slid away from the mountain at the same time, and then the noise of the blades grew fainter, and Ethan could hear himself think. But he was so shocked. And his insides felt the way insides feel when you’ve been crying for hours, when you’ve cried all the tears you can find to cry. Even though he’d barely scratched the surface. And he didn’t know what he thought, even though he could have heard his thoughts if they’d existed.

  Jone talked to the men for a few seconds, and then she came to Ethan and took him by both hands and turned him around so his back was facing his father.

  “What are we doing?” he asked her.

  “We’re going to come sit over here and let them work.”

  “Why did the helicopter go away?”

  “It’s just circling until they call it back.”

  “Oh.”

  A silence, during which Ethan felt overwhelmed by the parts of the experience he couldn’t understand, and the questions he couldn’t put into words. And she was still holding both his hands. As if to forcibly keep him from turning around.

  He tried to look over his shoulder, but she pulled hard on his hand and brought him back to face her again.

  “Don’t,” she said. “The guys asked me to take you over here and talk you into not looking. They said it’s one of those things. Once you see it, they figure you’ll never be able to unsee it again. And you might wish you could. They have to stabilize both his legs in splints. Inflatable splints. It’s not a pretty thing to watch. You were having trouble looking at his legs even when nobody was
moving them.”

  “I didn’t tell you that,” he said. “Did I?”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  That was the moment Ethan heard the noise. The sound. That part of the experience Ethan would always remember very clearly, no matter how much time went by. It was a sound that could have come from an animal. Except the only animals up here on the ledge were human. It wasn’t so much a purposeful, outward cry of pain as something that just couldn’t be suppressed. It was guttural. Vocal rather than verbal. It was the size of the world, Ethan thought, if not bigger.

  It raced through his gut like a hot knife, leaving him feeling as though he’d been sliced open.

  Jone reached out and grabbed his head, one rough hand over each of his ears. Even though it was too late. She just did it anyway.

  Then she pulled his head close to her and pressed his forehead against her shoulder and held it tightly. Ethan didn’t cry anymore, because he didn’t remember how. He couldn’t find tears. He couldn’t find anything he’d ever used in the past. Except shaking.

  The sound had made him feel as though someone had scraped out the inside of his gut. It would take time, he knew, to get over a thing like that.

  There may have been another sound, a second one, but it was more muffled, and his ears were more covered, and it could have been something else entirely. But probably not.

  A few moments passed in silence, except for the sound of the distant helicopter blades.

  Her hands disappeared from his ears.

  “Okay, you can look now,” she said.

  Ethan turned to see the men waving the helicopter back. His father was on the sled-like litter, only his face bare and showing. His wrists were strapped together over his chest, and the rest of him was wrapped in a nylon sheath and strapped down in three places.

  The copter came back and took away Ethan’s ability to hear again. Then it took away his father. It lowered the cable with the disc on the end, and the men attached it to a harness on the litter, and then they stood up and away, and signaled again.