The Rushing

James had lived with the rushing in his ears since he was a young child. He couldn’t remember a time without the numbing sound, like water pouring over a waterfall. It made some voices difficult to decipher; others, pitched just so, vanished into the current. Now, at thirty-five, he knew nothing else, and it seemed almost normal to him.

The doctors worked in their diligent way for a dozen years, first to eliminate the sound, then upon realizing their futility, they searched for a technology that would help. But nothing worked, as though no one could imagine the sound he experienced, so how could they possibly fix it? Their most recent rendition, a set of hearing aids the size of belt buckles, sat in his drawer unused, because he was done now. He’d made his peace with it.

James couldn’t remember that day—the day the water came—but his mom told him everything. She kept the story for him until he committed it to his own memory, but it was always her telling he remembered, not any memory of his own. He was five, and they’d gone out near the Idaho border to do what they loved most: hike out, set up camp beneath the junipers, explore the desert trails, and of course, paddle the river. That morning, they were drifting through a placid stretch of the Lower Owyhee where it cuts a deep canyon into the rock, when the river bent and dropped into unexpected rapids. In an instant, the glassy water turned to froth and capsized their canoe. They all plunged into the water—James, his mom and dad, and his little brother, Jaime, who was only four.

His mom pulled James out of the water, lifeless and cold. With her own breath she brought him back to the living, while his dad swam after Jaime as he was swept downriver. James’s first memories were flashes, like snapshots, of his brother’s funeral, but he felt nothing for him; he was so young. Rather, he was encapsulated in his parents’ grief, a pain beyond words.

That day on the Owyhee marked the start of his dad’s affair with alcohol, his escape from the recriminations of his reproaching mind. With that, Portland’s most gifted architect became nothing overnight. One morning he left and never came back, and then it was only James and his mom. Yes, his father had died with Jaime that day. So, when his dad disappeared, life for James and his mom changed little, like the ghost that had been living under their roof had moved on to a more private dwelling to grieve in peace.

Now, James carried the story alone, for his mother had passed on. Still, he was determined not to let it define his life as his father and mother had, this tragedy that seemed always to pull him backward into swirling eddies, inescapable and deadly.

But today, the first day of his thirty-fifth year of life, the water subsided. He opened his eyes that morning, and the silence—is that what silence was, he wasn’t sure—it transformed his mind. Even his body felt different, somehow less dense. Sounds finally touched him: an antique clock on his dresser ticking, the breeze in the trees playing in the leaves.

How did it go away after all these years? But even more, why? James understood somehow this was neither a chance rearrangement within his biology, nor some healing process doctors had yet to name. This was propitious, a vanguard of something yet unrevealed. So, when he turned and sat up in bed, it was with a sense of expectation, but also of fear, for something was changing.

✧ ✧ ✧

“James, someone called for you and wouldn’t leave a message. I put him through to your voice mail.” Allison didn’t glance up as he skirted by her workstation to get to his office.

He pushed the door closed and sat at his desk, trying to orient himself. He was still unnerved by the stillness of the world despite his frenetic commute, and now the sweeping view from his floor-to-ceiling windows seemed profoundly motionless.

The light blinked on his phone. A voice mail.

It took every ounce of his will to lift the handset and punch the blinking light. His heart pounded as he waited through the silence, the message cuing up.

“James … this is your dad. Yeah, it’s been—well, forever. Since I left. Since … you know, the river. I don’t have the right to call, not after all this time, but I remembered it’s your birthday, and I’m getting to be an old man. I don’t want anything. I just think … we should talk.” He rattled off his number and ended the call.

The voice was unfamiliar, raspy, almost choked, and older of course, but it was him. James was sure. The cadence, the words. He’d never forget.

✧ ✧ ✧

Thirty years is a long time to imagine what you might say to someone you’ve hated but never knew. His memories seemed more formed by photos hidden in an old shoe box than by anything from his own experience.

That’s what he told himself. He hated him, but he shouldn’t. Who can judge what a parent can or should endure? His mom always seemed wounded, distant, but his father, he should have been stronger.

So, when the time came for them to meet, James chose an elegant sidewalk café in the Pearl District. The June weather was more pleasant than any recent summer, and he wanted a place where he could arrive a bit late with an excuse, impressing his father with his important career. The café was the kind of place he would typically avoid—its background noises would render him all but deaf. He’d often find himself in such a place, deep in a conversation with a friend, playing along, nodding, smiling, but uncomprehending of what was being said. But today, he could hear—the song of a bird over there, the whisper of two lovers in a doorway. It set him on edge.

He parked and walked the few blocks to the café, slowing as he approached. As the restaurant came into view, he could see the purple clematis that climbed up and through the arbor covering the sidewalk seating. It was Tuesday and the lunch crowd should be light, which he’d hoped, and indeed, there was only one person seated outside. The man held a menu up close to his face, reading over the tops of his glasses. His dad.

He wore a pair of tattered canvas pants stained with various shades of white and taupe. He was a painter. His tee shirt, torn below the one arm, looked thin and gray, so worn it looked washed a thousand times. But it was his face that held his gaze. The blue eyes he remembered now appeared a washed out gray set against his bloodshot scleras.

As he came to the table, his father stood and smiled, and James noticed the scar on his throat, and he remembered the voice from the phone, all rasp without a hint of tone. A memory came to him of his dad that day on the river, in the back of the canoe, smiling and paddling with a fat cigar in his teeth.

James was filled first with embarrassment, then shame—shame for not considering what this kind of restaurant might feel like to his dad. James had thought only of what he wanted to say to him, through his words, through his attire, the restaurant, all of it. He wanted to say, look what I’ve done without you. I don’t need you and I never have, but he didn’t. James was humbled now by the disparity.

They stood for a moment in uncomfortable silence, his dad looking down, unsure what greeting was appropriate, then they sat.

“James. You look great. I’m so proud of you.” He coughed a few times and reached for his water glass. Whatever surgery he’d had on his throat made his words almost unintelligible with the noise of the street.

James leaned forward. “Dad. So, where have you been?”

“Here and there. Nowhere really, that I’d want you to know about.”

“Then why call? Why now?”

His dad was looking out at the sidewalk, then down the street, as though gathering the remnants of the words he’d planned to say but lost in the regrets of the moment. “I’m dying. Doctors say only a few months.” He folded his paint-stained hands and set them on the tablecloth. A petal from the clematis had fallen onto the table and blazed its accusing violet against the white linen. His father seemed unmoved by it.

“I want to tell you what happened on the river.” His face was stolid.

“I know what happened—”

“No, you don’t. You know what your mother told you—what we agreed to tell you … and the police, and everybody else.”

The stone that lay in James’s stomach since sitting down had come alive and roiled his insides. He put the napkin to his mouth to stifle a wave of nausea. “What do you mean? Why would you lie?”

“To protect you.”

James closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hear this. “Protect me?”

His dad stared at the table, his face beginning to crumple. “I hated you.”

But James wouldn’t break. Let him say what he wants, he thought. Let him say it all, and it’ll be done and I won’t ever need to see him again.

His dad went on. “… and I hated myself for it. That’s why I left. It was destroying me … and your mother.”

“But she didn’t run!”

“No. But we all have our limit, and mine came and it was a question of self-preservation or self-destruction.”

James’s anger surged, something he’d not felt in years, and then the words spewed from his mouth like hot coals. “So you saved yourself. How noble! While mom and I suffered and scraped just to keep our dignity.”

His dad set his heavy arm on the table and looked away again into the street, tears wetting his cheeks.

But then a calmness caught James and held him, and he said, “Tell me. Get it off your chest.”

✧ ✧ ✧

And so he told what happened that weekend from a perspective that, for the first time, made sense, without holes, without an agenda. They’d driven the seven hours to camp near the Owyhee, a birthday present to James, for he loved the river. His father relished the isolation, the self-reliance that the river demanded, but for James, it was like one of his storybooks, to be out on the river in the wild.

His dad had misjudged. Before the Internet, maps were scarce, and they were five miles further down river than they thought. The water was like glass, a perfect June day. The sun was still behind the canyon and a cool mist clung to the surface of the river.

“I heard the rapids before I saw them, but I didn’t do anything … just smiled and paddled. You and your brother—fighting up in front—your mother trying to settle you. And by the time we swung around a bend, I had no control … the canoe went crazy!”

James was there again, the boat rolling as the river rushed by. He had a flash, a snapshot, of the steep canyon sides, of the magical mist. The morning shadows darkened the moving waters, and they became foreboding—malignant.

His dad’s voice weakened and began to shake. “I shouted—paddle left!—but your mother … she had Jaime by the arm and was pulling him. But you had the other arm and were—pulling back! You shouted—Stop, stop!”

He covered his face with his rough hand. “I yelled at you—Sit down! But your mother was yelling too, and the river … and then your mother’s grip gave … Jaime and you fell backward—”

“Into the river?”

His dad nodded. “I couldn’t take my eyes off him.” He paused, catching his breath and wiping his face with the napkin. “When he slipped below the water, I lost it—the boat, you, your mother—it all turned over and over.” He stopped, setting the crumpled napkin on the table, and then met James’s eyes for the first time. “I never got it back.”

“So, you’re saying I pulled him in?” James was struggling to make sense of it.

“I loved you boys so much.” His father sobbed now. “But then he was gone and I couldn’t look at you … I hated myself.”

James was stunned, trying to reinterpret his father’s life, considering this new truth. Who was to blame? They each bore some responsibility. But he was only five! Still, how could he judge his father—James had no kids of his own, and by any measure, he’d lived an ambitious and narcissistic life?

“I’m glad you told me,” he said, but the truth was, he didn’t know what he felt—some combination of shock, anger, confusion, even pity.

“I’m not telling you to upset you.”

“Then why? Seems a selfish thing to tell your son he’s responsible for his brother’s death. You could have taken this with you to wherever they’re going to sprinkle your ashes. No one would have known.”

He grabbed James’s arm, and his eyes locked on him. “I don’t want the hate to consume you, like it did me. Because when it finally turns inward … well, there’s not much after that.”

✧ ✧ ✧

James remembered every word the two spoke that day on Everett Street—the raspy crudeness of his father’s voice, his broken spirit, the scent of his clothes—it lived in his mind, raw and vivid. His father insisted on paying for the meal, counting out the bills from his sweat-stained wallet. My treat for your birthday, he’d said.

They would never speak again—his dad died the following September—but still, he saw their conversation as a gift, a birthday gift, from a man he never really knew. A few weeks later, the rushing water came back, like before, but now less so, which was fine by James. He had heard what he needed.

✧ ✧ ✧

This story is a work of fiction. Except where explicitly identified in the afterword, the names, characters, and incidents herein are a product of the author’s creation and any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.

THE RUSHING. Text copyright © 2025 by Mark Mrozinski LLC. All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.