Drifting House by Krys Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

family trip. The Grand Canyon. One of those places his mother was always talking about. She practically sang those words as if it were going to save their lives. When Mark said he wouldn’t go without Chanhee, she lifted him ­one-handed out of his chair and deposited him in the backseat of the car. “You’re going,” she said. “And you’re going to enjoy yourself.”
    In the middle of a concrete motel room pretending to be a log cabin, Mark unpacked a blanket and folding chair to build a tent for himself. His mother unloaded the entire kitchen from the car, including a portable gas burner, sneaking in two grocery bags at a time so the motel manager wouldn’t catch her. As they rattled about unpacking, his mother and father pretended that they were no longer angry at each other. Chanhee wasn’t there, and the five days ahead looked long.
    He lay in the tent and folded his hands across his chest like a vampire. The North Rim was higher than the South Rim by eleven hundred feet, the Colorado River moved at four miles an hour, but there was no one to share all this with. He missed his quilt and firm mattress, he missed people to talk to. He didn’t like camping after all, so he crawled out of the tent. The clock said he had been cloistered for exactly eighteen minutes.
    “I’m not going anywhere special,” his father said.
    “So why can’t I go with you?” His mother looked upset. “Let cats be cats and dogs be ­dogs—I’m not the one dragging us back to where we began.”
    “Stop it. Now.”
    She nodded, her head slowly descending, ascending.
    I’m so afraid,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
    “Tomorrow,” he said firmly. “We’ll go hiking. We’ll have a good time tomorrow, our family.”
    He put on his brown jacket, brown socks, brown shoes. Hunched over, his father looked smaller than he was, and it was strange to think that in a year or two, Mark would be taller than his father.
    “This is a time to be alone,” he said. “You know what day it is for me today.”
    She didn’t push further. He opened the door and left in the cool wind.
    His mother pinched Mark’s cheeks, hard. “You need to follow him. He’ll listen to you.”
    He pretended not to hear her.
    She said, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy like walk off the rim.”
    “Why would he want to do that?”
    She didn’t answer, so he draped on his cape and crept after his father from a distance. He was discreet the way his mother told him to be, but it wouldn’t have mattered—his father didn’t notice anything. His father sat on a bench gleaming with dampness and counted the number of stars out loud to himself. When a couple walking by stared at him as if he were crazy, Mark felt protective.He looked comfortable, no longer intently studying people, no longer ill at ease. He could not imagine his father as a kid playing soccer or having kid friends in North Korea, the land of missiles and rogue leaders in newspapers. His father got up and pulled wide the elastic band of his sports sock and withdrew a bill. He walked to a small shopping center and into a bakery, and a few minutes later appeared with a white box. Mark followed several yards behind. They walked. Away from the stores and restaurants, away from the streetlights, away from the motel, away from what seemed everything he had ever known. He wondered if they were going to walk all night. There were so many stars that he wanted badly to name all the constellations out loud and impress his father. He missed his father.
    His father walked, beaming a flashlight ahead of him, and Mark tiptoed behind him, to the rim. They were standing on forty layers of limestone, sandstone, and shale. It felt like they were at the edge of the world. His father leaned against the flimsy wire fence and kicked a stone over the crumbly ledge. They both leaned forward, son behind the father, listening for the sound of the stone, but there was only the wind. It was a long way down and he