Travel, Broadens the Mind

Looked the same as it did every year. The huge viburnum was in bloom, so too a pale-striped-leaf dogwood. The viburnum’s flowers were on the fade-end of bloom, the dogwood’s just starting. It was always cooler there, set on a rise where the wind blew incessantly. The greensward had been freshly mowed, very short, and recently. Despite which, embedded with the grass, clover, buttercups and thyme were all in bright pink, purple and yellow flower. They could smell the herb-sharp fragrance of the thyme as they walked upon the grass.

Far more insistently pungent, the odour of cow manure, wafting on the wind from the farm sitting right adjacent the rest stop, nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont. As they walked, a leash held by each of them, man and wife, glad to be able to stretch cramped limbs and get their little dogs to do the same, the shared ritual of admiring the specimen-quality oaks, maples and ornamental crabs commenced. He conscientiously scooped up into a small plastic bag the equally small deposit their very small black dog rid herself of. The little male was content to lift his tiny back leg proprietorially at every tree trunk they passed.

Really, the stench of cow offal was overpowering, she remarked to her husband. Who smiled indulgently at her, a ‘city girl’, who had never experienced living and working summers on a farm, as he had.

“I rather enjoy it”, he said. “Brings back good memories. Doesn’t bother me at all.”

A trifle smugly, she thought. “I know you do, don’t, respectively”, she sniffed.

The day was warming considerably. Usually, early June, it was much cooler up here, and often enough drizzling. No fear of that this day. They would eat their take-along brunch at one of the handily-placed picnic tables.

“I’ll just be a minute” he said, handing her the second leash. The little dogs made to follow him. She tugged lightly, to hold them back, seating herself on the bench-seat of the closest picnic table. The little dogs wandered as far as their leashes permitted under the table, crossing leashes. And she testily unravelled them.

‘Just a minute’, she knew from long experience, would be an interminable stretch, and she resigned herself to a considerable wait. She felt irritated by the heat, and the pestiferous presence of black flies and deer flies now revealing their presence, as she sat there, offering up her tender flesh. You’d think, she said to herself crankily, that the wind would keep them away. She kept flailing at them, on her neck, behind her ears, at her face. Thought how foolish she must appear, should anyone be watching.

It was a busy place, cars coming and going. People using the convenient presence of clean washrooms, picking up state-issued maps, tourist brochures. Doubtful, she said to herself that the drivers of those trailers, semi-trailers, tractor-trailers, would be interested in tourist brochures. The coffee however, that would be another matter. Her husband swore by the quality of the coffee there. She detested coffee. Her husband enthused, it was Green Mountain coffee; your choice of decaffeinated, regular or hazelnut-flavoured. Not my choice, she responded dryly. She would make do with the thermos of hot tea sitting in the trunk. Her cup of tea, as it were.

A line of heavy trucks sat beyond the area where cars parked. Huge metal beasts, some carrying immense pieces of machinery, others logs, idled loudly, spewing carbon and rattling the air.

She had appreciated the brisk bonhomie of the young uniformed customs-immigration official - although they called them border inspectors now - at the Darby Line crossing who had casually screened their passports, questioned their destination, their origin, glanced into the car interior, noting the little dogs, scrutinizing their proffered documentation. A far cry from the usual rudely dour uniforms who so often screened them. She had leaned forward on her seat to view him more clearly and thanked him for his ‘refreshing’ attitude.

The young man had barely paused, beaming back “Have a good trip!”

He deposited the little plastic bag into the waste container sitting outside the doors to the tourist rest area. As he entered, he casually vetted the interior; unchanged from their last trip. A very young woman, pretty, delicate of build and wearing, he noted - for he was a conscientious people-connoisseur - very brief black shorts and improbably teetery high-heeled shoes. He noted also that a metal circlet of heavy keys dangled from a belt at her waist. He smiled directly at her. It was what he did.

Immediately the thought flashed his mind; she was exiting the ladies’ washroom, an inauspicious time to have one’s presence acknowledged. She scowled back at him, before peremptorily turning directly for the door, heels clicking angrily, imperiously he felt, on the stone floor. Before she left taking no notice of anyone else in the chamber, not the genial woman standing before the enquiry desk, nor the tourists milling about, nor yet the young man she passed entering as she exited. He was also a casual student of human psychology and he put that little performance down to an uncertain person's self-conscious display of psychological self-defence; a distancing from any who might find question in her appearance. Nothing needing defence there, he mentally shrugged.

He certainly had other things to think about. His wife’s unwillingness to embark on the trip, for example. Her seemingly growing frailty, sudden spells of dizziness, flashes of temper, fears and uncertainties. Her willing admission to him that she was herself puzzled at the fear that seemed to envelop her, looming seemingly out of nowhere. Her lack of energy, however, she tended to laugh off as “sclerotic old age”.

He hoped getting away would be good for her, take her out of her brooding moodiness. Despite her lack of enthusiasm for this trip he counted on it having an enlivening effect on her. Her usual exhilaration at being in the out-of-doors, away, the change of scenery and surrender to the pleasures of mountain trails would do it for her. It always had. She had a deep-seated need that way. He should know, he had ample opportunity to observe her over the years. Since they were kids, growing up together. Her mood would be rejuvenated, her energy and enthusiasm restored. He believed that.

He was not certain, but thought it likely that the woman sitting at the information counter was the very one he had spoken with last year at this same time. Effusively pleasant, eager to talk, generous with her smiles. Bored, no doubt, sitting there for long hours, he surmised. She informed him breathlessly that it was a wonder they still had brochures left for the taking. Two full busloads of high school students had come through that very morning, from Montreal. Rambunctious and excited, on their way through to a week-end in Boston. Polite kids, she hastened to assure him, as though they were his.

His wife decided she would move to another table, see if she could escape the black flies. Perhaps right where she was sitting, that was the problem. She gathered the little dogs, moved off to another table much closer to the building. Predictably, it made little difference, and she resigned herself to the nuisance, awaited her husband’s re-appearance. Many people passed through the doors; her husband not among them. She sighed, not in exasperation, not entirely. She was glad he enjoyed speaking with people, did not begrudge him any such opportunities, however fleeting - he was that gregarious.

She noted a young woman whom she had seen earlier enter, exit, and repeat this several times. Their eyes caught and they exchanged smiles. Her back to the parking lot, facing the greensward and the farm beyond, the mountain tops further still, she heard an odd, rhythmic clattering, idly wondered what it might be, but was constrained by not wanting to appear nosy, from ostentatiously turning around to determine the source.

She became aware of an audible intake of breath, a giggle, and did then turn to her right, to see the same woman, dressed in knee-length twill shorts, a brightly patterned three-quarter sleeve tee-shirt, rapidly approaching her.

“Did you see that?” she demanded.

“Did I see … what?” What was it I should have seen, she wondered, looking at the other woman’s bemused, hugely amused countenance.

”That woman! She just came out of the building.”

“No, I wasn’t looking in that direction.”

The woman looked disappointed. “You didn’t see her?” she asked, incredulously.

“Why no, I did not. Why? Why are you asking?”

And it came bubbling out, brimming with mirth, with glee, with what - admiration?

“This woman, delicate, slightly built, young, long blonde hair. Wearing a really short black pencil skirt. She was wearing black stiletto heels!”

“Oh.”

“Well, no, that’s not all”, the excited woman before her gushed. “I watched her cross over the tarmac, headed for where the rigs are parked. You know, those big tractor trailers?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I thought, you know, kind of like reasoning to myself, guess some long-distance driver picked himself up a juicy away-from-home prospect. You know, for a ‘casual companion’?”

“Oh!?”

“Well, that wasn't it! I watched her, in that skirt, those stiletto heels. She clambered up into the cab. On the driver’s side. There’s no one else in there. Just her! Look, there she goes, she’s pulling away!”

She turned herself awkwardly, yanking at the little dogs' leashes in the process, to look in the direction the woman was pointing. Yes, the largest of the lot, pulling out, pulling down the ramp, stopping at the confluence of the highway, then off and away.

She turned to look at the woman standing beside her. Felt the same goofy grin paste itself over her own face, to match the other’s. And they chorused a good, loud chortle: Hey there, girl!