I half looked to see three concentric color-coded circles over half of the country on his drawing. Ash-fall zones, of course. They were like a drawing I had seen in one of Will’s many Yellowstone volcano books and amazingly accurate in comparison to the hypothesized drawings that had been broadcasted on the news stations. I wouldn’t expect less from Will.
He scratched his head and looked out the window in awe. “Ash! And if it’s an El Niño year, the track can change.”
I turned the wipers back on. Screw the ash. I didn’t want to see it. Tiny particles of jagged rock and volcanic glass that the earth had spewed in its wrath now fell on my car and would eventually work their way into both my and Will’s asthmatic lungs. A cough seized me.
Reid whispered, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I simmered as I took another gulp of water, my dry mouth not abated.
Will asked, “Can we stop? I need to collect ash.”
I clenched my teeth. It didn’t help the headache building in the right side of a sinus cavity. I sighed. The volcano had erupted. It was his moment. I couldn’t fault him for that. Some kids dreamed of amusement parks; he wanted a cool eruption.
“There will be enough ash for us when we reach Colorado.”
“Good. I brought a few containers,” he said.
I kept my gaze forward, wondering what Reid thought of this interchange. He was quiet and, thankfully, distracted by looking outside. I had stopped apologizing aloud for Will a while ago. Still. That hefty pill was lodged halfway down my throat. Let it go, Harrison whispered to me. Or as my girlfriend Siobhan always said, Let that shit go. I repressed the urge to spiral into the list of never-gonna-happens. That list was omnipresent and long. I had moved past the verbal apologizing, but I clung to the feeling that sat like an obstinate mule within me. He was still Will. He was that unique boy who loved volcanoes and thought and felt differently than others. He was the boy who brought brightness to my days.
“You’re sad, Mom. We’ll find Finn. Don’t be sad. Maybe he already collected some ash.”
“Maybe,” I said, turning my lips into a half smile for his sake.
****
We didn’t get far.
“I’m sorry,” I said. The headache raged in my skull.
“Really, no need to say that,” Reid repeated for the third time.
I longed for a hotel bed, but I needed to stay thrifty so camping it was. It was a step up from sleeping in the car again. I watched, bleary, as Reid set to work on the tent. Although I’d become a pro at assembling the two-person tent quickly, it was a welcome to have assistance instead of having Will “help” by playing with the stakes and poles.
I blinked and took in the surroundings. This campground was not as crowded as the previous one. My feminist instinct deplored allowing Reid to take the lead on setting up camp, but I was grateful to have a guy with me. Sure, I had worked my way through a field dominated by men, seen other females pave the path for our generation, but when it came to it, with the current state of our country and where it was likely heading…and especially after the last few days, I felt safer having another person with me. Regardless of gender. I had to be more guarded. Yet, here I was giving a lift to a stranger.
Reid worked, unfazed by the muddy ground.
He knew the area. He was an asset, my mind reasoned. And he was friendly…
“Will, please gather a few branches. Stay where I can see you,” I said.
“Okay, Mom.”
I found myself amused. He fought me tooth and nail on homework, baths, chores, and a laundry-list of responsibilities, but nature, that he loved. He was a true naturalist like his mom and dad. Perhaps this new chaotic world would be better for him. The eruption certainly did open his wishful career path as volcanologist, I thought wryly.
Will hummed as he paused in his collecting to create some sort of structure. “Will, those are for the fire.”
He didn’t acknowledge me, aware yet oblivious. So much for his help. “No worries. There’s more,” Reid offered, gathering a few decent-sized logs on the forest fringe.
“I should have brought my cooking stove and canisters. Fires are so old school,” I apologized. I hadn’t been able to locate Harrison’s cooking gear stash in my packing.
“Nah, it’s classic and versatile,” he countered.
“It certainly limits our food choices,” I added.
Soreness rose in my legs. As I paced the campsite, the pinching in the middle of my forehead caused me to stumble, and I grabbed a nearby tree trunk.
Reid stopped in his work and laid a fleeting hand on my back, then dropped it. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Headache. I’ve got a cold and haven’t been sleeping well.” I’m also weaning off an anti-anxiety med, I wanted to add.
“Why don’t you rest? I can handle this. Need to earn my keep.”
“Thanks.” I breathed through it. It wasn’t like my usual migraine. Those took a full day to subside. Something was wrong in the air today, too. Well, something was wrong. Ash. The rational scientist in me told me this was not triggered from the ash. My mommy intuition agreed with that deduction because I’d had more illnesses than I could count since having kids. That would explain why Will wasn’t affected yet, and I was a stumbling fool. A cold with withdrawal effects made a nasty combo. Toss in asthma-triggering ash, and it wasn’t the best recipe.
I sat at the picnic table, sipping tepid water. I rested my head on my arms, pacified by Will’s humming and traipsing around with sticks and such.
A short while later, I awoke. I yawned, the painful scratch of a sore throat befalling me as I found the campsite empty. I had fallen asleep?
“Will?”
I looked around. No Will. No Reid.
I hurried to the tent and ducked my head inside. Nope. Dusk loomed, and the scent of cooking dinners and smoky fires filled the air. Too much water in my stomach sloshed. “Will?” I said louder. “Reid?” I pressed a hand to my mouth, willing the nausea away.
My gaze skimmed the area, and on cue, palpitations took hold of me, but oddly my fingers didn’t prickle with their usual wary concern. Regardless, my mind’s paranoia began its downward spin. No, no, no…
“Here! Here, AJ.” Reid approached at a quick gait from a cluster of oaks on the far end of the campsite. Will lollygagged beside him while carrying a muddy cat.
I groaned. I hurried to them and brushed a hand through Will’s disheveled hair. “Will…”
He ignored me and stroked the cat, a marbled brown and black furball. “The cat crossed our site, and I followed it. He crawled into a bush over there—” He paused with a flick of his chin to behind him. “—and got stuck! I had to save him. It was a prickly bush!”
I shared my best pissed-off glare with Reid.
He quickly said, “I’m sorry. I tried to wake you. You were passed out. Will’s kinda fast though. Didn’t want him to wander out of sight. We came right back. Didn’t want you to wake up and worry…like you just did. My bad.” His wide, cordial smile disarmed me but didn’t settle my racing pulse.
“We were gonna check and see if the camp manager knows whose cat this is. See, look? Tags,” Will said. “Maybe if we can’t find his home, he can come home with us. Snow needs a friend.”
“I was going to wake you before we went to the office,” Reid added.
I tried my best thank-you look with Reid. A short while later, after depositing the cat with the clerk, we enjoyed, if one could refer to it as such, a shared can of chili with bread we purchased at the camp store.
“I need it warmed with butter,” Will moaned as I handed him a piece.
“Don’t have any. Plain bread will do.”
Will wrinkled his nose. “I never eat bread without butter. That chili smells gross! I like yours better, Mom. You’re making that slurping sound when you eat it.” He pouted, dimples appearing high on his cheeks.
Now was not the time for me to push on the eating front. “Have a banana and
pepperoni instead.”
Will dug through our bin of food and found what he needed. An evening breeze blew past me, and I shivered despite wearing a thick hoodie. Will stoked the fire with a branch, and I shifted closer to it.
My diamond wedding band twinkled back at me as I twirled it around using the tip of my thumb. The light of the fire cast shimmers of blue and yellow in the simple princess-cut facets. Reid’s glance fell upon me. “Is your husband in Denver, too, with your brother?”
“No.” Bread caught in my throat, as I swallowed another bite of the awful truth. I never pretended it didn’t happen. I blocked it the best a widow with two spirited, challenging sons could.
Instead of eating, Will moved on to collecting stones to create miniature cairns. “Dad’s in heaven.” He paused in his collecting, handing me one of the rocks. “For Finn, Mom.”
Heat flooded my cheeks, and an ache clutched my heart at his indifference. Will had come a long way in the past year with accepting Harrison’s passing.
“I’m sorry,” Reid said, his expression pensive, his words sedate.
I waved a glib hand but said, “Thanks.”
“Were you visiting your brother in Salt Lake City, then, for vacation?”
I realized belatedly that I’d never elaborated upon that part. “Oh, yeah, my brother met us there. He flew from San Diego, and we met him for a family vacation.” I sipped my water, the feel of the bread, although long since swallowed, lingering in my throat.
“Ah.”
“We went to Yellowstone!” Will added.
Reid swiped a hand through his hair. “No way?”
I nodded. “Way.”
Will interjected, “Yeah! We were there right before it went kablooey!” He tipped one of his cairn piles for effect.
“Wow,” Reid said. He shuffled a few logs around to encourage the fire, which had trouble keeping a strong flame.
Will restacked the rocks. “We also visited a bunch of other parks—the Tetons, Craters of the Moon, Mount St. Helens, and Crater Lake. It was a volcano vacation!”
Reid’s gaze passed between an excited Will and my certainly dour expression.
Will rattled on, “I guess some of those aren’t there anymore, huh? Well, the Tetons and Craters of the Moon for sure. Not sure about the others. I don’t think Washington or Oregon were impacted as much as Idaho and Wyoming. Yellowstone is not there! Did you see the pictures on the news? Obliterated!”
Reid nodded, his attention now focused solely on Will. “I did.”
So had I. A magma chamber of grand proportion that had bubbled beneath Yellowstone had unleashed a fiery storm in the blink of an eye. “Will, how big was the magma chamber?”
“Twenty-five by fifty miles, Mom. The chamber can fill ten Grand Canyons.”
Tremendous ground drop and collapse. All those magnificent mountains—gone, swallowed into the belly of the earth. Several vents had erupted lava and ash into the air. Lahars had rushed down the larger mountains and destroyed thousands of acres of woodland. Rivers, lakes, wildlife—gone. All those entrancing rainbow hot springs—gone. People. So many people—dead. All of it wiped away within minutes and hours. It had not been a slow eruption. Violent and quick. The world caught unaware. Not supervolcanic level, but…
I rubbed my forehead. The smoke from the fires in the campground was especially permeating, and my head wasn’t any better after eating. My throat throbbed. The facts were daunting. I felt like shit.
Will came over. He sat beside me on the log and lifted my hand. He then kissed it with tender affection. I smiled. “Thanks, honey.” Just as quickly, he ambled to his cairns. He began to construct a bridge with sticks between two cairn piles.
Reid quietly watched us but said nothing. I caressed a thumb on the back of my hand where Will’s wet lips had been. When he was younger, he used to go up to strangers and kiss their hands or rub their bellies as he spoke to them. I’d chalked it to his curiosity and the way he communicated with people—he loved to touch. Perhaps it was his way of connecting with them when he couldn’t on the same neurological level. When he’d kissed a random stranger’s hand while we were at the dry cleaners one day, it had finally signaled a trigger of unease in my mind. It wasn’t usual for kids to do that. He’d been four years old then.
He had quirks I’d disregarded for years.
My head grew foggier, and I coughed.
“How are you doing?” Reid asked.
“Not so hot. A cold. Migraine.” Medication withdrawal, I didn’t add again.
I glanced at my watch. It was only seven p.m., but I was spent. “Will, let’s get you ready for bed.”
“Aww, Mom. You said I can stay up later in the summer.”
“I’m tired today, Will. We can have an early start tomorrow.”
I gave Reid a questioning glance. He nodded. “I’ll stay awake and wait for the fire to die. I’ve got a sleeping bag here.”
“Thank you.”
I then tucked Will in, curled next to him, tire iron in my hand, my head roaring. Will wiggled and insisted that I sing. After, he spoke in a happy whisper.
“I like this guy, Mom. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I mumbled, but tightened my grip on both Will and the iron nonetheless. “No wandering off after more cats, okay?”
“But—”
“William…”
“Okay. Night, Mom.”
****
My body may have been tired, but my mind certainly hadn’t gotten the memo. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night for fresh air. The rain had not abated the muggy Midwest August heat. I stepped out of the stifling tent, swimming through the dark, damp air and into more mugginess.
I gasped. Reid was leaning against a tree with a headlamp on and was thumbing through a thin paperback.
“Sorry. Trouble sleeping?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, a hand pressed to my startled heart. I closed the tent flap while I recovered myself. “I never sleep well while camping.” I turned to face him. “You’ve been lugging around books in that thing?” I pointed toward his large pack.
He laughed quietly. “Ah, yeah, a few. Going across the country can be a lonely process. Too much time with my own thoughts.”
“You’re telling me.”
He added, “Why not read someone else’s instead?” The fire had long since extinguished, and he had the look of a spelunker with the headlamp on.
I shielded my eyes from its glare.
“Oops. Sorry.” He removed it and placed it beside him, the light’s beam angled away from my face. He reached into his pack, withdrew a lollipop, and unwrapped it. “Want one?”
He stood, shuffled over, and clicked on my lantern that I’d left on the picnic table.
“No, thanks. Sweet tooth?”
A full smile parted his lips. “You bet. A man’s gotta have his vices, right?”
I pointed to the book. “Learn anything profound?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.” He raised the flappy paperback, and I squinted to read the title.
“The Great Divorce? Heavy reading,” I commented, recalling the other C. S. Lewis works I’d read in college. I scratched my head, grasping for the theme of this one.
My unconvinced look must’ve reflected my questions as I sat across from him.
“It’s about a man’s journey between heaven and hell.” His mouth curved with a weighted sadness. “My sister always liked Lewis. I decided it was time I read his work and find out why. I’m a late bloomer with books. I can see the allure now.”
“Deep philosophical reads are your way of diving in? Why not start with some thrillers or suspense?”
He shook the thinner, flimsy book, and said, “It’s lightweight for travel and keeps my gears turning. Good book-club material. Besides, we have suspense around us right now.”
Except it was not fiction. Both of us knew his attempt at lighthearted banter wasn’t working.
Instead,
we sat, adrift with our thoughts.
I coughed, wishing I’d brought my water bottle out of the tent with me. A yawn reminded me I needed to sleep, but then Reid spoke. “Your son, Will, he…” He scratched his chin as if he didn’t know how to raise the subject.
“He’s autistic. Well, technically it’s Asperger’s syndrome, but that label’s obsolete now since his diagnosis,” I said matter-of-factly, too tired to tiptoe around the subject.
Reid nodded. “Ah. I see.”
More introspective silence came from my companion. At least he didn’t give me the pity look or the “I’m sorry” or the “It’s a blessing” bullshit. My headache inched up the base of my neck toward my skull. A wave of dizziness assaulted me. I breathed through it and grappled with what to say next. Small talk with adults felt alien. The usual parent-to-parent conversations with carpool moms had become stilted these days.
“Do you ever ask why things happen?”
All the time. I brushed a hand over my face. “Why what things happen?”
“Why the eruption? Why autism?” he said bluntly.
Well, if seeing him reading a classic C. S. Lewis book in the night had surprised me, this nearly floored me. My brain wasn’t on prime functioning mode right now. “We’ve all had times when we’ve asked why. Just spare me the pity.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not one to pity another. Life throws a lot of shit at us.”
My hands grew clammy, and I licked my lips. Fatigued and intrigued, I leaned forward. “Okay, I bite. Why?”
“What if the eruption was God’s way of resetting man? And—” He paused, looking at the tent for the briefest of moments. “—autism is God’s way of resetting humanity. Time for a redo.”
I must’ve looked skeptical and if I had my water bottle, I would’ve snorted the water. “You’ve been taking your Lewis to heart. The volcano is science. Period.”
He continued, “You’re not a woman of faith?”
“I take it you’re a man of such beliefs?” I pointed to his book. I was no stranger to C. S. Lewis’s theological bent. I remembered that much.
He shrugged. “I’m the product of your typical Catholic upbringing. No shortage of icons in our house, weekly CCD classes, and routine confessions. My mom did a lot of charity work for church, tried hard to mold Lily and me into well-balanced, compassionate, caring people…,” he said, his voice fading. He cleared his throat. “I’ve traveled some long roads. Have had a lot of time to think…about stuff. Yeah, I guess I am a man of faith…of some sort.”
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