The World More Full of Weeping

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “But he’s not — he knows to keep to this side of the logging road. He wouldn’t — ”

  Dean smiled and shook his head. “I seem to recall you and me taking a few liberties with your father’s rules, too. Right?”

  Jeff hesitated, then nodded.

  “You remember what it’s like when you get out there. A lot of the rules don’t seem to apply so much. Doesn’t make him a bad kid. Just a kid.”

  “Right.” Jeff nodded again. “But” — he glanced at his watch — “it’s almost one in the morning. When do you — ”

  “Call off the search for the night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We don’t. If this was an alpine search, we probably would have called it off at sundown. Mountain terrain is too treacherous to mess around with after dark. But this is pretty flat, pretty straightforward. We can search through the night if we need to.”

  “That’s good.”

  Dean nodded. “The crews have been spelling off for the last while. Fresh eyes so the first crew can get some rest.”

  “What about you?”

  “John Sears came on about an hour ago. I was just waiting to let you know what was going on.”

  Jeff felt suddenly as if he wanted to cry: the small kindness was overwhelming. “Thanks, Dean,” he said.

  Dean shook his head and clapped him on the shoulder. “You should get inside. Your wife’ll be starting to worry about you.”

  Ex-wife, Jeff was about to say, but Dean had already turned away.

  By the time the school bus brought him home and he had changed into his scrubbies from his good clothes, Brian had little more than an hour with Carly. Spring might have come early, but night still came on fast. Too fast. Especially on school nights.

  They made the most of their time together. Carly was always waiting for him, and every day brought new wonders. Baby animals were being born everywhere — a blue jay’s nest one day, a rabbit den another — and the forest itself was changing, greening and thickening. The creeks were rising with the spring run-off, and the swamps burst into sudden colour: yellows and purples and oranges of flowers half-hidden in the shadows.

  And everyday it was harder to say goodbye. When it came time, Brian would leave it as long as he could, reluctant to let go of her, of their time together, even as the house started to disappear in the falling dark.

  He took solace in the knowledge that there was always tomorrow, that he would be back in the woods with her in only a matter of hours.

  But then the rains came, black sheets of March rain that soaked one to the bone in an instant, that chilled one to the core.

  It rained for days, the creeks rising and rising and almost slipping their beds, the animals slinking through the low brush only when absolutely necessary, and all Brian could do was look out at the woods as the rain streaked his bedroom window.

  Carly was waiting for him in their usual spot three days later. From the bulging grey look of the sky the rains hadn’t finished, but they had stopped for the moment, and Brian had hurried across the field as soon as he got changed from school.

  “Carly,” he called as he stepped under the forest’s canopy, stopping short as he saw her.

  A tight frown was fixed on her face.

  “You didn’t come,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said you’d come every day.”

  “It was raining,” he said, as if that was reason enough.

  “I waited for you.” She finally looked up at him, long enough for him to see the hurt in her eyes, then back down to the ground again.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “My dad . . .” His father hadn’t actually said anything about it: it hadn’t even occurred to Brian to spend the dark, rainy afternoons in the forest. He hadn’t thought for a moment she would be there.

  At the mention of his father, she looked up again, and her eyes seemed a little clearer, more understanding. “I waited,” she said again, but sounding sad this time, not angry.

  “I’m sorry. I’m here now.”

  Her smile broke through her frown and he felt a weight lift from him. “You are. You came back.” All around them, the leaves and boughs dripped as if the rain was still coming down. “Come on.” She started toward the forest.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped.

  “Are you — ” He gestured toward her. “You don’t have a coat or anything.” He had bundled himself into a slicker over his jacket but already felt the damp and the cold; she wore the same dress as always, her face pink and rosy.

  She smiled at his concern. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I love the rain.”

  As they walked he tried, as he always did, to impose their route on his mental map of the forest he thought he had come to know. They walked past the reading place — the lightning-struck tree with the cave in its trunk where he used to sit and read his guidebook — and the brokendown section of fence grown over with blackberries, the young canes thin and bright green. They crossed one of the creeks, the water rough and almost covering the tops of the stepping stones.

  By Brian’s reckoning, the next turn should have brought them to a clearing full of huckleberries and salmonberries that would be ripe in the early summer.

  Instead, she led him into a bright grove, rich with a heady blur of unfamiliar scents. The sky was bright blue and warm overhead. The storm must have burned off while they were under the trees, Brian thought, suddenly too warm in his heavy coat.

  “What is this place?” he asked, mostly to himself.

  Carly smiled, looking pleased with herself. “I thought you’d like it.”

  Brian stepped into the clearing, brushed his hands along the trunk of one of the flowering trees. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this plant.”

  “It’s a magnolia.”

  “Do they usually grow around here?” He wanted to open his knapsack, pull out his guidebook, but he couldn’t look away from the grove. The clearing had the sharp brilliance, the bright detail, of a dream, and Brian was sure it would vanish if he looked away.

  “And those are cypresses,” Carly said, leading him farther in. “Touch them. They feel warm. And their bark — ”

  “ — feels like skin,” he finished, lightly caressing the smooth, red-brown trunk.

  He didn’t want to look away, but he turned to Carly. “How . . . where are we? I’ve never — ”

  She smiled, as if she had a secret. “We’re in the forest,” she explained. “Your house is just over there.” She gestured vaguely.

  “But . . . how can that be? There’s nothing like this in the woods. How far have we gone?”

  “It’s not how far you go,” she said. “It’s how you look. All of this, these trees, these flowers, this place, it’s all here. It’s all right here. All forests are one forest, if you know how to look at them.”

  He knew she wanted him to ask. And he wanted to ask. He wanted to know.

  “Could you — Could you show me?”

  She seemed to think about it, then slowly shook her head. “No. Not now. We don’t have enough time.”

  “Sure we do,” he countered. The sun was still high in the sky, bright and warm. “It’s only — ” He was stunned when he looked at his watch and saw that it was already after five. “But . . . how . . .”

  “You have to go home, Brian,” she said, taking his arm and turning him away from the clearing. “It’s time.”

  They stepped through a scrim of low brambles and twisted weeds and the air chilled around them.

  “We just don’t have enough time,” she said. “Not for me to show you everything I want to show you. Not for you to see everything you want to see. I probably shouldn’t even have taken you there.”

  “No,” he said, his words coming in puffs of steam. “No, I’m glad you did. Maybe tomorrow you can show me more.”

  “Maybe,” she said, as they stepped into the overhung clearing at the edge of the forest. “Maybe tomorrow.”<
br />
  Her voice didn’t sound very convincing.

  “You will be here tomorrow, right?” Brian asked.

  “I’ll be here,” she said. “You should go.”

  He didn’t want to leave her. A feeling that had been building in him for several days bubbled to the surface. He began to feel that his time with Carly was short, coming to an end. Every time he said goodbye to her, it felt like he was saying goodbye for the last time.

  He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to risk not seeing her again.

  “Your father will be wondering where you’ve got to,” she said.

  “You’ll be here tomorrow?” he asked again, needing, with a part of himself he didn’t understand, to hear it confirmed.

  She nodded, and the warmth of her confirmation ebbed through him. “I’ll be here.”

  He smiled, and turned slowly away.

  She watched him as he crossed the field, pulling his jacket tight and hunching his back against the rain. She felt his yearning in his defeated stride, his wanting to stay as an invisible line, binding them.

  She smiled, and faded back into the gathering shadows.

  Jeff wasn’t surprised to find John Joseph in his kitchen, though he was somewhat surprised to find him washing dishes.

  “Thought I’d get a head start,” he explained. “Lots of coffee cups. Did you talk with Dean Owens? He said he was going to wait for you.”

  Jeff nodded, not really aware that he was doing so. He felt himself moving as if within a bubble, distant somehow from the events of his own life.

  John watched him for a moment, then dried his hands and led him toward the kitchen table. “Why don’t you set a minute,” he said. “Take a load off. I’ll get you a little something.”

  “Diane?” Jeff asked as John rattled in the kitchen cupboards.

  “Last I checked she was up in your boy’s room,” John said. “It seemed like she wanted to be alone. Oh, and Jim Kelly left that for you,” he added as he returned to the table, moving a folded piece of paper toward Jeff as he set a bottle of rye and two glasses down. “He said he thought you might get a kick out of it. Seemed like he’d been into the rye a bit himself.”

  Jeff nodded again, his gaze resting on the bottle. He watched it as John unscrewed the top, poured healthy measures into both glasses. He left the metal cap sitting on the table next to the bottle when he set it down.

  “This’ll help take the chill off.” John pushed one of the glasses toward Jeff.

  Jeff took a small sip, then a larger swallow, staring into the amber liquid in the glass as the sweetness burned down his throat.

  It seemed to cut through some of the fog.

  He unfolded the paper, keenly aware of John Joseph looking over his shoulder.

  “What . . .”

  It was a photocopy of the front page of the March 21, 1975 issue of the Henderson Herald. The banner headline read: “Lost and Found,” with a large black and white photograph underneath. Jeff recognized himself with a shocked immediacy, though he had to read the caption for the names of the men he was standing between.

  “Donald TeBrink and Charles Ellroy with Jeffrey Page, who was missing in his family’s woods for more than twenty-four hours.”

  John gave a short chuckle and wandered back to the sink.

  Jeff skimmed the article, but his eyes kept drifting back to the photo. He wouldn’t have recognized Charlie without the write-up: the “Charles” in the photograph had all of his hair, and was wearing it more than a little long, with an open collar and a beaded necklace. He had a broad grin that showed just how pleased he was that someone wanted to take his picture for the paper.

  His own expression was harder to read. At first, his eleven-year-old face seemed a little scared and a little relieved, as you might expect from a little boy rescued from the woods. Looking at it again, though — studying it — Jeff wasn’t so sure. He thought his eleven-year-old self looked almost sad. Not scared, but close to tears.

  As he shifted the paper, hoping a different angle would help him puzzle out his expression, Jeff noticed, for the first time, the faces crowded around behind the three figures in the foreground. The rest of the searchers, he assumed, milling around, only half-interested in the photographer, not meriting, for whatever reason, having their names on the front page of the local paper.

  Most of them were out of focus, but one face, just over his younger self’s right shoulder, was instantly recognizable. John Joseph wasn’t looking toward the camera, but the lens had found him nonetheless.

  When he looked up, John Joseph was staring at him, holding his own glass close to his lips.

  “But I don’t . . . I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of it. I look at this” — he tapped on the photocopied page — “and I know it’s true, but I don’t remember. . . .” He barked out a sharp, desperate laugh. “’Least you could have done was tell me you were part of the crew that rescued me.”

  John chuckled. “I seem the type to hide my light under a bushel to you?” He shook his head. “No, I’d have taken the credit if there was any to be taken.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked, pulling the paper toward himself again and taking another look.

  “I mean that nobody rescued you, Jeff.” He drained his glass, lowering his eyelids as he swallowed. “We spent a full day and night out back there. We must have covered every inch of your father’s woods. And mine. And old Tom’s. Crews even started up the hill, thinking you might have decided to try your hand at mountain climbing.”

  He stopped to pour himself another couple of fingers of rye, and topped up Jeff’s drink.

  “Then just before sunset the second day, you walked out of the woods.”

  “I just . . . ?”

  John nodded. “All of your own accord, and under your own steam. You were cold and hungry.” The old man smiled. “You looked like a boy who had been out in the woods for a night and a day.”

  Jeff smiled ruefully, staring down at his glass. He felt something that seemed like it might be a memory niggling at the edges of his mind, but nothing came into focus.

  “And you were crying.”

  The words hung in the air as if placed there.

  Jeff looked across the table at the old man.

  “Crying?”

  He nodded. “Sobbing. Everyone thought it was because you had been so scared, that you were so relieved at being home. Everybody comforted you, told you it was going to be all right.”

  “But?”

  John pushed himself away from the table, carried his empty glass to the sink and gave it a rinse. He leaned against the counter, looking to the window over the sink, the window that during the day offered a view of the woods. He spoke to the reflection of Jeff in the night dark glass.

  “Adults don’t always listen to children,” he said, quietly. “We think we know exactly who they are, exactly what they need, exactly what they’re going to say.”

  Jeff stiffened in the chair.

  “We think we know what they’re feeling, and we just proceed along with our assumptions. If we ever took the time to actually listen . . .”

  “I get it,” Jeff said, not angrily. “I should have paid more attention to Brian. I should have really listened to what he was trying to tell me about not moving to Vancouver.”

  John turned away from the glass to face him directly. “That sounds about right, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then what . . .”

  “They should have listened to you better, that day you came out of the woods. Everyone was so busy bringing you blankets and food and telling you that everything was going to be all right, no one actually heard what you were crying about. No one listened to what you were saying.”

  “Nobody except you,” Jeff said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  John nodded slowly. “You kept saying, ‘She’s gone. She’s gone and I’m never going to see her again. Carly’s gone.’”

  “You’re l
ate,” were his father’s first words as the screen door clattered shut behind Brian.

  “Sorry, Dad,” he called up the stairs as he kicked off his shoes and hung up his jacket and slicker.

  He couldn’t stop smiling.

  The apology, he thought, would be enough. His dad didn’t usually get mad. And even less now, with his mom gone and living in Vancouver. Since she left, Brian had noticed that his father seemed to be working very hard at not getting mad, at not raising his voice, at not doing anything to upset Brian.

  The apology would probably be enough.

  It wasn’t.

  He came around the corner at the top of the stairs, holding a spatula in his hand. “Where were you?” he demanded.

  Brian couldn’t tell if he was really angry or just worried, but looking up at him from the bottom of the stairs, he felt tiny.

  “Out in the woods,” he answered, in a voice as small as he felt.

  “What are the rules?”

  “Home before dark. Home before dinner.”

  “Right.”

  Brian started to climb the stairs. Every step felt like an obstacle, seemed to take all his focus.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “That’s not good enough, Brian.”

  As he reached the top of the stairs, his father turned away from him and went back to the stove. The kitchen was full of the smell of toasting bread and frying butter: grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner.

  “You’ve been getting later and later everyday. It’s almost six,” he said, without facing his son. “I didn’t make up these rules to be a pain in the ass. I need to know where you are. I need to know that you’re safe. And every day you’re pushing these boundaries more and more.”

  “Dad, I’m — ”

  “Jesus, Brian, it’s pitch dark out there. I thought I was going to have to call out the Search and Rescue.”

  “We just — ” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized the slip. He wanted desperately to call the words back, to undo the damage he had done. For a moment, he hoped his father hadn’t heard.