Walk Two Moons

7 ILL-AH-NO-WAY

“Well, lookee here!” Gramps shouted. “The Illinois state line!” He pronounced Illinois “Ill-ah-no-way,” exactly the way everyone in Bybanks, Kentucky, pronounced it, and hearing that “Ill-ah-no-way” made me suddenly homesick for Bybanks.

“What happened to Indiana?” Gram said.

“Why, you gooseberry,” Gramps said. “That’s where we’ve been the past three hours, barreling through Indiana. You’ve been listening to the story of Peeby and plumb missed Indiana. Don’t you remember Elkhart? We ate lunch in Elkhart. Don’t you remember South Bend? You took a pee in South Bend. Why, you missed the entire Hoosier state! You gooseberry.” He thought this was very funny.

Just then, the road curved (it actually curved—this was a shock), and off to the right was a huge jing-bang mass of water. It was as blue as the blue-bells that grow behind the barn in Bybanks, and that water just went on and on—it was all you could see. It looked like a huge blue pasture of water.

“Are we at the ocean?” Gram asked. “We’re not supposed to be passing the ocean, are we?”

“You gooseberry, that’s Lake Michigan.” Gramps kissed his finger and put it against Gram’s cheek.

“I sure would like to put my feet in that water,” Gram said.

Gramps swerved across two lanes of traffic and onto the exit ramp, and faster than you could milk a cow we were standing barefoot in the cool water of Lake Michigan. The waves splashed up on our clothes, and the sea gulls flew in circles overhead, calling in one great chorus, as if they were glad to see us.

“Huzza, huzza!” Gram said, wriggling her heels into the sand. “Huzza, huzza!”

We stopped that night on the outskirts of Chicago. I looked around at what I could see of Ill-ah-no-way from the Howard Johnson Motel, and it might as well have been seven thousand miles from the lake. It all looked precisely like northern Ohio to me, with its flat land and long, straight roads, and I thought what a very long journey this was going to be. With the dark came the whispers: rush, hurry, rush.

That night I lay there trying to imagine Lewiston, Idaho, but my mind would not go forward to a place I had never been. Instead, I kept drifting back to Bybanks.

When my mother left for Lewiston, Idaho, that April, my first thoughts were, “How could she do that? How could she leave me?”

As the days went on, many things were harder and sadder, but some things were strangely easier. When my mother had been there, I was like a mirror. If she was happy, I was happy. If she was sad, I was sad. For the first few days after she left, I felt numb, non-feeling. I didn’t know how to feel. I would find myself looking around for her, to see what I might want to feel.

One day, about two weeks after she had left, I was standing against the fence watching a newborn calf wobble on its thin legs. It tripped and wobbled and swung its big head in my direction and gave me a sweet, loving look. “Oh!” I thought. “I am happy at this moment in time.” I was surprised that I knew this all by myself, without my mother there. And that night in bed, I did not cry. I said to myself, “Salamanca Tree Hiddle, you can be happy without her.” It seemed a mean thought and I was sorry for it, but it felt true.

In the motel, as I was remembering these things, Gram came and sat on the edge of my bed. She said, “Do you miss your daddy? Do you want to call him?”

I did miss him, and I did want to call him, but I said, “No, I’m fine, really.” He might think I was a goose if I had to call him already.

“Okay, then, chickabiddy,” Gram said, and when she leaned over to kiss me, I could smell the baby powder she always used. That smell made me feel sad, but I didn’t know why.

The next morning, when we got lost leaving Chicago, I prayed: “Please don’t let us get in an accident, please get us there in time—”

Gramps said, “At least it’s a mighty fine day for a drive.” When we finally found a road heading west, we took it. Our plan was to curve across the lower part of Wisconsin, veer into Minnesota, and then barrel straight on through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, sweep up into Montana, and cross the Rocky Mountains into Idaho. Gramps figured it would take us about a day in each state. He didn’t intend to stop too much until we reached South Dakota, and he was really looking forward to South Dakota. “We’re gonna see the Badlands,” he said. “We’re gonna see the Black Hills.”

I didn’t like the sound of either of those places, but I knew why we were going there. My mother had been there. The bus that she took out to Lewiston stopped in all the tourist spots. We were following along in her footsteps.