Read Online Road to Bountiful by Donald S. Smurthwaite - Free Book Online

star was amazing, much more so than any I’ve seen back home, maybe because the lights are bright there and we never hardly look up.
    I have to say it. The shooting star inspired me.
    And—not to sound too whacked out here—I wondered if I could be my own shooting star in a nice, normal kind of earthly LDS way. Loyal is getting inside your head, Levi.
    Talk to yourself, Levi. Work through this. Okay. The point is, I’m on track for a lot of things—the mission is over, I’m about to start my last year at school, I have Rachel interested in me and me interested in her, at least I think that’s the way it shapes up, and I know I want to be successful , but I’m still pulled in different directions. I get pulled in the direction of earning money, having a job with prestige and pizzazz, trophy home, trophy wife, trophy kids, trophy cars, trophy church calling, trophy everything—anything to be above and stand out from others. To be someone. Is that a crime? And then I see that star and think it’s what I want to be without being any of it all. It’s clear, its course is straight, you can see it but you need to know where to look for it, and when you see it, you admire it, but it does nothing to call attention to itself. It’s just there. It’s pure, and there are no trophies in sight. It’s just there . For anyone to look at, if you know where to look at the right time.
    Okay, am I a little nuts here? I worried about Uncle Loyal not having dry mortar between his bricks, but I’m the one who looks at him and says, “See that star? I want to be like it.” I want to be a bursting ball of white light in a dark sky. Like a four-year-old who says he wants to be a cowboy or a fireman or a professional basketball player. Me? I want to be a shooting star.
    So I sit behind the steering wheel, and I think of what has taken place in the last few hours of my life. I take inventory. I do a little cost accounting. I add things up.
    I saw a shooting star and thought I wanted to be like it, which about pegs me off the weirdness meter.
    Uncle Loyal fed me a ham sandwich, and it got to me. Who eats a ham sandwich and comes away thinking he’s had a significant emotional experience? Me, just me. That’s who.
    I know what Vega and Altair are, and I think I can find Cygnus on my own. Before tonight, I thought they might be a heavy metal band.
    I drove through a crashing storm and saw lightning licking down in cornfields and thunder that sounded like a freight train blasting two inches from my toes.
    And I’m not thinking as much about the easy six hundred awaiting me soon after I cross into Davis County and head up the hill to Aunt Barbara’s mansion on the ridge.
    All of this in a few short hours, with my Uncle Loyal. What if I do slow this trip down? How much more would I have to talk about? How many more stars would I see? How many stars and constellations am I missing by going too fast and bracketing my life in dollar signs? How many more stories would I have to tell? How much more would I learn?
    And maybe when my friends all started talking about their summers, the jobs they had, their experiences, when they started to shake and bake a little in front of me, I’d just think, Yeah, but I was with Loyal, and you can’t match that, no way man. Smug.
    My career as a boxboy is over. I have latched on to my last mop and cleaned up after little Junior Short Pants for the last time. I have endured my last complaint about the asparagus being crushed by the canned corn or the bananas being too green or the price of lettuce being too high, as if I had any control over it .
    Here is the hint, memo to self: Enjoy your time with Uncle Loyal. The man is a beast.
    I start the car, a thousand thoughts billowing through my mind. Then one thought comes clear, takes hold, and before I know it, I’m asking Uncle Loyal a question that would have been astonishing to me earlier in the day.
    “Do you mind if we slow down on this trip? Stretch it