by Scott Hartman

I sit in silence until the arhythmic brush and hush of wind in the trees and falling water begin to make sense. Until it becomes music. Until the beating of my heart becomes part of it. “When was the last time we spoke? Has it really been three years?” Like the river, we begin with a trickle.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I say. “The last trip did go well. Now the work begins.” This latest trip, ten weeks in India, was the completion of a journey I began two years ago. I returned early that year. There was a death in the family.

“Remember my first trip to India? How overwhelming Calcutta was? How it overran then abused my senses? How I told you of my need to turn off compassion if I wanted to survive? Well, Jakarta was worse than that. It was because there was nothing there to love. At least in Calcutta, there was something to love. After a frantic search in Jakarta, I found a phone and called when I heard of the earthquake in San Francisco. You told me Susan was fine. Was that the last time we spoke? Do you remember the last thing I said to you? I love you.”

To my left, the canyon loses self-consciousness, opens as if to tell a secret, and quickly runs and hides around the next bend. All the Middle Fork is that way. If you want to know it, be patient. It is not a river that minds being known. In fact, it longs for intimacy. If you want to know the river you must first let it know you. You must tell it everything. Only then, when finally you are in tears, will it tell you something of itself.

“I remember a day in Ventura, 1981, only weeks before my first trip when I told you, I met a girl . . . the same look you gave me when you were called in for a conference with my sixth-grade math teacher, for the third time. Both times I saw and felt only disappointment, though I now know understanding was only masked. After I’d mentioned the girl you said, Oh Scott, I was just beginning to get excited about your bicycle trip to Europe . . . Do you remember how only a week before you said, Why don’t you just find a nice girl and settle down? Then I told you I wasn’t going to Europe.”

Where are you going?

I don’t know.

So you’re going, but you don’t know where.

“Through the tears I said, Yeah, and thought to myself, that is exactly what I’m doing. I think you only wanted what was best. Best for you. And failing that best for me. It was then I began doing what was best for me.

“Soon after the divorce, I told you I was thinking of living my life alone. That’s not a good reflection on your mother and me. Now it was you talking through the tears. Remember? I said, It’s not meant to be a reflection on you and mom. Now I know that it can be seen that way. It wasn’t meant to hurt you. It was meant, before I could say in so many words, to say that life for everyone begins and ends the same way. Our only choice is how we get between the two. I was saying, ‘I have found my way.’ What hurt you is that the way I found was not your way. I am sorry I could not have said it then. That is why I am here talking to you now.”

The sun has spent most of the day working its way up, over, and through the stand of ponderosa pines and around the massive gray sentinel rock behind me. All day the pool has resisted contemplation. Its surface deflects rather than receives. Inscrutable. The river has something to say to me, something to show. Until it is ready, I will be patient. I have come too far not to wait.

“From Jakarta, Dad, I traveled east to Bali, then back through Jakarta to Singapore. Yeah, that’s where I met Kate. No, I never saw her again, but you know I looked hard. She wasn’t in Calcutta or Benares, Agra, Delhi, or Amritsar. I did get a card from her when I got to Joe and Maureen’s in Pakistan. The cards you sent . . . I don’t know where to begin. You said what every son, everyone, would love to hear. Remember what you said? ‘You are a good son, Scott, and I love you. More importantly, you are a worthy citizen of the world whom I’m proud to know.’ And your Christmas card, ‘Scott, I admire and respect the things you have done in your life. I know they haven’t paid off for you yet, but what an education and experience you’ve had. Somehow soon, Scott, things are going to start falling together for you. I Love You, Scott. Dad.’ Then you died.”

As I held the other end of the phone in Pakistan, waiting for emotion—delayed like the long distance words—to hit; as anger and confusion fought for control, I felt you fill the room. Somehow, somehow, somehow, it was OK. When I hung up, Maureen called her parents and, through the tears, said, “I love you.” 

Afternoon abruptly gives way to evening and the late September sun disappears behind the steep, tree-studded ridge to my right. I can see into the river. I can see above the bed of boulders and rocks among the groups of yearlings—testing, tasting, committing to memory—an old steelhead scarred and torn returning for the last time. Was he here two years ago? Was he here when I stood on this rock and set you free? Did he see the river pick you up and greet you like an old friend? Like it had been waiting for you.“

As I stood to leave a warm, upstream gust of wind narrowed my vision and my mind flowed downstream to that day . . . 

The sun had long ago left the water, the tips of the tallest trees glowed like wicks of tapered green candles. I had done nothing all day but avoid what I had come here to do. I walked to the back of the truck, opened the tailgate and slid the cardboard box toward me. I ran my knifetip across the threaded tape along the width and sides of the box.

I pulled the urn from the box and held it in my hands. I regarded the urn for a moment then began to walk silently upstream along the river. From my first step I felt a part of something ancient. My footsteps made no sound in the soft forest floor of Ponderosa pine needles. The wind had dropped, the trees, now reverentially erect, not a whisper between them. An eldest son, a father’s remains and the river.

Rounding a small bend in the river I saw the flat-topped altar rock in midstream and knew I must go there. At once chest-deep in the cold, now gray-green water I gasped a nascent breath, exhaling only once on the residual warmth of the black rock. I stood erect and faced downstream. My brief offering of words was no litany of sadness for his absence but rather of gratitude and joy, for his presence.

Still dripping, I curled the urn against my chest and with my right hand unscrewed the top. I raised the urn overhead with both hands and tilted it until ash began to fall. The sound of it hitting the water was like the hiss of rain on dry ground. As I tipped the urn farther, a sudden late afternoon upstream gust of wind arose, coating my chest with a fine layer of ash. 

For a moment I watched the last of my father’s ashes swirl, rise for an instant, then begin to sink. Setting the urn at my feet, I leapt into the river. Sculling upstream with both hands I watched the last gray ash wash free from my chest. My father followed only briefly; until at last he was behind me. Turning to face downstream I found myself buoyant in a way that I had not been in months, if not years. Though it seemed contrary to the moment, it was undeniable—as was the realization that the river had been waiting for me.

The topography of the American Southwest is the landscape of Scott Hartman’s soul. At the age of eight, he loved “Show and Tell,” and 58 years later he still does. He tells what he remembers, and shows what he can't forget.