Chapter 7
Goodnight



All three of the ladies have a lot to say about what has just happened once Betty has explained the last few minutes to Doris. No one else bothers with the rest room. Instead, Betty turns the Chrysler back onto Route 7 and heads toward Rutland.
“Now as for you, Michael,” she says, thinking she is getting formal with me, “I suggest that for tonight, you come and stay with us at my house. It obviously isn’t safe for you to be out on the road after dark, young as you are. And in the morning, I’ll buy you a bus ticket to New York.”
What Betty doesn’t understand, I guess, is that she’s trampling on my plan by trying to protect me. I need to break out on my own, not with adult interference. Just like Grandpa Maurice.
We had a July Fourth picnic at the farm and, as he often does, Grandpa Maurice came. That was only three months ago, and school was out, of course, and I was home working on the farm. Mom had baked a half dozen pies for desert, and we grilled burgers and hot dogs and had a big tub boiling with fresh corn, and the table was piled with just-baked bread and butter from our own cows. The blue smoke rising from the grill hung under the spreading green canopy of the maple trees, and a thin plume of smoke rose from Grandpa Maurice’s pipe – he had asked if anyone minded that he smoked and no one did – and the pipe smoke drifted into the burger smoke and everything smelled delicious.
“What do you plan to do with your life?” he asked me after we had talked a bit about my days at Harwich.
“I’d really like to take over this farm some day,” I said. No one else was around at that moment, so I let out my deeper thoughts. “They want me to learn more about the world,” I said. “That’s why they have me at Harwich. But I’m pretty sure Dad knows everything you could possibly need to know about the world in order to get good cows to give milk and to make money from them.”
“He’s one of the best,” Grandpa Maurice said, drawing then on his pipe and nodding solemnly.
“So while I know they think they are doing what is best for me, it’s not what I want,” I said. I knew that this would play well with Grandpa Maurice. I expected the response he made.
“At some point,” he said, “when you are grown up, no matter when that happens, you will make such decisions for yourself.”
Well, that time has come. Betty, who I’m sure has a good heart, as Mom would say, is not going to choose my path for me. So I have to thank her for her suggestion but say I’ll be on my way tonight. I have no time to lose.
I say it just that clearly, and the car falls silent. I look out the window at the passing darkness. Roadside weeds and highway signs and corrugated steel guard rails flash by the Chrysler. Up on the hillsides – we are in Vermont, so of course the main roads all follow the valleys and have hills and mountains beside them – up on the hills, there are dots of yellow lights where there are houses or farms, but all else is black.
Finally, after a few miles, Betty speaks. “I’ll let you off in downtown Rutland, then,” she says, her voice sweet, not angry like I had feared it would be. “Close to the police station. You can try to get a ride from there, and if there are any problems, you’ll know where you can run for help.”