The Wild Truth (21 page)

One individual he seemed to have made an enduring impression on was an elderly man named Ron Franz, who Chris spent time with over a two-month period in the winter before he left for Alaska. Ron was a former military man who told Chris he had lost his wife and only son in a car accident over thirty years prior. He lived alone and didn’t have many friends when he offered Chris a ride to a desert campsite in Anza-Borrego. Afterward, he couldn’t get Chris out of his mind. He thought he was a smart kid and later went back to find him and talk him into a better direction for his future. Unsurprisingly, my brother rebuffed the offer, but the two became good friends. Chris—whom Ron knew as Alex—frequently went to Ron’s house for meals, to do laundry, and to learn from Ron the art of leatherworking. As they grew closer, Ron put together the small pieces of information that Chris let slip in conversation and came to understand that Chris no longer had a family. They weren’t deceased, Ron realized, but Chris had actually
chosen
to denounce his parents and leave his family behind. Given the respect Ron had gained for the boy, he accepted it must be for good reason. Ron offered to adopt my brother, suggesting he fill a grandfatherly role in Chris’s life. Chris declined the offer; keeping people at arm’s length was a necessity for him to continue his solitary journey to Alaska.

Chris had a tendency to lecture Ron about the importance of getting out and experiencing the world instead of treading a predictable path from church to grocery store to home. Ron listened. After Chris left his life, Ron moved out of his apartment and began living as a “rubber tramp” out of the back of a GMC van he’d outfitted with a bunk, a kitchenette, camping gear, and a portable toilet.

One day when he was driving back to his campsite from gathering supplies, he picked up two hitchhikers and started talking to them about his friend Alex. One asked if the friend’s name was Alex McCandless, and when Ron said yes, he told Ron that his friend had died. The hitchhiker had just read Jon’s article in
Outside.

Ron was devastated. He immediately wrote to the magazine, asking for a copy and explaining that he knew “Alex” and wanted to talk to the article’s author. Jon was soon in touch with him.

Through Jon, my parents contacted Ron, and he sent the family a letter in return, describing his time with Chris and the impact Chris had had on his life. I could sense Ron’s strong disappointment in Chris, his words deliberate despite the shaky handwriting, as he asserted that he had had no idea that Chris had come from such an admirable family with such loving, Christian parents. He seemed to be apologizing for Chris. I saw the satisfaction my parents gained from reading the letter and showing it to others, and it offended me.

I immediately drafted my own letter to Mr. Franz.

I offered just a few more vague sentences but succeeded in getting the message across. He replied:

He complimented my brother on the fine young man Ron believed he was, thanked me for helping him to understand Chris better, and promised to safeguard anything that I shared with him.

When Mom and I traveled together to California to visit with Ron in the Anza-Borrego Desert, my pen pal and I communicated many knowing glances during our group discussions about the friend, brother, and son we remembered. Ron was still grieving deeply over the loss of his companion. Several times he stopped in mid sentence, tears welling in his eyes, and stared out across the desert.

Ron brought us to the landlocked Salton Sea and other areas that he and Chris had explored together around the outskirts of Borrego Springs. The desolation seemed endless. We passed a small group of fellow migrants, but other than that, we saw only the crimson blooms on the cholla and ocotillo cacti and some passing tumbleweeds. It was difficult for me to grasp what had attracted Chris to the place.

It wasn’t until darkness fell that I understood. Around our diminutive campfire, the desert flats were perfectly level as far as the eye could see. As the sun vanished beneath the horizon, the blackness exceeded the parallel of the parched sands and seemed to completely wrap around me. The night sky offered the most breathtaking view I had ever witnessed. It was as if I had been raised up to touch the ceiling of a planetarium, and the display of stars swallowed me up. I sat alone on the surface of the earth in a cheap lawn chair, like just another infinitesimal speck of sand.

COMPARABLE TO THE VASTNESS
of the starry sky of Anza-Borrego are the seemingly endless northern plains of South Dakota. Fish and I traveled to the Badlands state to visit another individual who’d become a close friend of Chris’s during his travels, Wayne Westerberg, in Carthage. It was clear to me why Chris had felt comfortable with the measured pace and blue-collar virtues of the small farming community, which covered an area of only one and a half square miles. It boasted one grocery store, one bank, and a solitary gas station. The closest international airport was almost two hundred miles away.

From the letters that Chris had written to Wayne, it was obvious that he had forged a strong bond with him, as if Wayne had been somewhat of a young father figure. In one letter, Chris encouraged Wayne to read
War and Peace.

In his last postcard to Wayne, he wrote:

Clearly my brother was drawn to Wayne, much like others had reportedly been drawn to my brother. I was eager to meet him and understand the man’s appeal for myself.

As Fish and I drove our rental car along barren highways through continuous crops of corn, wheat, hay, and sunflowers, the drive reminded me of the cross-country trips my parents took us on, Airstream trailer in tow. Once when we were driving through the Midwest, we watched anxiously as an ominous dark cloud made its way across the plains. As it approached, we realized it was not the storm we had expected to drive through. Instead of heavy raindrops, the windshield wipers sloshed around a paste of yellow-green mush. Even with the wipers going at top speed, it was nearly impossible to see through the glass. I marveled at the ghastly display as the swarm of insects perished explosively, smacking against the surface with a
thunk
like hailstones. Dad said they were locusts, just like the eighth plague of Egypt.

Fish and I arrived in Carthage in the afternoon and met up with Wayne, who took us to see the grain elevator and other places where Chris had spent time. Wayne drove fast—with one beer in his lap and one in the console. I looked over at Fish, but he seemed unconcerned, so I double-checked my seat belt and tried not to appear terrified. Later we all met up with Wayne’s girlfriend, Gail, and a group of Chris’s friends and went to the places Chris had liked to hang out after work—the Cabaret bar, the bowling alley. I shared childhood stories about Chris’s intense bowling antics, and his friends all laughed knowingly, remembering the friend they had known. The group was kind and welcoming to me and Fish, and I found them to be incredibly genuine.

Wayne drank heavily all night, and at some point switched from beer to whiskey, so Fish took the wheel when it was time to head back to town. We’d been invited to spend the night at Gail’s house, and she led me and Fish upstairs to our room. As she opened the door, we saw that her teenage son was already fast asleep in the bed.

“Oh no. I feel terrible taking his bed from him,” I said.

“No, it’s fine,” Gail said as she roused him. “Hey, get up! We’ve got guests sleeping in here tonight.”

Her son awoke surprised and a bit annoyed, but he muttered a kind “Hello” as he stumbled out of the room, half-conscious and half-naked, to find an available couch space downstairs.

“Okay, see you guys in the morning,” Gail said melodically as she closed the door.

I stood there looking at the door. “Do you think she’s bringing in new sheets?” I asked Fish.

“What? Of course not.” He laughed as he put his bag down and rearranged the pillows.

“But don’t you think that’s kind of gross? I mean, geez. He was in his underwear! And we don’t know what’s happened in that bed!”

“You know what, Carine? Sometimes you’re just like your mother—everything has to be so prim and proper,” Fish snapped. “Why can’t you just be grateful to the kid for giving up his bed for you?”

I was taken aback by Fish’s abrasive response. It pissed me off when anyone drew similarities between my mother and me beyond our big brown eyes, and he knew it. But before I could object, we heard a full-blown fight outside the room. I heard Gail hurrying down the hall and screaming. Fish looked away from me, his glare turning to concern and alarm. He rushed over to open the door, and I saw Wayne attacking Gail, battering her as he pinned her up against the wall. In a flash, Fish was out the door and, without the slightest hesitation, had pulled Wayne off her. He picked Wayne up by one shoulder and his belt, carried him down the flight of stairs, and literally through Gail’s storm door. I stood at the top of the staircase, frozen. I could see Fish had pinned Wayne down on top of a patch of grass and was yelling in his face “You do not hit a woman!” over and over again.

I was horrified, and devastated by the thought of Chris escaping our home only to see this. I began to cry hysterically.

Fish released Wayne and stood over him for a moment. Wayne made no attempt to get up. Fish turned quickly, walked back through the doorway, took a stash of cash from his wallet, and handed it to Gail. Gail stood with her eyes wide and her hands clasped at her chest.

“I’m sorry about your door,” Fish said sternly. “I’m taking Carine out of here.” He continued back up the stairs without pause.

Fish shot me a look that said,
Everything will be okay. You can stop crying,
and I did. We both had too much baggage tied up in what we’d just seen, and it was time to go.

I hadn’t even processed everything before Fish was in and out of the bedroom with our bags. I numbly followed him to the car, not saying a thing to Gail or her son. Although Fish had not struck him, Wayne appeared lifeless as he lay drunk in the front yard.

I had no idea where we would go. Fish’s only concern was to go
away.

Rural South Dakota is pitch-black at night if there are no lights from the cosmos to help guide you. We drove around aimlessly, as if the car and roadways were tightly wrapped inside a swath of thick black velvet. With no hotels nearby and nowhere to stay, we pulled over to the edge of a cornfield to sleep in the car until the sun came up and we could find our way back to the airport and to Virginia.

We didn’t talk about the scene we’d just left. Tears streamed slowly down my face and I remained silent. As I laid my head on Fish’s shoulder, I attempted a fitful sleep. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I’d hoped to come to Carthage to feel closer to Chris, to spend time with those he’d grown close to in the years we were apart. Instead, I only felt confused.

All I could think was
Did Chris ever see Wayne do that? And if so, why in the world did my brother stay in Carthage?
No one who’d witnessed Wayne’s drinking throughout the evening had seemed concerned. It seemed to be his typical behavior. Did those drunken nights always end in violence?

Had Chris ever had to pull Wayne off Gail as Fish did? Would he have done what I had tried to do with Patrick’s father—to make him see his errors and repent? Had he ever encouraged Gail to leave? Chris had been on a pursuit of lightness and peace. I couldn’t understand why he would have felt so connected to Wayne.

Perhaps, I thought as I finally drifted off, it was the same thing that kept me connected to my parents.

A
FTER OUR RETURN
from South Dakota, I relied on Fish more than I liked to admit. Despite the emotional roller coaster I was on, I managed to remain comparatively grounded, and I owed much of that to his love and support. Even when we argued, he was even tempered and gentle hearted. We had a successful business and a beautiful new house; we’d acquired a girlfriend for Max—another Rottweiler named Shelby—and with that, we’d established our little family at home to add to the family we’d created at work. We spent time with our employees socially, and many of our customers were also our friends. We traveled to visit with my siblings, and when we saw my parents, Fish was a welcome buffer, always keeping the mood light.