"Pick which way."
I am with Sarah Feeko in her awesome new car. We're driving down back roads to nowhere in particular. Her awesome taste in music is rocking my socks off. At a fork in the road, she hits the brakes and lets me pick the next turn. Left? Right? Straight? We both have a fascination with roads less taken; in the course of half an hour I have seen her stop and back up to take a more interesting road at least twice. I pick. She drives. At the next fork, she asks again. I pick. She drives. As the road ribbons its way past cornfields and tumbledown barns I would love to explore -- somehow I can feel the magick coming off the ruins even from behind the rolled-up window -- I lean back in the seat and let the music carry me through the halls of memory to a little white Chevy half-ton, a fruit pie, a can of Pepsi, and the wind ripping joyfully through my hair.
We are getting lost. On purpose. I think we are, at least, and neither of the women in the front seat bothers to tell me otherwise. We have a full tank of gas, a cooler full of food and an insanely happy sheepdog named Ozzie, and we are on a grand adventure.
I'm sitting in the back of the truck, on the cooler. I have a Pepsi in one hand and one of those 50-cent fruit pies in the other. I am sticky and smiling and hopped up on sugar. The wind roars in my ears as we drive; the sun reaches through the trees to make patterns on my skin. I am kicking my ankles against the Styrofoam side of the cooler, thud, thud, thud, making as much noise as I want with no one to tell me to stop because no one can hear me anyway. I am nine years old, and I don't think I've ever been so happy. Simple joys have swallowed me whole, and I have no desire to slice open the belly of this particular whale to free myself. No thanks. I'll stay here forever.
The truck stops at a crossroads. My grandmother leans through the little window in the cab and says, "Pick which way." A little thrill shoots its way through my body. The possibilities are absolutely delicious. The attraction is twofold: not only am I going somewhere I have never been, but I am being allowed to choose the path. It takes me a long minute to decide. Picking one direction means excluding the others, and I want to see everything. I want to go everywhere. I, Tiffany Allen, have the soul of an explorer, and it is coming alive.
We drive and drive and drive some more, until we come to a little creek running clear and bright in the afternoon sun. My grandmother and great-grandmother get out of the truck. Someone hefts me over the tailgate. The dog and I go bounding toward the water, one of us barking, the other letting loose one of those screams of joy that only children are capable of. I cram my feet into the cold water and eat my lunch sitting on the bank, still happily kicking my legs. Water splashes up to catch the sun as Ozzie runs back and forth in the shallow water. My grandmother spots fresh wild strawberries and reaches to pick them, dropping them into my palm like rubies. There are plenty, and I eat strawberries until my mouth and my fingers are stained red.
On the way home, the sun is beginning to set. My great-grandmother leans out the window and points to a little building like a shack, telling me that is where she went to school when she was my age. I feel a vague sense of superiority over the fact that my school is so much bigger. On the last few miles of the most amazing day of my life, I tilt my face to the wind and laugh for no reason. I am slant-eyed with contentment, sassy and sleek as a cat. I am a girl with wild hair who is brave and daring and adventurous enough to get lost for no reason. I am invincible. I can do anything.
In the white Honda, Sarah switches the song. We drive past a blur of color on the left-hand side and back up to laugh at two roosters strutting along in the grass next to the road: the chickens from nowhere. I recognize one as a Rhode Island Red; my father's mother used to keep them. Later, we watch a white-tailed doe bound through the underbrush. It is August in Pennsylvania; the corn is high and the breeze is cool. The mountains are cloaked in dark summer green. Sarah couldn't have picked a better day to show up unexpectedly at my door, jangling the keys:
"Where are we going?"
"On an adventure."
Yes.
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