Glen, Glenn, and Glenda
Parallel Universes Collide

It was midnight, january 7, when the phone rang. I tried to wake up enough to speak intelligibly. Glenda, Glenn Hyde's daughter, was calling from Chicago.
Scott Thybony had given me her name. He had spoken to her fifteen years ago, discussed the life and exploits of her father, and decided it could not be the same Hyde who had vanished with Bessie in 1928. But I had to find her to be sure. I had left messages around Chicago looking for Glenda. Now, in the middle of the night, she was on the phone.
She and her brothers felt there was a good chance their father was the same Hyde who ran Grand Canyon with young Bessie. Their father had disappeared in 1928, gone on the road, and reappeared some seven years later with tales of having rafted several rivers. He had been on rivers in Idaho and Canada, had run crude, home-made wooden barges with one long oar off either end, and had attempted a Grand Canyon trip. All he would ever say about the trip on the Colorado, however, was that “it didn't work out.”
Glenda's father died when she was a mere two months old, and what she knew of him came primarily from her family—in particular her uncle Roy, Glenn's older brother. Although Glenn himself had been quite reticent about his adventures during the missing years, he had confided in Roy, who later told Glenn's children of their father's doings. Roy added two details to the Grand Canyon trip: that Glenn “pretty nearly didn't make it” and that “he stayed with some Indians in the desert afterward while he recovered.”
Glenda told me her father, Glenn William Hyde, had been born in Bolivar, Missouri. I told her my guy, Glen Rollin Hyde, had been born in Spokane. She was relieved, as her family history was strange enough without the Glen and Bessie story becoming part of their heritage. I added that my Glen Hyde had an older sister named Edna.
“What?!” she said
“Edna”
“E-D-N-A?” she asked.
“Yeah, Edna.”
“Oh my God!” she said. “That's what he named his first daughter!”
“Really?” I said, intrigued. “His younger sister was named Jeanne.”
“Jeanne?” she said. “Oh my God! That was Roy's wife's name!”

Two months later I sat across form Glenda in the Ravenswood Restaurant on the north side of Chicago. It was late afternoon and we talked for an hour over coffee. I had already confirmed much of her father's life story through public documents, and Glenda had reviewed my documentation of Glen Hyde's heritage and birth in Spokane. We were confident that Glen and Glenn were different people. But I had to ask:
“On the phone you mentioned there was a woman in your father's life named Bessie. What can you tell me about her?”
Glenda said she and her brothers knew little of Bessie. Glenda's mother and uncles would talk about her from time to time, but as soon as the children moved within earshot, the conversation abruptly changed. One time, however, Glenda was playing unseen under the dining room table and overheard a conversation. Whoever Bessie was, she was involved with Glenn during the missing years, the rafting years. And the big scar on Glenn's back was from Bessie. She had stabbed him. Glenda crawled out from under the table and asked why Bessie had stabbed her father. She was sent away.
I stared at Glenda, slackjawed. She smiled and shrugged. “That's all I know about her,” she said. Glenda handed me an eight-by-ten manila envelope. “I made you copies of the few pictures of my father,” she said. I pulled them out and stared at the top one for some time. The coffee began to boil up the back of my throat.
Brad Dimock