Tales Of Men & Women  by Stone Riley                     www.stoneriley.com                     Website Edition © 2007 by Stone Riley, all rights reserved

a short story

One time there was this bright young girl, quite enthusiastic, who took the summer off to hitchhike all around the country looking for the meaning of life. Right off she started hearing people talk about some guy named "Cousin Howard".

The first time was a mini-van covered with day-glo peace signs and flowers. They pulled up where she was standing and she looked them over and there was a big Egyptian hieroglyph decal on the window so she climbed in and they were all jabbering in their freaky stoned out way about Cousin Howard. Apparently a rock musician. That guy had cosmic vibes, they said. They had just come from a concert or something of his in Seattle and were going home now back to Frisco but were headed east and almost to Des Moines. Hearing this, she climbed over a naked woman to a window, opened it for air, declined the pipe when it was passed and got out at the next motel. But all night she couldn't get the slowly throbbing tune out of her head that the freaks had been trying to hum.

Next day or so there was the pair of Mormon missionaries, young guys in a white convertible, top down, screaming to the radio they turned up blasting but white shirts buttoned up with neckties pinned down neat like they were let loose on the world and didn’t know what to do with it. Stacks of Bible tracts were fluttering and flying off into the wind. She was fascinated by their energy. She leaned up from the back seat and asked where they were going. Why, to see Cousin Howard in Albuquerque, they shouted. To ask him about God. They swerved to narrowly avoid an on-coming bus and she parted company with them at a waffle house.

But by then her curiosity was piqued. To tell the truth, she had begun to seriously ponder what she would ask someone who knew about God. And that tune kept playing in her head.

Next morning she caught her first bad ride. She'd slept out at a campground, bed roll under the starry sky, and frankly looked a mess and therefore felt relieved to have this very respectable seeming man her father's age, black but her father's age and the kind of business suit he wore, in a family kind of station wagon with Michigan plates, pick her up.

But he began to talk about his family and very soon began to weep. His wife had recently passed on. The man was inconsolable, no matter what she said. She felt so young and ignorant. "Don't worry about me though," he said through his tears, "I’m going to talk it all out with Cousin Howard in L.A." She frankly couldn't stand it anymore, weeping with him, mile after mile of relentless grief stabbing her heart, and kissed his cheek goodbye at a truck stop.

But she was questioning herself: What should she have told him? Could someone teach her that, she would ask someone who knew about God. And that tune kept playing in her head.

Next morning she caught her first bad ride. She'd slept out at a campground, bed roll under the starry sky, and frankly looked a mess and therefore felt relieved to have this very respectable seeming man her father's age, black but her father's age and the kind of business suit he wore, in a family kind of station wagon with Michigan plates, pick her up. But he began to talk about his family and very soon began to weep. His wife had recently passed on. The man was inconsolable, no matter what she said. She felt so young and ignorant. "Don't worry about me though," he said through his tears, "I’m going to talk it all out with Cousin Howard in L.A." She frankly couldn't stand it anymore, weeping with him, mile after mile of relentless grief stabbing her heart, and kissed his cheek goodbye at a truck stop.

But she was questioning herself: What should she have told him? Could someone teach her that, someone who knew about God? And the tune took on a soft mournful wail.

Then there was the rusty old chugging school bus full of migrant Mexicanos – men, women, children, boxes tied down on the roof – going to a rally in Salinas where Cousin Howard was scheduled to announce next year's labor union plan. They made her share their scanty meals.

They broke down where the road rose steep into the mountains and she was sitting among the skinny listless children, wondering at the struggles of the passing generations of the human race and wondering at the inevitability of grief and wondering what she would ask someone who knew about God, listening as the tune took on a kind of mariachi beat, looking out as the mountain shadows lengthened across the breathtaking land, her eyes full of tears from some emotion which did not seem to have a name, until a couple brothers from the bus coaxed her to go on ahead in a car full of contemplative nuns who happened by.

Now, these nuns somehow took a notion that she was a wandering prostitute. Therefore they insisted – absolutely insisted – that she must spend a day or two at a lovely retreat their order had just up the road. Chance to clean up and think a bit and maybe pray and everything was free. They'd soon be by again in case she wanted to go hear Cousin Howard preach about divine light in Butte. Divine light? Was that what she needed?

She lay there in the simple room on the simple cot, moonlight and scent of pines on a gentle breeze through the open window, exhausted but unable to sleep for the empty ache of ignorance she felt. All these miles and all she had was questions. What thing, what kind of thing, was she seeking?

She went to gaze out, saw a tiny fire twinkling among the trees down by the lake and thought perhaps the sisters there wouldn't mind company. Hot dogs and marshmallows maybe. Wrapped in the blanket, sandals on her feet, she found her way.

But it was a man, alone, sitting gazing in the flames. His hair was caught back in Indian braids and a single dark feather graced his tattered hat. His face was old and creased in the flickering light. As she approached he gestured toward a place across the fire. She was welcome.

Was she dreaming? She took the invitation. But immediately when she sat, she said "Cousin Howard?"

He smiled and shrugged. "Who else?"

"I have so much to ask!" she blurted.

"Shhh" he whispered, a finger pressing on his lips, and smiled and seemed to sort of wink.

She tried to hush herself, to hear the breeze, to gaze into the flames, to relax into this dream which seemed so distressingly real, but her heart was demanding answers.

She tried to think what were the questions but nothing came.

She opened her mouth and one word "Why?" sighed into the air.

Instantly his finger pointed somewhere and he cried, "Look!"

She looked out through her veil of wonder. There was the rippling moonlight and the glowing water. There were the singing shadows of the trees. There was the boundless circle of awareness that filled her soul.

There were no other questions.