Oh Beautful

Charles Curry 455
99 S. Pearl St.
Albany, N.Y. 12207
[phone]
[e-mail]

OH BEAUTIFUL


Dean’s milk truck was decorated in green with dream pictures superposed on that solid backfield, reflections of the real colors he was driving through on a northbound back road. Gray and white towns whizzed past, matching his speed, blurred in with orchards and forests and cropfields among them. Vonnie sat next to him with Peggy, Ken, and Carol packed behind him close to the passenger on his way to Canada. Carol muttered as they rode, “We should have taken the highway, “ in a marked glottal stutter to match the jouncing she was taking.

“That’s where all the cops are, “ Vonnie reminded her.

“Couldn’t be worse than this, “ Carol replied, locking her teeth against the recurrence of stammering.

Dean fiddled with the radio dial until he picked up Hey Jude out of the air.


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Now a mountain ridge lay ahead, the road rising to join it, and the milk truck groaned as it started to climb. Ken said, “This heap had better not die before we get to Salem. “

“It’s not a heap, “ Dean said over music. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll take us to Salem all right, and Portland if we need it to. “

The passenger sulked in silence over his passage among strangers who were all so blithe about his predicament.

Dean’s truck made it up the ridge more slowly than he liked, jerking now and again, but the woody flanks of the mountain spilling past at a good enough clip, and then it came through to the top of the ridge at last. Without warning Vonnie said, “Oh look at that. Quick, look. “

“What is it ? “ Dean said nervously.

A pillar of morning sunlight stood in the sky, driven down in the bright dark-green of oceanic evergreen forests, broken sometimes by pastures or clouds or deciduous woodlands, by the vague blue sea beyond and some puny frame houses to their right where the Willamette River would be.
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“Oh yes “ was all Peggy said, and the bunch took turns scoping it while Dean drove on.

As suddenly as before Vonnie sang out, “Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies, for Amber Lands of Grain. “ Ken kicked in at the second line-

then they all were singing.

While they were singing to the actual purpled mountains in front of them, Dean began his drive down the ridge, slipping in between hills and lowlands in the brilliant day. Clouds rose above them, piled all together, ephemeral prisms for the Pacific light.

In honor of Oh Beautiful, the whole lot of them sang their swelling hearts out all the way to Salem.