[home] [contents] [back issues] [subscribe]

[submissions] [mission] [message board] [contact us]

A 28-Year Journey in Six Days
by Leslie Macaulay

Excerpts:

       My students are off doing whatever it is college students do during spring break, and by all accounts I should be on a beach in Mexico. Instead, I’m staring out a second story window of the tired, early-20th century Plains Hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming. From here, I have a perfect view of the local railway station. On the station’s roof, the Wyoming state flag is displayed by an eastern wind that refuses to let it relax. The sun disappeared behind clouds hours ago, somewhere between Ogallala and the Nebraska-Wyoming border, and snow is beginning to pile up on our Budget rental truck. Evidently, Mother Nature forgot that today is the first day of spring.
     Inside the room, on the television screen, grown men with too much testosterone and too little brain activity are battling to be declared tonight’s champion of the World Wrestling Federation. I made my friend Lindy swear she wouldn’t tell anyone that we watched this program and had a few laughs.
     I’m here because I once promised Lindy that if she ever decided to move back home to Oregon, I’d help her make the trip. I never imagined I’d have to make good on thatpromise.
     We first met outside the girls’ bathroom in Junior High School, 32 years ago . . .

. . .

. . . Ahead of us lay 2,000 miles in the cab of a rented truck, and I was worried that we would run out of things to talk about after two hours. I was afraid that, because our lives had gone in such opposite directions, maybe we had nothing to share. Would we argue about world politics and human rights? Could we understand each other’s views on America, considering that she had been living in the South while I had been roaming the world? Or would we stick to safer subjects, reminiscing about high school antics or chatting about this week’s country song chart? . . .


. . . To read the rest of this story, please subscribe.