The Longest Road

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The Longest Road Page 4

by Jeanne Williams


  After urging more water down Buddy, she sipped from the mason jar. The tepid water had a flat, dead taste but you could get sunstroke from heat or if you didn’t get enough water so she drank slowly. When she could trust her legs, she took the jar to Daddy, who was pumping up the inner tube after adding one more patch to a surface that was more patches than tube. The shirt she’d washed yesterday was smudged now and wet under the arms. He wasn’t as feverish-looking as Buddy but his cheeks were red.

  “That’s Daddy’s girl,” he said, trying to grin as he handed back the jar.

  She didn’t know yet how she felt about him, not after the way he’d slapped her, and most of all because he was leaving them. It was as if he wasn’t her same Daddy anymore but someone she didn’t know and couldn’t depend on, someone she was afraid of, like Floyd when he was drinking.

  Getting a tea towel to spread on the dust for a tablecloth, she decided it was pretty simple after all. If Daddy sent for them, she’d love him again. If he didn’t—well then, she’d never forgive him, either. But she wet another washrag and handed it to him so he could clean up.

  “Think I’ll catch a couple of winks,” he said. “No use tryin’ to drive when I might go to sleep and run off the road.”

  He lay down by Buddy. Somehow, flies had found them. You’d think the pesky things would die for good and all in a storm like the one that had buried houses and barns and crops and grass over this whole country. There weren’t any flowers under the trees, or any grass save some of last year’s dead clumps jutting up from the sand, but here came the flies though the lids were still on the pails. Laurie tied a washrag to a fallen branch and waved it over Daddy and Buddy when the flies settled on them.

  Already, Daddy was gently snoring. He must not have slept much last night. She heard the crunch of a twig and whirled as a soft voice behind her said, “Howdy, sis. Could I share your tree a while?”

  He wasn’t as tall as Daddy, but leaner and somehow solider, as if his muscles and bones were knit together snug and smooth. He was a whole lot younger, though he was a grown man. He had a long nose, long mouth, and long jaw that rounded to a broad chin with a cleft so deep that it almost looked like a scar. A scruffy felt hat, so greasy and stained that there was no guessing its original color, tilted back from a high, wide forehead and unruly black hair. All his skin that showed was burned brown as an Indian’s. What Laurie noticed most was the merry curve of his lips, and the dancing light in eyes she thought were gray till he moved into the sun and they sparkled green.

  He carried a sack over his shoulder and some kind of big, funny-shaped case patched with black insulation tape. His faded khaki work pants and shirt were almost as stained as his hat and a blue bandanna hung partway out of one pocket.

  “The tree’s for everyone.” Laurie whispered so as not to wake her father and brother. “Sit down and you can eat with us.”

  “Mightily obliged.” He kept his voice down, too, but it had a deep male ring to it that pleased Laurie’s ears. “I sure could use a drink if you can spare it.”

  Laurie nodded at the jar. “Drink all you want. There’s more in the flivver. I’m sorry it’s not cold.”

  “It’s wet.”

  Tilting back his head, he took a couple of swallows. She admired the way the muscles of his throat stood out firm and strong as he drank. He grinned at her. “When you’re thirsty, water beats the best corn likker ever made.”

  Liquor? Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging. Laurie thought that anyone who took a drink of beer or whiskey turned into a wife-beating, reeling, scary drunkard who didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care. Like Floyd who beat up Margie and who’d once pulled a butcher knife on Daddy when he intervened. This man certainly didn’t act like Floyd but Laurie’s alarm must have shown because the stranger looked kind of embarrassed.

  “Don’t worry, sis. I don’t have any booze in my stuff and haven’t had a drink in a month. Right now this suits me better’n any Kentucky bourbon.” He drank what was left in the half-gallon jar, sitting cross-legged in the dust. “You folks moving?”

  Laurie nodded, ducking her head. She was ashamed to say Daddy was leaving them at Grandpa’s. “Well,” said the brown-skinned, gray-green-eyed man, “I’m glad to see you’re not headed for California.”

  The name roused Daddy. His eyes opened. He kind of jumped when he saw the stranger and sat up in a hurry. The younger man thrust out his hand. “I’m John Morrigan, sir. Hope you don’t mind my restin’ off with you.”

  Daddy evidently liked what he felt in the other’s handshake. “You’re sure welcome to what we have. If we’re travelin’ your direction, you can squeeze in and ride with us.”

  “Wouldn’t want to crowd you.”

  Daddy grinned. It was the first time Laurie had seen him really grin big since Mama died. “You can help me fix flats.”

  “I’m good at that.” John Morrigan had a deep, soft chuckle, kind of surprised, like he’d just learned something nice.

  “I’m Ed Field,” Daddy said. “This is my daughter, Laurie, and Buddy’s havin’ a nap.”

  Daddy’s eyes filled and a tear oozed through the dust on his cheek. Don’t tell him about us! Laurie begged silently, making as much noise as she could in taking lids off the lard cans, sticking a spoon in the slaw, and setting forks in the pie pans they were using on the road, pushing hers toward Morrigan. Don’t tell him Mama’s dead and you’re dumping us like kittens you don’t have the heart to drown.

  Daddy had loved Mama an awful lot but he enjoyed sympathy. Laurie hated it, at least the kind you bought by showing your sores and deformities like the beggars she’d heard about in big cities. She felt poor and ashamed because Mama was dead. Daddy’s leaving made it worse. So she shrank and suffered while Daddy told Morrigan about Mama and his plans.

  “Did I hear you mention California?” Daddy asked.

  Morrigan nodded. “I just got to Amarillo in time for that storm. Goin’ out to see my mother for the first time in a couple of years. She lives north of McAlester.”

  “And then you’ll go back to California?” Daddy asked.

  Morrigan’s chuckle wasn’t pleasant this time. “If I’m goin’ to starve, I’d rather do it closer to home.”

  “But there’s all that fruit to pick—all that cotton.”

  “Yeah, and there’s a hundred men for every job of work, Mr. Field. I’ve worked in the oil patch since I was fourteen, got to be a tool dresser.” At Laurie’s puzzled look, he grinned. “That means I dressed the tools, honey—heated the bits when they got dull from drillin’ and hammered ’em out. A toolie’s second to the driller, and I drilled a little, too. But oil prices went way down a few years back and the way Alfalfa Bill Murray—he was governor of Oklahoma in thirty-one—the bright idea he had to fix that was to close down the wells complete.”

  “Doesn’t seem to make much sense.” Daddy’s tone was sympathetic, though he’d always said he’d never work in the oil fields. On top of a rig was a good place to get killed, and oil-field people drank, gambled, and cussed a lot worse than the cowboys who came to Prairieville once a month after payday.

  “When I couldn’t get work in Texas,” Morrigan went on, “I’d heard about jobs in Arizona and headed that way. The ads and promises those big Arizona growers had spread all over this part of the world sucked in so many folks the farmers took their choice just like a slave market—and let me tell you, people are slaves to their bellies, they got to eat. Arizona’s got real tough laws about drawin’ relief—can’t get a dime unless you’ve lived there a couple of years.” He laughed grimly. “In the last few years, I’ve walked the tracks and rode the rails and slept under most of the important bridges in this land of the free and I can tell you in lots of places it’s a jailhouse crime not to have a job unless your daddy had a pile of money and left it to you. Well, when the cotton was picked and the main work done, Arizona shoved us over into California, and it was the same thing all over again. I’d hear
d they was payin’ five dollars a day but instead I wound up glad to get a dollar.”

  “Maybe you weren’t in the right place.” Daddy looked pale and kind of sick. In spite of herself, Laurie felt sorry for him, though she was glad that now he’d surely change his mind.

  “Mr. Field,” said John Morrigan, “I’m afraid there isn’t any right place in California. After I visit my mother, I’m tryin’ the oil patch again, maybe go down to Texas. And this time, I’m not blowin’ what I make as fast as I get it like I always done before. Goin’ to save up and buy a spudder, talk some of them old Panhandle farmers whose topsoil’s roostin’ over in New Mexico into lettin’ me drill to see what’s under the hardpan.”

  “That’s likely the best idea for you seein’ as how you’ve been in the oil fields all your life,” Daddy said. “No offense to you, John, but I’ve heard so much about California that I guess I’ve just got to try it. There’s no work here of the kind I’m used to.”

  He gave Buddy a little shake. “Wake up, son. Time to eat before we hit the road.”

  Buddy was still flushed. His eyes were glassy when he opened them. “I’m thirsty.”

  Laurie took a water jar around to him, propped him against her, and helped him drink. He didn’t push her away. That proved he didn’t feel good. His eyes closed again.

  “Buddy—” He liked the fried, crusty part of rabbit, and she broke off a little and tried to get him to taste it. “You better eat.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “He looks kind of feverish,” Morrigan said. “You got any aspirin?”

  They didn’t have anything in the way of medical supplies except a bottle of Mercurochrome and a thermometer. “Don’t matter,” Morrigan said cheerfully. His voice calmed the fear-induced nausea churning in Laurie’s stomach. “There’s some willow along the wash. It’s mighty good for lots of ailments. Get a pot of water boilin’, honey, and I’ll fetch some bark.”

  Daddy broke up some dead limbs and had a fire going by the time Laurie unearthed a cup and the teakettle and tipped water into it. “We sure don’t need Buddy gettin’ sick on us,” Daddy said heavily.

  “Maybe he’s just hot and tired,” Laurie consoled. “It’s lucky we’re close to some willows and Mr. Morrigan can make fever medicine.”

  “That’s how your mother would talk.” Daddy’s voice was gratified and sad at the same time. “Wouldn’t surprise me if Morrigan’s part Indian. They know a lot about plants and curing.”

  Laurie was washing Buddy’s face and arms to cool him when John Morrigan came up in an easy swinging stride. He dumped a handful of white inner bark shavings into the boiling water, let it come back to a full boil, and set the kettle on the ground. His neat, quick, way of doing things didn’t waste a motion.

  “It’s none of my business, Mr. Field, but the kids might hold up better if you wait a couple hours and travel after it cools down. Looks like you got your, bedding. You could sleep out tonight and get to your father’s place before it gets real hot tomorrow.”

  Daddy looked like he was going to argue. Then he looked at Buddy. “Reckon that’s good advice, John, but I sure hate to sit around when the old Ford could be makin’ miles.”

  “And flats. They’ll be easier to change when it’s cooler.”

  “Guess you’ll want to hitch a ride with somebody else,” Daddy said regretfully.

  Morrigan shrugged. “Liefer visit with you folks, play a few songs to pass the afternoon. I got some canned peaches and salmon we can have for supper and a sack of oatmeal cookies a lady gave me along with dinner yesterday for fixin’ her screen doors.”

  Laurie’s mouth watered for a cookie but Daddy said, “We can feed our company. Is that a guitar you got?”

  “That’s what it is.” Morrigan poured willow brew into a cup and handed it to Laurie. “Maybe your brother will take it better from you.”

  Laurie doubted that. Buddy had to be spanked sometimes before he’d take his medicine. Mama always made sure he’d swallowed it because otherwise he’d hold a pill in his mouth till he could get away and spit it out. As Laurie gingerly raised the cup to Buddy’s lips, Morrigan smiled at the boy.

  “That’s what Choctaw Indians use for upsets like yours, son. It’s broke me out of a bad fever many a time.”

  Buddy took a sip, struggled not to make a face, and gazed at Morrigan with wide, glittering eyes. “Are you a Choctaw, mister?”

  “Grandma was a full-blood married to a quarter-Scots MacIntosh so that made my mother seven-eighths Choctaw. Grandpa Morrigan came over from Ireland and married a girl who was half Chickasaw. That made Dad a quarter Chickasaw. So—let’s see now, Bud: I’m one-eighth Chickasaw on my father’s side and one-sixteenth white on my mother’s side, so what do you figure that makes me?”

  Spellbound by Morrigan’s teasing, lilting words, Buddy drank without protest, but shook his head at the question. “What does it make you, mister?”

  For a moment, Laurie was afraid Morrigan would say “half-breed” but instead he laughed and gave Buddy’s hair a gentle ruffling. “One mean Irish Injun! Shall I sing you a song about a man who was even more mixed up?”

  Buddy nodded. By the time Morrigan got out his guitar, wiped it lovingly with a soft rag, tuned it, and rollicked through “I’m My Own Grandpa,” Buddy had finished another cup of tea and was sweating. His eyes had lost some of their mirrorlike blankness and he didn’t squirm when Laurie, sparing of water since they might not be able to fill their jars that day, moistened the rag again and bathed his face, neck, and arms.

  When she started to fold the cloth across Buddy’s forehead, Morrigan said, “It’ll do more good across his throat where it’ll cool those big arteries on either side of his windpipe. Like some special song, Buddy?”

  “Do you know ‘I Love Bananas Because They Have No Bones’?”

  Morrigan did. And he played “Amazing Grace” for Daddy and “Pretty Redwing” for Laurie. “Now here’s one about that dust storm,” he said. “I was visitin’ this friend out by Pampa, Texas, when it came up and he wrote this song, ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.’ Mighty good songmaker Woody Guthrie is. This was just how it was, folks thinkin’ the end had come and just sayin’ good-bye to their neighbors.”

  There were a lot of verses. They told exactly how it had been, and how it was, but this wasn’t a sad song or a sad tune. Morrigan’s deep sweet voice lilted soft or swelled high, rollicked along till your foot tapped, and made you believe that even if the dusty wind was blowing you and other folks away from home, there’d be a place to stop, a place to live again, in your own house with your own family.…

  No, that couldn’t ever be. Mama was gone. Without her the finest mansion wouldn’t be home, but there could’ve been a kind of a one, even under a tarp, if Daddy would take them with him.

  But he won’t, thought Laurie, struggling with tears. He still wants to go to California even after Mr. Morrigan told him there aren’t any good jobs. Daddy wants to get away from us. I guess we remind him too much of Mama and how it was. I guess he can’t stand it. But how are we going to stand living at Grandpa Field’s? It’s not fair. Daddy can leave us wherever he wants and it doesn’t matter a bit what we want.

  Still, she was heartened by Morrigan’s singing, and cheered that Buddy was looking better. She smoothed back her brother’s hair and closed her eyes, drawing the melody into her blood and breathing, filling the emptiness Mama’s dying had left in her with John Morrigan’s voice. “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of a home.…”

  Wasn’t it funny how a sad song could make you feel better? More as if you weren’t alone, that other people had gone through as bad or worse and managed to make music out of it? She tried to remember the words of the songs Morrigan sang that she didn’t know so she’d have them later, when he was gone.

  You got to walk that lonesome valley,

  You got to walk it by yourself.

  Nobody else can walk it for you
.

  You got to walk it by yourself.…

  He played and sang till the sun slanted low in the west. A little breeze made the shiny new cottonwood leaves whisper though, thank goodness, it didn’t stir up dust or ashes. Laurie wished they could stay here, that they didn’t have to travel on and lose Morrigan.

  Daddy, eager as he was to get shut of them, must have felt a little the same. He sighed as he got to his feet and stared south. “Guess we’d better chug along. How far can you ride with us, John?”

  “Why, if you can put up with me that long, I’d like to get off in Clinton—catch a ride there on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. If the railroad bulls don’t throw me off, I can go all the way to MacAlester on that line. Or I can hitchhike east on good old Route Sixty-six.”

  “What’re railroad bulls?” asked Buddy.

  “Oh, you might say they’re police the railroads hire to make sure nobody rides in their empty boxcars that’re shuttlin’ back and forth over land the government gave the railroads in order to get ’em to build as a public service. Yessiree, it’s a public service ’long as you can pay your fare.”

  Speaking in a hurry, because of course riding a train without paying for it was pretty close to stealing, Daddy said, “We can drop you right in Clinton, John. Glad of the company.”

  Somehow they got Morrigan’s guitar and sack tied on top with the suitcase. Buddy settled into a nest of bedding in the backseat, and Laurie sat between Daddy and Morrigan, turning her knees in order to give Morrigan’s long legs more room. She savored his closeness and his odor. It was woodsmoke and salt and man scent that had no sourness or discouragement to it like Daddy’s. She smelled tobacco, too, and ruefully concluded that Morrigan must be a sinner—but she didn’t care.

 

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