The Longest Road

by Jeanne Williams

  “Sure.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Laurie had an impulse to confide in this seemingly friendly stranger but decided it was too risky. “Larry Field. What’s yours?”

  “Catharine Harris. We just got here yesterday from Wichita Falls.” She held the door till Laurie passed through, hesitated till Laurie said, “Come on in. I’ve got to wash out some clothes but the water has to heat first.”

  “Don’t your mother wash your things?”

  Laurie bent lower than necessary to light the kerosene burner beneath the dishpan. The wicks were shielded by tall canlike flues that had little isinglass-paned doors to open for lighting. “Mother’s dead.” She could say it now without sobbing, though her eyes stung. “So’s Daddy. My brother and me live with Gramp.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Way came in with a box that he set on the table. “Hi, sis,” he said to Catharine. “How about a Coke?”

  “Thanks, mister. I’d split one with Larry.”

  “Catharine’s last name is Harris,” Laurie said. How lovely to be able to offer a visitor half a Coke! Laurie dismissed alarm over how much Way must have spent for groceries—there were bags of beans and potatoes, sugar and flour, but there was also Eagle Brand, peanut butter, grape preserves, tinned meats, and apples and bananas. After all, they didn’t have to buy sheets and pillows and dishes, though she wanted to get their own things as soon as they could afford it.

  She took two glasses from the top of the oven that rose to the right of the three burners on the stove. She had scrubbed off greasy dust so dishes could be stacked there till Clem brought the cabinet, bless him. “She just moved in next door yesterday. Catharine, my Gramp’s name is Wayburn Kirkendall.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kirkendall.” Catharine bobbed her head. “My pop’s already got on as a roustabout. You had any luck?”

  “Oh, I won’t be lookin’ for an oil job right away. Doin’ some sign paintin’.”

  Catharine’s anxious smile broadened to a laugh. “Gosh, Mr. Kirkendall, I’m glad you’re not a driller or tool pusher! Pop’s last driller was nice but his kids were real stuck up, wouldn’t play with me and my little brother or even walk to school with us.”

  “Buddy and I’ll be glad to walk with you,” said Laurie, moving the dishpan to a box and unwrapping a big bar of Ivory.

  “I got cheese and bread and cookies for your lunches tomorrow,” Way said. He went off to the bedroom as if to leave them private, though a word spoken in one corner of the house would reach to all the others. Catharine puckered the almost invisible down of her eyebrows.

  “You don’t care if the other boys call you a sissy?”

  That was better than the things Dan Hart, the landlord’s son, had whispered to her. “As long as we’re friends, I don’t give a rip about the rest of them,” Laurie said. Maybe, though, it wasn’t fair to let Catharine think she was a boy. Rubbing away at Buddy’s shirt, afraid to look at Catharine, Laurie blurted out the truth.

  There was shocked silence. Laurie wrung out the shirts. “If you don’t want to be friends—” she began.

  “Oh, I do!” Laurie found herself embraced, soapy arms and all. Catharine’s eyes shone like green jewels. “Why, this is lots better, Larry—I guess I better call you that so we won’t get mixed up. The girls will be jealous because I have a good-looking boyfriend and you won’t care if the boys think you’re a sissy because you are!”

  She hugged Laurie again as a voice from across the way called wearily, “Cathy! Get yourself home and tend to these dishes!”

  “I’m so glad you moved in.” Catharine finished her Coke and made for the door. “Mom let Billy and me stay home today but says we have to start tomorrow. We’ll come by for you about, eight-thirty. We can loan you paper and pencils till you get your own.” As she skipped out the back, she shouted, “Thanks for the Coke, Mr. Kirkendall.”

  He was in the kitchen when Laurie came back with rinse water. “Looks like you’ve got a pal. Make it easier, won’t it?”

  “Lots easier. Isn’t it funny, Way, what a difference one person can make?”

  He was looking at her and yet he wasn’t. His gaze reached far back, far away. “Honey, sometimes it only takes one person to turn the world into heaven or hell.” She thought of Morrigan and knew that was true.

  Bill Harris had his sister’s round face and snub nose but his hair was yellow. He and Buddy raced ahead of their sisters while other Sludge Town children eddied around them or dallied behind. There were a few jeers: “Look at the lovebirds!” “Hey, why don’t you kiss each other?” and the inevitable: “Sissy boy!” but Laurie and Catharine laughed and chattered as if they couldn’t hear anyone else until they neared the school. Catharine’s feet began to drag.

  “What grade are you in?” she asked. “I’m in seventh if this school’s not too different from Wichita Falls.”

  “I was in eighth.” As her friend’s mouth trembled, Laurie added, “I really belong in seventh, though.”

  “Goody! We might even get to sit next to each other. If the teacher seats according to the alphabet, F and H only have G between them.”

  Laurie scarcely heard. What if the principal made a fuss over where she and Buddy had gone to school that fall? She had their cards from Prairieville—the Oklahoma teacher had given them back—but how was she going to explain September, October, and most of November? She didn’t want to lie, and if she did, Gramp wouldn’t sound like much of a guardian for keeping them out of school a third of the school year. She had managed to change “Laurie” to “Larry” on the card and hoped that wasn’t really lying.

  Billy and Buddy were waiting inside the big double doors and outside the door with a frosted pane lettered PRINCIPAL. It was still early. The other Sludge Town kids had spilled onto the playground so the broad hall was empty. Catharine hung back. “I—I think I better go to the rest room.”

  Did you knock on a principal’s door? Laurie didn’t know. At Prairieville, the door had always been open. It couldn’t be wrong to knock, she told herself. And it seemed that she was going to have to do it. She was lifting her knuckled hand when the door swung open.

  “Good gracious, in trouble so early?” The erect lady was plump but corseted so her front and back looked solid as concrete. Her blue-gray hair was clipped short in back and waved deeply on the front and sides. Her black eyes swept over them quickly but Laurie believed she’d noted down everything about them. “You’re new, aren’t you, and come to get enrolled?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Laurie, and Catharine nodded.

  “I’m Mrs. Parrish.” Her smile showed neat white teeth. “Two of you are Larry and Buddy Field?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mr. Redwine called about you. Ordinarily, we require a parent to enter a child but he explained that you’re orphans and he’s taking an interest in you.”

  “We live with our grandfather.” It didn’t seem a lie. Way had certainly done more for them than Grandpa Field. “But he’s working for Mr. Redwine.”

  “So Mr. Redwine explained. You have your report cards?”

  Laurie handed over the Kansas ones and held her breath. Mrs. Parrish scanned them. “Seventh for you,” she said to Laurie. “Third for Edwin.” Buddy winced at his real name. The principal lifted a steel-gray eyebrow. “Mr. Redwine explained that you’ve been out of school because of family difficulties. You’ll need to do some makeup work and study hard to catch up, but I’ll give you the chance to be in your proper classes.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Parrish.”

  The principal smiled and turned to Catharine, who mutely extended two grubby cards and a folded sheet of tablet paper. “Neither of your parents could come to enroll you?”

  Catharine shook her head. “Pa’s working, ma’am. And mama’s got the baby. She said to tell you if you have to see her that she’ll come after I get home from school. That way I’ll tend the baby and—”

  Mrs. Parrish raised her hand. “I s
uppose this signed note will do,” she said. “Step in the office while I see if we have textbooks for you. Since there was no cotton crop to speak of this year, most of the farm children are in school though they’re usually out picking till Christmas. Oil-field families are always coming and going and we have a rule that no child gets a report card till they’ve turned in their books.”

  So they wouldn’t have to buy texts! That meant that after school while she and Buddy were buying their Big Chief tablets, pencils, crayons, and such, they could get enough clothing to stay decent without washing things out every day or two. Mrs. Parrish pulled books off shelves in a big long closet, placing them in four stacks. “Edwin, you and Billy will have to share a speller. Larry, you and Catharine will have to share geographies with other students till someone leaves. Come along. I’ll take you to your teachers.”

  Buddy’s teacher greeted him and Billy with a smile as if she’d been waiting for them and was glad they’d finally come. She was young with a merry laugh and soft brown eyes. Miss Larson, the slender, gray-eyed seventh-grade teacher, didn’t act delighted to have two latecomers in her room that was already crowded full of one-armed desks, but she wasn’t mean about it, either, and when the janitor brought their desks, she told him to put them next to each other.

  “So long as you don’t whisper or carry on,” she warned. “My father was a railroad man so I know all about new schools. If it turns out you’re behind in some subjects, let me know so I can work with you after school.”

  The playground hierarchy wasn’t much different from Prairieville. Grades had recess at different times. Only younger children lined up for the slides and swings or bumped each other off the teeter-totters, or swung across the jungle-gym bars by their hands. When the eighth grade boys made for the ball diamond and the girls strolled off in pairs or collected in giggling bunches, Laurie and Catharine walked together—and what a difference together made.

  “I just hated my last school,” Laurie said, burning to remember how new shoes, anklets, and the pretty dress Rosalie made hadn’t saved her from scorn. “It was a one-room country school and everyone could see when you had to go to the privy. The girls were mean and snooty and the landlord’s son—well, he said nasty things to me and the teacher didn’t even seem to notice.”

  Catharine bobbed her head. “Country schools are the worst, where the other kids know each other. Towns are better, especially close to an oil field where there’s your own kind. You can kind of ignore the town kids.” She shrugged philosophically. “When I start new, I watch and try to find a girl I think I’d like, one who doesn’t have a lot of friends. Then I just go up to her and say something nice about her hair or dress or whatever fits.”

  “Isn’t that hard?”

  “Sure. But it’s not as hard as hanging around by yourself.” Catharine sighed. “The worst part is when you really, really like someone and have to move. I’ve had friends I missed so much that I didn’t try to find one at the next school.” Her face scrunched up and she blinked. “But after a while, a new girl would come in and if I could tell she was lonely, I couldn’t help being nice. I guess it’s better to care about people than not to, even if it hurts to lose them.”

  “Oh, yes! There was a man we only knew one day, but it was a bad day. He sang us songs and made us laugh and gave me his harmonica. I never will forget him.”

  “Was he good-looking?”

  Startled, Laurie thought, trying to summon up Morrigan’s dark face, his smiling mouth, the green-gray eyes. “I don’t know. But if he was in a room of handsome men, he’s the man you’d notice.”

  The bell shrilled. “Darn it!” said Laurie. “I meant to get to the rest room before the bell rang. Now I’ll have to wait till all the boys are through.”

  Using the boys’ rest room turned out to be her worst problem at Black Spring Elementary. As Catharine had said, it was easier to be new in a school attended by a shifting majority made up of oil-field children. Of the thirty-two children in Laurie’s class, only twelve were from town or nearby farms and ranches. Among them, there was a definite pecking order from the biggest rancher’s and doctor’s daughters and the banker’s son down to farm workers’ kids and several from town whose mothers were raising them alone by taking in laundry or doing housework for the few families that could afford it.

  The oil-field kids didn’t fit the niches. They lived in shacks, tents, or boxcars and didn’t own their homes or have more furniture or belongings than they could load in or onto a car or truck. Still, those dusty wayfaring mud- and oil-splashed vehicles included late-model Chryslers, Packards, Lincolns, and Studebakers as well as Pontiacs, Dodges, Chevys, and Fords. The children either bought lunch in the cafeteria or carried light-bread sandwiches, cookies, and fruit in their lunch pails or sacks. Only the poorest farm kids hid out with their cornbread and molasses or fried side meat. Laurie wished she could offer them some of her nice lunch but she knew from experience that they’d rather no one noticed what they were eating.

  Some of the Sludge Town boys wore belt pants just like the richer local boys, and most of the girls’ dresses were as nice as anyone’s outside of those the doctor’s wife bought for their daughter in fancy Dallas stores. It aggravated Laurie that she had to stay in overalls when, once Buddy had the clothes he needed and Way was outfitted, she could have afforded a few pretty dresses.

  She made the best of it by picking out some beautiful plaid flannel shirts that felt soft as a kitten’s ear. She also bought a warm wool jacket, green and brown tweed lined with gold satin. These purchases and things for cooking and housekeeping took all their savings except for what Buddy hoarded, but that was all right because Way earned enough cash for their daily needs and she and Buddy were singing and playing again, just on Friday and Saturday nights since Buddy had to study hard to catch up the third-grade work he’d missed and Laurie was helping Catharine with her lessons.

  Because it was just down the street, they started in the Black Gold Cafe their first Friday night in town, but on Saturday night, W. S. Redwine came in and drank cup after cup of coffee, yellow eyes brooding, face like a squared rock. The oil-field men from drillers and producers to tank-builders and pipeline layers applauded each song, shouted for more, and stuffed bills in Laurie’s and Buddy’s pockets as they left, but Redwine’s eyes pressed on Laurie till her mouth went dry and her lips and fingers turned awkward.

  Nodding to Buddy, fixing her gaze on a dark man in stained khakis who reminded her a little bit of Morrigan, she launched into what had become their ending number. As Buddy’s voice trailed away with “I’ve got to be drifting along,” the shouts and clapping literally shook the flimsy building.

  Laurie smiled and bowed to the audience, though she was filled with unreasonable panic. “Let’s get out of here,” she muttered to Buddy. Grabbing his arm, she tugged him toward the door, but the way was blocked with men who wanted to thank them for the music and give them some money.

  Redwine didn’t hurry. Some of the other men were taller but there was a weight about him that caused an uneasiness as if a mountain were moving. When Laurie and Buddy finally made it out the door, he loomed beside them.

  “When you didn’t show up to play at the Truck-Inn or Redwine House, I figured you needed your evenings to study. That was okay. But then I heard you played here last night. How come, Larry?”

  His voice was hurt. That shook Laurie more than anger. He had brought them all the way from California and, according to his lights, he’d been good to them. “The Truck-Inn’s on the other side of town and the hotel’s a mile away.” It was a perfectly good excuse. Why did it sound lame?

  “Clem can pick you up and drive you home.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble.”

  “He’s paid for trouble.”

  Buddy said, “I don’t think we’d make as much in the hotel, Mr. Redwine. These oil-field guys—they act like they’re not happy till they’ve got rid of their money.”

  “How much did y
ou take in tonight?”

  “We haven’t counted.”

  “Well, count it up. I’ll guarantee you that much.”

  “Guar—guaran—what?” asked Buddy.

  “If my patrons don’t give you whatever you got tonight, I’ll make up the difference.”

  There was no way to refuse. On the following Friday, Clem picked them up at six-thirty, right after supper, and brought them home around nine. Mr. Redwine had never needed to make up the guarantee of twenty-three dollars. An auburn-haired lady in a clinging black dress and shiny, high-heeled, patent leather sandals had been playing the piano in the Redwine House when Laurie and Buddy ventured in that first night. People were talking so loud above the lady’s soft, dreamy music that Laurie thought it must be wretched to make music against so much noise. She was sure she and Buddy wouldn’t be able to perform in such circumstances and was about to retreat when the woman brought down her hands in a crash that hushed the diners.

  While they were momentarily quiet, she rose, swept out her skirt in a curtsy so exaggerated that it looked like mockery, and walked to the children with a graceful sway that drew more attention than her music had. Intensely blue eyes scanned the pair. Her eyelids were smudged with purple and tiny creases rayed from the corners of her eyes that had such long lashes they couldn’t be real. She was a pretty, pretty lady and she smelled like roses. Laurie was glad when she smiled and said, “I’m Marilys and you’re Larry and Buddy.”

  Standing behind them, a manicured hand resting on a shoulder of each, Marilys spoke into the lull her crescendo had demanded. “Ladies and gentlemen! Thanks for your kind attention. The management of the Redwine House is honored to present Buddy and Larry Field in their first professional engagement! Years from now, you can say you heard them at the beginning. Most of their songs weren’t written by a single person but were passed around and added to and changed—they grew from this country. Here they are—The Field Brothers!”