Take Me With You

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  August sighed deeply, wishing he had a good, immediate answer.

  “I’ve lived a pretty quiet life,” he said.

  “But you traveled all summer. Every summer. That’s your more. Right?”

  “I guess it is, yeah.”

  “So you know what I mean.”

  August sighed again. “I just can’t imagine it’s worth giving your life for.”

  “You don’t know I will give my life for it.”

  “And you don’t know you won’t. Climbers die.”

  “Drivers die, August. Do you have any idea how much risk you took? All those thousands of miles on the highways every summer? People die on highways. But drivers look at what I do and say, ‘Oh my God. You could die.’ But then they get in their car and drive away and never give it a thought. Some of them at eighty miles an hour. Some of them don’t even buckle their seat belts. Not because it’s really any safer. Because it feels safer. Because they’re used to it. I bet if we could pull some good statistics, we’d find out I’m a lot more likely to die driving on the highway to Joshua Tree than bouldering up some rocks to thirty or forty feet after I get there. But you still wouldn’t say to me, ‘Seth, please. Don’t get in that car. It’s too dangerous. You could die.’ ”

  “No, I guess I wouldn’t,” August said.

  But it didn’t really change the way he felt about the situation.

  “So you understand?”

  He almost said no. Just a flat no. But he caught it on the way out and changed it to something barely more supportive.

  “I’m working on understanding,” he said.

  Almost as though he was making some progress already. But he wasn’t.

  Chapter Five:

  RAISON D’ÊTRE

  August opened his eyes. Looked out the motor home window. Zion was out there. Not that he hadn’t known, on some level, that it would be. Just that in his sleep he’d forgotten.

  He looked up to see Henry in the kitchen, starting breakfast. And Seth was gone. Which is exactly what he’d seen for the last eight or nine days upon opening his eyes. Almost since they’d started their trip. Henry cooking. Seth gone.

  “This is some intense déjà vu,” August said, indicating the view outside the windows.

  “I’ll say,” Henry answered, as if half there and half somewhere else.

  “Even the way the cottonwood fluff is flying around. Just like it was eight years ago. Every detail.”

  “Except I’m not scared.”

  “You were still scared by the time we got to Zion?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” Woody sat up and begged for the toast Henry was buttering. Henry ignored him. “I want to know what you really call that stuff. That cottonwood stuff. You’re a scientist, August. I would think you would know stuff like that.”

  “Science teacher.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “I’d say so. They probably just call them cottonwood seeds. Where’s Seth?”

  “Gone already.”

  “He’s always gone when I wake up. He’s not on that big climb already, is he?”

  “No. He’s out looking for someone else climbing solo. Or a team that’ll let him join. Because you gave him such a hard time about going solo.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s good, though. Right?”

  Henry didn’t answer.

  “Sometimes you get really quiet,” August said, “and it seems to mean something. It seems to fit in with a question you don’t want to answer.”

  Henry flipped two eggs in a frying pan on the burner, careful not to break the yolks. He maintained his silence.

  “Confirm or deny,” August said.

  “I don’t like to tell people what to do.”

  “What if they ask?”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “Isn’t it better if he doesn’t go alone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But I do think it’s why he’s always gone before you get up. You’ve been awful hard on him about the climbing.”

  “It’s just because I care,” August said.

  Henry didn’t answer. August wondered if his silence meant the same thing as usual.

  He stared out the window at the high rock faces, his view of them partially blocked by cottonwood trees. Smelled breakfast. Listened to the flow of the river.

  “I hope he’s careful who he picks,” August said, almost as if to himself. “That could almost be more dangerous than going alone. Going with the wrong group. Someone who wants to go too fast, or isn’t careful enough about belaying,” he said, repeating one of the few climbing terms he’d picked up from Seth. “Or placing hardware. Or if their equipment is old and unreliable. I hope he knows how important that is.”

  August looked up at Henry, who was dishing up breakfast. The boy was literally biting his lip. It struck August as a sort of figurative way of biting his own tongue.

  “You’re doing it again,” August said.

  “I don’t like to tell people what to do, August.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re thinking?”

  August sat up, propped himself up with pillows behind his back, and Henry handed him breakfast. He watched the boy sit down on the couch with his own food. But Henry didn’t eat. He just stared at it. As though the food had to make the first move.

  Woody wiggled too close, but Henry didn’t stop him. August called Woody’s name sharply, and the dog jumped down in shame.

  August was beginning to think Henry was never going to answer. Never going to say what he was thinking. But August was wrong. Hugely wrong.

  “I’m just glad he left early, August. That’s what I’m thinking. I’m glad he wasn’t around to hear you say that. Do you have any idea how that would have made him feel? Seth’s been climbing for eight years, August. Eight years. Since he was twelve. You have no idea how much he knows about it. You talk to him like you know the risks and he doesn’t. He knows everything about climbing, including exactly what can go wrong. You have no idea how hard he works to keep the risks down. He’s made a study of it. But you take all that away from him when you say things like that. Like you look at what he does, and it looks dangerous, and you start talking to him like he doesn’t even know that. If it was somebody else, he’d probably just shake his head and walk away. But he admires you so much. It’s really hard for him. It hurts him, August.”

  Then he stopped just as suddenly. Turned his face away. Looked out the window. Nobody spoke. Or ate. August felt as though he’d suddenly lost his appetite.

  “Sorry,” Henry said.

  “I asked.”

  “I don’t like to talk to people that way. Well. I don’t like to talk to people at all. Except you. I like to talk to you. But not like that.”

  August and Henry took Woody for a short, slow walk later that morning, stopping for a time at the visitor center. August sat on a bench with Woody while Henry went inside and looked around.

  August watched men and women board shuttle buses dressed in hiking clothes, with day packs and trekking poles, and felt his mood sinking. In time Henry rejoined him, and they walked back to their campsite on a dirt trail beside the river, not talking at all. Seth was back in camp. He had a friend with him, a young man a few years older with wild black hair dressed in only shorts and sneakers. His build was light and wiry, his chest narrow, but he was clearly in shape. His skin was bronze from many hours in the sun.

  He and Seth were sorting through an amazing amount of climbing equipment, which was carefully laid out on the picnic table in front of them. Ropes and hardware, dozens of carabiners, loops of nylon strap, gear bags. A dozen other types of gear that August had never seen. August had no idea the names for most of it, or the purpose. Neatly lined up, it covered every inch of the table.

  Henry leaned in and whispered in August’s ear. “Bet you had no idea there was so much to it.”

  “August!” Seth said, his head coming up suddenly. He sounded animated, almost artificially cheerful.
“This is Dwayne.”

  August leaned carefully on his left cane, let the other cane rest against his right leg, and shook hands with the young man.

  “His climbing partner got the flu,” Seth continued.

  “Maybe,” Dwayne said. “Or maybe he got a good look at Moonlight Buttress.”

  August noticed a slight wince on Seth’s part. Dwayne continued to sort and count gear while Seth pulled August aside.

  “Please don’t say anything bad about climbing in front of Dwayne,” he said.

  August felt surprisingly stung. He wondered how long Henry had held his tongue before that morning, hesitating to speak on his brother’s behalf, and if things were even worse than he’d made them out to be. He wondered if Seth’s comment was the tip of an iceberg of August’s own making.

  “I wouldn’t have,” he said.

  “Okay, good. Thanks.”

  It may not have been entirely true, though, August thought. He might have. He wasn’t sure anymore.

  “Moonlight Buttress?” he asked. “I thought you were going up to Angels Landing.”

  “Yeah. More or less,” Dwayne said. “They’re right next door.”

  “We can still hike out down the Angels Landing trail,” Seth added.

  “So when do you leave?”

  “Tonight. Last shuttle.”

  “Not in the morning?”

  “No, that’s when everybody leaves—first shuttle in the morning. We’ll go out tonight. Climb by moonlight and headlamps. It’s safe in terms of holds, but if the route finding is too hard, we may have to stop and bivvy. You have to cut me a lot of slack on this, August. Our plan is to do it nonstop in about twenty-four hours. But a lot of things can change the plan. We could get stuck behind other teams where we can’t get by. We could lose the route in the dark. You have to accept that we could be gone for two or three days . . . maybe even longer . . . but that doesn’t mean we’re not okay.”

  August swallowed hard and self-consciously, his mouth feeling suddenly dry. He thought that sounded difficult and scary. To sit in the motor home for two or three days, accepting. Trusting.

  “Okay,” he said, thinking it sounded weak. “Maybe we’ll take the shuttle out tomorrow and see if we can see you.”

  Seth was threading hardware onto a nylon belt, and August wondered if that was the only reason he wouldn’t meet August’s eyes.

  “Um . . .” he said after a time. “We’ll be too far away.”

  “I’ve got my camera with the super zoom.”

  Seth buckled the belt and threw it back on the picnic table with a huge, jangly clank. Then he took August by the arm and led him around to the rear door of the motor home.

  Speaking quietly, he said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, August. But . . . please don’t watch. Please. It looks scarier than it is. Especially if you don’t know much about climbing. I feel like . . . if I think you’re watching . . . I’ll be . . . I’ll pick up that nervous energy from you. Well . . . not nervous exactly, but . . . negative. Like there’s some kind of negative energy that I’ll be able to feel. I mean, I know I won’t really be able to feel it. I’m just worried that I’ll be checking the feel of the air, because I’ll be thinking about whether I can feel it. I’ll be worried about whether you’re worried. Every pitch, every hold, instead of just thinking about what I’m doing, I’ll be thinking about how what I’m doing looks to you. And I worry it’ll be a distraction. Please just let me do this with you not looking, okay?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Sure, Seth. That’s fine.”

  Then August spent the next hour or two listening to the young climbers talk between themselves in what sounded like a foreign tongue. Joined here and there by bits of English but full of a vernacular that might just as well have been Russian or Swahili for all he understood.

  While he listened, August wondered if he had managed to cover over his hurt feelings as well as he hoped.

  “I was just about to come looking for you,” Henry said as August made his way slowly back to the motor home. “I swear I was going to jump the shuttle and search every corner of the park.”

  August wanted to argue, but he was too tired. It was too hard just to walk. He noticed the young man, Dwayne, was gone, and felt mildly relieved for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down.

  “Help me in, please,” he said.

  Seth overheard and came out, and they took their places to help August up the three back stairs. One on each side, arms reached up to brace firmly under August’s upper arms, all the way up.

  “Here, hold my bag,” he said, and handed it to Seth.

  Seth set it down on the ground and they whisked him up the stairs. Almost too fast. It was cool inside the rig. The air conditioning was blowing hard. August sat on the couch with a sigh. Henry handed him a plastic cup of water immediately. As if the move had been rehearsed for maximum efficiency.

  “I wasn’t in the park,” he said to Henry belatedly. “I was in town. Springdale. I took the shuttle into Springdale.”

  “Why alone, though?” Seth asked. “That freaked me out a little.”

  “I can go places alone.”

  “I know. But why? Why wouldn’t you want us to go?”

  “I was looking for something. I just wanted to be alone to look. I bought you something.”

  Seth looked around, as though August must be talking to Henry. “Who? Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Where’s that bag?”

  “Oops. Left it outside.”

  Seth lunged out the door and came back with the bag in his hands. He brushed red dirt off it, then held it out to August.

  “Don’t give it to me,” August said. “I told you it was for you.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “But before you open it . . .” Everything seemed to hold still. And everyone. Even Woody didn’t move. August wrestled with what to say. Truthfully, he was strangely self-conscious about the gift and not sure of himself at all. It was either a wonderful present or a terrible one, the best or the worst thing he could have done. But given those choices, he wondered if he didn’t just have to try. To find out. “I still have the receipt. So I really want you to tell me if it doesn’t feel like something you want. If you think it would be a distraction in any way. It won’t hurt my feelings . . .”

  Well, it will, August thought. A little bit. But he still wanted Seth to tell him the truth.

  Seth peered into the bag.

  “Oh, cool,” he said. “A helmet cam!”

  “You don’t have to say you like it if you don’t.”

  “No, these are great, August. These are really cool. I’ve seen some of the footage climbers take with these. It’s really intense. It’s really close up, hands-on. You know? Every time you look down to get something off your belt, you see down into all that exposure. You see these handholds that you mostly did by feel at the time. But, man, August. These are expensive! Why do you think I don’t have one?”

  “I have credit cards, too,” August said.

  “Gosh, thanks, August.”

  “I just thought . . . I really do want to see what you do, Seth. But you don’t want me to watch, which I guess I understand, since I seem to be the nervous sort where this stuff is concerned. But I thought if you turned this on when you started climbing, I could see what you do later. When you’re back. And I won’t have to get nervous, because you’re back. But if you think it would be heavy or awkward . . . well, it only weighs less than three ounces, but—”

  “August,” Seth interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Please stop apologizing for it. It’s a good present.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a good present.”

  And he leaned over the couch where August sat and gave him an awkward but sincere hug. It felt like the reversal of some kind of magnetic polarity. Seth had been leaning away from him for days. But August hadn’t realized how much so until Seth finally leaned back in.

  “We should take the shuttle into Zion
Canyon today,” August said.

  It was morning. August was up and showered. Dressed. Henry was finishing up the breakfast dishes.

  Seth had been gone since nine o’clock the previous night. Climbing. It was a fact that sat hard on August’s mind, whatever else he tried to think or talk about.

  When Henry didn’t answer, August said, “You know. Like the old days. Like we did eight years ago. Go up to Weeping Rock. Maybe even a tiny bit of the River Trail. We’ll have to see how much I’m up for.”

  Still no answer.

  “Henry. Are you doing that thing again?”

  “Which thing is that, August?” But he said it as though he knew which thing.

  “You know. The one where you don’t say anything because you don’t like to tell people what to do. You don’t like to talk to people like that.”

  “I don’t like to talk to people at all.”

  “But this is me.”

  “I was wondering if this is your way of breaking your promise not to watch Seth climb.”

  “Well, we may see a trail of ants crawling up that big rock wall, but we won’t be close enough to see which ones are Seth and Dwayne.”

  “You told him you could use your super zoom.”

  August sighed. Henry had been telling the truth when he said he watched everything, took in everything, but didn’t say. But August was pressing him to say. And so he was saying.

  “Tell you what,” August offered. “Wide-angle shots only, and not of Moonlight Buttress. You can be my policeman.”

  “Honest truth, August, why do you want to do this?”

  “Because I’m a little nervous today, and I feel like I’m just waiting for Seth to get back, and it’s going to be much too long a day if we just sit around camp the whole time and do nothing.”