by Brandt Legg
“I keep getting this sort of sound in my ears,” I said.
“You, too? Get used to it, little brother.”
“What do you mean?”
“I started hearing it when I was fourteen, too. I asked Dad about it. And it was the weirdest thing.” Dustin stopped walking and looked at me. “Dad started crying.”
“Why? What did you say to him?”
“All I said was, ‘Dad, I keep hearing the wind in my ear and I feel like a hummingbird is flying around my head.’ He pulled me in a hug and started sobbing, saying, ‘oh no, oh no, I’m sorry, Dusty, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about or why he got so upset.”
“Didn’t you ask him what was wrong?”
“Course I did. He said I hadn’t done anything wrong and we needed to have a long talk, but it would have to wait because he was late for work.”
I grabbed Dustin’s shoulder. “And?”
“He said he wanted to take me somewhere and show me something, that we’d talk on the way.” Dustin’s eyes were filling. “We never had that talk, Nate. Dad died two days later.”
The guilt was nauseating. Dad had wanted to take Dustin on the Grizzly Peak hike alone. I begged and begged to go until he finally gave in. Not only had I caused his death by going, but I had prevented him from telling Dustin some great secret, from showing him something important. I sat down on the trail. “What was he going to tell you? Show you?” I asked weakly. My head throbbed.
“I wish I knew. He was pretty upset when I asked him about the sound. I had the feeling that he heard it, too. Like he was all torn up because he passed it on to me or something.” Dustin was looking up at the trees but seemed to be staring much farther away. “He was distraught. You would have thought I’d said the army was shipping me out to fight some horrible foreign war.” He paused and spoke softly, almost to himself, “And in a way that’s what it’s been like.”
Looking at Dustin was like looking in a mirror, same hazel eyes flecked with gold, and sandy brown hair, but he was taller and solid where I was lanky. I could almost see him fading away as he stood there, battling memories and angst.
“Dustin, what’s been going on with you? You’ve really been freaking Mom out.”
“Mom’s been a wreck ever since Dad died. She thinks she’s going to blow it and disappoint him or worse, let us down.”
“She’s doing okay.”
“Glad you think so. The problem is she doesn’t believe anything I say. She thinks I’m just a burnout and tripping all the time.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“Only when I need to.”
“That seems like all the time.” With that he sparked a bowl and offered me a hit. “Whatever,” I said.
“You have no idea what it’s like. Everything’s coming in at me, and now I have you to worry about on top of all that.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Try getting your own life figured out.”
“You sound like Mom. Neither one of you knows what’s going on.”
“Because you won’t talk about it. Why don’t you try telling me?”
“Why don’t you try growing up and not be such a mama’s boy? Then maybe you could make up your own mind. Anytime I try to talk about it, everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, I just think you’re a big freak.”
“How did you get to be so immature?”
“I’m fourteen, what’s your excuse?”
“Never mind, Nate, they’ll come for you, too, and you’ll have a chance to deal with all this. Maybe then you’ll understand your older brother isn’t such a crazy freak.”
When we got home, Dustin split off and headed toward town. I had a chest pain and curled up next to a sequoia until it went away. After that, I only saw him a few times before he got committed. Today was the first real conversation we’ve had since that day in the woods.
I continued pacing in my room, switched back to working on photos, read about the San Francisco 49ers online and did almost anything I could to avoid sleep. Mom saw my light on and came in. She appeared to have aged ten years in the four years since the funeral. There was a little gray mixed in the long blond strands. Her thin face was still pretty, but lines had etched a history of recent sorrows.
“Make sure you email me your route, which campsites, Kyle’s plate number and all that good stuff.” Mom was efficient. “Hey, when you’re next in town, come by the restaurant. Josh would love to see you.”
“Sure, I’ll try.”
“You know, Josh and your dad were good friends, more than just partners. He has always adored you and hardly sees you anymore.”
“I know Mom, I said I’ll try.” The truth was I thought Josh was a pretty cool guy. He and my parents started the restaurant together before I could walk, and I literally grew up in the place. Mom probably thought I was avoiding him, but it was actually the restaurant I was avoiding. Dad died there.
It was located near the university campus and although its official name was The Radio Station, everyone called it “the Station.” It served healthy sandwiches, gourmet burgers with each dish named after a different musician, from Adele to Townes Van Zandt. It may have been most famous for wild desserts like Caramel Crisis, Chocolate Disaster or Die By Pie. The ceiling was covered with authentic album covers from old vinyl LPs. Framed concert posters, ticket collections, and other music memorabilia decorated the walls. An authentic radio broadcast studio, complete with an on-air light, sent tunes out to the dining area. Huge screens showed vintage concerts, and a marquee out front listed them as if they were live, like “THE BEATLES tonight.” The place was usually packed with college students and hip locals; the kids at my school considered it a cool spot.
Her once soft eyes were now hard. I wanted to tell her I was scared. Couldn’t she see how lost I was? But Dustin had tried talking to her, too.
“I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “Do you want to talk?”
“Not tonight, Mom, I’m really tired.”
“Okay, let’s find time though.” I thought she said we should talk only because she believed it was what a mother should say and was probably hoping to coast to my eighteenth birthday so her job would be done. She’d be rid of the responsibility of both her sons.
I lost another duel with sleep and was out soon after she left. I was a grown man, running along a beach. The sea was an odd shade of purple. Some kind of drone, the size of a six-pack of sodas, was chasing me as yellow marble-sized projectiles rained down. Another drone closed in from the opposite direction. I darted toward a cliff, dove into a small cave, and waited until the craft flew in after me. I threw a stone and smashed it. More drones flew to the cave, but I was already half way up the cliff on an old, primitive trail. When I reached the top, the sight was stunning. A futuristic city of pale reds and blues, silver towers rose out of an expansive, manicured forest that looked like an endless garden. “Where am I?” Or, rather, “When am I?” More attackers came from the beach, yellow marbles zinged at me. Desperate to escape, I ran toward the cliff’s edge. The yellow buckshot ripped across my arms and back. I fell for what seems like minutes before my head split open on a boulder.
Instantly, I was in my room, heart pounding, reeling from the pain in my back and an intense headache. “My name is Nathan Ryder, I’m sixteen, I’m in eleventh grade . . . ” I repeated my mantra. Why do I always see death? What are the Outviews trying to tell me?
7
Sunday, September 14
Kyle pulled up as the sun lit the morning sky, and we headed to the park. There were a few joggers and an old man walking a dog, but otherwise we had Lithia Park to ourselves. A hundred acres of shallow canyon land, an enchanted forest stretching around rushing Ashland Creek, seemed from a Tolkien book. Trees made me feel safe, and sometimes when the Outviews were especially bad, I thought about sleeping in the park. The ponderosa pine bark smelled of vanilla and reminded me of my mom. The strong, smooth
cinnamon-colored bark of the madrone felt like my dad, and the scrub oaks had always been Dustin in their tough scrappy gentleness. The alders, laurels, conifers, willows, maples, and sycamores were friends. Even though I’d grown up in the park, I usually found new places to explore but not that morning. I knew where Kyle was headed as soon as we crossed the road at the second duck pond: the Japanese garden.
The park had history. It was known how each trail had been created, who designed the duck ponds a hundred years ago, even why a certain flower was put next to a stonewall. But lost to time was the origin of the Japanese garden. Black pines, red pines, Japanese maples, persimmons, isu, and other exotic trees and shrubs looked a thousand years old.
Kyle explained that his daily meditations were split between the garden, an abandoned pear orchard, and home. He also did regular walking meditations, which I didn’t know were possible.
“Let’s see if we can calm down those voices of yours. Meditation is the art of silencing the mind,” he said softly. “When the mind is quiet, your concentration is increased, and you experience inner peace.”
“That’s all I want.”
“It can be elusive. You have a lot of turmoil.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Before she died, my mother taught me to meditate. I’ll teach you the same way.” He pointed to a rock at the base of a Japanese maple. “Sit here and keep your back straight. Try to concentrate on only one thing; it’s harder than you think. Focus on this flower. No matter where your mind goes, keep bringing it back to this flower.”
I tried for almost an hour, surprised by how difficult it was to empty my cluttered mind. Every time I got close, the words “family” and “past” echoed in my head. Then came waves of deep sadness and a harsh feeling of loneliness.
On the way back to his house, Kyle repeated that, “getting to silent mind is very hard, it will take time.”
“Kyle, I gotta say I didn’t enjoy that.”
“You’ll learn to. Did you like it when you first fell in the river? No, but now you love to swim. Does a baby like her first breath of air? No, she is terrified, but there is no life without breathing. Meditation is like that.”
“I might be in trouble then.”
“Practice. Everything is practice.”
“Kyle, are you really seventeen? Sometimes you seem more like seventy-seven.”
“You can take control of your mind,” Kyle said, ignoring my question. “You need to throw unwanted thoughts out. You’re not a bunch of thoughts. They aren’t in charge.”
“Then what is?”
“You are, your real self, your higher self.”
“I’m not sure, but aren’t those just different ways of saying my soul? Are you getting religious on me?
“Religion isn’t real, but you are.”
Driving to his place, Kyle suddenly pulled into a random driveway gasping. I turned just in time to see an Ashland patrol car cruise past. Kyle closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He wouldn’t talk about it, all I knew was he’d been treated roughly in jail with his parents not long before their deaths.
Back in his attic room, he handed me a copy of The Essential Writings of Thich Nhat Hanh. “Read this. He’s a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist who lives in exile. Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Dalai Lama said, ‘he shows us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.’ I think he’s one of the most important people on the planet.”
Linh joined us, and we told her what had happened at the garden.
“I just kept hearing the words ‘family’ and ‘past.’ I couldn’t make them go away.”
“Often when I meditate an answer comes to me.” Kyle’s eyes gleamed.
“You’re like consumed by these voices and nightmares and your brother went through some of the same stuff, right?” Linh said. “Maybe it’s a family thing. Let’s search your family’s past online.”
“My mom was adopted.”
“Then it’ll be easier because we only have one side to research.”
“My dad had a sister, my aunt Rose, the one we’re not allowed to talk to.”
“What a scandal.” Kyle and I started laughing.
“Why are boys so immature?”
I grabbed the flip-flops off her feet and tossed them toward the stairs. “Who you calling immature?” She couldn’t help but giggle.
We looked up the name Montgomery Ryder. Before long, a page showing his date of death came up.
“What was your dad’s middle initial?” Kyle asked.
“It’s ‘B,’ why?”
“Because a few Montgomery Ryders died around that time . . . Look at this.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Including your dad, eleven different people named Montgomery Ryder died within five weeks of each other!”
“Unbelievable!” Kyle said.
“That can’t be right,” I said.
“Yeah. See, Montgomery A. Ryder, sixty-three, from Baltimore, June 19; Montgomery J. Ryder, thirty-four, from Poughkeepsie, New York, June 23; Montgomery F. Ryder, fifty-six, Sarasota, Florida, June 25. It goes on to the last one, Montgomery L. Ryder, fifty-one, died on July 27 in Wichita, Kansas. It has your dad’s date of death as June 28.”
“That is way spooky,” I said. “I mean, eleven Montgomery Ryders—it’s not like John Smith or Tom Johnson. It’s not a common name.”
“Let’s see how many died the year before,” Kyle said, as he navigated the page.
“None,” I said reading the results, “check the year after.”
“None again,” Kyle said. After checking all the years since and ten years prior, we found only one other Montgomery Ryder death nine years before my dad died. Then we checked for any Montgomery Ryders currently living.
“Oh my God,” Linh said, as we all stared at the monitor. Not one Montgomery Ryder was alive today.
“It’s too weird,” Kyle added.
“Guys, I think something is really wrong here.” I felt sick. “Come on, there were only eleven people on the planet with my dad’s name and they all died when he did? All of them?”
Kyle started pulling up obituaries. Within half an hour we had printed copies of every one of them. Their ages ranged from thirty-one to seventy-four. Three died in accidents and eight of natural causes, either stroke or heart attack. “Nate, how exactly did your father die? Like where was he and who was he with?” Kyle pressed.
8
Monday, September 15
Every month during the school year I had to meet with my guidance counselor, Mrs. Little, whose duty was to make sure I was coping with all my “problems”: the death of my father, being raised by a single mom, and, especially, having a brother in the nut house. Today was our first meeting of my junior year. She had also been Dustin’s counselor, so she was extra worried and cautious about me.
“Good morning, Nathan. How are you doing, pal?” She must have been my mom’s age but dressed and acted like a generation or two back. Her brown hair done in a lovely 1950s style always amused me.
“Fine.”
“Are you really?”
“I’m good, really good.”
“Okay. And how’s your mother?” she asked in an uncaring tone.
“She’s good, too.”
“Did you enjoy your summer?”
“Yeah, it was nice.”
“Okay. I need to ask you some serious questions. Just take your time and try to answer truthfully.” She started typing as she talked, turning the monitor so I couldn’t see it. “You know we’ve touched on these issues before, but now that you’re the same age, well, at that age when your brother’s difficulties got out of hand, we need to keep a close eye.”
I nodded.
“Nathan, do you think you are able to easily tell the difference between real and unreal experiences?”
Absolutely not, I thought. “Yes ma’am,” I answered.
She stared for a moment to be sure she believed me. I didn’t
think she was convinced. “Okay, and have you experienced any instances of seeing things that were not there?”
Just about every day. “No.”
“No hallucinations of any kind?”
“No.”
“Good.” She half-smiled and continued to peck away on the keyboard. “What about hearing things? Voices? Strange music?”
“Mrs. Little, I’m a teenager, I hear strange music all the time.”
Another half smile. “Not what I mean, Nathan. I think you know I meant inside your head, voices or sounds that weren’t real, that no one else could hear, just you.”
What would happen if I told her about the voices? Just ask Dustin. “No, ma’am.”
“You look tired. Are you having trouble sleeping Nathan?”
“No, I stayed up too late over the weekend.”
“Are you using drugs of any kind?”
“No.”
“Are you sure, Nathan, because your brother sat in that very chair and said no to the same question less than a week before he was, well, sent away.”
“I’m not Dustin, Mrs. Little.”
“Of course not, but do you ever think you are him?”
Oh my God. How did she get this job? “Aren’t you supposed to be helping me?”
“Do you believe I am trying to hurt you? Do you believe anyone is trying to harm you? Do you think people are out to get you?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Nathan, the fact is that your grades are not what they should be. You test well, but the last few years you’ve barely maintained a C average.”
“I’ve always gotten As in history.”
“Yes, well . . . ” She dismissed it as if history didn’t count for some reason. “You’re having trouble paying attention in class, and some of your teachers say your thoughts jump around and that you seem distant. Schizophrenia has been found to occur more frequently in teens with a family history of the disease. It’s much better if we can catch it early, not when it’s too late.” She paused to make eye contact. “Like with your brother.”
