Road to Bountiful (6 page)

“Okay.”

He tilts his head upward. I see the moon, a little fuzzy, as if there are a bunch milky clouds in front of it. I look toward the east, where the sky is darker. I see stars. Lots of them. It is a peaceful, sweet feeling, almost as if the night sky is apologizing for the violence of the storm.

“Summer sky,” he says, getting back into the car. “The summer constellations. You can see so many of them from here. Most people think you need to be on the top of a mountain to see the stars well. The view from the prairie is fine.”

He plops down next to me. I start the engine, shaking out the cobwebs, eager to be on the road again to make up for lost time, if you ever really can do such a thing.

“Vega, Deneb, and Altair.”

I thought he was speaking in tongues.

“Say what?”

“Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Three of the brightest stars in the summer sky. You must know of them, you must have heard of them. Legend says that Vega is part of the lyre that Apollo taught Orpheus to play. Orpheus learned the instrument so well that he could calm savage beasts with it. When Orpheus died, the harp continued to play. The gods put Vega in the sky to honor his music.”

I couldn’t think of much to say, since my knowledge of the stars equates roughly with my knowledge about how to knit a quilt. Or crochet. Or sew. Or whatever you do to make a quilt. But a lack of knowledge has never been something to stop me from speaking, so I sputter, “Yeah, Vega. I think it was named after a car. Nice story, the harp and all.”

Then I say, “You must have read up a lot on it.”

“Not so much reading, more looking. I like to look up. And I like to know what I see when I look up.” He smiles again, as though he had told some kind of a deep and private joke. “I sometimes worry that I spend too much time looking down or to the side, Levi. We miss God’s magnificent stars. We can learn more about ourselves when we look up. There’s a pattern up there too. We miss too much. God works in patterns. I learned that a long time ago.”

“Yeah, sure.” Well, I knew
at that point
that He worked in patterns because Loyal had just told me.

We move ahead, down the two-lane blacktop, driving straight like an arrow that had been shot toward a target. I can see puddles on the side of the road. Bugs are starting to rise out of the fields and occasionally splat against the windshield. The keys in the ignition jangle pleasantly. Again, I think of my mission to Arizona and how, in some of my assignments, we drove long distances on warm summer nights. It all felt pleasant, it all felt
right
during those long trips through the desert
,
the shadows of sandstone cliffs and mountains outlined against the madrone and manzanita, dark against the fading midnight blue of the sky.

It was easy to think at those times, and it was easy to feel bigger than you really were.

We pass the lights of farmhouses. Each little farmhouse had a family, and each family had a story to tell, their own lives to lead, I think. The farmhouses look snug and secure, their yellow light splashing out into the night. I think how nice it would be after the storm to pull up in front of one of those homes, be greeted by a family, smacked on the back then, hand to shoulder, welcomed and invited in.

And the chances were Uncle Loyal knew the families who belonged to each farmhouse. The chances were, he
would
be smacked on the back, hands to his shoulders, and welcomed as a friend. It’s what his life was about, what he had achieved, what he had
earned
.

And me. I wanted to be a man of business. Maybe the warm welcomes would come afterward. After I earned my millions, my fame, my spectacular home, my trophy wife and kids.

Man. Drive through a tornado, eat a good ham sandwich, sleep a little, and all of a sudden, I’m getting
philosophical
. Maybe it is the Dakota air.

But I have to admit something else as we blast down the highway. I had underestimated the man sitting next to me in the car. I’m starting to kind of like Uncle Loyal. People have underestimated me for much of my life—hey, I was bagging groceries just three days ago—and I shouldn’t be so quick to judge someone else. Everyone has
something
to offer.

I let up on the accelerator. There is no reason to go so fast, especially at night.
Make these cool moments last, Levi. You can’t see the stars as well when you move fast down the road.
Vega, Altair, and whatever the third one was, Gamma Globulin, maybe.
They’re up there, but you’d never see them by going fast.
Uncle Loyal is better company than I counted on, and again, I think of how much he reminds me of some of the tribal elders, their light touch when shaking hands, how their conversation was filled with long pauses, how they moved little but saw
everything.
Loyal and I survived the storm. Now we have that gauzy sky and a few stars twinkling overhead. I let up on the accelerator again. I wonder what Uncle Loyal had seen that I had missed.

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.”

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.

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.”