"Okay," I say. "Everybody join hands."
They all look at each other.
"Come on! Just do it!" I tell them. "And don't let go."
Then I take Herbie by the hand and, as if I'm dragging a
chain, I go up the trail, snaking past the entire line. Hand in
hand, the rest of the troop follows. I pass Andy and keep walking.
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And when I'm twice the distance of the line-up, I stop. What I've
done is turn the entire troop around so that the boys have exactly
the opposite order they had before.
"Now listen up!" I say. "This is the order you're going to stay in until we reach where we're going. Understood? Nobody passes
anybody. Everybody just tries to keep up with the person in front
of him. Herbie will lead."
Herbie looks shocked and amazed. "Me?"
Everyone else looks aghast too.
"You want him to lead?" asks Andy.
"But he's the slowest one!" says another kid.
And I say, "The idea of this hike is not to see who can get
there the fastest. The idea is to get there together. We're not a
bunch of individuals out here. We're a team. And the team does
not arrive in camp until all of us arrive in camp."
So we start off again. And it works. No kidding. Everybody
stays together behind Herbie. I've gone to the back of the line so
I can keep tabs, and I keep waiting for the gaps to appear, but
they don't. In the middle of the line I see someone pause to
adjust his pack straps. But as soon as he starts again, we all walk
just a little faster and we're caught up. Nobody's out of breath.
What a difference!
Of course, it isn't long before the fast kids in the back of the
line start their grumbling.
"Hey, Herpes!" yells one of them. "I'm going to sleep back
here. Can't you speed it up a little?"
"He's doing the best he can," says the kid behind Herbie, "so lay off him!"
"Mr. Rogo, can't we put somebody faster up front?" asks a
kid ahead of me.
"Listen, if you guys want to go faster, then you have to figure
out a way to let Herbie go faster," I tell them.
It gets quiet for a few minutes.
Then one of the kids in the rear says, "Hey, Herbie, what
have you got in your pack?"
"None of your business!" says Herbie.
But I say, "Okay, let's hold up for a minute."
Herbie stops and turns around. I tell him to come to the
back of the line and take off his pack. As he does, I take the pack
from him—and nearly drop it.
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"Herbie, this thing weighs a ton," I say. "What have you got in here?"
"Nothing much," says Herbie.
I open it up and reach in. Out comes a six-pack of soda. Next
are some cans of spaghetti. Then come a box of candy bars, a jar
of pickles, and two cans of tuna fish. Beneath a rain coat and
rubber boots and a bag of tent stakes, I pull out a large iron
skillet. And off to the side is an army-surplus collapsible steel
shovel.
"Herbie, why did you ever decide to bring all this along?" I
ask.
He looks abashed. "We're supposed to be prepared, you
know."
"Okay, let's divide this stuff up," I say.
"I can carry it!" Herbie insists.
"Herbie, look, you've done a great job of lugging this stuff so
far. But we have to make you able to move faster," I say. "If we take some of the load off you, you'll be able to do a better job at
the front of the line."
Herbie finally seems to understand. Andy takes the iron skil-
let, and a few of the others pick up a couple of the items I've
pulled out of the pack. I take most of it and put it into my own
pack, because I'm the biggest. Herbie goes back to the head of the
line.
Again we start walking. But this time, Herbie can really
move. Relieved of most of the weight in his pack, it's as if he's
walking on air. We're flying now, doing twice the speed as a troop
that we did before. And we still stay together. Inventory is down.
Throughput is up.
Devil's Gulch is lovely in the late afternoon sun. Down in
what appears to be the gulch, the Rampage River goes creaming
past boulders and outcroppings of rock. Golden rays of sunlight
shift through the trees. Birds are tweeting. And off in the distance
is the unmistakable melody of high-speed automobile traffic.
"Look!" shouts Andy as he stands atop the promontory,
"There's a shopping center out there!"
"Does it have a Burger King?" asks Herbie.
Dave complains, "Hey, this isn't The Wilderness."
"They just don't make wildernesses the way they used to," I
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tell him. "Look, we'll have to settle for what we've got. Let's make
camp."
The time is now five o'clock. This means that after relieving
Herbie of his pack, we covered about four miles in two hours.
Herbie was the key to controlling the entire troop.
Tents are erected. A spaghetti dinner is prepared by Dave
and Evan. Feeling somewhat guilty because I set up the rules that
drove them into their servitude, I give them a hand with cleaning
up afterwards.
Dave and I share the same tent that night. We're lying inside
it, both of us tired. Dave is quiet for a while. Then he speaks up.
He says, "You know, Dad, I was really proud of you today."
"You were? How come?"
"The way you figured out what was going on and kept every-
one together, and put Herbie in front—we'd probably have been
on that trail forever if it hadn't been for you," he says. "None of the other guys' parents took any responsibility for anything. But
you did."
"Thanks," I tell him. "Actually, I learned a lot of things today."
"You did?"
"Yeah, stuff that I think is going to help me straighten out
the plant," I say.
"Really? Like what?"
"Are you sure you want to hear about it?"
"Sure I am," he claims.
We're awake for some time talking about everything. He
hangs in there, even asks some questions. By the time we're fin-
ished, all we can hear is some snoring from the other tents, a few
crickets . . . and the squealing tires of some idiot turning donuts
out there on the highway.
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16
Davey and I get home around 4:30 on Sunday afternoon.
Both of us are tired, but we're feeling pretty good in spite of the
miles. After I pull into the driveway, Dave hops out to open the
garage door. I ease the Mazda in and go around to open the trunk
so we can get our packs.
"I wonder where Mom went," says Dave.
I look over and notice that her car is gone.
"She's probab
ly out shopping or something," I tell Dave.
Inside, Dave stows the camping gear while I go into the bed-
room to change clothes. A hot shower is going to feel absolutely
terrific. After I wash off the great outdoors, I'm thinking, maybe
I'll take everybody out to dinner, get us a good meal as kind of a
celebration of the triumphant return of father and son.
A closet door is open in the bedroom. When I reach to shut
it, I see that most of Julie's clothes are gone. I stand there for a
minute looking at the empty space. Dave comes up behind me.
"Dad?"
I turn.
"This was on the kitchen table. I guess Mom left it."
He hands me a sealed envelope.
"Thanks Dave."
I wait until he's gone to open it. Inside is just a short hand-
written note. It says:
Al,
I can't handle always being last in line for you. I need
more of you and it's clear now that you won't change.
I'm going away for a while. Need to think things over.
Sorry to do this to you. I know you're busy.
Yours truly,
Julie
P.S. —I left Sharon with your mother.
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When I'm able to move, I put the note in my pocket and go
find Davey. I tell him I have to go across town to pick up Sharon,
and that he's to stay here. If his mother calls, he's to ask her
where she's calling from and get a number where I can call her
back. He wants to know if something is wrong. I tell him not to
worry and promise to explain when I get back.
I go rocketing to my mother's house. When she opens the
door, she starts talking about Julie before I can even say hello.
"Alex, do you know your wife did the strangest thing," she
says. "I was making lunch yesterday when the doorbell rang, and
when I opened the door Sharon was standing here on the step
with her little suitcase. And your wife was in the car at the curb
there, but she wouldn't get out and when I went down to talk to
her, she drove away."
By now I'm in the door. Sharon runs to greet me from the
living room where she is watching television. I pick her up and
she gives me a long hug. My mother is still talking.
"What on earth could be wrong with her?" my mother asks
me.
"We'll talk about it later," I tell her.
"I just don't understand what—"
"Later, okay?"
Then I look at Sharon. Her face is rigid. Her eyes are frozen
big. She's terrified.
"So . . . did you have a nice visit with Grandma?" I ask her.
She nods but doesn't say anything.
"What do you say we go home now?"
She looks down at the floor.
"Don't you want to go home?" I ask.
She shrugs her shoulders.
"Do you like it here with Grandma?" my smiling mother asks
her.
Sharon starts to cry.
I get Sharon and her suitcase into the car. We start home.
After I've driven a couple of blocks, I look over at her. She's like a
little statue sitting there staring straight ahead with her red eyes
focused on the top of the dashboard. At the next stoplight, I
reach over for her and pull her next to me.
She's very quiet for a while, but then she finally looks up at
me and whispers, "Is Mommy still mad at me?"
"Mad at you? She isn't mad at you," I tell her.
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"Yes she is. She wouldn't talk to me."
"No, no, no, Sharon," I say. "Your mother isn't upset with
you. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Then why?" she asks.
I say, "Why don't we wait until we get home. I'll explain it to
both you and your brother then."
I think that explaining the situation to both of the kids at the
same time turns out to be easier on me than on them. I've always
been reasonably adept at maintaining the outward illusion of con-
trol in the midst of chaos. I tell them Julie has simply gone away
for a little while, maybe only a day or so. She'll be back. She just
has to get over a few things that are upsetting and confusing her.
I give them all the standard reassurances: your mom still loves
you; I still love you; there was nothing that either of you could
have done; everything will work out for the best. For the most
part, both of them sit there like little rocks. Maybe they're reflect-
ing back what I'm giving them.
We go out and get a pizza for dinner. That normally would
be kind of a fun thing. Tonight, it's very quiet. Nobody has any-
thing to say. We mechanically chew and then leave.
When we get back, I make both of the kids do homework for
school. I don't know if they do it or not. I go to the phone, and
after a long debate with myself; I try to make a couple of calls.
Julie doesn't have any friends in Bearington. None that I
know of. So it would be useless to try to call the neighbors. They
wouldn't know anything, and the story about us having problems
would spread instantly.
Instead, I try calling Jane, the friend from the last place we
lived, the one whom Julie claimed to have spent the night with
last Thursday. There is no answer at Jane's.
So then I try Julie's parents. I get her father on the phone.
After some small talk about the weather and the kids, it's clear he
isn't going to make any declarations. I conclude that her parents
don't know what's going on. But before I can think of a casual
way to end the call and avoid the explanations, her old man asks
me, "So is Julie going to talk to us?"
"Ah, well, that's actually why I was calling," I say.
"Oh? Nothing is wrong I hope," he says.
"I'm afraid there is," I say. "She left yesterday while I was on E.M. Goldratt
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a camping trip with Dave. I was wondering if you had heard from
her."
Immediately he's spreading the alarm to Julie's mother. She
gets on the phone.
"Why did she leave?" she asks.
"I don't know."
"Well, I know the daughter we raised, and she wouldn't just
leave without a very good reason," says Julie's mother.
"She just left me a note saying she had to get away for
awhile."
"What did you do to her?" yells her mother.
"Nothing!" I plead, feeling like a liar in the onslaught.
Then her father gets back on the phone and asks if I've
talked to the police. He suggests that maybe she was kidnapped. I
tell him that's highly unlikely, because my mother saw her drive
away and nobody had a gun to her head.
Finally I say, "If you hear from her, would you please have
her give me a call? I'm very worried about her."
An hour later, I do call the police. But, as I expected, they
won't help unless I have some evidence that something criminal
has take
n place. I go and put the kids to bed.
Sometime after midnight, I'm staring at the dark bedroom
ceiling and I hear a car turning into the driveway. I leap out of
bed and run to the window. By the time I get there, the head-
lights are arcing back toward the street. It's just a stranger turn-
ing around. The car drives away.
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17
Monday morning is a disaster.
It starts with Davey trying to make breakfast for himself and
Sharon and me. Which is a nice, responsible thing to do, but he
totally screws it up. While I'm in the shower, he attempts pan-
cakes. I'm midway through shaving when I hear the fight from
the kitchen. I rush down to find Dave and Sharon pushing each
other. There is a skillet on the floor with lumps of batter, black on
one side and raw on the other, splattered.
"Hey! What's going on?" I shout.
"It's all her fault!" yells Dave pointing at his sister.
"You were burning them!" Sharon says.
"I was not!"
Smoke is fuming off the stove where something spilled. I step
over to shut it off.
Sharon appeals to me. "I was just trying to help. But he
wouldn't let me." Then she turns to Dave. "Even / know how to
make pancakes."
"Okay, because both of you want to help, you can help clean
up," I say.
When everything is back in some semblance of order, I feed
them cold cereal. We eat another meal in silence.
With all the disruption and delay. Sharon misses her school
bus. I get Davey out the door, and go looking for her so I can
drive her to school. She's lying down on her bed.
"Ready, whenever you are, Miz Rogo."
"I can't go to school," she says.
"Why not?"
"I'm sick."
"Sharon, you have to go to school," I say.
"But I'm sick!" she says.
I go sit down on the edge of the bed.
"I know you're upset. I am too," I tell her. "But these are facts: I have to go to work. I can't stay home with you, and I won't
leave you here by yourself. You can go to your grandmother's
house for the day. Or you can go to school."
She sits up. I put my arm around her.
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After a minute, she says, "I guess I'll go to school."
I give her a squeeze and say, "Atta way, kid. I knew you'd do
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