Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (36 page)

She laughed. A light, lilting thing. Like something the wind could toss around. Then she pointed Ethan down the hall.

He bought a soda, then carried it past the nurse on the way back to his father’s room.

“Going back in,” she said, clearly understanding all the subtext of such an act.

“I am,” he said. “It’s a hard time in his life. And . . . you know. He’s still my dad.”

Chapter Seventeen: Smart

Three days after his father was found

Morning light blasted through the hospital room window, and Ethan opened his eyes. He squinted and winced, took a moment to adjust, then looked over to see how his father was doing.

Noah was sitting more or less upright, his eyes wide open. He’d apparently used the bed controls to adjust into more of a sitting position. He was staring at the spot on the bed where his left leg should have been.

He seemed absorbed in what he was thinking, so Ethan was surprised when his father spoke to him—surprised that Noah had even noticed Ethan was awake.

“You slept in,” Noah said.

“I was awake a long time in the night.”

“Oh.” Still his father never took his eyes off the empty spot on his hospital bed. “I slept like the dead.”

“Actually . . . ,” Ethan said. Then he wasn’t sure whether he should finish.

“What?”

“We had a long conversation. Well. Longish. For us, anyway.”

“What did I say?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“No. I thought I was asleep all night. What did I say?”

“Oh. Nothing much.”

“You said it was a longish conversation.”

“You talked about the moon. You were staring at the moon, and you said you’d been staring at it every night out there in the wilderness and wondering if it would be the last time you’d ever see it.”

No reply.

“And you said I was really smart.”

“Well, you are.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said.

Then he decided there was no point in pushing the issue any further.

“Think I’ll get used to this?” Noah asked, still staring at the missing leg.

“Yes. I’m sure you will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because people get used to things. We just do. What other choice do we have? We always say we’ll never get used to change, but then the change happens and we do.”

“See?” Noah said. “Smart.”

Sam was waiting for Ethan down by the nurses’ station, smiling. More or less at nobody and nothing. Just smiling.

“How’s the yearling?” Ethan asked him.

“Oh, she’s okay now.”

“Where’s Jone?”

“She hadn’t been to see her family since before our pack trip. I told her I could take care of things here at home. So she’s over on the reservation on the other side of the foothills today. Seeing her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids.”

Because Sam couldn’t seem to wipe the goofy grin off his face, Ethan asked, “She been seeing anybody else lately?”

Sam grinned more widely, and they turned and walked down the hall together, toward the elevator.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

But just at that moment he broke into the funniest little dance. Only two or three steps, but it made Ethan laugh out loud. Then Sam stopped dancing and placed a finger to his lips in a shushing signal.

“I didn’t say a word,” Ethan said.

“So, on a more serious note,” Sam said, “how do you feel about reporters?”

“What about them?”

“You okay with them?”

“What kind of reporters?”

“Like newspaper reporters. Although this might be a good time to figure out how you feel about other kinds of reporters, too.”

“I must be missing something, Sam. I pretty much just woke up.”

“There’s a newspaper reporter down in the lobby. He’s hoping to get a word with you.”

Ethan stopped walking. It took Sam a step or two to notice.

“Why?” he asked Sam, when Sam had noticed.

“Because it’s news. It’s not such a small thing, what just happened. It’s a human interest story. Man goes out into the wilderness and almost dies and everybody gives up on finding him except his teenage son, who actually does. You didn’t think people would want to hear about that?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

They began walking toward the elevator again. Slowly.

“I didn’t promise him you’d have anything to say to him,” Sam said. “Only that I’d ask.”

“Oh, you talked to him?”

“A little bit. Yeah. I hope you don’t mind. I thought a story like that’d be good for Friendly Sam’s Pack Service.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “Right. Well, that’s fine. You have a right to get a little publicity off this. I hope it helps.”

They stopped at the elevator, and Sam pushed the “Down” button.

“I’m glad you’re not mad,” Sam said.

Silence. They stared at the readout of floors. Floor number four was lighted up. But nothing seemed to move.

“So, are you going to talk to that reporter?” Sam asked.

“I can’t decide. I don’t really like the idea. I don’t want this being all about me. And I don’t think it’s something I meant for everybody to know about. I feel like it’s more of a situation you talk about with your own family. And another thing. I have this idea that the great human interest story about the son who won’t give up on his dad revolves around the idea that dad and son adore each other. I think the whole thing sort of falls down without that.”

The elevator’s lighted floor display began to move. Toward them. Ethan felt more relieved than he could consciously justify.

“Well, it’s up to you,” Sam said.

Ding. The elevator doors slid open and his father’s doctor stepped out. Smiling, as always.

“How is the patient this morning?” he asked Ethan.

“Seems okay,” Ethan said.

Then Ethan and Sam stepped onto the elevator together.

The doctor reached out and held one of the doors to keep them both from closing.

“One question, Ethan, if you don’t mind. Does your father take a lot of prescription pain medication as a matter of course?”

Ethan blinked under the fluorescent lights and considered the question. And felt as though he didn’t have enough time to consider it. What with the elevator doors being held pending his answer.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean . . . not that I know of. Why?”

“It’s just that we’re giving him quite a lot of pain medication. As much as I dare prescribe. It should be enough for a much larger man. But he never seems to feel it’s enough. I just thought maybe it was a tolerance issue. That maybe he takes medication regularly and has built up a high tolerance.”

“Or maybe just a low pain threshold,” Ethan said.

“Yes, yes. Maybe so.”

The doctor let go of the doors and walked off down the hall with a wave and a nod.

“One other thing about the reporter,” Sam said as the elevator headed down. “He asked a lot about whether we think the park service was at fault.”

“What did you say?”

“Just that your dad was pretty well hidden.”

“Yeah. Hmm. Maybe I should talk to him a little bit. You know. Just to let Ranger Dave off the hook.”

“You’re Ethan?” the reporter asked.

The man jumped to his feet. As though to be Ethan was to hold a position of respect. As if Ethan were royalty, or a judge, and the world had to jump to its feet every time he entered a room.

The reporter had a sharply receding hairline, but he looked too young to have lost so much hair. Early thirties, maybe. What hair he had was bushy and wild. He wore nice dress pants and a white shirt with a tie, but no jacket. The clothes and the hair seemed mismatched.

“I’m Ethan, yeah. But I’m not sure how thrilled I am with a news story about Ethan. I mean, I know it’s a story, what happened. I was thinking it was more like a story for the next family Thanksgiving. Not for the front page of anything.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but the story’s going to be in the newspaper one way or the other. It’s a newsworthy thing that happened around here. It’s really more a question of whether you want any of your own words in the article.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “Hmm. I’m not sure.”

“Maybe I could ask you a few questions. You don’t have to answer any you don’t want.”

“Okay.”

“What made you go out into the wilderness to look for your dad? No, wait . . . let me rephrase that. I know why you wanted to find him. I guess what I’m trying to ask is . . . what made you think you
could
find him?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t . . . what?”

“Think I could find him. None of us did.”

“Then why go out there?”

“So I would always know I tried,” he said.
And to be brave for a change,
he didn’t say.

The reporter scribbled notes on his pad. For longer than Ethan would have liked. While the man wrote, Ethan glanced around at Sam, who was standing over by the gift shop. Sam smiled reassuringly.

“Do you blame the park service and search and rescue for not finding him?”

“No,” Ethan said. “I was disappointed when they called off the search. Who wouldn’t be? But I know exactly why they did what they did. And once we found him, we totally understood why the searchers didn’t. He was really hidden well. It would have been almost impossible to find him.”

“Then how did you?”

“Yeah, good question,” Ethan said. “We asked ourselves that a lot. And we asked each other. It was a weird stroke of luck. One of the mules started acting up and drove my mule off into the weeds, and she got her hoof caught on my dad’s fleece jacket. It was one of those things you couldn’t repeat in a million years no matter how hard you tried. And then that was like an arrow pointing to where he went off the trail.”

“But you didn’t call the searchers and ask them to go out on that ledge.”

“No. You can’t get cell reception up there. And Sam’s sat phone wouldn’t get a signal. We were a couple hours from a phone. We didn’t figure we had that kind of time.”

“How did you feel when you saw your dad again?”

Ethan instinctively took a step backward.

“No,” he said. “This is the part I don’t want. I don’t want to tell a bunch of strangers how I feel. It won’t be what they’re expecting anyway. I have to go.”

Ethan signaled to Sam and then headed for the parking lot. At a good clip, considering his legs still felt welded on and mostly immobile.

He purposely didn’t look back to see how the reporter felt about his abrupt departure.

Chapter Eighteen: I Give Up

Eleven days after his father was found

“Thanks for bringing us home,” Ethan said, more or less to both Jone and Sam at the same time.

His father had no comment. On anything. He just stared out the window of Jone’s SUV as the A-frame came into view. He hadn’t said a word since checking out of the hospital.

“Of course,” Jone said.

“We’re not about to leave you on your own with a thing like this,” Sam added.

“It’s just that . . . you’ve both put so much time into this,” Ethan said. “I’ll bet you never guessed what you were getting yourself into when this thing started.”

“We’ve come this far together,” Sam said. “Might as well finish the job right.”

Jone swung the SUV into the A-frame’s driveway and pulled up close to the front door.

“Sam, go get the wheelchair from the back,” she said. “Okay?” She met Ethan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “When are you and your dad headed back to New York again, Ethan?”

“Monday. We think. But my mom got refundable tickets. Because he has one more medical appointment before then. On Friday. And the doctor has to clear him to make the trip.”

Ethan glanced over at his father, to see how Noah felt about being discussed as if he weren’t in the vehicle at all. Ethan wasn’t doing it on purpose. But Noah seemed distant, and would not engage, and Ethan had no idea how to solve that.

“What time should I pick you two up on Friday?” Jone asked.

“No, you’ve done enough, Jone. I’ll call a cab.”

“Out here? It’ll cost a fortune.”

“You’ve already done so much.”

“Oh, hush. What time?”

“We have to be there at eleven.”

Then there was no more time to talk, because Sam had the door beside Noah open and the wheelchair in position with the brakes on. And it was time for the difficult—and, at least to Ethan, nerve-racking—task of getting Noah from the car into the chair.

Jone took one of Noah’s arms and Sam took the other, and they got him turned around with his back to the open door. Which was a little scary in itself. Ethan hoped his dad knew enough not to move or lean back. But it was impossible to know, because Noah still wasn’t talking.

They did the big transfer, and it was fast. Sam and Jone did the heavy lifting. Ethan just steadied his father’s right leg.

Then it was over, and all they heard from Noah was a pained grunt.

“I can take it from here,” Ethan said when they had helped him get the wheelchair up the front steps.

“You’re sure, now?” Jone asked.

“Yeah. I think so. I mean, I can wheel him into the house. That’s nothing. I might need help getting him into bed tonight.”

“You should let us come in,” Sam said, “and get him into bed right now. I think he’ll be more comfortable there.”

“No,” Noah said.

It was flat, and loud. And sudden. It created its own curtain of silence. Ethan was the one to break through it.

“Why don’t you want to be in bed, Dad?”

“I’m sick of lying in bed. Besides. I might have to go to the bathroom.”

“We have a bedpan.”

“Right. That’s exactly why. That’s just what I don’t want. I don’t want you bringing me a bedpan and emptying it for me. Cleaning up after me like I’m a baby who doesn’t know how to use the potty yet. I’ve been housebroken for forty years, thank you very much.”

Ethan looked into his father’s face, but couldn’t engage his eyes. Noah saw to it that he couldn’t. Ethan looked up at Sam and Jone instead.

Sam shrugged slightly. Jone kept her reactions to herself.

“That doesn’t quite work, Dad. I mean, I can wheel you into the bathroom, or you can wheel yourself in. But I’m not sure how you’re supposed to get from the wheelchair to . . . you know.”

“Can we discuss this in private, Ethan? You know. The two of us?”

“We’ll drop in once or twice later today,” Jone said. “See how you’re doing.”

“Thanks. We’ve got a ton of groceries. Thanks to you guys.”

Ethan watched them pile into the vehicle and turn it around, and drive off down the driveway to the road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them.

He looked down at his father, who pointedly did not look back. It was just the two of them now.

“If I can wheel myself into the bathroom,” Noah said, “at least I can dump my own bedpan.”

“Okay,” Ethan said. “We can give that a try, anyway. If you’re sure it’s what you want.”

“Quite sure,” Noah said.

Ethan undid the brake on the chair and wheeled his dad into the house. Rufus reared and danced to see Noah, or to see that Ethan was home, or both.

Ethan realized the moment had arrived, the one he and his father had both been dreading. The one Noah had been willing to withdraw five hundred dollars in cash from the bank to solve. They were stuck in this tiny house together. There was absolutely no way out.

But Noah wheeled himself into his bedroom, swinging the door mostly closed behind his wheelchair, and Ethan barely saw him after that.

A good two hours later Ethan heard a big sound from his father’s bedroom. It sounded like a huge, explosive expression of pain.

He ran in to see his father positioning himself on his back on the bed.

Noah looked up into Ethan’s face with exaggerated pride.

“See? I can get from the wheelchair to the bed and back again. By myself. So tell your friends they’re no longer needed.”

“They’ll still be stopping by.”

“Whatever. You can keep them out there with you.”

Ethan shook his head. More of a comment on his father’s behavior than he should have let show. Than he would have let show if he’d been thinking better. He turned to leave.

“Ethan. Wait. I need more of those painkillers.”

Ethan looked at his cheap watch. As always, the gesture was punctuated by a pang of loss and old, stale fear.

“You’re not due again for another two and a half hours.”

“But I need them now.”

“But the doctor was very specific. This is a scary-high dosage he has you on. He told me to hold on to the pills and be careful how I dispensed them.”

A silence. Ethan could feel his father’s mood crackle. In the past, it would have frightened him. Now all he had to do was walk away if things got too bad. And even if he didn’t walk away, well . . . he just wasn’t afraid of the man anymore. Things between Ethan and his father weren’t anything like they had ever been. Ethan wasn’t quite sure what they were. Just that they were new.

“You’re dispensing my medication now?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Because this wasn’t demoralizing and emasculating enough for me?”

“Because the doctor suspects you’ve been taking a lot of painkillers for a long time. And that you might take a harmful dose . . . maybe even a fatal one . . . you know . . . because of having such a high tolerance.”

Another silence. Ethan glanced at his father, who pointedly did not glance back.

“Are you asking me if that’s true?” Noah said after a time.

“Sure,” Ethan said. “Why not?”

“Nobody my age does what I do—what I
did
, I mean—without painkillers.”

“I’m not sure that’s right,” Ethan said. “But either way, you’ve got yourself in a bind where no safe amount is enough. There’s not much I can do about that. Why did you take so many pills? You weren’t already injured, were you?”

“Depends on what you call injured. I had shin splints and a pulled hamstring. And anything over twelve miles, my knees would swell up.”

“I can think of a way to solve that. Only run eleven miles.”

“Not how I solve things,” Noah said. “But I sure solved it now, didn’t I? Because I’m fresh out of knees.”

“Give me a yell if you need anything,” Ethan said, pulling the door closed behind himself.

“I need another of those pills,” Noah yelled through the door.

“Two and a half hours,” Ethan called back.

Ethan wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed between that unpleasant exchange and the knock on the A-frame’s door. Maybe an hour. Maybe less.

He assumed it was Sam, or Jone. Or both. So he moved to open the door with a lightness in his heart and gut. Because seeing them would be just what he needed. Their calm, helpful energy would erase the bad taste left over from dealing with his dad. Or so Ethan hoped.

He threw the door wide.

Standing on his stoop was Ranger Dave.

The ranger had his hat in his hands, in more ways than one. He literally held his wide-brimmed ranger hat in front of his belly. But he also carried his head slightly down, his eyes averted, like a man forced into a conciliatory, hat-in-hands gesture.

“Oh,” Ethan said. “It’s you.”

“If I shouldn’t be here, I’ll go. I mean . . . I shouldn’t be here. In an official sense I probably shouldn’t be. I guess I came here more as me and less as a ranger. But if you don’t want me here, I’ll turn and walk away right now. It’s not my intention to intrude.”

“No, it’s okay. You want to come in?”

“This won’t take that long. I just wanted to apologize. Unofficially.”

“I understand why things happened the way they did,” Ethan said.

“It was very generous of you, the way you said in the paper that you didn’t blame us. I wanted to thank you for that. Unofficially.”

“No problem.”

“It’s a hard thing to deal with. For us, I mean. For me. Having been so wrong.”

Ethan didn’t answer. Because he had no idea what he could say to alleviate that feeling. Or even if it was his job to do so.

“You sure you don’t want to come in?”

“No. I’m almost done here. I just want to say I’m glad your father is okay. And, yeah, he was hidden. He would have been really hard to find. Even if we had stayed out there, I’m not sure if we ever would have found him, given where it turned out he was. But I see now we should have kept trying. I think what I feel worst about is how I misjudged him.”

“Misjudged him?”

“Yes. I think you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Ethan said.

Behind Ranger Dave, Ethan saw the tiny dot of Sam’s pickup moving up the road in his direction. It made his gut feel lighter and less pinched.

“I thought he was this rotten guy who just took off on you. I guess I formed a mental picture of him based on a few facts we uncovered. I’m sorry for thinking your dad was a rotten guy.”

“My dad
is
a rotten guy,” Ethan said.

That sat clumsily in the air for a time, stopping the conversation.

Ethan glanced over his shoulder into the house. He wasn’t even sure why. Had there been a small sound? Maybe.

His father was there, in his wheelchair, not three steps behind where Ethan stood—off to one side, where the open door had blocked the ranger’s view of him. Close enough to hear everything. Ethan didn’t know how long he’d been back there. But in another way, by the look on Noah’s face, he knew.

Sam’s truck turned into the A-frame’s driveway, and Ethan was pleased to see that it was both of them coming to check in. Both Sam and Jone.

Ranger Dave glanced over his shoulder at the truck, then set his hat back on his head. He nodded a quick good-bye to Ethan and hurried to his big white SUV.

Ethan looked around at his dad again.

“Sorry,” he said. “But . . . this is Sam and Jone, so if you really don’t want to see them . . .”