On that June day that Brody was killed, Greg was spending his second summer as a seasonal worker for the Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado. He was sharing a cabin with four other men and spending most of his days clearing trails. When he came home for Brody’s service, Greg did his best to console me, and the rest of the summer he tried to get me to come visit him at the park, but I was too thick in my grief to be apart from anything that Brody and I had shared.
There was a shrine for Brody at the edge of the field where he had died, cards and letters and stuffed animals from friends of ours in high school. I didn’t leave anything at the shrine. Instead I would walk out to the middle of the field where he had fallen. I’d lie back in the grass where some of the bloodstains still remained and I’d imagine him lying beside me.
I worked at my parents’ store a few days a week, usually in the back where I unpacked merchandise, or I helped unload bags of feed and grain from the delivery trucks. And in the fall, though I still lived at home, I attended classes at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. I was supposed to major in life sciences. Brody and I had planned on getting married that following summer. I would have stayed in college until I’d finished my degree. He would have taken classes and continued to work on his family’s farm. We would have lived in a sixteen-foot trailer on a piece of property he had bought, while we built our house. And maybe we would have had a son as beautiful as Joseph. Maybe we would have had a few more.
Greg was a senior in college that year, and majoring in secondary education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. He’d already lined up a job teaching freshman English at a high school in Boulder that next fall. He’d come home for Christmas break. That was when he and my parents sat me down. They said they wanted to talk to me. They said the Lidells were stopping by, too.
The dishes from dinner had been put away. Mom and Dad and Greg, Mr. and Mrs. Lidell, and I were all sitting around the table. Mom had made coffee but none of us were drinking any.
Dad said they wanted to talk about me getting away for a while. They thought a change of scenery would do me good. I wasn’t comfortable with the conversation. I thought I’d been doing all right. I’d gone to my classes. My grades had been fine.
Mr. Lidell reached across the table and took my hand. “We’re real worried about you, Pru. And I know it’d tear Brody up to see you like this.”
Then Greg talked about the contacts he’d made while working for the Park Service. He said he had friends in Colorado who’d also held seasonal jobs. One of those friends had recently taken a position as a full-time ranger for the Bureau of Land Management. The friend was working out of the Grand Junction field office. He’d told Greg that the BLM was looking for seasonal workers for the summer and that there were several openings on the Western Slope. “He can put in a good word for you,” Greg said.
I felt intrigued by the job, and yet terrified of leaving Brody behind. I looked at my parents. Their faces were hopeful.
Mrs. Lidell said something about Brody wanting me to be happy. And I thought about how strong she was, how strong she and Mr. Lidell both were.
I finished out my semester. Then I packed my truck, a red Tacoma. I would be leaving the next morning. It was a hot day in early June and unusually humid for Missouri. I put on my running shoes and took off down our road, ran past the fields and pastures, and I might have kept going, all the way to the cemetery another three miles out of town, but as I came up on Brody’s house, Mr. Lidell waved to me from the driveway. He was working on Brody’s car, an old Camaro. I stopped running and walked up the driveway, and for a moment, I didn’t think I could do it, didn’t think I could get in my truck that next day and drive away.
Mr. Lidell invited me in. The house felt dark, the curtains having been drawn to block out the heat from the sun. I apologized as I sat on the sofa in the living room; my legs were still damp and sticky with sweat. Mr. Lidell talked of a new minister at the church. He told me of the minister’s family, something about him having four kids. I said that was nice. We were working too hard at conversation, and I had this desire to curl up on the couch from the exertion of it all.
Dinner was ready, Brody’s mom told us. I didn’t want to stay, but I was already caught up in the moment as we moved to the kitchen and sat around a large oak table. We held hands as Brody’s dad prayed and my legs stuck to the shellac on the chair. When we finished praying, I picked up my glass of ice water. My wrist and hand shook. Brody’s parents spoke to me. There were long pauses in the conversation. I concentrated on keeping my hand steady. This was our good-bye, only we didn’t know how to say it.