Marilys’s delicate jaw tightened. “We’ll go wherever we have to in order to find Way. At least I will.”
“So will we.”
Buddy nodded and then cried, “Look! Marilys, there’s a ‘Trade for Truck’ sign on that Pontiac in the driveway!”
Marilys hit the brake and herded the Chevy in behind the maroon Pontiac. “We need a truck so we can sleep in it,” she said. “But it aggravates me to let old Jerry steal us blind. The Pontiac looks good. If it drives that way, we’ll try for a swap and trade it for a truck first decent chance we get.”
“You can sleep in the back,” Laurie said. “Buddy and I can manage in front.”
“No, I’ll sleep on the floor in back,” Buddy differed.
The burly owner had just gotten a job at an oil field halfway to Electra on a dirt road and figured a truck would get him there better than an auto. The Pontiac had a good spare, and ran smoothly when Marilys tried it. She and the roughneck made out the titles to each other. She’d bought the Chevy under the name of Lila Meredith and now she explained to the man that she wanted her sister’s name on the Pontiac’s papers, Gloria Meredith.
After their things were loaded in the auto, Laurie gave the Chevy a farewell pat on the fender. It had carried them away from Dub, sheltered them by night, and she was sorry that Way would never get to drive it.
“How come we don’t pick up hitchhikers?” Buddy asked after they passed several men with their thumbs raised.
“I hate not giving them a ride, honey,” said Marilys, “but it’s just not safe for a woman with two kids to take chances.” At least, thank goodness, these roads weren’t full of jalopies stuffed with homeless families and the little they could carry.
Leaving the valleys of the Wichita and Brazos rivers, driving through vast ranchlands and regions where cotton gins testified to the main crop, which hadn’t been very “main” during the drought, they followed a crest that divided the cedar-studded ravines of the watersheds of the Brazos and Wichita rivers, spent the night on a ranch road, and pulled into Lubbock on Sunday, passing the tile-roofed brick buildings of Texas Technological College where shrubs and young trees, many of them evergreens, contrasted luxuriantly with the surrounding prairie.
“Way worked here and around here for a week,” Laurie said, her heart speeding. “For sure we’ll find his signs. Maybe one of us could ask about him at the Truck-Inns and hardwares.”
Marilys nodded. “With luck, Dub won’t be after us earlier than Friday but we’d better be well out of here by Thursday night. We’ll scout after Way, earn some money, and trade off this flivver for another truck.” Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were like midnight with stars shining through. “Let’s see who spots Way’s first sign!”
Lubbock, a neat town of broad streets, was full of churches, and all of them seemed full of people in their best clothes who were just coming out, shaking hands with their pastors and pausing to visit. With a stab of guilt, Laurie winced at what Mama would say about her children not setting foot in a church since they left Prairieville. Laurie had thought about it several times in Black Spring but there wasn’t any Tabernacle of Holiness. Even if there had been, she wouldn’t have wanted to go. It was wicked and worldly and she was ashamed of herself, but it was a relief not to have to sit through Sunday school and two sermons on Sunday, prayer meeting on Wednesday night and every night of every revival meeting even when there was school next day. And that was besides family worship—a chapter of the Bible and prayers all around—every morning and every night.
Before she let Buddy go play, she mostly did remember Sunday mornings to read out of Mama’s little white New Testament, grimy now that it was no longer nested in the small cedar chest among embroidered handkerchiefs, but now they just prayed under their breath and she suspected that Buddy only ducked his head and closed his eyes.
Well, thought Laurie, rebelling, if God expected them to be good like Mama, he should have left her alive. With the possible exception of Edna, who regularly attended the Methodist church, none of the people who’d been kind to them since the world of Prairieville ended were Christians. Not Rosalie or Way or Marilys. But they were good. According to Brother Arlo, that didn’t matter. In fact, it was presumptuous to be good if you weren’t a Christian and you’d go to hell as fast as a drunkard who’d murdered his wife, kids, and neighbors, too.
That had never seemed right to Laurie. It seemed at odds with what Jesus said about whatever you did for the sick or hungry or imprisoned, you did it to him. Jesus, when you came right down to it, didn’t sound much like God. Maybe the only thing God noticed was if you were Christian. Mama said it was sinful to question his ways, but whether you were kind or mean made a mighty lot of difference to the people you knew.
Laurie swallowed a gasp of joy as she saw the scrolled letters painted on the store window and repeated on a sign above, but left it to Buddy to call out, “Look! ‘Dub’s Hardware for Hard Wear!’”
“You win,” laughed Marilys. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
They discovered Way’s unmistakable flourish on a restaurant, a hotel, a farm-machinery store, and a sign by the edge of the city park that featured a man with a paintbrush and a pretty woman kneeling by a tulip bed.
Cleanest town in Texas!
Winner of the National Clean-up and Paint-up Bureau’s
First Prize
Every year since 1931!
Let’s win
AGAIN
in 1936!
The same distinctive lettering ornamented another sign.
SITE OF SINGER’S STORE, 1879–1886
FOR MANY YEARS, ONE OF ONLY TWO STORES ON THE SOUTH PLAINS***FIRST POST OFFICE IN LUBBOCK COUNTY***CROSSROAD OF MILITARY TRAILS***
Though this was a frontier town, we are proud that in its whole history, Lubbock has had only one saloon which the owner voluntarily closed after receiving a petition from fellow citizens.
“Must be some bootleggers around,” mused Marilys. “Or Way couldn’t have gone on a toot. Why don’t we have a picnic here and then find the Truck-Inn and a place for the Tumbleweeds to earn some money?”
The Truck-Inn was on the San Angelo highway at the edge of town. It would be the first place Dub would check so it was decided that Laurie would go in alone and say Way had left his hat at her house and did the Inn people know where he was? She didn’t want to lie, but no one needed to hear that the house had been in Black Spring.
“No use worryin’ about Kirkendall’s hat, sonny,” advised a heavy woman whose blond hair was pulled back in such a tight knot that it gave her a tilt-eyed look. “If it’s any good, he’d just trade it for a pint of booze.” Her snub nostrils belled with outrage. “I’ve never been so taken in as I was by that old hobo! Stayed here a week, worked hard, kept himself clean and polite, never had so much as a sarsaparilla bottle in his room. The next week he locks his door, stays drunk for three days, and then he’s gone like smoke.” Seeing Laurie’s distress, the woman pitched her voice softer. “Friend of the family?”
Laurie could only nod. “Well, son,” the woman said more kindly, “I’d guess there’s not much use looking for Wayburn Kirkendall in La Mesa or Plainview, Tule Creek or Tahoka. He’s already painted signs there. He’s got grandkids in Black Spring, poor little devils. If you leave the hat here, next time Dub gets through here, I’ll ask him to get it to the youngsters. Kirkendall bragged on them a lot, especially on the oldest one called Larry who could play the harmonica real good.”
Laurie heart began to thump so loudly she thought the woman must surely hear. “Thanks, ma’am,” she said. “Guess we’ll wait and see if Way—Mr. Kirkendall comes by. My folks think a lot of him.” They would, had they known him.
Back in the Pontiac, Laurie told what the woman had said, and added reluctantly, “Way talked about the Field Brothers here. We’d better not look for a place to sing.”
Marilys flinched and suddenly looked exhausted. Hard on her to do all the driving and
of course how she felt responsible for them. After a moment, she shrugged and gave a careless laugh. “Being it’s Sunday, there won’t be any car lots open and we don’t have time to hunt for some reprobate who’ll do a trade. Might as well get a start to San Angelo.”
Wintry fields—thank goodness there was still some land in the Southwest that could be plowed and yield crops—ranch-lands with cattle gathered at earthen tanks filled with water pumped by windmills; crumbling rock corrals; dry, white-bedded alkali lakes; a few towns crouched behind the upside-down funnels of cotton gins. They camped that night on the edge of the Cap Rock.
Big Spring had cotton gins, gas-storage tanks, stockyards, and the stink of oil refineries. The only trees were saplings that hadn’t yet decided whether to live or die. There was no clue of Way. They did trade the Pontiac and most of the cash they’d raised in Electra for a Ford truck. The dealer surveyed them, scratched at a nimbus of graying hair that surrounded his pink scalp, and finally spat tobacco into the weeds.
“No way I could sleep nights if I turned you loose with these tires, lady,” he said to Marilys. “I’ll switch ’em with those on that truck over there.”
“They’ll still be bad tires,” Laurie pointed out.
He grinned, showing stumps of brown teeth. “Shucks, sonny, I’ll sell that truck to some young sprout who needs to learn how to patch tires. Be good for him.”
Gas and groceries left them only a few dollars but sleeping in the car hadn’t been too comfortable. “We should be able to keep this one for a while,” said Marilys as they drove along the valley of the North Concho, where derricks reared everywhere. “Phew-ey! Smell that sulphur? This field has to be producing what they call sour oil.”
Sheep began to outnumber scrawny cattle in pastures with tight fencing that Marilys said was supposed to keep wolves out. As they entered a rough region where cedar and oak showed the bare, white limestone bones of hills, cattle dwindled and goats and sheep browsed the hills and along the river bottoms beneath giant oaks and pecan trees.
San Angelo held no trace of Way. Abilene had several of his signs but none of the business owners knew where he’d gone. In Stamford, he’d done a sign for the headquarters building of the SMS Ranch, using the brand with two S’s backwards. Haskell had no trace of him but on the other side of Wild Horse Prairie in Seymour, on the Salt Fork of the Brazos, a café and farm-machinery store had brand-new signs.
“Yeah, miss, your brother did my sign last week,” said the café owner, a middle-aged, gray-haired man whose belly protruded under his grease-spotted apron. “No, he didn’t seem to be headed anyplace in particular. Said he was seein’ the country, paintin’ his way along.” He sounded disapproving. As if to console Way’s relations, the man added, “I guess a sign painter cain’t rightly settle down, not unless it was in a big city where there’d always be work.”
Instead of going north to Wichita Falls, they took 283 east through rolling small-hilled ranch country and spent one night near the crumbling adobe ruins of Fort Griffin, the post from which countless sorties were made against raiding Comanches and Kiowas who had wandered this region time out of mind. An old man who turned up at the smell of their breakfast coffee, curious about them, shared their doughnuts and held forth in a quavering voice about how down in the flats, gamblers, wild women, and saloons emptied the garrison’s pockets at payday and relieved hidehunters of their earnings from the slaughter of thousands of buffalo.
“My pap hunted buffler out of here till they was gone,” he said, blinking watery, pale eyes. “Then he scouted for the army till the Comanches was all penned up in Oklahoma, and then he hauled freight and went to ranchin’. Got pushed off his land by the Circle X, a big English-owned outfit that moved in and took over. So he freighted full time till he married my ma and moved in to Abilene to run her daddy’s store. I was born out here, though, and it’s where I aim to die if’n they don’t make it into a state park and run off the folks that’s left—ain’t more’n a hunderd and thirty-forty people.”
“You ever see any buffalo?” Buddy asked. “Wild ones?”
“Sure, son.” The old eyes blinked and looked far away. “Even shot a big bull when I wasn’t much older’n you. Had to prop the rifle on some rocks to do it, use all my bullets. I was kinda sick when he finally caved in on his knees and went down, wished I hadn’t ever started, ’specially since he was the last one ever seen around here.”
Accepting another cup of coffee and filling it to the brim with Eagle Brand, he cackled. “Wish Pap could know the Circle X is deep in trouble. On account of the drouth, ranchers been sellin’ off so much stock the price is low, and what with the depression, folks can’t afford to buy much beef, anyhow. So the government’s bought the best cows at twenty dollars a head to ship to better grazing lands, bought and shipped more to slaughterhouses, and I hear about twenty-five hunderd head of culls are goin’ to be shot by the federal inspector right out by the pens.”
Laurie’s stomach roiled and she scattered the rest of her doughnut for the birds. “Anyhow,” she said, trying to find something good about it, “lots of people ought to get beef for the rest of the winter.”
The old man shook his head. “Them cow’s cain’t be eat, sonny. The whole idee is to raise the price on what beef gets to market. I hear the Circle X’s givin’ its neighbors the hides for helpin’ to drag the carcasses off to a little canyon by the pens. They’ll heap ’em there and keep a fire goin’ on top till there’s nothin’ left but bones.”
Seeming nothing but loosely connected bones himself, he got to his feet. “Thanks kindly for the coffee and doughnut, folks. Good luck on the road. The pens are pretty close to it. You’ll likely see the slaughter.”
They heard the bark of the rifle before they saw the penned cattle. Dead ones were being dragged by cowboys on horses to where men were skinning them. The skinned bodies were hauled to a ravine and tumbled over into it. Not all of them, though.
“That federal inspector must be pretty decent,” Marilys said. “He’s paying so much attention to the shooting that he can’t see how all those folks from town and around are loading quarters and sides of beef in their flivvers and trucks and wagons.”
Laurie was glad some poor people were going to have food because of the killing but she was glad when the sound of the rifle faded. She didn’t think she’d ever eat beef again.
19
Albany, Cisco, Brownwood, Eastland, Ranger, Weatherford. Farmers clumped in brogans, ranchers, and cowboys strode along in high-heeled boots, and oil workers wore laced boots if they could afford them.
No Way-signs, as they had started calling them. The Ford developed coughing fits so they stayed in Ranger three days, singing noons and evenings to pay for a good used carburetor.
“This was the wildest boomtown since Spindletop,” their mechanic told them. “My dad came to work in the field back in 1919, when it put out over twenty-two million barrels. Must’ve been fifty thousand people here, most livin’ in tents like us.” He wiped his greasy hands on a rag and banged down the hood. “Ten years later, Ranger was only makin’ something over two million, barrels. But we’ve still got a producin’ field, which is more than lots of towns do once the big boom’s over.”
They paid him and left town, the Ford purring as contentedly as a cat with a full belly of warm milk. When Weatherford had no Way-signs, either, they held a council. “We can try the East Texas oil towns,” said Marilys. “We can swing up to Burkburnett and the Panhandle. Or we can head for the fields in the Permian Basin. Got any ‘druthers’?”
“You’re the driver,” said Laurie. Buddy nodded.
None of them said what they must all have been thinking: that Dub was in Black Spring by now and could have the law after them; that Way might have swapped his Russian sable paintbrushes for some whiskey—that there might not be any new Way-signs.
“Let’s try west,” said Marilys.
From San Angelo, they drove through slopes covered with oak, cedar
, and mesquite. “We’d better get a new name,” Marilys worried. She frowned and sighed. “I guess we really ought to trade in the Ford but it runs so well with the new carburetor, I plain hate to take a chance on getting a lemon.”
Buddy thrust out his lower lip. “I liked being a Tumbleweed.”
“It’s a dandy name,” Marilys agreed. “Maybe we can use it again sometime if Dub loses interest in us—he could do that if he ran across someone he’d like for a son—or when you’re grownup.”
“Grown up!” echoed Laurie.
“That’s only five years,” comforted Marilys.
“But we can’t—can’t—stay on the road all that time, changing our names, changing trucks!” Laurie wailed. “If we find Way—”
“Only difference that’d make is he could be accused of kidnapping, too.”
“That’s wicked! We chose him for our family! We sure didn’t pick W. S. Redwine.”
Marilys patted Laurie’s knee. “I know, honey. It’s not right. It’s not fair. But W.S. got to your grandpa, hired himself a smart lawyer, and to be fair to the judge, being adopted by Dub would seem to be real good luck for you kids.”
Laurie shuddered. “It’d be about the worst thing I can imagine!”
Marilys shot her an anxious look. “He never—bothered you, did he?”
Remembering how Way had warned her and Buddy about men like that jocker on the train, Laurie flushed and shook her head. “No. He hardly even touched me. But he tried to make me sing songs he wanted, he the same as killed his own boy, I bet he had something to do with Way’s getting drunk, and—and when I’m around him, I feel like he was sitting on my chest.”
Buddy giggled. “If he was, you’d be one smashed patootie!”
They all laughed and Marilys said, “Why don’t you pick out our next name, Buddy?”
He wrinkled his brow and thought a long time. “How about the Roadsters?”
The Longest Road Page 27