by James Franco
“Round Table,” said Alex. He meant Round Table Pizza.
On the trail we walked in a line. I was last. We had our puffy jackets on but it wasn’t too cold. Mine was brown and lighter brown, Alex’s was red and blue, and my dad’s was all blue, bigger and less puffy. I told myself brown was better than red and blue.
The sun was low and shot shafts of gold at an angle through the trees. From far away I could see insects and atmosphere dancing, but when I walked through the light it was warm and the insects were gone. The ground was dry. No one was around. It was just us walking.
Our first stop was supposed to be a bunch of caves. My dad pointed up off the trail and we walked up an incline. After a bit, as we walked up the hill, I could see some people standing in front of the caves. When we got closer, I saw that they were a man and a woman in their thirties, wearing shorts and hiking boots and backpacks. The man had light curly hair like mine but his was down to his ears, and the woman had long, straight brown hair. Her legs were thin like a horse’s, and on her knee there was a purple brown scab.
“How’s it going?” my dad said.
“Not bad,” the man said. “Some candles here.” We walked up closer and saw that there was a large circle of white candles in the dirt. The circle was large enough for a person to lie in the middle. “There’s another one in there,” the man said and pointed up toward the cave. My father said nothing, but he took Alex’s hand.
Not long before, I had gone to see The Little Mermaid with my mom and Alex at the Old Mill Theater. Seeing movies was one of our traditions. In the middle of the movie I got up and went to the bathroom. On the way back I looked into another theater and saw a few minutes of a movie called The First Power. Lou Diamond Phillips was in it. I loved him as Chavez in Young Guns so I watched. I knew that it was about the devil and I wasn’t supposed to watch. The killer had tied up a woman and put her in the middle of a circle of candles. She was gagged and scared. The killer told her to relax and said he was going to say his prayers backward.
“Heaven, in art which father our are father which art in Heaven.” I left and went back to The Little Mermaid but I couldn’t forget what I saw.
My father didn’t let us look at the candles in the cave, so we kept walking. He held Alex’s hand and I walked a little behind them. My father and brother both had straight brown hair. The sun was above us and it was hotter. My dad took off his jacket and I took off mine. Alex took his off and we stopped to wait for him to tie it around his waist, but he couldn’t do it so my dad carried it for him.
The next stop was El Capitan. It was a tall, boxy mountain that shot straight up out of the ground. In my mind I always thought of it as yellow-orange because I thought of all the mountains in colors: Half Dome was white and gray; Mount Lyell was green; Mount Dana was pink; Matterhorn Peak was blue; but up close El Capitan wasn’t yellow-orange, it was just dirty white and chalky.
“Look at that tree,” my dad said. It was a tree with reddish bark. High up, some of the branches had been ripped away and in places the bark was skinned off revealing the pale insides. “That’s fresh. It’s from rocks falling off the mountain.”
There was a little stream going almost next to the base of the mountain. My dad gave us time to explore on our own. I told him I didn’t want any rocks to fall on me and he promised that they wouldn’t. I had nothing to do so I found a place with some sun and I sat with my back against the mountain. I took my shoes off and let my feet feel the air. The water was very close and it trickled and sparkled. From somewhere close I could hear my brother’s voice, high and demanding, and my father’s voice, deep and calming.
Sitting in the sun I felt empty. I was a black center in the middle of all the nature. I was nothing but I could do anything. I could fill myself with anything. I said a prayer. I asked God that I would never be like my father. I told God that I didn’t want to have sons. I said that if I died I would like to have done something good before that happened. I prayed that my brother would die, and then I took it back.
Later, on a large, flat oval rock we had our lunch. The hotel had packed us sandwiches and Cokes. I had turkey on wheat with sprouts and cranberries. It was the best sandwich I’d ever eaten. The Coke washed it down and the sugar stuck to my teeth.
* * *
To get to Yosemite Falls we walked through a very green and wet part of the park. The ground was full of mud and damp needles. All the rocks were wet and had a blue gloss. Soon the noise of the falls started growing, and after a while the sound was all around us. A steady rush of horror saying, “You are small and insignificant,” and getting so loud that you just wanted to see to get it over with and get out of there. Some people were walking back from the falls toward us. A couple with dark hair and dark clothes. They said nothing as they passed.
The three of us, we three Petersons, walked in a line toward the noise, my father in the center. We had our puffy jackets back on and there was a mist around us. The mist wet our faces as we continued toward the center of the roar. It felt like something was pushing us back but my father kept pulling us forward. The trees were green and black over us, like the arched ceiling of a church.
Then we came out from under the trees and there was a huge rock face and in the center, a cataract, white and gushing, implacable and steady in its furious rush over the side. It was a violent slice of movement in the stolid graphite-colored rock front, and the scene was all glazed over by the shifting atmosphere of mist. The waterfall was farther than I imagined, but the sound roared in a chorus that echoed and reechoed without end. It felt like there were speakers just below us projecting the rushing noise, so loud and close when the waterfall was so far.
We stood for a minute and then made our way up the damp path to a wooden bridge that spanned the river. At the base of the bridge, the waterfall sent itself smashing on the rocks. It was even louder here, as if we were in a cave of sound. The waterfall was a mystery. It was water and rock and river and time and noise. Is the water the waterfall? I wondered. Or the rock formation that makes the waterfall in that way? Or the combination? You could take a photo of the waterfall, but the particular water captured in the picture would never flow over again.
An old man walked over the bridge. He had on a translucent blue raincoat with the hood up and pulled tight around his face so that only his eyes and nose were showing through the opening. We asked him to take a picture of us and he did, with our backs to the railing of the bridge and the waterfall behind us. Alex was in my father’s arms.
The way back felt too far. I knew my father had kept us out too long. We had to walk back past El Capitan. The sun was going down behind the tall, square mountain and there was an orange glow bending around one edge. My dad had my brother on his shoulders and I was dragging my feet. After a while, we left the footpath and walked along a larger dirt road. My father said we were almost back to the hotel, but he had been saying that for a long time. A little off the road there were the remains of the wall of an old stone house. Next to the wall was the wasted foundation. Behind this was another foundation with brick remains ringing its sides. The sun was almost gone.
We walked more. I didn’t want to go any farther. Yosemite was hell. Then, ahead, we saw some burning. As we got closer we saw that there were large burning piles of leaves just off the road. I walked ahead of my father and brother to look at the piles. They were on a stretch of dirt so that the fire wouldn’t spread, but the flames went really high. There were five piles about twenty-five feet wide, all taller than I was and the flames leaped taller than my dad. Many of the leaves and branches and sticks had thorns on them and I thought that they might have been poison ivy or poison oak. When I was across from the second burning pile I saw something large and white through the smoke. I walked to the edge of the road and saw that it was a human rib cage. I didn’t see a head, but the ribs were very clear, like a corset. I ran back.
“Dad, there’s a skeleton over there.” My dad put my brother on the ground and told u
s to wait. He walked to the piles and stood over where the skeleton was. He stood there for a while and then came back to us and put my brother back on his shoulders. “Let’s go. A mountain climber must have fallen off the mountain. The animals got to him. It’s okay, come on, let’s go.” We quickly walked past the piles. “Don’t look,” my dad said, but I did. The pointed ends of the white ribs in the orange light of the fire.
On the way back my father hummed the meditation songs. My brother cried quietly and my father bounced him gently and said it was okay, it was just a hiker that had an accident. He hummed again, and I walked by his side and held his hand. The fire was far behind us, but it still felt close. My footsteps crunched and I didn’t want to be on the ground. It was hard to see and for ten minutes in the dark he hummed to us.
Then we were back at the hotel. We took our jackets off and my dad said, “We’re stinky boys. We’re all going to take showers. Then we’ll order room service, okay? Who’s first shower?” Nobody spoke. My brother and I sat on the bed. Alex said, “Can we call Mom?”
“No, it’s too late to bother Mom.”
I said, “Dad, call the police.”
My dad picked up the phone.
“Can I have the ranger service, please? Thanks …” He waited a bit and we watched. “Hello, I was out walking with my boys near El Capitan and we came across some burning piles. Next to the piles there was a skeleton, I think it must have been a climber that fell off the mountain… . No, the animals got to him… . Yeah, they even went through the sheathing on the bones… . No, no head. No arms either. But there were feet… . Yes, they looked human to me … sure …” Then he waited with the phone to his ear. I was glad we were together because it felt like the world outside was full of murder. Then he was talking again. “I see… . Oh, really. Um, hmmm … interesting, okay, thank you very much. Yes, the Ahwahnee, room 213, Peterson. Yes, okay, thank you very much.” He hung up the phone. “It sounds like it was a bear.”
“I saw, it was human,” I said. “It was real, I saw.”
“I know, but the rangers said it was a bear. It was getting too friendly with the people because people were feeding it, so they had to shoot it.”
“It was a bear,” Alex said.
“Shut up, you didn’t even look,” I said.
“Don’t worry, Chris, I thought it was a person too.”
“But why would they shoot the bear if it was being friendly?”
“Because a bear’s idea of friendly is different from ours. Bears just want food, so they’ll kill you if you have it.”
My brother took the first shower and then my dad. He came out with a towel around his waist. He was pale and thin. Before I went in I told my dad I wanted a cheeseburger for dinner. The water was only warm. I lathered the soap in my hands and rubbed it under my pits and around my neck and then down across my chest and ribs and crotch. Then I did my legs and feet and then my crack. When I was lathering my face the water got cold so I danced in place while I washed off the soap. I didn’t wash my hair.
After I dried off I put on my sweatpants and T-shirt in the bathroom and went into the main room. The food was there and we sat on the two beds and ate from the table on wheels. We all had burgers and Cokes. The cheeseburger was thick and the cheese was salty and good. The burger was so thick I could hardly fit the first bites in my mouth, and the tomatoes and onions squeezed out the back. My brother had a regular hamburger. He put tons of ketchup on all his hamburgers; I used mustard only because I was more mature. My dad put mustard on his, but spicy mustard made with white wine. He said all the alcohol was cooked out so it was okay for him to eat it.
After dinner my dad put the table outside the door. While he was out my brother and I started jumping on the beds, then we started jumping over the gap between the beds.
“Hey, guys, settle down, settle down, I want to tell you something.” We stopped jumping and I sat on the edge and Alex lay on his stomach. My dad sat on the edge of his bed where he had sat while he was eating.
“Do you guys know how babies are made?”
“I think so,” I said.
“How?”
“The husband and wife get naked in a bath together.”
“Sick,” said Alex.
“Who told you that?” my dad said to me.
“Beatrice.” Beatrice was my best friend, a French girl that lived down the street. We had had chicken pox at the same time, and watched The Dukes of Hazzard together and the movie Time Bandits. She had itched her chicken pox and got an indent between her eyes, like she’d been hit by a miniature cork.
“Beatrice is wrong,” said my dad. “Yes, the man and the woman get naked but they don’t have to get into the bath. Usually they do it in a bed.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s comfortable there.”
“Why are they naked?” said my brother.
“Because the man needs to put his penis in the woman’s vagina.”
“What?” I said. My brother was squealing and squirming on the bed beside me.
“When two people are in love, that’s what they do. It’s not gross if you love each other …”
“You and mom?” I said.
“Yes.” My brother was really going crazy with the squeals then, rolling onto the floor. My dad and I started laughing.
“You did that for me and Alex?” I said. My dad nodded.
“Yes.”
“That is gross,” I said and my brother repeated me, “gross!”
Then I asked, “Do you still do it?”
My dad took a long time to answer.
Then we all got ready for bed. I let my dad and my brother brush their teeth first and then I went in there alone. I tried to brush the way my dad had told me to, but it didn’t feel right so I just brushed in my old way. The bear had ribs like I had ribs. Underneath had been lungs, and a stomach and a heart and they all got burned away.
Acknowledgments
My favorite people are teachers. I have learned tons about writing from Amy Hempel, Mona Simpson, Gary Shteyngart, Ben Marcus, Michael Cunningham, Catherine Texier, Jenny Offill, Darcey Steinke, Joshua Henkin, Jonathan Baumbach, Stacey D’Erasmo, Tony Hoagland, James Longenbach, Frank Bidart, Alan Williamson, Jonathan Lethem, Victor LaValle, Rick Barot, Ian R. Wilson, A. R. Braunmuller, Mark J. McGurl, Jonathan Post, Lynn Batten, Ellen Tremper, Katherine Hayles, Stephen Dickey, Kenneth Reinhard, and Cal Bedient. They have all been my teachers and friends. Richard Abate for his support. Thank you to Nan Graham and Paul Whitlatch for editing and showing me the way. Dave Eggers and Tyler Cabot too.