Seth reached out and petted the back end of the dog. The part Henry didn’t already have covered in the petting department.
“What was your favorite thing you saw today?” August asked. Then, just as Seth opened his mouth to speak, he added, “Other than the climbers.”
“Oh. Other than the climbers. Then I think it was that wild turkey we saw near the Temple of . . . what was it the Temple of again, August?”
“Sinawava.”
“Right. I still don’t understand how they got those names. That court and all, and the temple. When we looked at the brochures, it just said stuff like somebody thought it looked like that thing. But that didn’t really explain it.”
“But you understand now about the mineral difference in the rocks.”
“Yeah, you explained that real good. Better than the brochures.”
Silence for a time. Still nobody was sleeping. And sleep would be required for the following morning’s climb. It would be hard enough for the well rested.
“Will you talk to me about something, August?”
“What do you mean? About what?”
“Anything. It’ll help me sleep.”
“Just talk to you about anything?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm,” August said. He lay back again, his hands clasped behind his neck. “Let me see. I could tell you about Bryce Canyon, but it’s hard to describe. I can’t tell you about Yellowstone, because I haven’t seen it yet myself.”
“But you saw the trail up Angels Landing. Tell me about that.”
“Won’t that just make you more excited? And make it even harder to sleep?”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Well. Tell me anything, then. Doesn’t have to be about things we’re gonna see. Tell me anything. Tell me something about you. Because me and Henry, we don’t even know you very well.”
August took a deep breath and tried to think of something. He thought he’d tell them about his job teaching high school science, but it struck him as too boring. Then he remembered that boring might be good. He could potentially literally bore them to sleep. Then he realized it was he himself who would be too bored by it. He had to talk science all school year long, but he didn’t have to think or talk about it during the summer.
“I’m thinking,” August said.
More time passed. During it, August wondered about the number of times Wes had been in jail. And why the number he’d been given had turned out to be a lie. It felt like a harsh word, “lie.” But it didn’t seem reasonable to believe it could have been a mistake.
He had two brief flashes of fear. The first was that he was responsible for these boys, and he was taking them up to the top of a narrow rock formation fifteen hundred feet over the canyon floor. And there were no guardrails. This wasn’t Disneyland. It really was possible to tumble right off the edge.
The second fear was that the summer might bring more surprises about the boys’ life at home. More bits of information withheld. It briefly flashed through August’s mind that by the time it was September and his job was to return the boys, he might no longer be sure returning them was the right thing to do.
He pushed the thought away again. Hard. But it left a pinching feeling in his gut, a sense that he had taken on too much. That he had started down a long trail of taking responsibility for the boys, with no idea where it might lead.
“I really am thinking,” he said.
“Okay,” Seth said.
And a silence fell again.
“My son’s name was Phillip,” August said after a time. “I won’t tell you all about him, because I want you to get to sleep faster than that. But I’ll tell you about him and the iced tea. He used to love this bottled iced tea. Drank maybe five bottles a day. He bought it out of his own money, because it had sugar in it. I thought he shouldn’t drink so much sugar, so I wouldn’t buy it for him after a while. So he bought it for himself. He was like that. He had a very strongly developed sense of fairness. He’d play by my rules, but he was the first to call me on it if my rules overreached. We used to call him The Enforcer.”
“We?”
“My wife and I. I mean, my ex-wife and I. Anyway. There was only one time I can ever remember him not finishing a bottle. We were sitting at the dining-room table, and he was drinking this iced tea, and we were talking about whether I was going to let him go on a camping trip with his friends over the Christmas break. That boy loved camping more than just about anything. But before we finished talking about it, and before he finished the bottle, his mom came in and asked him to go to the store with her. She had a big shopping to do, and she wanted help carrying everything. He never said no to helping out his mom. Never. I guess he figured he wouldn’t be gone too long. So he just left the half bottle of iced tea sitting there on the table. Because he knew he’d be right back. But he wasn’t right back.”
“When was he back, August?”
“He never came back. That’s when he and his mother got in that accident.”
“Oh.”
“So for the next couple of weeks that bottle just sat there on the dining-room table. I’d go in and look at it. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I still didn’t get it on an emotional level that he was gone. I don’t know how to explain that part. It’s like I knew but I didn’t know. My head knew, but there was this part of me that couldn’t make sense out of it. I felt like the bottle was proof of something. Like it made it so real that he was just about to come back and finish it. It made it almost seem possible. But then time went by, and it started getting moldy. And I couldn’t bear to see it get moldy, so I washed it out and put it away. But I still couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.”
“So that’s why you put the ashes in an old plastic bottle instead of a fancy urn.”
“Right.”
“Do you take ’em with you everywhere you go?”
“No. I don’t. I’m taking them with me to Yellowstone because I’m going to leave them there.”
“Leave ’em there?”
“Right.”
“Just leave that bottle somewhere? What if somebody throws it away?”
“No, not leave it there like that. I mean just leave the ashes. Not the bottle.”
“Oh. You mean like sprinkle ’em. I’ve heard of that.”
“Thing is I don’t think it’s . . . strictly speaking . . . it’s probably not technically legal. But he was supposed to come on this trip with me. And this is the closest I can get to taking him along. But it’s probably best if you don’t say anything about that plan to anyone.”
A brief silence fell.
Then Seth said, “That’s a really sad story, August.”
“I know. You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking with that.”
“It’s okay. I said it could be anything. Besides, now we know a little bit more about you.”
True, August thought. Only, now they knew more about his sadness and not much else. Then again, he thought, maybe that was all there really was to know about him. At least for the time being.
He thought for a while about something else he could tell them. A happier note on which to go to sleep. He made up his mind to tell them the story of how he found Woody at a Humane Society shelter that he hadn’t even known existed. A place he stumbled upon while in the process of being lost.
He lifted up his head to look at the boys and found they had already gone to sleep. Or, at least, close enough to look asleep to an outsider.
Unfortunately, for August sleep did not come so easily.
Chapter Seven:
THE VERY TOP
They got off the nearly empty shuttle at the stop called The Grotto. No one else did. They stood in the morning twilight, August untwisting the straps of his pack as he slipped them onto his shoulders. In the near darkness, he could see Seth bouncing on his toes, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm.
“Save your energy,” he said. “You’ll need every ounce of it.”
He look
ed at Henry, who stood quietly, arms at his sides, revealing nothing at all. No excitement, no dread. No anything. He was just along.
“I’m really surprised we’re the only ones going up from the first shuttle. This is the most popular hike in the park. Granted, most people like to sleep later than four. But there are usually half a dozen or a dozen on the first shuttle out. Looking to beat the crowds.”
“So today it’s just us beating the crowds?” Seth asked.
“Looks that way.”
“So let’s hurry up and beat them.”
“I thought this trail would be dirt,” Seth said.
“It’s not,” August said. “It’s mostly paved.”
“What’s this we’re walking on? Looks like pink concrete. Well. Not pink. You know. Like the color of the rocks.”
“Not sure,” August said. “It might be.”
“You said this was steep. But it’s not steep at all. It’s easy.”
August stopped. Henry noticed and stopped with him. August waited for Seth to notice, but after ten long Seth strides he gave up on that system.
“Seth,” he called.
Seth came back.
“Why’d we stop?”
“I want you to use your head. Which, no offense, you’re not doing. You saw Angels Landing yesterday and you saw it across the river when we started this trip. You can see how tall it is. And the hike is only about five miles round trip. Less up to Scout Lookout, which is the farthest we’re going. Which means at some point the trail has to go more or less straight up.”
“Why aren’t we going all the way?”
“You haven’t seen the last bit of climb, or you wouldn’t ask.”
“I want to do it all.”
“Seth. Focus. My point is that the trail goes through this canyon—”
“Yeah! We are in a canyon, aren’t we? That’s why it’s still kind of dark. And cool.”
“Seth. I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“I don’t know what it is, though.”
“I’m trying to tell you not to underestimate this hike. It’s pretty mellow through this canyon, and then it gets steep. And there are drop-offs. Like, more than a thousand feet up. And there are no railings or anything like that. I want you to pay good attention and not underestimate this trail. And when we get up high and we’re exposed to drop-offs, I want Henry in the middle. And I might even ask that we hold hands just for extra safety.”
“I sure don’t see that we’ll need all that.”
“You will,” August said. “Keep your head in the game.”
They stopped just below the dreaded series of almost comically tight switchbacks. August knew they had a name, but he didn’t tell the boys what they were called. Because Walter’s Wiggles made them sound too cute and friendly.
A light wind made the aspen leaves shiver.
“Doesn’t even look like a trail,” Seth said. “Looks like a brick wall.”
The trail was built with brick retaining walls under each switchback, and the section of trail was so steep that from this angle one could see only the retaining bricks. Not the trail they helped retain.
“This is where it gets a little harder,” August said.
“Well, let’s do it already,” Seth replied without pause.
August moved forward. Seth moved forward. Henry stayed put. Seth made his way back to his little brother while August waited.
“You tired?” he heard Seth ask.
Then August watched as Seth boosted Henry onto his back, the younger boy’s hands clutching at the shoulders of Seth’s light-blue shirt.
They started up the tight switchbacks. They still hadn’t seen another soul. A second shuttle may well have offloaded passenger hikers by then, but if so, they had not caught up. Their pace had been good.
August sensed that was about to change.
Seth stopped on the trail, sagging down to the point where his brother’s feet touched the ground. Henry planted his feet and stood on his own power while Seth fell into a crouch, panting.
“This is hard,” Seth said. “But only because I’m carrying him. If it was just me, I’d be doing fine.”
“You remember what I said. I said we’d see how high we could get. Maybe this is it.”
“No! I’ll take him. I can carry him. We can’t even see the view down into the canyon from where we are. Please, August. I can do it.”
August sighed. He slipped off his pack and pulled out two bottles of water, handing one to each of the boys. They drank gratefully. August savored the silence. The only sounds were the wind and Seth’s labored breathing.
“I could go on ahead by myself,” Seth said. “And you could wait for me here.”
“No. No way. It’s dangerous up there. It’s no place for a lone, inexperienced kid hiker.”
“Please, August. I want to get to the top so bad. I’ll never get back here again. When else will I have a chance? I’ll take Henry. I just will. Will you walk more with me if I can take Henry?”
August sighed again. “Here, you carry my pack,” he said. “If Henry isn’t too afraid of me to get on my back, I’ll carry him up.”
No reaction from Henry. Even the look on his face remained unchanged.
“Please, Henry,” Seth said. “For me?”
Henry walked the three steps over to August and reached up his arms. August crouched down and turned his back to the boy, and Henry climbed on. August felt the grip of small but determined hands on the shoulders of his shirt. He heard and felt Henry’s slow, calm breathing against his right ear. He slid one arm under each of the boy’s bare knees and clasped his hands to lock them into place.
“You need to hold on tight, Henry. This is going to be no place to take a fall.”
Henry let go of August’s shirt and wrapped his arms around August’s neck instead, gripping just low enough not to cut off his breathing.
Seth shouldered the pack, and they trudged on. With many stops for August to catch his breath.
“This is Scout Lookout,” August said. “This is where the trail ends.”
He eased Henry down onto the uneven red stone and pale dirt. Then he straightened and felt so bizarrely light that he could imagine his body levitating. Floating away.
The sun, which had long been up by any reasonable measure, was just glaring over the cliffs to their left. Across the canyon. Ahead, chains were bolted into the rock for hikers to grab on to as they made their way along the edge of a narrow rock spine rising to the cap of Angels Landing. Directly ahead the way was more or less horizontal. Then, farther up, it seemed nearly vertical. He’d taken that last piece of climb once before. He didn’t want to take it again. Not with two young boys, one of whom was overtired. Not even if he’d been alone.
The first rays of sun glinted off the Virgin River, which wound like a gold snake nearly fifteen hundred feet below. They stood on the wide, flat dirt expanse of the lookout. The last wide anything this hike had to offer.
“But that’s the very top up there,” Seth said, predictably pointing up the near-vertical spine to the cap of the rock formation.
“Seth. Go up to that sign and then come back and tell me what it says.”
On the sign was a photo of the same vertical climb that rose before them. In the corner was a graphic of a person—depicted in about the same detail as the guy on a men’s-room sign—falling. They stood too far away to read the information on the sign, but August had been up here before. He knew approximately what it said.
Seth walked straight-backed to read the sign, then rejoined them again with a noticeable sag to his posture.
“So, how many people does it say fell to their death from that route?”
“Six,” Seth said.
“I believe it also says something about parents watching their children. And I’m not going up there. I’m not sending you up there with nobody watching you.”
Seth flopped onto his butt in the tan dirt, obviously holding back tears.
“The view is really good from here,” August said. “Let’s just enjoy it.”
“When will I ever get another chance? I wanted to go to the very top. You said this was the most popular hike in the park. So, like, hundreds of people have gone up there.”
“More like tens of thousands.”
“So almost everybody who went up there didn’t die.”
“Listen. Seth.” August eased his tired legs into a squat in front of the boy, angled in such a way that he could still keep a close eye on Henry. Henry didn’t move a muscle. “I want you to see this situation from my point of view. You’re not my kid. You’re somebody else’s kid. And I’m responsible for you. That’s even harder than being responsible for your own kid. How can I let you do something dangerous? What would I tell your father if something went wrong?”
A tear slipped loose and rolled down Seth’s cheek. He wiped it away furiously with the back of one dusty hand.
“My father would let me go.”
August sat in the dirt and sighed. He briefly wondered if he had always sighed so often. He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and checked for reception. Two bars.
“Did you bring his number?” he asked Seth.
“Yeah. I did. ’Cause we said we might call him from up here.”
“Did he say how early you could call?”
“Seven. Seven to three. Is it after seven?”
“It is.”
“Is it the same time here as there?”
“No. It’s an hour later in Utah. But it’s still after seven there.”
“So I should just call him from here? And tell him I’m almost on top of the world and that’s as high as August says I get to go?”
“No. You should ask his permission to go up to the top. If he says you can, you can. But I want to talk to him. Make sure this thing is properly explained.”
It took a good five minutes of waiting just to get Wes on the line. August wondered if that meant his cell minutes wouldn’t last as long as he’d thought.
Then he heard, “Hey, Dad.” And watched Seth’s face brighten to match the moment. “Yeah . . . How is it?” Long silence. “Yeah, you always say that. Every time. I get it. The food is bad . . . Yeah, I am . . . Yeah, it’s good . . . He is . . . Listen, you won’t believe where I am. I have to tell you where I am. I’m on top of this huge rock thing in Zion National Park called Angels Landing . . . Oh, you’ve heard of it? I’d never heard of it . . . Well, I carried him part of the way, and August carried him part of the way. Anyway, we’re not at the very top because August thinks the last part is too dangerous . . . Yeah, that’s what I said. Thousands of people do it and they don’t fall. I think so, too . . .”
Take Me With You Page 7