A couple of weeks later, on a cool spring SUNDAY morning, they all met at Cathleen’s apartment. Dr. Basu pulled up in his large Mercedes sedan and sat in it to keep it running so that it would be comfortable for Colm. Sean arrived first with only a backpack, taking the notion of a road trip to heart.
When Sean saw his sister and nephew at the top of the stairs, he ran up and grabbed their bags, and Dr. Basu hopped out of the car to help Sean load the trunk. When they were through loading, Dr. Basu ran around the side of the car to open the passenger-side door for Cathleen. Sean helped Colm into the car and slid in alongside him.
It was so odd, Sean thought, sitting in the backseat. Finally, the trip out West he always dreamed about as a boy. They were headed off to see the world together, to see new and wonderful things.
His sister turned around and flashed a warm bright smile at her two boys in the backseat.
“Now, behave back there you two,” she warned jokingly.
“Yes,” Dr. Basu added. “Don’t make me pull over!” And he flashed a wink in the rearview mirror.
Sean leaned forward, grabbed the doctor’s shoulders, and shook him gently.
“Buckle up!” Dr. Basu announced as he pulled away from the apartment. Cathleen looked up at her apartment building and wondered for a brief moment if she would return alone. Colm looked through the back window, too, at the apartment, the sidewalk, the neighborhood—all he had ever known. He knew he should have been sad to leave it all behind, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He had never felt more hopeful or more alive.
Sean and Dr. Basu were already at war over the radio. “What’s this crap you got on, Doc?”
“It’s NPR.”
“N-P-who gives a shit. Let’s put the FAN on or get some music, old man.”
As they drove out of the Lincoln Tunnel and headed into Jersey, Colm, Sean, and Cathleen turned their heads to look behind them. Dr. Basu looked in the rearview mirror. They saw the sun rising behind them over the sparkling city. The morning sky was crisp and blue. Not a cloud was in the sky.
They were on their way.
They had to stop more than they originally figured they would. Colm had to go to the bathroom every hour. He could not get comfortable. His jerking and constant movement and trembling was starting to drive Sean nuts. In between Colm’s nervous fits, they spent a lot of time getting to know each other, in a way only a long car ride permits, by teasing one another incessantly. For two days they drove, without much to see but rolling hills with the first signs of spring—pale green and pink deciduous buds that speckled the highway and beyond. Colm was restless, worried about their route. Cathleen assured him they would try their best to get to L.A. by Sunday, but she reminded him that their appointment at the hospital in L.A. wasn’t until Tuesday, so they had time. But Colm was adamant. He wanted to get to L.A. by Sunday; he couldn’t care less about the doctor’s appointment. He knew that was Dr. Basu’s way of getting his mother to make the trip. Cathleen reminded Colm that it might take a little longer than expected, because after they reached St. Louis, where they would pass the Arch, they would then drive north, to see the Nebraska plains and the northern Colorado ridge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Colm winced, thinking it might take too long, but agreed. Even though he wanted to see the mountains, he knew his uncle Sean wanted to see them more than anyone.
On Monday morning when they left Cincinnati, the car was filled with the smell of hotel soap and shampoo. They drove for several uninterrupted hours. Colm seemed to be getting more comfortable, and by midafternoon he even managed to fall into a deep sleep, slumped over Dr. Basu, who was taking a break from driving and sitting in the backseat next to him. At the wheel, Sean was the first to see the large, silver catenary curve of the Arch rise in front of them.
“Hey, Doc? Get him up, will ya?” Sean said.
Dr. Basu gently touched the boy’s shoulder and shook him awake.
“Colm, Colm, wake up. Look!” Dr. Basu said, pointing out the window.
As they crossed the Mississippi and looked to their right, they saw the giant Arch sweep up to the heavens. “It was,” Cathleen explained, “an architectural and engineering stroke of genius.” Colm stared as they passed by it and gave the Wow-Cool that had been shouted countless times by children from all over, who with their parents on a journey over the Mississippi passed by it not expecting its height, its grandeur, and its mystery. How does it stand up without tipping over? Colm asked innumerable questions, waiting for all the adults to answer, but they all sat silently, unable to explain how certain things worked in the world. Even Dr. Basu, who seemed to know everything, sat quietly, saying nothing. Some things, he thought, yes, perhaps, remained best a mystery.
They had been on the road three days when they crossed the Iowa-Nebraska border and saw the Welcome sign, glossy and green with white reflective lettering, shimmering in the sparkle of the high afternoon sun. Colm smiled, believing the message had been written for him alone. Life, a good one, it promised him, lay just beyond the endless barrage of billboard signs.
The road continued to roll under the Mercedes’s tires, and they moved forward—out of Iowa, out of the East, out of all they had ever known and into Nebraska, home of the good life, sandhill cranes, steers, and corn. Safely buckled in the doctor’s car, they all thought the stars seemed to align, the planets moved into position, the angels took their rightful posts, cars parted and let them pass. Free and first, they were well on their way.
Cathleen talked incessantly about how harsh the country still was, how raw and new it all seemed compared to the concrete jungle they had just come from. But she acknowledged it was still a different experience to take a road to Nebraska from the East Coast today than it was a hundred or two hundred years prior when it must have been a long, hard road. She remembered an English class she had taken in high school, and her teacher who loved Willa Cather, the great Nebraskan novelist. Cathleen recalled what Cather had said: It is not the destination but the road—the road is all.
“Can you imagine it, Colm?” Cathleen asked. “What it would have been like?”
Cathleen was trying to picture it herself. She found it almost impossible to imagine, while soaring down the interstate at a cool eighty miles per hour, how arduous the trip must have been for those first few brave souls to travel through the roadless mountains and valleys of Pennsylvania and Ohio and the hot, drab, and grassy plains of Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa.
“Colm, imagine traveling all that way only to find even more grass just beyond the Iowa bluffs in this endless state of Nebraska? I think I would have cried. I would have absolutely died. To think you traveled all that way, hoping for something amazing and you were met with this?”
Cathleen pointed out the window to the vast, empty plains. “Nothing.”
She looked out the window and felt so small, so hopeless—erased, just as Cather said she felt—staring down a gargantuan red sky that swallowed her whole as she moved toward its large, hot yellow mouth.
“I don’t know, Mama. I think it’s pretty cool. Pretty amazing,” Colm said, looking out the window.
Sean looked out the window, too, and put his hand on his heart and began to sing in a deep baritone, “Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain . . .”
“All right, cut it out, wise guy,” Cathleen said.
“What? I’m serious. It’s beautiful, Sis.”
“You’re making fun of me, Sean. You’re always making fun of me.”
“I’m not. I think you’re right. It’s really hard to wrap your brain around it—the majesty of it all. It kinda makes you think.”
“It makes me wonder about so much,” Cathleen said as she quietly stared out over the dashboard to the long road in front of her.
“What, Mama? What does it make you think of?”
Colm thought he knew what she meant. He thought she was trying to prepare him. What if he traveled all the way to California and his dad wasn’t special? Wasn’t anything to write home about, he thought.
But Dr. Basu and Sean knew what Cathleen really meant. She was having another existential crisis. What if all that praying, all that wishing and hoping for a place like heaven, a final reward for her hard road here on Earth, was just a big, fat, Nebraska-size letdown? What if it all amounted to nothing?
“Maybe Nebraska was proof. Proof that there was nothing beyond. Maybe it’s a cosmic metaphor,” Cathleen finally said aloud.
“Proof of what, Mama?” Colm asked, totally confused.
“Proof that there is no heaven. That you’re right, Colm. That it’s all about the road. That we shouldn’t be putting these big expectations on life—on people, the afterlife. Maybe it’s a sign.”
“Come on, Sis. Leave that crap alone for twenty minutes and enjoy yourself. It’s just a big old lot of land where corn grows. Don’t read too much into it. Maybe it’s not proof there is no heaven, maybe it’s proof of hell.”
Dr. Basu spit out the coffee he was drinking. Sean always made him laugh.
Cathleen laughed too, knowing that she was bringing everyone down. “I know, I know, Sean, you’re right. I need to relax. It’s just sometimes I start thinking . . .”
“Never bodes well for you, Sis. Never.”
“Thanks a lot, jackass.”
“Come on, Cate. I’m kidding.”
“So am I,” she said, punching Sean in the shoulder.
“So, Mama, does this m-mean that you don’t believe?”
She laughed. “No. It just means that even belief has its limits. Even those who believe wonder. You can never, ever know for sure.”
“I know, Mama. I know.”
Cathleen said nothing else until they were just outside of Grand Island, where they pulled off and stayed in a weather-beaten motel. It was dark when they arrived, and all agreed to go to bed early so they could get up at dawn to make it to Denver by afternoon.
When they made it out to the car the next morning, they saw what looked like a swarm of giant birds, tens of thousands of them flying overhead in the early amber and purple sky.
“What in God’s name are they?” Cathleen said, looking up.
“They’re the sandhills,” Dr. Basu said. He had already been outside looking intently up at the sky. “They’re huge cranes and they migrate here every year, like they and their ancestors have for millions of years, long before us. In the spring, they fly north for the summer. It’s here, on the plains of Nebraska, where they land and dance. They do the ritual dance for each other, and they find their mates for life. When they return next time, those who found mates will have a baby with them. Thousands of people from all over the world come here just to see it.”
“Let’s go see them!” Colm said eagerly. “I want to see them dance for each other!”
“I think we just need to find an open field somewhere, where they land and feed,” Dr. Basu said.
They drove along the road until they found signs that led to a nature preserve. When they arrived, there were rows of cars, vans, and buses parked, and all around the fields were people with binoculars wrapped around their necks. There were even observation decks built to look out over the fields where the birds landed.
There were thousands of cranes, more than the eye could see. They were dancing for each other, lifting their giant wings back and forth, then one leg, then another, showing their mates they had what it takes to be there for them for the rest of their lives.
Colm, Sean, Dr. Basu, and Cathleen stood looking out beyond the birds at the rising sun. They stood speechless. There was no explanation for it—for the order, the precision, the devotion. How amazing was the world and how all of its infinite parts fit and worked together, Dr. Basu thought.
“Amazing,” Dr. Basu gasped. “I heard about the birds on NPR’s Earth & Sky, but I never imagined it was so—so heavenly.” He was dancing for Cathleen now, saying things he knew she wanted to hear.
“It is, Gaspar. It is. It’s breathtaking,” Cathleen said.
“You crazy nerds ready to get back on the road or what?” Sean broke in. “If we’re smart about it, we’re in Denver tonight, and we can be on top of Mt. Evans by tomorrow morning.”
“We’re ready,” Dr. Basu said, forgetting for a moment he was not in Italy and grabbing Cathleen’s hand to walk toward the car. Cathleen did not resist, and together they came down the stairs. Sean, shocked by this outward sign of affection, followed them, curious to see where this was going. They had already reached the car, and Dr. Basu was opening the door for Cathleen to get in when they all noticed Colm hadn’t followed them.
“Colm?” Cathleen yelled.
“Colm?” Sean and Dr. Basu yelled.
“Where the hell is he now?” Sean said, acting angry, but secretly fearing the worst.
Sean ran toward the deck and then up the stairs. Colm was still there. He was leaning over the guardrail and looking out at the birds.
“Colm, what’s going on? Why aren’t you coming? We gotta get on the road. We’re keeping your schedule, remember?”
“Uncle Sean?”
“Yeah, Bud.”
“Why don’t you think Mama and my father mated for life? Why do birds—these birds—even know how to stay, and how to take care of their family? How come my father didn’t?”
“I don’t know, Colm. Maybe that’s something you can ask him when you see him. I’m kind of curious about that myself, to be honest with you,” Sean said while leaning over the rail now, too, and looking out toward the birds.
“Yeah. I mean Mama is pretty great . . . and so . . .”
Sean knew what he was about to say and cut him off. “Yes, so are you. You’re awesome, too. There is nothing wrong with you or your ma, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You mean something was wrong with my dad?”
“I don’t know, kid. What the hell do I know? I just know someone had to be pretty messed up to leave you or leave your mother. I know that for a fact.”
“Do you think he’ll be happy to see me?”
“He’d be a fool not to. Now let’s go. You worried your mother . . . again.”
“I always worry her.”
“She’s a mom. That’s what they do.”
“Well, I worry about her—and you. I just need to know she has you and you have her. You need each other.”
“Come on, now. She already has you. She doesn’t need anyone else.”
“I just need to know you’ll always take care of her. You won’t take off on her—ever. Like that night in the hospital. No matter what she says.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I am glad she has you, Uncle Sean.”
“Looks like she has another someone too,” Sean said, nodding toward the direction of the car.
“You mean, Dr. Basu?”
“Yeah. I think he likes her.”
“I think so too,” Colm agreed.
“OK. So nothing more to worry about, right? Ready to see the Rockies?”
“Yup.”
Colm wobbled beside his uncle, who wrapped his arm around the boy’s waist to support him as he walked down the steps. Sean was dancing for Colm too, letting him know he wasn’t going anywhere. For life.
They drove all day through Nebraska, down through Sterling headed toward Denver. By late afternoon they all saw what looked like a purple cloud formation off in the distance.
“I’ve never seen clouds like that,” Colm said.
“Those aren’t clouds, Colm,” Dr. Basu said.
“Those are the Rocky Mountains,” Sean added.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Colm said. “They’re beautiful!”
“I know. I have always, always wanted to see them myself,” Sean said. “In the morning, we’ll be right in the middle of them.”
The white caps of the mountain peaks took on the color of pink and lavender in the morning sun. As much as Colm wanted to just get on the road, he knew his uncle was right. He didn’t want to miss climbing Mt. Evans for anything in the world. Mt. Evans was one of the few fourteeners in the United States accessible by car—so people like Colm, who couldn’t otherwise ever climb or reach the summit from its base camp, could. It was also on their way west. But when they got to Echo Lake to turn onto Mount Evans Highway, they found the road closed.
“I guess there’s still too much snow up on the mountain. It looks like it opens up in summer after Memorial Day,” Cathleen said after reading the sign and getting out her guidebook.
“Shit,” Sean said.
“We can always come back someday,” Cathleen assured Sean.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Let’s look for an observation pull-off somewhere, Sean. We’re almost eleven thousand feet up—that’s still two miles higher than New York City. Come on, don’t get upset,” Cathleen said as she tried to assuage him.
Colm felt bad for his uncle. He knew he really wanted to reach the summit of a mountain. He seemed to be trying to reach the mountaintop his entire life, only to find a roadblock at every turn.
As Sean threw the car in reverse to turn around, he barked, “Story of my damn life.”
Colm heard him, touched his shoulder gently, and said nothing. He understood his uncle’s disappointment all too well. When Sean felt Colm’s hand on his shoulder, he thought of the boy—and the boy’s own disappointments—and he couldn’t help but stop feeling sorry for himself.
“Sorry about that, guys. It’s really no big deal. We’ll come back someday together, Colm, when you’re older and we can climb the whole damn thing. Sound like a plan?”
“That sounds awesome, Uncle Sean. Maybe even my dad can come too!”
Sean closed his eyes and bit back what he wanted so badly to say. He had learned his lesson, so many lessons, from Colm.
“That would be great, Colm. Just great.”
Colm smiled and looked out over all the mountain peaks that jutted into the sky like tyrannosaurus teeth. Deep down he knew he would never make it back with his uncle, but it brought him joy to think that someday even without him there, his mother, his father, Dr. Basu, and his uncle would climb them. And as he thought of this he smiled. Because in just a few days he would finally see him, his father. His very own mountaintop. He. Couldn’t. Wait.