Road to Bountiful Read Free Page B

airport. I added in a little time to arrange for a car and then another two hours to make the drive to my old brown house. I assume he will drive fast across the flat land. There is a rhythm and cadence to life on the plains, and I have lived here long enough to understand it and the way it influences the comings and goings of people.
    Levi, I am certain, will drive fast across the plains. He will think them ordinary. He likely knows no better.
    What is there to do? Everything is packed, sent off, or sold. I taped a note to the front door for the new owners of the house—welcoming them, telling them it is a wonderful home. I understand they are a young couple. He has a sales route that takes him to the farms around this part of the state. They came from Wisconsin. They have two young children. I think my house will enjoy the young voices, the scuffling, the laughter, the joy of a cold Christmas morning when bright paper is sheared from gifts with abandon.
    Across the street, Harriet Van Acker peers at me from her window. We have been neighbors for more than three decades. She lost her husband, Carl, six years ago. She waves to me shyly. She will not come out and bid me farewell. She did so a few days back, packing with her warm sweet rolls and a photo of Carl and me from many years ago, standing stiff as toy soldiers in front of my house. I cannot recall the occasion, why the photograph was snapped. Maybe there was no special occasion, just that we were there and someone had a camera. I am glad for the picture now. Carl was a good man and a good neighbor.
    We have relied on each other, Harriet and I. Not in large ways, not in tangible ways. But we both knew the other was there and that we had the shared experience of losing a spouse. At times, that knowledge alone was helpful. Neither of us was quite alone in what we thought and felt and remembered.
    “I will not come over to say good-bye,” Harriet told me, her words sharp and chippy. “With Carl gone, and you leaving, and with Daisy and all. I feel alone now. Do you know? Yes, you must know. You feel it too.” She lifted her hands, palms up, almost in an act of supplication. Then she dropped her hands to her sides. There is nothing to be done. She knows I am leaving.
    “Tell me what it is like when you get there. Take care, Loyal, take care of yourself and come and visit if you can.” She hands me the pan of sweet rolls and turns to leave. Over her shoulder, she says, “I will not come back. I will not. Don’t even try to get me to.”
    She is a short, stout woman with gray glasses and gray hair. She wore an old blue dress, walking shoes, white socks, and despite the heat, a button-up sweater, top button clasped. She walked briskly back across the street to her home.
    “Good-bye, Harriet. Good-bye and thanks. All will be well. I will tell you about Utah.”
    She turned and said, “I won’t come back. I won’t say good-bye to you, Loyal Wing.” She resumed her pace and again spoke, straight ahead, words in a stiff line, “I hope the people who bought your home won’t mind looking in on an old woman.”
    And those are the last words I heard from my neighbor.
    But now, as I sit on my front porch, she looks at me from her window. I hold a hand up in acknowledgment. She waves a gallant hand back and then turns away.
    I look toward the west from my front porch. Tall thunderheads tower, their anvil tops the shade and texture of cauliflower, and tens of thousands of feet below, their tails steel gray. A rain line drips from their fuzzy base.
    Then I hear it, then I see it. Jagged lightning and the crack of thunder and the roar of an engine. My great-nephew Levi, it must be, announced by a magnificent thunderstorm.
    A car, a very red car, driving too fast for our quiet street, turns the corner two blocks away. It is a car too new and too red for anyone in our town to drive. We are conservative in things of that nature. The driver is in a hurry, as most young people