A Song For the Road

by Rayne Lacko

  They drove in silence for the first half-hour. Carter held his guitar propped between his legs and licked his lips. The cool, dry air fanning from the air conditioner was the only sound in the SUV, other than Kaia’s steady sobbing. “Poor darling.” Mrs. Liu nodded to Kaia. “She’s had some nasty nightmares ever since the storm. It’ll be good for us to get away for a while.”

  Kaia stopped blubbering long enough to correct her. “Oklahoma is my nightmare, Mother.”

  Carter shifted in his seat, placing one ankle over the other, then trading them. He couldn’t very well drum up a conversation about school. It was closed down temporarily, with so many families displaced. He didn’t want to ask about the damage to the Lius’ house because he didn’t want to talk about his own.

  The guitar propped between his legs felt conspicuous, like he was smuggling contraband in plain sight. He wondered if they could tell it was special, if they could feel its presence the way he could. Carter had worked very hard to keep the secret that his daddy was famous. It was bad enough the man left and never looked back, but what did it say about him? It was better to let kids think he never had a dad to begin with, than one who didn’t pay him any mind. But all that was going to change once he made it California. For once, his father’s good fortune was going to be a help to his mom and him, and not a sore spot.

  To direct attention away from the guitar, Carter reckoned a little charm might fix Kaia’s bellyaching. “Do you know what we use for a wind sock in Oklahoma?”

  Kaia sniffed and wiped her nose, looking blankly at him. “What?”

  “A brick on the end of a chain.” Carter tried a smile, watching her face for any break in her sorrow.

  In the front seat, Mrs. Liu made a choking sound in no way resembling a laugh.

  “It’s a little early for jokes, wouldn’t you say, son?” Mr. Liu asked, his voice as rough as his stubble. To Carter’s relief, he reached forward and turned on the radio, breaking the silence.

  Carter cleared his throat and stared out the window. He watched the mile markers go by, gazing out over farmland, surveying the storm damage to farmhouses, outbuildings, and barns. Doubt stuck in the back of his throat like a hair in a biscuit. Getting in the Lius’ car was a dumb idea. It seemed Carter had been acting on a whole mess of dumb ideas from the minute he stole his mother’s money. Now he was watching the only home he’d ever known fly by, without a plan or a dollar to his name. Leaning his chin on his hand, Carter tried to focus on the few things he had some control over.

  He tossed around ideas for what he’d write about for his independent research project. Maybe Carter could write about surviving an F5 tornado? No, he’d had his fill of the weather. He needed something original. It wouldn’t be half-bad to pass the time researching his favorite motorcycle brand, Harley-David-son. He might pay his respects to his neighbor’s wrecked Yamaha V Star while he was at it.

  Another thirty minutes went by, and Carter was losing the patience to bear another snotty sob from Kaia. When Mr. Liu pulled into a gas station to fill up, Carter was glad to have a break. It felt like a funeral home in that car. He stretched his legs, walking across the parking lot to a field of Indian grass, swallowing deep breaths of fresh air. He hoped his mother was all right. It crossed his mind that she should have given him a cell phone when he asked for one.

  Carter spotted a collared lizard sunning himself on a rock without a care in the world. He bent down and stared at the blue-throated feller, feeling just a little jealous.

  When Kaia’s dad called everyone back to the car, Mrs. Liu held a large paper bag. The smell of it stabbed Carter’s gut. What nature had given him in height, he got twice in appetite. He was hungry from sun up to starlight. She handed a napkin to everyone, telling the kids to spread it on their laps, then doled out fresh-baked cornbread muffins, as big as melons. Kaia shook her head, refusing hers. Carter ate his muffin as slowly as possible, savoring it.

  He stole a glance at Kaia, clutching a ratty old stuffed koala bear in her arms. What her long dark hair didn’t hide of her tearstained face, a crumpled and wet tissue finished the job. This wasn’t the Kaia he knew at school. That Kaia had a cutting, razor-sharp beauty and a cold, raw confidence. Carter’s buddy Landon said, “Kaia’s meaner than a wet panther.” But from where Carter stood, it seemed like moving to Oklahoma had been a demerit, a hit to her pedestal. Still, the girls in their grade worshipped her, backing up her reign of resentment whether from fear or awe.

  But there she sat, reduced to this helpless thing. Carter was nearly elbow-to-elbow with her, but he didn’t have a clue how he might reach out to help. Or stop her fool tears. Even if he had a half-decent idea, chances were good she’d reject him. This thought brought him back around to his plan of seeing his dad, the king of rejection. Carter had long suspected he was to blame for his dad leaving. But if Carter was a breaker, maybe he could learn to be a fixer.

  The guitar held between his knees in the cramped space was all he had. Once, it was going to be his future. Now, it held the promise of turning all his wrongs into rights. Since he couldn’t very well tuck it in his pocket and pretend it wasn’t there, Carter wagered that he ought to make the Martin seem commonplace, something he would be carrying around because it was only natural. People only remembered the remarkable. Placing his napkin in the trash bag Mrs. Liu offered him, Carter hoisted the case up onto his lap. Kaia curled her lip at him when it bumped her shoulder. “Pardon,” he said without looking her way.

  He took out his guitar and leaned forward to place the strap over his shoulder, his first time holding the instrument properly in nearly a decade. Laying his fingers across the familiar strings, he sat in silence, watching farmland off the I-40 roll on for miles to a cloudless horizon and trying to decide if he could really play it.

  The collection of strings under his fingertips hurtled him back through time, bumping over the Muskogee plains and shooting down crop rows to when he was just a little kid, sitting on his back porch for a guitar lesson. Eddie taught him a twenty-minute set of songs, kid stuff like Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” to play on amateur and open-mic nights. Carter reckoned any mention of wind or water was sure to catch him some trouble. There was one other he remembered, though. How did it go?

  Carter tried to find the beginning chords on the strings. Mrs. Liu glanced back at the guitar with an anxious smile, her lips a tight, bleak line. Mr. Liu stared at the road ahead of him. The corn bread and a full tank of gas must have refreshed some hope in him because every now and again he’d turn to his wife and say something on the bright side, like, “Glad we sprang for the low deductible, Jiao. Insurance will pay for those smart-glass windows, the kind that block heat and UV rays.”

  Kaia stared out her window, her back to Carter. Try or die trying, he told himself. Clearing his throat, he lifted his hand and strummed the first chord. The song was corny, he knew it as well as anyone, but if he was lucky, they might sing along with him. An entertained audience, Eddie used to say, will forgive you all your sins.

  This land is your land

  This land is my land

  From California to the New York island;

  From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

  This land was made for you and me.

  Kaia shifted abruptly in her seat and stared at him like he was laughing over an open casket. “It was written by Woody Guthrie,” Carter explained, “a Sooner state legend.”

  Mrs. Liu’s grimace softened. “I remember that song. I learned it when we immigrated from China to the United States when I was seven.” She turned a gentle gaze on her daughter. “You think moving to Tulsa was tough? Try starting a new school in a new country.” Kaia responded with a roll of her eyes.

  “But on the first day,” Mrs. Liu went on, considering the farmland blurring past, “my teacher taught the class ’This Land Is Your Land,’ a song to welcome new citizens to America.”

  Carter de
cided it was best not to tell her Guthrie originally had written the ditty as a protest song. If what Kaia’s mother heard made moving across the world a little less lonely, he wouldn’t quarrel over it. Songs meant different things to different people.

  “Do you know the rest?” she asked.

  Picking up his hand again, he continued playing, shaking as the song was reborn to him. Every vibration of the strings brought him back to his mother’s kitchen, his daddy’s hand over his, showing the placement for each chord, and the seesaw sound of his mother’s sandpaper wiping back and forth over the legs of an antique end table she was refinishing.

  As I was walking that ribbon of highway,

  I saw above me that endless skyway;

  I saw below me that golden valley;

  This land was made for you and me.

  Kaia’s crying stopped. She clutched her koala bear closer to her chest and looked to him every bit a little kid awoken by a nasty nightmare in the middle of the night. Carter’s hand sought the chord pattern change and found it. He met Kaia’s eye and nodded to her to join him, urging her to remember the words she’d probably learned when that koala was new.

  I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps

  To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;

  And all around me a voice was sounding:

  This land was made for you and me.

  She didn’t sing, but she stopped blubbering. Mrs. Liu, bless her heart, harmonized with Carter. The familiarity of the song bounced and reverberated inside each one of them, filling the empty spaces still sore from having the things they’d held unchangeable torn out and changed.

  When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,

  And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,

  As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:

  This land was made for you and me.

  The SUV passed out of Oklahoma into Texas. They were on their way, moving forward.

  “Again,” Mrs. Liu said, when Carter’s song drew to a close. Carter turned in his seat and looked back down the highway. Oklahoma was a distant speck behind them on the dark line of the horizon. The guitar was home to Carter and he was glad he still had it.

  Quietly to himself, he dedicated the next round to Tommy and strummed it out from the top.

  Chapter Ten

  AMARILLO, TEXAS, MARKED THE HALFWAY POINT between Tulsa and Albuquerque. Mr. Liu pulled into a Ma Joad’s, one of a chain of twenty-four-hour pancake houses. No sooner had he put the car in park when Kaia said, “I’m going to splash some water on my face,” and sprinted from the car through the balmy Texas sunshine to the restaurant. She left her koala behind. Just inside the entryway, Mrs. Liu put an arm around Carter while her husband made arrangements for a table. Her touch surprised him. He wasn’t sure if she was comforting him or leaning on him for support, but the gesture made him feel a little less alone.

  Directed to a booth with a view of the freeway, Mrs. Liu pulled her cell from her purse. “Let’s put a call in to your mother, hmm? I’ll look up the hospital’s number.” She smiled the kind of smile a person gives the last kid left after preschool.

  Mrs. Liu and Sandra exchanged a few words, a generic report on their travel progress. Then she said, “You must be so proud of your son, Sandra. His talent with—”

  Carter’s eyes flew wide open. Don’t say it, he begged her in silence. Don’t tell her about the guitar.

  Mrs. Liu didn’t finish her sentence. Carter’s mother talked over Mrs. Liu, like time wouldn’t oblige any small talk. She passed her cell to Carter without a word.

  Carter took the phone. “Mama?”

  “What talent?” Sandra asked, her voice weak. “Did they need your help with some engine trouble?”

  “Something like that,” he said, then changed the subject. “Mama, how are you doing?” He’d only just seen her that morning, but she didn’t sound like herself.

  “I’m going into surgery this evening, Cotton. Turns out they’re worried about edema, which means swelling or some such.” Sandra drew in a breath, then added, “Nothing complicated.”

  “I should be there with you. I should come back.” Carter looked at the traffic speeding by on the freeway. He could hitch a ride, he reckoned, with one of the commercial trucks roaring eastbound to Oklahoma.

  “Son, I’m fine. The important thing is that you’re safe.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Let’s make a deal, sweetheart. I’ll handle this surgery tonight, if you’ll handle Aunt Syl’s septic issues.” She laughed at her lame joke. Carter’s mom was stronger than anyone, he was sure of it. Before he could argue that if it were him going under the knife, he’d want her there, she said, “I expect you to get on that plane,” without letting him get a word in, “Deal?”

  There was no turning back. “Deal,” he mumbled. Carter could feel the sting of tears in his eyes as he handed back the phone. Not once did he cry after finding his mama; he sure wasn’t going to be the crybaby now. He glanced at Kaia, hoping she hadn’t noticed. Across the freeway, a sunburned billboard for a local water park held her gaze. “’An all-day unstoppable torrent of water’?” she said to no one in particular. “Yeah, no thanks. Been there, was almost killed by a flying tree.”

  Carter couldn’t help but agree, but he picked up the salt shaker, examining it to avoid having to say anything. He wondered what else they’d outgrown and didn’t know it yet.

  A single tear streamed down Kaia’s cheek. That first tear invited others, and soon she was crying again. She pushed the silverware off a folded napkin and used it to wipe her face.

  Carter’d had enough. “Why are you bawling all the time? It isn’t normal.”

  “Shut up,” she cried and bolted for the front entrance. Mr. and Mrs. Liu glanced up at Carter. They looked exhausted. Carter had only been listening to her sniveling for five hours. They’d put up with it for days.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go talk to her.” Carter followed Kaia out to the parking lot, where she stood in a patch of shade under an ash tree. The Texas midday sun made the asphalt in the parking lot soft as charred marshmallows under his Converse.

  Out of earshot of her parents, Carter let Kaia have it. “What do you have to cry about?” he asked, handing her another napkin. “You have both your parents right there.” He gestured to the table inside the restaurant, where Mr. and Mrs. Liu sat sipping iced drinks under a window-mounted air conditioner. “And by the end of today, you’ll be snug as a bug at your grandparents’ house.” Carter cleared his throat; there was dust in the air. And worse, a lump in the back of his throat threatened to bring his own flood of tears, enough to fill Amarillo’s water park. “Your grandma will probably fix a nice supper, too. Maybe sausage and gravy and pecan pie.” Carter wiped at his eyes with the back of his arm. “Dusty plains,” he cursed.

  Kaia slumped to the ground, gathering her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. The only way Carter was going to hold back his worry for his mother was to keep talking. He wasn’t going to let himself think about being scared. “And when your house is all fixed up, you’ll go back to the life you knew. As far as I can see, you’re sitting pretty.”

  She spoke up at last. “I don’t want to go back. I wish we never left New Jersey. My brother Ethan didn’t have to move; he stayed to go to university.”

  Carter didn’t know New Jersey from old, but he remembered the first storm he’d ever weathered. “It’s hard to trust the wind again once you’ve seen it blow,” he admitted.

  She wiped a tear from her face and squinted at Carter, sizing him up. “Ethan and I were seriously into cooking shows, you know, chef contests and all that.”

  Carter didn’t say a word, so Kaia went on the defense. “I don’t care what you think, Sausage Gravy. We made all kinds of fancy dishes, really upscale,” she continued, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I bet you aren’t aware that cooking is science.”

  Wha
tever patience he had left for her was sorely slipping. “Look, if you’re into cooking, you should cook. Easy.” She didn’t seem to need anyone at Bogle; she could make food without her brother.

  Kaia turned and stared out at the endless stream of traffic, heading in both directions. “It’s no fun cooking by myself, no matter how good I get at it,” she said, quieter. “I mean, when Ethan and I are in the kitchen together, it’s the best.”

  Carter thought about what it was like jamming on the guitar with his daddy. He loved music when he was little, no doubt. But how much of his good feelings had come from playing with him? Must have been bushels because Carter never wanted to play again once he left.

  “It’s the same with music,” he mumbled. It was all he was able to tell her. He glanced over to her parents again and then approached Kaia carefully, kneeling. That tree ploughing through her front door didn’t break his mother’s resolve. It broke the vat of tears Kaia had stored up. Everything had changed and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

  Her long dark hair shone in the sun, shiny as a raven’s wing. He dared to place his hand on her shoulder. Her hair was softer than he could have imagined, and she didn’t brush his hand away when he stroked it.

  “Ethan used to watch out for me.” She sniffed. “He said he’d always be there, whenever I needed him. But he wasn’t there when I was the new kid at Bob Bogle. And he wasn’t there when a flying tree smashed right through the front of our house.”

  Carter nodded without replying. His dad had said he’d be there, too.

  “I don’t understand why we had to move,” she sobbed, burying her face in her arms. “I wish we were still a family.”

  “I’d give anything to go back to the way things were.” He didn’t know why he said that, not when he’d been telling himself the opposite for the last six years. But he felt a whole bunch lighter for having said it. “If my dad was still around, I’d know how to play a whole lot more than ’This Land Is Your Land.’” It was the first time he’d ever admitted to anyone that he’d known his father, and he was surprised he was telling it to a girl he’d never spoken two words to before that day.