Becoming Chloe

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Randy makes us tuna sandwiches.

  Chloe says, “Oh, good. I like tuna sandwiches.”

  There’s also sweet coleslaw with carrots and raisins, and Chloe likes that, too.

  We’re eating outside in the garden. Drinking a cold root beer with our lunch. The weather is slightly cool, and I can feel the nip in the air fill my head and my lungs, but I don’t mind. In fact, I’m beginning to like it. I’m beginning to think even the mountains will be okay. And that was my last big reservation about this trip. I watch it fly away and I feel light without it. I feel free. I’d like to see a place called Angel Fire, too.

  “Here’s the deal,” Randy says. “You walk out of here with all that stuff. Everything you need to camp in the mountains. And all you have to do is climb up to the summit of Wheeler Peak and stick this in the ground.”

  He sets his plate on the patio floor, and a white cat with gold eyes sniffs at his tuna. Licks the edge of the sandwich. Randy wheels over to the porch of his shop and comes back with something in his lap. Something small and wooden and T-shaped. He hands it to me.

  I take it in my hands and look at it. It’s a wood sign, about eight inches by six inches, on a two-foot-long stake that’s been tapered to a sharp point at the end. The sign itself is hand carved, with raised wings like angel wings and a decorative border. Above the wings, etched in with a wood-burning tool, are the words RANDY BANYAN WAS HERE. Then, on the wings themselves, it says, IN SPIRIT.

  “Just climb up to the summit and stick this in the ground?”

  “Preferably with the right spirit. You can do it like a chore if you want. I can’t really stop you. But I’d prefer you do it like it means something.”

  “It does mean something,” Chloe says. She takes it from me. Holds it on her lap, reading the words as if in Braille.

  I can tell that Randy feels better now that she’s holding it. Chloe is the one he trusts to do this. It makes me feel bad, just a little bit. But I also feel that, somewhere between here and the summit, I can become the kind of person he trusts to do this thing right.

  “What I’m about to say may sound kind of silly,” he says.

  “It won’t,” Chloe says.

  They’re on the same page now, talking soul to soul. I’m the eavesdropper, trying to catch up. But I will. I have time left. I can catch up.

  “When you get up there . . . look out over the mountains with my eyes. Think about me. Think about my face and try to feel what I’d feel if I was on that mountain myself.”

  “Joy,” Chloe says.

  “Right,” Randy says. “Exactly.”

  Then he turns to me. As if knowing I could begin to feel left out in a moment.

  “What I’d like you to do,” he says, “is take some pictures and send them back to me. A picture of you guys on the summit holding the sign, or the sign in the ground on the summit. Whatever makes a nice picture.”

  Then he wheels back into the house.

  I finish my tuna sandwich. Chloe feeds the rest of hers to a fat cat.

  “I’m not stupid,” we hear Randy say. So we know he’s on his way back out again. “I know you can take all this free stuff and not do anything I just asked. You could lose the sign or forget to take a camera onto the mountain with you.” He’s back outside now, with a photo album on his lap. “Hell, you could throw that sign away as soon as you get clear of my shop. Funny thing, though. Turns out nobody ever does.”

  He hands me the album. Inside are photos of groups of people in cold-weather gear. Some are couples, some groups of young guys. All are standing on the tops of mountains with spectacular views all around and behind them. And all are holding wooden signs announcing that Randy Banyan was there with them in spirit. Chloe takes the album from me. Holds it in her lap and looks at the pictures. Touches the pictures.

  “Wow. The mountains are so beautiful.”

  “Closest thing to heaven in the world,” Randy says. “The higher up you get, the closer you are to heaven.” He has that look again. That faraway cast to his eyes.

  Chloe looks right into that faraway cast, and I think for a second that maybe she’s gone elsewhere, too. “Your spirit will be really happy up there,” she says.

  “I’m sure it will,” Randy says. “It always was before.”

  Then he has to go break up a cat fight up front in the shop.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Chloe and I bike. We bike slowly, first just ten miles at a time, twice a day. Then we pick up the pace. We had to weed our stuff down a lot. After we took on all that cold-weather gear, we had to ditch half of what we left home with. Mostly clothes. Every second or third day we stop at a coin-operated Laundromat and do a load of wash. You really only need a couple of changes of clothes to get by.

  I’ve gotten in the habit of pointing at things. Good things. Later, when we stop for water or a meal, Chloe writes it all down.

  Randy was right. You see things you might otherwise miss.

  I point to a squirrel running across the road. I point to a cat in a high crook of a tree near dawn. A horse leaning over a fence to try to reach an apple on a tree in the pasture next door.

  I point to kids. Riding in the backs of pickup trucks, playing softball in vacant lots. Running for the ice cream truck. We wave to them, and they almost always wave back. I point to a stream that runs along the road, spilling over rocks. A gnarled old tree hung with moss, sitting alone in a field all by itself. I point to people laboring in a field, picking crops. What kind of crops, we can’t tell from the distance. Something green and about waist high. The weather has taken a turn, into a hot Indian summer, and it looks like hot work, and I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have pointed. I won’t be able to defend myself if she asks where the joy is supposed to be hiding.

  “But, Jordy,” she says, “that’s such hard work.”

  “Hard work can be joy.”

  “Yeah, right. If you’re not doing it.”

  Then we crest a good-sized hill, but I’m not too winded now because I’m getting in shape again. Because I’ve been riding, so now I can do it. So maybe it’s true. Maybe hard work can be joy. If you can do it, maybe there’s joy in knowing you can. I’m not trying to say that those people picking crops felt any joy at all. But maybe I just meant our joy. Our joy at getting to see food growing. After all, it’s our joy we’re after. Not really anybody else’s. I think everyone has to find their own. Unless they have me to help point.

  We wave at everybody we see. Cars going by. People walking down the road, sitting on porch swings, mowing their lawns. Kids on bicycles of their own. When we go through a town, this keeps us pretty busy. Then we get out onto the back roads again and we have a chance to rest our arms. Every time somebody waves back, which is often, I say, “There. Right there.” And of course she can’t argue. Total strangers saying hello. If that’s not it, where is it? If you can’t see it there, you’re not trying.

  Then one day we wave at some teenagers in a van and they give us the finger.

  Chloe says, “Well, there’s one more for the ‘ugly’ column.”

  “I don’t think so, Chloe. I think you should put it on the good side.”

  “I think you’ve been in the sun too long, Jordy. What could possibly be good about getting flipped off?”

  “Because it almost never happens,” I say.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I’ll put it on the ‘ugly’ side, but under ‘beautiful’ I’ll put that it almost never happens.”

  “Okay. I can live with that.”

  I point to a red dog who chases our bikes, growling and nipping at our heels.

  “But, Jordy,” she says. “He’s trying to chase us off his street.”

  “I know,” I say. “But aren’t you still kind of glad we got to see it?”

  She’s beginning to question who’s the joy expert of this adventure. Still, if I say I see it, who is she to say it’s not there? Besides, while she’s arguing with me about it, she’s only missing some
thing else good.

  So she mostly just writes it all down.

  We get our first good look at the Mississippi.

  Chloe says, “Whoa. That’s a big river.”

  “It’s the Mississippi, Chlo.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “The Mississippi is a big river.”

  “I know. That’s what I just said.”

  We stop our bikes and just stand and take it in for a moment.

  I never really thought much about the Mississippi. Never thought of it as something I just had to see. But I’m kind of blown away by it now, just the sheer size of it, the width and the mass of water, and the pull of it. There’s something grand and powerful about the whole thing.

  Chloe says, “Where does all the water go?”

  “It dumps out into the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Well, then how does it stay full?”

  First I think it’s a silly, childlike question, but as I try to answer it I realize it is kind of mind-boggling. Sure, in my head I know that water evaporates and then it rains and water flows down from the hills in small tributaries and feeds the river again, and yet . . . Looking at that sheer mass of water, knowing it’s racing to dump into the gulf, it’s really hard to imagine the process that could keep it so consistently full. That’s just so damn much water to be constantly replacing. I guess it’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

  Just as I’m adjusting to that one, she says, “Why does it flow that way? Why not the other way?”

  I guess it’s something about finding the ocean and I guess it starts with elevation and gravity, but as I go to explain I discover I’m really not qualified because I really don’t know. There’s so much I see every day and don’t really understand and I just don’t stop to think about the fact that I don’t really understand.

  “It’s really beautiful,” Chloe says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It is.”

  We stand on our bikes and stare at the river a moment longer, and I’m struck by something strong and sudden. A sort of appreciation for getting to do all this. I set off to do it like a sacrifice I’d make to improve Chloe’s situation, but as a result I get to see all these amazing things I never would have seen otherwise, and I feel lucky.

  I flash back to the time in New York, just before Chloe came barging through the window and altered the course of everything. Where was I headed? I know I was not headed here. That’s all I know for sure. Not here.

  Somewhere in the middle of rural Arkansas she points to a fortyish black couple sitting on the porch of a modest red ranch house, fanning themselves, smiling and waving to us as we go by. This time the other people waved first. This time Chloe pointed.

  “There,” Chloe says. “Right there.”

  “Don’t you get hot?” the woman calls out. She has a round, meaty face. Thick eyelids. A face that’s seen a thing or two. “Don’t you get hot and tired riding?”

  We stop, because if we don’t stop, we’ll blow right by them before we’ve had a chance to answer. “Yeah, sometimes we do,” Chloe calls.

  Lately the onset of winter has been the least of our concerns. Instead we’re stuck in this late Indian summer. The temperature in this part of Arkansas today is eighty degrees in the shade.

  “Why don’t you come sit on the porch with us and drink some cold lemonade?” the husband asks. He has big pork-chop sideburns, going gray. A smile that would warm you up on a cold day, which I’m beginning to wish for. “Tell us where you’re going and where you been.”

  “See?” Chloe says. “I told you to look right there.”

  After we’ve each had two glasses of lemonade, paid for with stories from our travels, Mrs. Dodd asks if we wouldn’t like to go for a cool swim.

  “You guys have a pool?” Chloe asks.

  Our hosts both laugh. “You’re from the city, aren’t you?” Mr. Dodd says. “I bet you never swam in a real-life swimming hole.”

  “No, sir,” Chloe says. “I never have. And I really like doing things I’ve never done before.”

  “Go get Trent,” Mrs. Dodd tells her husband. “I think he’s down by the barn.”

  “I’m right here,” a new voice says.

  We turn to look, and I see a teenager, maybe sixteen years old, in jeans and a sleeveless white T-shirt. He’s been standing twenty paces from the porch on the barn side. Watching us, I guess. For how long, I don’t know. He’s dark-skinned, with hair loosely cropped and a little uneven. Muscular, in a thin, wiry sort of way. He looks shy.

  “Trent,” Mrs. Dodd says. “These nice young folks are on the road traveling. They’re hot and they’re tired. They come all the way from Kentucky on those bicycles over there. We put some cold lemonade in ’em, but now it’s your turn. Bring Bailey and Margie around. They can ride Margie double. You take ’em out and show ’em your swimming hole. Then when you all get back I’ll have some nice dinner made.”

  “We should probably get on the road before dinner,” I say. “It’s a very nice offer, but if we’re going to get settled in by dark—”

  “You’ll be settled in by dark,” she says. “You bet you will. In a nice clean stall in our barn with lots of extra straw. You start pedaling again first thing in the morning. Before the sun gets quite so mean as she’s been.”

  Chloe says, “Who’s Margie?”

  “She’s a big old swayback nag,” Mr. Dodd says.

  I look up to see Trent walking back to the barn, as instructed, to bring them around. Chloe looks to me for clarification.

  “A horse,” I say. “Margie is a horse.”

  “We get to ride a horse? I never rode a horse before. We’re going all the way to Big Sur to ride horses on the beach. This’ll be good practice, huh, Jordy?”

  “Margie is a good old girl for a new rider,” Mr. Dodd says. “That old mare is so sweet she won’t even swat her own flies.”

  Trent brings them out of the barn barebacked, in just bridles, the reins hanging slack in his hand as the horses amble along behind him. I realize I’m a little nervous to go off alone with Trent, because he’s so shy. Because his awkwardness makes me feel awkward.

  “Wow,” Chloe says. “I get to ride a horse. I never got to ride a horse before. Aren’t you glad I saw this place, Jordy? Aren’t you glad I pointed here?”

  She runs to meet the horses halfway, and I follow her.

  “Trent!” Mrs. Dodd calls out. “You keep your underwears on. None of that skinny-dipping like you do with your family. These folks are not your family.”

  We’re standing on the bank of the watering hole, and I’m unbuttoning my shirt. Trent is down to his boxer shorts already. He still hasn’t said so much as a word to us. The horses are grazing at the scrubby grass behind us, their reins trailing on the ground, a signal to stay close by and wait.

  Chloe takes off her jeans. She’s wearing her red panties today. She pulls her shirt off over her head. She’s not wearing a bra. Chloe never wears a bra. She hates the feel of one, and besides, she doesn’t really need to. Her breasts aren’t really that big.

  I find myself uncomfortable suddenly, and wondering if this was a good idea. Trent is a stranger, and he’s also a sixteen-year-old boy. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with a sixteen-year-old boy staring at Chloe’s breasts. Except for one thing. He’s not. He hasn’t even glanced at Chloe’s body. He’s pretending to look at the ground, but from the corner of his eye he’s actually watching me take off my jeans.

  Chloe shrieks once with pleasure, holds her nose, and leaps into the water. When she bobs up again, she shrieks even louder. Pushes wet hair off her face. Then she swims away. When did Chloe learn to swim? I wonder. She must have had a real life at some point, and I suddenly hate knowing so little about it.

  Trent opens his mouth for the first time and it startles me. “Swimming in your underwears is nasty. Then they’re still wet when you get dressed. And then your jeans get all wet.”

  We look each other in the eye for the first time. Then he
averts his gaze. We both step out of our shorts and stand naked at the edge of the water, ready to jump. In this one simple moment I not only know who he is and where he’s coming from, but I know I’ve been busted. I may be traveling with a woman, but Trent looked right through all that. That’s how naked I am, standing here with this stranger. I jump in and we swim.

  Trent has a big brother, Bart, who rides in from a far pasture to have dinner with us.

  We all hold hands and say grace. I’m holding hands with Chloe and Bart. Trent is across the table from me. I look up and catch his eye, and he looks away again.

  We eat homemade chili ladled over split cornbread. We drink sweet iced tea. I can’t remember when I was ever hungrier. I can’t remember food ever tasting any better than this.

  Every time I look up at Trent, he’s looking at me. But every time I catch him looking, his eyes dart away again.

  “I really want to thank you folks for all this hospitality,” I say.

  “We got more than enough to go around,” Mrs. Dodd says. “You’re more than welcome to what we got.”

  I want to say that this was a great day for Chloe. Riding a real horse and swimming in a swimming hole in her underwear. Two very important things she never did before. But how could they understand, really? How can they know how important these little things are to Chloe? How much of a difference they could make to her situation in the long run?

  After dinner Chloe asks if she can help with the dishes.

  “You want to help with the dishes?” Mrs. Dodd asks.

  “Yeah. It would be fun.”

  “Girl, you are my kind of company,” she says. “Trent, you go out and get a pitchfork and get our guest room all made up and ready.”

  I follow Trent out to the barn in the dark, carrying our blankets under my arm. Trent has a flashlight, and I watch the beam of it slide across the dry grass.