Then he was gone, p.1
Then He Was Gone, page 1
THEN HE WAS GONE
A NOVEL
ISABEL BOOTH
For Zach and Gabe
And for David, always
CHAPTER 1
Nick
I HAVE A picture of my little brother, Henry, that my dad took that day. He was six years old.
It was the longest hike we took in Rocky Mountain National Park. All the other hikes were warm-ups, my mom said, to get used to the altitude and get our climbing legs. It was still dark when we left our cabin that morning. It was misty and quiet and all I could hear was the wipers on the Jeep flapping back and forth, and I wrote my name across the window with my finger. Henry was half-asleep in the back seat with me. He kept falling over on my side, which was pretty annoying.
There weren’t a lot of cars in the parking lot at the trailhead at Glacier Gorge Junction, which is why my mom said we wanted to get there early. We got out and Mom handed out all our stuff. Fanny packs and water bottles for Henry and me. A backpack for my mom and dad with peanut butter sandwiches, bags of trail mix, ponchos, sunscreen, wildlife books. Stuff like that. The first thing we did was we looked at the map at the trailhead. We were hiking to The Loch, then up Timberline Falls to Lake of Glass, then to Sky Pond. About nine miles round trip.
“Are you crazy?” Henry said. “This is reedickallus.” That’s really how he said it. Reedickallus.
Some people would say my parents were crazy to take a six-year-old kid on a hike that long that went that high up. But they don’t know that kid. In June he caught his finger in a gate at the Little League field and had to have four stitches. It took three grown-ups to hold him down for a shot to numb the finger. We let Henry and Mom go first, and Henry complained for like a mile. His head hurt, his stomach hurt, his knee hurt, and he couldn’t go one more step. I walked up behind him and whispered in his ear.
“You walk like a girl. Let me take the lead.”
That made him so mad. He called me penis breath, only he said it so Mom wouldn’t hear, and he pushed me when I tried to go around him. He didn’t slow down again.
I love the mountains. One time on a hike when we stopped to rest we could see the whole entire valley. The town of Estes Park and Lake Estes looked so tiny so far away, and I said, “This is the best day of my whole entire life.”
We took off our hiking boots when we got to the top and ate lunch on the rocks at Sky Pond. Henry took off everything but his shorts, the neon-yellow ones he wore all the time that hung down and showed his belly button. My mom made a crown from shrub branches and set it on his head. He had the best head, kind of a perfect shape, and a buzz cut for the summer. The water was freezing cold but Henry was dancing in and out of it at the edge of the lake. His skinny little arms were in the air and he was shaking his butt and singing. “I … just want … to … fly.” Mom and Dad and me watched and laughed, and I finally stood up and we were dancing and singing. “Put your arms around me, baby, put your arms around me, baby. I … just want … to … fly.” And there was no place else in the whole entire world that I wanted to be.
We were almost back to the trailhead when it started to rain. The mountains were like that—a storm could blow in anytime. Henry and me ran most of the last mile. Our ponchos were flapping like Superman capes, and we were screaming and laughing because the rain was like ice on our legs. I think my dad yelled something like, “Be careful, the rocks are slippery.” I got to the Jeep first. Henry stopped running when he saw me win and called me a cheater. The Jeep was locked, so we crawled under it to get out of the rain.
We were on our backs staring up at the engine and stuff and our teeth were chattering and we had mud and goosebumps all down our legs. Henry rolled over and rested his head on my chest, and we listened to the rain and the thunder like that until Henry raised his leg and let loose a fart.
“Geez, Henry.” I pushed him away and he was laughing and trying to hang on to me.
“It smells like rotten peanut butter,” he said.
“It’s way more disgusting than that.”
Henry was into farting. My mom came home in July after two months in trial in Alaska, and on the drive home after we picked her up at the airport, Henry listened to her and my dad talking for like ten seconds before he interrupted.
“If you were on a date with a girl for the first time and you farted, do you think she would ever go out with you again?”
I almost choked. “Mom’s been gone for two months, and the first thing you want to talk about is farting on a date?”
My dad laughed, but my mom turned around in her seat, looking serious and like she was really interested in talking about farts.
“I think it would depend on the circumstances, Henry. How well you know the girl, how interested she is in you, whether you handle the situation maturely. You would certainly want to apologize and not give the girl the impression that you engage unthinkingly in such behavior.”
Henry thought about that for a minute.
“But what if you farted a lot of times? Not just once? You just kept farting.”
“That would suggest to me that you are ill and should bring the evening to a close. If you’re not feeling well before a date, even if it’s one you’ve been looking forward to, the better course would be to postpone it. If the girl is worthy of your attention, I’m sure she would understand.”
My mom really talked like that. Henry could say the dumbest thing and she would act like it was something we should take seriously.
The fart smell was trapped under the Jeep. I waved my arms, but it was no use.
“I have to poop,” Henry said.
“There’s a toilet at the end of the parking lot.”
“Those things are nasty.”
Well, duh. There was no water and no real toilet, just a seat that kind of looked like a toilet. You could hear your pee and poop splash at the bottom, and I told Henry when we used the toilets at other places in the park that it was probably like a fifty- or sixty-foot drop.
Henry scooched on his elbows army style to the back of the Jeep and stuck his head out a little. He motioned to me. Geez. I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up beside him, saying, “Dammit, dammit” because my knees were scraping on the pavement. All around the parking lot were these tall dark pine trees and they were kind of spooky-looking, all wet and the branches like droopy arms. The toilets were far off at the other end of the lot.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Henry said.
“I don’t know. They’ll be here soon.”
He scooched forward some more.
“I can’t see anything. I think it’s nighttime.”
“It’s kind of late, but I don’t think it’s night yet. It’s just dark from the storm.” I reached in my fanny pack. “Here. Take my flashlight.”
Henry took the flashlight. Clicked it on, clicked it off. Clicked it on, clicked it off. On and off. On and off. I grabbed for it, but he stuck it under his stomach and held tight with both hands.
“Come with me, Nick.”
“No way. You always act like you’re so tough. But you won’t even go to the bathroom by yourself.”
That did it.
He took a big breath, then another one and another one like he was in the Olympics getting ready to do the high jump or something. He crawled out from under the Jeep waving the flashlight around like a sword and screaming, “Ahoy, mates, ahoy.” Then he ran off into the rain.
* * *
I waited like forever. Mom and Dad didn’t come, and Henry didn’t come, and I was starting to get mad and maybe a little scared lying under the Jeep alone. I heard an engine start, then tires scrunching. A truck came toward me from the end of the parking lot where the toilets were, driving slow, and I thought they should turn the headlights on because it’s not safe to drive in the dark. And it was kind of creeping me out because I didn’t notice any other cars in the parking lot when we were running to the Jeep, and what if this was some kind of Christine thing. The truck rolled past me and my heart was beating like crazy and I was afraid the truck was going to stop. Then the driver hit the lights and turned onto the highway.
“Oh, wow.”
Me and Henry were playing the license plate game ever since we got to Estes Park. We got Florida, Alabama, South Dakota, and Maine. New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. Lots of Texas and Colorado and I can’t remember where else. I was ahead by five. And I couldn’t wait for Henry to get back from the toilet so I could tell him. Game on, buddy. Game on. I just got Alaska.
CHAPTER 2
Elizabeth
I WAS NEARLY insane by the end of the trial in Anchorage. Two years of traveling back and forth between there and Houston, culminating in eight weeks of fourteen-hour days, mind-numbingly boring testimony from expert after expert detailing construction flaws, project delays, and damages based on the declining price of oil. I missed Nick and Henry terribly, called home every night and wept alone in my hotel room after Henry described his kindergarten graduation and the award he’d gotten for running the most laps in PE over the course of the school year. The jury came back with a fifty-million-dollar verdict in our client’s favor, and I could barely sit through the celebration dinner. All I wanted was to be on the first plane home in the morning.
My father built the cabin in Estes Park where we spent our summers on nine acres overlooking Longs Peak and the Front Range. My brother, Sam, and I inherited it when Dad died, but Sam sold his half to me not long after and moved to Oslo with his Norwegian wife.
We flew from Hous ton to Denver in early August, our vacation cut short because of the trial. We arranged for shuttle service from the airport to Estes Park, the old Jeep and an even older Ford pickup kept at the cabin year-round along with clothes, camping supplies, and almost everything we needed besides groceries. We cheered when we rounded the curve on Highway 36 and looked down into the valley for our first glimpse of the town. Elk grazed on the side of the highway by Safeway and when we rolled down the windows to drink in the pine-scented mountain air, I felt myself starting to relax.
The boys knew the hike to Sky Pond would be long and strenuous, but I didn’t give them all the details. They were exhausted when Timberline Falls came into view, and when Nick realized we had to climb the nearly vertical black granite wall to the right of the falls to reach Lake of Glass, he shook his head and said, “No, no, no, no, no.” But we made it, and then on to Sky Pond—desolate and magnificent, the wind across the high alpine lake nearly constant but the sun fierce enough to make us drowsy. We ate lunch and the boys danced as if they had conquered the mountains and were on top of the world. I was ecstatic in that moment but didn’t feel victorious as I took in the jagged spires and chilling wind. The cliffs that guard Sky Pond are beautiful but menacing, a reminder that it is still untamed wilderness and we were only visitors there.
We stayed longer at Sky Pond than we’d planned, but the hike back was easy, the panoramic views breathtaking. I watched Nick fall in love with the mountains that summer as I had years ago, the aspen leaves trembling with the slightest breeze, purple and yellow wildflowers, whispery ferns, black moss, and cold, clear streams. Nick and Henry walked ahead of us on the way down, fanny packs swaying on their hips, hiking boots clunking on the rocks, bills of their baseball caps pointing backward. They talked constantly. An occasional shriek or giggle floated back to us, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. Nick was ten, a prepubescent pear shape, and seemed twice the size of Henry, whose wiry little legs made his oversized boots almost comical.
“You look better today,” Paul said. “Starting to feel human again?”
“Definitely getting there. Every day in the mountains helps.”
“Yeah. It was hard on all of us.”
It was a familiar refrain.
Paul is a poet. He’d quit his teaching job the year before to write, and in a few days would start his studies for an MFA, hopefully a PhD, in creative writing at the University of Houston. It was an incredible honor, a longtime dream of his to be accepted into the program, and I was thrilled for him. For years he had endured the thinly disguised condescension of my male law partners and their feigned interest in a high school English teacher and then stay-at-home dad with poems published in magazines they’d never heard of. But that was about to change, the prestige of the program already having given his ego a noticeable boost.
I was reluctant when Paul first told me he wanted to quit his job to write. I wasn’t convinced that poetry could fill that many hours in a day, but he assured me that his creativity needed the space and that he would be more available to help with the boys and around the house. I suppose his acceptance at U of H proved the first point, although I hadn’t seen any evidence of a significant volume of poems produced over the past year. As to the second, suffice it to say that the services of Jimena, our full-time housekeeper, were still required. If anything, his frustration with the demands of my work schedule and my absences from home grew. He seemed to think I could strike a perfect balance of professional and personal life by simply setting limits on the cases I took, refusing to work nights and weekends—a strategy destined to send my career to the graveyard. And, in the meantime, I didn’t notice poetry paying any of the bills.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
A gust of wind hit us, and the sky quickly darkened. I stopped in the middle of the trail and shrugged off my backpack.
“Boys,” I called. “Come get your ponchos.”
Nick and Henry turned back to us as it started to rain. They grabbed their ponchos, pulling them on as they ran.
“Be careful,” Paul yelled. “The rocks are slippery.”
I handed Paul his jacket then put mine on and tightened the hood around my visor.
“You think I should hustle after them?” Paul said.
I adjusted the backpack. “You can if you want. But they’ll be fine.”
“We should have started back sooner,” he said. “Gotten ahead of the rain.”
We hadn’t gone far when Paul drew up.
“Shit. I have a rock in my shoe.”
He leaned against a boulder on the side of the trail and unlaced his boot, pulled it off and shook out a few granules, then bent down to lace it up again. He repeated the process with his other boot. I waited, hands in the pockets of my jacket, rain dripping from my visor. It was getting colder.
“You want me to carry the backpack?” he said.
“No. I’m fine.”
We set off down the trail again.
“I’m getting excited about graduate school,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“They accepted eight people this year—out of hundreds of applications.”
“I know. You’re so talented, Paul.”
“It’ll be a shitload of work. But we’re in this together, right?”
I held up a hand for a fist bump. “You and me, babe.”
The roar of Alberta Falls was audible over the rain, and when it came into sight we stopped for a moment, picking our way carefully over the boulders for a better view. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the falls, dozens probably, but the power of the water is mesmerizing—foaming as it careens against the walls of the passage it carved for itself, the granite chute still too constricting for the river that flows through the narrow canyon. Paul tugged at my sleeve, drawing me out of my reverie and back to the trail.
“We need to sit down in the next couple of days and talk about our schedules, what you’ve got coming up,” he said.
“I’ll have a short trip to Anchorage for a hearing on posttrial motions. But other than that, I don’t have any out-of-town trips on the horizon, thank God.”
“Great.” He paused, shot a glance in my direction. “So you can take the boys to school?”
The terrain was fairly level the last quarter mile and we picked up our pace.
“I should be able to on most days.”
Paul’s a night owl, reading or surfing the internet, writing sometimes, I suppose, until after midnight, and on most mornings drags himself out of bed just in time to kiss Nick and Henry goodbye. I didn’t push him to make the morning school trek—Jimena picks up the boys in the afternoons—because he’s on duty when I’m out of town. But mostly because I love those twenty to thirty minutes in the car with the boys, the quiet companionship in an enclosed space, their time as captives conducive to offering up confessions and reflections and sometimes highly useful information.
We crossed the final hundred yards and the bridge to the parking lot.
“I’m going to the privy before we hit the road,” Paul said.
I nodded and turned toward the Jeep. The boys were nowhere to be seen—hiding, no doubt, and planning their surprise. I expected them to jump out from somewhere around the vehicle as I approached and prepared myself for the shouts of “Boo!” and the required assurances that they had scared me half to death. I unlocked the tailgate and pulled it open. I tossed the backpack in and bent over to unlace my boot, just as a hand inched out from under the bumper and grabbed my shin. I gasped, squealed, “Help!” and backed away as Nick giggled.
“You crazy boys.” I squatted down, peered under the Jeep. “Come on out.”
Nick rolled toward me and pushed himself up.
“Where’s Henry?”
“Pooping.” Nick opened a rear door and climbed into the back seat.
“Where were you?” he said. “What took you so long?”
“Not that long, Nick. Maybe thirty minutes, max.”
“More like an hour.”
I heard the tremor in his voice, went to the open rear door and gave him a hug.
“I’m freezing, Mom.”
I shut his door and got in the driver’s seat, started the Jeep and cranked the heat to high. I saw Paul walking toward us from the privy, rolled down the window and called to him.
