Road to Bountiful

by Smurthwaite, Donald S.

  Cover image © larshallstrom courtesy of 123RF.

  Cover design copyright © 2013 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2013 by Donald S. Smurthwaite

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Covenant Communications, Inc., or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN 978-1-62108-509-6

  For all who understand that back roads are the best way home.

  Thanks to the people at Covenant Communications for helping to bring Loyal and Levi to life.

  Chapter One

  My Name Is Loyal

  Somewhere across the wheat fields of eastern North Dakota, my great-nephew is behind the wheel of a big, fast, and new car, speeding toward me. He will arrive late this afternoon, we will pack up the few belongings that I did not give away, sell, or ship to my new place of residence, and we will begin the drive west: the second part of his journey, the first and likely last part of mine, one that will take me to my new home.

  My great-nephew’s name is Levi, and he probably doesn’t have much of a memory about me. I can barely remember him from a family reunion fifteen years ago at a park in a steep, red-walled canyon in the mountains of central Utah. My memory tells me he was the short towheaded boy, wide-eyed, skinny as a cornstalk, who climbed many trees, hiked high on the rocks of the canyon, jumped too close to the evening bonfire, and played hide-and-seek with his cousins well into the night. He didn’t say much to me then, nor I to him. Daisy and I were just two people, two faces among many, an old great-uncle and an old great-aunt. Distant relatives, distant family members, I suppose, with no claim upon his life. Daisy, by then, was ill, and when the announcement of the reunion was pushed through the flap of the mailbox in our house, she, with only a few words, expressed her desire to attend.

  Neither of us mentioned the words, “To see everyone one last time,” but we both knew it, even though the doctor had yet to offer a conclusive diagnosis. My Daisy asked for so little. A trip to see family was not too much. We caught a plane from Bismarck and were picked up at the airport by my daughter Barbara and her husband, Warren, and we wound our way to the faraway canyon where we met many members of our family for the first time and, true to our premonition, saw many of them for the last time. Even now, it seems peculiar to me that we met our family far from our home, in a narrow canyon with high stone walls. It seems odd that we all had to wear name tags, mine reading, “Hello, my name is Loyal.”

  By trade, I was a pharmacist. I ran the town drugstore for forty years. Daisy and I lived within walking distance of my store in a tall, brown, two-story house with a basement. We knew everyone in our town of two thousand souls, and everyone knew us. I was the pharmacist, the druggist, the man who knew what ailed everyone, illnesses both real and imagined. I would drop a piece of candy into the bag of medicine for a sick child, undercharge someone who I knew was experiencing hard times. Old Doris Simpson huffed when I finally added a dollar to the bill for her colitis medication, though it still cost me more than what I charged her. And the sugar pills I gave to Sloan Jenkins for the last twenty years of his life? He swore they kept him going. “Don’t know what you’ve got in those pills, but they sure straighten me out,” he’d cackle. “You’re better than any doc I ever had.” I never could charge John Fetzberg, one of the three town firemen and the father of six children, any more than I figured he could pay; he always lowered his eyes and mumbled his thanks when I handed him the bag of medicine and watched him as he shunted, slope-shouldered, out of the pharmacy.

  On ice-cold mornings, with freshly fallen snow, and with frost and ice crystals hanging in the air like small, twinkling diamonds, I often would awake to the tinny scrape of snow shovels on my sidewalk and driveway, manned by John and his older boys and girls, their very life breath heaving and steamy and frosty blue on those below-zero mornings.

  We never talked about it, John and I. Not a word between us. He never said anything about the medicine, and I never mentioned how nice my walks and driveway looked on those frozen mornings. We understood each other, as gentlemen do.

  But the times changed. A big store was built in Grand Forks, then another and another. I tried to keep my prices close, but it wasn’t always possible. And people could buy clothes and food and tires and tennis shoes and cosmetics at the big store, and my business dwindled. The long drive to the big store in Grand Forks didn’t seem to matter. It became part of the experience, part of the adventure. A trip there a month wasn’t so much, and if medicine were needed, it became only another reason to make the journey.

  Finally, there came a night when I took a piece of light yellow construction paper and carefully printed in blocked letters, “Closed for business. Thank you for many fine years. Good luck to you all. Sincerely, Loyal.” I hung the sign on the front door when I closed the store the following day, and that was that. The pharmacy closed. Not much was made of it. People knew it was coming, thought it was just a sign of the times. They mourned a little and told me they were sorry and would miss me and then drove on to Grand Forks. John Fetzberg said those things to me too, but there were tears in his eyes, and my sidewalk and driveway continued to be shoveled in those early, frigid hours. John, he remains a gentleman.

  Truthfully, part of it was the competition, but part of it was that I was tired. Forty years in the same location, the same job, the same cold winters, the same searing summers. And then Daisy grew worse and then she went away. Perhaps it was time for me to go as well, go to somewhere different. Years before, I had played bit parts in our community theater and learned about entrances and exits. I never missed my exit cue and didn’t plan to start now.

  I add it all up, this life of mine, and maybe the most telling moment of all came at a family reunion in a glade among the spires and aspens of a Utah canyon. Here was my family and my family did not know me. I have spent all those years in North Dakota. I have been happy, but perhaps it is time. I ended up wearing a name tag to tell my own family my name at a reunion. Was there a message for me, for my family, for all of us?

  Yes, things were changing in my life, and not just with Daisy and my pharmacy practice and my two daughters grown and moved so far away from the Dakota Plains. I knew things were different and that some things needed to end, or at least would come to an end. I did not like to see the old way end because I am part of it, as it is a part of me.

  I am Loyal. That’s who I am.

  That’s probably why I was not surprised when Barbara called and said, “It’s time for you to move closer to us, Dad. You’re there alone. There aren’t many people to look out for you. You are too far away. What if something happened to you? We’ve found a place for you, a nice place. It’s very private. They play games and have sing-alongs at night. The food is good. They told us to come in and have a meal. You’ll make new friends. We want you closer to us. We want you to be cared for.”

  I could imagine her then cradling the phone even closer to her mouth, the lids narrowing over her deep blue eyes. “What’s keeping you in North Dakota? Mom is gone, and you only have the old house. We have plenty of money; we can help out. Come and be closer to us, Dad.”

  Then she mentioned the name of the place, Glad Tidings Assisted Living H
ome. A biblical ring to it, that name. I had a funny vision of old men dressed like the Wise Men on their way to Bethlehem, walking around a sparkling new retirement facility. Maybe they were just in their bathrobes and slippers. Might I become as they were? I felt uneasy for reasons I could not explain. Yet as soon as she said it, I knew that I would live there someday, within my will or without.

  “Come and be closer to us,” she said. “Closer to your family.” Well, I am Loyal.

  I can see it now, as though it were written in the “Comings and Goings” column of our weekly newspaper: “Loyal Wing, a pharmacist here for more than forty years, has taken up residence in Bountiful, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, to be nearer his daughter Mrs. Barbara Bates and her husband, Mr. Warren Bates. We will miss you, Loyal. Good luck and God bless.”

  I didn’t put up much resistance, though I would have been content to spend the remainder of my days in the tall brown house on Chestnut Street and watch the seasons pass slowly. To feel the emotions of an eighty-two-year-old man as time gently passes—the huddled-up comfort of crackling fall mornings and snap-clean air; sweeping, elegant blizzards pounding across the stubby winter plains; the fresh green of spring and the hope it brings that all will begin again; and voluptuous summer, when the wheat fields around town grow from jade to tawny to golden amid the mixed chorus of calling birds and noisy bugs and the deep drumming of distant, throaty thunder.

  I am satisfied in the ancient turning of this ancient earth and the ancient joy it brings me.

  And so my great-nephew Levi is dashing toward me. What he thinks of me, I do not know; what he thinks of his mission to fetch and deliver his great-uncle Loyal safely to the Salt Lake Valley, I can only guess. He is the agent in my new life, but to him, it is likely just a trip from here to there with an old man he does not know, a few days of time, that’s all. How I wish I could look upon the frittering of a few days with such insouciance.

  He’s out there, somewhere on the prairie, closing in on me with each blink of my eye. He is hurtling toward me, and with him, I go to my future. A child will lead them, I think. He is twenty-something now. How can he know what his mission to my home, across the great sweeping plains, is all about?

  He can’t. He just can’t. He is too young. He does not understand my story. He does not yet understand journeys. To him, this is likely just a long trip.

  I will go inside my old brown house and walk around it once more. I will touch the walls and listen for laughter long ago faded. I will say thank you to this house, and I will know that it hears me. Then I will hoist my two suitcases onto the front porch. I will look at the Sold sticker slapped across the For Sale sign in my front yard.

  Then I will sit on the highest step leading to the porch and wait for Levi to come and take me away.

  Chapter Two

  By a Series of Strange Coincidences

  The world is flat. At this moment, someone could tell me the world is flat, and I would believe them, no questions asked. Let’s see. Long line of corn, followed by another long line of corn, followed by another long line of corn. What’s this? A wheat field. Followed by another wheat field, and after that, another wheat field. And stretching on toward the horizon, crops and more crops, on a landscape as flat as a cookie sheet. And about as appealing.

  Let’s see. One more time. Just why am I gunning down a two-lane highway somewhere in North Dakota, on my way to pick up Great-Uncle Loyal, my dear, sweet, kind uncle Loyal, and transport him to an old folks’ home in Salt Lake City before getting on with the rest of my life? And the little annoying voice keeps echoing in my head, “Levi, what are you doing? Why are you here?”

  I’ve got to be honest. I’m not gonna lie. I am not doing this for pure reasons, the need to assist a family member, the cry of help by a dear loved one. I am not doing it because I am a necessarily good person or kind or caring or just about any other of those Boy Scout law things. I am doing it for a simple, basic, and probably base reason: money. I need the money.

  Allow me to explain.

  Allow me to tell you.

  Allow me my youth, my greed, my pitiful finances, and my mounting bills.

  Allow me those things, and maybe you will have a bit of sympathy for me and not quite write me off as purely mercenary or just some kind of immature tool. I have a story to tell.

  I was at home, finishing up a summer as a boxboy and bagger in a grocery store. Me, a senior in college, and that was the best I could do, stuff frozen dinners and asparagus into bags. My friends had the hookups and good jobs that tied into what they wanted to do for the next thirty years of their lives. Clerking at a law office. An internship with a big accounting firm. An assistant account representative at a public relations outfit. I wanted to run from the room screaming whenever I heard what kind of jobs they lined up. It hurt. I couldn’t brag because I had nothing to brag about. I needed a job, I needed money, and that’s why I ended up saying about two hundred times a day, “Will that be paper or plastic, ma’am?”

  I had no connections. Zero. My father owns a small photography studio and is hardly a titan of commerce. My boxboy duties called me back from my daydreaming: “Can I help you to the car? Can I get that door for you? Oh, that’s quite all right—we have kids getting sick all the time in the store. It’s just nature’s way of saying, ‘No thanks, stomach’s not quite ready for that,’ and I’ll just get the mop and bucket and hustle right on down to aisle four. Don’t you worry. We hope little Junior feels better. Cute little fellow, he is.”

  Don’t get me wrong. Dad takes magnificent photos. He makes people really happy, and his handiwork is on display at hundreds of homes in our city, right over their fireplaces. He’s a pure artist and a good technician and a lousy businessman, and he makes ends meet. We’ve lived in the same house for twenty-five years and will never move out or move up, we’ll never want for family photos, and our Christmas cards are gorgeous.

  Get the picture? That’s my life.

  But back to the original question. Why me, why am I in North Dakota, and why am I questioning the spherical relevance of the planet I call home?

  Again, my answer: money. I like the stuff. I need it. Cash. Greenbacks. Bucks. Lincolns, Grants, and Franklins. Dinero.

  It’s like this: My aunt Barbara called one evening and chatted with my mother, just as I arrived home with my boxboy apron still hung around my neck. I faintly became aware that the conversation had moved on from the oh-hi-how-you-doing, how’re-the–kids, and is-Gene-still-taking-pictures tone and seemed to be heading in my direction. It was not hard to pick up the clues.

  “Oh yes, he’s going back to school in a couple of weeks. No, not doing much. Bagging groceries. I think he’s bored. It hasn’t been much of a summer for him, I’m sure. No girlfriends, at least that we know of.”

  My ears began to burn. I ripped off my wretched grocery apron. I’d cleaned up two aisles that day.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure he remembers Loyal. Down in Utah County that time. In the park. In the canyon. Such a sweet man.”

  Loyal? Uncle Loyal? Yes, I did remember him, but barely. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Uncle Loyal and his wife, the one with the flower name—Rose, Pansy, Tulip, no, Daisy. That was it. They were there. Quiet people. Uncle Loyal sat on a small camp stool and hardly moved the whole time. Round face, big honkin’ eyebrows, that’s all I remembered about him. He looked like this really nice old guy. Good thing he wore the name tag. I wouldn’t have known who he was.

  Aunt Daisy was there next to them, and they sat and watched and held hands and smiled, and that was about it. Sweet people, I guess. They were from some third world country, one of those places you can see on a map but you’re not sure really exists. North Dakota or Manitoba or Monrovia or someplace that sounded flat, cold, and boring. But about them? I didn’t remember a lot.

  Mother motioned me toward the phone. “It’s Barbara, and she wants to talk with you, Levi. She has an idea that she wants to discuss with you.”
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br />   Aunt Barbara is an interesting woman. There are things I admire about her. One. She is rich, loaded, wealthy beyond the comprehension of my feeble imagination. She married my mother’s brother, Warren, and while Warren will never be mistaken for Warren Buffet or Donald Trump, he got in on the ground level of some kind of 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.”