The Lincoln Boys

It was one knockout van, that’s for sure: pulling over in a cloud of dust, a little gravel. Your classic case, or trying hard to be: spray-painted in DayGlo colors, bad R. Crumb rip-offs, cartoon guys angled back as far as they could and still be upright, walking all over the side and up onto the roof in those big shoes and, scattered about, old familiars even then—1971—cast in tall capital letters: KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, that sort of thing. GIVE PEACE A CHANCE and FLOWER POWER and TUNE IN, DROP OUT.

I said something—holy hot damn or something—but were they even words?

Woody eased into a faint whistle. Shit, you’ve got to be kidding, he said in a low voice.

Hey, this is the Midwest, Frances said. We have to work overtime. We’re just now catching up to the coast. Besides, they look young. They’re babies.

Bingo!—I guess, Woody said.

We’d been standing out there too long on the prairie—Oh middle of Nebraska, as Woody liked to intone. Hour number four, for this particular wait. Day two in fact, on a trip that felt epic somehow, our hitchhiking from Illinois to California, the three of us: Woody finally out of Vietnam for good, and Frances—especially Frances, whose idea this whole thing was, a widow at twenty and now, a year later, intent on finding out—but how?—what happened out west to her husband Ned those months before the car crash, when he was driving back to her. And me—well, nothing special there. I was lucky. Just twenty, just along for the ride. And now this van, coming toward us, rattling to a stop.

Maybe we were hallucinating.

No. Because I heard it shifting down, coughing, yanked up to stop. And yes, the door opened out—not a slider, that came later. This was the old regular sort of VW door.

You guys! the driver shouted. You headed somewhere?

A quick decision: tell all, or part? West! Frances yelled, going for general. Then: Denver! Or—she stopped here, weighing the situation. California! she said at last.

All right! Cal-i-for-ni-a! Far out, far fucking out! cried the other guy in pure jubilance, the one in tie-dye everything: t-shirt and jacket and headband awhirl in blues and reds, what we could see from the road anyway.

The driver turned to him: slap me five, bro! Then faced us again. Yo! Get your asses in here! We got everything you want in this here friggin’ remarkable van.

Now where in California? the tie-dye guy riding shotgun said to us once Woody and I wedged ourselves in the second seat, and Frances slipped farther back, behind us. He had turned around and I could see he was a bit younger than we were, but not by much. He put on his wire-rims so he could check us out.

Wow, you in the army, man? he asked Woody, who had taken off his stocking cap. It’s that hair. It gave him away.

Yep. Well, no—just out, in fact. That’s it for me and Uncle Sam, forever and ever. I’m out of there.

He was a medic, I jumped in. He’s really a CO.

A CO? the driver yelled out, over the racket of the van. Right on! But I thought that meant you didn’t have to do nothing except maybe work in a nursing home or teach in the ghetto or something, stateside.

Not according to my draft board, Woody shouted back. I thought that too. No such luck.

Bummer, man. I mean, I hear you, Tie-Dye said. And yeah, I heard that, you know. About how every draft board is different. Then he looked intrigued. Hey, how was it over there, man? Lots of good dope, right? Pow pow pow pow! He spun out his forefinger, firing his hand in a wide half-circle. I bet you saw plenty of blood and guts too.

Woody turned away, staring out the window. I could see he really didn’t want this conversation to go on. But I could also see those guys would be fine with that. They weren’t going to call him a baby-killer or ask him about our policy with Red China or what he thought the ethics were, our using Agent Orange. These guys weren’t brainiacs, by a long shot. They just wanted to fill the air with noise and beyond that, have a good time. But Woody had shut down.

Hey, well. Let’s celebrate you getting your CO ass out of there,

man, shouted the driver in a magnanimous sort of way. Let’s break out the tow-truck reefer!

He means, said Tie-Dye, the really good stuff. Like: call the tow truck, I am wrecked!

The driver turned on the music: Crosby, Stills & Nash. Blaring. And then the strobe light they had somehow wired up to the overhead fixture.

Cool, huh? Got that on sale, at the only head shop they got in the dumbshit place we come from. By the way, he shouted back, you guys been to Woodstock?

Nope, not me, I said, not these two either. I actually was guessing that, but neither Frances nor Woody stirred up to contradict me.

Too bad, he said. Cuz we’re collecting Woodstock stories so we can say we did that stuff, you know? Like we’d been there. Got all naked and muddy, saw Janis scream her guts out and Jimi do a fucking ab-so-lute Star-Spangled Banner!

Before either of ’em croaked last fall, my friend here means, said Tie-Dye, turning around to us. Hey, you guys think he set fire to his guitar at Woodstock too? Hendrix, I mean. That would have been ultra out-stand-ing. I bet he did. And he played with his teeth sometimes. I heard that before too. How many guitars you think he fried like that?

Woo-ee! the driver sang out. Wish we coulda went!

Frances shifted back into the beanbag chair they’d set up as the third seat behind Woody and me, those guys at it for a while, remembering in great detail a long list of outrageous things they never witnessed. I closed my eyes, leaned against the window, and wondered if Frances was thinking about Ned or how long this ride would be or maybe nothing at all.

And Tie-Dye started rolling joints.

That’s pretty much what it was like when you got picked up by anyone under thirty. They brought out the weed and turned up the music; they passed around what food they had; they drove all night, taking turns at the wheel while you slept as best you could, propped up against your backpack. That van though—it seemed a particular miracle that no cop stopped us. You’d think that homemade R. Crumb paint job would be a major tip-off to the world-o-reefer inside. It was practically a theme park in there. But nothing ever happened. No interest. It’s like we drove in a bubble.

Tie-Dye and his friend were from Lincoln, the pinnacle, they said, the polis of Nebraska. Fucking polis were their exact words. Of the great state of Nebraska! They loved to say that, over and over. That great in there really cracked them up. That’s the only reason they’d watch political conventions on TV, they said. All those stiffs with megaphones prefacing their vote count with the great state of whatever—Maine or Texas or Florida or Illinois. No matter. Mr. Chairman, the great state of Rhode Island proudly casts its pathetic, infinitesimally small and perfectly worthless number of votes for that total loser: Harvey W. Poindexter the third!! At times it was Harvey Buttface—that Buttface part in quotes they’d dramatically make in the air—W. Poindexter the Third, and occasionally they did a version with Harvey, then Harve in the same exaggerated air-written quotes, followed by the rest. Whatever way, it always killed them. They’d laugh like maniacs, taking turns intoning that, stoned or not. What primo bullshit! Tie-Dye liked to say. Then it was primo everything for a while: the primo joint he just rolled, the primo map of the western states on the dashboard, the primo box of Cheerios crushed under the seat.

Those guys were definitely not political; they lived in the upper stratosphere where they’d gotten out of the draft. We couldn’t figure how since they didn’t appear to be in school, with a deferment coming that way. A mystery. But they were headed to Sacramento where Tie-Dye had a cousin. They figured they’d like the girls there. Or the girls would like them, better than in Lincoln. That too got them laughing until they nearly choked. Oh yeah, they’d say to each other, oh yeah! Those girls will like us way better. I really didn’t want to know what that meant.

Maybe their IGs are too low, even for the army, Frances said to us at a rest stop while they were in the can.

Too low for the army? Woody said. Not possible.

The other thing about getting picked up by people our age was the stoned toys they’d bring out. That cracked us up. After a few rounds, passing the joint, sure enough those toys would appear, treasures to be shared. Pointless, beautiful toys like thick blue waves trapped in a Plexiglas box. You’d sit there and hold the box with both hands, lifting one side a little, then the other. And the waves would do their thing and make an ocean. It definitely helped to be stoned. Those Lincoln boys had an array of such items. The driver’s first promise was true: theirs was one friggin’ remarkable van.

And that old VW cut through the mountains all right. Mountains. Do you believe it? That all this piled-up rock could look this way? Tie-Dye said in a hushed tone way past Cheyenne, almost to Laramie. A moment of genuine poetry. So we stopped the van, staring out and up.

Hey, check out that sign: Scenic Overlook, Tie-Dye would say then as we passed through what was left of Wyoming, into Utah and Nevada. He’d open his arms wide. That’s a goddamn command, he’d tell us repeatedly. It’s required, man. It’s the law. Hey, they’ll arrest us right here, no shit, right this second unless we sit back on our thumbs for a while just to gaze!

It wasn’t all sleep and stare, stop and be hypnotized by beauty. We invented various games to pass the time in that van, like First Memory or Famous Last Words. Or our favorite: Moment of History.

Ok, said Woody, clue #1: there’s a guy in a hat.

We all went blank.

And a second guy, he said, walking away, out of the TV screen, in handcuffs.

We shrugged.

Come on, guys, think hard!

You come on, said Frances, these clues bite.

Out the window, beyond the genuine postcard-of-the-west mountains, close up or snow-rimmed in the distance, there’d been canyons and salt flats and high desert. Day into night into day again, we’d been driving that long.

Okay, okay, Woody said, so the guy in the hat is older, the handcuffed guy younger. The older guy is rushing into the frame, from the right. Woody looked at us expectantly like he was willing the gears in our heads to turn. But they were locked; they needed more oil.

All right. Here’s the clincher. The guy in the hat has a gun. He’s waving it. He’s shooting it, and the crowd around them—they’re inside, some public building—is totally freaking out.

Teacher teacher teacher, call on me! Please please please! shouted Tie-Dye’s friend who was driving again. I know! I know! Jack Ruby, right? And he’s offing Lee Harvey Oswald right on TV—I saw that, man! With my own personal eyeballs!

Bingo, brother, said Woody, glancing at Frances and me with pity, like: really, you guys are pathetic. That was yours! And then he pointed low toward the front seat and shook his head. But next, it was the driver’s turn since he had guessed right.

Okay, he began, there’s these caves, see, and we’re underground. And there’s this really creepy music. Got it? What you talking, boy? said Tie-Dye. What caves? You wasted or something? No! Just caves, man, all wet-like and gummy, and this music, like: woo oo oo oo, woo oo oo oo. You know.

We need better clues than that, Woody said. And are you sure this is history?

Yes, ab-so-lute-ly, said the driver. So these creatures, man-like guys but not really human, start coming right out of the walls. Really creepy, like I said. One arm, then one leg, a whole bunch of them until they’re walking around all crooked, stick-like, in the cave. And making these little mumbling sounds and shit, because their mouths don’t work too good.

Oh, I know I know, screamed Tie-Dye. It’s those clay people, right? From that old Flash Gordon episode. I’m right, right?

Yeah oh yeah! his friend shouted, hitting the steering wheel, honking the horn.

There was no telling those guys what was history and what wasn’t. I remembered that scene too, on channel 5, the old Buster Crabbe version of Flash Gordon run late every Sunday morning in Chicago when I was little. My brother and I would rush home from Mass to watch it. I actually loved those clay people. We’d often mimic them around the kitchen table, walking stiff-legged to that weird music, doing the mumble and the sing-song and driving our mother insane.

Not history, man, Woody said. Sorry, you’re disqualified. That’s just TV. Actually, not even TV. They made that series in the thirties or something, and ran it at the movies first.

Maybe not your history, Tie-Dye said. Hey, it’s a big world out there, man. You got to open your mind.

But we carried on, mostly into more genuine historical moments, the recent moon landing, for instance, with that giant dusty bootprint of Neil Armstrong the major clue. And what singer turned up on Ed Sullivan, minus a pelvis?

Elvis! shouted Frances, right off. But that one was easy.

Okay, I said, how about this: a zillion wild, long-haired people screaming against the war in a park.

That could be anywhere, Frances said.

Okay, but floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows are breaking, and Norman Mailer is there, and someone is wearing a F-u-c-k headband. And here’s a hint: Revolution for the Hell of It. I did the finger-quote thing on that.

Abbie Fucking Hoffman! yelled Tie-Dye. Hey, I saw that book in a store! And that’s the convention the Democrats did last time, in Chicago, right? Shit. Wish we would’ve been there too. Sounds like that was a gas-a-roonie!

I was afraid the thought of any political convention would trigger their great state of whatever number again. But it didn’t. We all got quiet instead, sunk back to that remarkable spectacle, one we all wished we’d seen for ourselves. I had been eighteen, a city bus ride away but my mother wouldn’t allow me to go. The odd thing was that she went down there, though not really there there. She and a friend had tickets for the old Auditorium Theater one of those convention nights, where Art Linkletter was doing some show. She was really excited about that, seeing him live, on stage, an old hero of hers. I loved the irony of that from the first minute. The world shattering outside, everyone young gone freaking crazy while inside that theater my mother was happily watching Art Linkletter, whose claim to fame when I was a kid was his TV show House Party and its memorable segment Kids Say the Darndest Things. And there they were, all grown up saying those darndest things out there in the street, on Michigan Avenue near Buckingham Fountain, zany and earnest, setting fire to Chicago and the whole idea we should ever go to war.

Wait, I got one, Tie-Dye’s friend said though he could hardly get it out, he was so pumped. Bubble Bubble Bubble, he said, turning back to us as he drove, his face completely lit up.

What? Bubble bubble bubble? Woody said. Hey, keep your eyes on the road! Anyway, I give up. You’re nuts, you know that? You guys don’t follow the rules. Jeez.

Oh man, the driver said, looking up in the rear-view mirror now, bubble bubble bubble! Come on, man, you remember. That’s Sea Hunt. . . . Mike . . . Nelson, he slowly intoned, underwater . . . diver. Man, that’s the en-tire fucking soundtrack from tv—bubble bubble bubble! Fuck you!

But my favorite real Moment of History started with a microphone, a small crowd, and then something high and shaped like a massive capsule you’d swallow whole floating into the frame. The film quality was bad, I told them, all gritty and full of black spots. Then the announcer broke into sobs, half way through: oh, it’s burning, it’s burst into flames, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t talk, it’s . . . masses of smoking wreckage! I kept handing them more and more clues until I practically gave away the answer.

But no one put it together. Maybe they hadn’t been addicted to that old Walter Cronkite show, The Twentieth Century, which ran every week, remarkable footage from both World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression. My brother and I had watched that every Sunday night before supper. But this particular moment—I kept seeing the dirigible again, the Hindenburg, that famous clip of it catching fire in 1937, coming apart, right there in the air. Really, it’s the announcer’s voice I still hear, transformed in a second from its breezy newsman run-of-the-mill cadence to oh the smoke and the flames, oh, the humanity! —endless, mid-air, the most heart-shattering anguish imaginable.

The whole time Frances kept insisting: there wasn’t any reason to tell Woody about Ned. The plan was, of course, that he’d be breaking off from us, heading north to see his folks in Oregon once we got to California. Anyway, what was there to say? She wanted to listen to anyone who remembered Ned, that’s all. To put two and two together. It wasn’t like I was her best buddy and she was confiding in me. I’d only get the scoop because I was tagging along and would be meeting those people. And that would happen after Woody split, up the coast. It’s not exactly that we knew stuff and he didn’t. I didn’t know anything yet, only that it was out there somewhere. And maybe it would come.

We stopped a little longer at one of those scenic overlooks, coming into California from Nevada, Tie-Dye and his friend ready for their spiritual practice—another phrase they set in high-fingered quotes. They sat cross-legged on a blanket about seventy yards from us, their mouths opening and closing in a set rhythm they’d concocted, what they called the meta-yoga-silent-sing-along part of their method, the warm-up maybe.

Frances had wandered off somewhere. I saw how Woody watched her disappear into the woods, beyond the restrooms. In some ways, she was nondescript, ordinary—average height, on the thin side—but that silky hair, and good bones you might say now of such a face, but mainly it was something more mysterious that made people look back, look again. The tentative, almost delicate way of bringing her hand to her lip when she thought hard about something, or she could go fierce, turning her head in disdain or in a sudden softening of whatever, a moment ago, she was certain she believed—that surprise, those shifts. Her smart, ironic approach to the world seemed, at certain times, to include you, not cut you out of the secret. She was the kind of person I was glad to travel with, if only because she’d obviously be the magnet, the one everyone, males especially, would glom onto so I could rest easy. On the ramps, our thumbs out: hey, you’re the most visible, Frances, you should be the first one they see, you know what I mean? That was Woody’s low-key way of acknowledging this thing about her.

But like I said, it was agreed Woody would be left out of the whole Ned thing. And there was that other business, his hitchhiking back to Illinois after his discharge from the army, mainly—no, the whole reason—to see my high school friend Alexandria. To get her back. They’d been an item for a while but now: over, done with. That was Alex’s idea, of course, and once a door shut in her head—whammo—that was it. Nothing could pry it open. So when Woody asked there at the rest stop if he could talk to me privately about something, I was fairly sure it didn’t concern Frances.

This is about Crazy Alex, isn’t it?

Why would I want to talk about Alex?

Come on, Woody.

He looked out over the ridge into the valley way below, past the iron fencing and the sign warning parents to keep their small children far far away from the edge, under any circumstance. But to read the sign at all, you had to walk up pretty close—with those very kids screaming and wiggling and hanging on to you, if you had any.

So, he said. So. Do you know why?

Why she dumped you?

She really didn’t dump me.

Right, Woody. Sure. Get real.

Okay, he said. So why?

Then it came to me: I didn’t want to tell him. I tried to backpedal.

Listen Woody. It’s none of my beeswax. What do I know about you guys? As a couple, I mean. And you and me, we’ve been in the same room, how many times? I mean before this trip.

But you know, don’t you? She talks to you. He picked up a small white stone and threw it, a high loop, over the railing. We lost sight of it in seconds.

Well, maybe I do, I don’t know.

I was no good at this, a terrible liar and an even worse truth-teller. Now I’d be the bad guy. It wasn’t fair. Why hadn’t Alex told him herself? She’d be furious with me for saying anything.

Then you have to tell me, he said simply. And looked straight at me.

She has certain ideas, Woody, I said, stalling. You know Alex.

Keep going.

She thinks you’re, well . . .

He hadn’t looked away. He was still staring at me, the mountains and valley behind him big and solemn as some wide-screen movie pan.

Oh, screw this, I told him. To be drop-dead honest, Woody, she thinks you’re dull. That’s what she said. I’m sorry. I know you’ve been together for almost three years now, since that lame-o dance in high school, and you’ve been back here on leave and everything. But not talking much. I guess that’s the trouble, the not-talking part. That’s where she gets this dull business.

I could tell Alex’s take wasn’t a major shock to him. Dull people usually know they’re dull. Like fat people know they’re fat. Not stupid people. They never seem to know how stupid they are and keep trying to convince the world otherwise. But I’d noticed that a lot of the dull do it for solace, a way to be private about things, to get on with what they want to think about, quietly, in secret. I felt pretty much like that myself most of the time.

Dull doesn’t mean not-smart, I went on. It just means dull. It’s a matter of style, Woody. You aren’t a flashy guy, that’s all. It’s not exactly a death sentence. It’s actually something to be proud of. But in fact, I think this trip is bringing out another side of you, don’t you? I mean, talking to all these strangers? And getting out of the army?

I paused for a second. Alex should see you now!

I was fast entering the realm of feel-good blather, a lower form of metaphysics. The bullshit factor loomed large. But Woody did seem to be changing; coming out of his shell is what we would have called it in my house. He was loosening up. Even Frances had remarked on that.

To tell the truth, this makes me feel pretty crappy, he said.

Look it, Woody, I said. Alex is Crazy Alex for a reason. We’re talking about someone who cuts off her pubic hair, glues it to the wall and calls it art. I looked away for a second. You know that little number of hers, don’t you?

Woody half-smiled. Yeah, she took a picture and sent it to me. The guys in my unit thought, well, highly of that, put it that way.

Yeah, well, dull next to that is pretty freaking normal, seems to me. We’re all dull as dust against that model. You guys are just too different, that’s all.

Alex had done that thing with her pubic hair. A lot of weirder stuff too. In our all-girl high school, St. Pat’s, at that dance, for instance, the one she dragged Woody to—really our senior prom but the Archdiocese of Chicago had forbidden anyone to call it that—she’d brought a vial of mercury, thick quicksilver gotten from five thermometers she broke on purpose just to roll that stuff around on the tables, on those linen tablecloths. Toxic as hell, little shiny beads of it. But beautiful and surreal. Woody must have remembered that. We were always shaking our heads about Alex then, like when she announced she was going down to the Chicago bus station every Saturday afternoon for one full month to pick up sailors—her duty as a citizen of the world, she said—and take them to the Art Institute. And maybe she did.

Well, okay, said Woody, but you know what bugs me about this? How do I say this? He stopped for a moment, but didn’t dare look at me.

Woody, you don’t have to explain anything. I swear I . . .

Yeah, like I’m quiet. I am, he continued. But you try to get a word in edgewise with Alex. You know how it is. She’s nonstop. She’s all at once. Anything and everything, she’s got some theory about it. I love that. Okay, but this not-talking thing, this dull thing? That really gets me.

Woody was on a roll now, warming to his subject. He turned abruptly toward me.

Because you know what?

What?

I was a medic over there, right? You know what that really means? What a cool job, Woody. Like, so damn noble, you being a CO and all. Yeah, right. It means I tried to take care of people, that’s all. Not that I was that good at it either. Guys with their faces half blown off, their backs broken, hips crushed, their skin burned and blistered. And all for what?

Listen Woody. It was important, brave stuff you did over there. Especially since those pinheads drafted you. You were a co, for god’s sake. That was totally illegal, as far as I’m concerned. You gave it your all anyway.

See, that’s exactly what I mean.

A big white Buick pulled up and a family poured out: mom, dad, a couple of rangy teenagers—two boys—and a medium-sized spotted dog, all excited about the view. We watched them move down the platform.

Hear me out, would you? Woody was saying. Remember that map of ’Nam back in Mr. Lutowski’s kitchen, the first place we stopped on this trip? I have to tell you: I could hardly look at that thing. It made me sick. This fucking war. Some of those guys so bad off, Torpedo begging me to just do him in, please, right now. And you know what? It would have been a lot fucking kinder to do that. Lugger who dropped acid, tripping his brains out, or like Warhorse and Spinner just stoned out of their minds, paranoid, spooked by anything that moved. Imagine a guy like that with an m16 in his hands, aiming it god-knows-where. And I’m going to talk about that? With Alex, who knows everything about everything already? Or at parties? Right. Everyone all into peace and love and head-in-the-sand, hey, wow, let’s just be mellow, man. I mean, look at those guys: perfect example.

Woody pointed to Tie-Dye and his friend who were on to their version of the om thing, trying their best to be serious between bouts of snorting, wheezing laughter.

Do you actually think, Woody went on, that those two want to know the shit I saw over there? Or anyone? You kidding me? That’s why I love this stupid babbling I can do in cars, with whatever driver, all these strangers. I can hide in it. TV shows, basketball, the best hamburger joint, you name it, just pure bullshit. Easy stuff to talk about. Practically a way not to talk. I’m like some photographer, you know, who never has to be in the picture.

We just stood there at that point, looking out at what had been officially announced as scenic by someone in an office. Not that that mattered to the valley, as if it needed a caption. Those mountains still opened up, all the colors that stone and earth can be—the lush brown and pine green, distant snow edging the higher places, immense shadows shifting below us because way above, the clouds kept moving.

Well, I can see how that would make anyone clam up, I said.

It was true. It shut me down too, just hearing that much. He’d been at the heart of it. Horrible stuff. I didn’t know what to say. And then I was saying it.

Except, look Woody. I stared hard at him. Screw Alex. I mean, I’ve known her forever. She’s great, in her way. But you’re probably better off without her.

Woody was already a little embarrassed about his outburst, it was clear. He was avoiding my eyes again, finding more small stones, turning over every one in his hand like each was utterly fascinating, a perfect little world unto itself. That took a while.

Yeah, he said finally. Yeah, and you’re right probably. Your point before, that thing about Alex and me being awful different. I guess I sort of knew that.

We got quiet all over again. Woody’s default mode was, after all, to agree, be silent and polite, more sad than pissed off. He had a handful of stones now. Stepping forward, he threw the whole lot of them over the ridge. They sprayed out in all directions.

What will you do in Oregon, Woody? You going to stay up there?

I don’t know. My dad thinks I should work at his grocery store for a while, and then apply to u of o or Portland State. I have the GI bill, you know. It’s a pretty good deal.

You could study medicine. All that experience in the field.

I never want to think about that again, he said.

We were almost to Sacramento, where Woody would be taking off alone, up Route 5, straight into Oregon. We’d lose Tie-Dye and his friend too. They were busy trying to remember where the cousin lived, what street exactly and where on that street, the guy Tie-Dye said would be out of his gourd with joy and amazement to see them. Total and complete, no-doubt-about-it ecstasy is how he put it as his friend nodded happily.

Outside it was semi-other. Ordinary orchards, of course, but we spotted palm trees and signs for almond groves. Vineyards too, with grapes and grapes and more grapes, distant rows and rows of twisted tied-up branches, vast fiefdoms for table wine. There must have been oranges and lemons lurking somewhere too, but probably farther south where it got even sunnier. And farther than that—if you could believe the postcards on racks at gas stations— farmers grew the wildest things imaginable on trees—avocadoes, which I had never eaten in my life. I’d never even seen one.

The truth is, I was astounded that we’d gotten all that way so fast. It was only Monday. It took those pioneers over a year to cross what we just cut through in three days: mountains you couldn’t count, and rivers and prairies. And those were the speedy ones, without grandma in tow, with extra wheels for their wagon stashed in the back, next to the cornmeal.

Well, this is it, said Woody, as we neared the junction of 80 and 5, and pulled over into the broken asphalt parking lot of some root beer joint.

Hey, no fair, man! Tie-Dye said. Where’s the girls on roller skates? The ones to bring us our root root root beer? Not one appeared. It was a low-budget sort of place.

That’s southern California, Dimbo, his friend said, that’s where the girly roller skaters hang out.

We had stuffed our winter coats and gloves and hats into our backpacks. We were in t-shirts now. Very weird, for March. It was warm, standing in the sun on that asphalt.

Listen Woody, I said, keep in touch, will you? I want to know what you’re doing, school or whatever else. It was great having you along. I mean it.

Me too, said Frances.

I was surprised at how hollow I felt, and scared suddenly. And how stupid and predictable and unconvincing those goodbye words sounded however much I tried to intensify the I mean it part, to code it with affection. Then I was angry and sad. We had a nice drill going, the three of us. A sweet balance of earnest and funny, urgent and indifferent, silence and talk. I liked the guy a lot. He was good through and through. And our conversation on the overlook in Nevada, his stone after stone picked up so carefully and then flung out over the ridge. Look under something, my mother always advised. I thought briefly about Alex—an idiot. My friend, of course. But still an idiot.

Yeah, I will. I’ll let you know about stuff, Woody said, and thanks. He had written down our addresses in the van. He looked like he was going to cry. Well, gotta go, he said, hugging us both surprisingly hard, turning quickly away to walk up the street.

I bet he doesn’t look back, said Frances. We watched. She was right.

That’s one cool man-o-man, Tie-Dye’s friend said back in the van.

Yeah, said Tie-Dye, turning to Frances and me. Why doesn’t one of you two, you know, jump his sorry bones? What’s with you girls? I don’t get you.

Pretty soon we’d be leaving the van too. They took us only a little ways, where the old Sacramento Historical Park cut into 80. They were headed north, they said, then maybe a little east, still not clear where the cousin lived in town. That piece of paper with the crucial information, they assumed it was in the glove compartment. But it had vanished.

Poof! said Tie-Dye. But Confucius say: Nothing worthwhile easy gotten, no no! And both started their manic laughter again.

Thanks a million, Frances said, grabbing her backpack. You guys took us a hell of a long way.

Yeah, I said. We’re grateful.

No prob-lem-o, they said, nearly in unison.

You three made this one primo trip, said Tie-Dye’s friend.

With that, the primo thing started up again: the primo weather out here, what primo you-know-whats on those girls walking by, how primo the cars were in California, their having counted five primo convertibles so far, of various primo colors, how primo hungry they were, speaking of lunch.

No one had spoken of lunch but Frances and I were stepping down, out of the van. We were waving. They were laying on the horn then, making the peace sign at us, tearing off in a sudden right-hand turn.

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