Laurie, parting and combing Buddy’s hair in spite of his wriggles, frowned at Way’s brogans. They were held on more with broken and reknotted laces than with leather. “You need some shoes, too.”
Way stared at his peeping toes as if he’d never seen them before. “Why, I reckon I do. Well, kiddos, if I can find enough jobs, we’ll leave here stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys and duded up like real people!”
Real people with homes, people who belonged someplace, Laurie thought with a pang before she lifted her chin. She had the harmonica, Way had his brushes. They might have to move around a while but someday they’d have a home.
And for now, for the first time in her and Buddy’s life, they were going into a café and order exactly what they wanted and as much as they could hold!
9
Tarry was a discouraged-looking town in the California desert. One paved Main Street, Highway 66, was fronted for a couple of blocks by a bank and two gas stations, and more stores were boarded shut than were open. Main Street was angled by dirt roads that trailed out into thirsty sand. Small adobe houses and wood shacks scabbed one side of the railroad track that paralleled the highway. Three churches, two school buildings, and the better houses were on the other side of the tracks. Most of these buildings were stuccoed and pretended to get some shade from straggly palm trees with dead lower fronds drooping down like a witch doctor’s skirt Laurie had seen in her geography book.
CAFE—CABINS—HOME COOKING—ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR TWO BITS!! read a crudely lettered sign pointing to a blistered white frame building with half a dozen little oblong buildings behind it. The spicy aroma floating from the door was a lot more enticing than the establishment’s looks. A Chevrolet pickup and five cars were parked in front, all of them old except for one beautiful blue Packard.
“Let’s go, kiddos,” said Way.
The four tables were full so they climbed on stools at the counter that ran the length of the room. The gray-haired waitress looked tired, though the wall clock showed it was only seven o’clock. Her white apron was fresh and starched, though, and she had kind gray eyes. When she looked at the children, the lines around her mouth disappeared in a smile.
“Got big appetites this morning? There’s cinnamon rolls and biscuits right out of the oven and we serve real maple syrup with our pancakes.” At a nod from Way, she filled his cup with steaming coffee, scooted the cream and sugar closer, and said to Laurie and Bud, “You’ll have milk.”
Laurie’s mouth watered. Everything smelled or sounded good. Rosalie had bought them hamburgers but this was the first time in Laurie’s life to really eat in a café, decide what she’d like. Buddy asked at once for pancakes and bacon. Way ordered sausage, biscuits, gravy, and two eggs over easy. The cinnamon roll Laurie got was as big as a saucer, lavished with raisins and nuts and oozing from every coil with caramelly cinnamon and sugar. In between waiting on other customers, the lady kept their milk glasses full till at last they had to tell her they couldn’t drink any more.
Way finished his third cup of creamed coffee and got out the dollar Laurie had slipped him back in the railroad yard. “Now, ma’am,” he said to the woman, “We can pay cash or maybe you’d like a new sign painted. The one out front sure don’t do justice to your food.”
The lady looked in surprise at the dollar and then laughed merrily. “Goes to show! I figgered you were the ones I was feedin’ today for the Lord. I’ve been after my husband to do that sign—even bought the paint—but by the time he cooks from dawn to dark, he’s wore out. Sure, mister, hop to it. But the only brush we’ve got is gaumed with old paint.”
“Don’t fret your head about that.” Way pulled his wrapped brushes out of his coat pocket. “I got the best there is right here. If you have a can and some turpentine, I’ll get to work. While the background coat’s drying maybe I could mosey around and pick up a few more jobs.”
“You can if you’re any good, mister. My brother has the garage at the end of town. I know he’d like a nice sign and I bet there’s others.”
A square-bodied man by the window looked up from his cigarette and newspaper. He had a thick, straight thatch of lusterless hay-colored hair and yellow-brown eyes. Laurie judged men’s ages by whether they looked younger or older than Daddy. This one looked older, maybe as old as Way, though Way at forty looked fifty. The stranger’s face was as square as his powerful body, his jaw was actually wider than the middle of his face, and his nose looked like someone had squashed it into his face.
“You folks on foot?” he asked in a lazy voice. He sure wasn’t from Kansas. More like southwestern Oklahoma.
Way nodded. “Headin’ for Texas.”
“I’ll take you as far as Holbrook, Arizona, if you’ll paint some catchy signs for three truck centers I own along the way on sixty-six. I got business to attend to here.” The man glanced at a wristwatch. “Plan to leave town after dinner, say one o’clock. My truck centers have cabins. You can bunk in one tonight if they’re not full up with payin’ customers, and if they are, we can rig you some cots in the gas station.”
To ride in a car instead of scrambling onto a freight—be welcome instead of fearful of being caught? Laurie sighed with relief as Way said, “Suits me right down to the ground. Want we should meet you here?”
“One o’clock.” The yellow-eyed man resumed his cigarette and paper.
While Way sandpapered off the old paint, Laurie got out the harmonica. She was embarrassed to stand on the sidewalk and play but this was like keeping Way company. The chunky man strolled out, listened to “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” and said, “Know something snappier, kid? How about ‘Begin the Beguine’?”
“Can you hum it, mister?”
“No, but I can whistle it” He did, melodiously, and they wound up doing the tune together. “We’ll make some great music on the road,” he said, and dropped some change into the bib pocket of her overalls. It sounded like a lot but she glimpsed dimes, nickels, and pennies. He got into the shiny Packard and drove off.
Way gave a whistle of his own. “Boy howdy, that buggy cost two thousand bucks if it cost a nickel! We’re leavin’ California in style, kiddos!”
He dipped his Russian sable brush in the white paint and began to cream it across the board, gaily in rhythm with Laurie’s playing while Buddy held the bucket within easy reach. Most of the people coming out of the café stopped to listen. Dimes and nickels joined the coins in Laurie’s bib, but it was the skinny little man in the battered pickup who listened till Way finished the background and then tucked a spindled dollar bill in her pocket.
“Just keep a-workin’ and a-singin’ and you’ll be all right,” he said, ruffling Buddy’s hair.
While the board dried, they went down Main to the garage. The café lady’s brother, Seth Hanna, who had her nice gray eyes, grinned at Laurie. “If I can get music and a good big sign that’ll stop the highway traffic, it’s sure worth a dollar. I’ll go over to Lem’s Hardware and pick out the paint. Why don’t you come along and see if he’d like a sign?”
Lem, a pot-bellied, hairless man, wanted to work a trade, so Way agreed to decorate the show window in return for pints of turpentine and red, blue, and black paint. “I can get more jobs and finish ’em faster if the customer doesn’t have to rustle up the paint,” he explained to Laurie and Bud. “Sho’, I’m beginnin’ to feel like a capitalist with this here ‘means of production.’”
“What’s a cap-capitalist?” Buddy asked the question Laurie was about to ask.
“A capitalist owns a factory or a mine or a big farm or a railroad, somethin’ like that. That’s the ‘means of production,’ see? And then he hires, cheap as he can, folks to work for him. They got nothin’ to sell or invest but their labor. ’Course the capitalist has to have ’em, or his ‘means of production’ don’t produce. What he likes to have is ten or a hundred people wantin’ a single job. He can pick the best workers and still pay next to nothin’. But without workers, all the means of producti
on in the world would just be junk.”
“What kind of Red talk is that?” demanded Lem with an infantile hairless wrinkling of his brow. “You sound like a damn Wobbly.”
Way drew himself up. “I held a card from the Industrial Workers of the World for a couple of years. Mister, you tell me what’s wrong with workers gettin’ decent wages, decent hours, and a decent place to work?”
“Yellow-bellowed Wobblies wouldn’t fight for their country!” growled Lem. “Get outa my store and go paint winders in Roosia!” He spun on Seth. “You ain’t goin’ to hire this goddam communist, are you?”
The garage owner shrugged. “I don’t give a hoot about this guy’s politics just so he makes me a good sign. You want to sell me the paint, Lem, or shall I mosey across the street to Armstrong’s?”
“Hell, I’m in business!” As Way started out of the store, Lem rung up the prices of the yellow and red paint Seth had selected. “About as soon lose the sale as have to look at these here colors every time I look out the window.”
“Reckon Armstrong’s has ’em, too,” Seth drawled as the screen door’s bang dulled on strips of innertube nailed to it. He said to Way as he caught up, “Can’t you mix yellow and red to make orange?”
“Sho’. Onliest way I know of to do it.”
Seth’s lean, long, rather sorrowful face split open in a grin. “Okey-dokey, let’s just give ole Lem an eyeful!” The owner of the corrugated tin building pointed to the side facing the road. “I’d like you to paint a big yellow circle there, outline it with orange and red, and then do the letters the same way.”
“What do you want it to say?”
Seth scratched his ear. “Seth’s Garage, I reckon.”
“How’s about a little more pizazz? ‘Best break for your brakes?’ Or I could paint you a kitten with ‘Your motor can purr like this!’”
“All of ’em can’t. I’m not Jesus. But I am pretty good with motors and brakes.” After a moment’s quandary, Seth’s face split again. “Paint it all on. I’ll pay you another dollar for the idea and the extra work.”
“I better get after it then so the circle’ll dry,” said Way. “Got some rags to clean the wall? And the cat’ll show up better if it’s black.”
It was a marvel how he made that circle using the swing of his long arm like a compass. Laurie played, and flivver after flivver passed with suitcases wired onto the fenders, mattresses tied on top, piled full of kids and whatever could be crammed inside. The licenses read OKLAHOMA, TEXAS, KANSAS, ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, TENNESSEE, NEBRASKA, the litany of states that couldn’t feed their people.
Laurie’s heart swelled. She made a tune to go with the chant in her head. It was the wail of a train whistle, wind howling through the open machinery car, the rattle of a loaded-down jalopy, air hissing out of a flat, patched tire, the smell of the camp outside Eden, the loneliness of Daddy’s grave under the eucalyptus. When her grief and anger had poured themselves into the new music, she switched back to Morrigan’s songs.
Passersby stopped to listen. Most of them asked for tunes. Laurie learned some and by the time Way was ready to look for another job, her bib pocket clinked cheerily.
“Let’s buy your paint in that Armstrong store if they don’t need a sign,” she suggested.
Mr. Armstrong’s general store had a nice sign but his paint was cheaper than Lem’s and he threw in an old canvas bag to carry it in. Buddy insisted on this task. As they proceeded down the street, he strutted a little.
“We’re cap’t’lsts now, ain’t we, Way?”
“Aren’t,” Laurie corrected. If she couldn’t get Buddy back in school soon he was going to backslide from education the way Daddy did from religion.
“Sho’.” Way dropped his hand on Buddy’s shoulder. Yellow crusted the cuticles of his fingernails and he smelled of turpentine. His cleanest shirt had a yellow smudge, but there was a lift in his gait and he held his head higher. “Let me tell you, kiddos, it makes a sight of difference to know you’ve got everything you need to earn your keep most anyplace you light.”
“But Way!” protested Laurie. “You had your brushes all the time!”
He slanted her a wry grin. “Yeah, but I’d got to where I didn’t care if I used ’em. I was just goin’ where the wind blowed me, rolled up tight so’s not to knock off more of me than I could help. But that’s no style for a family man—any man a-tall.”
A shoe repairman was pleased to swap a sign for a pair of good work shoes that had been half-soled the very day their owner keeled over with a heart attack six months ago. “No one around here’s got feet that big,” said the little shop’s middle-aged owner. A small, humped-over man, he looked like one of Santa’s gnomes with his ruddy face and canvas apron. “Don’t like seein’ them doggone flatboats ’cause Hank was younger’n me and my heart acts up sometimes.”
Way adorned the window with the name of the owner, a cowboy boot, a child’s sandal, a lady’s high-heeled fancy shoe, and the beautifully lettered promise: REPAIRS WHILE YOU WAIT. Admiring the window, the repairman handed Way the sturdy shoes and glanced at the shoes Buddy had inherited from Everett. They were split open on the sides and a toe peeked through the left one.
“I could stitch up them shoes,” said the gnome. “But there’s some secondhand ones over there got a lot of good wear left in ’em. You can have ’em for a dime.”
The shoes fit fine and weren’t the least bit run over. Must’ve belonged to some rich kid. The old shoes were so worn out that the gnome shook his head over them and tossed them in the waste barrel. While Way went back to the café to finish the sign, Laurie asked the repairman to sew over the loose stitching on the shoes Rosalie had bought her for school.
“Sure, son, and I’ll throw in new heels and laces if you’ll play that french harp while I’m working. You know ‘Oh, Dem Golden Slippers’?”
Leaving the repair shop in shoes that ought to last till she outgrew them, Laurie took Buddy into the dry-goods store. He picked out two pairs of red socks, which would protect his feet and the “new” shoes. Way had no socks. She bought him three pair of the largest size heavy black cotton ones. Her own needed darning so she bought spools of white and black thread and a card of needles as well as cards of bone and black buttons to replace those that had been shed off their clothes. Boys’ flannel shirts were on sale for twenty cents, almost warm enough for a jacket.
“What color would you like, Buddy?”
His blue eyes widened. “We can get one?”
“Sho’!”
He giggled at her imitation of Way, then peered at her anxiously. “Will you buy one, too?”
The dollar bill would be left after paying for the shirt, but she wanted to keep that for the journey. “I want a different pattern,” she fibbed. “But that blue would look nice on you, Buddy.”
“I like the red better.”
Laurie nodded at the storekeeper, who held the shirt up to Buddy to make sure it was long enough in the arms. Glowing with the heady power of buying things with money she’d earned herself, Laurie felt very grown up as she paid for the purchases.
In a way, she’d worked for Rosalie’s nickels, but those were also a gift. The money going into the merchant’s till was a return for music, though it still didn’t seem quite right to get paid for doing what she loved. Counting the dollar windfall from the man with the pickup, she’d taken in almost as much that morning as Way had. She wished Morrigan could know that along with his songs, he’d given her the means to at least partly earn a living.
The nice gray-eyed lady had come out to admire the café sign as Way finished the lettering. A scalloped blue border edged the white background. A Blue Willow cup and saucer and plate were painted in the upper left corner above CAFE and a bed with a blue coverlet decorated the bottom right under CABINS.
“You’ll have to eat dinner for that,” said the woman. “It’s lots prettier than what I expected.” She looked from Buddy’s red plaid shirt to Laurie’s patched one. “Som
e tourists left a sweater in the café a couple of weeks ago. Reckon they’d have written for it by now if they were going to. Come in and let’s see if it fits.”
The sweater was sort of a flecked gray, not pretty, but clean and warm. The cuffs had to be turned up and it hung below Laurie’s hips, but that just made it warmer. “Didn’t cost me a cent,” said the lady with a brisk shake of her head at Laurie’s offer to pay. “It’s too little for me or my daughter—might as well do somebody some good.” She eyed them keenly. “You kids ought to be in school. Not to speak against your grandpa, but he strikes me as sort of footloose. May be up to you to remind him that you need your educations.” She shook her head. “So many families on the road, nothin’ ahead, nothin’ behind. Don’t know what’s going to happen to this country. Guess folks have to help each other the best we can. Could you boys fancy some milk and a cinnamon roll split down the middle? Come get it and take your grandpa some coffee. I’ll put it in an old jar so the paint on his hands won’t matter.”
It was half-past twelve when Way finished Seth Hanna’s sign with a playful black cat curled along the red-and-orange lettering: “People can see it from the other end of town,” Seth bragged. “Bet I get enough extra business in a week to more’n pay for it.” He winked as he opened his dilapidated wallet, carefully extracted two dollar bills, and handed them to Way. “Lem hates cats. He’s going to be mighty tired of this one before it wears off.”
They detoured by the railroad-yard shack to pick up their bundles. What a lot had happened since they left them there that morning! They didn’t even look like the same people, Way striding along with pride in the set of his head and shoulders, Buddy in good shoes and his red plaid shirt, Laurie with her shoes sewed up and snug in the good sweater. Its pretty carved wood buttons almost made up for the drab color. They’d had good hot food for the first time in the ten days or so they’d been on the road, had dinner coming, and they’d earned real money. Way had Seth Hanna’s two dollars and Laurie had garnered more coins while Way finished the garage sign.
The Longest Road Page 14