Maude

  George kept the car moving at an even pace, about 30 to 35 miles an hour when the road allowed. We headed to Nashville and reached the outskirts just as the sun was going down. George found a motor lodge, and we paid $3 for a room big enough for the four of us. There were four bunk beds, two on each side. George and I took the lower beds and the children slept on the top. We ate our supper on picnic tables set out under the trees, visited the community bathroom that was at the end of the row of cabins, and went to bed.

  We slept sound, and when we came out in the morning, the boxes that had been tied to the roof of our car were gone. For a moment I panicked, trying to remember what had been in them, my bedding, the quilts I’d stitched so carefully, and some of our clothes. The little wagon was still there. It was so old it hadn’t been worth stealing. George checked the car. The thieves hadn’t taken the trouble to break in, and the thing that was most important to me, my sewing box, was untouched. Among the items in it were the little purse with my secret money, the nightgown I’d worn on my wedding night to James, and the family pictures. The other things could be replaced.

  We loaded up again and headed for downtown Nashville. George had been there before, but the children and I were amazed at the size of the city. In the back seat, Betty Sue and Paul kept their noses pressed against the windows and o-o-oh-ed and a-h-h-ed over what they saw. I could scarcely believe it when George told me that Detroit was larger than Nashville. We drove through the city and turned north toward Kentucky. It was beautiful, but the hills were steeper than the soft rolling hills of home, and it took two days to get to Cincinnati. North of there, the road flattened out, and we made better time for a while.

  We were about twenty miles from the city when I heard loud popping noises, and George had to struggle to keep control of the car. He managed to get it over to the side of the road safely. He got out of the car and walked around it, looking for the problem. Both tires on the passenger side were flat. They were sliced right open. George looked back in the road and saw a scrap of metal. He’d driven right over it. He put the spare on the front wheel, then jacked up the back of the car and took off the wheel. He leaned in the window to tell me, “I have to go buy another tire. We passed a service station a few miles back. Stay with the car. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He picked up the wheel, crossed the road, and started walking back in the direction we’d come, stopping and sticking out his thumb whenever a car went by.

  After a while, a truck pulled up and George jumped down and took the new tire off the back.

  “Thanks, Bobby,” he yelled, and he waved after the driver as the truck made a U-turn and roared off down the highway. He put the wheel on the car and we were on our way again. George stopped a few miles down the road and got a new tire for the spare, just in case. It took twenty dollars from our purse to pay for the tires.

  We stopped at another motor lodge for the night, but when we did, we took everything out of the car and in the room with us. What things we still had were too important to risk losing.

  Our money was running out on us fast. Gasoline for the car, two new tires, and food for four people were all expensive. When the box of food I’d packed and the picnic basket from Helen were empty, I had George stop at a service station with a grocery, and I bought a loaf of sliced bread and a jar of peanut butter. It would feed us for the day. We refilled our bottles with water from the sink in the rest room. Betty Sue and Paul complained about the sandwiches but we all ate them, and drank enough water to wash them down. The next day I bought another loaf of bread and another jar of peanut butter and two apples for the children.

  Settled in my bed at night, I gave thanks to God for each day’s safety, each day’s progress, and each day’s food.

  We slept in the car the next night, a few miles south of Toledo. I saw George spread out what money he had left and count it. It didn’t look like very much.

  “Are we going to have enough, George?”

  “We’ll be all right, Maude, as long as nothing else happens to the car, and we don’t take a liking to steak dinners.”

  I could see the worry making furrows on his forehead. “How much longer is it going to take us to get there, George?”

  “Maybe tomorrow night, maybe another day after that. Bessie lives on the east side of the city, so we have to go all the way across it.”

  In the morning, George filled the car with gasoline, and we set out on what I hoped would be the last day of this terrible trip.

  Chapter 33

  We passed open fields of corn just north of Toledo. The car made a loud grinding noise and lurched to a stop. George got out and pushed it off to the side of the road, knelt down on one knee and looked under. I waited, wondering how bad it was. When George straightened up, I could tell by the look on his face it was worse than I imagined. He opened the door and sat beside me. “The transmission’s dropped right off, Maude.”

  “Is that expensive to get fixed?”

  “Too expensive for us, even if we were close to a garage that had the parts.”

  “What are we going to do, George?”

  He looked down the road in the direction of Detroit. “Whatever it is we have to do, Maude.”

  I told Betty Sue and Paul to sit still, and we got out of the car.

  “It’s a good thing Paul cried after that wagon,” George said, untying it. He loaded on what he could and tied it down with the tarp over it. Then he pushed the car further off the road and stood looking at it for a minute. He welled up and choked, “Pawnee would never have let us down like that.”

  We began what I hoped would be the last day of our trip, me carrying my sewing basket over one arm Betty Sue and I walked in front. George came behind us, pulling the wagon, and Paul walked beside him. From time to time, an open truck would pass, and George would stick out his thumb, but no one stopped. We walked until dark, stopping by clumps of bushes to relieve ourselves. We paid a farmer a dollar to let us sleep in his barn. When I said my prayer that night, I thanked God for the barn and asked Him to watch over Gene, wherever he was, and keep him safe from harm. I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t pray often for Bud. Maybe I felt he had the U.S. Army to take care of him.

  I hoped the farmer would offer us breakfast, but he woke us early when he came to milk the cows, and except for a gruff, “Good morning,” said nothing. We gathered our things and started out again, our stomachs already growling.

  We walked some more, then from behind me, George called, “Wait a minute, Maude.” Betty Sue and I waited for him and Paul to catch up to us. He said, “Paul’s crying for something to eat, and there’s no telling when we’ll find a store.”

  I wondered why he wanted to stop. He said, “I never stole anything in my life, but I’m going to now.”

  He looked around to see if there was anyone in sight, then jumped across a ditch to the edge of a field of corn. He plucked two small ears off a stalk and hurried back to us. “Keep walking,” he told us. We set out again and he stripped the husks and silk from the corn as he walked and gave one to Paul and one to Betty Sue. They gnawed them down to the bare cobs.

  I asked, “What about us?”

  “If anyone saw us, I figure they’d have mercy on us if we only fed the children. You and I can wait.”

  After a while, we came to a service station. George bought a bag of peanuts so we could use the restrooms. I filled our water bottles from the tap. We walked what I figured was a few miles longer and then sat under the shade of an oak tree and ate the peanuts.

  Detroit didn’t seem any closer than it had in the morning. We had to go at a pace the children could keep up. Sometimes, people would pass us, usually a man walking alone, but a few times, a man and woman, once a family with children. We would nod at one another and keep going without talking, like we had to save our strength for the trip.

  About eight hours into the day’s trip, we could see a small cluster of buildings that looked like it might be a town. I heard a soft clucking just off
the side of the road. I knew what it was. I handed my sewing basket to Betty Sue and followed the sound. In a clump of high grass I found a stray hen sitting on a nest full of eggs. I almost shouted. I made a fold in my skirt and gathered the eggs into it. I went to George and showed him the treasure.

  “How are we going to cook them, Maude? We left the pans back in Missouri.”

  “We aren’t going to cook them, George. We’re going to trade them.”

  We walked the rest of the distance to the town, and at the service station with a store, I traded my eggs for a loaf of bread. George counted out his coins for a can of Vienna sausages. It would do. Unless my children were hungry, and George had spent his last cent, I had no intention of letting him know I had money hidden away.

  “How much farther is it to Detroit?” George asked the man behind the counter.

  He shrugged. “It’s about forty miles to downtown.”

  I wondered how long it would take us to walk that far. I had no idea. We used the restrooms and then sat on a bench outside the store while we ate. When we finished, George picked up the handle of the wagon and we set out again. We walked until dark. We only had a few dollars left, so there was no money for a cabin, even if there had been one nearby. We settled down for the night under a big tree. George took the tarp off the wagon and spread it out for a blanket, and we huddled together. In my prayer that night, I gave thanks that it wasn’t raining and that our shoes didn’t have holes in them. I asked God to provide food for the children and George.

  In the morning, we set out again, hoping it would be the last day. I was disgusted by how long it had been since we had a bath. I’d always been clean about myself and the children, and grateful that George had always been clean about himself. It was awful to me that I hadn’t had a bath or changed my clothes for such a long time, especially since we were walking in the dust and the dirt of the roadside.

  We stopped by a little stream to relieve ourselves, and I pulled the big hairpins out of my hair. It fell loose and unrolled down to my knees. It had never been cut, and I brushed it one hundred strokes each morning. Like all of the married women of my church, I would wind it into a bun at the back of my neck and fasten it with the big U-shaped pins. I took my brush out of a box and tried to smooth out the snarls. It was awful. It made me half wild.

  I hated this trip. I hated the Depression. I hated George for letting this happen. I hated the Detroit I hadn’t even seen yet, and now, I hated my hair. I took the scissors out of my sewing basket, gathered my hair into my fist, and cut it off right at the back of my neck. Betty Sue screamed, and Paul started crying.

  I threw the hank in the stream, turned, and gave George a glare. His jaw dropped open, but he didn’t say a word. I guess I had a look on my face that he’d seen on his mother, and I was standing there with the scissors still in my hand.

  We started back walking north. As we plodded along, I mourned my spurt of temper. My neck felt naked and somehow exposed to the point of indecency.

  We stopped by a stream to eat the last of the bread. The Vienna sausages were long gone. George took a string and a hook from the wagon, tied it together, and stuck a piece of the bread crust on the line. He threw it into the stream and stood there watching it.

  Another couple came along, saw us, and stopped for a minute. The women looked like she was craving to talk to another woman. She told me her name was Imogene Rich and her husband was Wesley. She said, “We left Oklahoma two weeks ago and took the bus as far as Toledo. We didn’t have enough money to go all the way to Detroit. When we looked at it on the map, it didn’t seem like it was so far away.”

  I asked her, “Do you have family in Detroit?”

  “No. Everyone we knew was going to California, so we thought we might do better if we went somewhere else. Now, we’re broke. I don’t know what we’re going to do when we get there.”

  “How long is it since you ate?”

  “Yesterday.”

  I looked around me. The roadside was dotted with yellow flowers. I said, “I used to hear my mom talk about eating dandelion greens for a salad. She never made it at home, so I don’t know how they taste, but they don’t cost anything.”

  About that time, George let out a whoop and pulled in a fish. It wasn’t very big, about the size of my hand. He told Wesley, “See if you can get a fire started.”

  He put another little piece of bread on the line and dropped it back in the water. Wesley gathered up some twigs and dried grass and got a little fire going. While George angled for another fish, Wesley cleaned the one we had.

  Imogene and I gathered some of the dandelions and washed them downstream. After a while, George caught two more and cleaned them. He stuck the pieces on a green stick of wood and held them over the fire for a few minutes. When they were about to fall apart, he took them out of the flame and we all shared what we had.

  Back on the road, the Riches said goodbye. I thought about them not having any family and told her, “If things get bad, I heard you could always get help at a Salvation Army.”

  She hugged me, and they went on ahead. They could walk faster than we could. I hadn’t seen anyone walking south. I said to George, “It looks as if whoever came this far must have found work. There isn’t anyone walking south.”

  He looked at a car driving past and said, “Some of them may still have their cars. We’ll see.”

  After a while, the children stopped complaining. We were too tired to do anything but put one foot in front of the other and keep going. We spent another night sleeping in a field. In the morning, I was so hungry, I would have spent my hidden money for a meal for my children, but no store came in sight. After a while, I saw scrub apples hanging on a tree a ways off the road. George went and picked a dozen or so. “These are the best of them,” he said. I could see they were wormy. I wiped them off as best I could, and George cut them into pieces with his pocket knife. We ate what we could without bothering the worms and kept walking. We came to a service station, and George bought a candy bar, broke it in half, and gave it to the children. We drank water from the tap in the rest room and filled the bottles we kept with us.

  Finally, we could see Detroit in the distance. The buildings were closer together now. The children complained that they wanted to stop, and I felt as if I couldn’t go on myself. I wanted to just sit down in the middle of the road and wait until someone ran over me, but George prodded us on, and shortly before we reached the Detroit area, a truck stopped and picked us up. George sat in front next to the driver, and the children and I piled in the open back, next to some wooden crates.

  Through the window, I could see George talking to the man. In only a minute, he had the driver laughing in the same way he always did the men back in Kennett. Then George took a paper out of his shirt pocket and held it out in front of the driver, who nodded his head. George folded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

  We reached the city, and drove, and drove, and drove. It was amazing how large it was. We passed factories on the west side. Huge columns of gray smoke billowed up to the sky, joined one another, and flattened out in an overhead blanket so thick and wide it blocked out the sun. Black pieces of soot, too large to be dust, fell like snow and settled on me and the children. As soon as we brushed them off, more took their place. It seemed as if we crossed a railroad track every few feet. I could see the skyscrapers, and I pointed out the one I thought was the Penobscot Building to Betty Sue and Paul. Then the tallest buildings were behind us, and we still kept driving. After a while, we were on a wide street called Jefferson Avenue.

  Up front, I could see George talking and waving his hands, and the driver throwing his head back and laughing. It was the first time I’d ever been grateful for George being so social. The longer he could charm the driver, I thought, the closer he would take us to where we needed to go.

  As it turned out, he took us all the way to Bessie’s house.

  Chapter 34

  It was late afternoon when the truck pu
lled up in front of a large, square, two-story house. George helped me and the children down from the back and unloaded our things. He and the driver shook hands and slapped each other on the back. George shook his head and smiled. “You sure were kind to bring us all the way here, Dave. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  The driver grinned at him. “My pleasure. It was the best trip I had all year, George.” He climbed back in his seat and waved out the window at George until he’d driven out of sight.

  We were gathering up our things when Bessie and John came running out of the house, followed by a tall blonde girl that I thought must be Maxine. John pumped George’s hand while Bessie grabbed me and hugged me, then Betty Sue, then Paul, and finally, her brother. She took Betty Sue by the shoulders. “Lord, Almighty, just look at you. It’s like looking back into my childhood.”

  It was true. With the same build, height, black hair, dimples, and round faces, Bessie and Betty Sue were mirror images of one another with only the years to separate them.

  John shook his head. “We been ready to send out a posse to look for you, George. We were afraid that something bad had happened.”

  “The transmission fell out of the car near Toledo. We didn’t have the money to fix it, so we had to push it off the road and leave it.”

  “How did you get here, then?”

  “We walked mostly, almost to the city limits, then a truck picked us up and brought us the rest of the way.”

  “Well, let’s get these things inside and get some dinner. Bessie was just putting it on the table. She’s been cooking enough for an army for the last three days.”

  I told Bessie, “The only thing we had to eat today were some wormy apples we found on a tree, but I can’t eat anything until I wash off some of this road dirt.” I held out my arm and turned it palm up. “Look at it.”

  The dirt was sunk into the pores of my skin. It filled the creases on my wrists and the back of my fingers, and my fingernails were lined with it. I couldn’t help it, I started crying. “I’ve never been this dirty in my life, even when I was a little girl and helped Daddy at the stable. Most of our clothes were stolen, and what we have left is filthy from being worn for so long.”