The World More Full of Weeping (7 page)

“It's not how far you go,” she said. “It's how you look. All
of this, these trees, these flowers, this place, it's all here. It's
all
right here. All forests are one forest, if you know how to
look at them.”

He knew she wanted him to ask. And he wanted to ask.
He wanted to know.

“Could you — Could you show me?”

She seemed to think about it, then slowly shook her
head. “No. Not now. We don't have enough time.”

“Sure we do,” he countered. The sun was still high in the
sky, bright and warm. “It's only — ” He was stunned when
he looked at his watch and saw that it was already after five.
“But . . . how . . .”

“You have to go home, Brian,” she said, taking his arm
and turning him away from the clearing. “It's time.”

They stepped through a scrim of low brambles and
twisted weeds and the air chilled around them.

“We just don't have enough time,” she said. “Not for me
to show you everything I want to show you. Not for you to
see everything you want to see. I probably shouldn't even
have taken you there.”

“No,” he said, his words coming in puffs of steam. “No,
I'm glad you did. Maybe tomorrow you can show me more.”

“Maybe,” she said, as they stepped into the overhung
clearing at the edge of the forest. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Her voice didn't sound very convincing.

“You will be here tomorrow, right?” Brian asked.

“I'll be here,” she said. “You should go.”

He didn't want to leave her. A feeling that had been
building in him for several days bubbled to the surface. He
began to feel that his time with Carly was short, coming to
an end. Every time he said goodbye to her, it felt like he was
saying goodbye for the last time.

He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to risk not seeing
her again.

“Your father will be wondering where you've got to,” she
said.

“You'll be here tomorrow?” he asked again, needing,
with a part of himself he didn't understand, to hear it
confirmed.

She nodded, and the warmth of her confirmation ebbed
through him. “I'll be here.”

He smiled, and turned slowly away.

She watched him as he crossed the field, pulling his
jacket tight and hunching his back against the rain. She felt
his yearning in his defeated stride, his wanting to stay as
an invisible line, binding them.

She smiled, and faded back into the gathering shadows.

Jeff wasn't surprised to find John Joseph in his kitchen,
though he was somewhat surprised to find him washing
dishes.

“Thought I'd get a head start,” he explained. “Lots of
coffee cups. Did you talk with Dean Owens? He said he was
going to wait for you.”

Jeff nodded, not really aware that he was doing so. He
felt himself moving as if within a bubble, distant somehow
from the events of his own life.

John watched him for a moment, then dried his hands
and led him toward the kitchen table. “Why don't you
set a minute,” he said. “Take a load off. I'll get you a little
something.”

“Diane?” Jeff asked as John rattled in the kitchen
cupboards.

“Last I checked she was up in your boy's room,” John said.
“It seemed like she wanted to be alone. Oh, and Jim Kelly left
that for you,” he added as he returned to the table, moving a
folded piece of paper toward Jeff as he set a bottle of rye and
two glasses down. “He said he thought you might get a kick
out of it. Seemed like he'd been into the rye a bit himself.”

Jeff nodded again, his gaze resting on the bottle. He
watched it as John unscrewed the top, poured healthy
measures into both glasses. He left the metal cap sitting on
the table next to the bottle when he set it down.

“This'll help take the chill off.” John pushed one of the
glasses toward Jeff.

Jeff took a small sip, then a larger swallow, staring into
the amber liquid in the glass as the sweetness burned down
his throat.

It seemed to cut through some of the fog.

He unfolded the paper, keenly aware of John Joseph
looking over his shoulder.

“What . . .”

It was a photocopy of the front page of the March 21,
1975 issue of the Henderson Herald. The banner headline
read: “Lost and Found,” with a large black and white
photograph underneath. Jeff recognized himself with a
shocked immediacy, though he had to read the caption for
the names of the men he was standing between.

“Donald TeBrink and Charles Ellroy with Jeffrey Page,
who was missing in his family's woods for more than
twenty-four hours.”

John gave a short chuckle and wandered back to the sink.

Jeff skimmed the article, but his eyes kept drifting back
to the photo. He wouldn't have recognized Charlie without
the write-up: the “Charles” in the photograph had all of his
hair, and was wearing it more than a little long, with an
open collar and a beaded necklace. He had a broad grin that
showed just how pleased he was that someone wanted to
take his picture for the paper.

His own expression was harder to read. At first, his
eleven-year-old face seemed a little scared and a little
relieved, as you might expect from a little boy rescued from
the woods. Looking at it again, though — studying it — Jeff
wasn't so sure. He thought his eleven-year-old self looked
almost sad. Not scared, but close to tears.

As he shifted the paper, hoping a different angle would
help him puzzle out his expression, Jeff noticed, for the first
time, the faces crowded around behind the three figures
in the foreground. The rest of the searchers, he assumed,
milling around, only half-interested in the photographer,
not meriting, for whatever reason, having their names on
the front page of the local paper.

Most of them were out of focus, but one face, just over his
younger self's right shoulder, was instantly recognizable.
John Joseph wasn't looking toward the camera, but the
lens had found him nonetheless.

When he looked up, John Joseph was staring at him,
holding his own glass close to his lips.

“But I don't . . . I don't remember. I don't remember any
of it. I look at this” — he tapped on the photocopied page —
“and I know it's true, but I don't remember. . . .” He barked
out a sharp, desperate laugh. “'Least you could have done
was tell me you were part of the crew that rescued me.”

John chuckled. “I seem the type to hide my light under a
bushel to you?” He shook his head. “No, I'd have taken the
credit if there was any to be taken.”

“What do you mean?” Jeff asked, pulling the paper
toward himself again and taking another look.

“I mean that nobody rescued you, Jeff.” He drained his
glass, lowering his eyelids as he swallowed. “We spent a
full day and night out back there. We must have covered
every inch of your father's woods. And mine. And old Tom's.
Crews even started up the hill, thinking you might have
decided to try your hand at mountain climbing.”

He stopped to pour himself another couple of fingers of
rye, and topped up Jeff's drink.

“Then just before sunset the second day, you walked out
of the woods.”

“I just . . . ?”

John nodded. “All of your own accord, and under your
own steam. You were cold and hungry.” The old man smiled.
“You looked like a boy who had been out in the woods for a
night and a day.”

Jeff smiled ruefully, staring down at his glass. He felt
something that seemed like it might be a memory niggling
at the edges of his mind, but nothing came into focus.

“And you were crying.”

The words hung in the air as if placed there.

Jeff looked across the table at the old man.

“Crying?”

He nodded. “Sobbing. Everyone thought it was because
you had been so scared, that you were so relieved at being
home. Everybody comforted you, told you it was going to
be all right.”

“But?”

John pushed himself away from the table, carried his
empty glass to the sink and gave it a rinse. He leaned
against the counter, looking to the window over the
sink, the window that during the day offered a view of
the woods. He spoke to the reflection of Jeff in the night
dark glass.

“Adults don't always listen to children,” he said, quietly.
“We think we know exactly who they are, exactly what
they need, exactly what they're going to say.”

Jeff stiffened in the chair.

“We think we know what they're feeling, and we just
proceed along with our assumptions. If we ever took the
time to actually listen . . .”

“I get it,” Jeff said, not angrily. “I should have paid more
attention to Brian. I should have really listened to what he
was trying to tell me about not moving to Vancouver.”

John turned away from the glass to face him directly.
“That sounds about right, but I don't have any idea what
you're talking about.”

“Then what . . .”

“They should have listened to
you
better, that day you
came out of the woods. Everyone was so busy bringing
you blankets and food and telling you that everything was
going to be all right, no one actually heard what you were
crying about. No one listened to what you were saying.”

“Nobody except you,” Jeff said, his voice a hoarse
whisper.

John nodded slowly. “You kept saying, ‘She's gone. She's
gone and I'm never going to see her again. Carly's gone.'”

“You're late,” were his father's first words as the screen door
clattered shut behind Brian.

“Sorry, Dad,” he called up the stairs as he kicked off his
shoes and hung up his jacket and slicker.

He couldn't stop smiling.

The apology
, he thought,
would be enough.
His dad didn't
usually get mad. And even less now, with his mom gone and
living in Vancouver. Since she left, Brian had noticed that
his father seemed to be working very hard at not getting
mad, at not raising his voice, at not doing anything to upset
Brian.

The apology would probably be enough.

It wasn't.

He came around the corner at the top of the stairs,
holding a spatula in his hand. “Where were you?” he
demanded.

Brian couldn't tell if he was really angry or just worried,
but looking up at him from the bottom of the stairs, he felt
tiny.

“Out in the woods,” he answered, in a voice as small as
he felt.

“What are the rules?”

“Home before dark. Home before dinner.”

“Right.”

Brian started to climb the stairs. Every step felt like an
obstacle, seemed to take all his focus.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“That's not good enough, Brian.”

As he reached the top of the stairs, his father turned
away from him and went back to the stove. The kitchen was
full of the smell of toasting bread and frying butter: grilled
cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner.

“You've been getting later and later everyday. It's almost
six,” he said, without facing his son. “I didn't make up these
rules to be a pain in the ass. I need to know where you are. I
need to know that you're safe. And every day you're pushing
these boundaries more and more.”

“Dad, I'm — ”

“Jesus, Brian, it's pitch dark out there. I thought I was
going to have to call out the Search and Rescue.”

“We just — ” As soon as the words were out of his mouth,
he realized the slip. He wanted desperately to call the words
back, to undo the damage he had done. For a moment, he
hoped his father hadn't heard.

His father turned to him. “We?”

“Why don't you come home with me?” he had asked Carly
during one of their first afternoons together.