When my father was 58, he told me that when he died, he wanted his ashes spread in West Virginia; I thought it was odd, because I knew he had never been there. When he was 60, he died, and when he would’ve been 61, I drove to West Virginia.
I could see the summit in front of me, the sky turning pink and orange behind it with the sunrise. The climb was nowhere near as hard as I thought it would have been, but I was still out of shape. I checked my watch: it was just past 7:00 a.m., and I was grateful that the emerging sun was brightening my surroundings. When I had started a few hours earlier, things were pitch black and I needed my headlamp to see even just a few feet in front of me. I had also, perhaps luckily, forgotten to Google if there were bears in these woods before I lost cell service. I took the headlamp off and stuffed it into my backpack, collected another deep breath, corrected my posture, and moved forward toward the summit.
A minute later, I was standing at the peak of Spruce Mountain. My dad had never elaborated on where he wanted his ashes to be spread, so I thought the highest peak in the state would be a safe choice. I stood and looked out towards the sun beginning to emerge from its hiding place behind the endless rolling hills in the distance, turning the sky around it into morphing shapes of pink and orange. This view was worth the sore back and the terror I had felt a few hours ago, when I whipped my head around at every cracking twig. I never knew my dad to love mountains much, but if he liked the idea of West Virginia, I’m sure he would’ve loved it here. Even better, I was totally alone up here. One of the few things I inherited from him was the fact I would much rather be alone than with anyone else. The two-day drive to West Virginia was almost heaven for me.
I set my backpack on the ground and started digging through its contents: headlamp, water bottle, rain jacket, ropes, and carabiners I didn’t need, until I got to the urn. I carefully pulled it from my bag—it had made it all this way without breaking—and I unscrewed the top. It stuck at first, but with a heavier twist, the lid came right off. I gently poured some of the ashes into my palm and I was thrown off by the texture – the soft sand feeling didn’t match the morbid grey colour. Regardless, I began to spread them across the peak of the mountain. I walked in concentric circles, as if it was important to cover every square inch. When half the ash was gone, I set the urn on the ground; I would spread the remaining half on my hike back down to my Subaru. With the urn resting against a small rock, I looked back to the sunrise.
For the first time since my dad had died, I let myself feel something. Grief moved like a wave over me, every thought and regret and feeling that I was supposed to feel in the span of a year and a half hit me in less than a second.
Why wasn’t I there for him at the end?
Why wasn’t he there for me at the start?
Whose fault was it all?
It was like getting struck with a wrecking ball. I lost my balance, and I suddenly felt dehydrated. I found my way into a seated position with my knees pulled up close to my chest. Tears fell from my eyes; the moisture stung my eyes and made the wind sting even harder against my face. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried. Years ago at least. I had forgotten how much it strained my cheeks. I had certainly never cried in front of my dad; did this count as the first? I was more appreciative than ever that I was alone up there. How embarrassing would this be? The breeze turned to a stiff gust, sinking its teeth into my face a little harder, and forced me to close my eyes.
***
When I opened my eyes again, the scene was about as different as possible. A gray road with spread-out houses, every single one of them looking like they had seen better days. Nowhere, Ontario. I knew it well. The next thing I noticed was that every car in every driveway was old. An Oldsmobile Cutlass, a Lincoln Continental, a Plymouth Barracuda—makes and models I didn’t know I remembered and had forgotten where I’d learned.
The house closest to me was paneled with dull yellow wood, the door was peeling white paint, and wind chimes played harshly from the front step. I looked to the side of the house, past the rusting Chevy in the driveway, and saw a boy sitting with his back resting against the wall. I felt my legs moving me in his direction before I chose to. As I got closer, I could see he had red hair like mine, and that he was around seven years old. He looked up at me with a face eerily like what I looked like 15 years ago. It confirmed something that I didn’t realize I already knew.
“You can sit,” he said, with a voice that would one day be my dad’s. I did, and we sat in comfortable silence. I thought for sure he would be able to hear my heart palpitating in my chest, but if he could, he never let on. After a while, I could sense him hesitating beside me, then he rested his head on my shoulder, and I felt my heart move down away from my throat.
“Is there anywhere you want to move one day?” He lifted his head to look at me. I wondered if he could tell I looked just like him.
“I guess I’ve never thought about it. Not really,” I said honestly.
“I think you’d have one if you put your mind to it,” he replied, “Everyone I know has one. My dad always says he wishes he was still in Wales. He moved here with his parents when he was my age, but he swears it’s better than here. I want to move to West Virginia,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Why West Virginia?”
“I saw it in a travel magazine one time a long time ago. Out there you can go miles without seeing anyone. I want to stand on top of one of those mountains and yell as loud as I can.”
“Want to know something?” I leaned a little closer to him. “I’ve been there.”
His face lit up; I could almost see the questions rolling like a slot machine behind his eyes. Finally, he settled on one. “What was it like?”
“It’s great. I can tell you it’s exactly what you dream about it being.” My dad smiled and looked away from me. After another minute I asked, “Why are you sitting out here alone?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“Hiding,” he said while shuffling his feet in the dirt, making small, wafting clouds of dust.
This made me remember the ashes back on the mountain, and I felt my eyes sting a little. “I don’t like it inside much; I try to spend all the time I can out here,” He said. We sat quietly for another minute; I didn’t know what to say. “I could show you another place I like,” he said, looking back at me and smiling.
“That sounds good,” I responded, and we both got to our feet and brushed the dirt from ourselves. I felt calm here, which came as a surprise, considering how much of a shock it was to be here in the first place. My father began to walk towards the road, and I followed, eager to know where he might be leading me.
We walked toward the main intersection of town—a quiet restaurant, a bank, a grocery store, and a square with a little fountain stood waiting for us. “See the angel in that fountain? He’s supposed to shoot water out of his arrow, but it hasn’t worked for a long time. A couple of years at least,” my dad said to me like a tour guide listing fun facts about every attraction we went by. We walked past the intersection, and continued—west, I think—until we got to a bridge over a small ravine. My dad led me off the road and we slowly made our way down the steep ravine side. At the bottom was a narrow stream moving quickly between rocky banks on either side. It was just too wide to jump across, I thought, and from what I could tell was only about knee-deep. My dad began walking along the bank against the current, and I followed.
As we walked, the stream slowly got wider; after a few minutes, I had lost all confidence that I could jump across. Coming up ahead was a patch of jagged rocks propped in the middle of the stream, the water passing noisily over and around them. From this spot, I couldn’t hear anything but the water. I sat beside him and continued to listen.
“I try to keep this place for special occasions,” he said to me, needing to raise his voice a little to be heard over the stream. I was happy to know I counted as a special occasion.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because I really like it. I’m worried if I’m here all the time I’ll start taking it for granted.”
It made sense to me. I was realizing just how many things we had in common. Much more than just wanting to be alone. “You know a lot of words for someone your age, you know that?” I said to him, needing to raise my voice as well.
My dad laughed. “I like reading the dictionary sometimes; that’s where I learn a lot of them. My teacher accused me of cheating on my homework one time.”
I remembered back to when I was his age, and I studied the dictionary too. “I like it down here a lot, too,” I said, changing the subject as I felt tears sting behind my eyelids again.
“In West Virginia, there’s something like this, but a thousand times the size,” he pointed out. I knew the place he was talking about. I read in a travel brochure on my drive that it had been made into a national park a few years ago: ‘America’s newest national park,’ it had said. I was about to tell him that, but I got a strange feeling in my stomach and changed my mind.
A sparrow landed in front of us, halfway between us and the river. It looked at my dad, then at me, at my dad again, then chirped and flew away. “I feed them sometimes,” my dad said. “Every time I show up, they always make a point of coming to check. Always seems like they’re pissed at me when I don’t bring anything.”
I laughed, then silence was again between us. It was nice, though, this silence that wasn’t awkward like it so often is. “Is it alright if I ask you about something?” I asked, leaning towards him slightly. “Why were you hiding outside?”
He fidgeted beside me. “I guess I don’t like being around my parents sometimes,” he said, as he picked up a pebble beside him and threw it silently into the stream. “Especially my dad, he’s just angry all the time. Says it’s my fault, says it’s my mum’s fault.”
“What’s your fault?”
“Seems like everything, I guess. My mum’s family only gets mad at me because I’m shit at hockey.” I didn’t expect to hear the eight-year-old swear beside me, but he continued on. “And because the Leafs haven’t won a Cup since I was a baby. Guess that’s my fault somehow, but I figure they’ll win one soon.” He didn’t notice me holding back laughter beside him.
This was the first time I learned that my grandmother had a brother, and now I knew where my dad’s love of hockey had come from. Another wave of grief hit me, how he never saw them win one. Is that silly to get sad over? I asked myself. Yes, I decided, it was.
My dad’s little voice interrupted my thoughts. “I never asked what your name is,” he said.
I knew it wasn’t possible, but somewhere, somehow, I had believed he would’ve known who I was this whole time, but he didn’t. He had no reason to, and it made my heart fall a little towards my feet.
“Ryan,” I said, hoping the break in my voice wasn’t noticeable.
“I like that name. I’ll remember it,” he said, looking at me until he noticed I was looking back, and he turned to the stream. He picked up a rock beside him and tossed it into the river. The splash wasn’t audible. “You’re the first person to ever come out here with me, you know.”
I felt a cold wind in my hair again, the breeze from the mountain. “Let’s get you home,” I said. I didn’t want to leave him here alone.
We made the walk back to his old house much slower than the walk to the ravine. I could still feel the wind blowing at me. On our way to this ravine my dad had walked a few paces ahead of me, but this time we walked side by side. Soon, we stood in the driveway. At this point I was refusing to blink because I knew when I closed my eyes, I’d be back.
My dad looked at the ground with his hands in his pockets. I could tell he wanted to say something. Eventually, he looked up at me and said, “When I grow up, I’m not going to be like my dad.” And he smiled like he was sure of it.
The wind still howled at my face. The next thing I saw was my mom, standing in our tiny kitchen, telling me that my father had run away when things got too hard for him. “You were too expensive, and too much work,” she said, “It’s not your fault. Some men just aren’t meant to have kids. You will be though, I know it.” She always made a point of reminding me it wasn’t because of me. I had never understood his behaviour until now, and with it laid out in front of me, I recognized it finally. He was running away from family, from something that scared him. He went back to the creek, where only the people who knew him could find him.
I saw myself driving the three-hour journey to his nowhere house on my first drive with my G2 two weeks after I turned 17. I saw myself taking care of him the entire weekend when he had come down with the flu. He said I had brought him a cold from the “idiots in the big city.” I was the closest thing to a father my father ever had.
And then I was back in front of him on the driveway. I coughed, choking on words I didn’t even know I was saying. “You’ll do your best,” I said, these final words being barely more than a whisper. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t know where it had come from. The wind was beginning to blow even harder.
He raced forward, wrapping his arms around me, barely above my waist. “You think so?” The question was muffled by my T-shirt.
“I know so. And one day your son will know it, too,” I said. He turned and walked to the front door, and after it had closed behind him, I closed my eyes, too.
When I opened them again, I was at the peak of Spruce Mountain, the sun just fully visible beyond the hills. I was still seated the same as I had been before, with my knees to my chest. I slowly got on my feet, worried my balance would be gone, but I had no issue. I was still alone, probably for miles, so I inhaled and yelled as loud as I could.