Palouse - 27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Home and College – Late July 1993

Two Months After Graduation

“Stan, we have to do something. He’s driving me crazy again.” Betty sat on the edge of the bed in her pink nightgown. Stan lay on his side of the bed, his reading light off, trying to go to sleep. He knew which of all their children she was speaking about. He turned over, resigned to completing this conversation. He knew his wife well enough to know that she would not be able to sleep until she got everything off her chest that she was thinking.

He couldn’t resist, though: “What has Gregory done now?”

“Not Gregory. Micah. He hasn’t done anything. That’s the trouble.”

“So you can’t stand that he hasn’t done anything? Last year you were worried he was going the other direction.”

Betty ignored the jibe. “He seems so subdued; he seems so indifferent and calm about things. He used to be so lively.” Betty closed her eyes and remembered the young boy enchanted by a violin. “I hate to say it, but I wish he would get mad and yell at me – to show a spark. Isn’t there a happy medium?”

“Maybe he’s just grown up some,” Stan offered.

“What I’m afraid of is that he will wake up on the wrong side of things. I think it won’t take much for him to repeat his adventure with another Amelia and another group of wild boys.

“Stan, Micah’s doing so very little around the house except watching television and playing video games after he does his farm work; he doesn’t do music any more. He scorns church. It’s as if he’s broken. I’m at my wit’s end. He seems to have no vision for his own future.”

“Honey, he got his grades up last year in Idaho. He’s working hard for me this summer. I see just that some of the spark has gone out. He’ll get the rest of it back in time, I’m sure.” Stan didn’t speak what he really thought: that Micah had been pushed way too hard, rebelled, and then had had his spirit broken, not only by their reaction to his rebellion, but also by all the pressures that came with fame at such an early age – and, though Stan would never say so aloud, by his mother’s unrelenting pushing. Micah was hiding from all that was facing him, perhaps reluctant to return to that life and the problems it had caused him in the past. But Stan believed this stage would pass, and at the very least, Micah would become outwardly happy again. Little did he know the turmoil that Micah’s happiness would cause for the Kingman household.

“Betty, suppose he decides he wants to live the life other small-town teenage boys live: having a girlfriend, going to keg parties, staying out late, probably making out or more in the back seat of his car, not wanting to spend much time at home, barely doing his chores – living for the present, in other words. Is there anything terribly unexpected about that? That would be just like his brother, I might point out – hopefully, until Greg matures. And like me when I was a teenager, as you may remember. That’s where Micah is in his life, Betty. You don’t like it. I don’t particularly like it, either.”

“I don’t know. I’m just frustrated. And don’t remind me about Greg and his girlfriend.” Betty grasped Stan’s hand for comfort. “Micah’s done absolutely nothing about college, Stan. Nothing. It’s July. College starts in two months. I’ve asked him about college, and all he says is that he will get around to it.”

“Aren’t children a joy?” Stan said, ironically.

“I suppose they are,” Betty admitted with reluctance in her voice, “but I want so much more for them than they seem to want for themselves.”

Stan pulled Betty to him and hugged her for comfort. “Time, honey. Give Micah time. I doubt if he will be interested in taking over the farm. I think Gregory is the one for that. If we can push Micah into something for the future, so much the better.”

“I think he should enroll in Walla Walla College. It’s a good Adventist school, so he’ll be with good, Christian students. Maybe he’ll find a major that he will like. Maybe he’ll find a nice girl. Plus, he won’t be at home, and he won’t be near any of the loose girls and women of Endicott. If he weren’t legally an adult, I’d enroll him tomorrow, as his parent.”

“Let’s talk to him about college tomorrow. Turn off your light,” Stan said. “Maybe I can think of something to take your mind off Micah.” Micah and his siblings, of course, could never imagine what was going on in that bedroom.

* * * * *

“Micah, can we talk to you?” Stan said the next Saturday afternoon.

“Okay.” Micah was annoyed, anticipating yet another lecture about his behavior. He wasn’t very good about hiding his annoyance.

Stan and Betty were sitting across the kitchen table as Micah nibbled on a turkey sandwich he had made after getting home from a drive to town. Them against me again, Micah thought. As usual.

“What are your plans for next year, son? For college?” Stan asked.

“I’ve got a few applications in my room.”

Betty rolled her eyes. She wanted to point out that most college applications were submitted earlier in the year and that prospective students had already been notified of acceptances. She held her tongue, though. “Micah, your father and I think you should enroll next year in Walla Walla College. You will get a good education there, and the students are good Adventists.” The unstated implication was that the Walla Walla College would keep temptation away from Micah. Micah understood it the same way, but the time over the summer had given him another motive to go: he was getting more and more desperate to get away from home.

“We can make this work. With your savings from music and you working at the farm in the summers, particularly at harvest, we think we can swing tuition and room and board,” Stan said. “You can work during school for pocket money if you need to.”

“Okay.” Micah looked between his mother and father. “If I can get in, I’ll go there this fall.”

* * * * *

Micah was driving south toward College Place in the old family pickup that had been given to him for graduation. The storage space in back of the front seat and the truck bed were stuffed with his belongings. His mother had offered to go with him, but she really had no easy way to get back except to have Micah make another trip. Micah said he could handle everything, and she could come visit some weekend later in the fall.

The parting was sad, as most partings are. To Betty, the love for her son was mixed with the disappointment that he had not followed the career that was open to him. To Micah, it was the second breaking of the links to a home that had been supportive of him despite his rebellious attempts to become independent.

He knew he could come home again, but he could never return as a child who is dependent on the care of parents. He would come back as a different person, bringing his own world to that of Endicott and his family, just as his brother Robert did. But he didn’t know what this new world of his own was going to look like. It wasn’t Endicott; it wasn’t an international concert circuit; it was an unknown. He remembered Megan’s question to him at the end of the wilderness trek – about him hiding from the choices before him. Now he was coming out of that hiding, and it was scary. The only world he knew other than Endicott was that of music, and he had abandoned that, even though he had packed Poppa M’s violin carefully behind the front seat.

* * * * *

To Micah, Endicott was a place that held memories of the months of life with the friends at high school, but graduation had come for his friends, and many of those friends had been scattered with the Palouse winds down highways similar to what he was now driving. Then, there was Amelia. Micah could feel the stirring in his groin from the recollection of the times with her. He had not seen her since he’d come back from Idaho, and he knew he might not see her again. She had left town, and now her interests might lie elsewhere. He knew truthfully that his might as well. But on this drive he enjoyed the memories of their previous encounters. It even crossed his mind to consider if at least some of the pleasure and comfort he’d realized with Amelia might have been partly due to the fact it was done of his own volition, with no one but himself controlling what happened, making rules or scheduling it. It was joy of his own making, coming from his own decisions, and not dictated to him by anyone. Did he like that aspect of it as much as he liked the person Amelia was? Did he like it more?

He pulled up to the loading zone in front of Sittner Hall, a large brick building with a dark, slate roof. The Residence Advisor came out of the front door almost immediately, followed by a couple of smiling students to help him get his belongings unloaded and up into his room where he expected to live for the next nine months.

His was a small, typical dorm room, with space for two single beds, two single desks and not much more – not much larger than his room at Idanha. The bathroom and showers were down the hall. His roommate had not arrived, so Micah chose the bed that looked less worn. He had the two helper students put the clothes that had been stored behind the front seat of his pickup into the closet as he put the first box of many onto his chosen bed. The three of them carried the remainder of Micah’s belongings into the room, setting boxes on the bed and on the floor.

Micah thanked his helpers. After getting parking permits and room and building keys from the residence adviser, Micah drove his pickup to the student parking lot and returned to his room to unpack. He left the door wide open, inviting the other students to drop by to introduce themselves as he filled his dresser drawers, tacked posters on the wall, made his bed, and made notes of things he would need to buy. In an hour he was all done, and he had taken the flattened cardboard to the trash bins outside the dorm.

After sitting back and resting on the bed for a while, Micah rose and wandered the halls, introducing himself as the other students had done with him.

The next morning his roommate, Scott Wagner, arrived with his parents and a carload of belongings. Micah, Scott’s parents and two other students made short work of unloading. Scott was a stocky, red-headed young man who looked as if he just got off the football field at Wenatchee High School where he had graduated three months before. He took after his father, an accountant, except for his green eyes, which he had inherited quite obviously from his mother. The Wagners invited Micah to lunch so that everyone could get acquainted.

* * * * *

As the school year wore on, a polite coexistence grew between Micah and Scott, but no further closeness developed. Scott had strong religious convictions which Micah did not share, and in the past year Micah had developed a somber attitude toward life that the more effervescent Scott didn’t understand. Consequently, Micah was glad to get a single-room assignment for the second year, although he would have to use more of his summer earnings and savings to pay the extra room charges.

Where he had been able to breeze through high school getting good grades, the more demanding curriculum of college forced Micah to study harder in order to maintain similar grades, but studying more suited his mood, keeping him from pondering his future. Micah was neither happy nor unhappy. He no longer had the spirit and sense of direction that had dominated his younger years. The amplitude of his emotions had been dampened by the past few years; he was neither experiencing the highs of his success nor the lows that had stemmed inevitably from his abandonment of music. He wasn’t content, but he was accepting of where his life was.

Micah had achieved a steady-state life: studies, some involvement with the religious groups in the college, an occasional date going to a suitable movie for an Adventist college. It was an undemanding life – a life Micah thought fitted him at this stage in his life; he was a leaf drifting in a slow-moving river.

He spent the summer between his freshman and sophomore years working for his father on the farm in Endicott. Most of the time he just stayed around the farm, working as long as he could to fill the hours available. He had scouted Endicott, and most of his friends were not around, were married or were working. There wasn’t a lot to do away from the farm. From time to time, he would pass by the mobile home where Amelia had lived; it was now empty, with weeds growing taller alongside it. Occasionally, when his mother wasn’t around, he would pick up his violin and go to the music room and play Bach.

He was glad to get back to school a couple of weeks before classes started. Micah wanted to find a way to earn spending money. But College Place was a small town of just over 7000 population. Though it bordered a larger Walla Walla, there weren’t many part-time jobs, given the competition from the number of students at the various colleges nearby.

Micah knew he could find something else to make some pocket money. He was a farm boy and a good worker. He could play the violin and the piano, and maybe he could get a job in music. He could always play on the street with a hat on the sidewalk, just as he had done by accident years earlier in Colfax the day he was waiting for his mother. But he knew being a busker required that the weather not be too bad, and winter would eventually arrive in southeastern Washington.