The Big Wander

by Will Hobbs

  “Maybe you’ll get into a movie,” Mike groused. He pitched the flat tire onto the burro’s pack boxes and turned to inspecting his fingertips again. Clay climbed back in the cab. He wished Mike didn’t feel so bad.

  “No clues,” Mike said as they got under way again. He was biting on his bottom lip, and that was never a good sign.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Uncle Clay. No leads, and you haven’t located Restaurant Hay. So what are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Just looking around I guess. Somebody will have seen him. Maybe in Monument Valley. Can you believe this! It’s even more spectacular than in the movies!”

  “We’ll ask in Monument Valley. But you know, he really could be in Canada. I’m not sure you’re being very realistic.”

  “But we have to try, Mike. We’ll find him. I know we will.”

  “Our money’s not holding out too good, you know.”

  “Mine is. I’ve got one hundred and seventy-six dollars. I could start paying for the gas—why don’t you let me?”

  “Yeah, and that’s your life savings. I doubt if Mom would be too happy about you spending it all. And I should be making some money this summer, not spending it, even if I do have a scholarship.”

  “We could get jobs. Work for a while, travel for a while …”

  Mike was working his lower lip again, even pulling on his left earlobe, the one their mother always said he was going to pull off as he was solving his most difficult math problems. “We don’t know much, Clay. Maybe that wasn’t even right, about him being seen in Mexican Hat.”

  “Sounded right to me.”

  “I mean, what’s he to us, really. Why are we even looking for him.”

  Clay couldn’t believe Mike had said something like that. His breath caught in his throat. Suddenly he felt like he had a fever.

  “Now don’t get upset,” Mike said. “I want you to think about it. Let’s look at the facts. How often does he call or write?”

  “You know Mom says that doesn’t mean anything. He just doesn’t like to write letters. He’s not that kind of person.”

  “What kind of person is he? Do we even know? Look, Clay, I don’t think you see him the way he really is. How could you? You haven’t even seen him since you were eleven.”

  “I was twelve. He took me out salmon fishing three days straight. I spent a lot of time with him—at least I used to.”

  “It’s because you’re named after him, isn’t it?” Mike said. “That’s what it’s all about. You’ve built him into this larger-than-life—”

  “That’s not true,” Clay interrupted. Why was Mike doing this? What good was it going to do?

  “Maybe he’s more of a misfit than a hero. Just because he was a rodeo star…. You know he never made much money.”

  “Money isn’t everything. He is something special, Mike. I’ve always known it. Mom knows it. You used to.”

  “What I’m talking about is you and your heroes. John Wayne, for example. Life isn’t a Western, Clay, with good guys and bad guys.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Maybe when you’re fourteen.”

  “Yeah, well I’ll be fifteen in December. And I like Westerns just as much because of the adventure, and the places—like Monument Valley here.”

  “Maybe it’s because you can’t remember our father. Uncle Clay isn’t our father, you know. He’s not even like him.”

  Clay’s head swam. What was Mike getting at? “I’ve tried to remember him. How could I? I was only three when he got killed.”

  “He’s your original hero. Shot down trying to cover some foot soldiers in a war …”

  “I know all that. You’ve got people you look up to too, Mike, like President Kennedy and the astronauts—Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gus Grissom … you think our father was a hero. I know you do. So what are you saying?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Clay. It seemed like I had a point there somewhere. I think you’re fine. I don’t think you’re … well, you’re just kind of starry-eyed I guess, but that’s all right. We didn’t grow up like everybody else, that’s all, with both a mother and a father….”

  Clay broke into a grin. He didn’t know why, but he felt better than he thought he might, the way things were going. “For being so smart you can be kinda dumb yourself, Mike. Sure I’d like to have a father, but I wasn’t going to nominate Mom’s brother.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s a good idea to have heroes. Like President Kennedy, like John Wayne …”

  “Like Marilyn Monroe,” Clay said, and laughed. It felt good to be laughing.

  Clay lingered at one of the many empty tables in the dining room at Goulding’s Trading Post and looked out the windows and across to Monument Valley. The late light was bathing the monuments in a glowing golden aura like the world was ending. He was writing a letter to his mother.

  There was only Mrs. Whitmore to clean up all the mess the tourists had left behind, and he sure felt sorry for her. She had a long way to go. “Mind if I write a few letters here?” he asked. About his mother’s age, Mrs. Whitmore wore her hair tied back under a blue bandanna. “Sure,” she told him. “Make yourself at home.”

  He could see Hubcap Willie down by the big cottonwood where Mike had parked the truck. The old-timer had a little campfire going down there, probably was cooking supper. The burro was standing by waiting for whatever came next.

  Clay was telling his mother about the trading post, how different it was from the tourist traps on Route 66. How it must be a hundred years old, built out of rocks shaped one at a time into blocks—you could still see the chisel marks in them. How the ceilings were made out of logs crisscrossed by hundreds of sticks, how this very room he was writing in was where the casts of the John Ford Westerns ate their dinner every night while they were shooting the movies.

  The walls of this dining room are covered with photographs from the movies they filmed here. I’m writing under the eyes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda and Indian chiefs. I’m seeing some Navajos around the trading post. They don’t look like Indians in the movies—no feathers! The men wear the same kind of stuff as Uncle Clay—it’s the women who are really striking. Full skirts, long-sleeved blouses of shiny green or blue velvet, silver and turquoise jewelry all over—rings, bracelets, silver squash blossom necklaces …”

  He set aside his pen. It didn’t feel right to be writing letters when this woman was working all by herself. He was going to write to Marilyn next and send along the shark’s tooth, but he could do that in the morning.

  “Thanks,” Mrs. Whitmore said, “I could really use the help.”

  He bused the dishes while she loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up in the kitchen. He’d cleaned the tables and had that letter started for Marilyn when Mrs. Whitmore came out of the kitchen offering a bowl of ice cream topped with chocolate sauce. “Never heard of a kid who didn’t like ice cream,” she said, and sat down across from him.

  Like her husband in the trading post store, Mrs. Whitmore didn’t know anything about Uncle Clay. “So you’re going to travel and work your way around the West,” she said, after he’d told her his whole story. She paused and said, “How’d you like to work for a while right here? We’re shorthanded.”

  “At the trading post?”

  “Right here in the dining room. Three meals a day. I already know you’ll do a good job.”

  Clay took another look around the walls, at the photographs. Right here in this room! “What about my brother?” he asked quickly.

  “We need a hand at the gas station. Fifty cents an hour for you, a dollar him. Not much, but room and board won’t cost you anything.”

  He found Mike at the truck, gathering up their bedrolls and ground cloth. To Clay’s surprise Hubcap Willie was lying down inside the cab. “I was listening to the radio and cleaning up the bed of the truck,” Mike said. “He just kind of moved in to the cab. He said it was the closest thing to a bed he’d seen in a long tim
e.”

  “You’re going to let him sleep in there tonight? Inside the truck?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He’ll turn off the radio after a little while—he said he wouldn’t run the battery down.”

  Clay smirked but he didn’t say anything. His brother wasn’t such a tough guy after all.

  There weren’t many good sleeping spots. They found one about a hundred yards away under some box elder trees and away from the glare of the trading post’s night-light. Clay thought he’d kept his big news to himself about as long as he could, and spilled it. Mike wasn’t as excited as he should have been. “Well, I can see you’re all fired up about staying here,” he said slowly, and he thought about it a long while.

  “I’ll try it a few days,” Mike concluded guardedly. “Make back a few bucks.”

  Clay woke with the first desert light. He liked the time between first light and sunrise, and besides, he was too excited to go back to sleep.

  A coyote trotting by with its long tail hung low stopped to look at him, cocked its head as if to wonder at him being up so early, and trotted off among the yuccas. The first streams of the sun were lighting up the monuments of Monument Valley, and the towers looked more orange than red in that early light.

  Mike would sleep awhile. Clay dressed quietly and slipped away, down to the cottonwood at the edge of the arroyo where they’d left the truck and Hubcap Willie. Pal always seemed to be on her feet, and he’d been wondering if burros slept lying down or standing up. Maybe he’d find out.

  It took a moment for Clay to realize as the cottonwood tree came into sight that something was missing. The burro was still there, tied to the tree and standing up. It was the rusty Studebaker that was gone. Their backpacks and their other things lay heaped in a pile, but the pickup was gone.

  Hubcap Willie had left behind, for them apparently, every bit of his gear that went with the burro. Clay found the note on Pal’s pack saddle:

  Dear Boys,

  Hubcap Willie decided to take you up on your offer and has hereby swapped his faithful burro Pal and all of Pal’s gear for your Studebaker which is ailing. Hubcap is sure you boys have got the better of the bargain but will not complain. You’ll have need of hoofs to find your uncle if he really is a prospector, and Hubcap Willie will have need of wheels where he’s headed. Your search for your lost uncle has reminded him of a loved one who lives far away that he has not seen for many years. Don’t be concerned that you have sold an old man a bum motor because he is a crack mechanic among other things and knows his way around a wrecking yard. Be good to Pal and she will be good to you, and by all means never strike her for she is a noble soul.

  Truly,

  “Hubcap”

  P.S. This is hereby considered a lawful bill of sale.

  Clay looked around to share his amazement with someone, but there was only the burro switching her tail and looking at him with those huge, liquid brown eyes. The burro wrinkled her nose, bared her teeth, and began to bray like a lonesome freight.

  “Hee-haw to you too, Pal,” Clay said, and ran back with the note in his hand to tell his brother.

  7

  Clay waited anxiously as Mike read the note from Hubcap Willie. His brother almost seemed relieved when he finished it. Mike looked up and said, “Let’s go home, Clay. Let’s just go home.”

  “But Mike,” Clay shot back, “that’s not a legal bill of sale. We can show it to the police. They can stop him and we can get the truck back. Let’s hurry!”

  Mike was shaking his head. “It’s about to break down anyway. Let Hubcap Willie buy the oil and keep it running. He says he’s a crack mechanic.”

  “But—”

  “C’mon, Clay, you said we’d swap him the truck for the burro. It’s a perfect joke on us, it’ll make a great story. Anyway, I’d rather go back on the train. I was thinking, we can take a bus down to Route sixty-six and then catch the train at Flagstaff. Don’t you think that would be great, riding up high in that Vista Cruiser with all the windows? Great views …”

  “What about Uncle Clay?”

  “We’ve got absolutely nothing to go on.”

  “What about our jobs? What about Monument Valley? Mike, it’s only the twenty-second of June! We’ve only been gone a couple of weeks!”

  “Two of the longest weeks of my life, I’m afraid….”

  Here it comes, Clay thought. Sheila Don’t say it, Mike.

  “I miss Sheila something awful, Clay.”

  He knew Mike was looking at him, but Clay kept his eyes on the ground. “I thought you broke up with her.”

  “You know I’ve been talking to her. We talked again last night, a long time.”

  Clay hesitated. “Are you going to get married?”

  Mike laughed. “Not anytime soon, I hope. We both want to go to college first. Look, I just need to get home and get back to normal, get my job back at the station or somewhere else, and start seeing her again.”

  He couldn’t look at his brother. Probably Mike would get married a lot sooner than he said. It was too awful to think about. The next thing you knew, his brother would have kids and Mike would be somebody else and not very much his brother. It was happening right this moment—his brother was changing and leaving and it had always been the two of them.

  Mike took him by the shoulders and said with a little laugh, “It’s going to happen to you someday too, mark my words. Some Marilyn will come along—”

  Clay laughed, but he was fighting to keep his eyes dry.

  “Tell you what, Clay. Let’s stay around here for a few days at least, so you can see Monument Valley and get your fill of busing dishes.”

  But he didn’t get his fill of busing dishes. How could you, with those scenes from the movies all around you as you worked? Indians all lined up on a ridge with their battle lances, a cavalry column marching through Monument Valley, and all the while the eyes of John Wayne following you around the room …

  Outdoors on your own time, how could you ever get your fill of Monument Valley itself or get tired of living right under those sheer red walls hundreds and hundreds of feet high? He liked everything about the place: the red soil, the twisted junipers, the prickly pear cactus, hawks sailing, ravens thrashing the air with their ragged wings…. He liked visiting that burro down under the cottonwood, and he liked the way Pal would snort and shake her head with her ears flapping. The ears were always going, like radar dishes swiveling around.

  He bought a bale of hay for the burro, carried buckets of clean water. He talked to her and scratched her ears and thought about how strange and a little wonderful it was if even for a few days to have a burro just like his uncle had a burro.

  Clay went through the gear Hubcap Willie had left behind. Mike had no interest in it, but Clay liked it because it spoke of the faraway places. Tins with traces of oats, flour, cornmeal, and rice, a couple of two-quart canteens, pots and pans and utensils, a saddle blanket, pack boxes, a tarp, even a harmonica with a fancy engraving of a steam train under the words “The Midnight Flyer.”

  He liked to wander among the formations early when it was cool and when the light felt rare and golden. On his third morning walk, he could sense that he was running out of time. Mike was itching to go home.

  Clay was walking down a sand dune when it came to him, the inspiration, fully formed and perfect. No reason to go home just because Mike is…. He even tried it aloud. “No reason to go home just because Mike is!”

  When he got to the bottom of the dune, he looked back up at it and at the sheer red cliffs behind. A smile came to his face. It had to be the exact spot from the scene in The Searchers! He could almost see Natalie Wood running down the dune toward him with the cruel Comanche named Scar in pursuit. But the thought of taking on Scar didn’t seem as appealing as pulling Marilyn Monroe out of the river.

  He walked on, deep in thought. His inspiration grew into an idea and then a plan as he pictured being on his own, out here in this country he’d always dreamed about. There’d
be nothing much for him at home, nothing new and different certainly. Mike would be with Sheila all the time anyway. He’d be alone in the house all summer, with Mom gone and all. In the fall Mike would be off to college. It was time he started thinking for himself and finding his own way.

  “What do you say we head back tomorrow,” Mike said one evening as soon as he got back from the gas station.

  Clay had been preparing himself for this moment. Not like he was telling and not like he was asking either, Clay answered, “I’ve been thinking I’ve got the best summer job I could ever ask for. It’s like a summer job and scout camp combined. I don’t want to leave, Mike.”

  Mike was awfully surprised at first. “You mean, just leave you behind all by yourself?”

  “That’s right,” Clay answered. “I’ll be okay. I’ll do fine.”

  “I’m supposed to be looking out for you,” Mike said. “What would Mom think? I don’t know, Clay….”

  “Mom would let me,” Clay answered, trying his best to sound convincing. “I’m going to be fifteen in December. And besides, I’m not out here alone. The people at the trading post will keep an eye on me.”

  They talked into the night. Clay could see the tide was turning for him. Mike was beginning to picture it!

  Finally Mike said, “I think you’re right. I think there’s at least a good chance Mom would go along with this, if she could see what a good setup you have here, how nice these people are. It’s a great opportunity for you, and she’s always been a soft touch where you’re concerned.”

  That cinched it! “Probably you’ll get homesick after a week or two anyway,” Mike added. “Then you can take the bus down to the train, same as I’m doing.”

  In the morning, shaking hands with his brother, Clay knew this was the biggest day of his life. He couldn’t keep a few tears out of his eyes. “I know this means a lot to you, Clay,” Mike was saying. “I think it’s going to be a good experience for you to be on your own. But seriously, take care of yourself. Don’t make me regret this.”

  “I won’t,” Clay said. “Thanks, Mike. Thanks again.”