American Boy - Larry Watson [62]
“Sure you can,” I said. “Just keep your head down and plow ahead. One mile at a time. We’ll get there.”
“I’m pulling over. We can walk to a farm or something.”
“What farm? I don’t know about you, but I can’t see across the road.”
“We can come back for the car tomorrow. Or later today if this lets up.”
“What about all those stories about farmers who got lost walking out to their own goddamn barn during a blizzard? No, man, you’ve got to keep going.”
“I can’t, Matt. I mean it.”
“Slow down if you need to. But keep moving.”
Johnny shifted his hands nervously on the wheel. “I’m pulling over....”
“You can’t. We might never get going again.”
“ ... Then you can drive. I can’t do this.”
“Fine. But don’t pull over too far.”
Johnny found a spot where the wind had swept the side of the road clear for ten yards, and he eased the Valiant to the shoulder. When the car stopped it seemed less a consequence of Johnny’s application of the brakes and more a loss of mechanical will, as if the vehicle itself had realized it was no match for nature’s forces.
Johnny opened his door, jumped out as quickly as he could, and slammed the door. I slid over behind the steering wheel. For a brief moment I was alone in the car, and in that instant power and possibility and risk rushed through me. What if I put the car in gear and hit the gas, leaving Johnny snow-blind and freezing on the side of the road? The blizzard probably would have covered my tracks.
This fleeting feeling was strangely similar to something I’d experienced a few years earlier, when I was tramping around in Frenchman’s Forest. On a late spring day I’d found myself in trouble in school for talking back to Mr. Gordon, who taught eighth-grade science. I’d been walking down the hall on my way to class when Morris McGill, a big stupid farm kid with a reputation for cheerful cruelty, stepped on my foot. He did it deliberately and for no good reason—he was next to me, I was wearing sneakers, and he was wearing boots. When Morris lifted his foot to repeat the act, I shoved him hard against a locker, and Mr. Gordon witnessed my retaliation. “You might have split his skull open,” he said. Without thinking I replied, “A horse could kick him in the head and it wouldn’t dent that skull.” That was enough for Mr. Gordon. He marched me down to the principal’s office, where he said, “Mr. Lucas knows how to deal with hoodlums like you.” As it turned out, Mr. Lucas wasn’t there that afternoon, but the secretary wrote out a summons (that was her term for the appointment slip) for me to return the following morning before school in order to speak with the principal. To make sure I didn’t “forget” the meeting, she said she’d call my parents. Then I made matters worse by correcting her. “Parent,” I said. “I’m down to one.” Before she sent me on my way she told me she’d add smart aleck to the list of offenses to be reported to Mr. Lucas.
Rather than go directly home after school that day, I headed for Frenchman’s Forest. There, I knew, I’d have an hour or two of solitude, time to calm down and to nurture the self-pity that so often trails in anger’s wake.
I walked aimlessly, and because I was not determined to remain within the confines of the forest, I soon stepped into an open field. I stood at the bottom of a grassy hill. A few horses grazed nearby, but no owner was visible. Nor could I see a house, stable, or fence line. I wondered why those animals didn’t leave. Why not head for the open prairie and its freedom?
I’d never been on a horse that wasn’t saddled, but that didn’t prevent me from briefly entertaining a fantasy of climbing bareback on one of those horses and galloping off. The thought was enough. Suddenly it was easier to do what I was going to do anyway: return home, tell my mother about my upcoming meeting with Mr. Lucas, and walk into his office the next morning.
As it turned out, Mr. Lucas wasn’t particularly interested in me or my violation of school decorum, and he said little to me beyond, “Don’t do something like this on school grounds.” Which I took to mean that