21
I'm still not sure quite how I managed it,
but I somehow talked my parents into giving me
the family van for two weeks that spring,
two long weeks that stretched into three.
It was my best friend Tim and me--
we'd been missionaries together in Idaho--
returning to the scene of the crime
visiting all the families we used to know.
No doubt I got the van because of that girl,
Miss Bonners Ferry, the lumberjack
who played classical piano, was a lifeguard too
and the whole reason I wanted to go back.
A nice girl for a change, good wife material,
instead of the tramps I usually chased.
Tim had his eye on her younger sister,
but those were long odds we faced.
A thousand miles I rebuffed his offers
to help drive. Insurance reasons, I'd say,
but really I didn't trust him at the wheel.
My father had treated me the same way.
Things were good in Bonners Ferry. We hiked,
climbed rocks. The girl let me hold her hand
one night, and we played duets at the piano.
Tim and I stayed longer than we'd planned.
Then one day he left his journal sitting out,
open to a page about what a jerk I was being,
always making him look bad. I asked the girl,
but she couldn't guess what he was seeing.
A thousand miles home is a long, long way
to drive when you don't know what to say.
28
I-80
Wyoming
night time
snowstorm
eastern slope
Continental Divide
15-foot U-Haul truck
50 to 60 miles per hour
girlfriend white-knuckled
behind the big wheel
swerving skidding
on the downhill ice
all our possessions
rocking in back
not quite
overbalanced
I pump my
passenger brake
of course to no effect
snowflakes like hyperspatial
streaks in the headlight beams
I gently suggest slowing down
or even pulling over to let
me drive instead
but not gently
enough
I'm an excellent
driver she insists
you should have seen
that time I spun out in Texas
and I didn't even run off the road
but I grew up driving in snow
I tell her and you didn't
you have to slow
down
it's the wrong thing
to say and we
fishtail
again
one
moment
of terror in the
long, slow slide from
west coast to east coast
one harrowing strobe-lit frame
from the superslow-motion
accident that is
us
24
Wait, that's the one where
I lost my virginity.
Sorry, not this time.
23
Immediately after the tiny little Salt Lake City wedding,
I jumped in the Nova with Tim and his blushing bride—
not the sister. We raced straight to Evanston, Wyoming,
taking adjacent motel rooms. All night I had to imagine
what might be going on next door—which turned out
the next morning to have been nothing much. (We had
size issues, Tim whispered.) Their friend, a guy named
Bart or some stupid shit like that, met us in the parking
lot, having driven from who knows where for who knew
how long. I rode shotgun across Wyoming and sunny
Nebraska in Bart's Japanese pickup truck, all day long,
all the way to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where we staged a
second ceremony for the benefit of the bride's family.
Before the sun was up again, Bart had lit out west with
me groggy in the passenger seat, on our way back to
Utah. I could barely keep my eyes open, but late that
morning when I caught him nodding off, the adrenaline
jolted me like paddles to the chest. I begged him to let
me spell him behind the wheel. He denied having fallen
asleep, and when argument failed I resorted to Plan B.
I talked my way through that day like I've never talked
since, and never before—babbling, burbling, blabbering,
spinning stories like Scheherazade staving off death.
I even sang my heart out, and every time I saw those
eyes drift closed I cranked the volume. It occurred to
me, thinking of Tim and his impenetrable bride still in
Iowa, that this longest day of my life was my payback.
It's just a good thing that road was so damn straight.
