than you are. You’re holding out for what you want to do and you won’t settle for what you have to do. Keep following your star and please accept my apology.
I pursed my lips. “You were right the first time,” I muttered. “No need to apologize.” The seat beside me was empty. I hoped it would stay that way. I didn’t feel like talking. I had a lot of thinking to do.
I lay back in the darkness, listening to the singing of the tires in the rain. Trucks droned like huge hornets zipping past the window. I never realized before how much freight moved over the roads while most people slept. Those drivers hurtled their rigs through the dark with hours on their minds and a clock to beat. I dozed fitfully, waking now and then to the sounds of snoring or a baby crying, then drifting off into a limbo again. I was startled when the lights flicked on, and from far off the driver’s voice announced a rest stop. For a moment, I had no idea where I was.
In New York City, a frail, slight man with heavy-rimmed glasses sat down next to me. Before we left the city, conversation started to flow. At thirty-three, he was an eye surgeon. Here he was, just three years older than I, and professionally established. I was still groping.
“I make my living here in the city,” he said. “A very good living … and I hate it. The people are callous. If you fell down on the sidewalk, they’d walk over you before they stopped to help you get up.”
He told me how he had no time to himself at all, how patients came with their problems and left them with him to solve, how meetings of medical societies stole the precious moments of privacy that emergency operations failed to claim.
“So,” he said, “I’m going to my sister’s place for ten days and didn’t tell a soul where I was going.”
“I envy you,” I told him. “You’ve arrived. You’re right on course.” I confided that I still didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, but I was headed to Alaska to find out.
The doctor laughed. “Envy me? Why I’d give a whole lot to be going with you. When I started high school, everything was all planned. Mapped out. I’m sure life is much more exciting your way. The quest is much more stimulating than the goal.”
So we sat and talked, each envious of the other, each good for the other, and yet I felt that his was the better way to go. He was doing something worthwhile, contributing unselfishly of his time to society, and I was still a boy who wanted to play.
I didn’t like to see him leave when he got off the bus.
“It’s been a most pleasant experience,” the doctor said. He handed me a card and we shook hands. “If you’re ever in New York again, please look me up.”
“It would be fun to compare notes someday,” I said. I watched him hurry off, blurring into the crowd and the anonymity he sought.
SCENES FLASHED PAST THE WINDOWS OF the bus as we hurtled west. In Ohio, I was amazed at forests of television antennae. Chicago was in the throes of the Republican convention with “I Like Ike” placards, searchlights, and a barrage balloon [blimp] in the sky. Wisconsin towns impressed me with their washed streets and neat shops. Minnesota’s bodies of water, large and small, danced with sunlight.
North Dakota? A huge, undulating golf course and clumps of trees. Flat Montana rose up into the Rockies. The road was a precipitous rock wall on one side and a guard rail—dizzying nothingness beyond it—on the other. I could only smell the evergreens of Idaho as we roared through it in the night. Southern Washington seemed desolate with sage and rock. It felt like we were in the southwest. Then enchantment came outside of Ellensburg—the snowy Cascades jutting their proud peaks above the dark foothills. Black-striped, orange-barked pines towered amid the firs, and I felt I was moving through a canyon bordered with great living columns. Fog patches curled and ascended the slopes. The clear waters of the Yakima River raced along beside me.
Finally, upswooping, cloud-crowned Mount Rainier … and Seattle.
I shaved in the large restroom of the terminal. Soldiers were stripped down, dipping into suitcases, sprucing up and appraising their reflections. A thick-armed giant shaved next to me and splashed water like a grizzly emerging from a creek. I felt dwarfed beside him and wondered where he came from and what he did. I decided he had to be related to a Douglas fir.
Five days on the bus had exacted a toll. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I broke out on the streets of Seattle. I’d claim my seabag as soon as I got settled somewhere. Which way to go? I flipped a coin. Heads one way; tails, the other. Tails directed me to the Georgian Hotel. Not fancy, but in my price range, and it was clean. I soaked luxuriously in a hot bath, crawled between fresh sheets, and drifted into a deep sleep. When I woke, I couldn’t believe it! I had slept almost twelve hours.
I lay there staring at the ceiling. Thoughts bombarded me. Was I running away from life, or running toward it? Wouldn’t problems from back East follow me like birds in the wake of a ship? When was I going to realize I couldn’t be a boy forever? Well, I’d come this far. I’d play the hand out. With a frowning concentration, I dressed and went out to see the town.
Signs were all over the place:
ALASKA, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY.
FLY TO ALASKA! $79 TO ANCHORAGE WITH 55 POUNDS OF LUGGAGE, 30¢ FOR EXTRA WEIGHT.
STEAMSHIP CRUISE TO ANCHORAGE, $115 WITHOUT TAX.
SEE THE LAST FRONTIER!
The promoters were going on all cylinders. Such a lavish display made the whole business feel like a sucker’s game to me. Round-trip tickets weren’t mentioned at all. I wasn’t going off half-cocked. It was now Monday, July 14. I’d look around. If I didn’t line up an Alaska job here by Friday, I’d light out for Anchorage or Fairbanks without one, and take my chances.
I bought an Alaskan newspaper. I could see there was much unemployment up there in the land of opportunity. Her cities were crowded. There were many references to men stranding themselves without funds. Several pleas in the advertising section alarmed me. “Young man desperately needs work.” “Young man will do anything.”
I checked the Seattle Times carefully to see if anyone was driving up the Alaska-Canada Highway (also known as the Alcan) and wanted a passenger. That was like trying to fill an inside straight, but I’d continue to keep my eyes open just the same.
I wandered the streets to get oriented. Soldiers and sailors prowled the sidewalks singly and in bands, looking into windows, and moving in and out of the shops. Nobody seemed to notice them. They didn’t give the impression of being proud of their uniforms. I remembered how proud I’d been of mine, but times were different then. The country was together.
I strolled along the waterfront. Sockeye salmon, gutted and slab-sided, lay on beds of crushed ice. SEND A SALMON EAST, a sign read. AS LOW AS $10.50. Anna would be pleased with one of them, I decided, so I sent her one. I wasn’t surprised that it cost me $12.50. The low price advertised must have been reserved for the east bank of the Mississippi, the farthest west you could be and still call it “East” here. Piles of crabs rested on folded legs. Men in short rubber boots hosed the wooden and cement floors, sloshing debris off the edges. The smell of fish and seaweed hung in the air. Masses of brown-leaved kelp waved in the Puget Sound swells, like fronds of coconut palms. Packing cases, cans, and papers bobbed in the water around the pilings.
If you don’t
