Read Wyoming for Free Online Page A

learn it, Mom, by traveling all over. The places are real, then, instead of just dots and names on a map.”
    “You should show me your maps, Roy, the ones you made up. I’d like to see them.”
    “I draw maps of real places too. Mom, not just imaginary ones. When we stop, I’ll make a map of all the places we’ve been. Where are we going to stay tonight?”
    “I thought we’d see if we could get to A Little Bit O’Heaven, in Kentucky. Remember, they have all those little cottages named after different flowers?”
    “Oh, yeah. We stayed in the Rose Cottage because that’s Nanny’s name.”
    “There certainly isn’t much color in the sky today, is there? It’s just grey with tiny specks of black in it.”
    “It might snow, huh?”
    “I think it’s more likely to rain, honey. It’s not cold enough to snow. “
    “Mom, if you had a choice between freezing to death or burning up, which one would you choose?”
    “I’d take freezing, definitely, because once your body is numb all over, you can’t feel anything. You die, sure, but it’s better than feeling your flesh melt off the bones. How about you?”
    “I like being in hot weather a lot more than cold weather, but I guess you’re right. I saw in a movie where a guy who was lost in the wilderness made a blanket of snow for himself and survived until the rescuers came because his body stayed warm under the snow,”
    “I didn’t know about that, Roy. Let’s remember it, just in case we get stranded sometime in the mountains in a blizzard.”
    “You were right, Mom, here comes the rain. All the tiny black spots in the sky were raindrops ready to fall. I never saw rain that looked so black before. It’s like being bombed by billions of ants.”
    “Yes, baby, it is strange, isn’t it? Roll up your window all the way. I hope we can make it to A Little Bit O’ Heaven before it gets too bad,”
    “Mom, is there a religion of geography?”
    “Not really, unless you consider the ones where people worship places they believe an extraordinary event occurred.”
    “Probably something important to someone happened just about everywhere, and some people made more of a big deal about it than others.”
    “Yes, baby, you’ve got it right,”

Man and Fate
    V ICKSBURG IS REALLY A SAD PLACE , Mom, I’ve never seen so many graves,”
    “It’s spooky here, baby, I agree* It breaks my heart to think about all the young boys, many not too much older than you, who’re buried here. You know, Roy, some people would think we’re crazy, driving around like this in a cemetery in Mississippi in the rain. I can’t help but imagine the lives these boys might have had if there hadn’t been a War Between the States. A civil war is the worst kind of war. It’s been almost one hundred years since this one ended, and the South still hasn’t recovered.”
    “Soldiers from the North are buried here, too, Mom. Hundreds of ‘em.”
    “How can a place be so dreary and beautiful at the same time?”
    “I’ll bet there are ghosts here who come out and fight the war all over again every night.”
    “It wouldn’t surprise me, baby. Somebody could make a terrific movie of ghosts or even corpses rising from their graves and not fighting but talking with one another peacefully about how horribly wrong it was to have a war in the first place.”
    “That wouldn’t be so exciting, Mom, not if they were just talking. It would be cool to see the corpses, though.”
    “The only real reasons people go to war anymore are religion and money, and often it’s a combination of the two. In the Civil War, cheap labor in the form of slaves was the main issue. In World War II, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s economic problems, which were a result of World War L He had to go to war to get Germany out of debt. Do you understand any of this, Roy?”
    “Not everything. I know that sometimes people want the land that other people are on.”
    “That has to do with money.