“I know,” August said. “I’m sorry.”
Later that night they lay in their respective beds, August staring at the ceiling. In time he could hear Henry’s sleep breathing, something like a light shadow of a snore. But so far as he could tell Seth was still awake.
“August?” Seth said after a time.
And August was not surprised.
“What is it, Seth?”
“If you don’t want to take us back to San Diego with you now, I understand.”
“Oh, Seth. I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . of course I’m going to still take you with me. I would never change my mind about you because you accidentally dropped something.”
“But you told me it wasn’t safe.”
August sighed deeply. There was a wall inside Seth, and he had hit it again. He could never seem to get over, under, or around it. And it hardly seemed ready to crack. No matter how many times he told that boy to take it easy on himself, it was something like talking to the wind.
“Let me tell you a little story about Phillip,” he said.
“Okay.”
“He was a first-class thrill seeker. I remember one time we saw this documentary about people who’ve gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel. At first it was like a suicide mission. In the early days of barrels. But lately they’ve been making them tougher. Anyway, a lot of people still die. It’s just about one of the most dangerous things in the world a person can do.”
“Don’t tell me he wanted to do it.”
“Yes and no. I think he knew better than to actually try. But he was just so fascinated by it. I know he would have done it in a heartbeat if he could somehow have been sure he’d survive.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me.”
“Think about it. What could be a more fitting tribute? You put some of his ashes in the equivalent of a barrel and sent them over two very high waterfalls. It’s perfect. It’s more perfect than anything I could ever have thought of.”
“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“I think it was perfect.”
“Thanks, August. I do feel a little better now.”
August lay awake for a few more minutes, pondering his tall tale. Phillip had never been a thrill seeker. They had never watched a documentary about Niagara Falls and barrels. Nor had the idea ever been discussed. But it had been worth it to say so. Because in just a matter of minutes, Seth was snoring peacefully.
And August slept well, too.
Part Two:
LATE AUGUST
Chapter One:
SAD GOOD NEWS
They stepped out into the warm sun at a parking lot in Arches National Park. Walked down a flat path to an area from which they could view the famous Delicate Arch at a distance.
“How much more time left to our vacation, August?” Seth asked as they walked.
He asked once or twice a week and never seemed to remember from one asking to the next. Or maybe he just liked to hear the answer spoken out loud.
“About two weeks. Thirteen days until we head back. A couple more until we get there. There it is. See it up there?”
August pointed up to a clifflike slope of sandy-colored Utah red rock. There it stood in the distance, a perfect, freestanding, flat-topped arch. Just about everybody August knew had at least seen a picture of Delicate Arch. Except Seth and Henry.
“Oooh, nice,” Seth said, and zoomed in for a shot with August’s camera. “Too bad we can’t get closer up.”
“We can. We’re about to hike up there. I told you that. You don’t remember?”
“Hmm,” Seth said. “Maybe I was thinking about something else.”
“I remember,” Henry said. Since the beginning of summer, his voice had gradually morphed into that of a fairly confident cartoon mouse.
“Great,” Seth said. “He finally gets to talking again and he mostly uses it to make me look bad.”
“This is kind of steep,” Henry said.
They were making their way up a slickrock slope following the stacked-rock cairns marking the trail. There was really no other way to mark a trail over slickrock. Except with blue paint blazes. Which August was glad the park service hadn’t chosen.
“You want a ride?” August asked.
“No. I’m okay. I just want you guys to slow down a little.”
They all stopped, and Henry leaned on his own knees and breathed for a minute. Then he straightened up again.
“Okay. That’s good. Let’s walk some more.”
They started uphill again.
“What did you say they called those stacks of rocks again, August?” Seth asked.
“Cairns,” Henry said. Before August even could.
“Right,” August said.
“There he goes again,” Seth said. “I wonder why they call them that.”
“No idea,” August said. “Some people call them ducks.”
“Even weirder. But maybe that was because they looked like ducks to somebody.”
“Maybe.”
“They don’t look very much like ducks to me,” Henry said.
They all three stopped to lean and breathe again, but even more briefly this time.
“Will you take a picture of Henry and me in front of the arch, August?”
“Sure I will.”
“Good. I want my friends from school to see we were there. After Christmas, that is.”
“You know, Henry,” August said when they began to climb again, “you’ve gotten to be a darn good little hiker.”
“I know,” Henry said. “I think so, too.”
They pulled into an RV park in Moab around lunchtime.
Seth dumped the tanks while August fed Woody and hooked up the water and electricity. Then he checked his cell phone messages.
“Another message from your dad,” he told Henry, who frowned at the news.
“Seth!” Henry called through the window. “Dad called again!”
“So what?” Seth called back in. “I didn’t care the first ten times, either.”
“Did he really call eleven times?” Henry asked August more quietly.
“No. Five or six maybe. Seven tops.”
After lunch they took a walk on a high dirt berm, almost a levee, that ran along a canal that let off into the Colorado River on the other end of the campground.
Seth had Woody’s leash, and August decided he should probably listen to the phone message. In case Wes was getting desperate. In case he was about to put out an all-points bulletin. Report August for stealing his children.
He dropped a few paces behind the boys and called his voice mail.
“August,” the message began. “Seth. Henry. Okay, part of me gets it. You don’t want to talk to me. But I have some news, and you’ll like it. It’s good news, and nobody’ll call me. Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk my way into the office to make a noncollect call? How many times do you think I can do this? And it’s good news. Did I say that already? And I worked damn hard on it and this is getting frustrating, so no matter how much you hate me right now, could somebody please call me back and hear my good news?” Wes’s voice rose to almost shouting by the end of the sentence.
Then a click. No good-bye.
The message had been left earlier that morning. Which meant that, even though August wasn’t entirely sure what day of the week it was, it was definitely one of the days he could call Wes back.
“Your dad says he has good news,” he called to the boys.
Henry kept walking. Seth stopped and spun almost defensively. It had definitely caught him off guard. Then he talked over his caring again.
“So what? Who cares? How good could it be? I bet he’s just saying that to get us to call. I bet he’s lying. Maybe he’s always lying.”
August caught up with the boys, and Henry slipped a hand into August’s hand.
“I think we should at least hear
what it is.”
“Will you call him, August?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
They reached the corner where the canal met the Colorado River. To their left a highway bridge spanned the river, with an impressive wall of red rock behind it. They sat in the dirt on the berm.
“Look,” Seth said, pointing up at the rock face. “That’s going to be an arch, isn’t it, August?”
August looked up to see what looked like an arched doorway protruding from the rock. Yes, that’s how they begin all right.
“Someday,” he said. “But those things take a lot of time.”
He punched number five for the jail, which was now on speed dial. He read the person who answered both the name and the assigned number of the inmate in question. It didn’t take Wes long to come on the line. It surprised August, who pictured him running down a prison hallway to grab up the phone.
“Seth?”
“No, Wes. It’s me. August.”
“Oh.” If Wes was trying to hide his disappointment, he wasn’t doing well. “Look. I know Seth has a very well-developed sense of right and wrong. But . . . he has to talk to me sometime.”
August covered the mouthpiece of the phone with the heel of one hand. “He says you have to talk to him sometime,” he told Seth.
Seth snorted derisively.
“No comment on that at the moment,” August said into the phone. “But in the long run I tend to agree with you. I’m sure you can understand why we’re not your biggest fans right now. I mean . . . what did you think you were doing, Wes?”
A long silence. Knowing what he knew about Wes, August was half-prepared to find that Wes had hung up the phone and gone.
“I didn’t think you’d take ’em if you knew it only solved half the problem.”
“You got that right.”
“Look. You want to hear the good news or don’t you?”
“I do. Actually.”
“I’ll be there when you come back through. I’ll be home September third.”
August held still, watching the river flow and absorbing the news. He’d been primed for something good. But it didn’t feel good. It hit his gut hard. A distinct loss. He’d completely adjusted to the idea that the boys were with him nearly until Christmas.
At his left side he could feel them straining to listen to the other side of the conversation, which they could not possibly hear from where they sat.
“You’re not saying anything,” Wes said.
“How did you manage that?”
“It wasn’t easy. But I got ’em to let me do the second half of my time at home. You know. With one of those ankle monitor things. The first two times I put in for it they turned me down. But I just kept at it. You know. Letting ’em know it was for the kids. Not for me. That I had nobody to watch ’em after the first week of September.”
“I don’t suppose you told them you knew exactly how much child care you did and did not have going in.”
“Well, no. Couldn’t very well tell ’em that. I told ’em you had something come up that you had to bring the kids back early.”
“So you lied to them, too.”
“Listen. August. You really gonna bust my . . . chops? When I finally got this thing worked out?”
“No, I guess not. I’ll tell them.”
“That’s it? I don’t even get to talk to my boys?”
August put his hand over the mouthpiece again. “You guys want to talk to him?”
They both shook their heads vehemently.
“When they’re ready,” August told Wes. “Right now they say they’re not.”
“Shit,” Wes said. And hung up on him. It was a conversation ender to which August had almost become accustomed.
He looked over at the boys.
“Was it good news?” Seth asked.
“Um. Yeah. It was.” But August noticed that he didn’t sound all that convincing. “He’s going to be home when he first said he would. At the end of the summer. He’s going to be on house arrest. You know. With an ankle monitor. He won’t be able to leave the house. But he’ll be there anytime after the third of next month.”
They all stared at the pull of the river in silence for a moment or two.
Then Seth said, “In thirteen days?”
“More or less.”
“In thirteen days we won’t ever see you again?”
“Oh, sure you will. We’ll see each other again.”
“But we don’t get to go back to San Diego with you at all?”
“Guess not.” He looked at Henry, who refused to meet his eyes. For the first time in a long time. “What about you, Henry? What do you think of all this?”
Henry only shrugged. It jolted August in a place in his gut. Because Henry had been talking to him for quite a while now. Long enough that August was used to it and not expecting it to go away again.
“Hey. Henry. You in there? Talk to me.”
Henry continued to look away.
“We haven’t lost you again, have we, buddy?”
Henry only shrugged. August took a few deep breaths, trying to breathe around an uncomfortable obstruction in his gut. As if he’d swallowed something whole that remained undigested.
“You guys take Woody back to the motor home, okay? I need to make one more phone call.”
The boys got up, brushed off the seats of their shorts, and scuffed away without comment.
August dialed his sponsor, Harvey.
“You must be having a good time out there,” Harvey said, skipping “hello” as usual, “because when you’re having a bad time, you call.”
“Well, I’m busted then, Harv. Because we were having a good time until just now.”
“The story of my life,” Harvey said.
August filled him in on the sudden news. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. As a sort of wrap-up.
“What do you mean you don’t know what to do?”
“I thought it was self-explanatory.”
“There’s only one thing you can do. Give the kids back and go home. Get on with your life.”
“But I’m not sure they want to be there,” August said in what skirted embarrassingly close to a whiny tone. “I’m not even sure if they’re safe there.”
“Doesn’t matter, August. He’s their father.”
“He’s also a practicing alcoholic.”
“Indeed. Imagine if that was all it took to get kids away from their parents. Where would we have been in our drinking days, eh? Lots of parents drink. Some of them way too much. But they mostly get to keep the kids.”
“Every word out of his mouth is a lie, Harvey.”
“Which also does not relieve him of custody.”
“Shit, Harv.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I agree with you, August. It’s shitty. It’s one of those things in life you wish would be some other way. But it’s not some other way. Is it? You’re a smart guy, so I suspect you know what I’m going to say next. What am I going to say next?”
August squeezed his eyes closed. “I expect you’re going to say that those boys have their own higher power looking out for them. And that I’m not it.”
“I’m relieved to know you occasionally pay attention,” Harvey said.
“What would you think about an intervention? You know. The boys and me. Before I leave them alone there.”
“Sure,” Harvey said. “Good idea. Knock yourself out. That and two fifty will buy Wes his next bottle of beer.”
At sunset they stood at the railing at Dead Horse Point in a state park of the same name adjacent to Canyonlands, just across the highway from Arches and an easy drive from the campground.
The Colorado River snaked hundreds of feet below, flowing straight toward the spot where they stood, then bending away again in a horseshoe turn. The river had carved itself a red-rock canyon, leaving a teardrop-shaped mesa of colorful, striated rock above the horseshoe. The late sun hit the water at a slant, making it glow a flat gold.
; Henry hadn’t said a word all day. Seth had said maybe ten.
“This is one of the prettiest things we’ve seen on the whole trip,” Seth said, lining up a photo. “And that’s saying a lot. Because we’ve seen some amazing stuff. I don’t like the name, though. Why do they call it Dead Horse Point?”
“You’re better off not knowing. It’s not a happy story.”
“But you know it?”
“It’s on that sign over there. But I don’t recommend it. There are actual dead horses involved. It’s depressing.”
They stared in silence for a moment or two, the sun blinking off the water. In a minute it would disappear behind the red mesas.
“I hate things that are sad, August.”
“I know you do, buddy.”
“It’s sad that you live so far away from us.”
“I figured that was what you meant. But you can call me. I’ll leave you with my number. You can call me collect. Anytime. If you need help. Or even if you just want to talk.”
“And if our dad has to go to jail again, can we come stay with you?”
“Of course you can.”
As they headed back to the motor home, Seth said, “Remember when you told me that if anything would stop my dad drinking it might be me telling him the truth about how it hurts us when he does?”
“Yeah. I do remember. And I’m way ahead of you on that, buddy. I’ve already talked to my sponsor about doing an intervention.”
“Oh. Yeah. I know about those. I saw them on TV. What’s a sponsor?”
“A person in the program who has more time sober. Who helps you with the one-on-one stuff.”
“Maybe you could be my dad’s sponsor.”
“Not a good idea, Seth. First of all, your sponsor is supposed to be completely on your side. And I’m really not on your dad’s side. I’m on your and Henry’s side. And he knows it.”
They walked in silence for a minute more.
“What’s the other thing?” Seth asked.
“Other thing?”
“The thing that’s not first of all.”
“You have to be sober to have a sponsor. Sponsorship is a relationship between two sober people. You can’t sponsor someone who’s drinking. It just doesn’t work. Sponsorship is help staying sober. And your dad’s not sober. And even though I’m totally willing to do this thing with you and support you, I need you to understand that it usually doesn’t work.”
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