by Edward Es
“I don’t think he could find the Goodyear Blimp if it was in the secondary the way he’s throwing today,” adds Madden.
Michaels cringes. “Anyway, we’ll see if the strategy changes for the Cowboys here in the second half. By the way, folks, we’d like to remind you all that following the second playoff game, HTV will be carrying, live, the Cruisin’ for Kids benefit concert broadcast from a ship, I guess we found out this morning is in Hawaii. It was some kind of mystery cruise where nobody knew where they were going until they got there. And somehow it’s all connected with this unbelievable space adventure with Thomas Holmes, isn’t it John?”
“That’s right, Al. He owns that ship, and he arranged for all those kids to go on it before he went up in his rocket. I don’t know about you, but that whole story has really got me thinkin’ about a lot of stuff. Whatever happens, I know they’ve already raised something like over two million dollars just with those T-shirts, and a lot more on the Internet for children’s charities.”
“And this concert stands to raise even more, especially considering all the incredible things that have happened. Many of the kids on that ship were sick or crippled, and suddenly they aren’t. None of us understands what’s happened, but it doesn’t matter. We’re just thankful for all of it,” says Michaels.
“You got that right. Plus, they’re going to have Marcy Marxer and Cathy Fink, and a bunch of other people.”
“I’d guess you don’t go to Hawaii much since you don’t like to fly.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should put some pontoons, or whatever they are, on my bus. I could even get some of those slacker defensive linemen down there to, you know, row with those big oars. Kind of like one of those Viking ships? A little trip to Hawaii, I’ll bet they’d be movin’ a little faster.”
Al looks at him in wonder. “I’ll be sure to tell them you said that.” He turns back to the camera. “We’ll be back with the halftime stats after this message.”
When the camera light goes off he looks back at Madden who motions, what?
Night has fallen upon the Shack, softened by an unexpected Indian summer brought by the tropical wave that passed through, inducing Bud to drift asleep like a faithful watchdog. Francine comes out stretching and yawning, letting the screen door slam and waking Bud, who sits up in a stupor. She looks at him and starts to laugh until she realizes she woke him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d be sleeping out here. How long was I out?”
Bud stands up and nearly falls over, a failed attempt at nonchalance. “I wasn’t sleeping, actually. Well, maybe just dozing.”
“There’s a difference?”
“About three hours.”
“What?”
“You were asleep about three hours.”
“I see.”
Bud rubs his face. “Oh, you meant the difference between, dozing and sleeping. I thought...”
Both realize the futility of continuing and look away. Francine is still trying not to laugh. “Should we start over?”
“I think maybe we should.” She walks back in and he sits back down. Then she walks out, stretching and yawning again, not very convincingly.
“Hello. How was your nap?” he asks artificially.
“Oh, fine. How long was I out?”
As Bud answers, she lip syncs. “About three hours.”
“I see. Would you like to take a walk?”
“I’d love to. You lead the way.”
Francine walks down the steps and he follows as she takes the path toward the back of the Shack. Bud walks a few steps behind, content with the view. “It’s how tight your eyes are shut.”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“The difference between dozing and sleeping.”
“Ah, ha. OK.”
He catches up, and after a few more steps, she takes his arm. He looks down at that arm, around which her hand is gently draped, then straight ahead.
Tom sits at the console, his chin cradled in his hands, looking out the window. It’s still sinking in that the Earth is growing larger instead of smaller. Of all the miracles that happened back home, none is more elegant than his return when he had accepted the end of his life in the blackness of space. He was saved, and can hardly believe it, by the generous farewell of his son. Even if he’d been destined to float off into eternity alone, he would have done so content with having been with Noah once again. Yet, still this humbling gift he received, and from his son, or through his son. He takes a remotes and points at a Tivo player, running the Grodin interview on his screen in rewind scan. He stops and selects play.
“I can’t wait to see you and give you a big hug. I also hope you feel like saying something to all of us down here because we prayed so hard for you,” Melody says again.
He pushes pause on the remote and her face freezes on the screen. Certainly, he must honor that request, but has no idea what to say, much less how to say it. Unable to resolve what to do, he looks at the locker where he stored Theo and the Book. He floats over and takes the Book out, returns to the seat, and places it on his lap, laying his hand on the cover. He hasn’t opened the Book since just after Noah’s memorial service. Of course, he knows its contents by heart, having listened to Sunman tell the legend to Noah so many times, as was the tradition. And Noah knew it to the minutest detail, knowing as well, even at that young age, the onerous duty that was his to draw his page when the time came. But as much as he wanted to, he hadn’t come to the point before he passed away that he was prepared to tell his story, and that hurt him more than his own fatal suffering.
Tom opens the cover as if it would disintegrate in his hand. It’s an ancient book, compiled over generations by ancestors using deerskin and leather string, replaced occasionally, but not for over two hundred years. He stares at the first page, then turns to the next, revealing simple drawings on each. As the pages turn, the stories revive in his mind, each the culmination of an old life, an attempt to make sense of that life, and to offer an answer.
As he reaches the last page on the right side of the Book, he stops, knowing that on the other side Noah was to have drawn his own answers. His hand rests on it as if trying to feel through to that other side, and, considering what happened hours before, senses the emptiness of what should have been, what story should have been told there by his son.
But in that moment Tom is charged with the revelation that Noah’s life was completed before his very eyes. How could he betray what his son had done with thoughts of emptiness and untold stories? With this thought he turns that last page, and as it comes into his view, his face draws, and his eyes fill.
A brilliant three-quarter Moon illuminates a tight bend of the Virgin River a mile or so behind the Shack. Moonlight glitters off the water as it cascades down a small patch of rapids at the center of the bend, continuing to a pool where glitter turns to wavering reflection. In the peninsula formed by the bend is a small wood, centered on an expansive skeleton oak.
Bud and Francine approach the river, still arm in arm, and walk up to the water’s edge. She looks up at the Moon, then at the oak, its universe of branches quivering in the wind, amplifying the twinkling of the stars. “It’s been twelve years since I’ve been here. Nothing’s changed. Not one rock, not one twig. Nothing. Where does time go?”
Bud still can’t take his eyes off her, and hardly tries. “Who says it goes anywhere? It’s us that come and go. That’s why it feels the same when you come back. Nothing changes, not really. It was here all the time, waiting. Waiting for you to come back.”
Francine turns to his stare, holding it in her own for a moment. Then she walks a few steps upriver and stops, facing toward the oak. “And was it waiting for you?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Francine walks into the middle of the river just upstream of the rapid. She ends up in just above her knees and wobble
s to maintain balance against the current and the stones. Bud lurches forward a step. “What are you doing? Are you nuts?”
“I haven’t been river walking since…” Francine looks up at the Moon.
“Since?”
“Since, a long time.”
“Jesus, do you have to do it now? That water’s got to be freezing! And it’s dark.”
“It’s OK. You get used to it. Come on.”
Bud steps back, not believing his ears. “What? Come out of there. You’re going to get sick.”
She flicks water at him. “Oh, stop that.”
Bud flinches at the freezing drops and looks at her like she’s the Mad Hatter. He glances back longingly at the trail, then at her, shaking his head. “If you weren’t so… I’d…” He walks into the river and wrenches. “Oh. Oh, God.” He sploshes up to her and gives her a stare as icy as the water. “Ju shitsu, that’s cold.”
“Ju shitsu? Is that what you said?”
“Never mind. You proved your point. Now let’s get out and head straight for the hospital. Or funny farm, better idea.”
“Take it easy, you’ll survive.” Francine grabs his hand and leads him a step at a time upriver. Bud teeters one side to the other, stepping on the slick round stones. She slips a few times also, both using the hand hold for support, one nearly pulling the other in.
“Francine, Whitewater, Holmes, whoever you are, where are we going? And why?”
“It’s just a little farther.” Both banks of the river are blocked with bare thickets, but up a few more yards there’s an opening to the right leading to a clearing by the oak. Once they arrive abeam the clearing, she stops and looks toward it. “This was our favorite place to camp, the three of us. It was so perfect, especially in the fall when things were starting to cool off and the leaves were turning red and yellow. We’d build a fire out of the oak branches. It would burn all night.”
Bud feels like he’s intruding on the memory. “You know, we could have just walked along the bank and crossed here.”
Francine lingers in the memory, hearing his comment from it, distant and echoing as the river pushes against them. She looks upriver. “My son, Noah, he loved to river walk with his Daddy. He always wanted me to go up the Narrows with them, but I never would.” She looks down at the water. “Oh, how I’ve despised myself for that.”
“Were you afraid?”
“I suppose, a little. All the talk about flash floods. But that’s too convenient. Since when does a mother not do something with her child out of fear? The more fear, the more reason to go. That’s what we do. Protect.”
“But Tom was there to protect him.”
“And who was there to protect Tom? No, I didn’t go because I stopped cherishing the moments. It was easier not to go than it was to go. That’s before I learned that the hard things are the ones that make you grow.” She bends down and reaches into the water past her elbow, coming up with a gray speckled rock. “I finally did go up the Narrows, too late.”
“Why too late?”
Francine pauses to stare at the rock, wiping the water off to feel its slippery moss, glowing green in the moonlight. “Noah’s last wish. After he died we found an envelope he left us, to be opened when he was gone.”
“Francine, are you sure you want to—”
“Yes, please. I need to.” He puts his arm around her and she lays the side of her face against his flannel jacket, looking back upriver. Her voice quivers through restrained tears. “He wrote a poem about a dream he had, and he wanted Julia to read it at his memorial. That’s all he wanted. He was very specific about it. He didn’t want anything said but the poem.”
“Julia was his ‘life partner’. I saw that in the file, but I didn’t understand what it meant.”
“A life partner is someone who helps terminal patients experience the most they can with the time they have left. With children, they teach them things, different things that help them learn. It’s hard to describe.”
“I get the idea,” Bud says, solemnly.
“She taught Noah about philosophy, about botany, astronomy, about God, about life. And death. And poetry. We didn’t know he wrote the poem until after he was gone.”
“So she read it for him. Where?”
“That’s the thing. Noah never stopped amazing everyone. He isn’t like other children. He’s from a different place. I understand now.”
“Is?”
“Yes, is.” Bud strokes her hair, a reflex also from a different place. “Noah said in the letter he left that he wanted his memorial to be at a place he called Eden Cove. It’s a spot on the river, up the Narrows, his favorite place. He finally got me there.”
“How many people were there?”
“There were only thirty-two. He made a list. Of course, a hundred or so followed anyway, but they stood back. The Cove is at a bend in the river, like this one, only the canyon walls tower up, straight up. It’s not far up the Narrows, but most of the time you’re in the river, against the current, sometimes up to your waist. When you come around that bend, though, you find yourself facing… Eden. Noah said it was the closest thing to heaven on Earth. It’s a giant hollowed out part of the rock wall, and the river turns away at that spot so there’s a beautiful slope going up into the shelter, with rocks and trees and flowers, and ferns, all protected. He and Tom would go up there in the rain and watch it fall.
“The walk up the river that day… every step was work. Nobody spoke. I cried all the way. That was the only sound you heard, besides the river. The weeping whispered off the walls, the rocks, like the wind. At first I could barely stand up, but with each step I learned how to walk the river. I learned not to look down, but to feel my way across the stones, to use the current to keep my balance. I learned to trust myself, and by the time I got to the Cove, I realized I could sense each stone before I stepped on it. I felt him helping me with each step. I felt him there.”
Francine leads Bud by the hand out of the river, up the bank, and under the oak. There he sees this was somebody’s place. A fire pit, a bench hollowed out of a fallen tree, a swing moving in the breeze from a low branch. He sits her on the bench and kneels before her. “So that day, he was your life partner. He brought you up there. He taught you to walk.”
A tear traces her soft cheek, reflecting the silvery moonlight. “He did. He taught me to walk in faith.” She touches his face. “I never told anyone this before, but when Julia read the poem, I heard his voice. It wasn’t hers. It was his. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“But it was his voice, in the poem, coming through her.”
“No, it really was his voice. And now I understand why, since…”
“What?”
“Someday, maybe I’ll tell you.”
Bud stares into her crystal-blue eyes, then starts unlacing her boots. “Let’s get these off before you catch pneumonia.” He takes off both boots and peels off her wet socks. “Oh, my gosh,” he marvels. “Those are the most perfect little feet I’ve ever seen. Look at them.”
“Aren’t they, though? I’ve always been proud of them.” Francine smiles. “So. You’re a ‘foot man’, are you?”
If it’s possible for Bud to be embarrassed, he is. “No, actually. I’ve always thought feet were terrible things, so... awful most of the time. But look at these. They’re... just perfect.” He rubs them to warm them up.
“What about yours?”
“Oh. I have Fred Flintstone feet.”
“Hmm,” she purrs. “I always thought Fred Flintstone was... sexy.”
Bud starts to say something, then stops. Instead, he puts her socks and shoes in her lap, picks her up in his arms, and carries her down the bank and across the river, almost falling in only once.
A helicopter skims across the ocean at whitecap level toward the cruise ship in the distance. Inside, Marcy Marxer and Cathy F
ink sit wide-eyed, the wind lashing from an open door.
The chopper roars up and over the ship, then sweeps a wide circle around it. All over the ship, passengers, led by children, wave. Banners hang shipwide, announcing the concert as TV cameras record the arrival. The chopper tilts onto its pad at the bow where earlier it had hidden under the tarp, and as the blades circle down, Marcy and Cathy step out, waving back. They walk along the cordoned-off pathway, shaking hands and patting heads, the children beside themselves at seeing these two in person.
Marcy and Cathy enter a dressing room with a small entourage of lucky kids who won a contest to be behind stage. Captain Wright is there to greet them, shaking both Marcy’s hands. “Hello, Miss Marxer, Cathy. Captain Wright, welcome aboard.”
“Thank you,” Marcy says. “I can’t believe this reception. We were just saying this has got to be the most excited group of kids we’ve ever seen.”
“There’s been a lot of excitement around here for the last few days. You’re jumping on just ‘turns up the volume’ if you know what I mean.”
Cathy shakes his hand. “Well, nobody’s more ready for this than we are. I hope we didn’t keep you waiting.”
“Not at all. It’s a little tight, but we’re still on schedule.”
Cathy reaches out and snatches one of the children who’d been staring, giving her a squeezing hug. The others look at each other in disbelief. Marcy kneels down and reaches out a hand to each as the Captain watches with a big British grin. “I hate to break this up, but I need to talk to Cathy and Marcy for a few minutes. Would you mind stepping in here for a moment?” They follow into the sound booth and Captain Wright closes the door. “There’s something I need you to know, but this is in confidence.”
“Is something wrong?” Marcy asks, concerned.
“No, nothing like that. We received a call from Mr. Holmes. He’s going to make an appearance at the end of the show, but he didn’t want it to be announced because he didn’t want to upstage the performances. He prefers it that way, if you don’t mind.”