My mother has always said that crying doesn’t help, but it also doesn’t hurt. And I had cried plenty of times in my life, sometimes in pain, sometimes out of loneliness. But I wouldn’t cry now. It was clear I was in a world I knew nothing about. A world where people walked around like zombies staring at their phones and where you were not supposed to drink water in public. I didn’t know how to get back to the apartment. And there was no way I would walk back to the school.
I sat on the edge of the pool, remembering what my father had said about getting lost in the woods. When you get lost, stay lost for the time being. Stay put. Don’t just wander. It will make things worse. Sit down and think. Come up with a plan.
I had my head down, staring at the concrete. And then this old guy sat down beside me. He had a smell about him. Nothing I was familiar with. Not body odor, but something else. Something strong.
“Looks like you need some kind of help,” he said.
I nodded and looked at him. He was maybe sixty, unshaven, and in old clothes like my dad would wear chopping wood. He had a bottle in a brown paper bag, and he held it out. “Want some?”
I didn’t know what it was, but I accepted the bottle and took a sip. The liquid burned like hell, and I spit it out.
The guy looked offended. “Shouldn’t waste good sauce,” he said, putting a cap on the bottle and shoving it into his pocket. I was coughing and trying to get my breath. “Just trying to ease the pain, kiddo.”
I took a gulp of air. “I’m lost,” I said. “Think you can help me find my way home?”
“Sure,” he said. “I know all about lost. Been that way most of my life. I’d go home too if I knew where home was, but I don’t. But I bet I can get you where you need to go. Where you from anyway?”
So I gave him the short version of my tale. Wide-eyed, he pulled out the bottle and took a deep gulp, but he didn’t offer it to me this time.
“I’m Ernest, by the way. Ernest by name but not by nature.” He laughed at his little joke. “I’m not exactly your guardian angel, buddy. But let’s figure this out. You say your father’s in the hospital, and they put you and your mom up somewhere.”
“Yeah, a tall building.”
“Lots of them around. But let’s head toward the hospital and see if you recognize anything.”
So we started walking. He had a bit of a limp, so we went slow. And he was right. About twenty minutes later we were circling the streets around Regional General Hospital when I recognized an old, dirty brick building. “That’s it,” I said. “You want to come in and meet my mom?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. I got places to go, people to meet. I’m just happy you found your way home.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He turned and I watched as he hobbled off.
My mom was happy to see me. She could read me like a book. “Rough day?”
“Yeah. Rough day.”
She gave me a sad look. “Maybe we made a mistake raising you like we did.”
“I love everything about the way I grew up,” I said. “I want to go back.”
“We never expected this would happen to your father. We have to stay here for now. He’ll get better, and then we’ll go home.”
But I had this gut feeling that even if we could go back home, something had changed, and it could never quite be the same. I told my mom about school, about the fountain and about Ernest.
“Let’s go visit your father,” she said.
We walked the couple of blocks to the hospital and went inside. My mom took me to the cancer ward, and we walked into a room with several beds. Behind some curtains, my dad was sitting up in bed. He had tubes going into his arms, and he looked pale and weak.
“How was the first day at school?”
“Not so bad,” I lied.
“It’ll get better,” he said. My mom was fidgeting, adjusting the bedcovers and then running her fingers through his hair. “Hey. School, city, forest, whatever. It’s all about your inner resources.”
I’d heard a million of these little speeches before, had grown tired of them but had them memorized. And right now I didn’t mind. It was good to hear him say stuff like that. “I know, Dad.”
“Just use your instincts and your survival skills.”
“There were no wolves or bears at school, Dad.”
He smiled. “Sure there were. You saw them. Just keep your distance and stay downwind of them.” He coughed and closed his eyes for a second. I could see he was in some kind of pain.
“We’ll all get through this,” he said to me. “And then we can go home. We gotta get some firewood cut and split before winter.”
My mom leaned over him and gave him a hug. I did the same. Then we sat for a while in silence, listening to the other sounds in the hospital.