“Hah! They missed our stuff though.” A corner of a box showed between two of the stones. “We’ll get this later.” He looked at the van for a moment. Eric tossed a handful of pebbles into the creek where the foam swallowed them without a splash. He thought they might hitchhike to town, then he remembered there was no traffic. “Sheesh!” he said again.
Dad covered the box, then slid down the slope. “We walk,” he said and moved resolutely up the path to the highway.
When they passed the hidden trail to the cave, Eric was thinking again of Amanda. She smiled often. Sometimes, when they played a section of music particularly well, she smiled at him, but they didn’t ever talk. He didn’t know what to say once he got past “Hello,” and “How are you?” He thought, why did I think she’d hold hands with me? He blushed remembering how his plan hadn’t worked out, and he was glad his father was ahead of him.
School this year was so weird anyway, he thought. Everybody talking about the disease. The newspapers called it “Mega-cold” or “The Austrian Cold,” or “Beggar’s Fever,” because doctors first identified it among the homeless in Vienna. We were still cheering at football games when the T.V. started reporting the disease. It was a curiosity, something happening to people far away. First they’d act as if they had a cold, sniffing and coughing, then, after a week or so, the fever would start, and within twenty-four hours they’d be dead. The fever wouldn’t break, even after they died, the newspapers said. For hours afterward the virus ate at the body, creating its own heat. The disease’s progress was simple: two weeks contagious, one week of the cold, one day of fever, then death. He’d heard that airborne droplets from coughs transmitted the virus a mile downwind. So did sweat. Brian Knudson told him, in a horrified whisper, just touching a doorknob an infected person had handled a week before gave one the disease.
Adults acted funny too. The band director, even, told everyone in the woodwind section not to swap reeds. All the fuss, though, didn’t touch Eric. Teachers talked about the disease. Students staged benefit concerts, and the school nurse gave talks in class about health issues. But Eric could only think about Amanda’s hand, Amanda’s beautiful, remote and lonely hand.
He shook his head ruefully. Four days in a row he’d tried for it as they left the band room. The first time, Theresa Ortiz got in the way. The next three times his nerve failed him, but the fifth time, Friday, the last week in May, he lined himself perfectly. They reached the door, shoulder to shoulder. He smelled her perfume, he was so close, and underneath that, he imagined, something else, lilacs, like her bath soap perhaps. The thought made his head swim: her
Later, Eric sat in the lunch room poking at his Salisbury Steak. At the table next to his, a couple sat facing each other, foreheads almost touching, holding hands. He wondered, how do they do it? How do people ever get to hold hands?
A few weeks after that, he got a girlfriend, but he couldn’t shake the sight of Amanda’s sculpted and impossible fingers, lightly curled, brushing her thigh as she walked.
The high tech, straight-as-a-mountain-road-could-be multi-lane I-70 replaced the old, curvy, two-lane US Highway 6 in the mid-1960s. Until 1991 when Colorado made small stakes gambling legal in Black Hawk and Central City, only slow-paced tourists and fishermen used the old road that followed the course of Cripple Creek, crossing occasionally. When the road builders could figure no other way, the road dove through short tunnels where children in station wagons urged parents to beep their horns. The scenic route ended where the old highway merged with the new via a long, steep entrance ramp. Just before noon, Eric trudged up this ramp behind his dad, who had not rested since they began hiking three hours before. The creek gurgled over rocks to Eric’s left. Other than their feet scuffing the asphalt, the lively chatter of the water was the only sound he had heard since they left the van. Neither Eric nor his Dad had spoken. The wet sounds reminded Eric that his throat ached from thirst. His shoulders throbbed where the pack weighed them down. His feet hurt; he could feel blisters forming where his perspiration- soaked socks rubbed on each step. He glanced at his dad. A broad swath of sweat stained the back of his shirt to his belt.
Eric broke their sustained silence with, “When are we going to get there?” Dad stopped, put his hands on his hips, the right hand cupping the holstered gun, and sighed loudly. He didn’t turn to face Eric, but looked up the ramp until Eric reached him.
“We better talk,” Dad said.
Eric closed his eyes for a second. Dad’s “talks” were always a bore, or bad, or both. He opened them and tried to look interested. “Okay.”
“Your mom is sick. I’ve been trying to figure a way to tell you while we’ve been walking, and I don’t know any way but this.”
It hadn’t occurred to Eric to wonder what Dad was thinking. Hours of silence from him weren’t unusual. Eric assumed he wasn’t thinking. The idea that Dad was churning something in his brain at the same time he was struck him peculiarly, like finding out that escargot was snail. Then the words themselves sunk in. Mom is sick.
Dad continued, “She’s sick; maybe you and I are too, so we’ve got to get to Idaho Springs for medicine. They may have a doctor and a clinic. We can bring her into town if there’s room. Perhaps it’s not the… the…” He paused, searching for a word. “…disease, but it might be. We can’t be too careful.”
“We should be with her.” Eric wanted to run down the ramp and back toward the cave. He could almost see her, alone, frightened, a big, heavy woman who needed someone to care for her.
“She’ll be fine. It’s just a cough now, an itchy throat. She has aspirin. She wanted you to go with me.”
“But she would have expected us hours ago. She’ll think we’re dead.” Dad wiped his face with a bandanna he pulled from his back pocket. Then he tied it around his neck.
“She’s a tough bird, Eric. Besides, she saw us go by this morning.”
“I didn’t see her.”
“You weren’t paying attention. She waved from the lookout. Anyway, we may not be walking much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen.”
Eric turned his head side to side, like a hound dog catching a scent, then he heard a rumble over the cascade of water. It rose in volume, then fell, and Eric realized he’d heard the sound several times while they were standing on the ramp.
“It’s trucks on I-70. We can catch a ride. We’re only a couple of miles away, now, but I’m getting tired,” said Dad. Eric started toward the highway. Dad caught his arm like a clamp. Eric tried to shake him off, an automatic response. He hated his dad to touch him. It made him feel like a baby. Dad said, “We’re not done talking.” Eric relaxed in his grip. Dad let go. “If we get sick, son—I mean your mom and I—we’ve made some preparations, some things at the house you need to know about.” Dad fished in his pocket. Eric heard the clink of coins, then Dad handed him a key. “This opens a drawer in the back of my desk in the office. It’s not likely anyone would find the drawer, even if they broke into the house. In it are instructions for you.” Eric looked at him uncomfortably. Dad continued, “You know, if we do get sick.”
Eric put the key in his pocket. “You’ll be okay.” He looked away. He didn’t know how to deal with this. He thought maybe he should hug his dad. Dad coughed into his hand.
“If things don’t work, you’ll have to make decisions on your own. We’ve got plenty of supplies in the cave to get you to winter, but I think you’ll need to go back to Littleton before the snows hit. I’m thinking the worst will be past by then. The disease will have burnt itself out. Do you understand what I’m saying, about us getting sick, about what you should do?” Dad put his hand on Eric’s arm again, but he didn’t squeeze it this time.
“Sure, Dad. I got it.” Dad’s hand pressed a shade harder on Eric’s arm, and Eric looked directly into Dad’s eyes behind his glasses. They were dark brown with little flecks of brightness like gold in them. He couldn’t remember ever looking into his dad’s eyes like this before. “Sure, Dad.” Dad pulled his hand away.
