Run for the Hills

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

F inally, here Mad was, in the same state as her father for the first time in more than twenty years. There was a pleasure in this fact, not the proximity to her father, necessarily, but the notion that she was so close to him and he had no idea. After so many years of uncertainty, a kind of constant low-level mystery swirling around her, she knew something that her father did not know. If she could only maintain this feeling of superiority for as long as she could, if she could somehow walk undetected into her father’s home, could stand just behind him until he sensed something charged in the air, and then reach out her hand to tap him on the shoulder, it would almost make the twenty-plus years worth it. Almost.

Woodside, California, was not what the kids had expected when they thought of their father, questing further and further from his origins, but unless their dad planned to sail across the Pacific Ocean or hike to Alaska, it was a place to settle. It was also abundantly clear that it was rich as hell, the houses looking like things that railroad magnates had lost, thanks to the steady dilution of their fortune and then sold to venture capitalists who did things with money that would make the old-money folks want to kill themselves if they weren’t already dead. It was interesting to chart their father’s progression across the country. He had started in a metropolitan city, and when his first bout of restlessness and ennui hit, he sought out rural spaces, agriculture, “real” America. And then he went to Oklahoma, the vast plains, an opportunity to consider the questions of life on this planet. And then he went to Salt Lake City, which had the word city in the name, a place, though still mountainous and wondrous with nature, where you could get sushi if you wanted it. And then, perhaps realizing how little time he had left on this mortal coil, he decided to pick one of the richest places in the world, populated with people who owned wineries and horse farms and made artificial hearts, and decided it was time to relax. This was all conjecture, of course, but their father, in his absence, encouraged, perhaps even demanded, conjecture.

They could see the Santa Cruz Mountains as they left behind the coffee shops and dog boutiques and stores that were probably just fine, but made Mad grumpy on principle. And then they arrived at the address, and they were looking at a mansion so large and ornate and old that it looked like the cover of a romance novel, or the painted backdrop to a movie from the forties. If their father was inside this mansion, everything made a little more sense. Forget about familial responsibility. Just set aside the ethics of abandoning children and lying to everyone who ever loved you. If you started out in an apartment in Boston, Massachusetts, and you intuited that your real future lay here, in a mansion on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, maybe you had to go find that mansion. She was still so mad at her father, but, truly, this was a breathtaking mansion.

“Our dad is rich,” Tom said.

“There’s a gate,” Pep observed. “We can’t even get in. Who is going to let us in? Dad’s just gonna hide in there if he sees us.”

“Oh, god,” Rube said. “Wow. I am losing my nerve.”

“No, Rube, please,” Mad said. “Look, there’s a little box. We just talk into that box. He opens the gate. We finish what we started.”

“Once he closes the gate back, we’re trapped,” said Rube.

“Dad is not going to trap us,” Tom said.

“He doesn’t even want us here in the first place,” Pep offered.

“We won’t know until we talk into that little box, Rube,” Mad said, and Rube nodded. He drove up to the box and rolled down the window. He pushed the button.

“He might not even be here,” Rube said.

“Why would anyone leave this place?” Tom wondered.

“Hello?” the voice said. It was a woman’s voice, cautious, and instantly everyone in the car seemed to relax a bit. They could delay the shock of seeing their father for a few more seconds. And the astounding length of the driveway would give them a few minutes to prepare. They just had to get in.

“Yes, hello,” Rube said. “My name is Reuben Hill and I am trying to schedule a meeting with my—well, with our—I have associates with me who are also involved in this—”

“Who is this?” the woman asked, so confused.

“Why do you always talk like a fake lawyer when you get nervous?” Pep asked. “It’s so weird.”

“I’m here with my brother and sisters and we’re looking for our dad. His name is Charles Hill and this is the address I have for him. We want to speak to him. We want to meet him.”

There was silence. Mad wondered how long they would stay here, waiting for an answer. Forever? How could they turn back now. They would ram this car into the gate, over and over, until they gained entry. They had wrecked one car already. What was one more?

“You’re Charles’s children?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” Rube replied. “There are four of us.”

“You have no ill intentions? You are not trying to hurt me?”

Mad once more thought about Rube’s initial desire to kill their father, and she hoped, in his strange state, that he didn’t mention that he had only considered killing his dad, but that now he had no murderous thoughts toward him and that he’d never once, even in the early stages of the fantasy, thought about killing innocent bystanders. She prayed this did not happen.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am, but we don’t even know who you are. We understand why you would be shocked or concerned, but we’re just trying to find our father.”

“I will let you in. I’ll meet you at the front door. I’m trusting you.”

“You can trust us,” Tom said from the backseat, and Mad resisted the urge to shush him because she sensed that would only make things worse, to hear the harsh shushing of a small child just as you’re about to push the button that protects you from intruders.

The gate slowly opened, and Rube inched the car forward.

“Is Dad going to be out on the front porch, too?” Pep asked. “Is he here?”

“We’re so close,” Rube said. “Is everyone okay?”

“No!” Pep yelled. “Of course not. But we have to keep going, right? Let’s just do this.”

When they pulled up to the house, which did not recede in grandeur the closer they got to it, there was a woman who seemed to be in her forties, fit in the way that rich people were fit, just the slightest bit of frailty embedded in their good health. She was wearing a wildly floral long-sleeved maxidress, like something Joan Didion would have worn in the seventies, and was standing at the front door.

“I’m scared,” Mad admitted. She did not like to be in the presence of wealth, but who did? Even rich people probably didn’t like being around other rich people on their home turf. But at least they had a Rolex or the security of an Ivy League education to protect them. Mad was a farmer looking for her lost father like someone out of an old John Ford movie.

“There’s four of us and just one of her,” Rube said.

“And Dad,” Pep added.

“And maybe another kid,” Tom said.

“We have to get out of this car,” Rube said. “The longer we sit here, the more suspicious it looks.”

And so they exited the car, all of them in perfect unison, all four doors opening at once, and they regarded this rich woman and tried to smile.

“You’re looking for Charles Hill?” she said. They all nodded. “And you are his children?”

They nodded again. “From different mothers?” They nodded. “From different places in the continental United States?” How much nodding was going to be involved in this meeting. Why didn’t they just say, yeah! ? But it was too late. They were nodding. They were going to keep nodding.

“And you think he’s here?” she asked. Rube turned back to the car, as if he needed his briefcase and documents to support their assertion, but they were too far to doubt themselves. They were here.

“He is not here,” she said. Mad nearly shouted an obscenity. Rich people, leisurely people with no real responsibilities or schedule infuriated her. They were here for their father and now this woman was toying with them. The only way it would have been more infuriating was if she was smoking a cigarette in one of those fancy holders or if she was petting a hairless cat.

“But you know our dad?” Tom asked, undeterred.

“Yes, I know your father. But he’s not here and this is not his address.”

“Did he leave you?” Tom asked.

“No,” the woman replied, though she allowed the slightest smile. “He did not.”

“Oh, wow, did you leave him?” Tom asked.

“I have an address for you and that’s where you’ll find him. I believe this is an important thing that you’re doing and regardless of what anyone else may think, you should meet your father and be able to talk to him.”

Another quest. Mad wanted to scream. Always another quest, some other thing that they had to accomplish, some mountain to traverse or some insane billionaire heiress to humor. The further you get into the quest, no matter how long it continues, you can’t leave it. You’re too far into it.

The woman had a piece of paper and held it out to Rube, who walked over to take it. “Thank you,” he said.

“It’s a very vast property,” she warned them.

“Bigger than this?” Pep wondered.

“In terms of acreage, yes,” the woman said.

“Well, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Mad said. “Thank you for the address and sorry to bother you.”

“We didn’t even get to see the inside of the house,” Tom whispered to her. “I would like to check out the interiors for my film.”

“We have to find Dad, okay?” Mad replied, and Tom reluctantly agreed. They all got back into the HHR and turned it around to head down the driveway. The woman waved.

“She didn’t even tell us her name,” Pep said.

“Was that Dad’s new wife?” Rube wondered.

“Ex-wife?” Mad offered.

“I think we need to pretend like this didn’t happen,” Rube said. “At least until we find Dad.”

It was quiet for a moment while the gate opened up again for them. They passed through and then they drove to the first parking lot they could find, which took fifteen minutes, in order to look at the address and compare it to their road maps. “It’s in Woodside,” Mad said. She was trying to figure out the map, but the address seemed to be swallowed up by empty space, acres and acres and acres of nothing. “I think dad might be hiding in the wilderness, like a survivalist or something.”

“I didn’t want to say it earlier, but I think he’s started a cult,” Rube replied.

“I think he’s maybe a monk, you know?” Pep offered. “He’s atoning for his sins by living in a cave and praying with squirrels.”

Tom looked up at them from his notebook. “I think he probably just got married again and he has another kid.”

“Jeez, Tom,” Pep said. “That was brutal.”

“Okay, we can get there. It’s far, but not that far,” Mad told them. It was hard to summon the terror they had just felt, because they started to wonder if they’d ever actually find their father. If they had to go into Canada, Mad would lose her mind. This had to be it. It had to end at some point. That’s how life worked, right?

After a half hour of driving, they turned onto a road that was winding, one-way, and steeply rising. It would be so disappointing to slide off the side of a mountain and die just minutes before they reunited with their long-lost rake of a father. It would be so goddamn embarrassing. If they had died when the PT Cruiser malfunctioned and sent them hurtling toward a terrible reckoning in the vast plains of the southwestern United States, that was one thing. It was an unfortunate outcome to a quest, which is by nature fraught with peril. But if the Chevy HHR flipped end over end down a winding mountain road and their father, pushing a baby stroller, happened upon their mangled bodies the next day, well, that felt mythic. And myths were either really cool or really embarrassing, and Mad knew which way the balance would tilt for her.

They leveled out, the road still so narrow, and Mad wondered if it was a good or bad thing that not a single car had come from the opposite direction. The road forked and they observed a rotting wooden sign that simply said dardanelle ranch, with additional blocks of less-weathered wood signifying house numbers attached to the sign but without much in the way of direction. “Two-two-seven-eight!” Mad called out, pointing to one of the numbered signs. “That’s where that weird rich lady said Dad is living.”

“So we’re doing this,” Rube said. “We’re going to see Dad, right?”

Mad wondered what would happen if Tom simply stepped out of the car and started walking in the opposite direction. If Mad suddenly revealed that she did not actually want to see their father. She knew Rube was only trying to prolong the inevitable and also give weight to this moment, but she wanted him to drive. They were no longer on a road that offered the distinct possibility of death, and she wanted to go, to get on with it.

“Let’s go,” the rest of them said, willing themselves to be ready for what came next.

THE DAY BEFORE, WHEN SHE REALIZED HOW CLOSE THEY WERE TO THIS moment, she had taken Rube aside, away from Pep and Tom, and asked him if he was okay. He looked confused and she reminded him that he had recently admitted under great duress that he had been planning to murder their father. And that his siblings would serve as possible suspects to aid in evading arrest. How could that impulse be gone? Once someone puts murder on the table, you cannot pretend that murder wasn’t an option.

Rube said, “I wish I’d never revealed that to you and Pep.”

“Pep and I also wish that you’d kept it to yourself.”

“The thing is, the more of you that I met, and the closer I got to the reality of what is going to happen, I realized it was such a terrible thing. It would ruin me. My life would end. And if you were to witness it, your lives would end. I can’t kill someone in front of Tom. He’s a child. It was just a bad idea and I ran with it because I honestly didn’t know how to write any other ending. I thought it had to go that way, and now, because of you, I feel like maybe there’s a better way to end it.”

“Well, okay. You’re being kind of fanciful about it, and I’m just worried because it felt like a very real intent to murder our dad.”

“I’m not going to do it,” Rube replied, trying to keep his voice down. “I promise you, Mad.”

And she believed him. He had come up with the idea when he had been an only child. But they had each other now.

THEY DROVE DOWN A DIRT ROAD, MARVELING AT HOW THE DENSE WOODS periodically gave way to expansive views of hills, with sheds and barns and what looked like a fairly huge horse stable seemingly built into the landscape, the sky blue and cool and cloudless. Though they hadn’t seen another vehicle or human being during the drive on this road, Mad was more confused by the lack of animals. There were no steer, no horses, not even a chicken waddling across the road. For such a huge tract of land, it seemed foreboding that nothing animated it, only Mad and her siblings in this dinky little car.

Finally, after about five miles, they reached a clearing, and the road was now paved, and they saw a sign that read hidden drive ahead, and then a series of driveways, each numbered, including one that was marked 2278, which she pointed out to Rube, who turned onto it. They drove and Mad realized that she was having trouble breathing, like it was taking effort to pull air into her lungs, and her chest was tight. She remembered feeling like this at the end of Pep’s game, and she tried to suck in air without anyone noticing. Of course, everyone else in the car noticed. Rube turned to look at her. “You okay?” he asked, and she nodded. She looked in the rearview to see that Pep was also staring at her. Tom had focused the camera on her, which made her chest tighten even more. If this was a movie, she realized that she was the innocent young soldier who gets killed immediately.

“I’m having a little trouble breathing,” she said. “And swallowing, too, actually.”

“You might be having a heart attack,” Tom offered from behind the camera.

“It’s an anxiety attack,” Rube said. “I get them all the time. Do you feel like you might be dying, but it’s low level and you don’t want to acknowledge that possibility because it will make you look weak and crazy and so that makes it even worse?”

Mad took another shallow breath. “It does.”

“That’s an anxiety attack,” he said. “Which is perfectly normal.”

“Why aren’t you having one?” she asked, and he replied, “Because I’m on a lot of meds and I also took a Klonopin at the last rest stop. That’s why that narrow road on the edge of the mountain didn’t even faze me.”

“When I get nervous,” Pep offered, “like before a game? I throw up a ton and then I feel fine.”

Tom admitted that he didn’t get nervous or panicky.

“If we could, like, not talk about it. I just need a second, I thi—”

“We’re here,” Rube said, his face instantly apologetic. “We’re here.”

Mad looked up to see the most beautiful structure, all wood and glass, angles that could only be described as Scandinavian, absolutely pristine. It made her want to die.

“Rube!” Mad said.

He put his hand on the top of her head and instantly thought better of it, placing it instead on her shoulder, a nice, familial gesture of support. Pep leaned over from the backseat and put her hand on top of Mad’s head, and then Tom did the same. And it did not feel good. It made her uncomfortable, but it also, somehow, made her want to cry. Was there ever a time in her life in all of her years on earth when this many people touched her at once, stood next to her to let her know that they loved her? No. The answer was no.

“I have never had anxiety until I met you,” she said to Rube. “Thirty-two years and nothing, and now I’ve had two freakouts on this trip.”

“That only means that you are, you know, truly living,” Rube said.

“Guess I am, too,” offered Pep. “I ran away from my entire team and hid by a bridge and then jumped into your car. My coach doesn’t even know where I am.”

“I won four thousand dollars,” Tom said. “But I haven’t been on the trip as long as you have.”

“ We won four thousand dollars,” Rube replied. “Mad, you won a ton of money on a slot machine. Don’t focus on the times you felt like you were dying, okay? That’s not gonna help you. Just like Pep shouldn’t focus on losing the biggest game of her entire life, right? What does that help? We’re here. We’re about to meet our dad. Whatever happens, it’s not just going to happen to you. It’s going to happen to all of us. Together.”

“Do you think he’s watching us from the window?” Mad asked, feeling her breathing begin to steady, not sure how to tell her siblings to remove their hands from her body.

“The whole freaking house is a window,” Pep offered. “He doesn’t have curtains, either. I don’t see anybody.”

They stepped out of the car and walked cautiously to the front steps of the deck. “I’m going to knock on the door,” Rube said. “Now I feel like I’m having an anxiety attack.”

“No one’s in there,” Pep said. “I mean, I can see inside. It looks like a freaking magazine or an ad or something. No one is in there.”

“Maybe he’s …” Mad said, trailing off. “Maybe he’s incapacitated.”

“Should we break in to check?” Rube asked.

Even though Mad’s father had been an avowed pacifist, he’d had two shotguns on their farm. Mad wondered if Pep’s version of their father owned guns, or Tom’s. If they all got shot by their dad while trying to break into his cabin in order to reunite with him, they would be on every single news show in the world.

“No,” Mad said, certain. “We’ll just wait. We’ve made it this far. We’ll wait until he shows up.”

“I’m going to explore,” Tom said, holding up the camera to take in the view.

“No, Tom, wait,” Mad said. “There could be mountain lions. Predators.”

“I’ll go with him,” Pep said.

“What if he comes back?” Rube said. “You guys will be stuck in a well, and he’ll show up and I’ll be all by myself.”

“Well, I don’t think we should split up,” Mad said.

“We have my phone,” Pep said, holding it up. “Oh, wait, damn, there’s no reception at all out here.”

“We’ll all explore together,” Mad finally declared. “We need to stretch our legs and it’ll be less confrontational if we’re not all just sitting on the deck waiting for him to come back from the general store or something.” Honestly, she wanted to look around the ranch. She’d never seen this much uncultivated land in her life. It was startling and beautiful and a little scary.

“Well, what about the wagon?” Rube offered. “If he sees the car and we’re not here, he’ll get suspicious.”

“We should cover it in tree branches and camouflage it,” Tom offered.

“No, that would make him more suspicious,” Mad replied. “Why don’t we drive back out to the main road and then I saw a clearing where we could park and then we’ll walk around. Maybe we’ll even see him.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Rube said. “I feel like the best version of our meetings was when I came to see you in Tennessee and you had time to see the car drive up from far away, you know? With Pep, we had to call, and with Tom, we had to ask his mom first. It wasn’t easy to create an organic moment of communion, but if you see this vehicle in the distance, you have time to get prepared.”

“Yeah, fine, sure,” Mad said. “Let’s all get back in the wagon,” and Pep and Tom both groaned.

“You guys are overthinking this,” Pep said.

“Wait,” Tom said. He rolled down the window and leaned out with the camera. Pep held on to his legs without being asked, to keep him from getting tossed out of the car if they hit a bump. He tried to fix his arms as steady as possible, and then he said, “Action!” and Rube started to drive back down the road, and it was as if Mad, even though she was facing forward, could see the shot as it assembled itself, the cabin getting smaller and smaller, the sky opening up above them, this little spot in the wilderness.

Once they parked, it took a few minutes for Rube to find what he deemed a suitable walking stick, and then they were off. Mad did worry that Tom, with his T-shirt dress, might not be prepared for snakes or creatures or even just rocks if he took a tumble, but she decided against voicing this concern. He lived in a state filled with overly religious types, as he ran around in a makeshift dress until he could wear a regular dress, maybe, who knows, and she wasn’t going to mess that up for him.

After thirty minutes of hiking, the group came upon a clearing atop a slight hill, but Mad let her eyes adjust and noticed that there was a tunnel built into the hill. It was bigger than a storm drain, certainly man-made, just wide enough that one person at a time could walk through it. And atop the hill was a wooden structure, what looked like a colosseum for a low-rent Renaissance festival.

“What in the world is that?” Rube asked Mad, who shrugged.

“Maybe storage for wood?” Mad offered, “or a little performance space?”

“A performance for whom?” Rube wondered? “For squirrels?”

“Let’s go in,” Pep said, and Tom was already walking into the tunnel.

“Wait!” Mad said. “Pep, you get in front.”

“That’ll mess up the shot,” Tom said.

“If there’s no minotaur in there that kills all of us,” Mad offered, “you can go back and shoot it the way you want.”

One by one, they walked into the tunnel, and Mad was shocked to find that the walls of the tunnel were warped pieces of wood, bending like the walls of a ship, but so loosely joined that dozens of rays of sunlight pierced the tunnel.

“It’s like the belly of a whale,” Pep said in amazement. And then she hit a section that was perfectly sealed, pitch dark, and she stopped for a second, feeling around for the way through.

When they finally emerged inside the structure, Mad noticed that the opening was a perfect triangle pointing back the way that they had come. Inside the structure, the ground was covered in sickly yellow brush and dry dirt.

“This is so weird,” Pep remarked. “Like, this is exactly the place where someone like me gets sacrificed by a bunch of weirdo creeps. And I bet that, like, the virgin moonlight once every fifty years shines exactly on the opening and they bash my head in when I peek out.”

“It is definitely unexplainable and ominous,” Rube admitted.

“It’s just a piece of art,” Tom said. “It’s good, too. Only one way in and one way out. You have to travel through it. Okay, Pep, go back in there and then come out of the opening with your hand over your eyes, like you just woke up from eating a poisoned apple.”

Pep did as she was directed, and Tom held the camera as low to the ground as he could get. “Nice,” he said, once Pep, stretching to her full height, stood inside the structure.

“Do you think that Dad made this?” Mad asked Rube, who considered it.

“I think that’s very possible,” he admitted. “This might be his new thing, building strange structures in unpopulated landscapes. Sure. Why not?”

The work with the wood—the bend of it so that it looked like the skeleton of a dinosaur, to make sure it was a perfectly octagonal space inside the structure—it felt to Mad like the work her father did on the farm, to be both precise and wild at the same time.

“Okay, we’d better keep hiking,” Rube said. “Tom, do you wanna go first this time with your camera?”

“Yeah!” Tom said, running swiftly down the wooden stairs, disappearing into the earth. Pep followed, then Mad, and Rube took up the rear. Mad closed her eyes, tried to make her way through the tunnel by touch, the soft scraping sound of her feet on the slightly damp earth, the way slats of light played upon her eyelids. When she finally made it to the opening, she walked out into the wilderness again and opened her eyes, only to see Pep and Tom standing stock-still, Tom’s camera held limp at his side. She looked up, and she saw their father.

His hair was shockingly white and came down to his shoulders, and he had a beard, his face tan and weathered, but it was unmistakably him. He was wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a ratty blue T-shirt.

“Kids?” their dad said.

“Dad,” Tom said.

“It’s us,” Pep admitted.

Rube touched Mad’s shoulder, holding her back. And then Mad noticed the backpack their father was wearing, the pack sitting high above his shoulders. And inside the pack was a toddler, a little boy, who was regarding them with utter indifference. Their brother, she imagined. They were together at last, for the first time.

“Hello, kids,” their father said.

Mad took a breath and realized how easily her lungs pulled air into her chest. She was ready for this. She would not mess it up. She had found her father. He wouldn’t get away from her again, no matter how hard he tried.