The Serpents Trail Page 14

  The Book Cliffs swung north with me and I soon crossed the Price River where for the first time I noticed a few pinion pines and cedar on a low mesa not far from the highway. The land slowly spread itself out into farm-land. I passed through Price and when I came to the small town of Helper, I couldn’t resist turning off the highway to find out about the town’s interesting name—and lunch, if possible.

  As I drove into Helper I had the feeling that this was a town that rolled up the sidewalks when the tourist season ended, for there was no one on the street and only a few cars and pickups at the curbs. In the center of the main five-block street, which was lined with small shops, a couple of banks and hotels, a theater, a grocery, a hardware store—and the Western Mining and Railroad Museum that was unfortunately closed—I found a café that was open.

  A small bell tinkled as I pushed open the door and walked into a soda fountain straight out of American Graffiti. Except for a clerk who popped out of the kitchen in the rear, the place was empty of people, but full of old-time wire-back chairs and tables to match. At the long counter that took up most of one wall I perched on the kind of revolving stool I had loved as a child and was cheerfully handed a menu in a plastic cover that folded open like a book—more nostalgia. It took me a minute to get to it, however, for my eye was caught by an ice cream aficionado’s fantasy list on the wall behind the counter. No low-fat supermarket frozen yogurt, this. I was informed that it was homemade ice cream with whole milk and cream, real strawberries, blackberries, and other taste sensations long forgotten, or ignored, by the current commercial world of artificial flavors. I found lemon custard, a childhood favorite, on the list and knew I would have terrible trouble choosing between it and a huckleberry swirl. But a peanut-butter milk shake was definitely the selection to accompany the rest of my lunch order. Remembering that I had a freezer in the motor home, I ordered quarts of the other two to go, feeling smug. As I waited, listening to encouraging sounds from the kitchen, I examined the other walls that were covered with antique tools, kitchen utensils, and such. One front corner of the place was filled with displays of candles and colorful gift items. Spotting a jukebox across the room, I dropped in a quarter and was soon finding my thrill on Blueberry Hill along with Fats Domino.

  The hamburger that arrived in record time, on a home-baked bun with a scoop of old-fashioned potato salad on a lettuce leaf beside it, was a scrumptious reminder that burgers used to be made one at a time to the customer’s specifications and have slices of dill pickle and tomato that you couldn’t see through. As I consumed every crumb between slurps of the peanut-butter shake, the nice lady behind the counter told me about the town’s name.

  This had been coal-mining country, I learned. The grade through the hills to the north had proved too steep for a single railroad engine to be able to pull a train of loaded cars, so the company provided helper engines to assist. Thus the name of the town—Helper.

  What a treat. I love place names. I traded her one of my favorites: Damfino Creek, somewhere in Wyoming. Can’t you just imagine one old prospector saying to another, “What’s the name of that there crick?”

  It has always amused me that Nome, Alaska, was the result of the misinterpretation of some cartographer’s scrawled question on the border of a map: “Name?”

  They are everywhere, if you look. The country’s history and humor is recorded in its names, and some of the best in the West are to be found in its small towns, abandoned mining claims, and the imagination-inspired titles for natural features.

  Evidence of coal mining was just around the edge of the bluff that rose to the north of Helper, as I took the Winnebago slowly up the steep grade between the walls of a narrow canyon and was reminded of those helper engines. In a large pull-off, I also found evidence of the Old West on a bronze plaque: “Near this site stood the Pleasant Valley Coal Company office and store. On April 21, 1897, in one of the most daring daylight robberies, Butch Cassidy, Elsa Lay, and Bob Meeks robbed pay-master E. L. Carpenter and made off with over $8000.00 in gold and silver of which only approximately $1000.00 was ever recovered.”

  Besides old mining buildings, there were signs that told about Utah’s coal industry and a commemorative plaque with a long list of the names of miners lost in a tragic accident. With one hundred miles to go before I reached Salt Lake, I drove on and soon crossed Soldier Summit in a rainstorm that blew in and out in less than half an hour, washing the dust from the windshield and, hopefully, the rest of the rig.

  I filled up with gas and picked up a map of Salt Lake at a service station outside Provo. It was almost two in the afternoon when I turned off Highway 15 into downtown Salt Lake and, somehow, found my way to the VIP Campground at 1400 West North Temple. Actually, I think I just got lucky and drove past it by accident.

  The streets in the main part of Salt Lake City are very well organized and easy to understand—if you can crack the code! For anyone unfamiliar with the arrangement, they can be totally, leave-you-scratching-your-head bewildering, for they seem to be nothing but letters, numbers and compass directions at first.

  Eventually, one gets used to what appears to be a maze of confusion and it begins to make perfect sense. It conspired to make sense to me on the second morning and, thereafter, I had little trouble finding my way wherever I wanted to go. Upon arrival, I simply searched until I located North Temple, then drove up and down it, watching like a hawk, until I finally spotted the VIP Campground and turned in with a sigh of relief.

  To give Salt Lake its due, however, from another point of view it is an unusually stress-free place in which to drive. Usually, guiding a thirty-foot Winnebago through the center of an unfamiliar city requires careful attention and skillful navigating, but downtown Salt Lake is a motor homer’s dream. In 1847, within a few days of its Mormon founding, the city plan was laid out in a grid pattern of ten-acre square blocks. These blocks were separated by streets that were an unbelievable one hundred and thirty-two feet wide, because, at that time, it made sense to make them “wide enough for a team of four oxen and a covered wagon to turn around.” This early planning was so generous that the width makes the streets feel half-empty of traffic and there is plenty of room to make turns and shift lanes—even for a thirty-foot motor home—with, or without oxen.

  At the VIP Campground I registered in their A-frame office and, finding a number of spaces from which to choose, parked the Winnebago in a lovely, isolated spot under a large shade tree. In response to a quick phone call, a local car rental agency soon delivered a compact car for my use. So, leaving the Winnebago where I had hooked it up to water, electricity, and sewer, I made a short trip east on North Temple to a shopping center with an Albertsons grocery, where I picked up some fresh fruit, milk, on which I was running low and like in my coffee and tea, and a new red ball for Stretch, who, we discovered, had forgotten his yellow one in the yard at Sarah’s.

  Upon our return, we took a walk around the campground. Then, while Stretch took a nap I borrowed a telephone book from the office to do a little sleuthing. Settling on the sofa with the unopened phone book in my lap, I did nothing for a few minutes. It was quiet, except for the hum of traffic on North Temple beyond the registration office and, far away, the faint sound of a siren of some kind—police or ambulance, going somewhere I didn’t need to know. It felt—satisfying.

  I had not anticipated what a relief it was to distance myself from complications, though those very complications had inspired my trip north to Salt Lake City. There is something liberating about being on your own—alone in a new and unfamiliar place with no one to make demands or judgments about what you should or should not be or do. I know that kind of freedom is part of why I like to travel and have taken to the road so easily after years of living in the same place with the same people. I have friends at home that I can’t do without forever, which is part of why I return frequently to my house in Homer on Kachemak Bay in search of reassurance that my roots are still firmly planted in Alaskan soil. But I do enj
oy wandering to places I have never been, seeing things I’ve never seen, and meeting all kinds of interesting people in the process. I like doing it alone, accommodating no one but Stretch, who demands little and is great company.

  When my husband Daniel died, it seemed for a while that half my life had gone with him. At first I kept myself busy doing things at home and refusing to allow grief to take up residence in the empty space. But in a couple of months I found I had run out of projects—the house was immaculately clean, closets and cupboards all in order, lawn mowed and manicured, garden planted and weed-free. I realized that you could read only so many books, rent so many movies, repeat the same walks so many times. When a friend asked me to join her on a trip to Denali National Park, I was enthusiastic in accepting, just to get out of town for a bit, though the closest I had been to a motor home was swearing at them on the highway between Homer and Anchorage during the summer months of the year, when they travel the Kenai Peninsula in migrating herds of pale behemoths. I was astonished that one trip to Denali was all it took for me to develop a yearning for a rig of my own. Within six months I had it parked in my driveway and was getting ready to attempt my first trip down the Alaska Highway. It was a most welcome surprise to find how very well a new singular lifestyle on wheels suited me.

  Running away from home was no problem. My two children had both grown and flown to follow their own stars.

  Carol, my daughter, is married to an attorney with political ambitions and lives in Boston in a whirl of social life that would make me dizzy, but seems to suit her. Neither she, nor her husband, Philip—never Phil—approve of my gypsy lifestyle and let me know—frequently—that it isn’t socially acceptable. The past summer, for instance, upon learning that I was driving north to spend the summer in Homer against their advice, they had refused to allow my grandson, Bran-don, to visit me, pleading summer sports as an excuse, but really as a sort of punishment, I suspected.

  I see my son, Joe, on a more regular basis. He is a criminalist for the Seattle Police Department and is able to visit me fairly often, bringing with him the casual Alaskan attitude he has retained and, sometimes, his cheerful, realistic, live-in girlfriend, Sharon, who runs her own travel agency and has no uppity airs about her. I imagine they will eventually marry—when it suits them—which is fine with me. When they learned of my new acquisition and travel plans, they expressed nothing but approval and once or twice have even come along for short parts of the ride.

  As I sat there in the middle of Salt Lake City, I thought about calling Joe to check in, but decided to let it wait until later, when he would be at home and not in the middle of something forensic. Instead I looked through the phone book for the names on my mental list.

  First I checked for Stover, any Stover. There were seven, none of them J. or Jamie. I considered that possibly the phone might still be listed under her ex-husband’s name, though that seemed unlikely, as she had said they’d been several-years divorced. I didn’t know what his name was anyway.

  Strike one!

  I gave Stover up for the time being and tried Scott. There was a whole page of Scotts, but no Mildred. There was an M. Scott, so I called it, but that turned out to be a Michael Scott who didn’t know anyone named Mildred.

  Strike two!

  I did have the address that had accompanied Mildred Scott’s name and could try finding it tomorrow. No! I decided. I would try it later that day. More people are at home in the evening and, if I couldn’t find her, I might find someone related, or who could help me find her.

  Not strike three—not yet!

  I considered calling the Family History Library and asking for Wilson again, as this was the day they had said he would be back. Explaining what I wanted—when I was confused about who, what, and why—would be difficult at best, however, and best might be to go there in person to talk with him.

  Tomorrow, then.

  Giving up until after dinner, after which I intended to brave the bewildering checkerboard of Salt Lake City and try for Mildred Scott’s address, I succumbed to my former impulse and joined Stretch in a nap.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IN MY DREAM SARAH HAD COME TO VISIT ME IN HOMER, as she did one long-ago summer. We were young again and walking side by side along the beach on the long spit that extends out into Kachemak Bay. It was late afternoon and there was no one else on that smooth crescent. Except for the screams of the gulls, the soft gurgle of waves on sand and gravel, and the wind that tossed my hair, it was quiet. A gust plastered her green slacks to her legs and she laughed as it snatched off an old fishing hat she was wearing and sent it rolling away. I chased and caught it but, when I turned around, she had climbed into a boat that hadn’t been there before and was steadily rowing out into the bay without me. When I called to her, she didn’t answer, but smiled and kept on rowing. So, helpless, I could only watch her grow smaller and smaller in the distance until she disappeared and left me standing with the brim of the hat in my hand.

  My hand was full of an edge of the comforter when I woke to find my pillow soaked with the tears Ed had asked of me in the park the day before. I seldom cry. When I’m alone, I don’t fight it and didn’t then. There are good results from tears and one of them is the release of tension. In a few minutes they stopped, so I dabbed at my eyes with that edge of the comforter, got up feeling better and went to open the door to let the warm breeze dry my face.

  Stretch came to stand with me and look out through the screen door, as we often do. We watched a woman with a basket under her arm and a small girl in tow walk across to the office building and disappear into the laundry room.

  A glance at my watch told me it was after five o’clock. I had slept for well over an hour. Time to think about dinner, after which I would see what I could do to find Mildred Scott’s address.

  I took Stretch.

  There’s something about a mini-dachshund—especially with a sixty-three-year-old woman at the end of his leash—that is nonthreatening. People are attracted to Stretch for obvious reasons—he’s cute, he’s friendly, he’s too small to be a menace. They talk about, then to the dog—and then to the woman-with-the-dog. With the ice broken, they usually extend more communication to the woman. It almost always works. Stretch doesn’t mind. He expects to be adored.

  Having scrutinized the map with the assistance of the sympathetic manager in the office, I drove my rental car east on North Temple until I arrived at Temple Square, with its six unmistakable towers rising from a cluster of other buildings associated with the LDS church. Turning right on West Temple, I drove by the Family History Library, where I intended to go the next day in search of Mr. Wilson, then made a left onto South Temple. The ten or twelve blocks of this wide street to the east of the square are the most historic in the city, including Beehive House, residence of LDS Church President Brigham Young who founded Salt Lake City; the Utah Governor’s Mansion; and many other impressive mansions, churches, and buildings. Tree lined, it was a pleasant drive with those ten-acre square blocks on the right and smaller blocks on the left between the alphabet streets of the northeast quarter.

  Two-thirds of the way along it, according to the map, I located South 1100 East and, making another right turn, followed it along until I reached the 700 block. There, in the area I had anticipated, close to both East High School—and the University of Utah, I had located on the map—was the address I had found linked to Mildred Scott’s name. I pulled up in front and sat looking at an ordinary sort of house with a walk that led up the center of the yard to a short flight of steps and a front door under a small roof that protected a narrow porch. There was a light behind thin curtains in a front window. Someone was at home.

  I got out, took Stretch on his leash, and went up the steps to ring the doorbell. Waiting for an answer, I could faintly hear some kind of classical music from inside. I didn’t hear anyone approach, but the door opened suddenly and a man about my age stood looking out at me. He reached to one side and turned on a porch light.
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  “Yes?”

  “Excuse me, please, but does a Mildred Scott live here?”

  He stared without answering for a long moment and a hint of a frown lowered his brows.

  “Who wants to know?” he asked.

  “My name is Maxie McNabb,” I told him and hastened on, as he raised a hand to the doorknob as if he meant to close it. “It’s a bit hard to explain, but I found her name and this address on a card and she may know and have corresponded with a friend of mine in Grand Junction.”

  “Damn,” he half-spit at me. “She’s dead, for God’s sake! Go away.”

  He stepped back and began to swing the door shut.

  “Please,” I said, reaching one hand to restrain it. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to upset you. My friend in Grand Junction has just died and I need some information. Please.”

  He hesitated, still scowling at me.

  “And who the hell are you?”

  Then Stretch worked his magic, stepping forward with tail wagging in such a friendly fashion he was impossible to ignore.

  “Hello, pup,” the man said, looking down, and smiled before he could help himself.

  As I said—irresistible.

  Still reluctant, he let me into the hallway—probably to avoid the curiosity of a neighbor, who had stepped onto her porch at hearing what must have sounded like an argument, reminding me of Doris, back in Grand Junction. Inside, with the door shut, he kept me standing in the hall and waited to hear what I wanted, still glancing down at Stretch, who exhibited his best behavior by sitting at his feet and not attempting to check out the living room.