Leaving Blythe River: A Novel

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I guess it’ll have to,” Noah called in reply.

  Amazingly, Ethan got right back to sleep.

  Chapter Nineteen: Just the Thing

  Sixteen days after his father was found

  They stood together at the airport curb in Casper, close to Jone’s SUV, so no airport authority would think they were leaving the vehicle unattended.

  Ethan’s mother had notified the airline about his father’s condition. All Ethan had to do was wait for two airline employees to come down with a wheelchair and help Noah to the gate. That and get a rolling cart or a skycap to help move poor tranquilized Rufus to the check-in desk in his plastic pet carrier.

  “So you’re going to be on the flight to Chicago with your dad?” Jone asked.

  She had asked before. But there had been so much going on. So much packing, so many plans. So much to remember.

  “Yeah. Yeah, my mom got me the same flight as my dad to O’Hare. And then she got me a connecting flight from O’Hare to New York.”

  “Good,” Jone said. “Good.”

  She stood with one arm hooked through Sam’s. None of them seemed able to look the others straight in the eye. It was hard, saying good-bye to them. Harder than Ethan had realized it would be.

  “That way you two can take care of each other,” Jone added.

  Sam was still acting balky and silent.

  “Yeah,” Ethan said, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice. “You two take care of each other, too.”

  Jone smiled a tiny sad smile, and Sam blushed and continued to say nothing.

  “I know people always say they’ll stay in touch,” Jone said, “and promise they’ll visit. But you really will, right?”

  “Try and stop me,” Ethan said.

  He looked over to see two uniformed airline employees inside the terminal, heading their way. Heading for the sliding glass doors. With the wheelchair.

  “I’d miss Blythe River too much if I never saw it again,” Ethan added.

  “So come back for a camping trip,” Sam said, apparently finally getting his voice unstuck. “Friendly Sam’s Pack Service is always at your beck and call. No charge. For old times’ sake. But just be sure to give me a month’s notice or more. Ever since the AP picked up that story about your dad, I’ve got more business than I know what to do with.”

  “Good,” Ethan said. “You deserve it.”

  He glanced nervously over his shoulder again.

  “They’re almost here,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” Jone said. “Just go. We’ll talk.”

  Ethan rushed in and gave her a hug.

  “You know I’m never going to forget you, right?” he asked into her snow-white hair. “And everything you did for me? And him?”

  “Oh, hush. Stop acting like we’ll never see you again.”

  “No, we will. I know.”

  Ethan let her go and grabbed hard on to Sam.

  “I’m bad at this,” Sam said. “I hate good-byes.”

  “It’s not good-bye,” Ethan said.

  But it was time to help his father into the wheelchair and to their flight gate. And they’d brought a cart for the dog, too. So, much as Ethan hated to admit it, it was at least good-bye for now.

  “See, there’s Aunt Patty,” Ethan said. “Right on the other side of security.”

  Ethan stood in the busy Chicago airport, one hand on his father’s wheelchair, feeling the sensation of masses of people flowing around them like water. As if Ethan and his dad were an island in a fast-flowing river. Creating changes in the current. Even in the banks. Shaping the flow of everything simply by refusing to flow.

  Ethan couldn’t focus off the weirdness of the feeling. All these people. Being back in civilization.

  “Can’t believe I’m forty-one years old and I’m going to live with my damn sister,” Noah said.

  “Not for that long. Just till you’re back on your feet.”

  “Feet? Plural?”

  Ethan was growing tired of such comments from his dad, but he didn’t say so. All he said was “You’ll have a prosthetic leg soon. And it’ll have a foot. Look. I’m going to see if I can get a TSA person or somebody to walk you through to her. Otherwise I’ll have to go through the security line again. I don’t want to miss my connecting flight.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Noah said. “That’s fine. Don’t miss your flight to New York.”

  Ethan walked over to the large man who sat at the entrance to a cordoned-off pedestrian lane leading out of the secure gate area.

  “Is there someone who can push my dad’s wheelchair through to that woman standing right there?” He pointed at Aunt Patty, who waved. Ethan waved back. “I have a connecting flight, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “Ethan!” he heard from behind. “Wait.”

  He turned to see his father wheeling himself along.

  “I can go through myself.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure, Dad.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Tell Aunt Patty I’m sorry I didn’t get to say hi.”

  Then they just stood a minute. Ethan looked down to see his dad looking up at his face. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Noah was looking up to him in more than just the physical, logistical sense.

  “This isn’t the last time we ever see each other,” Noah asked, “is it?”

  “I don’t think so. Not ever. Just . . . for a while. It’s just one of those things that take time.”

  “Right,” Noah said. “That’s honest. Well. Thanks again for the next forty-one years. Hope there’s at least a little of you in it.”

  Then he wheeled himself away.

  Ethan watched, wondering if there was any part of him that was sorry to see his father go. But he never got a clear answer on that. Feelings are a funny thing, he realized. They’re always more tangled and contradictory and complex than we want them to be. Than we care to admit.

  “Oh my God,” his mother said. “Look at you!”

  She was standing in baggage claim, staring at Ethan for several seconds before rushing in to close the distance between them and give him a hug.

  Before she could get there, Ethan looked down at himself to try to see what she’d seen. As though he might have spilled food on himself or something.

  She hit him so suddenly and so hard that he let out a little involuntary “oof” as she embraced him.

  “What about me?” he asked into her ear.

  She stepped back and looked again.

  “You just look so different. Look at you!”

  Ethan laughed. “Can’t really do that,” he said. “You’ll have to tell me.”

  “Your eyes are totally different. And your face has changed. I can’t explain how, but I swear I’m not making it up. And you looked right at me. You used to look down at your feet. You looked right into my eyes.”

  “Oh,” Ethan said. “Well . . . thanks.”

  “I expected you to be different. Some different, anyway. I mean, how could you not be? And part of it . . . I could just hear it in your voice. So I was prepared for you to seem . . . but not this much. It still surprised me.”

  At first Ethan didn’t answer. He just walked with her to the baggage carousel. He could already see Rufus waiting in his carrier against the far wall. Apparently he’d been brought in separately, and first.

  Ethan could feel himself smiling. Maybe only inwardly. Maybe it shone out from his face as well. Ethan had no way to know.

  Not that it mattered anyway.

  As the carousel beeped, and started moving, Ethan said, “Turns out you were right about Blythe River. It was just the thing for me.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “That flies in the face of what I was about to say.”

  “Which was?”

  “Not sure it matters now.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I was going to say I pushed you too hard. I know I did.”

  Silence as the bags began to slide down and drop onto the carousel.
Somebody else’s bags.

  “That’s true,” he said. “Maybe not that you pushed me too hard. Maybe more that you pushed me to be you and Dad. Instead of to be me. But it’s okay.”

  “How can that be okay?”

  “Because I figured it out for myself. And because I know you were trying to be a good mom.”

  She reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “Here’s a question,” he said. “Think Dad was trying to be a good dad?”

  “You know . . . I actually do. I don’t think he tried to be the best husband he could be. But I think he tried to be the best dad he could. His best isn’t very good most of the time. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying.”

  Ethan saw the first of his bags drop, and prepared himself for the slow journey to the edge of the carousel.

  “Maybe I’ll give him a call, then,” he said. As much to himself as to his mom. “See how he’s settling in at Aunt Patty’s.”

  Epilogue

  Twenty months later

  “She’s been looking at you,” Glen said. “Accept it or don’t, but she keeps looking. She followed us over here.”

  They walked up the steps of the university library together, Ethan resisting the strong urge to look back.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been hoping pretty much all semester, Glen. But with my luck she’s probably looking at you.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not weird,” Glen said.

  Ethan punched him on the arm. Fairly hard. Then he looked back to see if the girl had noticed. Glen was right—she was watching. Ethan didn’t know her name, but she had curly hair and muscular calves and a pretty smile, and she was in his communications class. It was not the first time he had noticed her. Far from it.

  She smiled at Ethan and he smiled back. Then he faced forward again.

  “Smooth,” Glen said.

  “Oh, shut up, Glen.”

  “I’m going to do you a favor. We’re going to find ourselves a nice seat in the library. And then I’m going to go off like I need to find the bathroom or something. And then she can sit down if she wants to. See what a good friend I am? Aren’t you glad we ended up at the same university?”

  Ethan didn’t admit it in that moment, but he was. Very glad.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  As he looked up into her eyes, Ethan could feel his face flush. He desperately wanted to think it didn’t show. He knew it probably showed.

  “It’s not,” he said, “no.”

  “Your friend isn’t coming back?”

  “If he does, he can sit somewhere else.”

  She examined Ethan’s face for a moment, as if to decide whether he was joking.

  “It’s fine,” Ethan said. “He won’t be back for a while.”

  “I’m sorry. I just have to ask. Are you Ethan Underwood? The Ethan Underwood? The Blythe River guy?”

  “I am. But I’m not sure why you say that like it’s a notable thing to be.”

  “It is, though! It is! I read all about you in the paper. Last year. Or was it the year before?”

  “Summer before last,” he said.

  She sat. They smiled at each other. Briefly. Then they both looked away.

  “Amanda,” she said.

  “You’re in my communications class, right?”

  “Right. I thought I recognized your name from that article in the paper. But then I figured there could be more than one person with the same name.”

  She swept her curly hair back behind her shoulders, as if it were distracting her somehow. But Ethan sensed it was a bit of edginess. That it was merely something to do with her hands. It seemed unimaginable to Ethan, who saw himself as the only party who could possibly be nervous in a meeting such as this.

  Meanwhile Ethan was not talking. So Amanda raced on.

  “I saved that article, but then I couldn’t figure out where I put it. And I tried to do an online search, but nothing I came up with had a picture of you or anything. So I figured I’d just ask.”

  “Why did you save it?”

  “That’s kind of hard to explain. Partly . . . I just have this thing about adventure. And that was such an amazing adventure story. I love true-life stories like that. I like to read about people lost in the wilderness. I like to watch movies about mountain climbers in trouble. Sounds terrible, but what I like about it is . . . you know . . . when it works out okay. When people overcome the odds. And survive. And also I have a thing about certain wilderness areas. I have kind of . . . well, I started to say a bucket list, but I guess I’m too young to have a bucket list. But there are about three wilderness areas that I’ve read all about, and that just have a hold on me for some reason. I’ve done a lot of hiking. But I’ve never been to the Trinity Alps in California, or Badlands National Park in South Dakota. And I’ve never been to the Blythe River Range. And I want to go there so bad I can almost taste it.”

  Ethan looked up to see Glen come around a corner and into view, stop, survey the scene at Ethan’s table, and kindly disappear again.

  “Well, if you want to go,” Ethan said, “I’m really good friends with the guy who does pack trips up there.”

  “Friendly Sam!” she screeched, as if she’d known him all her life and couldn’t wait to see him again.

  Two young women at the next table shot Amanda a dirty look. One made a shushing noise.

  “That’s the guy!” Ethan said in an exaggerated whisper.

  “Are you ever going back there?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Hiking?”

  “Maybe. Maybe partly. But Sam has these great horses and mules, and you can cover so much more ground that way. But I do hike. In fact, my mom and I hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu over the holiday break.”

  “Over Christmas? Wasn’t it freezing up there in the mountains?”

  “No, it’s—”

  “Oh, God, that sounded so stupid. I’m really not that stupid, I swear I’m not. I just wasn’t thinking. Peru. South of the equator. Winter here, summer there.”

  “Right,” Ethan said.

  “How was the Inca Trail hike? That’s on my bucket list, too.”

  “I thought I was going to die. Especially going over those two high passes. But, you know what? By the time it was over I was so glad I’d done it.”

  “So when are you going back to Blythe River?”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said. “Maybe this summer. I’m sure Sam would be happy to have another rider along. No charge for the tour. He promised me a freebie. You’d just have to cover your airfare.”

  “You’re inviting me to go to Blythe River with you?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. That probably sounded really bad. I wasn’t trying to—”

  “No, it’s okay. It was nice.”

  “But we don’t even know each other.”

  “But we could by then,” she said.

  A long, ringing silence. Ethan didn’t break it. Because it felt so perfect. So right. He felt he could do it nothing but harm. It had nowhere higher to go.

  “In the meantime,” she said, “will you tell me about the place?”

  “All about it.”

  “And your big adventure?”

  “Everything there is to tell.”

  Glen caught up with him at the Starbucks a few hours later.

  “I kept trying to get back to you in the library,” he said, “but you just looked like you were having too much fun.”

  Ethan felt his slight smile grow. It had been with him most of the day, whether he thought about it or not.

  “I do have to admit it was fun.”

  “Tell me you have a date with her.”

  “I can tell you better than that.”

  “What’s better than that?”

  “We’re going away together over summer break.”

  “Get. Out. Not seriously.”

  “Seriously. She has this thing about Blythe River. And adventures. So we’re taking a pack trip. I called Sam and
booked a spot.”

  Ethan looked up at his friend and smiled more widely to see Glen’s mouth drop open.

  “How in hell did you . . . Ethan Underwood . . . of all people . . . get so lucky?”

  “That’s a really good question,” Ethan said. “I was just sitting here wondering that same thing myself.”

  About the Author

  Photo © 2014 Hunter Kilpatrick

  Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty published and forthcoming books. Her bestselling 1999 novel Pay It Forward, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List; Jumpstart the World was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and the Sun, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts and the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her short fiction received honorable mention in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, a second-place win for the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominations for Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have also been cited in Best American Short Stories.

  Ryan Hyde is also founder and former president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.