Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (31 page)

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.

The helicopter flew away. It flew away with Ethan’s father still dangling below it. It didn’t even take the time to bring him on board first.

Just as Ethan was wondering if Noah would have to dangle there all the way to the hospital, he noticed the cable getting shorter. The litter was dangling closer to the belly of the craft.

Then they disappeared behind a mountain, and it was over.

Ethan blinked and looked around. One of the men smiled at him. He came over and clapped a hand down on Ethan’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll come back for us.”

“Good to hear,” he said, sounding more relaxed and normal than he felt.

“They’re going to set down right where the pavement ends. There’s an ambulance waiting for your dad. Then they’ll come back and pick us up.”

Ethan briefly pictured dangling from the end of that cable. Then he pushed the image away again.

Ethan watched Jone and one of the rescuers as they were winched up to the helicopter at the end of the cable, both of their harnesses hooked together at their chests. It looked terrifying. More so than Ethan could even allow himself to process.

The same man who had clapped him on the shoulder and reassured him helped Ethan into his harness. It was not a harness like the one Sam had loaned him. It was enormous and weighty in comparison. It came up all the way to his chest. It had two huge, heavy rings that came together almost at his chin.

The copter was hovering directly overhead, so it wasn’t easy to talk.

“You afraid of heights?” the man asked, loudly, into Ethan’s ear.

“Yes, sir,” Ethan shouted. “Little bit.”

“Don’t look down. Don’t look around. Just look right here.”

The man pointed to a round patch on his nylon jumpsuit. It was embroidered with a mountain range, and letters that must have added up to a particular rescue team. That was another one of those details that didn’t stay clear in Ethan’s head.

Especially since he didn’t follow the man’s directions.

Deafened by the noise, battered by the wind, Ethan squinted his eyes and watched the man grab the disc end of the descending cable, slip its huge, heavy-looking hook through all four of the rings on their two harnesses, and lock it into place.

Ethan felt his feet lift off the ground.

He did what he was told not to do. He looked down. And around.

Not because he was afraid, although he was.

Because he wanted to see the Blythe River Wilderness one last time. Because, exhausted though he was, much as he longed for a hot bath and a warm bed, part of him didn’t want Blythe River to go away. It was dizzying to look, but somehow, in that moment, dizzying didn’t seem like such a bad way to go.

What felt like only a second or two later a gloved hand reached out and grabbed the cable, and pulled. Then Ethan was inside the helicopter, with his feet on something horizontal and solid.

He felt himself being strapped into a padded seat, with belts secured across his waist and vertically over both shoulders. But he didn’t know who buckled him in, because he was still looking out the window. Staring at the snowcapped peaks, and that amazing wet snake of a river. Which was less silver now and more gold.

His stomach dropped as the copter peeled away, tilting and turning toward civilization. Toward home.

Jone patted his knee.

“We did it!” she shouted into his ear. To be heard over the
thwap
of the copter blades.

A pause, during which Ethan only smiled. Or thought he smiled.

“
Yeah
we did!” he said.

Then he looked out the window and watched the wilderness disappear.

Ethan didn’t know he was crying again until he felt the taps of teardrops hitting his own arms and lap. Flowing with surprising gusto. Freely.

Ethan wondered if it was the first time any of his emotions had ever felt free.

Ethan stepped down out of the copter and onto the tarmac of the road between his house and Sam’s. A bit dreamily. And dizzily. As if this might or might not be reality.

The copter’s motor had shut down, and the blades had stopped spinning. And the silence felt absolutely stunning.

Sam was waiting in his jacked-up 4x4 pickup, and he had Rufus in the back.

Ethan wanted to say thank you to his personal rescuer. The one who had comforted him. Winched up on the same cable at the same time. He turned and walked back to the man, but no words came out. So instead he just threw his arms wide and gave the guy a hug. And received one in return.

Then he walked stiffly to Sam’s truck.

“You all ready to go to the hospital?” Sam asked.

Ethan climbed, with much difficulty, into the truck bed with Rufus, without speaking. Jone took the shotgun seat Ethan had purposely left for her.

Sam made a U-turn in the road and headed toward town.

The truck had rolled not ten feet down the road when Ethan found his voice again.

“No,” he said out loud, to no one. Well, no one except Rufus, who was leaning over his lap and licking his face with exaggerated enthusiasm. As if he’d been sure he’d never see Ethan again.

Ethan knocked on the truck’s back window.

Sam pulled over and opened the window’s sliding middle section.

“Yeah?”

“No,” Ethan said. “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?” Jone asked. Soothingly, Ethan thought. “What can’t you do after everything you just did?”

“I can’t do this next part. Not without rest. I’m just so exhausted. You have no idea how exhausted I am. I can’t even describe it. It’s like being in this unbearable pain. And not just physically, either. My brain is exhausted. My gut is exhausted. My heart can’t go another step, I swear. What we just did, that was easy compared to this next part. The part where I go to the hospital and the doctors are all touched by how we rescued him, and they figure we’re about to have this wonderful, emotional reunion. And they say something like ‘Your dad is awake now. You can go in and see him.’ And I have to say, ‘I don’t want to see him. I hate him.’ I can’t do that part without at least a good night’s sleep.”

A long silence.

Then Sam popped the truck back into gear and made another U-turn in the narrow road. Ethan sighed deeply and let a part of himself relax. A part that had been needing relaxation for a very long time.

Longer even than Ethan had known this place.

Ethan said a little prayer that his dad would make it through the night. That Ethan wasn’t giving up his last chance to see him. Which felt odd, because he tended not to pray. And because he tended not to cherish moments with his father. Still. He wouldn’t want to miss the last one.

“You going to be okay here in the house all by yourself?” Jone asked him.

Ethan looked up at her, squinting. As if she’d wakened him. As if she were a bright light and he were a hangover.

“I’m not alone,” he said. “Rufus is here.”

“Right. Sorry. You got something to eat?”

“I still have one helping of that good chicken stew. It’s been in the fridge. It should still be okay. Right? I hope so. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

Jone counted days out loud, and on her fingers.

“Yeah. Five days or so. Should be okay. Sure you don’t need anything?”

“A hot bath and lots of sleep,” he said.

She nodded once and made her way to the door.

“Jone,” he said. Before she could get away.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“I was happy to be part of the thing.”

“Tell Sam I appreciate it. All of it. Even putting me back here at home and telling the hospital we’re not coming till morning. I’ll tell him myself tomorrow. But tell him I appreciate him anyway. Okay?”

“He knows. But yeah. I will.”

Then she let herself out.

Ethan savored the silence for a few minutes before rising stiffly and heating up his dinner.

Even a couple of days later Ethan would be unable to remember what he was thinking that evening. He would think he’d forgotten. But there was nothing to forget. He wasn’t thinking. Thoughts would have required a minimal level of energy that Ethan did not have to give.