 
### Long Road to California

### by

### Myanne Shelley

###

###

###

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Myanne Shelley at Smashwords

TITLE

Copyright © 2014 by Anne Shelley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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## Chapter 1

## Vera Mae Dreaming

Sleep was ever more elusive in Vera Mae's 88th year, but her dreams came bold and frequent, sometimes difficult to distinguish from reality. Though who could really judge. Reality meant long hours of stillness and quiet, aches down to her very bones, the high pitched complaints from her compatriots at the care facility and sarcastic murmurs from their underpaid caregivers. The dreams that overtook her as she hovered between sleep and awake – and maybe even between this world and the next – seemed quite as real.

Early morning, barely enough light to separate objects from shadows and nothing to show colors at all, Vera Mae found herself in bed, but in her childhood bed. The room narrow, her bed pushed up by that window that never shut all the way, the tight row of her siblings' beds along side her. The bed was small but so was she – her arms little twigs extending from her raggedy nightgown, its lacy sleeves torn from too many washings.

She was just a girl, twelve maybe, always skinny and all the more so back on the farm, during those hard years. It was the start of the dust storms. The strange stillness had woken her, the stillness before the winds howled. The family had barely cleaned up from the last one. They were still new, abnormal, and everybody thought then that each new storm would surely be the last.

Her older brothers, sprawled across their double bed, seemed to have a dozen lanky limbs between them. Nellie was there – little Nellie alive! Sleeping peacefully on her trundle, her small perfect fist curled in front of that dainty bow shaped mouth. Vera Mae stood above her, gazing down, willing herself to stay in this moment.

But when she lifted her eyes, the storm was rolling towards the window, faster than a steam train hurtling down a track. Faster than anything she had ever seen. The roiling dark mass extended to the sky; it reached the window and rattled it like death arriving. The window couldn't stop the dust, and Vera Mae felt it coming, covering her skin and burrowing deep into her lungs. She woke – really woke – coughing,

## Chapter 2

## Nina's Goodbye

##

I've called Vera Mae Byrnes my grandma for so long that sometimes it slips my mind that the relationship is only by marriage, that she's my husband Caleb's grandmother. I truly love her like my own.

Caleb and I leave on our journey tomorrow, and surely one of the down sides will be missing her while we're gone. We've set her up on Skype, and showed our favorite of the Fairhaven attendants how to log her on, how to check her email. This young woman, Maya, is a joy for Grandma Vera and us both, and it worries me that she'll find a better job, with higher pay and something close to the respect she deserves for her level of dedication.

Vera was up and dressed when we arrived at the start of visiting hours, and she willingly accompanied us to the small parlor to sit comfortably and admire what we could of the outside garden. This used to be one of several spots Vera would go on her own; lately she'll walk along with us, but she doesn't seem to leave her room much otherwise.

Walking is a chore for her. She's quiet about it, but you can tell. She takes the tiniest of steps, leaning heavily on her thick pronged cane, eyes downward and lips pursed in concentration. I know she likes it once we get there, and that's why I still push it. I fear most of her visitors – and she doesn't get that many either – just accept her passivity and let her stay put.

I've told her about our trip already. Of course she knows, she's been a gentle and non-judgmental witness to the financial struggles Caleb and I have had over the past couple years as well as my frustration with my professional work. She knows the myriad reasons, at least as much as I've spelled them out to her, starting foremost with her precious memory box, her "collection," as she calls it.

Still, it comforts me to lay it out, now that the plans are final. "We'll be gone for eight weeks altogether," I tell her. I send a look over at Caleb, sitting awkwardly on the old fashioned chair across from us, and he nods. "Our flight to Dallas is in the morning. We'll stay a few days with Dee, see Ginnie, and pull together all the things we need for the trip."

"Send my love," Vera says, her voice a slightly hoarse whisper. Ginnie is her firstborn daughter, Caleb's mom, and Dee is Caleb's older sister.

I pause to see if she wants to say anything more, and wonder if she's having trouble talking. Or more concerning, forming the right words. I have to tamp down my urge to put in a call to the doctor or check with the staff. They're going to have to sort this out themselves. That's what they're here for.

"Then we'll head out from Dallas and up to the Kansas line, see if we can find where the old farmstead was. We'll pick up the interstate that's replaced Route 66 at Amarillo," I continue brightly. "I expect we'll be stopping quite often of course, even if we can't find the exact spots. I have all the images from your collection scanned and on my laptop," I assure her.

I stop again, waiting, watching her until I catch a glimmer of a nod, a sense of understanding in her crystal blue eyes. Caleb glances up, wondering why I've stopped talking. His eyes are clear and bright like that too. Vera's shine from deep in their sockets, penetrating out from the broad thatch of wrinkles all around them.

"We'll be mostly camping. They have one of those rigs that fit on the back of a truck, you know, so it should be reasonably comfortable. Staying at places with a shower and finding wifi for the computer." I don't think she really gets how computers work, but I say that anyway. Just in case. "I'll send you lots of emails, and let you know when we can Skype. Once we're on the road, it's hard to tell how long we'll stay where. But we'll follow your route near as we can. We'll stay with a couple friends along the way, and splurge for a motel now and then. Some restaurant meals. Caleb will have his radio to keep up with his games."

Vera extends her hand toward me, or perhaps toward my camera bag. "You'll take the photographs," she whispers.

"Oh, dozens," I answer. "Hundreds. It doesn't matter on the digital camera, I'll keep shooting until I get just the right shot."

"You could get one now," Caleb says, straightening up on the little chair, eyes on Vera.

She nods, a sly smile easing across her face, sitting a tiny bit taller herself. I grab the Lumix, my basic camera, from my bag, and take a step back to frame her face and upper body, away from the light of the window. I see in her expression and posture the look of a woman who once turned heads. "Get in," I tell Caleb.

He's not crazy about being photographed, but he'll do it if Grandma Vera wants it. He leans down next to her so that their faces are level. Without being asked, he knows to turn towards the light from the window.

As I frame and focus, I'm pleased as always to see the genetic bond between them despite the generations that separate them. It's not even that many years – Vera Mae was only 22 when Ginnie was born, and Ginnie had Caleb at 21. Anyway, both are slender but sinewy and strong, with bright blue eyes and rosy skin that easily freckles. Caleb has worked to keep himself in shape for sports; he's loved everything about baseball apparently since birth. And while Vera has slowed down a lot, even now you can see her grit and determination to do whatever she sets her mind to. As a younger woman, she was quite physically active, raising four kids and growing a huge garden of food, harvesting and canning it all herself, plus taking on every imaginable do it yourself project.

In the pictures in her collection, she looks permanently in motion. Carrying her younger brother or cousins, hauling wood or laundry or just picked food, bounding to the top of some landmark for a look around, helping her brothers push the old jalopy.

How I wish she could come along with us. I grin to myself, imagining the looks we'd get dragging Grandma Vera up to the top of some boulder, trying to recreate a faded black and white snapshot taken with a brownie camera in the spring of 1937. Watching her sink back down on her chair, though, I can see it was a strain even to pose for these quick pictures. I'll put us in the re-creations, I tell myself, or passersby.

"Lucia?" Vera asks. "Still in school?"

"She's taking her regular classes, Grandma," Caleb answers. "Studying hard, as usual."

Lucia is our 19 year old daughter. "She's got a nice little place in Davis," I add. "Three roommates to keep her company, and we'll only be a cell phone call away." I keep my voice completely nonchalant, as I've tried to with Lucia this whole time.

Of course she'll be fine, she's been away at college for a year and a half already. She insisted on skipping tenth grade and going early. We've paid her portion of the rent up front. She has a job on the campus for spending money. Emergencies, she can call us. Or any time, as she already does. "I'm hoping she can come by and see you," I tell Vera. "She's planning to come down for a party next month, she'll stay over with her friends."

Vera nods. Her brows are knitted. I think it bothers her that we aren't taking Lucia with us, that our small family will be apart for so long. It's less than a normal semester at college, I'd like to point out. Lucia too has her reservations – but her angle is that the house will be occupied, unavailable to her.

Frankly, that's a huge plus for us, for our finances: we've been renting out our spare room above the garage through Airbnb, and a regular who'd been visiting the Cal campus arranged to rent the whole house for him and his wife for two months. He's a gem – he'll even oversee the regular room rentals for us as part of the deal. It will net us more than I'd make, staying home and working.

But all Lucia understood was that her childhood home would be off limits, and she was at first as indignant as if we had taken away her phone. We haven't shared all of our financial woes with the girl, but enough to make her see that bringing in this money was more important than the small inconvenience.

Enough with the worries, I tell myself again. It's only temporary. By the time we get back we should have more money in the bank than we started with, the job market will hopefully have loosened up a bit for Caleb, and his knee healed. Caleb is a landscape architect, wonderfully talented, but unfortunately his trade is in the high end sorts of jobs that have been sparse these past years. He had bad timing with joining and investing in the launch of a rather exclusive new firm just at the start of the big recession. It failed spectacularly, and Caleb, I think, feels his reputation has been tainted from his brief association.

I watch him chatting with Vera, wishing he could lose that tension in his posture, the way his shoulders look hunched and defensive even seated. For most of our years together, he's been the loose one, the funny one, the partner I look to for comic relief. The past couple years have been roughest on him. He's a bit anxious about the trip too, I suppose. In addition to the work and knee stuff. I know he's excited about the adventure, but it pains him that he has to sit out all season from his softball team, and that he can't follow every game of the Giants and A's.

But it's eight weeks. For God's sake, we'll be on the road for less time than Grandma Vera's family spent completing their journey west in the first place, our nominal reason for choosing this route and destination. Technically, we're delivering a used pick up truck from Dee and her husband to a second cousin in the valley who's buying it for use in the summer.

Really, my goal is my art. I want to create a then and now series of images of that capture the essence of that massive migration from the dust bowl era. Using Vera's collection as a start, we'll retrace her steps, try to find the places, sketch in some details about the people, who they were and where they went and who they are now. Caleb and the rest of them think it'll be a nice little thing for the family. I fantasize about skyrocketing sales and widespread recognition from publishing a gorgeous coffee table book.

Even small sales. Even a tiny bit of recognition. For too long now, years that have stretched to decades, I have set aside my photography, my original love. I've poured any creative energy into my job, into developing and keeping clientele, into raising Lucia. I extended my small innate talent for images, shapes and colors to build better web portals and branding for small businesses that I hardly care about. The occasional discounted nonprofit job to salve the guilt from my former activist self.

But so little time, so little energy left over for taking pictures, even as the digital technology has exploded. Even now when anyone with a smart phone snaps and posts pictures of their breakfasts online.

This is going to change, this I've promised myself. For all the downer news, the tough choices Caleb and I have made, I can at least get something out of this, the second year of our personal financial crisis. We sold our second car, cut off cable, stopped taking vacations that didn't include a foldout couch in somebody's house, dumped our share of the season Giants tickets. But I kept my cameras and my ibook.

Flipping it open now, I ask Vera if she'll take a last quick look at the digital images, just see if the basic order is right, if anything else jumps out at her from the somewhat grainy shots and faded images of news clippings, pamphlets, handbills.

"My eyes aren't what they were," she says sternly, but belies her words by firmly motioning me to hold the laptop right in front of her.

The very first image makes her laugh: a swirling out of focus shot of some kids, her cousins, dashing after chickens. This is back in southwestern Kansas, on their farm.

But she sobers as I click through the next set of photos. Her Uncle Stan took all these. He was, I understand, the driving force that got the whole family moving, the one with a tiny bit more means to support the group as they undertook on their journey. Vera's own family was terribly poor to start with, trying to farm in that barren dry land. They'd barely been scraping by before the dust storms hit. And then her little sister had gotten sick and died, further devastating the family. Uncle Stan had pushed both families along toward California, and the promise of a better life. And he had – how I wish I had known him, could thank him now – proudly documented the trip with his trusted camera.

Here they are all grouped by the two vehicles, the caravan, as Vera called it in her neat cursive note across the back of the photo. The men, Uncle Stan and Vera's father, stand tall and determined, arms propped along the open backs of their impossibly loaded cars. Vera's mother and aunt stand on either side of the men, the aunt with her youngest child on her hip. Vera and the other kids are arranged haphazardly in the car backs, looking as though the slightest bump in the road could tumble them out. It appears dangerous even to me, and I was raised in the era before rear seatbelts, when kids bounced around in the backs of station wagons and no one thought anything of it. Vera is 16 in this picture, but looks much younger. All children are scrawny. Her older brothers are tall but boyish, long awkward limbs hanging from too short sleeves. The cousins and her younger brother crowd together, hard to tell apart.

The cars look ancient, like something a museum would reject for being too implausible to possibly even have run. But the next pair of pictures show each car starting off, dust billowing behind and frantic hands waving out the sides. There are a couple shots of the farm too, depressing wide vistas of bare land with nothing growing. The dilapidated farmhouses – dusty and weather beaten, nothing you'd miss, I imagine.

I click through these faster; I don't think Vera likes to dwell on them. Quickly past what she calls campsites, which to me look like just dusty lots, no shade in site, but where they stopped a few days here and there. The roads were not freeways back then. Some were barely paved. The cars broke down, or the men got a couple days hard labor. In one shot, all the men and boys are hauling something – train trestles maybe? Vera can't remember, but identifies it as the place where they helped build a side of the road camp. They look fried from the sun, overheated and sweating, muscles straining, yet they all grin at the camera.

I watch her eyes for recognition, for reaction. She nods almost imperceptibly at a few images; others just make her look vacant or sad.

"Wait, that one," she says suddenly. "That belongs later. We didn't meet those fellows until we were almost to California." She's staring at the picture, leaning forward.

The image is of Vera's brothers and two rather brawny young men who are all leaning on shovels or rakes next to a ditch. One has a hat rakishly drooping past one eyebrow. "Who are they, Vera?" I ask. "You didn't have a note on that one."

"Reno. That's Reno." Her voice is hushed.

"But you were way south of Reno, do you mean Las Vegas?"

"No, dear, that's his name. Reno's in the hat. That's his younger brother Smitty. That's when we first met, it was just before we reached California. We needed to stop and fix the cars, get reconnoitered before we crossed the state line. They were there too, doing the same. Fine fellows."

"Do they turn up later? He doesn't look familiar."

"No, not in these pictures, I'm afraid. But we all were together in '38, a picking."

I wait for her to say more, but she's done. I jot a quick note about the names – we'll have to query further when we get to that point. The clippings and pamphlets aren't worth trying to have her look at – the print is small even for me. Vera looks tired, I realize. She's no longer focusing on the images as I scroll through them. Well, I'll be following up, shot by shot, as we go along.

I click to the end: the last image is a pdf of a jolly placemat with garish images of landmarks along Route 66, something clearly from later, probably the 1950s. Vera's eyes crinkle almost shut as she laughs her joyous laugh. "Oh, that, they sent me that, one of the cousins, much later," she says. "Oh my dears. It was nothing like that."

I start to close the laptop, but she reaches out a tentative arm to stop me. "Caleb, I wonder if you could find me a tissue?" she asks. The minute he's out of earshot, she says, "Let me see that one again. Reno and the boys."

Puzzled, I click back. "Oh, Nina," she whispers. "It hurts to see that, but I want to keep looking at it. That's all that's left, I'm afraid. I had my letters, but they're all gone now. I can't really say much about him, it's not right, not appropriate to the family, you see. But he was my first love."

Caleb returns and Vera turns away from the screen, towards him with a warm smile. She takes the tissue and dabs her eyes. Glances at me and shakes her head, obviously doesn't want to say more or to be asked more. At least not in front of Caleb. But how can I not follow up on this? Supposedly she married her first love, Caleb's grandfather, the long departed Grandpa Walt, in a quick blooming romance just before he shipped off in the army in World War II.

As we get ready to say goodbye, her words stay with me. It was nothing like that. But what was it really like, I wonder.

## Chapter 3

## Caleb in Texas

##

It's dinner time at my sister's house and I'm surrounded by women. Nothing new, I should be used to it by now – raised up by these two, my single mom and slightly older sister. Married for going on 20 years now to Nina, with her even longer. Only Lucia is missing from the picture, my little girl, the one of all these ladies who at least used to look up to me.

Dee's husband and kids missing from the scene too, I suppose. The kids, high schoolers, already off on some secretive pre-Friday night dance ritual. He works. Like all the time, kind of makes a point of how very engaged he is in commerce, how big an office he dwells in, how much attention he must devote there. Nina tells me I'm oversensitive, that he's not this way out of spite for my lack of gainful employment.

The dude has always been like that, I suppose. A bit of a blowhard. We can talk sports, he knows his stuff pretty well. The local teams at least. Never picks up a ball or glove himself though, I'm pretty sure. Does not set a foot in the kitchen until dinner is served. Dee says that's the way he was raised, that it's a Texas thing. She's become quite the expert on all things Texas over the years here. To hear her drawl, you'd figure she'd been born and raised here, not Visalia.

Mom doesn't seem to have caught the Texas bug, though she's been here going on ten years now. She and I bookend the broad kitchen table while Dee and Nina put the finishing touches on the food. I catch Nina giving me a look, like why don't you do something here, but we've been through this. We both know I can cook or lay out the dishes just fine at home. With Dee, though, my little boyhood brat tends to surface. I goad her without trying. And since we're guests in her house, better I follow the house rules: men, children and old people sit while the women work.

Mom, that would be the old person. Which is ridiculous, she's all of 66. I watch her taking furtive sips from her wine glass, looking if anything like a child who's being allowed to sit at the grown up table. But she's assigned herself to be a helpless old lady for some time now.

Gotta feel a little bad for Mom, really. She was a 1950s gal who sought nothing more than a traditional life. Went to college long enough to snag my dad, married and had us two by the time she was 21. But oops, it was the '60s, and Dad took off for peace and freedom and taste of the wider world. Mom took back her original name for us, and that was about the extent of her independence. She took her alimony and child support, and pretty much went from him to turning to little boy me for anything mannish around the house. Yeah, age like 9, I was wielding the tool set, getting phone instructions on the water heater from Dad.

She never remarried. When Dee hooked up with Harlen and moved here to the Lone Star state, Mom set her sights on moving in with her, I think. It took some years and they compromised on an adult only complex down the road, but you can see what she's angling for: she and Dee, companionable ladies sharing a kitchen, shopping together, being mistaken for sisters.

I should be more sympathetic to Dee. She's doing the lion's share of dealing with Mom, the emotional stuff. Yes, I moved her out, did the literal heavy lifting, bankrolled it back when I had money, but that was a long time ago. I watch Dee now, fussing over the food. She and Harlen are pretty much solid steak eaters, while Nina and I mostly avoid red meat. She's cooked a salmon, trying to balance out Harlen's love of everything charred and Nina's quiet but obvious urbane taste for things delicately seared and flavorful.

Dee really is starting to look like Mom, it occurs to me. And awfully middle aged, in a frowning, pastel suited way that neither me or Nina will ever have. I plan for us to go directly from jeans and tees and hiking boots to Grandma Vera's graceful wrinkles and teensy footfalls. Nina, aside from being the better cook not to mention technically older than Dee, defers to her, with a patience I rarely glimpse at home.

Nina is a couple years older than me, which bothers her, tickles Dee, and which I rarely even think about unless in this context. But Nina – it's a cliché, I know – seems ageless. I look at her and I just see her. The woman who came on so strong the moment we met, who seemed like a force of nature, a damned pretty one, even when all she was doing was interviewing me about my softball team.

She claims to have kept her professional demeanor during our first rambling talk, and even when I first asked her out. Yeah, professional, her working for this dinky outdoors mag that was half way to folding even in the late 1980s when people still read magazines. Doesn't matter. What matters is that I recognized something about her, the way you see the ball leaving the pitcher's hand that you know you'll hit out. Or the team that's going to take it all the way, something about how the players come together even at the start of the season. I recognize that stuff. That's how I saw her, pretty much from the start.

This trip we're making, it's her thing. Least I can do after managing to sink us so bad with my endlessly stupid decisions. Decision plural – not enough to quit my old job, I had to invest the remainder of our spare cash into my brilliant start up. With the late launch, that has us rolling out invitations to homeowners just as the foreclosure crisis went down.

Nina says she was a partner to the decisions, that it wasn't just me. But it was. I know that. Nina thinks I'm jonesing to spend these weeks cruising along the path that Grandma Vera and company took a zillion years ago to support her photography, and out of family interest and everything. Honestly, I'm mostly glad to be away from home for awhile. Not having to face cousins at family gatherings who snicker at the city boy and how he's fallen on his face. Not potentially meeting guys I steered into investing with me at the Berkeley Bowl.

Harlen's loud car sputters and dies in the driveway, and like Pavlov's dog, Dee pops open a beer for him. She offers me one too, and I take it, though it's some crappy light stuff.

In he strides from the garage, calling, "Hi kids!" to the assemblage. He reaches Dee, and swings her for a stagy smooch. "Delilah!

"Harley!" Dee practically swoons. I watch Mom and wonder if this makes her miss Dad. Or all the years when she might have had another man but had just us.

Nina brings out the food. Her expression is carefully neutral, non-judging. I used to wonder, sometimes, if she wished for more of that traditional romantic type stuff. She says not, and I'm inclined to believe her. In part from times like this, how she has to keep from meeting my eye, from mocking them.

"Caleb, you're over here by Mom," Dee instructs me.

I heave myself up. Wince as just a small piece of pain shoots up my leg, radiates out from my bum knee. Ease down by Mom and just the residual is left, the phantom pain from those few steps. When does it hurt, the docs ask, as though the fact that it doesn't always hurt means I'm mostly good, right? Sitting is fine, even light walking after the first several steps. But dare I try to do the things that are central to my life – running the bases, dodging backwards to field a ball, climbing around landscapes, squatting, carrying a load of soil? It's been excruciating. Not to mention any more younger sports like skiing, forget it.

It was already getting bad, losing cartilage, whatever. And then I injured it a few months ago. Kept off it while the tendons healed; tried to exercise in the pool at the gym and by hand weights. Didn't have to worry about my work suffering, because hey, what work. I've had cortisone shots and gotten a whole routine of stretches to do. A brace for being on my feet for longer periods. It's improving, slowly.

Mostly I try not to think about it. Even the shooting pain, it's just this thing that I notice and try to set aside, like unwanted chatter when you'd rather be alone.

Which is not the case now, I tell myself. I don't get to see this end of the family that often, it's a chance to catch up. That's certainly what Dee thinks. We got all caught up with them and their two earlier. Now, as usual, she wants to know the blow by blow of each of our dozens of cousins and second cousins in California. Mom has three younger brothers, all of whom have reproduced. And Grandma Vera's older brothers had five kids between them, Mom's cousins who are around her age or a bit younger. Most of them have kids, a sea of cousins and kids of cousins from tots to forty somethings, stretching down the central valley.

Fortunately Nina puts her encyclopedia-like mind to good use in memorizing key facts about each and every one. Personally, I feel like I'm doing well if I can connect the right names to faces and parents of the spawn at our regular family picnics. I mean it would be fine except that they keep changing – this one getting a job with an animal shelter, that one with a sudden interest in school sports, another out of the closet and proud. The younger ones growing tall and gangly, the teens turning into adults, hooking up and reeling more family in.

And what do they say about me, these quick capsule descriptions, I wonder. What did Dee and Harlen tell their friends about our visit – oh, our little charity case, my poor brother and his terrible investment. Calls himself a landscape architect; hasn't worked in a dog's age. We set him up delivering our old truck, just to give him something to do. Nina, the wife, got a mind of her own. Non-traditional. (This because she dares think for herself, have opinions.)

Make an effort, I tell myself. Throw in a couple stories I recall about the cousin who's at Cal, second string on the baseball team. Thanks to him I've had to add the Cal Bears and the Pac 12 standings to my line up, along with the Giants and As. And my own softball team, the Dead Gophers, which I'll be sitting out all season. Best can be done there is seeing if anyone remembers to post the scores on the league website.

Harlen counter brags about his son trying out for basketball. Mom randomly praises Dee and me both. We eat and chat. Nina wants to know everything Mom knows about the people who made the trip west from Kansas with Grandma Vera. And the people they met along the way; she found some strangers in one of the pictures and she's on a tear trying to work out who they are. Mom knows pretty much no more than we do, and says so.

I wonder how soon will be too early to push on into the family room, manipulate Harlen into showing off his big screen TV. At least if we catch a Ranger's game, we can see the scores. It's early in the season anyway. Teams just showing what they've got, like teenage kids, big but lots of growing still to do. I'd like to follow, but nothing critical is going on just yet.

To get the ball rolling, I help carry the dishes back, rinse them for the dishwasher. Nina slips in to help, but immediately corrals me into taking a quick walk around the neighborhood. The sun is setting, the light pretty. She gets antsy this time of day, wanting to capture a perfect moment, something lovely and fleeting. Regularly the resulting images don't live up to her expectations.

She's probably had a good dose of ladies talk from this afternoon too, while I was out getting the truck serviced and the camper set up. We have a list of approximately 500 more items to purchase tomorrow at Walmart. The store of choice in these parts, and also for the poor; we snicker about it, but we need the bargains. We can load up and be set for a couple weeks of eating and the whole trip's camping.

"We'll be back in twenty minutes," I promise Mom, who starts to fret like a momma duck when the brood splits up around her. "Nina wants to take pictures. I'm going to check out the yards."

That's a polite way of saying I can't believe what passes for landscaping around here. The climate is basically arid, so please explain why Dee's neighborhood is full of wide green lawns, clearly major jobs to keep watered and mowed. Expensive. Useless, too, you never see a kid playing catch out here. We're the only pedestrians in town. Not a native plant to be seen, though I'm hard pressed to think what might qualify.

I follow Nina. She follows her camera. "You're doing that face," she says, laughing.

"Look at this. They might as well stick in pink flamingos."

"Shh, they'll hear you." She moves down the sidewalk, head tilted, looking at the spindly trees and rejecting them.

"You know, if you've got the slightest little incline that passes for a hill around here, you might want to work with it. Just saying."

"Did you see the garden gnomes?" She points.

Yup, a neighbor has gnomes, and maybe a hobbit house for a mailbox. A flower bed that might have last been weeded when Bush was president. "This is painful. I want to give them a free consult just so I don't have to see this a second time."

"Well, get used to it," Nina says, snapping a shot of the biggest gnome. "It's only going to get more rustic from here."

## Chapter 4

## Vera Mae's Dreams

##

In her mind, the kids are still there, chattering away. Caleb with his eyes and smile, always with his mind half elsewhere, imagining prowess and glory on a distant ball field. Younger, she puts him in her mind's eye. Sound of limb. And Nina, so eager to please, so interested in Vera Mae's stories. Why not put Delilah here too, and her husband Harlen, bring them back from Texas. All the rest of the grandchildren, a wide circle of interested young faces.

Caleb and Nina have gone to catch their plane. They'll drive back, as though zipping down a highway in an enclosed pick up truck could be anything like the old days. At least they are trying to understand, she thinks. That's something. Eyes open, the small sterile room is a blur, devoid of friendly faces. Eyes closed, she brings them back. Puts herself at her house before they sold it, small but tidy. The bright kitchen overlooking the garden, such a wealth of food and flowers.

What the kids don't realize, Vera thinks to tell them – too late now – is that while they were poor back in the olden days, there were others so much poorer. They see the pictures, thin bodies and ragged clothes, junky old cars. They see Dorthea Lang's pictures – how these fascinate Nina, how she goes on about composition and artistry – and it's all grim poverty. But there were degrees.

Uncle Stan had a trade, his family lived in town, he did books for the other merchants. Of course he lost money in the crash, but he at least had money to lose. Only three kids. His house was solid, and paid off. Stan had a foresight that most didn't. When prices were dropping and farms were failing, even before the dust storms got so bad, he realized it would ripple across everybody else too. He read reports, he came to see that the newer farm techniques were bad for the land.

Others didn't see this. Or thought it was all temporary, as Vera Mae's own father had. A few years of drought, the dust storms, but it'd come back. Even when news reports said our Kansas dirt had flown all the way to Washington, D.C., Vera Mae's father prayed for one more year.

Much later, Vera Mae heard someone call Nellie's passing a blessing. Never, never, a girl just six years old gone so fast. Sick and wheezing and the awful morning when she didn't wake up. But that was what it took to loosen their father's grip on the failed farm. Stan saw that his trade was mostly gone, he knew people were going west, wanted to be part of it, those vast fertile acres. But he also wanted to look out for Vera Mae's mother, who was his sister. After they lost Nellie, she had nothing left to stay for.

Their caravan – how the kids' eyes widened in amazement, did those cars even run, Grandma? Their caravan was one of the better ones. Uncle Stan's Nash was a fine car. Old but running well, the new type of engine in it. And both her big brothers were mechanically minded. They knew how to keep both cars running, knew when to add the water and oil, how hard to turn the crank, what wires went where in case they came loose over those pocked bumpy roads.

Vera Mae's family had the big old Ford. Temperamental, was how they described it: she'd run, but on her own terms. It had a big enough back for all of them and all their load, that was the most important thing. Oh, but it was a bouncy ride. How she remembered that. Even now, if some oversized helper came and thumped down while she was in her bed, it carried her back, jouncing on top of the mattresses in that wide back.

The back was open, but they had strung up their camping tarps to keep off the sun. Didn't do much against the dirt raised from the roads though. Well, they couldn't go very fast either. Between the fidgety old engine and her ma worrying things would come untied, that they would shed their pots and pans and clothes all down the road – slow days, they were. Long and hot, dust and dirt for hours and hours, but slow going those weeks when they crossed. It was a treat, didn't all of them know it, to be invited to ride in the Nash for awhile.

Vera Mae sank a bit deeper. Her bed so soft that she could almost float above. Look down on the roads winding through the desert and up into the mountains. Away from the dust storms and into the crystal blue skies farther west. Did she tell them the about first layover in New Mexico? The pictures then? Nina thought they just happened upon paying work for all the boys. Oh no, that also set them apart. An old business friend of Uncle Stan's gave them the work, it was pre-set amongst them. He was building up a paid camping ground, making money from all those passing through, looking for a safe place by the road to spend a night. She'd not thought much about it then. The fairness and all, an added expense to those who might have fared as well just pulled by the side of the road.

They'd had canned food to bring along too. Her ma had salted up their last sow, there was meat to be had as well. Nothing fancy to look at now, but early on, Vera Mae recalled how they would stay in their tarp tents to eat. Embarrassed, you see, at this luxury, when nearby there were kids fed nothing but fried dough.

Even Uncle Stan with his camera. She recalled children staring, rushing to pose for him. Others looking sidelong, perhaps wondering what it could be sold for. He was careful. There wasn't much in the way of crime in those days, not like what happened here in Oakland on a given night. But desperate people did desperate things, they all knew that. They all were careful.

She slipped deeper still into her dream. The old Ford, but Caleb driving, Nina, Delilah, Harlen all waving... her brothers in the back seats. Everyone receding down a hot dusty road. Into their journey, long and hot, but necessary for their survival. Mostly difficult. Sometimes magical.

## Chapter 5

## Nina Getting Started

##

We make it about 20 miles from Dee's place before I can no longer contain myself. "It's so ugly here. Oh my God, what was I thinking?"

Caleb, to his credit, does no more than snicker. We both know of my tendencies for second guessing. He's driving, watching the road, paying attention to highway signs to put us on the right connector toward Amarillo. We're still in the outskirts of Fort Worth.

All I see are cars and trucks, quick exits, giant hideous billboards, dull flat land with tract houses and mini malls. After the syrupy slow days and big bland meals at Dee and Harlen's place, I was jazzed to get started. Now reality hits me. There's an unfamiliar bounce in the truck that's making my teeth rattle. It's noisier than our car, and uncomfortably warm even with the AC on. Midday sun pounds on the roof, and reflects blindingly from the metal surfaces all around us.

Distressingly long minutes pass. I click on the radio, am assaulted by a series of country music or fast talking Spanish language stations. Caleb veers suddenly over a lane, and I grit my teeth, try not to brace myself for impact. Another long entrance, and we're on highway 287. I relax my grip a bit. It's a long stretch from here until we make the turn off toward Kansas.

"Put in a CD," Caleb suggests. "We brought plenty."

I don't want to waste them all just yet. But he's right – there's nothing to see here, we haven't even reached the starting line yet. There won't be any ball games to pick up until into the afternoon if at all.

"Maybe grab us some trail mix while you're digging," he adds.

"We just ate."

"Yeah, but it wasn't..." he fades out.

It was a very bland omelet, crying out for veggies, herbs, or salsa. Our send off brunch, and neither of us wanted to insult Dee's cooking any more than we probably already had. "Your average migrant in the '30s would have been delighted with that meal," I mention. Trying to get my head in the game.

"Come on," he says, pawing at me while he drives one handed.

I twist back, straining against my seatbelt, and poke around in our neatly packed supplies, which we've set up for easy access. It's a lot of stuff for just the two of us, I can't help noting. Thinking of the, what, eleven people crowded into those old cars in the Byrnes crossing.

Another grueling set of miles, at the truck's top speed near 70, and we're past the heavier traffic. Just highway and ugly little stops off in the distance now. Flat, flat land, a little greenery but nothing you could call scenic.

I glance over at Caleb. Music, a couple bites of nuts and dried fruit, and he looks perfectly contented. Like we're doing what we set off to do, so all's right with the world.

I click up the AC another notch, and aim it toward me. Internally, I keep steaming. Maybe I wish I could be more that way, but that complacency of his can be annoying. The way he can just go into his head and be sitting there, but also a million miles away. How's it going to be, spending the next two months in this close proximity, I ask myself, and a tiny wave of panic flushes over me.

We're right next to each other, but he's so distant. We're like the old married people we thought we'd never become. The ones you see in restaurants who don't talk, who've got nothing to say and from their frowns, only negative things to think about each other. Lucia, always our link even in our bleakest times, is pissed at both of us. Mad about the house, bothered by Caleb's injury, by seeing her strong as a horse dad limping. Upset, and no doubt disillusioned that her parents have proved themselves so fallible with our poor money management and late career difficulties. It rankles both of us, I know, that our paid off house can earn more than we do.

A new looking Lexus shoots by us, doing 90 at least. Followed by a large SUV, running fast and smooth, leaving the pick up in the dust. Literally, I can see bits of it swirling behind them.

Think of Grandma Vera, I tell myself. All those people on the road back then, they were right out in the elements. They'd think this little truck was the lap of luxury. We don't have to go fast anyway. We want to experience the journey. Still, I also think of how they piled together, all pitching in. How it was all new to them, leaving their failed farm behind them and seeking out a better life. Vera, only a teenager, had such a spirit of adventure, you can just tell.

I wonder if any of them questioned their choices. Sure, they must have had some regrets and all, but did they hammer away at themselves, the way I'm doing, wondering if this was all a mistake? Should we just have stayed home, gotten paid work, gone to do my photography on the weekends? Gone to pretty places, with something actually to put in the pictures other than endless bland flat land? Been assured, at least, of tasty and nutritious meals? The Walmart had all manner of food, but I wonder if we'll see many fresh vegetables here on out.

Again, I steer myself back to the Byrnes's trip, Grandma Vera and her family, Uncle Stan's family. How happy they would have been at the sight of these neat bags and firm coolers packed with convenient to prepare foods. Maybe not gourmet stuff, but certainly sufficient.

Grandma Vera doesn't like to talk about it, but they were malnourished back then, it's pretty obvious. She said they didn't have much, but they had enough. But the evidence jumps out in the pictures, in their jutting bones, in their postures.

"How old was Grandma's younger brother when he died?" I ask Caleb.

He glances over, stops drumming the music's beat on the wheel for a moment. "I don't know, in his fifties? I was a kid, but I remember we went to a service for him. It was long before Grandpa Walt died, that wasn't until 1990," he adds.

"And Vera's father died pretty young too, right? It wasn't long after they settled in California."

"Yeah, that's a lot of why Grannie was such a trooper – she had to pitch right in and help the family from the time she was a teenager."

"They were malnourished. I mean badly, it's amazing Vera came through as well as she did."

"Yeah, her younger brother probably was, and her poor little sister that died. But the older brothers did okay."

"Well, they wouldn't have been so poor during their childhood, they were born in, what 1917 and 1919?

"I don't know. You have all this charted out somewhere, don't you?"

He's right, I do. The older brothers and Vera, born in 1921, got through their early years before the Depression kicked in. The boys later joined the army, fought in World War II, got veterans benefits and an education. Vera as a young woman found war work when the men were away. But the old and young didn't fare so well.

"She's the last one of her generation," I say out loud. Her older brothers lived into their late 70s at least, but even one of their sons has already passed away, a heart attack at 60.

"Don't get bummed out. She's had a good long life."

She surely did. Her spirit is something that captivated me from the start, something that motivates me to do well on this project. Lived through the Dust Bowl, migrated west, survived hardscrabble years, had a blossoming romance with a boy she had met along the way, cheerfully brought up four kids plus raised vegetables and chickens decades before it became a Bay Area trend. But Grandma Vera is so much more than the few sentences I might use to introduce her in the write up I'm already imagining accompanying my work.

The truck bounces along. I'm getting used to the rhythm, or so I tell myself. Caleb is right, Grandma Vera made the most of her years, 88 and still going. Despite the loss of her baby sister, and then her father, after the hard times and then faced with the second world war, she found work and friends and romance. And didn't dwell on the hard parts, just incorporated them. Told stories that made you laugh.

I'm brooding, just the same. Thinking no one would say anything along those lines about me.

"We're getting toward the turn off," Caleb says after awhile. Maybe noticing my silence. "We should get gas. Want to stop," he asks, "take some pictures? Just let me know."

The land is more bleak than ever. Caleb doesn't see it – he just suggests I pick up my camera because he knows it usually shakes me out of a mood. "Let's just get out and stretch. I can drive for awhile."

"There's a town of some sort where 83 turns off. Probably better gas prices there. Harlen's right, the mileage isn't bad on this thing." He fumbles at the radio. "Can you see if there's a day game on?"

The music has stopped. I didn't even notice, but I take out the CD, scan the stations. We pick up scratchy voices that sound like some kind of sports talk, and that satisfies him. I'm thinking about the turn off. It will add a couple hundred miles at least to drive up to the edge of Kansas and try to locate where the old family farm used to stand. Hours more of these dull unpleasant roads and vaguely uncomfortable jostling. And the farmstead is long gone, we know, all part of some gigantic corporate spread that took over that whole area.

"Do you really think we should go up there?" I ask. "I know we've got all this time, but we could spend more time where it's nicer. Take a side trip out of Santa Fe instead maybe."

"Well, we could," Caleb says. He's never very contradictory, he's good at seeing all sides. "But you're not going to find anything like the family farm near Santa Fe."

"Well, nor up there, necessarily. If it all looks like this, who cares?"

Caleb is quiet. I can't tell if he's contemplating our decision or if his attention has wandered to something they're babbling about on the radio. It bothers me sometimes, the way I can't tell. Other times, I just tell myself it's better when we still offer each other some bit of mystery after twenty years.

"I guess it would bother me, if I put something fake in there for the very first 'after' shot," I concede. "And we're so close. It would be hard to tell Vera we bypassed it."

"Anywhere near Santa Fe besides your friends' place would be expensive," he answers.

And there we are, back to our standard positions of the recent months. Me standing up for capital A Art, and Caleb stressed about money. All we need to do is start reminiscing about our beloved cats, the second of whom died last winter, to complete the circle. Make us both sad and start an argument about whether we can afford to get a new pair or just make do for awhile longer petting the neighbor's tabby that hangs out on our steps.

"Here's the turn. We need the gas in any case," Caleb says, slowing, aiming toward the exit and a big truck stop and gas station off to the right. He catches my eye as he turns the wheel. "Oh, man, are you thinking about Scout? Now?"

It makes me laugh, that Caleb can see that in my face, even when I'm sad from missing that sweet little kitty. "Yes. Sorry. I know, not the time and everything."

"Well, yeah, but it's always the time, Nina, come on. We both miss her. Gemmer too." Caleb pulls into the station. "Let's not pick one up on the trip though. That would be too much."

"Can you imagine Scout riding back there?" Our little cat was particular about sounds and smells and fixed routines, especially in her declining years.

The air is searing, outside of the truck's cab. Waves of heat rise from the asphalt, and the odor of fuel and exhaust is stifling. Caleb pops open the gas tank lid and fiddles with his credit card. I hurry toward the bathrooms and away from the sounds and smells.

It won't be this bad, just in a field somewhere, I tell myself. And I need to stand out there, feel the heat, smell the smells, in order to really capture the images. I need to actually go to the places to get the pictures, and to come anywhere near understanding their experience.

## Chapter 6

## Caleb on the Farm

##

It's only a couple days into our grand journey to follow Grandma Vera's migrant trail, and I'm wondering if we'll whip through it in a week and end up camping at the closest free BLM camp to home, waiting for our friend the professor to vacate the house and let us back into our lives.

We camped last night at a not unpleasant little lake at a small wildlife area. It was warm but not too hot, pleasant rolling out the air mattresses in just the basic tent frame. Not many bugs. After the long day's drive I could have seen fit to stay there a day or two, but Nina was anxious to get an early start. Barely let me drink the cheap coffee we brewed (or more accurately heated up on the camp stove). Another concession to our need for caffeine but at a bargain price; no Starbucks for us on this trip, assuming they even have them out here in the hinterlands.

We've been swapping out driving, so it hasn't been too bad. Not much to see out here, for sure though. Nina's mentioned that any number of times, and it makes me wonder just what she expected. Was she so enamoured with the facial expressions and contrasts of black and white in Uncle Stan's photos that she missed how the first bunch were taken in the middle of nowhere?

She's at the wheel as we cross into the Oklahoma panhandle. It's pretty damn bleak, I can't deny it. Nothing much growing. Not many cars. Oil thingees off in the distance. This is technically a highway, but it's narrow, not well traveled. But it's not far across. Into Kansas, we basically take a left at the town of Liberal. That name's been cracking us up with every highway sign.

A quiet half hour or so passes. One of her folksy singers croons on the CD. Blame Sally blaming somebody. We've brought a wide range of music to suit both our tastes and the times of day, Beatles and Ramones, Talking Heads and Indigo Girls. Quiet tunes for the morning; I'm not much listening anyway, thinking instead about the scores and stats from the news report we heard earlier. Thinking it's way too early in the season to be thinking post-season, but mapping out the division leader match ups anyway. Always enjoyed the near limitless potential of a baseball season. So many variables and so many possible outcomes. One little ninth inning hit or injury or new guy off the bench can ripple out so far.

Nina slows carefully just past the Kansas border, and turns the music volume down even further. The outskirts of town are right here. She's got a city person's paranoia about small town cops. Or maybe an occasional pot smoking Bay Area liberal's fear.

"We're white people in a pick up with Texas plates," I remind her. "They'll be throwing out the welcome mat."

"It's not much of a town, is it. Can you tell where the turn off is?"

We pull up behind an ancient looking sedan, an old man barely visible behind the wheel. A couple trucks rattle towards us; otherwise the town seems pretty much asleep midmorning.

I glance at the little unit Dee left plugged in for us. "GPS says it's D Street." The highway becomes the main road. Stocky little houses appear alongside it. A lone dog on a long leash eyes the truck but doesn't even bark, as if that would be too much trouble. "There's gas," I point out. We've been stopping every hundred fifty, two hundred miles. Getting gas when we see it. Nina scoped out that we wouldn't run out this way, even out here away from the bigger towns.

Not much selection – we fill up, use the bathroom, stretch. Nina wants to do some yoga or pilates, but restrains herself. Even her toe touches have garnered attention from the guy behind the counter of the dinky little store. He sits up a bit from his slouch, watching us, raising a lazy hand toward the driver of a car that eases by out front.

He's friendly enough when I go inside to pay, greeting me with a slow, flat, southern drawl. I restrain myself from buying anything, and the dude seems satisfied with my purchase of half a tank. We had an adequate breakfast of fruit and Walmart breakfast bars earlier. Lunch will be out of the cooler, in theory at the old farmstead. Ice cream bars at 11 am are an added expense and empty calories that we just don't do anymore. Being on the road makes me want one though.

I take the wheel when we get back into the truck. We don't even have to exchange words about it – I know she'll want to be able to take pictures as we approach the farm. Or whatever's left of it. Nina scrabbles around in the bags. She's got her everyday camera up front already, ready for anything, but she's pulling out the fancy one, and her tripod. She's been careful to pack it out of sight – it was expensive, even buying it refurbished, and she'd be devastated to have it stolen or broken.

Car break ins seem not to be a thing out here, though, it's a far cry from Oakland. This little town is pretty much the sort of place where people leave the keys in the car, even leave the engine running while they do their errands, and no one blinks. There's hardly anyone even here to blink.

I find the street that heads west, and turn. "She thought it was about 20 miles from here," Nina says. "Check the odometer."

I do, but I wonder whether Grandma really has a clue, if she's remembering something she was told 60 years ago. We roll slowly out of town. It's warm again. I guess I should just assume it's warm here every day, although Dee told us we might see thunderstorms.

There's one big old house with a nice garden out front. Many others of the more run down variety. Then quickly we're back to the wide open fields. Grasses off to the side, lining the little two lane road. Beyond, dry looking fields of something stubby. It's early May, maybe they just planted? I can't think what kind of crops they would grow here. Supposedly they raise cattle around here too, but I don's see any. "What is that, you think?" I ask.

Nina looks up, distracted from fiddling with her lenses. "I don't know. Hay?"

"They just grow, like, hay?" It seems weird. But she could be right.

"For the livestock to eat, sure. How far?"

It's been three miles. We go on like that, watching the miles slowly pass, looking for changes in the landscape. Or anything that could show where the old house might have been, and the yard and barn and their vegetable garden that supposedly kept them all from starving until it got too dry too. There's one dusty old road, fenced off, a long flat track that disappears into the distance of the low planted hay or whatever it is. No buildings or remains of buildings.

The truck bounces along. I crack a window for a sec, and hot dry dusty air blows in. Next to me, Nina is tracking the view out the other side, and it's no different. "Bleak," she says. "I can't imagine them growing much here."

"Well, I guess they didn't," I point out.

"But for awhile they did. People came here for the chance to own their own piece of farmland. Vera's parents did that, they came to make a life for themselves out here. They managed to keep it going for twenty years, right?"

I nod. I know the story. So did all kinds of poverty stricken people from the eastern US and from the British Isles like my great grandparents. And not long after they all took up their farms, cultivation technology changed. People went from simple plowing with horses along the contours of their land, to tractors that tore up the topsoil. Got it all loose plus ripped out all the native grasses that helped hold it down. Everybody planting wheat or cotton because there was money to be made, except for when there wasn't. Pile on a drought, which until faced with it, people had pretty much denied could happen, evidence of prior such conditions ignored or forgotten. Pile on the Great Depression.

I back myself out of my head, out of my sudden vivid imaginings of the arid land around me swirling with dust. We've gone 19 miles. I slow.

"What, do you see something?" Nina asks.

"We're coming up on twenty miles." The landscape shows no changes; we could be in a video game with an endless loop of dull dry grass on either side of a dull flat road. Twenty one miles pass, twenty two. "Say if I should pull over."

Nina shakes her head. "Not yet. She said the house was up top of a slope. It might be farther along – look for a hill."

I start to laugh – I don't think there's such a thing in the whole state. But she's serious. I speed up a little, to 45 or so, and squint into the horizon. We pass a few little bushes, and the next set of stubby grass looks to be maybe a different color than the last. The sky stretches pale but bright ahead, heat waves shimmering off the pavement in the distance.

"There, look," Nina says, pointing out her side.

We both see it – another of those tiny side roads and what could, comparatively, be called a hill. A slight rise off to the right, beyond the little road. Nothing much planted, just dirt and more of this scrubby grass.

"This must be it," she exclaims. "Damn, there's a gate."

I ease the truck onto the dirt track just in front of the gate, then edge past. It doesn't seem likely I'll be blocking anybody, this is just from habit, I guess. "Even if this isn't it, it can be, you know? This is what it must have been like." I get out, and feel the dry wind.

Nina's in full photographer mode, strapping on her good camera and shouldering the lens bag, tripod, case.

"You see any shade? You still want to eat out here, or should we look for something more, um," I struggle for a the right word. "Or we could eat in the truck with the AC."

"I might be awhile," she says. "And I'm kind of hungry."

I bow to the inevitable. Heat and discomfort be damned, we've finally reached the starting point. I burrow around in the coolers for cold water and the sandwiches we made. And the last of the cookies Dee packed for us.

Nina's already scouted out a break in the fence a little way along, and forged through the short rough grass to the track on the other side. I stuff the food in the mini cooler, grab a blanket, and follow. Grudgingly around the fence as my bum knee prevents me from just hopping over, my natural first impulse. She's at least kind enough not to make a point of this, that she's found a flat path, that I shouldn't climb fences.

Leg's not that stiff from sitting at least. The truck has a high front seat, lots of room to move my left leg around, stretch it out. While Nina strides off along the little road, I stretch a bit, then tag along. Keeping an eye out for where we might sit and eat, I spot another, bigger mound of scrubby bushes that at least offer a bit of shade. Set down the blanket and cooler, take a long cool drink of water.

Out here, cold water refreshes in a way you forget in your day to day life, I realize. Even the sandwich seems extra tasty. Think of being out here all day in an open back car that does 45 tops, no AC, no cooler or ice. No cookies. No GPS, not sure of where or if you'll manage to find a safe place to spend the night. Makes a too warm picnic with lousy scenery seem not so bad, I've got to admit.

Nina's pushing through dried grass around the highest part of the little mound, looking for signs of the old house, I guess. "See it?" I call over.

"Nothing." She comes back long enough to scarf down half her sandwich, but her eye is focussed back on the mound. "That first shot, the kids and the chickens?" she says, still half chewing. "Wasn't it a flat surface right in front of a barn?"

I don't remember. It doesn't matter now, I mean there's no barn, no chickens, no kids. No farm either, no one family's land, no proud owners.

Nina edges back, tripod tucked under her arm. "I guess this will just be the lack of anything that used to be here in that first picture," she says, echoing my thoughts. "It will show the stark contrast at least."

I finish my food, leisurely. Click on my phone. Don't really expect to see bars, am not surprised there's no coverage. I read over some stuff I'd already downloaded. Hope no disaster has befallen Lucia, or rather assume she'll have the good sense to call Dee or Nina's sister or the parents of a friend. I mean if she needs adult input. Which remains pretty unlikely.

I glance up at Nina, who's now splayed out by her lowered tripod, trying for some funky angle, I guess, for the "after" shots bereft of kids and animals. Nina says I forget about our daughter when she's not around. Or the cats, back before they met their demise. I'll admit to having a fairly strong out of sight, out of mind tendency. But that's healthy, I think. She obsesses, sometimes, about things we haven't the slightest control over. Lucia's doings among her obsessions, I'd have to say.

I'm not worried about Grandma Vera in our absence either. I mean not any more than I'd worry that something might happen to an 88 year old lady. But checking in – I don't see the Skyping working much out here. Who knows if she'll see Nina's emails. But we'll be back soon enough, right? I put away the phone, bored, a bit overheated. Nina must be roasting, but when she's deep in, she goes to a place where she kind of leaves her body behind.

Watching her so involved in her task, and thinking about going back, both make me think about the jobs I don't have. The networking I'll need to take up, the excuses or whatever that need to be made, the groveling before I can line up some serious jobs. Downer stuff, stuff we're here to get away from, I tell myself. Instead, I mosey back farther along the track, see if I can spot signs of the old barn or anything. The grass is taller, waving languid in the breeze. It's very still. Quiet, no cars or birds, no electrical humming or planes overhead. But as far as the old barn, there's nothing that I can see. As if it was never here.

Not much farther down the road we've been driving, there's the Cimarron National Grasslands. We're due to take a look – this is a wide area where they restored the native grasses, brought the landscape back to how it's supposed to be, how it was before all the white folks showed up and scraped it bare.

But what did they know, right? Your individual farmer or Scottish immigrant dreaming of being a farmer, they don't see themselves as part of a massive trend. They were just people trying to provide for their families, trying to live off the land. I can't feel much anger toward choices my great grandparents might have made here.

If anything, I feel gratitude. Amazement. All the miles they traveled, to reach this dried out patch of Kansas, and then the guts it took to admit they'd lost their battle with this land. To pick up and drive the family another 1,200 miles, start life over again. Give Grandma Vera and her brothers a shot at achieving a middle class life, and all that and more for Mom, for Dee and me.

I stretch my arms up toward the sky for a moment, and spin slowly, 360 degrees. That life they had here is so thoroughly gone, there's not a fence post, not even a foundation of a house to be seen.

Nina wants to show the before and after, and to sketch in the details of who took the trip, where they all ended up after. Being here at the starting gate, it hits me in a way it hasn't before, the sacrifices made. How very far the Granger and Byrnes families have come.

I head back toward the car, to see if she's gotten the shots she needs. Know already the next "after" shot will have to be set up with the tripod – just her and me waving out of our loaded down car. Our lives half over already, our route fully mapped out. Such a pale contrast to that picture with all those excited kids.

## Chapter 7

## Vera Mae's Dreams

##

The rest home goes eerily quiet in the early afternoons. Ladies in wheelchairs are helped onto their raised beds for their naps. The staff take breaks, ducking outside for cigarettes or cell phone calls. More able people, like Vera, are free to roam, but there's no place to go. Careful as she is, she has come to fear falling going anywhere alone. She can see, in the faces, the frail bodies all around her, that a fall would mean the end of any sort of mobility, of independence. The end of the end.

She rests in her comfortable sloped back chair, the one brought from home, facing out toward the sunny back window. Her vision is poor, but she sees the green of trees, and some bright reds that might be fuchsia or hummingbird sage. Eyes half shut, she lets her mind fill in the rest of the scene. The details of the delicate leaves, the subtle shifts in color of the newer buds, the dappling of sun and shade below the broad leaves of the poplars above.

Her view broadens. As if she could float above, she steers herself out and away, to the old house. To her garden. The last one, the most magnificent one from when she had all her long free days to cultivate and nurture. That lush and fruitful garden grew for almost thirty years at that house. The smaller house and bigger yard, that they bought towards Walt's retirement, after the children were grown. She and Walt together had leveled the yard, built the terracing to keep it from eroding down the hillside, and put up the light mesh coverage to keep out deer. A happy time in their last years together, working quietly side by side. The children out in the world, involved in their busy lives, Walt still working weekdays, Vera happiest outside. Tending the chickens, growing vegetables. Though she didn't appreciate it at the time, just being so comfortably alive in her aging but not yet old body.

Gardens have always meant security to Vera. They had eaten fresh vegetables even as times got hard back on the farm. Later, in California, her mother always sought out a dwelling place that had a patch of dirt nearby, someplace where she could eke out a few greens. Even when they were all stacked like wood in a tiny shack, even when the jobs were gone, the family's money tighter than tight.

All those grandchildren, how they delighted in the garden. Awed as tikes by the sight of fresh food poking out of the ground. Later, what a kick they got of seeing the old Grannie digging in the dirt. Sure enough, they like to nibble on a fresh strawberry, or discuss the best variety of tomato for their salads. Heirlooms, fashionable foods. They smiled to see their grandmother happy outside gardening. They didn't really understand it the way Vera did though, she was sure. They didn't see the security it offered. From childhood, a garden was how she knew she could eat.

But Vera's mind drifts away from the hard times, from the bad years when it seemed like nothing would grow. In her mind's eye she sees the family on the road, at the start, headed away from the drought and toward their new life. How tiny glimmers of joy began to emerge from all that sorrow. Losing Nellie. Losing the farm.

At the start of the trip, they told and retold the stories they had heard of the glorious orchards to be found in California. Oranges growing at the side of the road, there for the picking. Cherries, peaches, grapes, rolling hills of fruit for as far as the eye could see. Cotton fields. Plenty of water, no dust storms. Jobs for all the men. Uncle Stan may have foreseen the soon obvious problem of supply and demand with so many families heading west, but even he assumed it was just a matter of driving farther along, continuing past the first wave of migrants.

But bouncing along those roads – or better at the day's end, when the bouncing stopped – how they would distract themselves, motivate themselves, with that talk. Night times, groups of people who had just met each other would build up a campfire, gather and sing together. Swap their stories of the places they had been, the poor life they were leaving, and of the eden to which they were surely headed. Every one of them, Vera thought, had such ambition.

It makes her sad again, to think of all the ways they had been wrong. She wants no such thoughts in her happy garden. Instead she pictures little Frisky, the cousins' tan and white terrier, romping around, a circle of eager children there to play with him. Vera Mae partly watches, and partly is there herself, giggling as a girl. He was a good dog, happier, they all said, to stay with Uncle Stan's friends at the new campground than to keep traveling with them in the cars.

They were right, the little dog probably would have starved or run off during the many moves in that first long winter. How the children had cried to part with him, though, she recalled. Times were different. It wasn't like later, when people treated their pets like pampered children. Family had needed to put their own children first. Times were hard. Just remember the sweet pup. The lush flowers.

Vera squirms on her chair, rising back out of her half awake vision. Too many sweet things are laced with sorrow, she thinks. So many happy times meshed far too closely with the anguish of a loss. The dog, the dog gone. Reno, of course. That dear laughing boy. Everything he had awakened in her, everything they had meant to each other. How when they worked side by side, even at the most menial tasks, time flew, and they delighted each other.

Sinking back, she sighs aloud. Closes her eyes, wills him back. Reno, as in that picture on the computer, her young handsome man. Her barely grown boy really. Herself a still growing girl. The whispers they would exchange at the end of each row – he picking so fast, but still managing to catch her every few turns. Planning to sneak away together later, the exhaustion of those grueling days somehow departing their tired bodies at each tremulous touch.

It's fuzzy, nearly dark. She puts her hands out searching for him, feeling him nearby, her happy anticipation like a friend she's following. But Vera can't keep herself here. A few moments pass, and she's sitting at a long ago dinner table, the family eating, the meal interrupted. The evening that was warm suddenly gone bone chilling cold, for their brother's friend has come with the news: Reno and Smitty, both brothers were in an accident at the cannery where they'd been working. Smitty laid up, badly hurt, Reno dead. Killed instantly. A week ago, but they're just getting word. Vera Mae sinks in her chair, the room spinning. She has not gotten a letter from him in at least ten days. They've been writing to each other, waiting until he has money saved... her brothers know, and Jed, sitting closest, catches her arm. Steadies her before she collapses and leads her out of the room to be alone with her grief.

How they run along together like train tracks, these paths of pleasure and loss. She surely wouldn't have given up their time together, in order to avoid the sorrow of losing him. "I'll find you, Vera Mae, or you'll find me. We'll find each other again." Those were the last words she heard spoken from him, all those years ago, before he left for the coast. His voice comes whispering them again before she drops off into deeper sleep.

## Chapter 8

## Nina's Marriage

##

We pull over for a break at an exit not far past the New Mexico border, and it hits me. I haven't thought of home, or Lucia or work or money, all day. I have no idea what time it is, except that I'm hungry and it's been awhile since we broke camp at the Buffalo Lake refuge. We spent, what, three days there? They're running together. In a good way. No buffalo to be seen, but at least a pleasant campground. A lake, fishing for Caleb. Plenty of places where I could imagine campsites of old and sweet images of families kicking back, for the modern updates. Side trips to hunt for the actual locations, hours to edit and perfect my updated shots.

But time is flowing past, unnoticed, in the way it did in childhood. You just look up and the day is over, and you've been thinking of nothing beyond what's right here and now. No worries about all that external stuff, just making sure we're fed when we're hungry and have a place to rest when we're tired. No fear of the phone ringing with bad news – there's not much reception here anyway. Lucia's been checking in by text, brief silly stuff, but reassuring. And it's been six, no, seven years since my mom died, nine for my dad. We just saw Caleb's mom and she's as ever. His dad presumably just fine too; Caleb being a child of divorce doesn't have the sort of ties and responsibilities toward his father that I once did.

Anyway, a fine morning easing into afternoon, and I'm feeling at ease with myself, with my husband, with my camera, in a way that's pleasant and rare. I've taken so many shots that both batteries are low. We need to stop at a coffee shop, linger at a place where I can plug in for a bit. So far people have been completely fine about that.

Caleb's driving, and with a quick raised eyebrow, he passes the pair of generic looking restaurants right at the highway. We've found the better places, the more authentic ones, farther along in the little towns. Funny, kitchy stuff, and it's hard not to laugh, but then I feel like such a snob. These are real places, real people's lives.

Yes, we've been by a couple old style diners that were purposely done up, exaggerated to look like the stereotype of what anyone might expect in west Texas along old Route 66. And yes, I've had a small field day shooting the vintage fixed up cars, the garish neon signs. But I'm damned if I'll chuckle at the slow drawl of a cheerful waitress, who calls Caleb hon and graciously points me toward an outlet to recharge my batteries. In fact, we've been chatting these local people up. Caleb, though he denies it, can still charm the ladies.

A couple days ago, we talked with an old man who was parked in a rocker next to a little gas station along a road signed as formerly 66, and he was amazing. Said he had been born in Texas and only set foot elsewhere to go fight the Nazis in France. Clearly a peer of Grandma Vera's, age wise. Said he could remember the caravans of migrant cars passing on the old route like it was yesterday. Actually, as Caleb later pointed out, he claimed to recall everything he told us as if it was yesterday, and it's quite possible he was making it all up. Just keeping us there for awhile for company.

But I jotted down a couple of the phrases he used anyway, wishing I could transcribe it in that slow and smiling twang he had, drawing each word into the maximum possible number of syllables. I got some good photos of him. Sitting in his chair and then standing firm, brushing aside Caleb's offer of a hand or his nearby cane. His eyes small but sharp, his clothes hanging on his lean lanky body, arms folded firmly across his chest. The gentle breeze rustling the faded khaki and lifting the flaps of paper in the store window behind him, decades old advertising, also lose and faded.

I'm not sure quite where he'll fit in, but he's surely another sort of "after" image. The people who witnessed it all but stayed put, who didn't follow. It strikes me that I should pick up a tape recorder, try to get more from these stories when I'm putting the thing together.

"We can ask around about the old campground. Get a real lunch." Caleb says. "This okay?" He pulls in front of a small diner with a wide awning and a tiny side lot full of cars. A cardboard sign in the window proclaims HomeMade PIE.

"Yeah. It's got all the cars in town, looks like." Hardly any cars are parked on the street.

Caleb pulls up so that the truck's cab is partly shaded under a windswept tree. I look for any signs that limit parking, but there are none. That's weird for us, still, being used to the standard Bay Area battles to find a legal space.

He gets out and stands by the truck, doing that little stretch, wince, stretch thing he does with his leg. I don't think he's even aware of it, but I can see the traces of pain on his face. Not sure from the actual pain or what it represents, the softball and so on that he's missing.

"Wait," I tell him, pulling out my Lumix. "Can you stand by the pie sign?"

He complies. He knows I'll just keep finding different ways to ask him until he does. I cross into the street, looking for traffic though there's none. But I want to capture the popularity of this tiny café in this tiny town. The idea that still, people crowd together to get the good stuff.

It's still flat and rural looking, just like where we've been. The license plates are all New Mexico though. The cars older, weather beaten. Nothing fancy in the little lot; each car is carefully slotted into its small space and I assume this is the politeness of people who are well acquainted. That dry wind blows. There are trees, clearly planted and tended by the town, struggling up at regular intervals, leaves tattered by the breezes. The other stores, a tiny grocery and drug store, a clothing shop, look unoccupied. There's another shut up restaurant that must only open at night, and a bank branch with one lonely ATM.

I edge back to get all this in view, focussing on the doorway and window where Caleb is patiently standing. Crossing back, I catch and quietly capture an elderly couple, the man graciously helping the lady into their large sedan although he looks none to steady on his feet either. Married for what, I wonder, 60 years? More people who saw the caravans but didn't follow?

We head in, and one of those classically cheery waitresses instructs us to sit wherever we'd like. She's clearing crumbs from a cushy red booth by the front window, and we slide in across from each other. I spy an outlet, but wait until I can at least ask her to use it. No one's in a hurry here. It's past normal lunch hour, but half a dozen couples or little groups of friends are lingering over mostly eaten plates. It smells good in here, like fresh fried foods and something sweeter, waffles and syrup maybe. A thin, grizzled guy in an apron circulates, refilling coffee cups, and he pours one for each of us.

"Is that fresh, Henry?" the brassy waitress calls. "These folks are visitors."

"Course it's fresh, what do you think?" he harrumphs back. "It's fine," he assures us. "Milk and sugar right there on the table. They're plenty fresh too."

Several regulars snicker at this exchange, but in a friendly way. "Don't worry, they're long married," says the woman at the table closest to me.

"That's okay, so are we," I tell her, eliciting an unintended laugh. I'm a bit self conscious about my accent or lack thereof. In case there was any question from a hundred little things about our appearance, as soon as we speak it screams that we're not from around here.

We get set up with menus, the batteries plugged in, soon an order working for heaping sandwiches at – by Bay Area standards – crazy low prices. We must have pie, the waitress instructs us. Caleb grins. He's been eyeing the one on display at the counter already; now we have no choice.

I just smile back. We're doing okay as far as food expenses. The camping has been mostly free and we're cooking simple stuff over the camp stove at night. Lunches like this are cool. Some pie, why not. I promise to find a place to role out my mat later, do a serious workout.

The group next to us leaves, calling out several goodbyes, followed by another older couple who have been scrutinizing us from across the room. Henry – who's apparently the cook and busser, probably dishwasher and maybe owner too – clears and quickly resets the tables. Our waitress tends the whole floor, runs the cash register, and I'm guessing bakes the pies.

She lays down our plates with a flourish, and Caleb and I dig in. The food is pretty tasty, and best if I not think about how much butter, mayo and salt is involved. Outside, a big truck rumbles by, rattling the windows.

"Walmart," Caleb says, indicating the name on the truck. "Even out here."

There's probably a big one at the nearest bigger town. Putting the remaining little shops like those around here out of business. Nobody wants to hear about it though. Good chance our lunch ingredients came from there.

"So y'all visiting near here? Or just on your way somewheres?" The waitress eases into a chair across from us. "Don't mind if I rest my feet for a bit."

"Kind of both," I tell her, happy for this opening. Briefly, I explain our mission – Caleb's grandmother's Dust Bowl migration, the cherished photos she inherited, my photography.

She listens with flattering interest. Could be she's just enjoying resting for a few minutes, not being the one to keep cheerful conversations flowing over her domain. But the other customers are mostly listening in at this point too. We're a real diversion.

"We're actually looking for an old camping area from that era," Caleb interjects. "Her uncle and brothers helped this guy build it. We don't know exactly where it was, and I'm sure it's long gone, but they set it up not far past the New Mexico border for people making that trip along Route 66."

That starts a discussion amongst the whole crowd. One guy thinks he remembers hearing about this, not here but another ten or so miles farther along. His dining companion says it's now a big truck stop. But another man pauses on his way out to say that the truck stop is at least 20 miles along, and that old camp was probably closer and just abandoned, gone back to nature. Henry puts in that his grandparents may have stayed at the roadside camp – they had made a similar migration and then turned around and come back, settled somewhat north of here in the town of Logan. We ask further about that – we've seen a lake and a campground up there on the map, and they assure us it's a fine place.

We'll have to just keep an eye out, I guess. It's harder on the interstate – we can't just slow down to look for a flat abandoned ground that may have some old railroad ties as a foundation. Maybe the truck stop makes sense to photograph, even if it's not at the exact location.

Caleb orders pie for both of us, his with ice cream.

"Now it was your grandmother that built this place?" our waitress asks me, setting down our plates.

"His grandmother's uncle and father and brothers," I explain. "They knew the man who had staked out the place. And they all needed the work, jobs like that were scarce."

"Don't I know." She swipes another table then eases back into a chair. "Henry and I'd be unemployable if not for this place."

Caleb's eyes meet mine for a second. I'm sure he's thinking about the word unemployable and his situation. And wishing me not to discuss it with strangers. "It was a special place for his grandma too, because she met his grandfather there," I tell her. "She was just a teenager and they got to know each other as friends. But then they met up again a few years later and fell in love. Had those shared memories of all working together back here."

"Oh my. What were their last names, Henry, do you think your pop would recognize them?"

"Doubt it." Henry's cleaning in the back, but listening too.

"They were the Grangers, And he was Walter Byrnes. I guess he was traveling with some friends, I don't have their names, but he knew the campground guy. They were all from the same part of southern Kansas."

"Oh, that's sweet. Went west together. A long marriage?"

"Pretty long. Until he died. She's 88 now, been widowed for awhile. I wish we knew the name of the man who owned the campground," I add. "She just refers to him as Uncle Stan's friend, which really isn't much help now. She can't remember it."

"Yeah, her memory kind of shaky on some of the details," Caleb says. "Other stuff, she remembers just fine. Could tell you all about the dog they left there."

"Oh, we love dogs. I'd never forget a dog's name. That's our fellows there," the waitress says, pointing to a collage of snapshots next to her register. Out of focus, but cute brindle mutts.

"Tell her the story, Caleb," I urge him. I'm brought back to our dating days. I don't know how it came up, but he mentioned Grandma Vera's long lost dog one of the first times we went out.

Caleb looks embarrassed at my enthusiasm and the waitress's eager expression. "Well, the two families were traveling, and Uncle Stan's family had this dog named Frisky. A little terrier, a bundle of energy, hence the name. And once they were on the road and saw how long it would take, and the kinds of places they would have to stay—"

"And when they realized they'd have trouble getting work, that they'd have to keep packing up and moving," I add.

"Right, plus I think they were worried about could they even afford to feed the dog, I mean they were really running low on money. Anyway, they gave the dog to the man who was running the campground. There was lots of room for him to run around, he could help guard the place, they could afford to feed him. But all the kids were really upset, Grandma Vera too." Caleb pauses, taking in everybody's sad expressions, even Henry, who's pretending to sweep but leaning toward us from the kitchen. "Then like three years pass. The man's son, who's in his twenties by now, married, brings the dog on a trip out to California. Goes to visit Stan's family, who's settled in a house. Vera and her brothers were living nearby, and they all got together for a grand reunion. Stan's kids were almost teenagers by then, everybody waiting on the porch. They open the car door and that dog goes flying across the lawn in a frenzy. Like he's been saving up all his tail wagging and licks for his original family this whole time. They thought sure he would have forgotten them, but he hadn't, not at all. Grandma Vera used to say that after that, she knew what happiness looked like. Her, the dog, all of them, despite everything they'd been through."

"Oh, that's sweet, brings a tear to my eye," she says.

I nod. "I knew I'd have to keep seeing him when I heard that story, so I could hear Grandma Vera tell it herself." We both laugh.

Caleb excuses himself for the restroom.

The waitress leans towards me. "He's a keeper, that one," she says, voice low. "You chose well." She winks as she picks up our pie plates. Leans close to her Henry as she passes them to the sink.

Watching them, I can see a close couple. Kind of opposites, each with their role in the partnership. I wonder what she sees in us. Funny that she says I chose well, as if she figured out just from observing us that it was me who thought longest about it, who gave the final okay.

I just wasn't sure Caleb was serious, all those years back. He seemed so young. He was young, even younger than me, and I was young too, only 25 when we first met. We moved in together after a year or so mostly because we were spending so much time together it was dumb to keep renting out two places. But it still seemed casual, to me anyway. If I'm really honest, I'll admit I thought he was a bit of a lightweight as far as intellect or ambition. I'd been surrounded by people who took themselves mighty seriously, thought highly of their degrees, their career paths. While Caleb was cheerful about being outside a lot as a landscape architect. And loving baseball, his whole zen of the game thing, which I still don't totally get and didn't then at all. But his smarts don't advertise themselves. And his ambitions, in retrospect, were more reasonable than the high ideals of those long gone colleagues.

He sits back down across from me, amiable as ever. Now, the whole relationship, the little accident that became Lucia, the marriage, it seems inevitable. Hard to imagine any other life for either of us. I glance over at Henry, manning a steamy hose over the back sink, and wonder what those two talk about at night. Or that old couple in the parking lot. Do they still surprise each other now and then?

I unplug and repack my camera equipment. We pay, leave a good tip, and decide to head up to that lake for the night. Caleb thinks he can get good radio reception, catch the Giants playing in Arizona. I've got to sit down and delete the bad shots. I'll use the evening light for camp side images up there, and we'll find whatever we can of the original abandoned site before the sun gets too high in the morning.

He stays at the wheel. I gaze out the window, mind still on the people we've just been talking to. Wondering where they live, how they live. Remembering Caleb in his twenties, both of us, how we just kind of landed in our situation. Found ourselves there and kept moving along, hardly noticing time pass until years and years had gone by.

I don't think of us as having had a grand romance, ala Grandma Vera, meeting up with her old friend and soon swept off her feet for a hasty wartime marriage. But maybe we did, in our way. I remember interviewing Caleb for my soon to fold enviro mag. The issue was a local park; he played ball there, represented his softball team. I remember how we clicked, how fast the interview went, how I kept forgetting to ask questions when he asked things about me. And then later, how we talked on those first times together – that was the romance for me, I guess. The physical attraction presented itself pretty clearly too, even if I first saw it as a fling.

Even these past few years, the stupid money stuff, I haven't regretted my choice. Choosing him. Wish I could have known to avoid the multiple hits that led to our catastrophe, of course. Spiraling college costs, the loan we made to my sister when her husband left and left her his debts, the size of the investment in Caleb's start up. But when I look around at other people's lives – people we've met, or people we're learning more about, like Vera – our problems kind of shrink in perspective.

It's not far at all to the lake. There's a state park, a small self serve campground, a couple tents, no people in sight. Pretty place, still high desert, and at last I can see actual mountains off on the horizon towards Santa Fe. Caleb unloads the tent and we set up the frame with practiced ease. Unroll and inflate the cushy air mattresses, set out the stove, fill up water bottles.

"We'll need a food stop pretty soon," I say.

"Santa Fe," he says. "Santa Fe Walmart." Laughing. "Pick up some good energy there too."

He mocks it, but I'm looking forward to finding a nice farmers market, organic foods, doing Pilates without people staring. I've got friends up there too, a couple who met in college and stayed together. Fun people, and talk about long married.

I check my phone, which is miraculously getting service. Lucia's sent a couple goofy texts, which I answer in kind. It's warm up here, but the dry kind, and we've gotten used to it. I rub on some sunscreen and hand it to Caleb.

We decide to walk by the lake before the game starts, and it's nice, I think, that after the rest of the day together it's still a pleasant prospect to wander around together. Quiet, outside, no agenda. Well, that's Caleb's ideal situation anytime. Me, one I've had to learn to appreciate.

Back at the camp, Caleb gets out his solar radio. I check my phone again. "I'm going to call Vera's room. See if she can tell us anything more about the camp. It's earlier in the afternoon there, right?"

Several patient rings, and Vera's hesitant voice comes on the line. I speak slow and loud so she knows it's me, and when I hear that recognition in her voice, bring her up to date on our progress. Ask about her day, which always seems a funny question when there really isn't much going on with her day to day anymore. But I think she appreciates the idea that somebody cares to ask.

Not surprisingly, she can't recall any more than she's already told us about the campground they built. She wasn't paying attention to its exact location or to the last names of adult friends of her uncle. Her world back then, like any teenager's, was focussed on her own family, other kids, how to make her hair and clothes look decent under those conditions.

"Well, can you tell me about meeting Walt?" I ask her. "He was already there, right? Did you first spot him looking all strong and manly at the construction site?"

That just gets a laugh. "I'm afraid I never could pinpoint when I met him," she says. "Walt said he remembered seeing us arrive. Was concerned if the boys would shorten the job. Noticed me amongst the children, thought that gal would grow up to be pretty or some such thing."

"Well, you were just a kid then. It was later when you saw him in a more romantic way, right?"

There's a long silence, and I wonder if she's set the phone down or is dozing off.

"Nina," she says sharply. "I have to tell you that it wasn't that way, really. Now that you're back there, seeing the things I saw." She pauses. "Is Caleb there with you?"

"He's down at the lake, listening to the game." I stand, edging away from our camp chairs, just making out his silhouette by the lake. The sun streams across, still too high for decent photography yet.

"Well, I've been thinking about it, dear," she says. "I've decided it's all right for him to know too, for both of you to know about Reno."

Good thing, I think, since I've already been nagging him about who the heck was this guy. "That you met him, that you, um, liked him before you married Walt?" I ask, trying to come up with delicate phrasing.

"That I did," she says firmly. "He was a fine fellow, such a fine fellow, I can hardly explain. We – we just had a magic thing. Like they say in the movies, as though music followed us when we spent time together. We met at a stopover by the river just before the California border. All the fellows did some hauling there. We caught each other's eye, yes indeed. Now I don't mean anything untoward, mind you. He became a friend to my brothers too. We agreed to look for each other again farther along, farther north. He was the one who knew the name of that large berry farm where we spent a good long time, three seasons of 1938 it was. And then the cotton farm." She stops. Tired out from talking? Remembering?

"Where you all had jobs," I prod her. "Even you and your little brother were picking because the wages were so low. And your father had passed away by then."

"Yes. You see, by then we were already making plans for our future, Reno and I. Not in public yet, neither of us felt I could leave my family until we were more set, had some money saved to start out. But my brothers knew he was sweet on me. Walt knew, he was a friend to all of us too."

"So, why, um...?"

I hear her take a huge breath, a long sigh. "Well, Reno and Smitty, that was his brother, had gone to work in a cannery at the coast. Higher wages, you see. But more dangerous work. And we found out there was an accident. Word made it back to us that Smitty was hurt, that Reno had died. It was a dreadful thing, you can imagine."

"Oh, Vera, that's terrible." I've been casting an eye around, looking for places to shoot later, but her words pull me back.

Her voice halting, she continues, "We all hoped that Smitty at least would come back, or get in touch somehow before we had to move on. I couldn't have traveled all that way for the burial, anyway I'd not even gotten word until a week later. But winter was coming, we were out of work again. We couldn't stay in the town where we'd been. My brothers and I went to the city, to Oakland, where there were starting to be more jobs. Our mother soon followed. So we just lost track of him."

"They couldn't forward mail or leave word with someone?" It's hard to imagine such a thing in a world where anyone can find anyone with a few clicks, even people you'd rather forget.

"I sent a letter of sympathy to him, of course, but it came back. I suppose we just thought he would show up, find us. I was just so numb, dear. I don't know what I was thinking, just that my boy was gone. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other."

"But, then what about Walt?"

I hear her sigh again. "Oh, he'd bumped into my brothers in town. He'd heard the sad news same as we had. He was going through hard times too, lost both his parents that year. When we met later in the city, it was a relief, for both of us, to be around someone familiar. Someone you could sit with, be blue together." Her voice perks up. "When Pearl Harbor came, and the war, he signed up right away. We decided to marry before he left. He wasn't so sure he would be coming back. He wanted someone waiting for him, though, and it felt right to me. Understand me, Nina, I grew to love him very much."

"Of course," I assure her, though my head's spinning a bit.

"We had four fine children. All of our grandchildren, many happy days. We pulled ourselves out of those hard times together and managed a very satisfactory life together." There are noises on the phone, other voices. "I hope I haven't said too much. But I'm old. Maybe I need to tell more of my story. That much of it, anyway."

I thank her, unsure what else I can say, and she says needs to get off the phone. The aide Maya comes on the phone briefly, assures me things are fine but they're taking Vera down for a routine check up.

I sit back in my little chair, still a bit mind boggled from Grandma Vera's story. Wondering if there's more, from the way she ended it. I stifle my impulse to run and tell it all to Caleb. He's content down there. Will it bother him, I wonder? I don't have a parallel to compare – I never knew my grandparents, and certainly didn't know of their courtship stories. She did love her husband, she said, and they had a "satisfactory" life.

A few decades go by, and that seems okay, I suppose. I envision Caleb and my time together telescoping out into the future. Grown children of Lucia's telling the story of their grandparents. They wouldn't care that each of us had a few partners before we found each other – they'd just want to know that we did well together.

A shiver passes through me, though the air is still warm. Moments like this are part of the trip, I tell myself. Much as we learn about Vera and the old days, we're also looking big picture at ourselves, looking at our own lives.

## Chapter 9

## Caleb at the Game

##

It's been a nice enough couple weeks up in the Santa Fe environs, kind of a vacation from the vacation, but I'm actually glad to get back on the road. Back to the journey, to Grannie V's path, to our search for authenticity and Nina's documentation of it.

Not so much authentic up in Taos, in my opinion. Kind of everything I'd imagined and less. Pretty, yes. Stunning scenery in every direction, though I'll admit to preferring plants over rock formations. Hills covered with wild natives over boutiques selling crystals.

But we got some chill time, for sure. Took it easy in a campground that was more like a resort (priced like one too, unfortunately). Saw the tourist sites, had some more than decent meals. And stayed a few nights with old college friends of Nina's, who were laid back and didn't mind that we spread and cleaned out our gear all over their yard. Got caught up on laundry, stocked up, slept in a comfortable bed. Honestly, I've gotten used to the tent; the only time I haven't slept well was during a couple rainy nights when we bunked in the shell on the truck.

Insomnia's not much of a thing for me, though, not the way it is sometimes with Nina. I can put myself into another realm pretty quick just by outlining stuff in my head. Landscape designs, for instance, when I'm starting a job or just have seen a place that needs it. Or play possibilities, mapping out game strategies for my team, be it the local guys or the Giants coming down the wire toward the playoffs.

This morning, we're both well rested. The truck filled, oil checked, cooler stocked, and just a short hop to Albuquerque. Grandma Vera had several pictures in her collection from there, where they took a break on their journey. Car trouble, I think, not the hedonistic couple weeks we just spent. But Nina's hoping to find some of the spots. There are landmarks, it's an actual city, so we won't be just pecking around the sides of the road.

She's driving. Glancing over, I can see her posture is relaxed, hands loose on the wheel. We're on an interstate, but there's little real traffic. Midday, midweek, just people with time on their hands out here, like us. It's nice to see her not so worried. She can get a little wound up, like did we remember to pack this or that item, do we have sun block, will our sucky insurance cover it if I re-injure myself, and so on.

In Taos, they'd say she's becoming one with the journey. She shoots me a quick look. "What time is your game?"

"Not 'til three," I answer, thinking so much for her not worrying. "Plenty of time."

"I'd like to look around at one of these reservations," she says. "Just for my own interest."

"Sure." I don't share her fascination in native culture so much, but I do find the southwestern tribes' architecture interesting. The cultivation techniques. The map shows us coming up on tribal land, but I doubt we'll see much of historical interest. The landscape's got that arid, rocky look off the side of the highway. Hues of tan, orange, brown, like a distant Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

I'm looking forward to some green, as in a green field for baseball. In Albuquerque, the Isotopes, the local farm team of the Dodgers, are playing the D-back's team, the Reno Aces. We can catch the last pair of games of their series, and I guess I can embarrass us routing for the away team. Like any good Giants fan, of course, I can't stand the Dodgers. Supposedly the new stadium here, that they share with the University of New Mexico's Lobos, is pretty awesome. Plus, AAA tickets come cheap and plentiful, unlike those for our boys in orange.

Nina flips the turn signal, and its slow clacking accompanies her leisurely slide toward a distant exit. A faded, aging sign points us toward the San Felipe Reservation. Pueblo ahead.

"If this is all roadside stands with beads and feather cap schlock, let's give it a pass," I suggest.

"Let's give it a chance," Nina says. The truck bounces over the pocked road, which is paved, but barely. Then after a few minutes, "Can you imagine the whole trip on this kind of road? God, the older people must have been aching."

"Not to mention one of the cars being open to the road. Breathing in all the dirt. The heat." We've talked about this several times already. But it does pretty much blow my mind that Grandma Vera's entire family with all their possessions made the trip in those conditions. No wonder she's tough as old shoes despite her petite demeanor.

Nina finds a place to pull over, parking near a ramshackle collection of out buildings and junked old cars. We get out, stretch our legs. A bit too early for lunch, although that's immediately where my mind goes. Good thing; there's a little stand selling stuff that looks near inedible.

We get a couple looks from people, a couple friendly nods. We're approximately as exotic on an Indian reservation as we were in rural Texas, when you think about it. There's a not very native looking shack serving as a tiny museum, and a little trail stretching up and over a small hill. Without discussion, we start to climb it. Nina draws out her smaller camera and holds it like a talisman, practically sniffing around for a good shot.

I don't see much to photograph, really. There are distant mountains, but the hills right here are flat, stunted, pale. The sky looks barely blue, and cloudless, and even I can tell the light is too bright overhead. She kneels down for a moment, studying a spindly little succulent of some sort, poking its way up between the smooth rocks beside our trail.

One shot, sure to be deleted. If something really captures her imagination, she'll take a dozen, minimum. Lucia will back me up on that, even if Nina denies it.

"Of course the cars were a lot slower," she comments, back on the subject of what an arduous trip the original one must have been. "But they hardly had shocks, did they? They'd feel every bump."

"Let's look for a museum with old cars. In a ghost town maybe. Be cool to actually take a ride in one."

She frowns, understandably skeptical that there are actually Fords and Nashes from the 1930s available for joy rides. "It's so dry out here. You know, that drought in the 1930s lasted for years." She scuffs a sneaker along the dried dirt path and an ashy fine puff of dust lifts and settles.

"They gave the homesteaders bigger plots of land in the plains," I tell her. I've been reading up on the history of the Dust Bowl. "Early in the century. Because they knew it was marginal. But there was a wet period and they thought it would be permanent, that the farming affected the climate. 'Rain follows the plow' is what they told people coming from Europe."

We're circling back already. It's not much of a trail. Nina wants to look at all the little knickknacks they've got on display in the museum. I give it a glance then go back out to the truck. Happy to pull out a folding chair, sit in a shady spot, read over some more of the stuff I downloaded.

Interesting to learn that World War I and even the Russian Revolution were involved, combining to bring up agriculture prices, which in turn drove farmers to increase production. Areas in the plains states devoted to farming were doubling and tripling over 1920s. And the farmers were deep plowing in flat rows, even burning away the deep rooted native grasses that kept the soil in place. Cotton farmers left their fields bare in the winter, and burned stubble to control weeds.

So when the weather pattern normal to a semiarid region reasserted itself in the form of a drought, there was nothing to hold the soil in place. The dirt dried to dust and the normal winds lifted and swept it away. Dust clouds reached all the way to east coast cities. In the midst of the storms, you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. Day turned to night. It coated everything. People even died from it, they called it dust pneumonia.

That's clearly what happened to Grandma Vera's little sister. I can remember from being a kid, hearing her and Grandpa Walt, whose parents had died fairly young, talk so matter of factly about these deaths. I remember kind of looking around at my cousins, wondering if one of us would tragically die, like her beloved little Nellie. Because of the way they talked, as if that sort of thing was normal, acceptable – and I guess to them, it was.

When Lucia was little, when she'd get a virus and her fever would spike, I had a small sense of that anxiety, I suppose. She always bounced back, but still, I can recall, almost taste it, the gut wrenching fear that comes with trying to help your sick child. And those poor folks, dozens, hundreds of families, they just had to accept that fate, the death of a child. Or parents passing at age 50. It's not something I particularly like to think about, but it's hard to deny. There are spirits like that trailing near every extended family in central California that was once called "Okie." Different story but same result, I suppose, for the families of hardscrabble immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Nina returns empty handed except for her ever present camera, and I'm glad for the interruption. I don't want to dwell on the sadness, any more than my grandparents did. We climb back into the truck, and return along that rough bumpy road.

Although according to what Grandma Vera's recently been telling Nina, it's just dumb luck that Grandpa Walt even became my grandfather. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I'm not entirely sure Grannie V is thinking too clearly these days. I mean how good is her memory anymore? She can't tell us the names of any of the aides except for her favored Maya. She'll forget who's visited her, or think it's been weeks since she's seen someone when it's actually been days. And now suddenly there's this other dude, who conveniently disappeared and who showed up in just one picture of her extensive collection?

Nina thinks it's a fine romantic story though. She wants to track down the guy's brother, the one who technically could still be alive, when we get back to California. Although he'd be almost as old as Grandma, which is to say no spring chicken himself. Oh, and last name of Smith. That'll be a cinch to find.

We drive along for awhile, before pulling off at a monument of some sort to fix a picnic lunch from our fresh supplies. Nina checks her notes while I finish eating and then clean up. She says we should get a campsite at the riverside park which is right nearby, and then go straight to the UNM campus, where we can pick up game tickets and hunt down the first of her landmarks.

My mind is wandering a bit as we do one, then the other. I drive, she navigates, chooses the campsite, then chatters about the changes in scenery as she guides us to a parking area near the campus. We're back on track – the campus sits right at old Route 66. We pack as though for a days long journey, she with her tripod and better camera, me with seat cushions, water bottles, snacks for the game. Bummed, but resigned to it, I snap on my leg brace, assuming we'll be on our feet for awhile.

The sky that was pale north of here seems brighter blue, and the air fresher. All the grass and trees, I'm thinking. The campus is lush compared to where we've been. Laid out nicely, lots students striding around as though in a campus brochure, clean cut and respectful. What I imagine – hope – it's like for Lucia at Davis.

Nina's already found a campus map and located the ticket office, while I'm still checking out the landscaping. It's really nice, there's a subtle curving of the lawn near the pathways that keeps kids from cutting across. Good mix of native plants and showier stuff. Many blooms, and I'd bet they're timed to be coming up one after another.

She wants us to head for Schole Hall, where Vera and company posed for pictures. "This was where Vera was up on top of an archway or something. And where they had all the kids in order of height. I wonder if we could ask some students to pose?" She's a woman on a mission now.

Wandering, we find the area, and she checks out every angle. Then she gets the tripod set up to her liking. Her inner reporter returns, that fast snappy attitude that I enjoyed from the start, and she flags down a pair of coeds to see if they'll pose for her.

Then she wants a group, with different heights, and I'm assigned a spot at the end, filling in for Vera's oldest and tallest brother. She'll be in Vera's spot. The girls, who are game and apparently not in any hurry to get to class, text a couple friends, and we flag down a random guy to stand between me and Nina. She trots to the camera to start the timer and hurries back, all of us grinning at the blinking red light.

I can't imagine doing something like this with passing strangers when I was in college, but I suppose these kids take each other's pictures all the time. I'm like the only one around who's fine with an older phone, who doesn't need to record and post my every movement. The girls laugh and flirt with the guys as they wander off, waving off Nina's thanks with an all purpose "no problem."

We spot the entranceway to the hall, the stone work where Vera perched for that one shot. Tall trees beside it, that were tiny trees back in the original shot. Nina will let me click the button, but she still needs to set up the shot.

"I should have brought a skirt," she exclaims. "Vera's picture was borderline racy, you remember? You can see how she would have caught that guy's eye." She steps back from her tripod, at last satisfied.

"You look fine. Almost as youthful." Well that's an exaggeration, but she does get a young energy about her when she's transfixed with her work like this.

Nina scoffs at that. "I bet she didn't need a hand up like I do. Can you?"

I help boost her onto the thick ledge, thinking it's a good thing I don't have to climb up there too with my bum knee. There's a big gnarled tree rising above us, partly shading the lawn and entrance to the hall. Nina leans back into a swath of sunlight and hooks hands around one knee, as Vera had done. She looks fetching enough that way; sorry, but I can't really think of my grandma in those terms.

We spend awhile longer poking round the campus. Nina looking for her shots, me looking around at the layout but basically getting bored. It reminds me of my long days at home, unemployed – thinking I should work on something but not quite able to get a start. About the time my knee starts screaming at me, it's time for the game.

Now I'm psyched. The stadium is cool – well scaled, feels intimate but also big league. Just walking in tells a story of good times already had, wins, narrow losses, the camaraderie of fans of all ages. Good number of fans are on hand as we climb up to our seats, more making their leisurely ascent as the rowdy announcer calls out what will be the first of probably many whimsical contests. I just breathe it in. It's hard to explain – there's something about even arriving at a game that does it for me, relaxes and rejuvenates me like nothing else.

Nina's still distracted, poking around in our bag, getting comfortable on her cushion, looking around for interesting people to shoot. I just tune it all out. I'm focused on the players as they take the field. The optimism that ignites every one of them here at the start. For me, a game is like a little life cycle: born anew, hopeful, fresh, then growing strong, usually a plateau in its middle. Then it stays as is and fades away, or suddenly shifts, fortunes won or lost. Sometimes every play builds on the prior play, anticipation builds, streaks are born. Or one lucky hit or muffed play can change everyone's luck. One late at bat can bring a dozen possibilities, from strike three and inning over to a grand slam. One guy can be the hero, or lose it spectacularly. At the start, you just don't know.

The anthem, caps off, rough looking players lined up below mouthing the words. We're close enough to hear the umpire yell, "Play ball!" I scan the big screen for players names that I recognize. A lot of these are young guys, just brought up to triple A. Big dudes with baby faces, putting on attitude but probably scared and excited inside, gulping air before they're up to bat, afraid of choking.

Playing in college, I was like that. I had a whole routine to go through, to drown out the specter of the crowd and focus on the game. Otherwise it was overwhelming, all the noise and eyes on me. Even now, just watching, I vicariously feel a bit of the thrill as the first batter faces down his first pitch. Hell, I get pretty pumped even for our softball games; I'm known for taking a wild hack at the first pitch I see.

A couple times my dad showed up to watch me play, back in college I mean. Talk about pressure. Baseball was something, one of few things, I shared with my dad. Something easy and neutral we could talk about, something where I felt like even if he hadn't cared much to stick around and see me grow up, a thing he respected about me. Nina has theories about this, that it's daddy issues to explain why I am quote obsessed with the game. I don't think it's anything that complicated, though. Baseball is like life for me; of course I'm interested in life.

Nina, over the years, has at least come to appreciate the game. She knows the rules, although it's kind of out of sight out of mind for her as far as being able to recall key plays or players of games we've seen. I may not remember all the second cousins' birthdays, but I can certainly tell you who made the winning run in every critical game I've seen. She suggests that this is irrelevant information, about as much as I'd say so about all the cousins. I glance over at her. She's not paying much attention yet, still frowning over her camera and looking around for good camera angles. I wish she could just ease into the game, let it wash over her. Regularly she'll spend more of an experience trying to photograph it than actually being part of it.

The Aces go down in order. May be a quick game, which I suppose will be a good thing for my knee, which has swelled a bit and still aches from the climb up here. I attempt to work it loose, trying to avoid kicking the guy in front of me.

Below, I can see into the visitor's dugout. The coach, fast talking, assuring the players they have time, friendly slaps as they take the field. I watch the assistant ambling back from first. He's got a slight limp, just a small hitch in his step that makes him look off balance. Squinting for his name, I recognize it – the dude was a decent triple A player in Fresno a decade or so back. Probably never going to be quite good enough for the big leagues, never going to pull down a huge salary. But then he got injured and couldn't play at all.

I watch him down by the dugout. Standing there at the rail, I can see that he's getting a pot belly, though he can't be more than 35. Jeez, whatever potential he had, now he looks like he barely exercises. Can't be earning much as an assistant. I cringe, I can't help it, comparing myself to him. My original potential as a player all the more worse and now my aching swollen knee. My early potential in design, my later reality.

And yet, the guy looks like he couldn't be happier. We both track a well hit ball that sails into left. The fielder flies across and makes a snappy leaping catch. I grin, try to high five Nina. The assistant looks about to pop his front buttons in pride for his guy. Isotopes fans around us, at least those paying attention, groan.

I have to admit some respect for the coach. I mean he could have just complained, felt sorry for himself and his career ending injury. Slunk away. But he took control of what he still had, made a place for himself doing what he clearly loves. What more can you really ask, right? There's another fly ball, another quick out.

And another little ding in my brain, that I should take some notice – I too can still control some pieces of my life. Maybe it takes this much distance to figure that out. But when we get back, yeah, I can still do as much as I can of what I love to do too. I can get back in the saddle, hustle up some jobs. Adjust my aging body to the work. Weekends, play first base instead of outfield, take a pinch runner until I'm better healed. But still play.

The Aces are back up, and I tune out the rest of my thoughts, tune in, zen like, to the ups and downs of the rest of the game. It ends in a satisfying 2 zip win for the Aces.

Back at our camp, I can't believe the day has gone so fast. We keep our dinner simple. A couple post game beers are still cold in the cooler. Friendly neighbors nearby clue us in about sights to see, and the best campgrounds nearby, including some freebies, always good.

After awhile, Nina gets out her phone to check messages. Shows me a photo Lucia sent her, she and her friend dressed up for their party. I check my phone, and see Luce has left me a voice message. (She knows I'm not a texter.)

"She wants me to call her," I tell Nina. "Did she say anything else to you?"

"Nothing," Nina says, frowning.

I click Lucia's number. Like most kids, she can be counted on to have her phone on her, to take an incoming call regardless of whatever else she has going on. "Hey, Dad," her voice now greets me. "Took you long enough. I called, like, yesterday."

"Everything okay?" I ask her calmly. She has been known to check in with me rather than with Nina over small problems, attempting to save her mother the extra worry. Tends to backfire though, since Nina can pretty much sniff out anything going on with either Lucia or me.

"I'm fine, don't worry," Lucia says, and her chipper, carefree tone backs her up. "But it's about Grandma Vera. Hang on a sec." I can hear her background noises diminishing. "I went and saw her, like Mom told me to. But she was kind of riled up. Like she was glad to see me and asked how is school, but basically she was really worried about you guys. And I told her you were fine, that we'd been checking in and everything."

"Okay." I offer a slight shrug to Nina, who's hovering. I put the phone so we can both hear.

"Well, she's worried about this information she told you guys, which it seemed like she didn't want to tell me. But she said it was weighing on her, that Grandpa Walt had confessed something to her. That he found out and at first didn't tell her but then he did. And she didn't tell you and Mom but now she's worried that you guys should know it: that they mixed up which brother died. Does that make any sense to you?"

"What?" Nina literally grabs the phone from my hand. "Honey, Vera said it was the brother who died? Reno who lived?"

I'm still processing what she's talking about, as Nina quizzes Lucia about Grandma's exact words. When I get the phone back, Luce is laughing, saying watch out, Mom's on a tear. She herself has to go, message delivered and now back to her studies, or so I'd like to think. But before she clicks off, she tells me she believes what Grandma said. She's taken Psychology classes, and she assures me that even if Vera's short term memory is a bit fuzzy, the long term stuff is probably sharp. I'm not sure I want to admit it, but she makes a good point.

Nina, as predicted, is brimming with energy. Already on her phone, tracking down Grandma Vera herself, almost beside herself to get the story in its excruciating detail. She's gesturing, exclaiming, even taking notes.

I take a few moments to clean up our campsite, tuck away the cooler, toss out our trash and recycling.

Finally Nina practically dances over, giddy, throwing her arms around me, threatening to tumble us both backwards. Words tumbling over themselves, she informs me of Grandma Vera's news, the information she withheld but then decided to spill.

It seems that a hundred years ago (okay, only almost 70), the news of her boyfriend's death was incorrectly delivered. The two brothers were named Reginald and Raymond Smith, and while Vera knew them as Reno and Smitty, they both got called Smitty at the unsavory cannery where the one met his demise. There was the accident, and word came back that both brothers were hurt but Smitty was going to make it, so everyone thought that meant that her guy, Reg aka Reno, died. But it was the brother, Ray, who was killed. Her fellow had a bad head injury and so was out of commission for long enough that he lost track of all his pals to set the record straight. Then by the time he bumped into someone who knew someone, Vera was married to Walt, had a baby on the way. Walt somehow found out about the mistake later, but then he kept it quiet, presumably worried she would regret their marriage or run off or something. He didn't tell Vera until some more years had gone by, enough that everybody had moved on, and his guilt about it was weighing on him. And Vera apparently has kept the whole story under wraps until just now?

I'm shaking my head in a bit of disbelief. "It just seems like a stretch," I tell her. "Like maybe she needs something interesting to spice up her life there at assisted living. Could she be mixing up a book she read? I mean, why wouldn't she have said something before? Why not give the guy a call in like 1970?"

"I asked her about that, didn't you hear me? She said she did try to find out what happened to him. First, she had to forgive Walt, which she did although it took a long time. Then they found out that he had put down roots in Monterey. Had a family of his own there. And I guess they decided to leave well enough alone."

"Well, okay then." I watch her. Pretty sure this is not the end of it.

"Caleb, it's so romantic – first he sees that she's married and he backs away. Then she does the same thing 20 years later, finds out that he's married and doesn't interfere. But who's to say they weren't both pining for each other?"

"And yet she was happily married to my grandfather, and not saying a word about it, for all that time?"

"Well, yeah, but who knows what's happened since?" Nina takes a step back, arms crossed, resolute. "I think we owe it to Vera to find out. Honey, it's part of my story here."

I can't help but smile back. Our story, I think to myself. I might as well get on board. Looks like Grandma Vera's got a late inning rally working for her.

## Chapter 10

## Vera's Visitors

##

Vera Mae tries to stay awake and alert. Though it's often tempting to drift off, she tells herself maybe there is enough in this life to keep her here for awhile longer.

She has been getting more phone calls. And her callers have been patient with her. Letting the phone ring until she can ease over and fumble with the handset, carefully identifying themselves. Ginnie and the boys calling at regular intervals. Her brothers' kids now and then too, whom she still thinks of as youngsters though of course they're getting into their 50s and 60s by now. Since her older brothers passed, sadly within a few months of each other back some 10 years ago, she is the last of her generation. Mom or Grandma to the whole brood.

She's had some visitors too. It strikes her that someone may have organized a round robin of some sort, with Caleb and Nina, who lived closest and came most often, away on their trip. Their girl Lucia has come, and the twins came by, her brother Jed's oldest granddaughters. Even Jed's only daughter and her quiet husband came all the way from Oregon and stayed for awhile, though it seemed they were content to sit together with her and watch the television.

In any case it behooves her to stay alert. Today is Sunday, the day the most visitors come throughout the assisted living home. Vera perches on the edge of her bed, trying to keep her tired back upright and thinking ruefully of the times gone by when she could have hopped up and trotted down the long hallways here without a second thought. For now, she must let it be enough to sit facing the door, to look and listen to goings on out there.

Maya doesn't work on Sundays, but somebody else will be along, Vera reminds herself. If she needs a hand. (She tends to forget, either the girl's schedule or the day of the week, then must endure the syrupy tones of the impatient aides who address her as if she was a small child.) Yesterday, Maya helped her with the computer, and read out to her the messages. Frank, her youngest, will be coming by with his new wife, one of his daughters, and some assemblage of grandchildren.

As is typical, he was vague with the details. Vera's eyes drift downward, and she brushes at her light cotton pants, unsure if she's seeing discoloration or just wrinkles. Or perhaps it's a pattern in the fabric. Well, no matter. If he can't be more specific than we'll see you in the afternoon, he can hardly expect his mother to be pristine and wrinkle free. There are lots of ladies here who get dolled up really beyond necessity for their visitors, Vera thinks. Hair permed and sprayed, garish stripes of bright red lipstick, stiff flowered skirts, and all for people like the minister's assistants who must make their after-church rounds.

Vera decides she can ease herself into the bathroom – she needs to go anyway – and put on a subtle bit of lipstick. Otherwise, they'll have to take her as she is.

Frank is turning 60. It's remarkable to think that her youngest child has now lived longer than either her own father or younger brother did. That Frank, the baby, might now be called a senior citizen (not that he would ever allow such terminology; in that he is like her, quick to deny his own signs of aging).

Frank and his younger second wife live near Los Angeles, but have come to spend a long weekend at a fancy hotel in San Francisco. Surely there was a party, or a festive dinner of some sort. Vera tries to recall now, she feels sure she saw an invitation but understood it to be pro forma – hauling her out of the home and across the bay into the city would have been too much trouble, a terrible distraction. She thinks someone declined graciously on her behalf, yes, that's why the group will be arriving here.

Maya helped her with a birthday card and it went into the mail early last week. The Byrnes have never been big on presents and treats for birthdays except for the children. But she wonders now – maybe she should have made more of an effort to join them. Maybe they should have encouraged her more. Somehow gotten her out into the wider world again, if only for an evening. But Frank, of all the children, she and Walt had to admit on occasion, was a bit spoiled. Not so much one to think of others, always feeling a bit more entitled, that's the word, than his siblings. Far more so than she or Walt, or anyone of their generation, certainly.

After awhile, a pleasant interlude of reasonable comfort in her chair, enjoying what she can of the pretty day outside, snippets of conversations from the hall and a bit of music from her radio, she hears them approach. Frank's voice is loud – he's possibly somewhat hard of hearing – and the wife's tone high pitched and staccato.

"Come in, come in," Vera calls, projecting her ragged unused voice as much as she can. Such energy, from so many people crowded in her doorway. "Let me say hi to each of you. Then Frank, if you can give me an arm, we can visit down in the nearer parlor. Give everyone a place to sit."

Vera feels her chest expanding, the smile that won't leave her face at the sight of these dear people. The children, smooth faced and smiling, each so polite, so careful with her. Frank's girl Lizzie, or Liz she goes by now, still looking so young herself but here she is with children of her own. Vera tries to remember Frank's wife's name. Her face is familiar, kind of over tight and chiseled, hair careless and dry looking, blonder than nature ever intended it. Vera thinks of her as easily distractible, and indeed she is holding onto her cell phone, eyes darting toward it, even as they all make their way down the long hallway.

They sit, Vera on a stiff chair that will support her back, the other adults sprawling across a couch and love seat, kids on the floor. Liz offers the children a pair of picture books to look at, admonishing them to do so quietly.

"Don't worry," Vera says, "We all like to hear children's laughter here." She hesitates, not wishing to supercede parental authority, but Lizzie and Frank both laugh.

"These two get started, you'll need earplugs," Frank says. "Even I will!"

Vera laughs with them. Asks about the grand dinner party. As Frank regales them with tales of the event, Vera finds herself only partly listening. More, she watches Frank, and hears traces of Walt in his voice, in his mannerisms. And also, so clear as if they've gone backward in time, she sees her boy, her young man, Frank as he was years and decades ago. The youngest, always piping up with his own take on things, striving to be heard amongst the others. The most interested in new trends, the most rebellious.

Turning half away, eyes on his wife as he prompts her to join in, there are traces of all three of her brothers, even her father, in the mature man Frank has become. Vera holds her tongue, though. As a boy, Frank preferred to be his own person, not reminded of how much he resembled all those other boys gone by.

But here comes another cacophony of voices, and more lovely people tumbling into the room. TJ, Alexis, Nate and Lucia have come too. Windblown, laughing, exclaiming over their ride, for it seems TJ has driven them over in his tiny car that was already stuffed with gear he was bringing for Frank from the party.

Vera can't quite keep track of which ones got rides to the city with each other, who stayed with whom, but just drinks in the liveliness they all bring to the room. Alexis crawls onto the floor to play with her nieces, while Lucia and Nate, second cousins close in age who used to play together well, kid around with each other as always.

TJ draws up a chair right next to Vera and tells her how good she looks, teases her that she can't possibly have a son as old as Uncle Frank.

"Oh, aren't you the flirt," Vera tells him. She feels her cheeks flush slightly. For an instant, she is brought back to a much earlier time. To the sweet things Walt would say, during their brief courtship. Or further back, the older times. She turns away from these thoughts, and asks Alexis and Nate and Lucia for updates on their studies.

How polite they are, even Alexis, who gently reminds her that she finished college some time ago.

"Time flies, doesn't it, Ma?" says Frank. "I look at these two and I can't believe I have grandchildren. I think I'm seeing Lizzie and Alexis. Pretty in pink but plotting trouble."

Friendly eye rolling from his girls, giggles from the little ones. "Tell us about when Daddy was little," Liz suggests. "The naughty stuff he used to do."

The young adults cluster around her, fully grown but still with the appearance of large children. Vera has told them family stories before. Cleaned up, cheerful family tales – food fights and flashlights hidden under bedding to stay up past midnight. The kitten Ginnie found and lured home, kept in the boys' room in secret for nearly a week before she heard its telltale meowing, how she grew to be the favorite pet, boss of the family dogs. Later, the creak of footsteps on the squeaky steps, sneaking in after curfew. Frank growing his hair out long, skipping school to go to a protest, only to have his picture printed in the local paper.

She doesn't talk about things like Frank getting caught smoking pot. His dropping out of college. Ginnie getting married so young and then bitterly divorced. The lost feelings she herself got sometimes, thinking of the life she might have missed. If not for the hard times, if Nellie had somehow survived. If she had married Reno the first time they spoke of it, rather than gaily sending him off to the coast to earn more money. How could any of them have guessed that just a few short years lay between them and the easy prosperity that followed?

But Lucia is talking now, bringing the others up to date on the journey her parents have undertaken. To hear her tell it, they are roughing it near as much as Vera herself did, and Vera must clear her throat and speak up to gently correct this impression.

"My dears, they may be in a rough and tumble pick up truck, but they are on paved highways, not the road they used to call bloody 66. Going twice, three or four times as fast. They have guard rails and headlights, road signs, gas stations and restaurants all the way along. Why, if they got a flat tire, they could call someone from their cell phone and not even have to leave the car!" Vera catches her breath. She is flattered to see the circle of faces surrounding her, hanging on her every word.

"Did you change the tires yourself, Grandma?" asks TJ. "How long did your whole trip take?"

"Well, I helped my brothers, yes indeed. Starting the Ford up too, it had a hand crank. Not just a simple key to turn." Vera pauses. "Almost eight weeks, it was altogether," she tells TJ. "Of course we made several stops along the way. Not least to fix a tire that blew right as we were coming fast down a hill, that slowed us down indeed."

"Tells us about when you and Grandpa got married," Alexis exclaims. She is still so young, moony about romance. No one really wants to think about those hardships so long gone.

Vera settles back on her chair. She knows they have heard her story, but she can see their smiles. The sense nostalgia even amongst the younger set. "It was wartime," she says. "Even though the war had come to Europe, we'd been seeing it on the newsreels, it came as a surprise to us here. Pearl Harbor seemed to change everything in a day. Our fleet struck, so close to the west coast, not a person didn't wonder if San Francisco or the shipyards on the bay would be targeted next. The whole country geared up. Everyone felt patriotic – think how it was after 9/11," she adds, to keep it relevant to the youngsters. It strikes her briefly that the children don't even remember that.

"Well, your grandfather and I had been seeing a bit of each other before then. Dating, you could call it, though we didn't have much pocket money to do more than walk around the lake. Sometimes go to the pictures. I'd cook him a meal now and then. He had recently lost his mother, you know. Hadn't much learned to fend for himself in the kitchen."

"Not like Dad," Alexis pipes up. Indeed, Frank had fancied himself somewhat of a gourmet after he got divorced.

"Well, it was different for a bachelor back then. But we hadn't been in any hurry, is what I mean. We had known each other for several years, if you count back to when our families were first acquainted. But when the war came, everything speeded up. It was as if the last years had been in slow motion and then everything got fast. Factories got going. Preparations for war. Recruiting stations opened, men rushed to sign up. Walt was 24, I was 21. He'd never been able to get a good solid job, and I guess there was no question that he'd sign up." Here Vera takes in all the faces again. Sees pieces of herself and Walter both in each of them, in the blue eyes, the upturned noses.

"He stopped at the jewelry store on the way from the recruiting station. He didn't have enough to pay for the ring, but the fellow there let him have it on loan for the evening. An older gentleman, as if it was something he could do to support this brand new soldier. And Walt proceeded straight to my apartment that I was sharing with three other girls. He took my hand and walked me right out to the sidewalk though it was winter, cold and windy outside. I remember I could see two of the girls in the window, watching, hands over their mouths when Walter got down on a knee." Vera feels herself tearing up for a moment, surprised at how much the memory yet moves her. "'Vera Mae,' he said, 'I don't know if I'll make it back, but I want there to be someone here waiting for me.'"

There is a collective sigh from the girls. Even Frank has a smile, nods for her to finish, doesn't try to change the subject.

"So we tied the knot just a couple weeks later, before he had to leave for boot camp. Oh, the dress my mother helped me sew was a simple one, but pretty enough. Something new. Most everything else was borrowed or old, yes indeed."

"And their honeymoon was just a weekend at a hotel," Frank adds, for he grew up hearing about this. "They didn't take a real getaway for another 15 years!"

"Well, I had my job, I wasn't about to lose that," Vera tells them. "Walt left for his service, and I got myself a good factory job. The kids started coming along. And after the war, we went back to Modesto so he could join with his brother in the growing operation." Vera suddenly feels as if she is looking out a train window, the years of her life swooping by like telephone wires.

Alexis, bless her, remembers that there's a small black and white framed wedding photo, up on top of the set of shelves from home. She dashes off to fetch it and returns, giving it a quick dusting and then holding it for the girls to see.

Vera takes a look too. The dress that once was hastily sewn, patched together from slightly different bolts of fabric, now looks simple, elegant, classic. Walt, arms a bit too long for the suit he'd inherited from his late father, is handsome. Impossibly young. And happy – she sees it, and recalls from that long ago day, how he felt he was snatching some joy from the uncertain future he was about to face, over there in war torn Europe. Her own expression is more serious, more reserved. But joyous in its way as well.

Several conversations erupt at once. Vera is hard pressed to follow. But she's thinking back about the past anyway. About how, yes, maybe she felt lost sometimes. Yet she cannot imagine a life that didn't include all these people. Her children, her grand and great-grandchildren, the deep affection she had for Walt, especially in their last years together. Their marriage may have begun with two people in mourning, striving to pull their way to the surface as if from underground, but eventually it flowered into something much more – all the faces surrounding her are ready proof.

The angriest she ever got with Walter was when he confessed, after half a dozen years had gone by, that he had heard the rumor that it had been Smitty killed at the cannery, Reno in bad shape with the head trauma, but alive, languishing there for weeks, dazed. This when they were completely ensconced in their life in Modesto, the four youngsters growing up, a household to manage, Vera's mother on her last legs. As if she would just up and leave all that and go off in search of him. That's why he hadn't say anything at first. It took her understanding the depth of that fear of his for her to forgive him. And maybe also for her to appreciate the life they had built together.

Of course she had been curious about what happened to him, she would admit, once she got over the utter surprise of it. She did learn later that the rumor was true, it was Reno who had only been hurt. He had recovered, had stayed out on the coast, married and built a life of his own there. Awake, surrounded by her kin, she understands that that is a fine outcome for her cherished first love.

Vera watches her great granddaughter, Lucia, laughing with the others. She's glad she told her to tell Caleb and Nina about the last piece of the puzzle. All this time gone by, there's hardly a need to keep any of it secret anymore. It's only when she's dreaming that those old feelings return.

## Chapter 11

## Nina's Art

##

Caleb and I have taken the advice of some old timer we met back in our campground by Gallup, left the highway behind, and followed one old road that led to another and another. And I'm pretty sure we're nowhere near anyplace Grandma Vera ever set foot, nor even close to where we were aiming for 20 minutes ago, off the GPS unit altogether. And yet, we continue. He's at the wheel, looking inordinately pleased as the truck lurches upwards, farther along what's quickly becoming a one lane dirt road. A track. Still, there are tire tracks, and the rocky landscape is intriguing.

He glances over. I shrug. The rough road crests a hill and evens out somewhat. There's a crookedly placed sign ahead, and a widening in the road. Caleb slows, steers into what might be considered a parking area, big enough for two or three cars. "Petroglyph area," he reads. "Check it out?"

I'm already half out the door, camera in hand. He grabs a cold water from the cooler. It's mid-morning, the sun's moving upward, the arid landscape warm. "That guy didn't have a clue, I'm pretty sure," I say, looking for landmarks to get my bearings. "There are no springs here, nobody would have gone this far out of the way for a safe night off the highway."

"It's cool though, you know?"

"Yeah." I can't deny it. I want to find petroglyphs that nobody's seen before. I check my filter and carefully clean it. "Maybe he said left when he meant right or something. Or we did." We weren't paying super close attention at this morning's leisurely and amusing breakfast with our friendly fellow camper.

"Look at this!" Caleb's pointing to a rock formation just steps ahead. There are crude figures scratched into the rock. "Those are the older ones, I was reading about them," he says, pointing up to some more images that just look like a series of dots. "Thousands of years old."

We stand side by side, squinting at the rocks and the ancient, faded markings. I think of the eons of time elapsed. The people who made these images, the tools and effort that I now so easily capture with a simple click. It hits me, gut level, this sense of connection I feel. Like faint shadows of the ancients are still here with us. I can't imagine being anywhere else at this particular moment, though we arrived here unplanned and unexpectedly. But how good that we found this place.

"There are more up here," Caleb calls. He's scrambling ahead, looking more comfortable on his leg than he has in months.

I follow, eyes darting between the rocky outcroppings and the strange, eerie images. They're mostly at eye level, or a bit below. Shorter people, I guess.

Caleb pauses several paces farther along, in a flat clearing surrounded by massive, gracefully arched stones. "You could camp here and be protected," he says. "Look how there's stuff growing by here – I bet there is water underground nearby."

I'm struck by the sharp contrast of light and dark, from the shadows and even on the rocks themselves. There's faint coloration but a color photo here will look black and white, or vaguely sepia. Then a tiny shock of green, the small plants that somehow found water. Turning for a vertical shot, I see another faintly scratched petroglyph just visible in the bright sunlight. Sharp edges of the rocks contrast to the delicate images and pale cracks sliding down the surface of the stones.

It's got nothing to do with what we came here for, but it's remarkable. I imagine generations of native people, living quiet nomadic lives around here, eons before cars or land disputes or European immigrants.

Caleb gazes up toward the sky, then makes his way in a quick climb up to the top of the highest outcropping. He's more agile again, like his younger self. Or like his grandmother no doubt was, all those years back. "Climb up here," he says. "You can see for miles."

Up I scramble, considerably less gracefully, but confident that Caleb has already seen me looking lots worse.

The view is something. Tans and browns and massive rocks as far as the eye can see. Far in the distance, the interstate running almost parallel to an old riverbed snaking nearby. Behind us, hills becoming mountains. Just hints of green.

He points in the direction we're headed, towards the Petrified Forest. We've been planning to stop there. But this place, this unplanned stop, it occurs to me, may end up being more magical.

Slowly, stopping here and there for a few more photos, we make our way back to the car. Back down the crude roads toward the sparsely populated highway.

"This can count as the rough road where they got their first flat," Caleb suggests.

I have to agree. "Hold it a sec, let me get out and take one of you going over a pothole."

"Hardly the same with four wheel drive," he says, but stops to let me out.

"Well, that's the point. It's pretty damn easy now, in the truck. Things have changed."

I take several steps back, to get the truck, the narrow road. Not sure what will come across – even I will admit that sometimes a picture can't truly capture the essence of a place like this, both the challenges and ease of it. Any more than a quick conversation or facebook post could give more than the briefest hint of this morning's adventure. Sometimes you just have to be there.

We're quiet, each with our thoughts, back on the highway. The other cars and giant rumbling trucks seem like an imposition now.

Another 40 or so miles, and we take the exit toward the Petrified Forest. No shady spot to park, but we cobble together lunch and make for a shaded picnic area. There are lots of cars, several families in view. Most moving at a faster pace than we are, hurrying despite the heat to snap quick shots of each other in front of the larger chunks of once fallen trees. Like they're checking it off their lists before racing back to the car.

Sated, Caleb and I start a slow wander, tapping on the petrified wood, marveling at it. It's an interesting phenomena, but I hadn't realized how pretty the whole area would be. The eerie formations of the petrified wood, the colors, the patterns of the colors. Gentle sloping hills under the wide open dome of sky, brilliant blue with cottony white clouds slipping along, running shadows over the rock strewn ground.

I'm finding some good quality little shots – pieces of the petrified wood angled nicely by blowing dry grass, interesting color combinations, lights and darks. But I'm hard pressed to capture the grandeur of the whole place.

"Arizona's darn pretty," I announce to Caleb. "Who knew?"

"Yeah, until we get to the racist hangouts and the bloody 66 part," he says.

"Don't forget the Grand Canyon. And Sedona." We're still debating which of these to detour toward. Likely we'll do both. We're making good time. And we still have over three weeks to go before we need to deliver the truck and can get our house back. Funny though, where that much time seemed like a monstrous lot at the start, our rhythm has shifted enough that now the prospect seems only adequate.

Our pace has slowed, we're taking more time to be outside mornings, evenings, or at interesting sites like this. Stopping for longer, talking to local people, taking in local ball games where we find them, even charming little high school games. Of course still following the path of Grandma Vera's photographs. Plus – and I don't think Caleb is quite on board yet, but he'll come around – now we'll need to make a detour over to the coast. To Monterey, to follow up as best we can on Vera's long lost beau.

Part of me, I have to say, wanted to drop everything and head there immediately after my last conversation with her. Caleb, more cool headed, pointed out that after several decades, another couple weeks would hardly matter. Gently phrasing his words, but also reminding me that there was a good chance the guy had passed on by now. Injured as he had been. Or even living, he would be over 90, perhaps even more befuddled day to day than Vera sometimes was.

What a wonder that woman is, waiting decades to tell anyone her story and then leaving out a critical piece. It was how the story unfolded for Vera herself, she had tried to explain to me – as far as she knew for 12 years, he was dead. Another half dozen passed before she found out that he was married with kids in Monterey. And now, it's all in the distant past. Vera is hard pressed to even leave her room these days, much less traipse around seeking her old boyfriend. Possibly she wouldn't want him to see her now, when his memories were of her so vital and lovely as a young woman.

My initial internet search turned up nothing, I guess not surprisingly. Little info to go on, a common surname. But obviously we can dig deeper. If nothing else on this trip, I've learned how much you can glean from chatting up retired people in their own comfort zones.

Caleb and I have finished our circuit, and return to the breezy shade of the pavilion area. It would be tempting to stay the night here, but that would leave too many overheated hours. Anyway, we're due for a motel tonight, headed for an area with low prices and minimal scenery. A pool, I'm thinking, even a little one, for this heat. The luxury of a long shower not dependent on poking in quarters. A movie on TV. Sex on a firm mattress.

I put away my camera, and we get back into the car. I crank the AC. "Is there anything else you want to see between here and Winslow?" he asks. "I'd be up for an early check in."

"Fine with me. Next photo op isn't until Flagstaff." I glance over, looking for traffic as we merge on the highway.

He's grinning, and I'm pretty sure he's thinking about showers and sex on a bed too.

We easily find an adequate if unlovely motel. Even taking our time, the shower and bed are put to good use, and then the pool, before we drag ourselves back out to do laundry and look for a decent dinner spot. Pizza in the room appears both cheapest and tastiest option. We order and time it with the laundry.

Caleb finds the Diamondbacks on TV, and settles in, almost purring between beer and the remains of the pizza, the game on TV, and the updated stats from the newspaper we got at the laundromat.

I spread out with my laptop and catch up on a week's worth of email. I'm pleased to see a couple job inquires – even if they're small I should have something to bring in some cash when we get back. I send updates to Caleb's mom and to Clint, the cousin to whom we'll eventually be delivering the truck (in one piece, I assure him). And to Vera, of course, letting her know where we are, things we've seen. Family on facebook have posted a bunch of pictures from Caleb's Uncle Frank's birthday dinner.

I drag Caleb's attention away from the game long enough to show him a shot of Lucia and several of the younger cousins posing comically. And Frank grinning over a giant cake that may actually have 60 candles.

"Fire hazard," he mutters, attention waning in favor of the game. He stretches out, long limbed and very relaxed.

I feel that way too. We'll fall asleep early, I'm pretty sure, and sleep well even if there are highway rumbles. Sex and pizza have been doing that to us since we were twenty somethings. I lean a little toward him, and he idly strokes my outstretched leg. It's good, it occurs to me, that even in our lowest moments, we haven't lost this physical connection. I think for a moment of Grandma Vera. Of the two of us, old like that, of how we'll be toward each other then.

It's not a fun thing to contemplate, and my own vanity makes me focus first on how I'll look externally, rather than the physical limitations I'm likely to have. But at least I picture us as still together. And that makes me think again of Vera. Widowed these past, what, 20 years. And Lucia – I've never urged her to marry young even though we did, but I've always, always, most hoped she could find a true partner.

I send a note to Lucia, teasing about the picture and updating her on our travels. Her most recent message included a link to a website about Route 66. I click it open to a dramatic and well balanced photo that looks to be from the mid-30s, early in the Dust Bowl migration. I was expecting something just thrown together, but this site is nicely designed (I should know, having designed this sort of site myself). Good flow, logical progression of clicks. And here are before and after photos, dozens of them.

I'm immediately drawn in, tickled at the familiarity. The recent pictures are just what we've been seeing. They are well composed and including both modern elements (massive trucks, heavyset people in casual clothes) and traces of the past, of the way lots of the places seem timeless. The old pictures, carefully credited, are a mix of Dorthea Lange-esque portraits and marvelously pristine images of rickety old cars, desolate patches of the old route.

I stare at the weather worn faces, the somber expressions that show both pain and perseverance, pride. The contrast between these faces and the modern equivalents, chubby, bland, chatting outside stores in a mini-mall, or staring dully at a cell phone. There is text too, just simple notations about the locations, and the photographer's observations about her modern day places and subjects, how some things have changed and how some haven't. Just enough to tease you into clicking further into the history of that time.

I start to interrupt Caleb again, but let him be. There's a blog too. The photographer, the modern one, lives in southern California but regularly makes trips to Santa Fe, where she displays her work at a gallery. But this, all this, the before and after series, the commentary, the historical background, her witty observations on the blog – it's all posted here for free. Done and done well, no charge. Though presumably one might look for her name in the gallery if in Santa Fe.

I lean back onto the fat oversized motel pillows for a moment. Suddenly, almost gaspingly, I am deflated. Whatever I hoped might come out of my work, Uncle Stan's lovingly preserved but honestly not grade A images, it's already been done, and done better. Created, edited, posted online for all the world here at a simple click. This much talent, but in a way it's nothing special.

I remember first posting images on Shutterfly, setting up my account with Flickr. Brief exchanges with total strangers who clicked on to comment. How flattering, how energizing, but also how quickly it was frustrating. A world of mostly mediocre photography, and there I was, my little work quickly disappearing like a few random drips into the ocean of available images. I have modest skills, but they are just that. Modest talent, nothing more.

Who am I kidding about this whole project, I ask myself, the day's fine serenity fast dissipating. We'll get back, we both have to work again and catch up on our debts, then maybe I'll find time to finish my own before and after photo series, my own nice website. But that's all it will be; best not track the hits because I'll be disappointed when it's only family and friends.

Caleb rouses himself up for a moment, exclaiming over a catch in the field. "Watch this replay," he urges me.

Obedient, resigned, I watch some young man at the peak of his career leap up to snag a ball before it sails over the fence. For every one of him, a million more watch, knowing whatever their dreams, they could never be that guy.

And yet, Caleb is psyched. He saw it happen. He's enjoying watching the game.

I settle back, and put away my laptop. Whatever's churning in my head, I can't deny that we had a nice day. A day we never would have had, except for being out here chasing my dream. Weeks that can't be taken back, that will be part of our shared history. If nothing else, I tell myself, try to embrace the process.

## Chapter 12

## Caleb Looking Up

##

The truck's engine starts giving us a little trouble on the lonely road through the Kaihab Forest, headed back towards I-40 from the Grand Canyon. Dee had warned us about this, part of why she urged us to make frequent stops – after awhile at certain speeds and temps, it develops a rattle and runs through more oil than normal. I don't think she and Harlen did any more than carry extra oil and dump it in. At Dee's insistence, we're got several quarts packed away with that in mind.

Nina's all for that, or for limping along until we hit the interstate, finding a mechanic (who will no doubt try to rip us off). I'm down with the oil, but I bring us to a stop at the first side road we come to, and tell her to go take some pictures. It would just be dumb not to let the engine cool first. And I suspect I can find a loose valve in there myself.

This makes her nervous, like her city self, tensed for threats from any direction. She gets out of the car, but has her phone out, testing it, rather than either camera.

"It'll be fine," I tell her. "Dee told us, this is nothing new." I prop open the hood and turn my head away from the hot rush of acrid air that rises. Just looking, I can see the oil's down. Once it cools, I'd like to tighten all the valve connections, and also make sure the spark plugs aren't misfiring. Our very first stop for gas, I noticed all the dirt and dust accumulated, like no one bothered to wipe it down or likely even check things out regularly. Even their so called service was pretty basic.

"We've got enough oil, right? And water?" Nina asks, kind of flapping her hands the way she does when she feels something is too far out of her control.

"Plenty. The engine just has to cool. This is nothing, think what Vera's family went through – they blew out tires going down hill on those rough roads. Miles from nowhere, on their own."

"You think the tires are okay?"

I fix her my back off look. "Their tires. Not these tires. This can be your present day car trouble shot," I suggest.

"I'm sorry, I'll stop hovering," Nina says, inches from my shoulder but backing away. "It's just, there's not much traffic along here. In case of emergency, you know?"

"It's far from an emergency," I assure her. "Any more than me toeing the edge of the canyon was." I fan the engine and try to get a smile from her. But she's still eyeing both me and the engine warily.

I ease around her and reach behind the seats to pull out some rags and a quart of oil. There's a small tool set back there too, and I grab it as well. Finally, she cocks her head, taking in our quiet woodsy surroundings, starting to think about the photos she can take. I'm resigned to appearing sweaty and probably oil smeared in yet another set of shots – but at this point, I can pretty much tune out the camera. At least I was looking reasonably clean an hour or so ago, where we and a thousand other tourists posed for a thousand identical canyon vista shots.

Oddly enough, I think we both liked Sedona better than the Grand Canyon. Well, I expected Nina would, as she's not a fan of heights and cliffs and so on. I did make her nervous – unintentionally – just by looking around close to the edge. Lucia used to do that too, not even realize she was freaking out her mother in her exuberant play. Nina sees dangers around her loved ones more than around herself, I can't help but notice.

The big hole was spectacular, or course, jaw dropping, immense. But I've been there before, a couple family trips as a kid, and a more vigorous camping trip down from the North Rim, not long after college. Where we got to really live in the rugged and dramatic place, not just look at it. That was just before Nina and I hooked up, I guess. When we were talking about it before, I'd forgotten that she wasn't there. It's funny to think how few memories I have of being an adult but not with her – and some damn camera – along too.

But all the tour buses, the loud chattering crowds of look alike tourists clamoring to be at the same place at the same time, put me off. I suppose we've gotten spoiled, these weeks, to expect to have places mostly to ourselves. To just walk up to a campground and pick our spot, or drive freely and unencumbered by buses and poorly navigated rental cars. I like the quiet of this random side road better than the congestion of the giant parking lot near the grandest canyon lookout, that's for sure.

Not that Sedona was empty or lacking morons who'd stop dead in the middle of the road with that charmed sense that no one would ram them if they're on vacation. But there was something easygoing about it. The pretty look of the place, the dramatic red rocks in the background. Just a street or two away from the crystals and readings and so on, there were houses and small landscaping that was stunning. I had wandered for awhile, while Nina was camped out at a café involved in her work, with her cameras and laptop juicing up.

I know it's a wealthy area, and one rife with native plants and remarkable rock formations, so no surprise that the larger estates were done up nicely. But backtracking down a narrow lane just behind the main drag, I was impressed with the look of things as well. People with even a small space just got it, as far as their proportions. Balancing the rise of their architecture with the heights and angles of the vegetation out front. I was measuring square footage in my head, nodding at how it came together. Simple and stark placements of stonework, clearly local pieces, and those quiet desert succulents that you hardly notice until they shoot out a spectacular bloom.

Couldn't help but wonder, strolling around, if several of them had used the same service, or if there was some neighborhood program or something. I mean, the landscaping pulled the collection of disparate houses into an attractive and physically balanced, very appealing neighborhood. I was charmed, and believe me, I'm not a guy who often is charmed by stuff.

Turning back to the engine, I wet the rag and wipe down where I can. Test the temperature, and then reach in to gently test connections where I can. Strain to reach the plugs and wonder if I'll need my reading glasses to be able to see better. Reminded of being a kid, being too short to reach and see the stuff I was fixing. It's hard to tell, but there are a couple possible culprits for the rattle. I fumble around for the right sized socket, and tighten each connection in turn.

There's something kind of relaxing about working under the hood. Like walking around, looking at landscaping, seeing what works, what could be fixed – this is the same, tools and some easy physical labor and it's fixed. Or at least looking better, or running better. There are a series of things that I can figure out and get done, whether it's a for an opulent new corporate headquarters or fixing a piece of machinery.

It occurred to me back there in pretty little Sedona, and it strikes me again now, that it would make sense for me to focus small like that, like those houses on the little lane. It doesn't matter anymore that my so called expertise was in higher end places. When the housing market eventually comes back, there will be the need. Small jobs on small lots can be a starting place. I'm not doing myself or anyone else any favors sitting at home crushed by my epic fails, Something about being out here, away from everyone I know, makes me see the smallness of my own personal shortcomings. Scheme of things, my failed company, my lost investment, they're more like specks on the edge of the canyon than boulders blocking my path.

I finish up with the oil, and check over to see if Nina is still stressing. She's got the paper map out. In her shorts and t-shirt, one hand winding her hair out of her face, she looks like a school kid. I gather the rags and rinse off my hands from a water bottle, trying to wash off the gunk and car smell, and take in the fresh scent of the pines surrounding us.

"We're still 50 miles from the interstate," she says, "and it'll be getting dark in another hour. I was hoping to see most of this in better light."

"Well, let's find a Subway or something on the highway and then find a camp sooner. Take another day to go across and spend the afternoon around there, then start fresh at the border in the morning." I watch, trying to gauge her reaction. We'd been aiming to get farther along today, but it doesn't really matter.

She nods, looking satisfied with this change of plan. "We could check out the river area in the afternoon light."

Nina wants a thorough investigation of the last patch of road out of Arizona. Back before Highway 40 was rerouted, the stretch of Route 66 out of Oatman and down to the California border was infamous – a treacherous narrow twisting road that would challenge the best of vehicles and proved the undoing of some of those old 1930s rigs.

Vera's family managed it with only a pair of flat tires, one on each car, down by the bottom. There are several photos, and it's the part of the story that most stuck with me from the family lore of my childhood days. The flat that made them run off the road and how they nearly careened off a cliff, almost spilling all their worldly goods below. Plus, as Nina has pointed out several times, it was at this juncture where Vera met the famed Reno. Her family fixing their cars, taking a break from the stress of almost crashing, the brothers Smith working odd jobs along that last stretch before the California border. Nina has shown me the photo: something with shovels.

The truck starts up smooth, no knocking, and I give the wheel a little pat. Ease it gently back to the road.

We ramble along at a good pace, each with our thoughts. I'm still calculating out the types of jobs I might find, how much I could see fit to charge, how many I'd need to make it worthwhile. How long until my leg is reliable. How to mitigate if it never really is – face it, man, that's a possibility that's stupid to just ignore. Nina, I'd guess, is lost in thought about lights and colors. It's getting toward evening, when the sun is low and the sky and distant hills are suffused with pinks and corals.

There's a junction with the interstate, edible if uninspiring food for dinner. We're back in the Kaibab Forest, according to the map, and just a little ways along, the GPS indicates a campground. Up a gravel road and away from the lights and cars of the interstate, I have to admit I'm glad I just checked the engine. "Relax," I tell Nina. "We can crash in the truck if there's nothing up here."

But a few slow miles in, there's a sign, a little self serve place, and we hurry to set ourselves up in the last of the dusk before darkness comes on fully.

I should call Dee – I did promise to give her an update if the truck had any problems. She answers, sounding glad to hear from me, and immediately mentions that Mom is over. This is a good time to apologize for not checking in with Mom that often, because Dee can't really whine about it when Mom's right there. I give her the low down on the truck. She seems less than interested; I guess she figures it's our problem or Clint's from here on out.

Mom of course wants to chat, and Dee turns over the phone fast. She at least says hi and how are you, before launching into the saga of her latest battle with her cable company, her annoyance at people's manners at the grocery store, and so on. Nina can tell it's Mom, I'm sure, and comes up to my other ear to whisper " tell Ginnie the latest about Reno!"

First I need to get a word in edgewise. I say where we are, where we've been, the Grand Canyon and so on, and we both recall the first trip we took there as a family. Dee and I were little; it was before Dad left. "Nina wants me to tell you what Grandma said about that guy she met on the trip, the one from that picture?" I add, hoping this won't be too weird for her. The idea of her mom being in love with another guy. Although frankly, in my case, it would seem totally fine, I suppose. Too bad my mom hasn't hit it off with someone else.

Mom can't really remember which picture. In an odd way she never showed that much interest in Grandma Vera's collection, in what was clearly an important part of her mother's life. Or maybe it's that she almost resents it, the way her mother has always favored those photos, that time in her life before she had her and her brothers. But she remembers Nina asking about the guy in the picture.

"Well, Grandma confessed that he was a boyfriend. They met on the trip and then they worked together later at a farm. Only he left and they thought he died. So after that, she married Grandpa Walt."

Nina's pushing on my arm, saying, "Her first love, it was magical, she was devastated."

I repeat her words. "Do you remember your parents talking about that, from when you were little?" I add. After all, Grandpa Walt's eventual confession would have happened when she was a kid, maybe a teenager.

"Well, I wonder, now," Mom says. "You know neither of them spoke much aloud about feelings and so on, it was just the way people were back then." She pauses, exhales.

I watch the crescent moon hovering by the horizon as she collects her thoughts.

"There were times when they were testy with each other, I remember that. I don't know, it was the early 50s, I might have just assumed they were worried about communism or something."

"It's hard to imagine Grandma being afraid of much of anything."

Mom laughs. "Can't argue with that. You know, she always did make a point about finding true love. I can recall that same word she used, magical. That I shouldn't settle for anything less. She was not sold on your father when I brought him home, I guess because she didn't see that magic. She was right as it turns out, though probably not for the right reasons. But I always figured she meant true love like in the movies, not something she had experienced her own self."

"From everything she's told Nina, she was talking about herself before she dated Grandpa Walt, with this young guy. I think they would have gotten married if not for his accident."

I can hear Mom's sharp intake of breath, but it's hard to tell with her – is she interested in the story, or distracted by something on TV? "Well, gosh, Caleb," she exclaims. "That's something, that she actually had that kind of romance herself, that she always held up as some sort of ideal? As a teenager? Hard to believe." Mom laughs. "Well, maybe I should believe it, knowing her. But that she's talking about it, my gosh. Dee, come listen to this!"

I retell the story to them both, Dee listening in, chuckling and exclaiming. "The thing is," I add, nodding to Nina, who is practically dancing in front of me, looking like she'll chew my arm off, "it turns out that the guy didn't get killed like they thought, it was his brother. So like potentially, he could still be alive."

My sister and mom squeal in unison; I have to hold the phone away, keep from bursting an eardrum. "So we're thinking maybe we should make a big detour and go to his last known area, Monterey. Last known from like 30 something years ago."

"Of course you should, oh my God!" Their voices blend together. It's too dark to see Nina's expression, but I don't need to see her face to know she agrees.

Off the phone, lights out, the darkness is like a warm blanket. At first, utterly black. And freeing in its way – anything I need to see or do will just have to wait until it gets light again. For now, all we can do is sit, talk, stargaze until sleep takes us.

Slowly our eyes adjust, and the now moonless night makes itself known to us. Above the slim silhouettes of the nearby pines, bright stars pierce the silent sky.

Nina's puttering, but soon she sits, and we lean towards each other, heads back, awestruck at this darkest, showiest night so far. Wonder at the sheer number of stars, the expanse of the galaxy practically at our fingertips. Matching gasps as a meteor shoots by.

"They had nights like this almost the whole way," I whisper. Don't want to break the silence, but I suddenly have Grandma Vera's voice in my head and the need to share it. How she would collect all the kids at our family gatherings, keeping us awake after our bedtimes, the stories she would tell. "They would pull off the road wherever they happened to be. Sometimes they'd look for other families, sometimes it was just them. The guys would put up the tarps for tents, and Vera would help her mom and aunt cook, or take the little kids around to scrounge for firewood. They might have a campfire, heat up their food. But it was always dark like this, no highway lights at all. They liked it when the moon was out. She always knew the phases of the moon, like it was her personal friend."

Nina shifts next to me, and I feel her hair lightly brush my arm. "For all the hardship, they had a pretty amazing experience," she says. "You know I've always gotten a bit of that sense from her. That they had a bad time of it, but she loved the adventure."

"Yeah, those were the stories she would tell us. I mean they were dirt poor and there were hardly any jobs once they made it to the central valley. But she would tell us – imagine all us kids in sleeping bags out on the porch at that big place in Modesto – she'd tell the story of coming down that steep windy road by the border. Being in the back, bouncing and keeping hold of her little brother and all the stuff piled around them. Hearing fear in her father's voice and trying to crane around and see the front of the road but just seeing the drop off the sheer edge they were next to. Then all of them leaping out of the car, trying to push it to a turnout before someone came crashing along into them after they stopped."

"What else," Nina murmurs, her voice faint, barely breaking the stillness.

We're both tired. Which reminds me all the more of listening to those stories on those childhood nights. "They were really low on money by then. They got the cars fixed and even washed them before they crossed into California," I continue. "There was some sort of agriculture border check, and it was important not to look like vagrants. They camped out by the Colorado River before the crossing, and it was really luxurious because they could all bathe and soak out all that dust. She would tease all of us kids, telling us we had no idea how much people back then would love the nightly baths we tried to get out of," I add.

"Then it was this big let down at first. They crossed into California, but it was still the Mojave desert. The kids literally thought they would see orange groves the minute they hit the state line. Instead they had to reverse their days and nights – sleep in the day and stay awake to drive across the desert at night, to avoid overheating. And they were really running out of food, like everybody was eating the last of this giant sack of potatoes they had brought. But just when the adults started questioning their choice, they came upon these people whose car had broken down. They were leaving, headed east, but stuck at the side of the road. Her brothers were able to fix the car, and the people were so grateful that they shared all their food. Grandma would describe this meal they had, just as the sun rose up over the mountains behind them – she could name every type of food they had, thick slices of bread, bacon and eggs, fresh pealed oranges, apricots, coffee to drink."

"Sounds good."

"Yeah. What we might think was a nice meal was like the best feast she could imagine."

"Well, that gets to the heart of it, doesn't it," Nina whispers. "You gotta suffer a little bit to appreciate when it lets up. To know what's really valuable."

The stars still sparkle, but my eyelids are drooping. We crawl into our sleeping bags. Nina sighs deeply, the way she does, like a cat, just before falling asleep.

I'm almost there too, though her sigh makes me miss our old cats for a moment. Thinking about what she said, what's valuable. I think about Grandma Vera as a teenager, all those kids, so psyched about simple food. Her and her young love, the guy whose love for her was magical. I roll to my side for a sec, toward Nina. Trying to imagine how bad it would have been to have lost her. Even if someone else came along, even if years had passed.

Just before I drop off, it clicks finally in my head, about Grandma Vera. Vera and her first love. The years don't matter. Of course we have to go find him.

## Chapter 13

## Vera Remembering

##

Vera Mae hears noises outside the room. Faint voices, and for a moment she can't recall where she is in the slightest. The bedcovers are strewn about, as if her young cousin has yanked them away. But that was so long ago, they aren't camped by the side of the road. Is it that awful old shack they crowded into, steps from the cotton farm? The little trailer they rented after Jed took off for the city? Her apartment in Oakland, the house in Modesto? All she knows is the darkness.

There is the familiar sound of a loaded tray rattling, and Vera places herself at Fairhaven, her life and possessions back to one little room. Her mind settles and her body relaxes back toward sleep.

All the talk with her visitors has stirred up memories. Telling them about the days after Pearl Harbor and her wedding day, no wonder she's a bit muddled. To explain the story of her marriage to Walt, you had to understand those prior years. The Depression, the drought, leaving Kansas and the dust bowl. To know Walt, you had to stretch back to the hardships he endured too. His journey across, running parallel to hers, all the same burdens and more. He had no older brothers, no Uncle Stan – he grew up fast, had to labor like a grown man from the time he turned 12.

She tries to recall what he looked like the first time they met. But all she remembers are the photographs from that stop, the first long layover on their trip. Walt, her brothers, other sons of farmers who had left Kansas and were heading west, small images, faint, black and white.

Instead, her drowsiness overcomes her and she is there with them herself, on the road. As they got farther west, routines emerged, even out there where you hardly knew what to expect with each new day. Almost floating above, Vera Mae sees herself helping load up the cars, racing with her brothers to get the tarps up and the mattresses tied down. Then they are driving and she feels the bumps, the rhythmic bouncing that lulled them into a sleepy, hungry stupor near every afternoon. The hot air blowing, the dirt.

Before they reached the California border, they came upon a whole load of people camped by a long stretch of river. Vera thinks she can hear the rush of the river. Shouts from the children as they rushed in to douse themselves in the clear fresh water, sighs from the ladies as they lay themselves down after, resting before doing the washing, rounding up their kids, figuring out how to stretch their meager food into a filling dinner.

Strangers suddenly friendly. No need for shyness when they were all banging the dirt out of their clothes together. Laughing, delighting in the sensation of being purely clean, knowing they had left the dust storms back behind them. The boys, finding work, helping steer the river away from the best flats for camping. They had all met Reno and Smitty there, on the banks of that wide river. Boys and girls took a fancy to each other all up and down those clean river banks.

Vera sees their faces: the rawness in them. Sunburned and lined, brows furrowed to permanent frowns. Thin, those people were, but muscled. Not a one especially pretty or handsome, but each fierce and gritty and resolute. All of them absolutely determined to make their way to a better place and to earn their keep fair and square. That steadfast resolve made the fellows like Reno look well enough, though the years that followed were a trial as far as finding steady work.

She drifts a bit, nestling deeper into her covers and picturing Walt as she knew him just before the war. He would put on a smile when he came to see her. And she would try to rouse herself too. She felt the loss of Reno keenly then, hourly it seemed, but she knew Walt had a double dose – both of his parents dying one after the other. Every day, she put one foot after the other, numb. But driven to earn her keep, to turn away from the long hard seasons when the only jobs were picking, and then few of those to be had. And Walt worked hard too; hard work surely a way to set aside his losses. He wouldn't realize it when his sorrow showed on his face. Sitting together, their conversations dwindled to silence, was more comforting than she could have guessed. Like old married people already maybe. Maybe that was why it was so easy to say yes when he asked.

Vera shifts. The hallway has gone quiet again, though she thinks she hears the sounds of birds outside. Like the old house. She pictures Walt there, up on a ladder or out in the yard, happily fixing thing. Young people now couldn't understand the sheer joy you could get just from having a place of your own. Walt's folks never had owned their own place – he'd been born poor, grew up poor, got sent off to war just when things were getting better back at the end of the hard times.

It made him appreciate a good solid job in partnership with his younger brother. A wife and kids, a house that would be paid off well before his retirement. Food on the table, a good simple meal, with coffee, and milk for the coffee, and a fresh cake or pie for dessert.

Well, she's the same way herself, of course. Say what you will about Fairhaven, there were three meals a day and indoor plumbing; Vera had lived with worse.

And slow but sure, she and Walt both had lifted out of poverty and risen away from all that sorrow. Having children will do that. His surviving the war with only superficial wounds. Both of them earning enough money to open a savings account, put down a payment on a house. Growing food in her garden to eat, and having money enough to shop at the market, even splurge now and then. Fine new clothes, sturdy new cars, college funds for the children.

Awake with the light of day slipping into the room, Vera knows without a doubt that they built a good life. In the end, she could only wish he had lived a few years longer. Seventy-three, he was, when his heart gave out. He had been ailing for several months at that point and more than once asked her not to let him linger if it came to that. So the final heart attack was as much a release for him, for them both.

She had just turned 70. She can recall how she had felt herself to be so old then. Where now, a woman mobile, active, just 70 – why, what she wouldn't give to trade places! She can almost feel her muscles strain as she remembers how she had pitched in to clean out the house, laughing off the children and grandchildren who insisted she sit and rest while they worked. Nonsense, she had always worked, she wasn't about to stop, and the truth was that staying busy took her mind off the loss.

Missing Walt after all those years of marriage was a different kind of sadness. She had seen it coming and they had spent good time together, quiet talks just like in the early days. She had all the youngsters to check in on her, to see her through. Not like Reno, which was shocking. Most people hadn't known the depth of their feelings and near everybody assured her she was still young, she'd find someone else. She had nursed a lot of her pain in secret. Widowhood at 70 was public and respectable.

Still, there were other feelings she needed to keep to herself. What she felt on and off throughout those years, though, was guilt. Guilt that she should have waited, she should have investigated when the news came about Reno, not just taken a stranger's word for it. She should have found a way to go out there, then she could have learned the truth a decade before she finally did. Should have kept all his letters proudly, not secreted them away until they were lost in one of the family moves. But on top of this was guilt that she had managed a good life anyway.

But she was entitled to that much, wasn't she? After all she'd been through? As a younger woman, Vera Mae tended to see people, herself included, as either good or bad, as choosing either right or wrong. How she had wondered about her own character, her own choices. Many a year had passed before she realized that people are not just one way or the other. The very same person can be both, can be some of each. Circumstances change. Choices made don't lock a person in one way or the other.

Vera hears the cheerful voice of the fellow who delivers breakfasts, and she slowly, carefully, rises from her bed to greet the day.

## Chapter 14

## Nina's Last Shots

##

I'm driving at the pick up's top speed, almost 75, along a seemingly endless stretch of Highway 40. Cars, even the occasional giant truck, pass as if we're barely moving. The sun is still high above the horizon, though it's afternoon and it feels like we've been on this road for days instead of hours. But good that the sun's not lower – there would be nothing to shade it as we head west through the bright empty desert past the Granite mountains.

Ahead, if you could call it a destination, is Barstow. A place to stop for gas anyway, maybe to switch drivers. Caleb is slouched toward the window in his seat, dark glasses covering his eyes. Dozing off, from the looks of it. He'd been trying to find something interesting on the radio and given up. We're tired of our music that's all been played multiple times. Tired of the road.

I twist my head around, stretching out my neck. Reach for some lukewarm water, needing to stay hydrated, stay alert. Last thing we need is to get squished by a double rig truck this far along. There's a sign for the town of Hinkley, famous for Erin Brockovich, its polluted environs. We had talked about stopping there just to take a look, but now that seems stupid. I'd rather push on to get somewhere nicer.

Really, the place I would most like to be right now is at home. Nothing like weeks away to make you feel like Dorothy longing for Kansas. Only I'm longing for anything but – just a quiet night in Northern California. Some fog, some simple local food, and yes I'll admit it, time alone surrounded by my stuff. Caleb and I haven't driven each other completely nuts yet, and I guess that's something. But we're close to fully tuning each other out, I'm pretty sure. I'm focussed on my shots, he on whatever ball games he can wrap his head around. I don't know that we've said it quite out loud, but I've been promising myself in a hundred ways to appreciate our dull normal life once we finally make our way back there.

We're aiming for Tehachapi tonight. I've never been there, but Caleb has pleasant memories of the place, and it's halfway up a mountain at least. Out of this hostile climate. God, I can see how disheartening this would have been for Grandma Vera and her people. I mean, now that we've seen the old road out of Oatman, the famous "bloody 66," I feel like I get it a little better. They could have died out there. They blew a tire on a steep and narrow road known for its brutal wrecks.

But they survived it just fine, nothing more than a couple bruises and a dented fender. Visiting those places was a let down, honestly. The road unpleasant, and with no good place to stop. And we had no idea where they actually camped out, where Vera first set eyes on the Smith brothers. I took some pictures of a pretty but vacant river valley; hard to imagine it teeming with refugees. Anyway, they got the cars fixed up, got themselves all washed and everything to make a good impression at the check station – and then ended up here, a desert road as desolate as anything they'd already crossed.

It's a long, long stretch going 75, air conditioned, well fed, in the light of day. Hard to imagine bouncing along here in those old cars, driving nights to avoid the heat. The kids expecting fruit trees and seeing nothing but distant cactus. The adults, probably talking in hushed voices, worrying about running out of food, finding work. Driving on their last spare tire, no money for a replacement, barely enough to fill the tank. Faced with even having to pay for water. And instead of looking forward to their small but comfortable home, as I am, they had no set destination, they were living out of their cars.

There were two comments I remember from Vera's notes at this point in her collection: everyone was worried about running out of water, and that they were called "Okies" by the border agents. Her father and Uncle Stan had carefully explained, I imagine, that they were from Kansas. That mattered not a whit, according to Vera's neat cursive note on the back of a photo of the younger children posed by a large dried out cactus plant. It seemed that anyone from anywhere coming into California was designated an Okie. And it didn't sound so bad at first, though later, of course, they all understood it to be a derogatory term.

Caleb bestirs himself when we finally make it to Barstow, raising his head to take in the bleak surroundings of the gas stations, mini-marts and fast food joints of the first exit. "I don't think it gets better," I tell him, and he nods, accepts the cheapest gas station of the quartet right on hand.

Gas, bathroom break, and we decide to treat ourselves to ice cream bars – even those look like they've been sitting around past their prime. We restock the cooler with ice, and Caleb gets an iced coffee too, promising he's fully awake to drive the next 90 or so miles out of the desert and up into the mountains. Then no driving for at least a couple days, we agree, enough time to get the kinks out. I'll look for the place they stopped and took one last picture of their poor beat up cars with the vast Mohave below and behind them. We'll find Caleb's childhood swimming hole, or something like it. Cast off the grime of our own road.

Starting out a couple days later, we are at least somewhat refreshed. Days with no driving, lounging by a pretty pond, out of the desert heat and resting up where a sweater feels okay in the evening's shade – all good. Caleb and I caught up on local news, managed a couple conversations not about highway signs or baseball games. The talking heads keep saying the recession is easing. We'll see.

We get moving early, just after the sun gets past that point of lovely morning light. Very pretty landscapes up here, as well as back where we drove up. I got some amazing sunrise shots looking to the east from the summit, easily the best from the whole trip. The one with the two of us, posed by the truck with the desert behind us, offers a fine parallel to the original. Uncle Stan's shot captured what seems to me the essence of their whole journey – they look hot, dried out, tired, but also full of hope. Something about the way they're all standing, Vera and her brothers and even the little kids, you can just feel their optimism. There, away from the dust storms, on the other side of the biggest desert crossing of the whole trip, in one shot they're waving goodbye and in the next, grinning, arms outstretched, looking ahead for what comes next.

And I guess Caleb and I can offer both a contrast and a matching shot. Contrast, because our crossing was so relatively easy. The food we've run out of is fresh coffee, or artisan cuisine, nothing more. The truck hums along just fine – whatever Caleb fixed back in Arizona has held. But at the same time, I, and I imagine Caleb too, have a sense of moving past the worst of our bad years. We're more optimistic about our return, I am anyway. I have to be.

I'm proud of the photos; I think they're among the best I've taken in years. I'm looking forward to putting them all together, to finishing up this project. To have done it, even if nobody outside the family spends the time to see the whole thing. That's the reality, I know that. As Vera herself has said, the magic is in the journey more than in its end.

It's a straight shot down to Bakersfield and then up toward Visalia. We have a few more sites to locate. Caleb has no interest in visiting his early hometown; it's only the coincidence that Vera's family worked on farms in the area that he's okay with taking Highway 99 north instead of the interstate. At least he's come around to the Monterey detour, even been scouting out the best route there and found a free campground for us to use as a base in the area. I'm not sure what changed his mind, maybe the thought of me searching out his pre-school or something. He doesn't even want to stop in Visalia, just make the turn and get out as fast as his mom must have back after her divorce.

Caleb puts on an oldies station and we hum along, goofy and unselfconscious. He snacks on trail mix though we barely finished breakfast – he just likes something to do, I think. He's partly tossing nuts in the air, missing as often as catching them. I'm trying to recall and forgetting the mileage to our next stopping place. They're all blurring to me. We'll need to stop, we should switch drivers and I can check my notes.

We're moving pretty fast but languid, all downhill. The pretty mountain scenery is soon left behind, the flat oil rigs and giant billboards heralding fast food and cheap motels of Bakersfield ahead. I ease over to the slow lane, and the amount of traffic is startling. Bakersfield outskirts seem a booming metropolis compared to where we've been, and the local drivers pushy and rude.

After a gas stop, we head away as fast as we can, and shortly the worst of the traffic is behind us. Caleb grouses about what's left though, and the frequent exits and entrances on 99. I try to get him talking about baseball, the ups and downs of last night's game. Anything to pass the long slow miles.

Out the window I can see the flatness of farmland, but not what they're growing. We need to leave the highway. Vera tends not to say much about their first months around here in California, just that the work was hard when they had it, but worse when they didn't. Uncle Stan's pictures end here too. The rest of her collection is articles, clippings, and then later photos from when the families were more settled farther north, gatherings for birthdays and that sort of thing.

Still, she had a specific flyer about a farm near the town of Poplar, and I'd like to at least have a look. If Caleb hasn't stuffed himself maybe we can find a little café, pick up lunch.

Miles pass, and then more miles. Even just sitting here is making me hungry – maybe it's all the billboards for crappy food. I try to imagine being in an old slow car, the mild gnawing of hunger but no assurance of a decent meal ahead. Or being the parents, hungry kids in the back. Every look out the window would be about food or work, wondering, worrying about what lay ahead. Daunting indeed.

Caleb says he doesn't remember the area at all, but finds the turn off before I can point it out. Off the highway and down a two lane road, it at least feels like someplace they might have headed toward. I watch an old style tractor puttering up a dirt road we pass, dust in its wake, but we're past it before I can raise a camera. The farmland is lush and green, though I can't tell just what's growing.

Another mile in, and I can see almonds, neat rows of them extending out endlessly in either direction. Then some kind of berry maybe? Growth low to the ground. We pass a rickety little stand.

"They'll sell you stuff on the weekend, probably," Caleb says. "Later in the season."

I can't even think what day it is, Tuesday maybe? "The flyer said cotton field and to register in Poplar," I tell him. "Do you know it?"

He shrugs. "It's not much of a town, just a couple roads crossing. We'll be coming up to it in a couple miles. Want to get a shot here?"

"Let's see what's there." I don't know, this looks too gentle somehow. Mild green sprouts and a distant curved irrigation thingee, that's not what I imagined here. I know it there won't be a Steinbeck-esque evil boss and bone thin stooped laborers toiling over low cotton fields anymore. But there's nothing much at all.

Shortly a small row of houses appears on either side of the street. Caleb slows almost to a crawl and I crane out the window. The places are modest, somewhat ramshackle, and no one's around. We pass one small intersection, then another.

"There's a restaurant," Caleb says, pointing to our left. "Looks like it's the only one. Mexican – probably okay. I could eat some tacos."

I nod okay. Maybe I'll get more of a sense of the place walking around.

We pull in. It's after one already, and no worries about it being crowded. An elderly couple sit at an outside table, plates empty but a few chips between them keeping them occupied.

I gather my camera, step outside and do a couple full stretches. Caleb flexes too, and tests his knee.

"Don't worry, the food is right good," the old man calls out to us. "You two and us may be the only white people in town, but don't you mind. It's all Mexicans now. But they'll go easy on you. They know to hold that hot salsa when they see me and my sister here coming."

I am, as usual, fully silenced by such outward racial or ethnic commentary, and I turn awkwardly toward the menu posted at the door. They are both white, which I guess I hardly took in, seeing as my immediate way of classifying them was simply as old. Guess I've got my issues too.

"Thanks, we'll keep that in mind," Caleb says mildly.

The woman, the sister, says nothing but watches us with interest, legs stretched comfortably out from her chair. She is wrinkled, looks almost as old as Grandma Vera, but probably isn't – more likely she has just been outside a lot. Vera, up until her early 80s, was freely mobile like that, could come and go as she pleased. Keep that in mind when you're counting your own blessings, I remind myself.

The place is small inside. It smells great, and we order soft tacos. There are tables, but it's kind of warm, with just a corner fan to stir the air around. "Might be nicer outside," Caleb says. "And that dude probably has some stories."

He's right. I suppose they've both seen a lot of changes, and he obviously feels free to comment on them. We nod to the woman at the counter and go back out to the other front table. She brings out a bowl of fresh chips and salsa that's only mildly hot. Very tasty. The old man and woman are still seated, shaded under the awning and observing us in a friendly way.

"So you've lived around here for awhile?" Caleb asks.

"Longer than you two have been on this world, I'd say. Not as long as Sis here, though." The man cackles toward his sister. She regards him coolly, and I can see this is not a fresh observation. "Porterville is home, just down the road a pace."

By rote, I explain our mission. And that we knew the family spent a couple months somewhere around here, picking cotton. After some extended calculations on the man's behalf, he establishes that they are too young to have in fact known Grandma Vera, assuming she was here in 1938. He was two years old at that point, and his sister six.

"But lord yes, they grew cotton here. This little town is Poplar-Cotton, isn't it. Our folks came same as yours did, I'd say, to work the fields, just made it here a few years earlier. Got a head start, that's what they used to say. We was lucky, weren't we, that our folks had established a home for us?"

The sister nods firmly. "It's all been bought up long since though," she says. "You won't find the sorts of small places they had back then now. Not much cotton left, to think of it, either."

Our food arrives, quantities of it. "Well, we'd love to hear what you remember of those days," I offer. "Even if we can't find the exact location."

I expect a fast monologue from the old fellow, but he just sits there, thoughtful. Both of them, similar frowns on their leathered faces. "We were shielded from a good deal of it," the sister says softly. "Twasn't until I was much older that I learned about the less savory doings of the companies that ran the farms. We did used to see caravans of old cars moving along the roads, that I recall. Men asking for work."

"Our Ma would give folks some fruit or something if she had it," the guy says. "They couldn't offer a job but they could do that much."

"But they understood that the people coming around weren't bad people, weren't dangerous. Just out of work and hungry to find it. Or plain hungry."

"Not full of demands and rights like some of those that'd come later," the old man adds.

"His grandma says they all got called Okies," I tell him, hoping to stave off a further tirade against the now majority population.

"Law, yes," the woman says, animated for the first time. "I used to feel so bad for the folks. We hadn't much, but we had decent clothes at least. Roots in the town. Oh, some of the folks we'd see, the children, it'd break your heart. Families couldn't stay put and then the town folk wouldn't want those immigrant children in their schools. Raggedy little things, then they'd get called those names."

"I do remember one family," the man cuts in. "They had twin girls, is how I recall. Coulda been pretty if they'd had enough to eat, if they coulda smiled more. But just proud people. Somebody would call them a name and they would just stare back at you, pull themselves up tall and proud. I don't know what happened to then, but I tell you, they were bound and determined to make their way, the whole family was."

Of course I picture Vera and her family. Guess they were just one family amongst many along here, though, too many people and too little work. I want to call her, hear her tell all her stories again. Whenever I tell her things we've heard, and ask her was that what it was like, she says, all that and more. I've got to get back there, it strikes me, and get her to tell me the whole thing again, start to finish.

We inquire about where we might find a similar looking farm to the old cotton fields, but our new friends aren't much help. So we finish up, and I take a few photos of what remains of central Poplar, buildings where they might possibly have lined up back then to get their picking jobs. Then we just head north on the country road we'd turned on.

Just out of town, I spot a dusty truck pulled to the side with three guys squeezed into the cab. Mexican immigrants presumably, but not doing anything but sitting there. What am I going to do, ask then to pretend they're farming for my modern day shot?

Caleb points out houses where there used to be farms, and suggests we turn back toward the highway. We follow the sign toward Tulare. The landscape barely shifts – fields but no people. A few miles along, I can see some guys way out in a field. Adjusting the irrigation pumps maybe. I ask him to pull over.

Without being too obvious, I hope, I twist on my telephoto. Get a nice sort of silhouette, the men and their machinery, dark against the bright distant afternoon sky. Caleb switches off the engine, and comes to stand nearby, both of us observing the men working in the distance.

I feel melancholy. "Is this it? My last shot?"

Caleb squeezes my shoulder. "It's never your last shot, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, we can look for other farm shots. Or maybe a group of people on a porch, like for Vera's brother's birthday."

He's right, I suppose. I climb back into the truck, though still with a feeling that we're ending something. If we weren't making the detour, we could have the truck to Clint by tonight.

"Come on," Caleb says. "Let's go find Grandma's boyfriend."

## Chapter 15

## Caleb Finding Answers

##

Nina and I stand at maybe the prettiest lookout we've come across this whole trip, a bluff above the beach at Carmel. The Pacific actually does glow in the manner of those cheesy paintings they sell in town; beams of light pierce the perfect curls of the waves. Cypress trees hug the windswept bluffs, gulls cry, the spray shoots out like sparkling jewels as each wave crests and breaks toward the shore.

It's a testament to her state of mind that Nina hasn't even lifted her camera since we arrived, but just stares outward. Seeing what I'm seeing, but not taking it in at all, I'm pretty sure.

I bend down to unlace my grungy worn out hiking boots. "I'm going down there to wade. I don't care if nobody else does. You okay?"

"Yeah. Go ahead." She shifts a little and squints toward the horizon. Doesn't need to tell me she's still processing everything.

There are a couple people on the beach walking dogs. They ignore me as I roll up my pants and splash into the freezing but refreshing surf that laps at the shore. Nina and I have both commented on the way people here have looked at us and the dirty old truck. We're wearing wrinkled, faded, crappy clothes, we both need haircuts, I haven't shaved in several days. The truck, let's just say, stands out among the Priuses and Audis and Mercedes that are the norm at precious Carmel-by-the-Sea. It's a small taste, but a taste nonetheless, of how Grannie V and company got treated, heading up the valley, the whole Okie thing.

Of course this truck still runs okay and all we have to do is drive away when we so choose. Our house will be ours again in just a few days. Last check in with the professor, everything is cool. His wife cleaned the place spotless, he says, and she's looking forward to going home just as we are.

Distance-wise, we're not far at all. But we still have to swing back across 198 to Atwater, deliver the truck at last. Have a happy little gathering for whoever's around, sit with the cousins and kids drinking beer and talking baseball, and catch a ride with Clint and his wife back to Oakland.

And that's not to mention the last bit of our mission here. I turn back toward Nina. She's sitting now, zen like, peaceful as far as I can tell.

Here's the thing. We actually tracked down the guy, Vera's Reno, at last. He died eleven years ago. But that's not quite the whole story, as far as I can see – there's a daughter and we're going to meet her for lunch tomorrow.

Nina's really bummed though. I think maybe she had this idea we would find the guy and suddenly Grandma Vera would put back on her dancing shoes and waltz out of the old age home and into his arms? If I'm honest, maybe that's a little of what I thought too.

I splash back out of the bone cold water, and scramble into my shoes. Cajole Nina into walking around with me. We're here at the beach by this cute little town. Can't afford the pricey spa treatments or $100 organic meals but at least we can hike around and look at stuff. We're not supposed to show up back at our weird little freebie off-the-grid hostel site until evening anyway.

"At least it's kind of genuine here," Nina comments glumly, as we make our way back to the tiny streets and precious B&Bs and galleries of the town.

Compared to Cannery Row in Monterey, I guess she means. Where the cannery was, where the guy had his near death experience. Where very little of the reality of that time remains – it was a mob scene of tourists and boutique stores, with only the occasional glimpse of the bones of the old buildings. Tiny anchors to the past.

It was disheartening, walking around, and we wasted a good part of our first day tiring our feet out with no clue about the guy or for that matter anything about his life here. Finally found a museum for a little background, and hit up the historical society. Seeing our interest, a woman there hooked us up with an older volunteer docent.

She gave us some better info about the history of the canneries, the huge fishing industry there and then its collapse in the 1950s. We didn't know the name of the particular cannery, but at least got some familiarity, maybe some sense of how he spent his time here, back then.

This morning, we came back and went out on the pier and at least hung around the outside exhibits of the big aquarium. Then when the library finally opened, we were able to view old newspaper articles on a microfiche machine. Nina found several references to fatal accidents in canneries during the late 1930s, and noted down the names of each. Then the librarian helped us cross reference those names to more current references to the name Reginald Smith, and up came the obit. Pretty likely our guy – the age was right and it mentioned that his surviving a cannery accident. I thought both of them would start crying at that point.

But Nina just went very very quiet, the way she does. It was the gentle librarian who suggested we might still be able to locate the next of kin, all listed with full names and resident cities. So after all those years and all these miles, it took google about three seconds to give us a phone number for one Cara Smith-Rossi, beloved daughter and still a resident of Seaside, a town just north of Monterey.

Nina made the call, while I stood next to her, trying to be supportive but unsure what to say or do. The librarian retreated a couple steps but kept an eye on us, same feeling I'd imagine.

Nina's end of the conversation was gracious, her professional consultant self – a quick identification of her name, her apologies for calling out of the blue, her very belated condolences about Mr. Smith. References to Vera Byrnes nee Granger, the acquaintance from all those years back. Then she listened. Then brightened, and her tone became more her own. Small protests, we wouldn't want to impose, but we'd love to—and she'd flapped her hand at me for a pencil and paper. They arranged a spot to meet for lunch.

Call ended, she told us that it was indeed the daughter and that she had actually heard of Vera Mae. It was almost like she wasn't surprised by the call, just that it had taken so long. She would be happy to meet us and she'd love to tell us about her father; she was semi-retired, so short notice was no problem at all.

So then we came here, having both had enough of walking around the touristy part of Monterey with no real sense of the place. And it's funny walking along the dainty streets of Carmel as if we're just on a regular little vacation. After all this time, at the end of our trip, the end of our search.

"She said she would bring some mementos for us," Nina says, repeating herself. "She has them in a box. It was like she was just waiting for the call. Eleven years later."

"Maybe she's lonely," I suggest. "Semi-retired, right? His daughter, how old would she be?"

"The obit says they had a son and a daughter, and she's younger. I don't know, late 50s, early 60s maybe? Cara did mention she has adult sons."

We crest a hill and turn to look back down at the beach, just visible between the canopy of trees alongside the street. "That's nice," Nina mutters, reaching for her camera.

I step closer to a nearby house, try to get the attention of a cat lazing in its doorway. Nina's back, I think, relieved.

Many shots later, we stroll along. Decide to eat here in town, laughing that we can find an early bird special. We're a couple decades older than anyone else staying at the hippie camp, but veritable youngsters down here.

Even the discount meal, pastas and splitting a salad, is extravagant compared to the rest of the trip. To the rest of the year, for that matter, but it feels okay for the occasion. We even get a half carafe of the house wine.

Nina has said she doesn't want to speculate any further on the daughter, the lunch, any of it. We've decided not to let Grandma Vera know about any of this yet, even our detour here. But that leaves us not much to talk about. Me, I'm happy enough to eat good food in silence. Just the same, I try to chat a little, get Nina going on the local photography.

There's a chill in the air back outside, and it's getting dark. I'm relieved when she says we should just go back to our campsite, listen to tonight's game in the tent.

That we do, though the Giants go up early, and it's a lot of Jon Miller rambling about life in the 1970s. Nina claims to like that stuff as much as the actual play by play, so I'm glad enough for her sake anyway.

Late morning, we quietly pack up our stuff. Various other tents house snoozing Gen Y kids, whose mild partying we were able to tune out last night. Not knowing how long we'll be this afternoon, we've told Clint we'll bring the truck tomorrow. Likely we can drive part way there today and just hang at a state park or something, take a last chill day. And I want to find a library with wifi, catch up on email. I'm serious, I actually do. Somehow being near the end of the trip, being close to home, hell, maybe even knowing that that guy lived a pretty long life – it makes me want to jump back in.

We drive back down into town and poke around the more residential area for a bit, in the pleasant low key neighborhood where Cara told Nina that she grew up. It reminds me a bit of Grandma's neighborhood in Modesto, where we used to go when I was a kid. Funny, or maybe not so much when you think about it. Kindred souls and all that. There's a bit of that old fashioned feel, even still, with neighbors saying hello, a "help yourself" sign by a bucket of dog biscuits, that sort of thing.

Nina wants to make sure we're not late, so we soon head to the little restaurant in Seaside. It's small, unpretentious, and there's easy parking. I'm liking this lady already.

We take comfortable patio seats, and right at noon a smiling middle aged woman approaches. "You must be Nina and Caleb," she exclaims, clasping our hands each in turn. "I'm delighted to meet you at last. Thank you for tracking me down!"

We greet her back, settle in, take in the menus, place orders. I can feel Cara's eyes on me.

"I'm sorry to stare," she says, with an infectious laugh. "But I remember to this day my dad saying how bright blue your grandmother's eyes were. Yours must be just the same."

"They are, his mother too, that's the first thing I noticed when I met the family," Nina exclaims. "Vera was lovely as a young woman. She's still got class – here's a recent picture." She holds up her phone and Cara gazes at it thoughtfully.

"So your dad, he talked about Vera?" I ask. It feels awkward, I mean we didn't even know about the dude until a few weeks ago.

"Vera Mae, he always called her." In fits and starts, lots of interruptions from Nina, she fills us in: Her father, Reno Smith, took awhile to recover his memory after the accident. Of course he remembered Vera, their relationship, but not things like her exact address, which he didn't have on him at the hospital. So it was weeks before he was able to write to her, and by that time she was gone; his letters came back. His leg never fully recovered, he always walked with a limp, and was 4-F during World War II. He never went back to working at the cannery, but started working at and then managing a warehouse down by the docks, that sort of job coming available with so many men gone. That's where he met Cara's mother, who was then a young widow, having lost her husband somewhere over the Pacific.

I don't need Nina's arched eyebrow to understand the parallel lines here – another pairing born of loss. Nina is quick to explain about Grandma Vera's marriage, that she thought Reno had died and that Walter too was in mourning for his parents.

Cara nods slowly. "Yes, my mother's loss was very fresh when the two of them first met. She was widowed with a young son, my brother, and having lost her true love. But he rekindled something in her, I think. They courted for two years before they decided to marry, and by that time Dad was genuinely a father to my brother. Then I was born a couple years after that, so I only knew them as my happily married parents. But it was no secret in our household, that each of them was rebounding from their first loves. My mother was the sort of person who would only be strengthened, not threatened by the idea of Dad's young love. I'm sorry," Cara adds, dabbing her napkin to her eye.

"How long ago did she pass?" Nina asks softly, reaching out a gentle hand.

"Just over a year. Sorry, it just hits me sometimes." She sits quietly for a moment, then rallies. "She would be just tickled to know I'm sitting here talking to a living relative of Vera Mae! And God knows, he would be too."

"Grandma told us that he finally caught up to where she was living, but it was after she was married to Grandpa Walt," Nina says. "And I guess he didn't want to interfere, or he figured she had moved on? Anyway, she didn't even find out about this until much later."

"My understanding is that he felt he should bow out due to her marriage. But that he did make sure – he was reassured to know that they'd all gotten the story wrong, thought he'd been killed instead of his brother. He felt she would have waited for him if she'd known. Imagine what an awful time he'd had of it back then," she continues, voice animated again. "He was laid up in a hospital for weeks, his younger brother had died, all his stuff got packed up in boxes that he didn't even know about until weeks after that. Then by the time he writes a letter off to his girlfriend, she's gone, moved away, the letters came back and he had no idea where she'd gone, and didn't have means to travel."

We all three pause, and eat a little bit. Thinking about all the devices that keep people linked together now. I'm regularly bugged by kids that constantly text, that can't look up from their phones – but I suppose I'd have to admit to a middle ground about the advances in technology. Say what you will about dumb videos and meaningless facebook posts, it's not a bad thing that people can find each other more easily now.

"Tell us more about him," Nina says. "It sounds like he had a good long life, despite all of that. Grandma Vera did too, it's obvious when you get to know her."

Cara's smile is warm, genuine. I don't really recall the photo of her dad, but just listening to her, I get a sense of a lively, friendly person. She tells us about both parents, because their lives were intertwined. The house where she grew up, that they fixed up and added on to, the vegetable garden. Nina and I both exclaim over Grandma Vera's beloved gardens. Vacations – they rarely went very far. It was a bit challenging for her dad, his injured leg, first of all, and they weren't terribly well off back then. But also, both her parents felt like they had come to a fine place that was hardly worth leaving. A long trip, in her childhood, meant a couple hours down the coast or up into the mountains. She always had a sense from both her parents that they were generally pretty satisfied with where they were.

"I'm the same way, I suppose," Cara adds. "My husband and I have lived in the same house for 20 odd years. Raised our boys there. We'll travel a little farther, sure, but I don't think any of us feel like we're missing much not being world travelers. My younger son lives in Fremont, I think I mentioned. I drive up there on a regular basis."

That's not very far from where we live, Nina hastens to tell her, and her words hang in the air for a moment. Weighing how it would sound to invite her to visit us, to visit Grandma Vera, I'm guessing – too much too soon?

Perhaps Cara is thinking the same thing though, and they both burst out with the idea almost at once. "I'd love to meet her, but wouldn't want to impose—"

"I'm sure she'd be delighted, thrilled, wouldn't she, Caleb?"

"I think she'd like it," I answer. "Now that she's finally telling people her whole story."

"We didn't know, for all this time, no one in the family knew except for Grandpa Walt, and he's been gone for 20 years now," Nina adds.

"That's a shame," Cara says. "Well, better late than never. I would be honored to meet her."

"It would complete the journey, wouldn't it," Nina adds, eyes sparkling and sentimental. "Oh, you and Grandma Vera, I'd love for that to be the final picture of them all!"

"I'll bring her all the letters," Cara says. "I just need my husband to bring them from storage."

Nina and I exchange a glance.

"Oh, he was a romantic, my dad," she laughs. "He kept all Vera Mae's letters, plus he hung onto the ones he sent that came back, all wrapped up in ribbon and stored away." She stops, and fumbles in her purse. "Here are some photographs, at least."

"Vera doesn't have any letters from Reno, she told me that back when she first told me his name from that picture," Nina says softly. "I don't know, I think she lost them, or maybe felt she had to throw them away."

"Do you think she would want to see them now?" I ask.

"Absolutely," Nina says. "And of course she would want to know what he finally sent, after she'd moved. I just hope she'll let us see them."

Cara nods in agreement, both of them giving me a look like men are hopeless. The dude's the one who saved the damn letters, I'd like to point out.

She passes us the pictures, carefully holding the old fashioned scalloped edges. One I quickly place as Reno and his brother, rangy looking young men. Two candid shots of Vera as a grinning, budding young woman. For a moment, I see a spark of Lucia in her posture and her bright smile. And just one shot of the Vera and Reno together – he's helping her carry a large basket. His hand over hers, their heads leaning toward each other, eyes merry and looking just delighted to be in one another's company.

"That's wonderful," Nina says, holding it out. I know she wants a copy for her picture project. I just hope we can recreate a sense of that passion in the after shot, the two of us, after all these years.

Cara shows us a few more pictures, more recent, of Reno with her mother, and her and her brother as kids. Very 1950s looking, the haircuts and big boxy cars. But a happy young family, just what you'd say of photographs of Vera and Walt with my mom and her brothers from that era.

To look at her, Cara must be around my uncle Frank's age, Vera's youngest son. It's weird to think of them all growing up, not so many miles or years separating the families, but with no knowledge, nothing to bring them together. Well, until now, until us.

Nina's right (I know, as usual) that it would do Grandma Vera good to meet this nice woman, her young man's daughter. To complete the tale that she has finally decided to tell.

"Here's one more thing," Cara says, "and I promise I'll dig out all those letters." She holds up a faded handbill, an exact match to the one Nina has copied on her computer, the farm we couldn't find.

But it was there. They were there. It meant the world to a pair of people, once upon a time.

## Chapter 16

## Vera Mae's Letters

##

Vera comes awake gradually. Loosens her arms and then her legs carefully, wary of stiffness or those sudden unexplained pinches that sometimes surprise her. Blinks her eyes to see that it's daylight already, and gives a little breath of gratitude that she has slept through a comfortable night.

Trays rattle in the hallway, cheerful voices call back and forth. She moves, slowly and precisely, to her bathroom and back. She'll wait for help with dressing, but at least gets herself into her soft lightweight robe. The foggy days of summer are lifting, it's almost autumn, when the days get hot and dry.

From years back, she recalls the delicious anticipation of this time of year – her garden fruits and vegetables lush and plump and close to harvest. Sometimes – often – they would snag a few early bloomers as soon as they came ready. Small sweet peppers, the first of the summer squash, lovely berries of course.

Various grandchildren have discussed the trend of "eating local," as if they were introducing a new idea. Vera doesn't mind though. She enjoys the company. Her most frequent visitors, Caleb and Nina, haven't been able to come as often as before. Both busy working, which she understands is a good thing.

But her new friend will be along later today. In fact, she has promised to bring a sample of the sweet persimmons she has grown in her garden. Farther south by the coast, they have less fog and long sunny days. Cara takes pride in her produce, loves talking about it and sharing it. Appreciates the appreciation, she says. Just as Vera herself always has. No point in a bounty of produce without people to share it.

Cara Smith-Rossi. Vera has carefully sealed the name in her mind. She knows she forgets names sometimes, but not this one. Cara Smith, the only daughter of Reno Smith. She does not resemble him much, Vera thinks; she must take after her mother. But there is a vibrancy about her, maybe, that brings the memories of him back. She makes a point to come by when she's in the area, visiting her son and his partner. Her visits are always a treat. She has even brought the young men, and they were charming.

When they were first acquainted, Vera wondered if Cara was just missing her own mother, looking for a substitute. But that's not so, any more than Cara is like a daughter to her. She's not much similar Ginnie at all; if anyone, she's like Frank back in his hippie phase. Free spirited, open minded, full of questions and ideas about the world. She won't let Vera lapse into small talk either – Cara is genuinely interested in what she has to say. Vera feels her head spinning sometimes, when they talk, but in a good way.

Vera doesn't feel she can really hide much from her anyway. She knows so much about her! She kept all of her letters, her letters to Reno and his that she never received. Nina took pictures of them all so Cara could keep copies, but she gave them back to Vera. Oh, she blushes now to read them, but read them she does. It's like going on a little trip through that time in her life without stirring from her quiet room.

Nina has begged her to let her include the letters in her picture project, which she says is almost ready to "launch," as if it was a missile going into space. Vera told her she can have the whole bunch after she has left this world, but for now some things are private. On seeing the girl's disappointment, though, she promised she would select a couple of them for her now. It feels satisfactory to have this to do this morning; she likes to be occupied. She will run the idea by Cara this afternoon, see which ones she particularly likes.

Cara Smith-Rossi, daughter of Reno Smith. And now a cherished friend. Who could have guessed after all these years, Vera thinks. On the other hand, maybe all she had to do was finally tell her story.

Dearest, darlingest Reno,

I laughed and laughed at your last letter, how delightful of you to include the complete description of your "fishy" slip up. Do hope that your laundry took care of the worst of it! How good of you to set such a wise example to your younger brother, I must say.

As for me, I've little new to tell you. How I miss you! How I wish you were here, if only for an hour. Well, if I'm wishing, why not for a whole day and night then... but you can't imagine how often I just want to tell you some silly little thing and then I remember that I can't. The boys try to cheer me up, and poor Jed has willingly let me share with him my misery at being alone. He's got a girl he's interested in though, and I know he'd rather be having fun with her than listening to his little sister's woes.

The rest of the family are not so well as Jed and his new gal, I'm afraid. My Ma does her best, but she misses Father terribly, as do we all. All the boys have worked themselves to the bone, trying to keep us all housed and fed and secure for when the work ends. We've not had much meat or eggs, and Ma worries that we're all getting weakened, and then she goes and insists that she doesn't need any and gives it all to us.

It's a relief to know that you are at least well fed out there on the coast! We hear tell of new programs that provide food to the most needy, and while I hate the idea of being such a person, it is good to know that Ma won't be allowed to starve. We will probably have to leave at the end of the harvest. The boys and I may seek work in a bigger city. If there was work for a woman out there, I would go to you first. Is there any chance, darling, have you seen any such jobs that I could do? You know I can do all kinds of things!

Please write to me again as soon as you can! I know you're working long hours and need your rest, but I need your funny stories. I'm thinking of you every day and dreaming of you at night, my dear. Give a big hug to Smitty for me, and save a thousand hugs and kisses for yourself. Yours always, your beloved,

Vera Mae

My darling Vera Mae,

In all these weeks that have passed, I now despair of hearing back from you. My earlier letters have come back, and I can only assume that you had to move on. I know the work was likely to end in the fall with the harvest, and here it is late November.

But should you see this letter, you or someone who can pass the word on to you, know that I miss you terribly and long to come find you, just as I promised back in the Spring when I made my way here. The doctors say I am not to travel yet, while my leg heals. (They don't say it aloud, but I fear they think that my head is not yet right either, that I will wander off somewhere and not find my way home. What could I tell them, but that I am already far too many miles from home, because my home is where my heart is, and my heart is there with you.)

They had to bury poor Raymond in a poor man's grave before I was well enough to hear of it, and it was near a month until I was sufficiently recovered to send word of it to our dear mother. That was a sad chore, darling, and how I wished I had you at my side to help find the right words.

But imagine my compounded sorrow when I discovered you were gone and I had no address by which to reach you again. The boarding house where we stayed was bankrupt and then sold. They turned away all the former border's mail, I learned, during almost the entirety of my convalescence. I have gone almost daily to see if I can intercept a letter from you, but to no avail.

I hope and pray that one of you will return to this your last address, or someone will find this letter and kindly forward it to you. In the meantime, I must find work again, despite my wretched hobbling and foggy head. I have been kindly welcomed as a boarder with friends, whose address I enclose below. I long to see a letter from you there.

Know that I think of you often, and of our good times together, and of the times I hope to come. Love from your faithful,

Reno

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Myanne's e-book The Ghost Family is available for $1.99 at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36248 and her other e-books are available free to download at:

Clarity http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99806

Set it Off http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/327834

Like what you've read? Online reviews are appreciated!

