He’d been gone for a year when Pa said it had gone on long enough. It wasn’t like before: I think he was scared he’d never see his son again. And Ma wasn’t much better. She couldn’t sleep, she kept saying that one day she’d end up forgetting her own son’s face, and she couldn’t stand the thought. It was worlds apart from when we were young, when I was sure we’d be happy forever. Everything felt wobbly, like a leg was missing.
He’d snuck out like a burglar, no explanations, and now we were all off-kilter. I couldn’t see why Thomas would do that to us, and even now I don’t know why he’d do such a thing. Shut the door of his house, get into his car, and disappear.
A year before Pa decided he couldn’t take it anymore, I’d gone to Thomas’s because it’d been five days since we’d seen each other last. The house was empty. He’d taken a few clothes and his backpack, and I saw his copy of Walden wasn’t on his chair by the fireplace anymore. I knew if he took his favorite book with him, that meant he was set on being away awhile. He could have gone on one of those solo hikes he was in the habit of taking, but something about the state he’d left the house in had me convinced he hadn’t. His wood chisel and his other wood-carving tools were on the ground, in front of the hearth. And his wood-carved animals, too: he’d put a grizzly, a wolf, an elk, and a sea eagle in a half circle, like they were there to talk to me, but the house stayed quiet. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling he wasn’t coming back.
If he was going to say goodbye to everything around him, this nature he said he loved more than human beings, he had to have a damn good reason. But, that day, all I felt was angry at him, and it only got worse as our parents got worried and panicky.
It’s so selfish to just leave without thinking about our feelings, like we wouldn’t worry ourselves sick, like we’d just go on without him. I could have punched him for what he’d done to Ma and Pa, for the grief he put them through all the way to the end. Staying angry at him was what kept me going. It drove me to go looking for him down in the Lower 48, from the West Coast all the way to the East, no matter what I might find. I crossed the United States looking for him, and I didn’t find any answers to the questions I kept asking.