16. Colors Yet to Come #2
Before stepping in, Gus twisted to take a final look at the Montana mountains behind the home he grew up in.
Their vast magnitude still filled him with awe.
They framed his little house that stored so many memories he didn’t want to abandon.
Gus then looked back at Bridger, still standing on the cabin porch.
His subtle sad smile forced Gus to hold back tears. The boys each gave a final small wave.
“You ready?” Dan asked from the driver’s side, pausing as he got in.
Gus glanced again at Bridger, who looked down at his feet. Gus could tell he was in agony. So was he.
No, he wasn’t ready.
“I, uh… I just…” Gus peered back at Bridger.
Dan followed his son’s gaze toward the skater boy at his door.
He sighed. He knew this feeling all too well.
Parting hurt most when returns weren’t guaranteed.
Dan observed Gus for a moment from across his car—saw with a wistful ache that his son was yet again taller than he remembered.
His little boy had grown up stronger than he could have ever hoped for.
In this moment, so many of Dan’s old regrets faded away.
“Gus?”
His son looked up.
Dan smiled. “Go say goodbye.”
Gus locked eyes with his father. He let out a shaky laugh as a quick tear fell. Gus immediately dropped his backpack and his skateboard and dashed back to the house, back to Bridger.
Gus ran so fast he almost tripped as he leaped to throw his arms around the boy who taught him everything that mattered most.
“Oh!” Bridger winced at first, but then eased into Gus’s embrace.
Gus held his chin in the crook of Bridger’s shoulder and squeezed as tight as his arms would allow. He didn’t want to let go. This was his first real friend, his first real love.
Gus lifted his chin and placed a slow, final kiss upon Bridger’s lips. The boy’s eyebrows raised, then melted. Bridger reached up to cup Gus’s face, making this last kiss count.
When they finally parted lips, Bridger held their hug.
“Goodbye, Gus,” he whispered.
Dan let Gus and Bridger have their private farewell and waited inside the car for Gus. Eventually, his son bent down into the vehicle to take his seat and closed the door. The Chevy Blazer pulled out and drove away.
Whenever Dan was driving, Gus often sat alone in the back. But today, he sat in the front passenger seat, right next to his father. For the next few minutes, they both sat in somber silence as they sped down the highway. Gus opened his window and let the last of summer’s breeze blow upon his face.
With only an empty road and plenty of time ahead of them, Dan eventually nodded to the cardboard box in Gus’s lap.
“Open it,” Dan said casually.
“But I’m not alone yet,” Gus responded.
“Humpfrh,” Dan muttered.
Giving a smiling shake of his head, Gus ripped the tape off the box and gently opened the cardboard wings to find an object wrapped in newspaper.
His forehead raised in pleasant surprise as he caught eyes with his father.
Dan released the smallest of grins and glanced back at the road.
Gus gingerly unfolded the newspaper to find a small pile of wood.
At first, Gus was confused until two of the rectangular pieces opened to reveal Dan’s parting gift: Gus’s old tattered sketchbook that he had ripped up and thrown away, but now restored and strengthened with hardwood covers and each page fully laminated.
Shock, relief, and excitement hit Gus all at once. Dan muttered a laugh as his son reacted.
Gus opened the book to find all his old drawings of Montana nature, animals, skateboards, birds, and Bridger rebound into the new wooden sketchbook. Every ripped-up page, his dad had meticulously taped back together.
Tilting his head, Gus looked fondly at the months of memories as he flipped through the pages.
He was surprised by all the little sketches he had forgotten about and, more than that, how much time and care his father must have put into matching together all the scraps of paper to put them back where they belonged.
As he skimmed through the restored book, Gus discovered a journey of multiple different sparrows mixed within the summer’s sketches that grew more colorful with every page.
Gus let a tear fall as he found his favorite last sketch of Bridger, whole again, sunbathing with his rain-soaked cheek.
From his backpack, where he’d pressed it between two art books, Gus pulled out the drawing of his mother that he’d saved.
The one he couldn’t bring himself to destroy.
Dan watched with a nostalgic smile on his face as Gus slipped it in with the one of Bridger.
His old sketchbook was forever stronger than it was before.
Gus closed the back cover, and his eyes widened with more curiosity. There, written on the wooden back, was an engraved message from Dan.
Dear Gus, Never throw away painful memories
that led to today’s joy. A great life is built by
the moments we refuse to forget.
Gus smiled as he read the words.
He then noticed the rest of the wood he’d lifted from the box was an untouched second sketchbook. Immediately, he flipped to look at the back, pleased to find another engraved message, this one below an embedded picture of his happy, young father and mother.
This new sketchbook is one your mom
never got to use. She always dreamed
of going to art college. Thank you for
reminding me of her.
Keep drawing.
Love, Dad
Gus glanced over at his father. The aging man bowed his head mournfully while keeping his eyes on the road.
“There’s more…” Dan prompted, gesturing toward the new sketchbook.
Gus opened the wooden cover to the first blank page. Taped there was a postcard, a Polaroid, and a sparrow’s feather. The nature-filled Montana postcard offered a simple message:
I’ll never forget my summer
with you, Bird Boy.
At the bottom was Bridger’s signature and the date.
August 2003. The Polaroid showed the boys together, laughing up in Gus’s room.
He immediately chuckled thinking of Bridger and all their nights under both the stars and his twinkling fairy lights.
However, as time held, Gus’s smile slipped away as bittersweet tears welled in his eyes.
That boy changed his life for the better.
Truly. Yet, right now, the dreary and regretful memories fading back in were not of his new lover but of the one person who had loved him first.
“I miss Mom so much,” Gus shared as a droplet wet his cheek. “I wish she was here right now. I wish she could have met Bridger… There’s so much I’ll never be able to tell her.”
Dan remained stoic in the driver’s seat.
Gus held strong, not wanting to weep. The grief always hit him hardest when he pictured his mother’s radiant smile and how he’d never see it again. He looked into his sketch of her. Missing her eyes.
“I wish she knew that you and I had this summer together, Dad.”
Dan looked out the windshield at the picturesque Montana landscape around them, at all the vivid colors he had taken for granted for so many years. Today, he found them more vibrant than they had ever been.
“Your mother knows, kid.” Dan smiled softly. “She knows.”
Tears streamed down as Gus looked into the side view mirror to get one final look back at Livingston, Montana, shrinking in the reflection. The portrait of his hometown in the little glass was more stunning than any sketch he had ever drawn.
Gus wiped his cheek.
Mom would have loved this view.
Gus chose, right then, to be grateful for his summer of experiences. The furniture, the escapades, building skateboards, making mistakes, gaining new friends, falling in love with Bridger—everything.
Gus turned forward, plucked the sparrow feather from between his gifts, and twirled it in his fingers. He looked down at his renewed sketchbook with its drawings so colorful they actually looked like the real world around him. For the first time, Gus’s drawings matched his reality.
The boy pulled out his colored pencils.
Gus carefully removed the Polaroid of him and Bridger from the new sketchbook and re-taped it to the final page of his old one.
Then he began drawing the bright blue sky and evergreen hills beyond the front windshield.
Gus glanced up and leaned out his open front passenger window.
He wanted to ensure he made the most of all the blending colors before him.
Finally, he understood how they all worked in harmony.
Gus’s last addition to his drawing was something simple. He sketched two young red sparrows flying in the distant wind. He knew both birds could see all the colors yet to come over the big mountains that stood in their way.
I did it, Mom.
I finally made some art I’m proud of.
I can’t wait to share it with you one day…
As Dan’s Chevy rounded the curvy bend facing a new visage of magnificent magenta mountains and emerald forests stretching far and wide, Gus cracked a confident smile.
He pulled out his mother’s empty wooden sketchbook and turned to its first, fresh page.
Gus Shepard couldn’t wait to draw something bright and new.