Read Split for Free Online

and Mother talked about their vans, how much they'd paid at auction, where they were headed. Jim also had his eyes on Mexico. And at the very moment my mother dropped by, he had been building a kiln in the back of the store for the Earth Guild's pottery studio. It seems she had stumbled on a man who could help her turn her schemes into brick and wood. By the time they finished talking, the sun was low in the sky and they had a date to change their oil together.
    Jim wore hand-painted ties, listened to the Stones, and collected op art, but he still had the good manners of the Auburn fraternity boy he had once been. He had joined the ROTC in college, which helped pay his way through school, and when he graduated he owed two years to the navy. After basic training, they offered him two choices: he could be a pilot, or use his B.A. in architecture for a noncombat position. Jim loved planes and had always dreamed of learning to fly, but he saw where Vietnam was headed and opted out of flight school. The navy stationed him in Taiwan, where he maintained the cooling system on a communications way station. When he was discharged, he hopped jets home, taking over two years to reach the States. He stopped in Cambodia, Thailand, and India, read Krishnamurti, dabbled in meditation, bought Persian rugs. His route was marked by palaces and ruins, and he took pictures of nearly every architectural detail in his path, from onion dome to Roman arch. When he arrived home, the naval lieutenant j.g. moved into a commune in Harvard Square, whose members dubbed themselves the Grateful Union.
    Â 
    Not long after Jim and my mom hooked up, Vito took our mail truck on a wild-haired ride—his legs were barely long enough to work the pedals—and crashed it into a pole. He fled on foot and was missing for days. The truck had to be sold for scrap metal. When Vito turned up, Mother told him she considered their social contract broken, and the boy was sent back to the foster agency. With only one mail truck between them, Mother and Jim made plans to head across the country together.
    Jim's truck was considerably cozier than my mother's. A platform bed stretched across the width of the van, and a hinged half-moon table folded down from one wall. We ate sitting cross-legged on the mattress. The walls were lined with bookshelves, fitted with bungee cords to hold the volumes in place. On a shelf just behind the cab was our kitchen: a two-burner propane cooking stove, a tiny cutting board, and a ten gallon water jug. Jim covered the metal floor with Persian rugs and hung a few ornaments on the walls: a plaque with the Chinese characters for peace, prosperity, and happiness; a yellow wicker sun.
    Before we set out, Jim bought a small wood stove and bolted it to the floor near the back. The smokestack jutted out the side of the truck, the hole weather-sealed with the fringe from a tin pie plate. One of Jim's friends from the Grateful Union wired a stereo system into the van, and Mother sewed heavy denim curtains that attached to the front windows with Velcro, so we could have privacy at night. Most of the cab was taken up by the engine, which was housed by a flat-topped metal shell. Jim cut a piece of foam in the shape of the engine cover and had me lie down to try out my new bed. A perfect fit. I was about the size, in those days, of a sack of mail.
    In the spring of 1970, we packed up our essential belongings and set out toward Key West, stopping at every fruit stand and roadside attraction. When the road was smooth, Jim would put an LP on the record player—Richie Havens's
Mixed Bag
or Fred Neil—and those soulful voices carried us down the highway: "I want to go where the sun keeps shining, through the pouring rain. I want to go where the weather suits my clothes."
    We were on traveling time, lazy and slow. We had no schedule or destination, no errands or household chores; certainly no one was expecting us. When the sun beat against the