Road to Bountiful Read Free

vacation-and-condo partnership exchange about fifteen years ago, which, near as I can tell, is a glorified pyramid scheme that caters to people who have too much money and need to find new places and ways to spend it so that they have all new fodder for their next family Christmas letter.
    My guess is that Aunt Barbara is the go-to gal in the business, the brains that keeps it in the black, the oil in the money machine that lets it purr and hum. She has presence. She can be sneaky. She has a certain kind of latter-day chutzpah. She’s a bit on the large side, wears her bleached blonde hair big, and jangles wherever she goes due to the approximately nineteen pounds of jewelry hanging from her wrists and neck at all times. She is a woman whom I’d call formidable, the kind of person who commands, demands, and gets respect. I want her as a friend, not as an unfriend.
    Memo to Aunt Barbara: You have a bright, adorable nephew named Levi who is going to graduate with a business degree in the next year. Hint: He needs a job. Hint number two: Why not keep your business all in the family? I can book people to condos in Costa Rica.
    Don’t mistake her for a bad person. She’s not. I think she has the grace and will to do some good things with her money, and she has the proverbial heart of gold right under all that jewelry. And, as I was about to learn, it is the combination of a good heart, her desire to have her father a little closer than North Dakota, and her willingness to depart with a few bucks that had me reaching for the phone, curious about what scheme my aunt had in mind for me.
    “Levi, Barbara here. How is the grocery business this summer?” she asks.
    “In the bag, Aunt Barbara, I’ve got it in the bag.”
    “Levi, that was awful. Simply awful. You should apologize.”
    “I should. It was. I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry.”
    “How much longer before you go back to school?”
    “Two weeks. A little less.”
    “Your senior year, right?”
    “Yep. Then it’s off to see what life is all about. Places to go. People to see. Impressions to make. Upward and onward. I’m going to make a dent in this world.”
    “I have no doubt that it will be a large one. A very large dent. You have good skills.”
    I was thinking that Barbara was my favorite aunt. I could hear clinking and chinking as she moved the phone from one ear to the other and her baubles and bracelets flopped around. I could picture the light bouncing off her bleached blonde hair, sort of like a sunset over a big lake.
    “I have a business proposition. Would you like to earn a little pocket change? I have something in mind.” She paused, and then she said slyly, “I’d make it worth your time.”
    I liked those words . I liked them very much. Worth my time. Speak on, Aunt Barbara.
    “I’m interested. Anything to boost my meager checking account. What were you thinking about?”
    “It’s my father, Loyal Wing. He lives in North Dakota, alone now. My mother died a long time ago, and I worry about my dad and the awful winters and being far from us. I want to bring him to the valley to live, but it’s not as easy as putting him on a plane and getting him here. He doesn’t like to fly. And he has some things that I know he’d like to take with him that he couldn’t get on an airplane. And he likes to drive. He absolutely loves to be chauffeured. He’d just rather drive and look out the window and watch things go by than get in a plane and zip here in three hours. He’s a quiet man but a perfectly lovely man.”
    Okay, I was thinking, so what did this have to do with me?
    “He has agreed to come and live here in an assisted living home, but we need to get him to Utah. He lives in North Dakota, where I grew up. Did I already say that?”
    This was becoming clearer. She said something about pocket change. Talk on, Lady Barbara. Speak to my heart, with words bracketed by dollar signs. Speak to me!
    “I was wondering if you could get away from