This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Catherine Ryan Hyde
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477820018
ISBN-10: 1477820019
Cover design by Anna Curtis
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920606
CONTENTS
Part One: EARLY JUNE
Chapter One: AUGUST, STANDING STILL
Chapter Two: THIS WILL SOUND CRAZY
Chapter Three: NEW DEAL
Chapter Four: MEETINGS
Chapter Five: THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT
Chapter Six: THERE
Chapter Seven: THE VERY TOP
Chapter Eight: WHAT HE TOLD ME
Chapter Nine: OPEN
Chapter Ten: FOUR STRIKES
Chapter Eleven: IN A BARREL
Part Two: LATE AUGUST
Chapter One: SAD GOOD NEWS
Chapter Two: STAY FOUND
Chapter Three: ONE REAL GOOD DOG
Chapter Four: LAST STOP
Chapter Five: SOME KIND OF IT
Chapter Six: GOOD-BYE
Chapter Seven: IT WON’T BE
Part Three: LATE MAY, EIGHT YEARS ON
Chapter One: WEAKNESS
Chapter Two: GROWN
Chapter Three: RIGOROUS HONESTY
Chapter Four: CLIMBING
Chapter Five: RAISON D’ÊTRE
Chapter Six: CHALKY WHITE HANDS
Chapter Seven: OR BUST
Chapter Eight: THE TRUTH
Chapter Nine: FLASHING RED
Chapter Ten: FALLING
Epilogue: AUGUST IN LATE AUGUST
YOSEMITE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Part One:
EARLY JUNE
Chapter One:
AUGUST, STANDING STILL
August Schroeder stood at the rear door of his broken-down motor home looking out through the small, square window. Had he looked out any other window—the windshield, the side windows, the little window over the kitchen sink—he’d have seen the inside of a mechanic’s garage. He wanted to see sky. He’d come out here to see sky. Not toolboxes and racks of new tires and hydraulic lifts.
He stepped out the door, down the two metal steps, and walked into the mechanic’s garage. He stepped in front of the open hood, where the mechanic could see him. The man straightened up, stretching his lower back against one hand. He wiped his hands on a red shop rag. Wiped his forehead on one dirty sleeve.
He was unusually tall, the mechanic. Maybe six foot six or taller. His limbs appeared stretched—thin and lanky. His blond hair was long in the back, curling and tumbling and disappearing under the collar of his blue work shirt.
Wes. His name was Wes. August had been careful to learn this, because so much of his fate rested in the mechanic’s hands. It seemed wise to remove as much of the distance between them as possible.
“How’s it going?” August asked.
“I’m on schedule. If that’s what you mean.”
August sighed. Took a seat on a stack of three unmounted tires, lowering himself with his hands. “I don’t even know what I mean. Just making conversation, I guess.”
Wes pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and shook one out, receiving it with his lips. “What’ve you been doing to keep busy all day?”
“Not much. Just absorbing the fact that Yellowstone isn’t going to happen.”
Wes lit the cigarette. Squinted at August through the smoke. “You told me you’re out all summer. Seems to me you’d still have plenty of time.”
“Time, yeah. I’ve got time. That’s not the issue. Money is the issue. I budget just so much for gas every summer. Yellowstone is four states away.”
“You go out all summer every summer?”
“I do.”
“You a teacher?”
“Yes.”
“What do you teach?”
“High school science.”
“Science,” Wes said. Like he was describing a shiny new car hardly anyone could afford. “I used to be good at science. So . . . maybe Yellowstone next summer.”
“Yeah,” August said. “I guess.” But when he thought again about giving up the part of the trip Phillip would have loved, should have shared, the pain came back, slicing him into two parts. The old and the new. It was so familiar now, that pain. He almost welcomed it. He’d almost missed it.
“But it was the whole point of the trip this year. It was really . . . kind of a big deal. But anyway, you don’t need to know all that, and it’s kind of personal. I just won’t be able to afford it, and that’s just the way it is.”
He looked up into Wes’s face and saw something, but he didn’t know what it was. Something that the mechanic was holding in. Something he could say, or not say. A weighing of options.
“I swear I’m not gouging you on this repair,” he said, but that wasn’t the thing.
“I know you’re not,” August said.
“I appreciate the trust.”
“It isn’t exactly trust. I don’t know you at all. I’ve known you for less than a full day. The reason I know your prices are fair is because my father owned a garage. I used to work summers there. I’m not exactly a mechanic, but I know quite a bit about it. I know the things that tend to go wrong, and I know how many hours’ labor it takes to fix them. If you were gouging me, I’d know it.”
About an hour later, August stood looking out his back door again, watching two boys play. One was maybe eleven or twelve, tall and lanky. He reminded August of a young horse—long legged and somehow managing to combine clumsiness with an odd grace. His hair was light brown and shaggy. The little one was quite little in comparison, maybe seven. His every move looked tentative. His very being had a tentative quality that drew August’s eyes.
They were kicking a ball around in an enormous lot of dirt and weeds, close enough to the garage that August assumed they belonged to the mechanic into whose hands he had fallen. He guessed they were brothers, because boys of such disparate ages didn’t tend to band together in play. Besides, they looked like brothers. They looked like two examples of the same theme.
As he stood watching, the long, familiar blade of pain sliced down from the pit of his throat, burned its way between his lungs. It was right there in his body, he now knew. It had never been in his head. It had always been real, but he had lived all those years without knowing it. Those years felt pointless and wasted now.
Woody wiggled by his left shin, whining. There was a low window, too, in the rear door. Woody could see the boys play, and he wanted out. His little docked tail quivered more than it wagged. The sound he made reminded August of the whine of his garden hose when the water was restrained by a closed nozzle.
He reached down and scratched between Woody’s small shoulder blades, his fingertips disappearing in the wiry white fur. The dog let out a yip, almost as though accidentally. As though he’d been straining to hold it in but then it got the better of him.
“Okay,” August said. “Why not?”
He opened the back door.
They were a good long way from the road. Even farther from the highway. Now, with the door open, August could hear it in the distance, the highway. Well, not the hig
hway itself, but the cars on it. The distant drone of their travel. That sound sliced down through his chest, too. Because he was not on that highway with them. He should have been on that highway. He should have been gone. He should not have been here. Then again the word “should” repaired nothing. It definitely did not do engine repairs.
He stepped out of the air-conditioning. Into the June heat. He watched Woody blast over to the two boys, bounding up and down to chart his trajectory over the weeds. As he ran farther away from August, his image became distorted by wavy bands of rising heat.
The bigger boy’s head came up, and his face brightened when he saw the dog. Woody was the perfect dog for a kid that age. A small-to-medium terrier mix full of excitement, always up for play, happy to do tricks.
The littler boy turned to see what his brother had seen. He jumped, missed kicking the ball, and ran behind the tall boy to hide.
“He’s friendly,” August called out. “He just wants to play. He’s been cooped up inside the motor home too long.”
The little one emerged. Tentatively, as he seemed to do everything. Full of wonder and fear warring with each other. August knew the wonder would win. He wished he could communicate what he knew to this frightened boy. But that never did any good anyway. People learned by what they experienced. It mattered little what anyone said to anyone.
The small guy held a nervous hand out to Woody, but the dog jumped away again, running in a wide circle and then doubling back for another invitation. He didn’t want to be petted. He could get that much inside. He wanted to play.
August walked closer. The older boy stood straight-backed and tall as August approached. He took charge, that boy. It seemed to be his nature. There was something unusually mature about his stance. It made August’s slicing pain ease and withdraw slightly. Because the boy in front of him was not Phillip. The boy in front of him was only who he was. He was only himself.
The younger boy retreated behind his brother again as August drew near.
“That’s your rig, huh?” the tall boy asked, pointing with his chin to the rear one-third of the motor home protruding from the garage. “That’s a real nice rig.”
“Thank you.”
“Nice dog, too. Is he a Jack Russell terrier?”
“Maybe part. I’m not sure. He’s from the pound.”
“What’s his name?”
“Woody,” August said, and Woody’s ears twitched.
“He do any tricks?”
“Lots of them. But right now he’s feeling cooped up. He wants to let off steam. Tell you what. I’ll make you an offer. If you can catch him, I’ll give you five bucks.”
“He won’t come when you call him?”
“Oh, no,” August said. “That’s not it at all. He’ll do whatever I tell him to do. But that’s his favorite game. When kids try to catch him.”
The tall boy’s eyes grew lighter. “Hey, Henry,” he said. “Five bucks. What do you think?”
They took off in pursuit of the dog, zero to full kid speed in seconds. Woody ran a wide, delighted arc, looking over his shoulder as if laughing.
They would never catch Woody. So it wasn’t really fair. If they ran him until he was happy and worn down, August would offer them the five dollars anyway. Otherwise it was just a mean trick. He wandered back into the mechanic’s garage, because it hurt to watch children play. Despite the fact that he’d been doing so on purpose for some time.
About ten minutes after August took a seat on the stack of tires, the mechanic pulled his head out from under the hood. He looked at August as if he had something to say. But if so, he never said it. Instead, he lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, then blew the smoke out again, watching it as if transfixed. As if he’d never seen such a thing before.
“How bad d’you want to make it to Yellowstone?” he asked.
“Bad,” August said. But it felt dicey. A little dangerous. There was an offer hovering somewhere. Everything was a mystery except the weight of it, which he could feel. “If you have thoughts, I’d like to hear them.”
“Never mind,” Wes said, cutting his eyes down to the concrete floor. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“You’ve got something to say, go ahead and say it.”
Just at that moment the older boy stepped into the garage, carrying Woody in his arms. Woody’s tongue lolled out, longer than seemed physically possible, and, as the dog panted, he flipped little drops of sweat onto the boy’s bare arm. The effect was that of a wide grin on the dog’s face. And that might have been exactly what it was. August looked up to the face of the boy. It was red and dripping from the heat and exertion.
“Seth,” the mechanic said. “What’re you doing with the man’s dog?”
“It was his idea,” Seth said.
“It was my idea,” August said. “He’s doing exactly what I asked him to do.” Then, to the boy: “I can’t believe you caught him. Nobody ever caught him before. You must be one fast guy.”
“That’s not how I did it. I didn’t do it with my legs. I did it with my brain.”
Seth poured the dog into August’s arms, and August set Woody on his paws on the concrete floor and went after his wallet. Pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to Seth.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Seth said, with something almost like a small salute.
It seemed an odd expression for a child his age, until August considered that the boy lived in—or at least behind—a business. He must have heard it all the time.
August watched him walk back out into the shimmering heat.
“Nice boys,” August said.
No reply. Wes just crushed the cigarette into an ashtray on the workbench and stuck his head back under the hood.
August gathered Woody back onto his lap and watched for a few moments to pass the time. But it was really no more interesting than staring at the sky. Right around the time he was ready to go back inside his rig, the upper part of Wes emerged again.
“When I finish up for the day,” he said, “maybe you and me can have a drink?”
“Oh. Um. I don’t drink.”
“At all?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Oh. Well. The drink isn’t the real deal of it. Coffee, then.”
August felt a rush of discomfort. This tall, odd man wanted something from him. And he couldn’t imagine what it might be. He couldn’t imagine what he had that the mechanic would need or even want. He briefly tried on the idea that the man was hitting on him. But it didn’t feel quite like that. But it felt equally personal, scary, and emotionally important.
“I have coffee inside,” August said. “Come knock when you’re done.”
“I’ll prob’ly work late. Eight or nine at least. All the better to get you back on the road.”
“I’ll be up,” August said. “Just knock.”
Then he spent the rest of the day wondering how big a mistake he had actually made.
At the end of the day, the mechanic put away his tools, shut off the lights, and let himself out of the shop through a side door. He didn’t knock.
August drank the coffee himself and, predictably, couldn’t sleep.
Chapter Two:
THIS WILL SOUND CRAZY
In the morning, as he was making a fresh pot of coffee, August heard a shy, tentative knock on the motor home’s rear door. Woody barked. And barked. And barked.
“You’re late,” he said out loud but to himself. Quietly. Too quietly to be heard through the door.
He’d already pushed the side-window blinds up but had not yet opened the curtains on the back door. That was a more involved task, as they were blocked by the screen door. He had to open the back door to get to them. So that always happened last.
“Shhh,” he said to the dog, but to no effect.
He finished plugging in the coffeepot and turned it on to brew. Then he unlocked and opened the back door. In the dirt at the bottom of his two metal steps stood Seth, a baseball cap held politely in
front of him, his little brother Henry directly behind.
“Good morning, Seth,” he said.
“How’d you know my name was Seth?”
“I heard your father call you by it yesterday.”
“Oh. That’s right. And this’s—”
“Henry,” August said. “I heard you call him by it yesterday.”
“Oh. Did I?”
“What can I do for you boys?”
“Sorry to bother you. Sir. Hope it’s no trouble. If it is, just say, and we’ll go right away. We wouldn’t’ve knocked if we thought you were sleeping. We saw your shades go up. So we knew you were awake. Hope it’s not a bother. It’s just that . . . Henry . . . my brother . . . and me, we’re just wondering . . . maybe could we play with that dog? No charge. We’re not asking it for any five bucks. We just liked that dog. And we think he liked us back.”
“I know for a fact he liked you back,” August said. “Look at him.”
He opened the door wider so the boys could see Woody standing on his hind legs—paws reaching up and raking the air—and jumping up and down. Yes. Jumping up and down on his hind legs only. Woody was half circus dog. Woody could do that.
Henry let out a light shriek that August recognized only after the fact as excited laughter.
“He’s good at that,” Seth said. “How’s he balance on his hind legs so good?”
“He’s just built for it, I guess. He can walk all the way across a room on his hind legs.”
“We’d sure like to see him do his tricks sometime.”
“Sure. Maybe when you bring him back.”
Seth’s face lightened, and only then did August realize the boy had been waiting for a yes or a no and straining under the weight of the uncertainty.
“So we can take him out in the lot to play?”
“Sure.”
August opened the door wide for Woody and gave him the simple “go on” permission. The dog scrambled out the door and jumped all around the boys and jumped up and put his paws on them and licked at Henry’s face, which he could reach by leaping.
Take Me With You Page 1
