Road to Bountiful by Donald S. Smurthwaite Page B

past the round-topped hills. He shuffles his feet and stretches. Although it’s midday, a quarter moon hangs overhead in the summer sky.
    We pass through an Indian reservation, then on to Glasgow, a small town with a wide main street, just north of a giant dam and reservoir. We push ahead. We near the place where Uncle Loyal said that Glenn was.
    “Not far now. Can’t be. Next stop: Glennville. Glenn, baby, here we come.”
    “Only a few miles,” Uncle Loyal says slowly. “There’s a small town just ahead. That’s where we’ll find him.”
    “Good. Let me know where I need to turn.”
    We drive in silence for twenty minutes. Then Uncle Loyal shifts in his seat, drums his fingers on the dash, and turns his head to look out the window. We pass a sign that gave the name of a small town—actually, less than a town, just a few homes, a grocery store, a grain elevator, a closed gas station, a building that advertised, “Antiques and Collectibles, No Junk,” a bar, a large stone house that said, “Bed and Breakfast, Open, Call Ahead,” but gave no phone number, and a large garage with a dozen old cars and trucks parked outside, a man dressed in greasy coveralls standing on the side of the highway.
    Uncle Loyal says, “Here it is. Here is where Glenn is.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Up there. On the little hill to the left. The green place.” He flings his hand in a general direction to the south, toward a small green patch of grass surrounded by tall trees.
    I look in the direction he pointed and squint. Something isn’t right. I can’t see any houses.
    Then the bottom drops out of my stomach. The green place. Yes, of course. Now I know. It all comes to me, all of what Uncle Loyal said suddenly made sense. Of course he’d be at home. Glenn couldn’t be anywhere else.
    “It’s a cemetery,” I say.
    He glances toward me sheepishly. “Yes.”
    “Uncle Loyal. That’s where Glenn is, right?”
    Uncle Loyal turns away. He now looks troubled, and I can just about guess the unspoken questions that are on his mind. “Does it matter, Levi? Do you understand? Will we still catch fish? Are you angry with me?”
    His face is drawn. He fidgets uncharacteristically. He looks straight ahead.
    “Yes. I’m sorry, Levi. I didn’t tell you. I should have. I tried a couple of times, but I didn’t think you would go all this way if you knew my friend Glenn wasn’t alive. I should have said something more, been more adamant and forthcoming.”
    I slow down as we near the intersection. I’m trying to sort this out. It made no sense, and it made a lot of sense at the same time. I flip on my turn signal and wheel the red car to the left onto a dusty gravel road that led up the hill.
    “I’m sorry,” Uncle Loyal says. “I am truly sorry. But . . .” and he doesn’t finish his sentence.
    I slow more as we get to the entrance of the small country cemetery. The markers, all a light gray, stand in perfect lines.
    I steal a glance at Uncle Loyal. I think, He has no one, he has nothing, nothing but his wisdom and his stories and his experience living on the plains. His wife is gone, his friends are gone. He has two daughters, one he hardly hears from and the other who has given me a plastic card and six hundred bucks to get him to Utah so that she can feel better about the way she’s treating him. I feel a surge of sympathy or understanding or empathy or ethos or pathos or one of those words I should have learned in English 101 but never took the time.
    But I feel something , and that’s what counts, I suppose. I don’t want him to be sad or unhappy or feeling that he let me down. I know what I could do, what I should do, what I would say. I take a gulp and feel I am on the edge of doing something that would be considered maybe as an act of kindness, and at the same time I hope it won’t be clumsy. I have to admit that I have a bit of a record when it comes to being clumsy. I need more practice at being kind. It seems like