Temperance Creek. Pamela Royes

I loved my cowboy boots, the toes pointing, moving toward the freeway traffic without me, in spite of me.

      “Laura, this is a great day.”

      In the cold, thin April light, my wool-lined jacket felt good across my shoulders. The prairie morning fanned in pink, red, and violet rays before us. Pick any color, pick any road, I thought. The frigid embrace of winter was finally breaking. Below us, the noise of the traffic rose and fell like the sound of distant surf . . . or was it applause? I glanced at Laura.

      One day we’re watching Disney and Bonanza together, the next we’re merging with the interstate traffic, high on LSD. My grasp on the consequences of our actions paled as the psychedelics, a parting gift from one of our high school friends, kicked in. Someone honked, and Laura and I turned to wave, our arms lengthening into long ribbons of flowing movement. We stopped and danced a celebratory do-si-do in honor of our grand appointment with the universe. Then we worked to compose ourselves.

      “Did you see how your fingers looked when you waved?” Laura said.

      My grip on the suitcase felt like a good shop weld, and I was afraid if I let go it wouldn’t come off. Laura’s wire-rimmed granny glasses fogged up, and we started laughing and couldn’t stop. We spent ten minutes at the edge of the barrow pit, pulling our act together.

      “How much money did you bring?” I asked. “I’ve got almost fifty bucks. I’m really starting to hallucinate. Let’s have a smoke.”

      When I was six, I’d packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a paper sack and slipped down to Lincoln Park, where I’d hid in the woods, nursing some imagined grievance. When I’d finished eating, I’d gone home to see if anyone had missed me yet. I’d found Mom in the basement pressing damp sheets on the hissing, belching mangle iron and sat quietly on the floor watching her fold the starched white sheets into neat squares. Perspiring, she’d worked the big iron, the steam rising in great puffs, unaware of my duplicity.

      “Ready, Laura?” She nodded. We got to our feet and stuck out our thumbs. Somewhere out there were geodesic domes, black lights, Woodstock, and the mad passion of life, love, sin, and creativity. The future.

      Three days later, around midnight, Laura and I reached the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, looking all the while over our shoulders. We’d expected to be set upon and apprehended, and with the passing of each small hour, we began to wish that the expected hour would arrive, so we could get on with the consequences.

      “Pam, do you think they’ve put out an APB on us?”

      “Maybe they don’t even know we’re gone yet.”

      “I’m so hungry.”

      “Yeah, me too. Let’s keep walking and find an exit.”

      “It’s so cold. Wonder what everyone’s doing at home.”

      Reaching into my jacket I pulled out two Marlboros and a book of matches. We lit up and started walking again.

      “Would you have gone without me?” she asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “Thought so.”

      A day later, we ended up in Aspen, Colorado. Staring up at those rocky, snow-covered, ten-thousand-foot mountains, I was enthralled, entranced, and absolutely certain that destiny had played a part in guiding us there. Laura found work cleaning rooms; I was hired on at an heiress’s horse ranch, cleaning stalls. I got a furnished apartment to live in. And the keys to her spare Porsche.

      When I called home, I was slightly surprised at how easily my parents capitulated.

      “What good would it do if we said no?” Mom said in her I-don’t-know-what-we’re-going-to-do-about-you voice. I knew she thought I’d thrown my life away, my opportunities, my reputation, and the possibility of ever attracting a wealthy husband.

      “I’m sorry.” Maybe deep down, part of me hoped they’d drive to Aspen and make me (albeit a more contrite version of me) come home. But for some reason, they didn’t.

      Two weeks later, Laura got homesick and bought a one-way bus ticket back to North Dakota. I stayed, but I missed Laura. The bare-bones apartment now too big, too quiet, and too melancholy. I saw myself. Transfixed by the tick of the clock, the quiet traffic, and muffled movement from adjoining apartments.

      I worked long hours at the ranch, six, seven days a week, cleaning stalls, schooling horses. When I wasn’t working, I read, explored, hiked, or swam in the public pool. On Sundays, I called home, collect. Eventually, I discovered a new kind of freedom. I adopted a puppy. A malamute husky, fuzzy gray and white, smart, loyal, independent. I adored him. I named him Jack. He was the first dog, the first anything I was totally responsible for, and together we settled into a decisive rhythm and confidence.

      Separated from my hometown juvenile delinquent friends, and well under the legal drinking age, I set aside alcohol and drugs. I got a library card. I learned to drink coffee and hold down a job, taught my dog to sit, stay, and heel, paid the rent, and made new friends. Rita and her boyfriend Kris owned a home recording studio outside Old Snowmass. I was discovering myself. I craved exposure to beauty, to nature, to art, to words, to music, to people—ordinary, intelligent, amusing, and loud—anything outside convention or expectation.

      My parents phoned one night toward the end of summer with the startling news that they were selling our house in Grand Forks, buying a place in Medford, Oregon, and wanted me to think about coming home. Without Jack. They followed up with a letter and enough money for a bus ticket.

       Dear Pam,

       You really shook me up last night with your news about the dog. Honestly, I just don’t think you realize what problems you will make if you bring that dog home. Your dad is stressed enough as it is. I’m really sorry about this but I woke up in the middle of the night and it hit me, what you had said. I guess I was relieved when you said “dog” instead of “pregnant,” “married,” or “in jail.” I just didn’t take it in all at once . . .

      I pocketed the money Dad sent because, well, they left me no choice really. Leave my dog? I quit work, said goodbye to my Rocky Mountain friends, dropped off the Porsche and apartment keys, and slipped away. Slipped because I knew how. Same as I’d slipped in and out my parents’ front door at any and all hours, slipped through the woods and the alleys. Slipped, learning to move with the pack when necessary, not allowing anyone to single me out.

      Then I hitched back to North Dakota.

      With a couple good rides behind us, Jack and I dozed in the back seat of a beat-up Rambler, and I thought about Mom’s last letter, how stressed Dad was. It had to be hard, leaving his Dakota roots, his work, his friends. I still couldn’t believe it was happening. It must have been Mom’s idea to move to Oregon, nearer her side of the family. Since the accident, she hadn’t been happy. Good or bad, the accident had become a catalyst, uprooting our family to another state. Oddly, I didn’t mind we were leaving the summer before my senior year. I’d miss my friends, but there would be mountains, and I felt ready for anything. Only a few more rides and I’d be home.

      Somewhere outside Omaha, in the numbing ether of Nebraska, a Ford sedan stopped to pick me up. Behind the wheel, a salesman, wearing a navy blue business suit.

      “I can get you as far as Sioux City,” he’d said.

      I threw my pack in the back seat and jumped up front, Jack curling on the floorboards between my legs. We’d reached cruising speed, eighty-five miles per hour, before the driver spoke again, asking in a conversational tone, “Are you wearing any panties?”

      There was a sudden weightlessness to my up-until-then routine mission to find a ride home. Inexplicably we’d come unmoored and were hurtling, spinning, through space. The past seemed unfinished and the future unlived and out of control, and there was no air. Every thought, every thread, fiber, and nerve were shrieking, Mayday! Desperate, I slid, crushing myself against the passenger door, and risked a glance at the driver. Saw his darting looks, his