Road to Bountiful Read online

  I feel like I am a sea captain, steering a sleek red ship. Stars overhead to guide me through a sea of wheat and corn. The long, low rises in the road are the swells, but there are no waves.

  The prairie was an ocean.

  It had turned into a beautiful evening for a drive. Why go fast? Why not slow down a little? The six hundred bucks would still be there whether we arrived tomorrow or next week.

  Uncle Loyal’s mild voice, sandy and sweet, brings me back from my faraway thoughts.

  “We’ll be with each other for more than a thousand miles, Levi. Tell me something about yourself. I don’t know your family very well, a shortcoming all my own. I should have visited more often, stayed better connected. I’d like to become better acquainted with you. Perhaps we’ll become fast friends on this journey together, eh?”

  “Well . . .” What could I tell him? What should I tell him?

  Maybe I should tell him just what I am imagining at the moment: Uncle Loyal, you and I are sailors out on an ocean on a small, fast red boat, and I had this very strange idea about driving up to a farmhouse—no, sailing to a harbor, a port—and being welcomed as long-lost friends. Or I could tell him that his fairness, his understanding of silence, and his quiet way remind me of the tribal elders that I had occasion to meet.

  Or I could tell him I liked sports, girls, and greasy hamburgers, played too many video games, and that I wear my baseball hat backwards whenever I can.

  Junction ahead, Levi. Time for a choice. What do I tell Loyal about me? Would he understand the comparison with the tribal elders? Would he get the whole concept about our fast red schooner sailing across the wheat fields?

  I fidget and pretend to concentrate on the road ahead. I still don’t quite know how to answer Uncle Loyal. It is so nice, so utterly cool to be driving out here in the middle of North Dakota or Detroit or the Yukon or wherever we are. This is like a scene out of Mayberry, me being Opie, Uncle Loyal playing Sheriff Andy, the two of us having a nice little chat on the front porch on a Sunday afternoon with Aunt Bea fussing about a pie.

  “Well, I’ve lived in Utah all my life.”

  “I thought perhaps so.”

  “Except for my mission. I went to Arizona, northern part of the state.”

  “Quite an experience, eh?”

  “Yep. I’ll graduate next spring with a degree in business.”

  “Wonderful. I believe I knew that about you also. And after that?”

  “Get a job, I suppose. Maybe grad school, but I don’t have much money. Money’s important when you’re just getting started.”

  “Often a problem, the combination of grad school and finances.”

  “And I have a friend, a girl-type friend, her name is Rachel, but she’s not my girlfriend, just a friend who happens to be a female, and when I get back to school, I’d like to see where things go. You know. Like you and Aunt Daisy. Or my parents. See if we get there or not, hook it up, you know, like go to the big dance.”

  I realized that I had just referred to eternal marriage, creating spirits and worlds without number, making the most important decision of my earthly life and perhaps in my entire existence, as “getting there or not.” The feeling of being a philosopher evaporated in a nanosecond. Why could I never quite trust the right words to come tumbling out of my mouth?

  “Interesting. I’m sure Rachel is quite taken with someone of your obvious abilities and talents, with your kindness and depth of understanding about life.”

  “And that’s about it. I’m not very interesting or exciting, and this trip with you, I . . .”

  I’m doing this for money, Uncle Loyal. That’s what I was going to say, but I can’t force out the words. I’m not the person you think I am. I began to feel awkward. Really awkward.

  “And?”

  “And that’s about it for me.” I think a few seconds. It was true. That’s about all there was to me. Not much to show for twenty-four years of work.

  “I see.”

  My fingers are strumming the steering wheel. I didn’t want to tell Uncle Loyal anything more because the conversation might quickly get into areas that would lead him to conclude that I was not a kind person, that my depth of understanding was at the shallow end of the pool. And I was beginning to feel like a creep because I was making this trip with this really nice, old, and wise guy, and I was doing it just for the money.

  He must have figured out that I had become uncomfortable. He says, “I already feel I know you better. Thank you, Levi.” It is a nice little period on the end of a sentence, his way of saying that’s fine, that’s okay, the conversation, at least this part of it, is over, you don’t need to tell me anything more. He puts his hands behind his neck and stretches out. Then he tilts his head back and yawns, and down the long road we go.

  We are beyond the edge of civilization. Signs of life disappeared quickly during our short conversation. I couldn’t see farmhouses anywhere. It’s dark, as dark as it used to get when I was out in the woods on a campout and the last embers of the fire had died down; the only light you saw came from the moon and the stars. The filmy clouds in the sky seems to have disappeared, too. The sky is clear and dazzling. The storm is over.

  “In another mile or so, there’s a turnout, Levi, a rest area. There are many other stars out tonight. The clouds have vanished. It’s always good to view them after a storm. It makes me feel as though the world has been washed; it is fresh, and we have the chance to start all over. It’s a funny thought, Levi, certainly odd, I acknowledge. Daisy sometimes told me I imagined too many things, but I always enjoy thinking what perhaps no one else ever has. Let’s pull over and take a look up. What do you think? Eh?”

  What do I think? Part of me hears the siren call of the six hundred dollars waiting at the end of the road, and the sooner I get there, the faster I have the wad of green clutched in my happy little fists, and Levi becomes one blissful guy. The other part of me wonders why I don’t know the name of more stars and why I can’t pick out more constellations.

  I’ve had the time to do so. Can’t blame it on that. I just haven’t done it. Like family history or food storage or waiting until the end of the month to do my home teaching. Human error. Avoidable. But oh so easy.

  It will be okay, I think, to drag my feet a little on this trip. I lean forward, bend over the steering wheel, and look at the North Dakota night sky. Even as we bomb down the dark road, I can see what looked like a thousand stars. An image of creation floats into my mind.

  Wisdom, at least my brand of it, seems to say, “Pull over and look up at the stars. Uncle Loyal is right. Let’s take a look up.”

  I draw in my breath. I tell my great-uncle something that I can hardly believe, even as I hear my own voice say it.

  I tell him, “Yeah, show me where to turn. It’s a beautiful night. You’re right. We can slow down. Let’s go look at the stars.”

  Chapter Nine

  When You See a Shooting Star You May Be Seeing Yourself

  I am discovering this much: my nephew is a young man capable of surprises. I mentioned the turnout along the highway but didn’t expect him to pull in for a chance to look into the night sky. But he agreed. We drove slowly to the darkest part of the rest area and spent a few minutes gazing at the sky. Then, I believe I surprised my grand-nephew by walking to the front of the car, bracing myself, and leaning back until I lay on its hood, my hands folded behind my head to provide a bit of a cushion. Shyly, he came around to the front of the car and did likewise. There we were. Two men on the warm and slightly dirty hood of a car staring straight toward heaven.

  I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I squint, and my eyes dart across the black canvas of the sky overhead. Slowly, it comes to view, begins to make sense, as though we are sorting through the pieces of a vast puzzle. I tell him, “Look there, see that? It’s Cygnus, the Swan, and its white giant. And there. Over there. Look there. Do you see it? Sagittarius, the Archer. We have picked a fine night for star gazing,” I say.
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br />   He looks.

  “I can’t see an archer. I can’t see a swan.” Then he looks a little more. We need see no more than a dark summer sky to understand that God works in patterns. Beautiful, precise, and brilliant patterns. Levi begins to put together pieces into a whole. “Oh. Now. Yeah. Maybe I can. I think I see it now. Both of them. I dig this. You connect the dots. Yes, I see.”

  “Yes. You connect the dots.”

  The sky had totally cleared; the stars sparkle as though they are jewels scattered on a roll of dark velvet. It is satisfying to introduce my young great-nephew to the stars. I hope he’ll remember to look toward heaven on pitch-black nights in future times. I hoped he would learn the beauty of patterns, the strength in slowness, the wonder of pace, the link between wisdom and time.

  “We have a long trip ahead. I think we should be getting on our way again,” I finally suggest. “Maybe we’ve seen enough stars for one night.”

  Levi doesn’t move. His head cranes upward, his gaze intent. A half-minute of portentous silence slips by before he finally speaks. “Just another minute, Uncle Loyal.” And then, “This is just starting to make sense.”

  The sense of pace. The peace of slowness. He is beginning to understand lessons that the plains had taught me. I again join him in looking up.

  It was then that a silvery white dot of light burst across the sky, moving impossibly fast, producing no sound, making a wild ride across the sky. It seemed to make everything on earth stand still and fall to silence and seem small. We had seen a shooting star, nothing uncommon in North Dakota at that time of the year, but apparently something rarely seen by my great-nephew.

  “Wow. Whoa. Wow. Dude, did you see that?”

  “I did. Yes.”

  “I can’t ever remember seeing anything like that. That was awesome.”

  “It was spectacular.”

  “I’ve never, never seen one like that. Not at all.”

  Slowly, he rises from the car hood, our time gazing at stars now capped by an event most memorable. The air smells both sweet and musty. We open the car doors and slide into our places in the front seat.

  Levi starts the engine but does not put the car into gear. In the dim light that comes from the dashboard, he turns toward me.

  “I wonder what it’s like to be a shooting star,” he says.

  An unusual thought, certainly. But I am happy to hear it. “I think you already know something of it.”

  He puts the car in gear and presses his foot on the accelerator, and we merge back on to the highway. “Well, we’d better try to make up for lost time. We have a long bit of road ahead of us,” he says, and the red car moves down the highway at a faster clip.

  “I’m enjoying this. All of it. The trip. The drive. The company.” My words come back to him in the humid air, tinged with the peculiar fragrance of dampened corn, near to ripe. I’m not quite sure of the implications, not understanding the idiom of the young, but I enjoy being called “dude” by him. The tone of our trip is changing. It is becoming a journey. And I think this: we have much to learn from each other.

  A few more seconds pass before I have the perspicacity to add, “And we have many miles to go.”

  Chapter Ten

  And I Worried about Uncle Loyal Being the One Who Was Nuts

  I told Uncle Loyal, sure, let’s pull onto the driveway and look at the stars. The little voice whined in my mind: Remember the fat paycheck at the end of the road, Levi. When you waste time, you waste money. That was Levi the man of business speaking. But Levi the human being fortunately took control. I enjoyed the experience. Give him credit. The old fellow did seem to know tons about the stars. Did you know that Orpheus played the harp really well? The guy must have rocked.

  So there we were on the side of the road, spread out on the car hood, looking up at the stars, and Uncle Loyal was pointing out some constellations, and I was thinking, I can’t see much, and I’ve probably had about all I can handle in the way of Dakota culture for one afternoon and evening. Next thing we’d be stopping at the Cornfields of Mystery, or Wheat fields of Wonder, or some other such roadside attraction, and I’d be buying postcards to send to my friends and let them know what an amazing time I was having.

  Then I started to see the patterns, and things began to click for me. So much to see and understand, and I hadn’t taken the time to notice. Uncle Loyal had already talked about the slowness of all things, two or three times, and honestly, I thought it was just one of those things nice old guys say. But I now get part of what he means: you do see more when you’re going slow. Then I saw the star, the shooting star, and for a moment I forgot about where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, what was important to me. I even forgot about the money I was earning on this quick trip. The shooting star was amazing, much more so than any I’ve seen back home, maybe because the lights are bright there and we never hardly look up.

  I have to say it. The shooting star inspired me.

  And—not to sound too whacked out here—I wondered if I could be my own shooting star in a nice, normal kind of earthly LDS way. Loyal is getting inside your head, Levi.

  Talk to yourself, Levi. Work through this. Okay. The point is, I’m on track for a lot of things—the mission is over, I’m about to start my last year at school, I have Rachel interested in me and me interested in her, at least I think that’s the way it shapes up, and I know I want to be successful, but I’m still pulled in different directions. I get pulled in the direction of earning money, having a job with prestige and pizzazz, trophy home, trophy wife, trophy kids, trophy cars, trophy church calling, trophy everything—anything to be above and stand out from others. To be someone. Is that a crime? And then I see that star and think it’s what I want to be without being any of it all. It’s clear, its course is straight, you can see it but you need to know where to look for it, and when you see it, you admire it, but it does nothing to call attention to itself. It’s just there. It’s pure, and there are no trophies in sight. It’s just there. For anyone to look at, if you know where to look at the right time.

  Okay, am I a little nuts here? I worried about Uncle Loyal not having dry mortar between his bricks, but I’m the one who looks at him and says, “See that star? I want to be like it.” I want to be a bursting ball of white light in a dark sky. Like a four-year-old who says he wants to be a cowboy or a fireman or a professional basketball player. Me? I want to be a shooting star.

  So I sit behind the steering wheel, and I think of what has taken place in the last few hours of my life. I take inventory. I do a little cost accounting. I add things up.

  I saw a shooting star and thought I wanted to be like it, which about pegs me off the weirdness meter.

  Uncle Loyal fed me a ham sandwich, and it got to me. Who eats a ham sandwich and comes away thinking he’s had a significant emotional experience? Me, just me. That’s who.

  I know what Vega and Altair are, and I think I can find Cygnus on my own. Before tonight, I thought they might be a heavy metal band.

  I drove through a crashing storm and saw lightning licking down in cornfields and thunder that sounded like a freight train blasting two inches from my toes.

  And I’m not thinking as much about the easy six hundred awaiting me soon after I cross into Davis County and head up the hill to Aunt Barbara’s mansion on the ridge.

  All of this in a few short hours, with my Uncle Loyal. What if I do slow this trip down? How much more would I have to talk about? How many more stars would I see? How many stars and constellations am I missing by going too fast and bracketing my life in dollar signs? How many more stories would I have to tell? How much more would I learn?

  And maybe when my friends all started talking about their summers, the jobs they had, their experiences, when they started to shake and bake a little in front of me, I’d just think, Yeah, but I was with Loyal, and you can’t match that, no way man. Smug.

  My career as a boxboy is over. I have latched on to my last mop and cleaned up afte
r little Junior Short Pants for the last time. I have endured my last complaint about the asparagus being crushed by the canned corn or the bananas being too green or the price of lettuce being too high, as if I had any control over it.

  Here is the hint, memo to self: Enjoy your time with Uncle Loyal. The man is a beast.

  I start the car, a thousand thoughts billowing through my mind. Then one thought comes clear, takes hold, and before I know it, I’m asking Uncle Loyal a question that would have been astonishing to me earlier in the day.

  “Do you mind if we slow down on this trip? Stretch it out a little? I’m really in no hurry. We’ve got time.”

  He gives me that old owl look in the dim light of the car. He scrunches his lips together and gently drums his fingers on his slacks. The gears are turning. I can hear them.

  “Not at all, Levi. Not in the slightest. Slow down and gain. That’s what I say.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We Decide to Make It a Trip Worth Remembering, Starting with My Friend Glenn

  Well. I am surprised. Pleasantly so. Levi seems to be more friendly and thoughtful, or at least thinking more, with every hour we spend together on this long road.

  He told me that we’d slow the pace down, take in some sights, be more casual in our travels. He asks me if there was anything I’d particularly like to do.

  A good question for a man my age. One must be selective, putting every day to some good use. I certainly have little time to squander. An idea takes form. It has been on my list for many years.