The Longest Road

by Jeanne Williams

  Oh Mama, Laurie pleaded. Help us be gone by then! Help Daddy get a job quick so he can send for us! Shooing Babe into the bedroom, Rosalie closed the door most of the way. Laurie put the chest in the bottom of the box along with the ruby-glass pitcher and sugar bowl and then looked helplessly at the bird quilt and piles of belongings, hers and Buddy’s, that had been dumped on the bed.

  It gave her a funny, sick feeling to realize this was all they had left in the world, that they truly didn’t have a home but were just stuffed into the corners of another family’s life. Laurie chewed her lip, blinked at tears, and conjured up Morrigan’s smile, his deep, warm voice saying, “If any part of us lasts, it has to be love.”

  Steadied, Laurie went at her task. Daddy was taking Mama’s red-letter Bible, but Laurie had the treasured books she’d gotten for Christmas and her birthdays: Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book; The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Craik Mulock; Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, so sad Laurie had only read it once; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, which was a mighty disappointment to Laurie. Why, when she only got a book or two a year and wanted so many, didn’t her parents ask which one she wanted? When it came to poetry, she much preferred Alfred Noyes, Rudyard Kipling, Vachel Lindsay, and some of Longfellow, like “The Skeleton in Armor,” which she’d learned by heart from library books while she was doing the ironing or the dishes. She had enough poems in her head to recite for hours. That was almost as good as having the books. She loved the gallant colonel’s son in “The Ballad of East and West” and thrilled as she declaimed haughtily:

  “Lightly then answered the Colonel’s son: ‘Do good to bird and beast,

  But count who comes for the broken bones before thou makest a feast.…’”

  And while reciting “The Highwayman,” her heart swelled with pity for the landlord’s red-lipped daughter who “watched for her love in the moonlight and died in the darkness there,” and for the bold outlaw.

  The last of the books, which she placed standing up in the box so she could get to them without messing up her clothes, was Helen’s Babies. Mr. John Habberton had written it in 1876 and the title went on and on: Some Account of Their Ways, Innocent, Crafty, Angelic, Impish, Witching and Repulsive. Also a Partial Record of Their Actions During Ten Days of Their Existence, by Their Latest Victim. The bachelor uncle’s verdict on his small nephews—“Born to be hung, both of them!”—always sent Buddy into laughing fits. Maybe Belle and the other children would enjoy it.

  Touching the beloved books, all of them written in by Mama, even the little Faultless Starch booklets, made Laurie feel a little better. Rosalie was nice and would certainly be glad of her help. There wasn’t any question of being more than able to earn her and Buddy’s keep. They wouldn’t be taking charity. So far, Grandpa hadn’t said a word to either of them. That suited Laurie fine.

  At least it seemed likely that Rosalie wouldn’t make her wear long stockings and suspenders, especially since she’d gotten rid of her old ones. The clean dress was wrinkled. Laurie shook it out as best she could and placed it on top of the muslin underskirts, bloomers, and nightgowns Mama had sewn for her, two of each besides the underwear she had on.

  That was all, except for her comb and toothbrush.… No, there was still the best thing of all except for Mama’s lavaliere and the books! Morrigan’s harmonica. She tucked it into a nightgown, just in case one of her “cousins” snooped.

  Buddy had more keepsakes than she did: a rattlesnake’s whispery transparent shed skin, the coyote’s skull and coarse pelt, a bag of flints and arrowheads picked up around Point of Rocks. There was his trove of Big Little Books and a tobacco pouch of small treasures like his G-Man ring secret decoder and two boxes of .22 shorts. Buddy, so protective of his tiny lair, was going to miss it, but maybe he’d have enough fun with the boys to partly make up for the loss of his private kingdom.

  Laurie didn’t know what to do with the snakeskin but she stacked the thick, chunky little books from bottom to top on one side of the box and then put her brother’s keepsakes on the other, placing on top his socks, underwear, other pair of overalls, and two shirts. She folded the bird quilt neatly and put it at the bottom of the bed. Rosalie had taken charge of their other bedding except for the pillow and sheet Laurie would use that night. Sleeping with Belle wouldn’t be so awful if Laurie could roll up in the quilt stitched by Mama’s hands but she’d have to be careful not to get it dirty.

  Now to find something to hold their toothbrushes, a jar or can. Rosalie’s children never brushed their teeth but Mama had always been particular about that.

  Going outside, Laurie was grateful that the hounds had gone with the boys and averted her eyes from the savaged rabbit. Thank goodness, there was a toilet. It buzzed with flies and spiders and had webs in several corners but Laurie was grateful for it. Holding her breath while she relieved herself, she got out of range of its smell and squinted in the hard, bright glare as she surveyed the surroundings.

  Down by the rickety barn, the turning blades of the windmill caught the sun and creaked dolefully as it pumped water into a big, round metal watering tank. Would Grandpa let them get in there this summer to cool off? The corral with the tank opened to a pasture where five black-and-white Holstein cows rested under the only two trees in sight, drowsily watching three calves play king of the hill on a little slope, charging each other, heads down, their tails seeming almost as thick as their rangy legs.

  A tractor and other machinery ranged outside the corral along with a truck so rusty there was no guessing its original color. Using the corral for its back fence was a good-sized garden with rows and hills of young plants. A sag-wired pen enclosed a chicken house and barren sand pecked over by a score of Rhode Island Red hens and a floppy-combed rooster. In the nearby pigpen, a big spotted hog slept beneath a tin roof extending from a rough shelter and a sow suckled squirming little piglets that showed pink through coarse white hair.

  On all sides of this farmhouse center stretched planted fields that Laurie vaguely knew required a lot of work even before the cotton was picked or corn harvested. High above, a chicken hawk circled, hunting for a meal. Laurie hugged her arms close to her, a little cold in spite of the heat.

  She wished her own grandfather didn’t remind her of the bird of prey, especially since she was going to have to live with him a while. Oh, if Daddy could just find a place for them soon! Right now, with Mama dead and Daddy leaving, it was as if their family was blown like the dust, swept up from where it belonged and scattered by the winds. She’d hold tight to Buddy, though. As long as they stayed together, they were a still a little bit of a family.

  There was a trash pile, mostly rusting tin cans and broken dishes, between the chicken pen and pigpen. Laurie hunted till she found a small cracked jar for the toothbrushes and went to the pump to wash it. She had to really throw her weight on the handle to bring it down, but after a few downward pushes, water gushed out, and she scrubbed the jar clean enough to use.

  She was rinsing it when the crunch of steps made her turn. Daddy took off his hat and rubbed sweat from his forehead. “Laurie doll, I think I’m goin’ to take off soon as Buddy gets back.”

  She gasped as if he’d hit her in the stomach and knocked the breath out of her. “Daddy—”

  “I can get a hundred miles or so down the road before dark,” he said hastily, looking away out over her head. He swallowed and put his hand on her shoulder. “Honey, the sooner I get to California, the sooner I can get work and send for you and Buddy.”

  Through the thin sleeve of her dress, his fingers didn’t feel alive, or maybe it was her shoulder that was numb. The baked earth moved under her feet and her head went swimmy. Why did it matter, whether he left now or tomorrow? But it did. Tears squeezed from her eyes though she struggled not to make a sound.

  “Bawlin’ won’t help.” Daddy’s tone roughened. “You’re old enough to understand. I’ll send for you kiddies as quick as I can. That’s what you want, isn’t
it?”

  She nodded, gulping, tasting the salt of the tears that had trickled to the edge of her mouth. “Rosalie’s a nice woman,” Daddy went on, “but she was brought up by worldly folks and Pa never set foot in a church in his life. It’s up to you, Laurie, to make sure Buddy says his prayers every night, and on Sundays you can read a chapter out of your mother’s New Testament.” He did look at her then. His light blue eyes were wet. “You try to remember all the things your mother taught you, try to behave like she’d want you to, and teach Buddy.”

  “I—I’ll try.”

  “That’s Daddy’s girl.”

  He hugged her and kissed her cheek but Laurie still felt as if she or he or both of them were made of wood or rock and their blood was drained away. She carried the jar inside and set it under the bed between her box and Buddy’s. Somehow, when she put their toothbrushes in it, it made her feel more than anything else had that they didn’t have a home. She reached blindly for the harmonica, gripped it tight, and ran out to the barn.

  5

  The barn was always cooler than the house and soothingly dusky. Besides two doors it only had one small window up in the hayloft through which a square of light gilded the fragrant cured hay. It was often Laurie’s refuge as days ran into weeks and weeks into the months of that long summer.

  The real refuge, of course, was John Morrigan’s music, and the memory of that brief time, less than a day, when he’d made a difference to all of them but especially to her. She’d never forget the way his eyes changed or how he laughed or the things he’d said, but mostly she remembered him singing, made him as real as she could whether it was while she slapped at gnats and chopped weeds or when she woke, heart pounding, as the sun fell toward the earth, or when she missed Mama so bad that her insides weighed heavy as stone.

  Practicing in the barn, sometimes tagged by Belle, she experimented with brushing her fingers over the reeds and the effects she could get with her tongue. She learned to play most of Morrigan’s tunes well enough to be recognized and made up a few of her own, about how she felt every morning when she woke up and realized she wasn’t in her own room, in her own home—that she’d never sleep there again. She hoped whoever rented the place was watering the cherry tree.

  Several postcards had come from Daddy. Moving from one job to the next, he lived in the car and under a tarp stretched from its door to wherever he could fasten it. “Saving every dime I can,” he scrawled. “If there’s any five-dollar-a-day jobs, I ain’t found them. Have met up with a nice family here, the Halsells, and I get my meals with them. Mind Rosalie, kiddies, and Laurie, you remember to read the New Testament to Buddy on Sundays. Not any use trying to write to me, we have to keep moving from one job to another.”

  A father you couldn’t even write to or know where he was! It gave Laurie a queer, empty feeling. She did read the New Testament to Buddy, though he fidgeted impatiently except when she read about how John the Baptist was beheaded, or Herod had all the boy babies killed, or Jesus cast devils out of people and sent them into swine. She herself liked where Jesus comforted his friends by telling them that in his Father’s house were many mansions and that he was going to prepare a place for them. Mama was in that place, really, not in the dust-blown grave on the plains.

  As for taking refuge, there hadn’t been much time for that, right from that afternoon in mid-May when Buddy and the boys came up to the house with four half-grown rabbits, and Daddy had kissed both his children, rubbed at his eyes, and driven off.

  Before the dust cloud raised by the Model T had faded from sight, Grandpa said to his grandchildren, “Find a hoe that fits you and choose your row. Ev’rett, you show ’em how to cut the weeds under the ground good and get out all the roots.”

  They had learned. Learned to dig down to uncover the roots of the Johnson grass and pull every single little rootling put with the edge of the hoe so it wouldn’t start another clump; learned to chop out the crabgrass without hitting a good plant, cotton or watermelon, peas, pumpkin, and corn; learned to chop down deep at the tender part of the careless weed roots, which could grow thick as her ankle, so tough a blade couldn’t dent them. All the time the sun beat down, and if it wasn’t gnats or blister bugs or great big horseflies making you miserable, it was grasshoppers whirring up from the leaves they’d been chewing full of holes, landing on your clothes or skin with their raspy feet, or tangling in your hair.

  Sometimes they got inside the overalls Rosalie had bought Laurie for field work. She knew they couldn’t bite or sting or do any real harm, but the scratch of their brittle bodies against her skin sent Laurie almost into fits. This delighted the boys, who added entertainment to their labor by sticking hoppers down her back till Rosalie put a stop to it.

  Laurie was grateful for Rosalie, whose nature, like her body, was soft and comfortable till you pushed against the underlying bone and sinew. Rosalie seldom scolded or instructed her children, or interfered in their fusses, but when she did, they paid attention. From what Laurie could see, Rosalie had much the same attitude toward Grandpa and what she expected. Apparently she didn’t grudge his spending money on tractors and such while she scrubbed out clothes on a washboard and lived in a tarpaper shack, but she insisted on keeping cows and chickens so there’d be milk and eggs for the children, and on the well-built cement storm cellar, which was stocked with water, canned food, and a lantern.

  “I saw a tornado pick up a house and smash it down on some folks once,” she said. “When one of them big black funnels comes twistin’ out of the sky, I want a good place to run.”

  Rosalie was so different from Mama or anyone else Laurie had known that she spent considerable time puzzling over her. It was the first time Laurie had tried to understand grown-up, what they did, what they felt, and most of all why. It seemed a little indecent and underhanded to be examining someone without their knowing, like peeking at them while they undressed, but it was like unraveling a mystery, looking for clues the way Nancy Drew did.

  Rosalie didn’t have nice furniture or curtains at the windows but she had a radio—with a loudspeaker so you didn’t have to plug in earphones—on which she listened to “Stella Dallas” and “Our Gal Sunday.” The whole family enjoyed “Fibber McGee and Mollie,” the Carter Family’s gospel singing, “Saturday Night Barn Dance,” “Gangbusters,” “Death Valley Days,” and listening to Bing Crosby on the “Kraft Music Hall.” After Grandpa was in bed, Rosalie loved to listen to Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, or Wayne King. She especially loved Will Rogers.

  “That’s a good man,” she told Laurie. “Hasn’t got stuck up over gettin’ rich and famous. He’s raised scads of money for Dust Bowl folks and when there was an earthquake in Nicaragua, he flew down there and raised money for the ones that’d lost their homes. If he was president, this country would be in a lot better shape.” That spurred her into saying that Pretty Boy Floyd, who’d come from her part of the state and been shot by lawmen the year before, wasn’t as much a robber as the banks he’d held up. “At least Pretty Boy helped out a lot of poor families and he was better thought of and liked by folks who knew him than any governor Oklahoma had ever had, or any president of the U.S., either!”

  Most of the time, though, Rosalie didn’t fret about politics. She bought movie magazines and True Story and True Confessions. She had an ornate bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, which she was glad to share with Laurie and Belle, a spilled-over cake pan of Tangee lipsticks, powder, rouge, mascara, face creams, and Cutex nail polish, and she had earrings and necklaces and bracelets, shiny patent leather shoes with high heels and two good dresses, one of swingy, flowered, navy rayon, the other of yellow chiffon.

  When she put on the low-cut chiffon for the Fourth of July, Grandpa caressed her bare arm and called her his sunflower. She laughed and kissed him full on the mouth.

  The kiss wasn’t a bit like the way Daddy and Mama kissed when he went to work or even when he came back from a haul to Colorado. It made Laurie blush and l
ook away. She could hear the bedsprings creaking almost every night and knew Grandpa and Rosalie were doing what got babies. Because he was so much older—Rosalie was twenty-seven—it seemed wrong even if they were married. As pretty and young as Rosalie was, it looked like she’d hate to have the old man touch her, but there was no mistaking that she loved him, or that he cared for her, though he ignored his children except to give orders. The times Rosalie didn’t go along when he took cream or eggs to town, he always handed her all the egg money and anything left from selling the cream after buying chicken feed and the few groceries they needed, and he never fussed over how she spent it.

  About once a month, the whole family went to town. Laurie was stunned the first time at being given a whole shiny nickel to spend just like her cousins. Except when Rosalie had visited, Laurie had never gotten more than a penny at a time, and that not often, which was especially galling since Buddy had his rabbit money. He’d lost that income since Grandpa ruled that any rabbits shot belonged on the table. It was the only fresh meat they had except on the Fourth when Rosalie killed two old hens to fry up for their picnic. Side meat and a few jars of sausage were still left from the hog butchered last fall. It made Laurie feel a little queasy to know that the friendly spotted hog she fed every day would, on some cold November day, stop his eager hunting for morsels and become food himself. She tried not to think about it but she was sure she couldn’t eat him.