Page 31 of So Far Gone

have much food at all. I have coffee and some pancake mix. Dried fruit. Smoked salmon. Some pasta. You caught me between supply

runs.”

“We can’t come inside, anyway.”

“You drive all the way up here and you can’t come in?”

“No, Dad. There’s a pandemic. We’re supposed to be social distancing.”

“Oh. Right.” He put a hand to his head. “I keep forgetting. The woman who cuts my hair made me wear a mask. She was talking

about it just the other day.”

“Dad, everyone is talking about it. Everyone’s wearing masks.”

“Of course they are. Yes. I’m sorry.”

How was it, Bethany thought, that the only two people who didn’t seem to know that the entire world had been shut down were her father and stepfather? For a moment, she envied them both.

Kinnick started toward her, as if to give her a hug. “Is it... Can I...”

“We have to stay six feet apart.” She pulled a mask from her pocket. “And I should probably wear this.”

“Even outside?”

“I mean, no one knows for sure. But I don’t want to be the one who gets you sick.”

“Of course. Well, don’t put that on. I’ll keep my distance. But can I at least bring out some water for the kids? Or some...

uh, dried fruit?”

Both kids looked at their mother. “That’s okay,” she answered for them. “We ate at Mom’s.” She nodded toward where he’d been

working. “Are you fixing your barn?”

“The barn?” Kinnick scratched his head, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing. “Oh.” He turned to look. “No, I’m taking it

down.”

“Why?”

“Well, I found my grandpa’s old landfill up here. Thirty years of garbage. Old car bodies. Metal and wood. He just threw everything

in that hole. I dug it all out of the ground, hauled it off, and cleaned it up, planted some trees, and it just felt so good...

I realized that’s what I want to do with this place. Slowly return it to nature. Eventually leave no trace that anyone was

ever here.”

No trace. Sure. She couldn’t say why this rankled her, but it did.

They walked to the little stream beyond his house, small-talking as they went. Leah and Asher tossed rocks into the water,

trying to make the biggest splash, even though the creek was only a few inches deep.

Bethany kept glancing over at her dad. Unlike with her mother, it felt rather natural being six feet away from Rhys.

When she was little, she attached herself to her father’s hip the minute he got home from work.

He’d tell stories about his job and ask her about the books she was reading.

She loved seeing his byline in the newspaper.

By Rhys Kinnick. Staff Writer . He’d light up when he read her middle school book reports and her English papers, as if they shared a secret language—which

was... of course, language. She loved to write, and everyone said she would grow up to be just like your father . And then, as she’d explained to Peggy, in high school this chasm had begun opening between them, and eventually, she stopped

saying she wanted to be a writer like her dad.

“How’s the writing coming?” she asked. The other time she’d been up here, he’d admitted he was trying again. He had started

keeping a journal of his progress in the woods, like Thoreau.

“Slowly,” he said. “I guess I’m still mostly preparing to write? Reading a lot and making notes toward... well, toward something.”

“Another book?”

He flinched at this. “I mean, I don’t—yes? What makes something a book? You know... can I just bind two thousand pages

together and pronounce it, ‘Book!’ I mean, there must be some inherent value to a thing outside its form, or its public recognition,

right?” She had noticed this, too, the last time she came up here, the way her father seemed to be debating himself whenever

he spoke. “Then again,” he said, “maybe not.”

“Did you say two thousand pages?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“You just said ‘You can’t bind two thousand pages and call it a book.’ Have you written two thousand pages, Dad?”

“Are there fish in here?” Asher turned and asked.

“There were a lot of fish when I was a kid,” Kinnick answered. “Little brook trout. About the size of your hand. Not anymore, I’m afraid.”

“Where did they go?” Asher asked.

“Where indeed,” said his grandfather. “People build houses in these hills, and dig new wells, and the groundwater eventually

dries up. There isn’t enough water for trout anymore. Or much of anything.”

Bethany smiled to herself. That was not the way you answered the question of a five-year-old. You said something like, They went to another stream , or, They swam to the ocean and turned into salmon , or, They went to fish heaven .

“What grades are you two in now?” Kinnick asked the kids. This question got under Bethany’s skin, too. Does he really not know?

“Kindergarten,” Asher said.

“Fourth,” said Leah.

And they went back to throwing rocks.

“What are your favorite subjects?”

“English,” Leah said.

“Rocks,” said Asher.

And they went back to throwing rocks.

“Good subjects,” Rhys said.

Until that moment, Bethany had been looking for a way to bring up the reason for her visit, the breakthrough she’d had with

her therapist, and how the frost between Bethany and Rhys maybe hadn’t started four years ago, but almost twenty, when she’d

seen him at the house with that woman. And to ask him: Did you see me? And do you know where it comes from, this desire we

both seem to have to escape? Is it genetic? Are we running from each other? And how does it feel—to actually do it ?

But now, she wondered, what would be the point of any of it? This man didn’t even know what grades her kids were in. He hoped

to leave no trace of himself, including, she supposed, his people. That was the answer to her question.

Rhys Kinnick was the personification of selfishness.

“Did you see my solar panels when you drove up?” Kinnick asked.

“No,” she said, “I guess I didn’t.”

They turned back, and he pointed out a single row of heavy, shiny panels mounted on the tin roof of the old house. “Turns

out it’s not too hard to put them on a tin roof, even with that kind of pitch.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. The electrical part was tricky, though, as you might guess. There’s a guy who lives up in Ford, this friend of mine,

Brian, he was an electrical systems specialist in the air force. He’s been helping me. It’s easy enough to generate electricity,

especially in summer. Storing it is the real challenge.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” And he went on for another five minutes like this, about marine batteries and inverters and about how the real trick

wasn’t adding more power, but finding ways to have the power on demand, to only use it when you needed it. “I mean a refrigerator,

that’s your biggest usage right there.”

As he spoke, Asher came over and took Bethany’s hand. “Mom. Can we go now?”

“Pretty soon,” she said.

Kinnick looked down at the boy, then at Bethany. “I’m sorry. I’m droning on about usage rates. I’m out of practice talking

to people. I haven’t even asked, How are you ? How’s work going? Are you at the same school?”

“I am.” She had been teaching part-time, English and civics, at a little Christian school in Grants Pass, where the kids went.

“Well,” she said, “we’re not in school now, obviously. A lot of parents are starting to get upset about that.”

“Oh, right,” Kinnick said. “I keep forgetting. The... what’s the disease called again?”

“Coronavirus. Covid-19.”

“Right. Right. And Shane? How’s he doing?”

She could hear Rhys trying to sound neutral in asking about her husband. “He’s good,” she said. “He’s driving a truck that

delivers food to stores and restaurants. He’s what they call an essential worker. He sends his best.”

Kinnick chewed his bottom lip. “I think I told you the last time you were here, but I want to say it again: I regret my part in that. It’s one of the things I think I’m trying to overcome. My temper. My reactiveness.”

I regret my part in that? It was like a politician’s statement. He comes to dinner at her house, calls her husband an idiot, punches him in the face,

and then drives away forever—and half-apologizes... for his reactiveness ? What did that even mean? She pictured Peggy again. And how does that make you feel? Bethany fumed. She needed to get out of there. To escape her father’s escape.

“When?” Asher was back at her side.

Bethany looked down. “What’s that, honey?”

“You said ‘pretty soon.’ I was just wondering when. Ten minutes or... twenty minutes or...”

“Fourteen,” she answered. Asher nodded and went back to throwing rocks.

Bethany smiled. “Asher hates imprecision.”

“I see that. They both seem... well, they seem like great kids. Smart. And so cute. They’re... well, it’s just...

I think... you’ve done a great... you seem like a great parent, Bethany—I mean, of course you are.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Even when he stammered something nice, it stung. She seemed like a great parent? She could see the strain on Kinnick’s face, trying to figure out what to say, how to say it. “Have you thought about coming

back?” she asked finally.

“Coming back?”

“Yeah. Into civilization?” She smiled. “What’s left of it.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I feel like I’m not quite done here. Like I’m close to... well, figuring something out...

some kind of... I don’t know what to call it. Conclusion?” He shook his head. “No, that’s not right. It’s like Sartre wrote:

‘Appearance doesn’t hide essence but reveals it.’ Feels like that’s what I’m getting close to. The appearance of something...” It was clear he didn’t want to say the next word aloud, but he finally did: “profound.”

She thought again about the questions she’d come to ask him. “Can I ask... what is it?”

He laughed, knit his brow and narrowed his eyes. “Well, the whole tradition of Western thought and philosophy is steeped in

humanism, right? Pythagoras, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius. Even something like the Upanishads. Watts, Sun Tzu, ethics, art theory,