Road to Bountiful Read Free Page A

the grocery store, although I am sure they would miss you there because I am also sure that you are an excellent employee. I wondered if we flew you to North Dakota and rented a car, if you could drive the two of you to Utah.”
    The punch line. I was about to become a chauffeur, a driver for hire. But what about the bottom line? My bottom line, to be exact. I thought, Minimum of three hundred, plus expenses. She must have shifted the phone again from one ear to the other because the clatter of two armfuls of jewelry came tinkling over the phone.
    “Of course, we’d pick up all the expenses, absolutely. The plane ticket, the car, money for food, and we could pay you five hundred dollars for your time and driving my father back.”
    My mind whirred with giddy delight. Five hundred dollars! Let’s see, at my paltry boxboy wage, times forty hours, take away a little tax and the kick-in for the union dues, and cha-ching, I’d get to see beautiful North Dakota and take home more than twice what I would earn in the employ of the gigantic grocery store chain where they treat cans of tomato soup better than me. All of this was zinging through my head, and I was about ready to say, “Deal!” But Barbara, mistaking for reluctance the silence that accompanies my quick calculations, chipped in, “I know it’s a sacrifice , Levi, and you would probably rather spend the last weeks of your summer with your family. Would six hundred dollars be fair compensation for your time and labor?”
    Fair? Yes, more than fair. Twice as fair as what I had in mind. This is a deal. This is easy money. Take a flight, pick up the uncle unit, and then bomb back to Salt Lake City in record time, and I’ll have six hundred bucks in my pocket. For six hundred smackers, I’d go pick up Attila the Hun on an elephant in the Alps.
    I was coy enough to speak slowly. “I was hoping to spend time with my family because family comes first and we are close, as you know, but I think I can help you, Aunt Barbara. And I’d like to help your father out, because he’s family too. You bet I remember him. Uncle Lewis. A great man, an idol to me. Yes, Uncle Lewis. What a sweet guy.”
    Uncle Lewis, no, Lawrence, no, Loyal. Loyal, Levi, not Lewis or Lawrence. Tall or short? Bald or full-head of hair? Thin or round? I was clouding up. Bald. Camp stool. Quiet. Them’s the basics. And arched, bushy eyebrows that framed his face into a kind of triangle.
    I heard Barbara clear her throat, and then her smooth, deep voice came flowing across the phone line. “Then let’s put the plans together. Do you think you can make the trip next week?” She must have been happy because I heard clinking from her arms, her ears, her neck, and maybe even her toes. It was a happy clinking, I thought.
    “I guess so. I’ll check my calendar. Next week.”
    And so we made the plans. It was all quite simple, really. Just what she described. Fly to Bismarck, rent a car, pick up Uncle Loyal, and then zip him to the promised land. North Dakota. Is that where the place is where all the presidents have their faces carved into rock? Maybe we can take a little side trip. This is too easy. Way too easy. Pass go and collect my six hundred. I am The Road Warrior. I had worn the green grocer’s apron for the last time. I gave notice the next day at the giant grocery conglomerate of which I someday hope to be the CEO.
    That’s the way it started, and how I came to blast across this dry, flat land on my way to pick up Uncle Loyal. It was as simple as that: a series of remarkable coincidences. Right place, right time, punch out of the grocery store, and set out on a most profitable and satisfying journey. Six hundred bucks! Whoa!
    Let me make the noise one more time. Cha-ching!
    I think Loyal is already becoming my favorite uncle.

Chapter Three
    He Comes for Me in a Very Fast Red Car
    I sat on the front steps of my home for only a quarter of an hour. I know what time my great-nephew arrived at the