Call Me a Cab

30

When people think of Colorado they think of mountains; Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Vail, skiing, all that stuff. But that’s all in the western half of the state, while we were still in eastern Colorado, which is every bit as flat as next-door Kansas. The mountains were visible far away to the west, blue-gray promises bunching on the horizon, but where we stood it was possible to see nothing much of interest in any direction at all for miles and miles and miles. No wonder they make science fiction movies in places like this; you’re really aware that you’re on a planet. And this is the landscape through which — no, over which — Katharine and I took our walk, heading arbitrarily north on the smallest available road, away from the Interstate.

It’s a truism that we don’t walk as much as we should, but behind the truism is the fact that we don’t walk at all. By ‘we’ I mean Americans, but I probably mean Europeans and Canadians and South Americans and Japanese as well. Going from the garage to the house, or from the television set to the refrigerator, or even from the parking lot to the supermarket, isn’t walking. In order to walk, you have to go somewhere you’d usually go by car — like two blocks for a newspaper.

Not that I took to this new experience right away. At first, my cantankerousness and boredom kept me from taking any interest or pleasure in what was happening, until suddenly I realized my body, all on its own, was enjoying itself. Our movement had achieved an easy strolling rhythm, our arms and legs were involved without strain, the dirt shoulder on which we strode was flat and even, there were no hills to contend with, traffic next to our left elbows was light, and it turned out that walking wasn’t merely a method to get where you could do something else; walking was fun in itself. “This was a stroke of genius,” I said.

Katharine beamed, then looked back and said, “See how far we’ve come already.”

Not very far, actually, but that was all right; we had no appointments to keep. The Holiday Inn was a squat nodule in the near distance, among other low projections from the surface like groves of trees, clusters of barns, the town containing our cab, and some sort of factory westward with those water-cooling tanks that look like salt-and-pepper shakers.

Our road was old concrete, patched frequently with ragged scars of blacktop, traveled infrequently by mostly dusty cars and pick-up trucks. People looked at us in curiosity — nobody walks anymore — and one well-meaning fellow in a pick-up truck and cowboy hat stopped to ask if he could “help.” We thanked him, assured him we could manage on our own, and he gave us a friendly smile, a big wave, and his wishes for good luck.

As we strolled, Katharine pointed out the various flora around us, bushes and trees and even some flowers here and there along the roadside, telling me what everything was called. I’m unredeemably a city boy; the names she quoted fell out of my head just as rapidly as she put them in. Still, it was nice to hear her talk about what was, after all, her subject, which led me at last to say, “What made you decide to be a landscape architect in the first place?”

She gave me a sidelong look: “What made you decide to be a cabdriver?”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Nothing, you know that. The only reason I’m driving a cab is because my father had one around the house. I take the path of least resistance. You don’t. This whole journey is you taking the path of most resistance.”

She laughed, then said, “Well, I usually take the path of least resistance, just like anybody else. I didn’t start out wanting to be a landscape architect, it just happened.”

“Sure.”

“No, truly. When I was a little girl, what I wanted to be was a wife and a mommy, like everybody else. Then, around the time I went to college, the world opened up a little and it was all right to think of alternative futures, and then I decided what I wanted to be was personal secretary to a major politician, like a senator. Or maybe a movie executive. I was an American History major, with a Poli Sci minor, and I also learned shorthand and typing and all that, and when I graduated the placement office found me a job with a landscape architect.”

“Oh, no!”

She was laughing at me. “Did you think I was a saint? Did you think I had a vocation?”

“Yes!” I gestured wildly yet vaguely, like Raggedy Andy. “That road of yours, those eight miles—”

She stopped, and turned, and looked at me very seriously. “That’s one of the things you don’t know, Tom,” she said, “and it’s probably why you’re such a layabout.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You really believe, don’t you, that a heavenly messenger has to appear in a circle of fire and tell you what to do with your life before you’ll take any of it seriously. I love what I do, Tom, it uses whatever talents I have, it absorbs my interest, I think I’m very good at it; but until I got that secretarial job I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a landscape architect. If I’d gone to work for a rug manufacturer instead, I’d probably be designing carpets at this very minute, and I’d most likely be pretty good at it.”

“But don’t landscape architects have to go to college for it and pass tests and things?”

“Of course,” she said. “And I did, too, once I got involved. I’m fully accredited.” She smiled, amused at the opportunity to shock me. “But the whole thing came from a three by five card in that placement office.”

I clutched my brow. “Do you mean,” I demanded, eyes widening, “that accident plays a significant part in human life? I don’t think I can stand it.”

She studied me from under lowered brows, as though I hadn’t been joking. “No,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe you can.”

What terrible route the conversation might have taken from there I know not, because at that instant we were saved by the halting just beyond us of a black and gleaming Rolls Royce, out of which popped a tall lithe old woman in a lawn-party white dress, marcelled silver hair glistening in the sun, big cheerful smile on her lined and slender face as she called to us, “No more of that! You two just get in the car here and behave yourselves!”