!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
We left St. Louis after lunch, traveling through rolling hills, farms, and open woodland, a wider vista then crowded New England and Ohio. Mike fiddled with the radio, trying to find the clearest AM radio stations, which featured Paul Harvey news, stock reports, and twangy country music. He grumbled, “It’s better at night when the big ones, like KOMA and KOA, come in. They play songs I…we…want to hear, not this stuff.” He lifted his right foot off the accelerator, and started driving with his left.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked, pointing at his foot resting near mine on the transmission hump between our seats.
“It feels better. I don’t get as tired. Maybe I’m left footed?”
“I can drive, you know.”
“Uh, great! OK, there’s a Stucky’s before we get to Columbia, I think, you can take over there.” He glanced over, eyeing my Marimekko, and asked, “What was it like there at Jeanne’s? What did you do?”
“I met Ruth, her aunt. She’s living part-time in Israel, spends her spring and summer on a kibbutz there. Told me any time I want to go, I should get in touch.”
“Are you thinking about it?”
“Well, not now, of course. But after I graduate, I want to travel, I want to see other parts of the world. It’s so cliché, everyone goes to Europe. I’d like to do something different.”
“Why Israel?”
I looked over at him, trying to decide if he was serious. No hint of a smile on his face or sarcasm in his voice, so I went on, “I feel a pull there. It’s where Jews go now. We’ve even got dual citizenship if we want it.” I wasn’t sure myself why the idea intrigued me. Was it a tribal, or maybe a religious thing?
He ventured, “That hasn’t really been a thing for you, I thought, being Jewish.”
“Ruth said it feels different, being Jewish there. She says she’s not always wondering how, or if she fits in, that it feels good being more like everybody else.”
“I thought there was a war, or bombs all the time.”
“Apparently everybody’s in the army, even the women, when they’re young. The country may be surrounded, but the people in it don’t think about that all the time, they know they can protect themselves, not like when they lived in Europe.”
Mike nodded, saying, “Yeah, I get it. A home in the homeland.”
Stucky’s specialized in pecan log rolls and kitsch. While the attendant filled our gas tank, we strolled the aisles, looking at small plaques with home-spun sayings and heavily sugared confections.
“They should have a dentist’s office next door,” I whispered. “Make a fortune.”
Mike took over driving again just outside of Independence. “You know there’s a tabernacle here, just like the one in Salt Lake City.”
“A Mormon one?”
“Well, kind of, but, no.” He explained, “After Joseph Smith was killed, back in Nauvoo, and Brigham Young took them out to Utah, some others stayed behind, following Joseph Smith’s son. They continued using the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine of Covenants…”
“What’s that?”
“They believe God speaks through modern day prophets, gives them divine knowledge about how to live. ‘Don’t use tobacco, it’s for sick cows’, stuff like that.”
“And blacks aren’t allowed to be priests?”
“Yeah, that’s in there.”
“ How do you know so much about this?”
Mike launched into a short dissertation. “My grandmother, G’s mother, was in that church. G’s sister kept it up, always sent me stuff about it for Christmas, even took me to a church camp on an island near Seattle, the year I went there for the Worlds’s Fair. ‘Stories From the Book of Mormon, Stories From the Bible,’ things like that.”
“I thought G is an atheist. Is that where you got you interest in religion?”
“I guess so. But not from a practicing perspective. I like seeing how people explain the world. Philosophy, good novels, religions, they’re all trying to answer the same questions.”
The interstate turned into a turnpike once we got to Kansas, and Mike sped up to 80 miles an hour. The car started to wobble a bit, as if the tires were loose. “What’s that, that shaking?” I asked.
“My dad said something about getting the wheels aligned? This car’s getting old, over 90,000 miles it says on the thing here,” he said, pointing at the odometer. We hit the outskirts of Topeka. “There’s supposed to be a motel here that doesn’t cost too much, I remember from when we’ve driven out here before. Motel 6, costs $6 a night…Oh, damn!” He shouted and pounded the steering wheel, then pointed out the window. “We missed it, hope we don’t end up in Wichita!”
“It’s OK, Mike, don’t get so upset. Just get off the next exit, turn around, we have plenty of time.”
Next morning, we left the gentle hills of eastern Kansas behind, entering the totaly foreign terrain of what Mike called, “The West.”
“It starts right about here, where it rains less, there aren’t any trees, you can see forever. Look, must be twenty miles, not even a curve in the road!”
“I thought the West was mountains? Not this.”
He shook his head. “No music. Boring scenery. What do you want to talk about?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I know…What does it mean, friendship? What’s a friend, why do we have them?”
“Huh?”
“You. You and me, for example. We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s that mean?” he repeated.
We had an all day drive ahead, nothing to look at until Denver, so I let the question hang while I reached back, trying to name all my friends, why I felt good with them. Finally, “Hmm…I feel like I get to live lives through friends I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. We reciprocate the wish fulfillment of each other. The closer we are to someone, the more we can grow through…and with…them. Like Leslie. I wouldn’t want to be Leslie, but I’m glad I know her, she helps me see, think, about things I might otherwise avoid. But you have to give, as well as get. Having a friend helps me be a better me. I want to have them see me as my best possible self, maybe even serve as a role model for them sometimes. That means I have to be a strong enough person, with enough of my own life, before I can have a friendship like that. Like I said, friends help each grow, they support each other that way.”
“What about us?” he persisted. “I look around at who I know, who I spend time with. And I’d rather be with you than anybody. So I wonder, does that make you my best friend?”
The bristly sere wheat stubble, a monochrome dark yellow fading to dark brown near the fallow loam, spread in all directions. I wondered how anyone could live here, nothing changing in the landscape save for occasional summer storms rolling down from the still hidden mountains. I looked over at Mike, intent on the road , empty to the horizon. The vastness filled me with anxiety, tempered by Mike’s presence. I’d always felt safe with him, psychically and physically. I’d never told him that; I wondered how to put it.
“Last night, in that motel? We got to sleep in a double bed.” I started.
“Yeah, that was different, wasn’t it?” The road still held his gaze.
I went on, trying, “When I was little, I always felt nudgy if I had to sleep in the same bed with someone else. Didn’t matter the size of bed or who it was, even my sister. With you, last night, I fell right asleep. With you, I’m comfortable, can forget I’m with another person.”
He glanced over, enough time for a quick smile. “Me, too. I remember, it was like no time had passed, we could fall right back together.”
Stroking his thigh, I concurred, “That’s it. Safe and snuggly.” I struggled as my thoughts fought with my feelings. I closed my eyes, sighed, and plowed on. “That makes me scared, too.”
“Scared?”
“I don’t want to feel like anybody else… like you…have that control, can make me feel that way.” This wasn’t sounding right, I knew. “Anais Nin – remember her – says a woman should be just as independent as a man, just as able to chose who she’s with, and how she’s with him. That a woman’s life should not be tied to a man’s success.” I paused, awaiting a reaction. “And it’s all tied up in love. And sex. The pill has made it different for us now. We really can choose who, and when, and be the independent woman earlier feminists dreamed about.” Still silence from Mike, behind the wheel. A final thought bubbled out. “I’ve got to learn how to be with a man, without being dependent on a man. Can you understand that?” I wished he’d stop the car, so I could shake him by the shoulders, make him understand.
He pursed his lips, seemed to shrink forward towards the wheel, then suddenly sat bolt upright. “There they are!” He pointed at what appeared to be a dark cloud low on the flat horizon.
Bewildered, I said, “What? Who’s there?”
“The mountains! The Rockies!”
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