Road to Bountiful

by Smurthwaite, Donald S.

  Silently, Levi takes my staff from me and pushes it into the ground. He gathers pebbles and rocks, and only after a few minutes could I see that he’d arranged them to form my name.

  “It’s your mountain now, Uncle Loyal. You bagged it. That’s what you say when you get to the top of a mountain. You bagged it. Not bad for a guy your age. Not bad for a guy thirty years younger than you. You are,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “a beast.”

  “I have never been called a beast before. I think I like the sound of it.”

  A wind, more cutting and blustery than what we had experienced to that point, rumbles up the ridgeline. I notice that the sky has lost its luster and that a squall line is moving toward us at a great rate of speed. We are going to get wet. And in this wind, we are also going to get cold.

  In the distance, and it was impossible to tell if it came from above or below, we hear the low, throaty growl of thunder.

  “We’d better head down. Get back to the car before we get really wet. These storms can sneak up on you. It shouldn’t take us long,” Levi says with what I took to be a hint of worry.

  We hurriedly make our way off the mountain, although I wished we could have stayed longer. The dark clouds maw behind us, and once, when I looked back, the clouds indeed had split into two fingers, looking much like jaws ready to gobble us up. Lightning splays down into the lake-side basin before us. Levi keeps an anxious eye on the sky and where the lightning touched down. The thunder explodes, as loud as any I had heard at my prairie home. With no more than a quarter mile to the car, the plopping drops of rain change into a torrent as we half hop, half jog our way over the rock-strewn field. I stumble once or twice; my legs and knees and arms seem to betray me as I awkwardly crab my way down the hill. Finally, we reach the car. Levi quickly unlocks the passenger door and gently shoves me in. Outside I watch with awe my first, and to this point, only Montana gully-washer.

  We are soaked, we are tired, we are cold. And we are happy.

  Levi starts the engine and turns up the heat. He begins to crawl the car down the hillside, back toward the main road, making sluggish progress measured in yards by the minutes. Near the bottom of a small ravine, he pushes hard on the accelerator toward a shallow puddle of water that had been given birth by the storm.

  The car lurches forward then stops. Levi pushes hard on the accelerator. Nothing happens. I hear the zizz of the front wheels turning, cawing their displeasure. Lightning spikes down around us. Rain pounds the car. Levi flips the gear shift from forward to reverse, forward to reverse, forward to reverse, trying to rock us out of the puddle, which, even in the short time we were there, had become more like a pond.

  Finally, he puts the car into park and lets the tired engine pant. His eyes are focused straight ahead, his jaw tensed. The warm air blows out of the heater vents. The windshield swipes move rhythmically.

  We are two sailors in a boat stalled on a sea by a wheezy and temperamental storm. For the second time in four days, the fury of nature has crossed us.

  Water dripped down the side of the car windows. It had grown unnaturally dark as the big storm swirls above us and around us. Quite suddenly, it seemed as though nightfall had overtaken us with the suddenness of a stealthy bandit.

  Levi looks straight ahead. His mouth curled almost to a downward, perfect semicircle.

  “Uncle Loyal,” he says deliberately. “We have a problem. We’re stuck.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sitting in the Red Car, My Life Turns to Gumbo

  Dumb. Very dumb. How could I have let this happen? A perfectly awesome day. We start early, get to the top of the mountain, and then, boom! The day goes down the tubes. Disaster. We’re stuck, very far from anywhere. People die doing stupid things like this. What did John Wayne say in a movie? Life is tough. It’s even tougher when you’re stupid.

  I saw the storm coming. I knew what it could mean. I’ve been in the High Uintas when a storm like that comes blasting in. You don’t take your time, you don’t goof off, you get right down to business and find someplace safe. I’ve read about too many people who are sunning themselves one moment at the top of a mountain, ignore a few clouds, and all of a sudden they’re crispy critters.

  So there we were. Stuck in the gumbo. Here is the recipe for Montana gumbo: drive off a paved road, add a barrel of water to the dirt, whip it up with wind, and let it thicken. And harden. Like cement. There is no escape.

  I did not want to spend the evening in the middle of the mountains, but it was late afternoon and the possibility of calling the car home for the night was growing larger by the minute as the puddle around us grew and the thunderstorm showed no sign of quitting.

  What do I do? Apologize. Why do I always apologize for everything?

  “I’m sorry Uncle Loyal. I should have seen it coming. (I did.) We should have hustled out of here sooner. (True.) I shouldn’t have tried to splash through the puddle. (Also true.) I should have got out and seen how deep it was and how slick. (Hindsight is always 20/20.)”

  “Well, stuck we are and stuck we shall be until it dries out or someone rescues us or until we find a way out of this predicament,” Uncle Loyal said in a most pleasant tone of voice. “It’s fine, Levi. There is no need to apologize.”

  He is so calm. Steady. A rock. Unflappable. It’s funny, but just hearing him made me feel a little better. Zen Mormon, that was Uncle Loyal.

  I begin to think, which only came about thirty minutes too late. Maybe I could get us unstuck. Brain, click in. Brain cells, line up and get back to work. Let’s see.

  “This is what we’re going to do, Uncle Loyal. I’m going to get out and find a bunch of rocks and wedge them under our back tires to get us a little traction. That’s what we need. Traction. Traction is good.”

  He looks at me with his eyebrows arched into a high triangle on his forehead.

  “Eh? Are you certain, Levi? Back wheels or front? Why not at least wait until the rain slows and try something then?”

  “Can’t wait. I want to try it now. Back wheels, definitely. We’re losing time. And daylight. This puddle is only going to get bigger. A puddle I can deal with. Getting us out of a pond, now that’s another thing. And we’re going to be stuck in a pond if this rain keeps up.”

  “As you wish.”

  With nothing less than a sense of doom, I climb out of the car. My foot instantly sinks into about a foot of water, disappearing in the brown foam with an ominous sucking sound. I turn my head and smile at Uncle Loyal, a smile purely for show.

  “It’s not so bad, not as bad as I thought,” I call, a smile made of pure, 100 percent synthetic products plastered across my face.

  Confidence, man, I say to myself. You’re the captain of this car or ship or whatever it really is, and you have to be confident or the passenger might start to panic, although it was difficult for me to imagine Uncle Loyal panicking over anything.

  “It appears your foot is stuck in mud,” Uncle Loyal leans over and says, a frown creasing his face.

  “Yes. It appears my foot is stuck in mud.” I try to not sound as though I were making fun of him, but I probably didn’t succeed. A profound grasp of the obvious, has this great-uncle of mine.

  There was only one thing to do next and that was swing my other foot into the muck. Laugh in the face of danger. Embrace trouble. Fear nothing. Stick your good foot into the muck. My other foot nestled with the same sucking sound into the mud.

  At this juncture in my life, I am able to predict with certainty several things.

  One, I am going to get muddy.

  Two, I am going to get wet.

  Three, my plan has zero chance of working.

  Four, we are going to spend the night in the mud puddle.

  Other than those four trifling details, everything is fine, just fine. Fine. Yes. Fine.

  But I have to push on. With slow, exaggerated steps, I make my way across the puddle, which is now close to twenty yards wide. I begin to find rocks and take off my s
weatshirt, which then doubled as a wheelbarrow, although it had no wheels and couldn’t carry much. Other than that, it worked really well. I sling my sweatshirt over my shoulder and trudge back into the puddle/pond/lake and, with much more confidence than I feel, dump the load behind one of the rear tires. I repeat this process about a half-dozen times as Uncle Loyal looks on with a mixture of curiosity and bemusement. At the end of the last load, soaked, cold, and filthy, I reach down and try to push the rocks against the tires. I force a smile and give Uncle Loyal what must have been the most hypocritical thumbs-up signal in the history of all humankind.

  The moment was now at hand.

  I try, with very limited success, to clean myself up before hopping back in the car. I did have the foresight to ask Uncle Loyal to toss a couple plastic grocery bags on the seat to protect it from the slimy swamp creature who was about to get in and try to drive the car out of our misery.

  “You are wet,” Uncle Loyal says as I gingerly climb in. “And dirty.”

  I let out a long sigh. Wet, yes. Muddy, yes. Stupid, that too. The shadows are lengthening, and so is my shame. I’d seen the storm coming. I couldn’t get around that. I’d seen it coming and knew it could mean trouble, and still I did nothing, or at least I didn’t do anything quickly enough to avoid getting us in this jam.

  I might have avoided all this if I had only not driven full blast into the puddle but instead gone around the edges of it. But no, I was in a hurry and maybe feeling a bit like the hero, and I was driving a hot red car, and I headed for trouble with my eyes wide open and the part of my brain that usually flashed the caution sign totally shut down.

  There was a great sacrament meeting talk in here somewhere, but I am too frustrated and embarrassed to dig it out. I have other things to dig out first: Loyal. Me. The car.

  I start the car and gently step on the accelerator. We might have moved an inch or two, then we settle right back in. I try again. Then again. And again. We made no progress.

  “Let me get out of the car and push. You can slide over, Uncle Loyal, and step on the gas pedal while I’m pushing in the back. Maybe that extra shove will get us going. If the car does start to move, just keep going until you get out of the puddle. I’ll catch up with you.”

  “You’ll get muddy,” Uncle Loyal warns, giving me a long, sad glance. “But I guess you already are.”

  I swing the door open and step into the ooze again. I muck my way around to the back of the car as Uncle Loyal moves to his left and grasps the steering wheel. With more hope than I feel, I shout, “Now!” and begin to push on the back of the red car, which now was more the color of a baked potato. With all my might, I push. The car wheels spun; I lose my footing and do an Olympic-caliber face-plant in the mud. In my mind, I see a row of judges all holding up cards that read “10.”

  This is not going to work, I think.

  Uncle Loyal stops the engine and looks behind the car. He rolls down the window and gazes at me wordlessly for several seconds. I am coated in mud and must look like the creature from the swamp. I had to wipe away the area around my eyes just so that I could open them. I am grateful that Rachel cannot see me at this moment.

  At last, Uncle Loyal speaks. I think, what he’s going to say would be calming and profound and would help us to find a way out of this predicament. Listen, Levi. Listen well. The voice of wisdom is about to thunder down to you from the top of the mountain.

  “You’re muddy, Levi. Quite muddy.”

  “Great. This is just great,” I mumble. Then I sit down right in the middle of the puddle-turned-pond, figuring I couldn’t get any wetter and couldn’t get any dirtier. It is at this point that I remember I have a pair of almost-new waders in the car trunk. Terrific, Levi. Smart, Levi. Way to think it all through, pal.

  And there, at that moment, I feel so utterly lost and alone.

  It’s evening, I’m stuck in the mountains of Montana, I am muddy and tired and frustrated, and it is still raining. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I’d felt on top of the world after talking with Rachel, nothing could go wrong, that life was filled with promise, that I had my course clearly in front of me. And now I feel I am sitting below the world. I am in a huge mud puddle, hopeless and helpless. My life had turned into a muddy Montana gumbo.

  Uncle Loyal calls out to me, “I have a towel, Levi. I’ll hand it to you through the window. And I’ll fetch you some dry clothes. It is a very good thing we did some laundry yesterday. Let’s start there, with a towel to get you cleaned up, and we’ll proceed forward, eh?”

  Let’s start there. Okay, he’s right. When you’re sitting in a puddle, cold and wet, you have to turn it around. I had to start somewhere. Why not with a towel and some dry clothes? Take a small victory, I think. When you’re sitting in a mud puddle with no way out, take a small victory.

  I towel off and slosh around to the back of the car. With great care, I change my clothes and feel a tiny bit more like a member of the human race.

  I’d seen it coming. I’d seen those clouds. I’d known it could mean trouble. Why didn’t I act or react or do something?

  I still can’t answer.

  “It’s okay, Levi. All is well. We’re dry, we have shelter, we have food. Jerky. We have lots of jerky. And think of the story we’ll be able to tell Barbara and your family when we get back. Men alone, lost in the foreboding Montana mountains, fighting against the beastly elements.”

  “We might be here all night.”

  “We might. And that’s fine too. All is well.”

  I think of my cell phone. I doubt, considering that I was in the middle of a wilderness and my closest neighbors likely were bears, mountain goats, wild chickens, vultures, and elk, that I would be able to get in touch with anyone up here. I had actually thought of trying to call someone when we first got stuck, but there were two problems with that idea: one, I am a male and don’t like to ask for help, especially from strangers, and two, I am a male and don’t like to ask for help, especially from strangers.

  But now it’s worth a try. Thankfully, I had the sense to take my cell phone out of my pocket before I decided to take a swim in Mud Lake. I reach into my backpack, where I had set it, flip it open, and see the low battery sign flicker once before the phone shuts down. I had forgotten to charge it after my call last night. I was out of juice and out of luck.

  “We’re stuck,” I report. Again.

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “Well. Here we are.”

  “Yes. Here we are.”

  “Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, if the weather is good, I’ll hike down to the road and flag someone down, and we’ll get some help. But I can’t think of anything to do right now.”

  “Nor can I. We have a plan, Levi. Always good to have a plan.”

  Outside, the rain has slowed to a patter. Off to the west, the sky is lighter, and I can even see a few yellow rays of sun peeping through the jumbo gray clouds. The storm is almost over. I know that the chances of having a good day tomorrow are in our favor. Summer storms come and go quickly. That only leaves the problem of how to spend the night.

  “One of us can sit up front, and I suppose the other one can curl up in the back. We have extra clothes, so we’d better layer up,” I suggest. “Gonna get cold up here tonight, summer or not.”

  “I’ll just lean the seat back and spend the night here,” Uncle Loyal says. “You can take the backseat. You can stretch out some there. I have a few extra clothes in my suitcase. A sweater or two, a jacket. If you can get to the trunk, we can put on the extra clothing. It might be well-advised. I have a suspicion that you are right; it will be cold up here, even in August.”

  Extra clothes was an offer I can not afford to pass. I take off my dry socks before going back out into the rain and slowly making my way to the back of the car, where I pop the trunk lid and rummage through Uncle Loyal’s large suitcase. I find the clothing he mentioned then slosh and slide my way back into the car. There isn’t any need for the waders because I’m alre
ady covered in mud. Once again, I’m feeling cold and muddy and mad at myself for getting us into this mess.

  I check my watch. That old familiar gray light of evenings in the mountains is overtaking us. It is a little after eight. It would be pitch black in twenty minutes, and stone quiet, too.

  To my surprise, I begin to feel drowsy. I climb into the backseat and stretch, as best I could, across it. Not a four-star lodge, but for a night, it might do. “I’ll leave the keys in the ignition, and the heat on high. When it gets cold, one of us can reach over, start the car, and let the heater blast on us for a few minutes. At least we won’t freeze to death. And we shouldn’t starve, either. We’ve got a ton of food. Heat. Food. Water. We have a lakeful of that. So we’re okay. More than okay. Maybe I’ll fish that little lake in the morning. From the car window.”

  “You are very resourceful, Levi.”

  “Promise me this, Uncle Loyal. I get to tell this story, not you. And you can’t mention a word about it to Rachel unless I give you the wink and nod. Promise. My eternal well-being might be in your hands. Little Levi babies are depending on you. We don’t want Rachel to know until after the wedding that she is marrying a klutz. Let’s just say it’s our little secret.”

  “You have my solemn promise, Levi. You sound confident of your choice and chances.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “And why do you think that is? If I may ask.”

  “You may ask. We’ve been through a lot together, Uncle Loyal. No secrets, eh? We both fell in love with Evelyn. Or was it Vicky? Something with a v in it. We survived the biker bar together. We went fishing. We climbed a mountain. We got caught in a roaring, rain-swollen torrent and swam to safety. We rescued a van load of Girl Scouts from the raging flood. We changed the tire for a bus filled with nuns on a field trip to the mountains. We fought grizzlies with our bare hands. We sunk a pirate ship in a battle on the lake. We did all of these things, or something close to them. All that. So, yes, you can ask why I am not feeling confident.”