The Longest Road

by Jeanne Williams

  “It’s going to beautiful, Way!” said Laurie.

  He stepped back, cocking his head. “It’ll do.”

  Martha came out with a cup of coffee for him and a rag he could hold it with. “That cloud and pillow would make anyone sleepy, much less a trucker coming in off the dirt stretch of sixty-six.” She shook her frizzy red head admiringly and widened her green eyes. “I declare, Mr. Kirkendall, you got a talent.”

  Why, she was flirting! And Way was grinning, shy and pleased as a youngster. Laurie tugged at Buddy’s sleeve and hustled him off. “Buddy, if you’ll go to the post office—see, it’s right over there with the flag flying—and get me a stamped three-cent envelope, you can have a dime to spend.”

  “A dime!”

  Poor Buddy, fallen from the glory of his nickel-a-rabbit days! Probably, in a boomtown, he could run errands after school or find some way of earning a little spending money. Laurie smiled at him, digging a dime and nickel out of her pocket. “You can keep the two cents change from the envelope nickel, too.”

  “Why do you need an envelope?” Buddy’s mouth quivered. “We-we ain’t got anyone to write to.”

  “Don’t have anyone,” Laurie corrected. “Goodness, Buddy, try to talk right or you’ll get put back when you start school. We do too have someone to write! Have you forgotten Rosalie, how nice she was to us?”

  Buddy scuffed his almost new shoe on the gravel. “She was. But Grandpa didn’t like us worth shucks.”

  “Well, I’m not writing to him. But in case Halsells didn’t get to write, I have to tell Rosalie about—about Daddy.” Tears welled suddenly in Laurie’s eyes and her throat ached. Oh, Mama, is Daddy with you? He must be even if he was backslid because he kept that little boy from drowning. If we’d just got there in time to see him—if he hadn’t left us—if you hadn’t died—Getting hold of herself, Laurie gulped and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “I want to let Rosalie know we’re all right. It’s not fair to worry her. Now you go get that envelope.”

  Writing about Daddy was one of the hardest things Laurie had ever done, only it seemed there’d been lots of hard things since Mama died so you’d think she’d be getting used to it. Her eyes kept blurring. She tried to keep her face wiped, but tears still spotted the tablet paper.

  At the end of the second page, she wrote that they’d been sort of adopted by a real nice man who’d lost his family and that she and Buddy would soon be back in school. Taking the three dollar bills out of her bib, Laurie smoothed and folded them carefully. She had seen some beautiful plaid shirts in the mercantile yesterday evening and both pairs of her overalls had sprung holes in the knees during the journey. If people at the Ashfork truck center were as generous as the ones last night, she could send Rosalie money from there.

  But she still couldn’t believe that the harmonica was a reliable way of earning anything. Just because she’d been lucky so far, she mustn’t count on it. “Pay God first,” Daddy used to say, setting aside the ten-percent tithe from his wages. Laurie figured God could take care of himself, no better a job than he’d done looking after her family and plenty of other folks, but Rosalie was different.

  Laurie sighed and poked the dollars in the envelope. “This is to pay back a little of what you spent on us,” she finished. “I’ll send more when I can and write sometimes. Thanks for being so good to us when we weren’t really any kin, and don’t worry about us, we’re going to be just fine. Please save the bird quilt and cedar chest and books and Buddy’s things, but it’s all right for the kids to read the books. We’ll come see you sometime and get them.” But not till she was grown up enough that Grandpa couldn’t make her stay there and be a sharecropper and fight off his landlord’s son.

  Buddy dropped the envelope on the table and scooted off to spend his money. Laurie sealed the letter, cupped cold water to her swollen eyes, and started for the post office. As she passed Cabin 1, W. S. Redwine stepped out. Before he shut the door, Laurie glimpsed a dark-haired woman in the bed, sprawled out buck naked. Laurie had never seen a naked human except when she’d helped Mama change Buddy’s diapers or bathe him. The hair on the woman’s crotch was dark, too, which shocked Laurie as much as the large purplish nipples on the big breasts. Did all grown-up women have hair on that place? Rosalie hadn’t said anything about that. Had Mama—?

  Ashamed at even wondering, Laurie ducked her head and hurried past, muttering a response to Mr. Redwine’s yawned greeting. He caught up with her in a long stride. His shadow blocked the sun. He wasn’t as tall as Way or Morrigan or Daddy but he was a lot heavier. Somehow he reminded Laurie of a mass of rock.

  “Martha told me you had quite a concert last night. Truckers gave you a bunch of change.”

  Laurie didn’t want to talk to him but she couldn’t resist saying, “They liked my music.”

  He raised a thick shoulder. “Hell, kid, they liked you. Most truckers are family men.”

  “Daddy was a trucker after we lost our farm.” Of course Daddy had carried food Mama packed for him and slept in the truck. He couldn’t afford to eat in a café, much less rent a cabin. Those sketches of Mama’s dream house had made Laurie achingly aware of how much her mother had gone without, but she hadn’t thought much about Daddy.

  Now, with a flood of grief—and guilt, too, for having hated him when he hit her and left her and Buddy at Grandpa’s, she understood a little of how hard Daddy had worked for them, how desperately he had tried to take care of his family.

  She wished she could tell him that. Wished she could hug him and say that she loved him. Laurie averted her face so W. S. Redwine couldn’t see her tears.

  “Well,” he said, “just like your pa missed you boys, other truckers miss their kids. That was part of why they filled up your pocket even if you didn’t know the latest songs.” He stroked his stubbled boxlike jaw. “But the other part is you’re good—you could make a musician.”

  Laurie’s heart leaped. She didn’t like this man but he was a good enough businessman to have centers spread out over several states. He was probably richer than the banker or anyone else back in Prairieville and he’d been a lot of places. Mama would have called him worldly but that meant he should pretty well know what people liked even if he’d guessed wrong about the truckers.

  What kind of musician? she wanted to ask. Good enough to play on street corners or—He couldn’t mean she could ever be like the real musicians you heard on the radio or phonograph, Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry, Kate Smith, Jeannette MacDonald, stars like that.

  Before she could figure out a way to find out what he thought without making a fool of herself, he said, “You can all have your lunch at the café. Be ready to leave right after that.” Without looking at her, he turned toward the café and moved over to see how Way was doing.

  Laurie went to the post office, wishing he had said more. Maybe he would on the way to Ashfork. She didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up. She loved to read and learn things but you couldn’t get paid for doing that unless, maybe, you went to college and became a teacher. You could teach even if you were a married woman. It would be wonderful to have a job. That way there might be enough money for things a family needed and if a husband was mean or took to drinking like Floyd, you could move out and support yourself. Even Mama had said it was a shame Margie couldn’t do that.

  Apart from teaching, women were clerks and waitresses and secretaries, or they took in ironing or sewed. If you married a farmer, you raised chickens and had a big garden and helped with the milking and crops and cooked for harvest hands if the land was planted to wheat. That kind of life would be fine if you had your own farm—not mortgaged—and had a good husband, but you wouldn’t have any money of your own unless your husband let you keep the butter and egg money.

  Was it possible that she, Laurie Field, blown like the dust clear across the country from the little town of Prairieville, could make her living with music? Wouldn’t that make Morrigan proud of her? She was so excited at the id
ea that she floated to the post office, but came down to earth with the reality of the holes in her overalls.

  Ignoring the lovely plaid shirts in the mercantile, she bought blue ticking remnant that would serve for patching. As she left the mercantile, Buddy trotted out of the drugstore licking a chocolate ice-cream cone and hugging a Superman comic book.

  “Come back to the cabin,” she said. “We’re going to read the New Testament before you get into that funny book.”

  “It ain’t—it’s not Sunday!”

  “We missed Sunday because we were on the train. We’ll make it up now.”

  Buddy scowled but evidently remembered he wouldn’t have the comic if Laurie hadn’t given him some money. He consoled himself by running his tongue around the cone so none of the ice cream would drip and be wasted.

  Laurie recited Daddy’s favorite Psalm, the Twenty-third, which she knew by heart, and read Daddy’s favorite story about the Good Samaritan, and the place where Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

  Buddy snuffled a little. “Is this a kind of fun’ral for Daddy?”

  Laurie shook her head. “No, it’s just—remembering.” She didn’t feel able to make up a fitting prayer so she prompted Buddy through the familar chant of the Lord’s Prayer.

  He sprawled then on the bed with Superman. Laurie took the butcher knife out of Way’s inside jacket pocket, which he had lined till it was sort of a sheath. She sewed on the buttons and mended the frayed cuffs before fetching their clean clothes from the clothesline and starting the patches.

  Mama had always kept their clothes in repair but Rosalie never got past fixing Grandpa’s garments, so that summer Laurie had progressed from awkward, pigeon-track, quarter-inch stitches to smaller, neater ones. What her patching lacked in delicacy it made up for in strength. She stitched till she was sure the patches would outwear the surrounding cloth. And all the time her head churned over Mr. Redwine’s careless remark.

  A musician! Was it possible—could she be a real one?

  Way finished the sign well before noon so W. S. Redwine had him paint a new menu board to go above the counter and retouch the faded numerals on the cabins. “Eat up, kiddos,” Way urged, sliding into the booth across from them. He smelled pungently of the turpentine he’d used to clean himself and his brushes. “Redwine owes us a good feed!”

  “He sure does,” agreed Martha. She’d done something to her hair so it wasn’t nearly as frizzy and her green eyes were a bit wistful. “That’s a wonderful sign, Mr. Kirkendall. If Dub weren’t as tight as shrunk rawhide, he’d pay you some cash on top of your board and a ride to where he’s headed anyhow.”

  “We’ll take it out in chow.” Way twinkled at her. Laurie thought again how different he looked with a haircut and shave. That wasn’t all of it, though. Instead of slouching, he walked proud and his voice was confident instead of apologetic. “While I was paintin’ that menu, I had plenty of time to figger out that I wanted chicken-fried steak with gravy and smashed potatoes, green beans, lots of coffee with cream, and a big chunk of pecan pie. That is, if it won’t get you in trouble?”

  “Dub’ll never know it,” Martha said.

  “Where is he? He said he wanted to take out of here by one o’clock sharp.”

  “He’s having dessert in his room.” Martha gave Way a slow wink and Laurie blushed, guessing that the naked woman with that interesting patch of hair was still in Cabin 1. “He’ll be raring to go at one, though,” Martha warned, “so I’ll tell Jim to hurry that steak. Now, boys, how about you?”

  They were waiting outside the café when a somewhat battered green Pontiac swung up beside them. “Hop in,” called Mr. Redwine.

  These seat covers were a scratchy kind of checked fabric and there wasn’t much room after the bundles were stowed in back with Laurie and Buddy, but it was still far ahead of the old Model T and it didn’t have to be cranked.

  “Swap your Packard?” Way asked, folding up his legs.

  Mr. Redwine jerked his head toward the garage. “That’s my California car. This one’s for Arizona and New Mexico, where there’s lots of unpaved roads. In the rainy season, from July to September, I’ve got an old Chevy truck that can get through most of the washes unless they’re flooding.”

  This car either didn’t have a radio or Mr. Redwine was too busy steering the car once the paving gave out. In either case, Laurie was grateful that he wasn’t exhorting her to learn his music. She wished he’d say more about her becoming a musican, though she didn’t want to ask. Maybe the conversation would lead around to it.

  Only there wasn’t much conversation beyond Mr. Redwine’s cussing. They couldn’t go much more than ten miles an hour on the bumpy road, which seemed to be either sand or jaggedy rocks or both at the same time. A tire went flat about an hour outside Kingman.

  “Guess you know how to change a tire, Wayburn.” Mr. Redwine had looked tired when he picked them up. Now his face was red and dripping sweat where it hadn’t caked with dust. “There’s two spares in the trunk.”

  “Never had a car,” said Way. “Reckon you’ll have to show me.”

  Mr. Redwine said some words Laurie hadn’t heard before, even from hoboes on the train. “Have to drive and change tires, too! That’s a helluva note! Get out, you kids. No use having to jack up your weight, too!”

  Way fixed the next flat while Mr. Redwine smoked cigarettes and didn’t even wave back at families packed into ancient trucks and flivvers that rattled past with everything from trunks to a piano tied on top or lashed onto the running boards. This might be a highway but it was about the worst road Laurie had ever seen, through the harshest country. The desert stretched to sawtooth mountains and what looked like ancient gray volcano peaks. The banks of the washes were streaked with red and green and gray. God might live here, or the devil, but it wasn’t for humans.

  Nor was the cliff-edged mesa country into which they ascended, a vast high tableland where wind whipped dark evergreens into tortured shapes, yet Mr. Redwine told them the highway ran through the corner of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. What had to be pronghorn antelope skimmed through the high grass, flashing white rump patches. There had been herds of them on the Kansas and Oklahoma plains, Daddy said, till they were hunted out or died because they wouldn’t jump fences to get to water or feed. The prairie must have been beautiful then—forever stretches of grass and wild flowers like that tiny strip between fields and schoolyard she’d called the Little Prairie.

  “Mountain sheep.” Mr. Redwine nodded at white creatures poised along a precarious rock ledge.

  Just around the curve, a Model A was pulled over to the side. A blond lady nursed her baby while several little ones ran and squealed as they gathered pinecones. A skinny, sunburned man in overalls was struggling to jack up the front.

  “Let’s stop and give him a hand, Mr. Redwine,” urged Way.

  “He’ll manage.”

  “But the woman and kids—”

  “Oh, some other Okies’ll come along and help them,” shrugged Redwine. He sent Way a hard glance. “It’s my car and I’m driving. I’ll decide when we stop.”

  “’Cept when you have a flat.”

  Mr. Redwine slewed his head toward Way as Laurie, looking over her shoulder, cried out in relief, “A truck’s stopping.”

  “I told you,” shrugged Redwine. “That kind look out for each other.”

  “Now ain’t it damned lucky they do?” said Way dryly.

  When it seemed they would never see another human being, they came to a little village called Peach Springs and pulled in at the trading post from whence dirt tracks ran off in all directions. A couple of old trucks were parked beside mules and ponies. Dark-skinned men in overalls, trousers, and ordinary shirts lounged in the shade.

  “Shucks!” sighed Buddy. “They’re dressed just like anybody else.”

  Laurie was disappointed, too. These were the first “real” Indians she’d ever seen—
people like Rosalie and Morrigan who lived like everybody else didn’t seem Indian, though Laurie wasn’t sure exactly what Indians could be like in these times. Daddy had worked with Indian cowboys up in South Dakota, and there were lots of Indians in eastern Oklahoma, but she hadn’t realized that some groups still lived mostly on reservations and didn’t mix with whites the way they had in Oklahoma. It began to dawn on her that Indian tribes could be as different from each other as European nations.

  “How do the Hual—Indians make a living?” she asked Mr. Redwine.

  He snorted. “Government handouts mostly, you can bet. But there’s deer and antelope and mountain sheep to hunt, and rabbits, naturally. Their agent says they even eat porcupines and badgers and gather nuts and acorns, berries and grapes, and they use a lot of kinds of cactus. Down in the canyons, they grow little patches of corn, squash, melons, beans.” He spat out the window. “About twenty years ago the government started giving them cattle so they could build up herds.” He added grudgingly, “The agent says they’re doing pretty well with that.”

  The white trader ordered a young Indian helper to patch the innertubes of the two tires in the trunk. Redwine selected a Coca-Cola from a tub of water-cooled soft drinks. “Want one?” he asked Laurie.

  “Thanks, Mr. Redwine, we’ve got some money.” She said to Way, “Let me pay for our drinks, Gramp. You’ve been working for our food and ride and room.”

  She got a 7UP, Buddy chose a Hires root beer, and Way pulled out a pale green Coke bottle. Laurie looked around for something the Hualapai had made, but except for some pitch-daubed baskets patterned in red and a blanket that looked like it was woven from strips of rabbit hide, the shelves and counters were piled with bolts of bright cloth, ready-made garments, shoes, felt and straw hats, blankets, canned foods, farm implements, tools, dishes, pans, and lamps—everything people would need from the outer world that ran through this edge of their high, wild one.

  Seligman, with its ore cars and cattle pens and loading chutes near the railroad, was the only town till they pulled into Ash-fork with the road winding up the great hill above it. Laurie stared at a long, two-story building with arches supporting a balconied roof that stretched all along the front. “Is—is that a palace?” she whispered.