Free Interstate by Stephen Dixon

even be a stay and she says what does he mean? she’d love having him but they don’t have that much room in their house, comfortable as the place is—each boy has his own bedroom and there’s no family room and now no playroom to convert, that room has become Glen’s home office and the basement his woodshop and the only other places are an unventilated attic and an airless crawl space, but maybe the two youngest boys can double up and he can stay in one of their bedrooms for a few days. “I don’t want to put anyone out—I can sleep on the porch if you have one and the weather’s not too damp or cold”—he doesn’t know Portland or really any part of the States west of the Shenandoah Ridge he thinks it was and it’s called which he visited with a friend and his friend’s folks more than fifty years ago, “We slept in pup tents, made bacon over a log fire,” but maybe it gets like that there summers—cold—unlike here, and she says they do have a porch in front but it’s not screened in and if it’s bug season, which all depends, at least on how bad the bugs are, on how much precipitation they had that spring and how chilly the summer’s been, they’ll feast on him, so porch-sleeping’s out because it’s either bugs or cold so you just can’t win, besides that their house is on a relatively heavily traveled street. Anyway, he says, they have something going here—started, in plans—and he’s looking forward to it already, if it works out that is, and if it doesn’t work out, no sweat, sweetheart, he’ll more than understand, and hangs up and thinks she doesn’t want to see him out there or Glen doesn’t or them both or it’s the kids and they’ve discussed it with their folks and don’t want any old something or another staying there for even a week and the parents or one of them went along with the kids, but it’s never going to happen, whatever the reasons he just knows he’s never going out there, that’s all. Hey, worse comes to worst and he wants to see her that bad, which he knows he will, he can fly out there without telling them, stay at a nearby hotel and call from there and say he’s here, always wanted to see the West Coast and for sure shouldn’t die without doing it sometime in his life and if they want to see him—no, he won’t be that tough—and he wants to see them too and had planned to but if they have something better to do—not “better”; “something more important”—not even that—just something already planned that can’t be put off like another Alaskan trip tomorrow or this time the South Pacific or Japan—he’ll understand and see Portland himself and then continue his trip south by bus for the rest of his two weeks to San Francisco and places like Mexico and L.A.
    Late that fall—he calls his daughter about once a week and they talk a few minutes and then he usually asks to speak to one of the boys—a young man comes into the luncheonette, no more than eighteen—but things with Margo like “How are you?” “We’re all fine,” “How’s the weather?” “Could be worse,” “Hear from your mom?” “She’s always the same: couldn’t be better,” “How’s work? how’s school? what’s doing in Portland these days? I’ve been reading the weather map in the paper lately and it’s been saying you’re getting tons of rain,” sometimes sports talk with the boys which he has to read the paper or talk to some of his customers to know about, for a week a lot about their trip to Alaska: lot of driving around, didn’t seem too interesting to him for all those miles, bunch of seals, loose bear or two, some kind of antelope or moose, could have been a modern zoo like even one that’s in his city