Outview (4 page)

“I keep getting this sort of sound in my
ears,” I said.

“You, too? Get used to it, little brother.”

“What do you mean?”

“I started hearing it when I was fourteen, too.
I asked Dad about it. And it was the weirdest thing.” Dustin stopped walking
and looked at me. “Dad started crying.”

“Why? What did you say to him?”

“All I said was, ‘Dad, I keep hearing the
wind in my ear and I feel like a hummingbird is flying around my head.’ He
pulled me in a hug and started sobbing, saying, ‘oh no, oh no, I’m sorry,
Dusty, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about or why he got so
upset.”

“Didn’t you ask him what was wrong?”

“Course I did. He said I hadn’t done
anything wrong and we needed to have a long talk, but it would have to wait
because he was late for work.”

I grabbed Dustin’s shoulder. “And?”

“He said he wanted to take me somewhere and
show me something, that we’d talk on the way.” Dustin’s eyes were filling. “We
never had that talk, Nate. Dad died two days later.”

The guilt was nauseating. Dad had wanted to
take Dustin on the Grizzly Peak hike alone. I begged and begged to go until he
finally gave in. Not only had I caused his death by going, but I had prevented
him from telling Dustin some great secret, from showing him something
important. I sat down on the trail. “What was he going to tell you? Show you?”
I asked weakly. My head throbbed.

“I wish I knew. He was pretty upset when I
asked him about the sound. I had the feeling that he heard it, too. Like he was
all torn up because he passed it on to me or something.” Dustin was looking up
at the trees but seemed to be staring much farther away. “He was distraught.
You would have thought I’d said the army was shipping me out to fight some
horrible foreign war.” He paused and spoke softly, almost to himself, “And in a
way that’s what it’s been like.”

Looking at Dustin was like looking in a
mirror, same hazel eyes flecked with gold, and sandy brown hair, but he was
taller and solid where I was lanky. I could almost see him fading away as he
stood there, battling memories and angst.

“Dustin, what’s been going on with you?
You’ve really been freaking Mom out.”

“Mom’s been a wreck ever since Dad died.
She thinks she’s going to blow it and disappoint him or worse, let
us
down.”

“She’s doing okay.”

“Glad you think so. The problem is she
doesn’t believe anything I say. She thinks I’m just a burnout and tripping all
the time.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Only when I need to.”

“That seems like all the time.” With that
he sparked a bowl and offered me a hit. “Whatever,” I said.

“You have no idea what it’s like.
Everything’s coming in at me, and now I have you to worry about on top of all
that.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Try
getting your own life figured out.”

“You sound like Mom. Neither one of you
knows what’s going on.”

“Because you won’t talk about it. Why don’t
you try telling me?”

“Why don’t you try growing up and not be
such a mama’s boy? Then maybe you could make up your own mind. Anytime I try to
talk about it, everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy, I just think
you’re a big freak.”

“How did you get to be so immature?”

“I’m fourteen, what’s
your
excuse?”

“Never mind, Nate, they’ll come for you,
too, and you’ll have a chance to deal with all this. Maybe then you’ll
understand your older brother isn’t such a crazy freak.”

When we got home, Dustin split off and
headed toward town. I had a chest pain and curled up next to a sequoia until it
went away. After that, I only saw him a few times before he got committed.
Today was the first real conversation we’ve had since that day in the woods.

I continued pacing in my room, switched back
to working on photos, read about the San Francisco 49ers online and did almost
anything I could to avoid sleep. Mom saw my light on and came in. She appeared
to have aged ten years in the four years since the funeral. There was a little
gray mixed in the long blond strands. Her thin face was still pretty, but lines
had etched a history of recent sorrows.

“Make sure you email me your route, which
campsites, Kyle’s plate number and all that good stuff.” Mom was efficient.
“Hey, when you’re next in town, come by the restaurant. Josh would love to see
you.”

“Sure, I’ll try.”

“You know, Josh and your dad were good
friends, more than just partners. He has always adored you and hardly sees you
anymore.”

“I know Mom, I said I’ll try.” The truth
was I thought Josh was a pretty cool guy. He and my parents started the
restaurant together before I could walk, and I literally grew up in the place.
Mom probably thought I was avoiding him, but it was actually the restaurant I
was avoiding. Dad died there.

It was located near the university campus
and although its official name was The Radio Station, everyone called it “the
Station.” It served healthy sandwiches, gourmet burgers with each dish named
after a different musician, from Adele to Townes Van Zandt. It may have been
most famous for wild desserts like Caramel Crisis, Chocolate Disaster or Die By
Pie. The ceiling was covered with authentic album covers from old vinyl LPs.
Framed concert posters, ticket collections, and other music memorabilia decorated
the walls. An authentic radio broadcast studio, complete with an on-air light,
sent tunes out to the dining area. Huge screens showed vintage concerts, and a
marquee out front listed them as if they were live, like “THE BEATLES
tonight.”  The place was usually packed with college students and hip locals; the
kids at my school considered it a cool spot.

Her once soft eyes were now hard. I wanted
to tell her I was scared. Couldn’t she see how lost I was? But Dustin had tried
talking to her, too.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “Do
you want to talk?”

“Not tonight, Mom, I’m really tired.”

“Okay, let’s find time though.” I thought she
said we should talk only because she believed it was what a mother should say
and was probably hoping to coast to my eighteenth birthday so her job would be
done. She’d be rid of the responsibility of both her sons.

I lost another duel with sleep and was out
soon after she left. I was a grown man, running along a beach. The sea was an
odd shade of purple. Some kind of drone, the size of a six-pack of sodas, was
chasing me as yellow marble-sized projectiles rained down. Another drone closed
in from the opposite direction. I darted toward a cliff, dove into a small
cave, and waited until the craft flew in after me. I threw a stone and smashed
it. More drones flew to the cave, but I was already half way up the cliff on an
old, primitive trail. When I reached the top, the sight was stunning. A
futuristic city of pale reds and blues, silver towers rose out of an expansive,
manicured forest that looked like an endless garden. “Where am I?” Or, rather,
“When am I?” More attackers came from the beach, yellow marbles zinged at me. Desperate
to escape, I ran toward the cliff’s edge. The yellow buckshot ripped across my
arms and back. I fell for what seems like minutes before my head split open on
a boulder.

Instantly, I was in my room, heart pounding,
reeling from the pain in my back and an intense headache. “My name is Nathan
Ryder, I’m sixteen, I’m in eleventh grade . . . ” I repeated my mantra. Why do
I always see death? What are the Outviews trying to tell me?

7

Sunday, September 14

Kyle pulled up as the sun lit the morning
sky, and we headed to the park. There were a few joggers and an old man walking
a dog, but otherwise we had Lithia Park to ourselves. A hundred acres of
shallow canyon land, an enchanted forest stretching around rushing Ashland
Creek, seemed from a Tolkien book. Trees made me feel safe, and sometimes when
the Outviews were especially bad, I thought about sleeping in the park. The
ponderosa pine bark smelled of vanilla and reminded me of my mom. The strong,
smooth cinnamon-colored bark of the madrone felt like my dad, and the scrub oaks
had always been Dustin in their tough scrappy gentleness. The alders, laurels,
conifers, willows, maples, and sycamores were friends. Even though I’d grown up
in the park, I usually found new places to explore but not that morning. I knew
where Kyle was headed as soon as we crossed the road at the second duck pond: the
Japanese garden.

The park had history. It was known how each
trail had been created, who designed the duck ponds a hundred years ago, even
why a certain flower was put next to a stonewall. But lost to time was the
origin of the Japanese garden. Black pines, red pines, Japanese maples,
persimmons, isu, and other exotic trees and shrubs looked a thousand years old.

Kyle explained that his daily meditations
were split between the garden, an abandoned pear orchard, and home. He also did
regular walking meditations, which I didn’t know were possible.

“Let’s see if we can calm down those voices
of yours. Meditation is the art of silencing the mind,” he said softly. “When
the mind is quiet, your concentration is increased, and you experience inner
peace.”

“That’s all I want.”

“It can be elusive. You have a lot of
turmoil.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Before she died, my mother taught me to
meditate. I’ll teach you the same way.” He pointed to a rock at the base of a
Japanese maple. “Sit here and keep your back straight. Try to concentrate on
only one thing; it’s harder than you think. Focus on this flower. No matter
where your mind goes, keep bringing it back to this flower.”

I tried for almost an hour, surprised by
how difficult it was to empty my cluttered mind. Every time I got close, the
words “family” and “past” echoed in my head. Then came waves of deep sadness
and a harsh feeling of loneliness.

On the way back to his house, Kyle repeated
that, “getting to silent mind is very hard, it will take time.”

“Kyle, I gotta say I didn’t enjoy that.”

“You’ll learn to. Did you like it when you
first fell in the river? No, but now you love to swim. Does a baby like her
first breath of air? No, she is terrified, but there is no life without
breathing. Meditation is like that.”

“I might be in trouble then.”

“Practice. Everything is practice.”

“Kyle, are you really seventeen? Sometimes
you seem more like seventy-seven.”

“You can take control of your mind,” Kyle
said, ignoring my question. “You need to throw unwanted thoughts out. You’re not
a bunch of thoughts. They aren’t in charge.”

“Then what is?”

“You are, your real self, your higher
self.”

“I’m not sure, but aren’t those just
different ways of saying my soul? Are you getting religious on me?

“Religion isn’t real, but you are.”

Driving to his place, Kyle suddenly pulled
into a random driveway gasping. I turned just in time to see an Ashland patrol
car cruise past. Kyle closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He wouldn’t talk
about it, all I knew was he’d been treated roughly in jail with his parents not
long before their deaths.

Back in his attic room, he handed me a copy
of
The Essential Writings of Thich Nhat Hanh
. “Read this. He’s a
Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist who lives in exile. Martin Luther
King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Dalai Lama said, ‘he shows
us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.’ I think
he’s one of the most important people on the planet.”

Linh joined us, and we told her what had
happened at the garden.

“I just kept hearing the words ‘family’ and
‘past.’ I couldn’t make them go away.”

“Often when I meditate an answer comes to
me.” Kyle’s eyes gleamed.

“You’re like consumed by these voices and
nightmares and your brother went through some of the same stuff, right?” Linh
said. “Maybe it’s a family thing. Let’s search your family’s past online.”

“My mom was adopted.”

“Then it’ll be easier because we only have
one side to research.”

“My dad had a sister, my aunt Rose, the one
we’re not allowed to talk to.”

“What a scandal.” Kyle and I started
laughing.

“Why are boys so immature?”

I grabbed the flip-flops off her feet and
tossed them toward the stairs. “Who you calling immature?” She couldn’t help
but giggle.

We looked up the name Montgomery Ryder.
Before long, a page showing his date of death came up.

“What was your dad’s middle initial?” Kyle
asked.

“It’s ‘B,’ why?”

“Because a few Montgomery Ryders died
around that time . . . Look at this.” Linh pointed to the screen. “Including
your dad, eleven different people named Montgomery Ryder died within five weeks
of each other!”