The Longest Road

by Jeanne Williams

  “It won’t be the last,” Way said gloomily.

  Thinking about the wars across the ocean knotted Laurie’s stomach. She remembered that in Revelations the Beast, the Antichrist, rose from the banks of the Tiber. Couldn’t that mean Rome and Mussolini? Guilt and fear flooded her. The family still had a chapter from The New Testament and silent prayer on Sunday, but none of them were saved, much less sanctified. Laurie wasn’t sure what she believed. She felt guilty and disloyal to question Mama’s teachings, yet frightened though she was, something at the core of her could not embrace what was preached at the tabernacle. Whatever her punishment, that was the way it was.

  Derricks sprouted in the distance, dwarfing a sprawl of tents and shacks. Way turned off the highway on a rut-gouged dirt road with a pointing sign that read TO LUCKY. “Ought to be some work, with a name like that,” he chuckled. “This dry air’s already cleaning out my lungs.”

  He helped build derricks all summer, seldom missing a day because of asthma, though if he got too tired or worked up about something, he would start wheezing and had to breathe vapor from steaming water till he was better. Laurie and Marilys worked in a tent restaurant, and Buddy stocked shelves in the Lucky Mart and delivered groceries. There wasn’t a school, though, so late in August, they moved to Reynolds, southwest of Oklahoma City. On September 1, 1939, the day that Hitler invaded Poland in a “blitzkrieg” lightning war, the family rented a trailer from a driller who had decided to build a house and stay in the area.

  Buddy enrolled in seventh grade September 3, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. That evening President Roosevelt talked to the nation by radio as he had done so often in his Fireside Chats. He said the nation would remain neutral but that “even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience.”

  “Huh!” Way snorted. “If England falls, Hitler’ll be over here. We better fight while there’s still someone else left to help. If I was a little younger and didn’t have this blamed asthma—”

  “Helping produce oil is good as being a soldier,” Marilys assured him. “But, oh, I hope someone stops that lunatic before he takes over all of Europe! Those poor people, never any peace!”

  With such terrible things happening, it seemed strange that everyday life could go on pretty much as usual. Way got a job as a pumper on a forty-acre tract with four wells. He went around every two or three hours to check the gas engines and start them or shut them off, gauge the tanks, and keep track of production. He worked a twelve-hour day but it wasn’t as hard and dirty as most oil-field jobs.

  Marilys and Laurie got work in a hotel run by a shrewd but kind couple, Ross and Shirley Marriott. Marilys cooked and Laurie waited tables. While fending off what seemed to be all the single men in town and some of the married ones, Laurie wished she could play the guitar or harmonica instead. When she turned sixteen in October, she hugged Marilys and said, “Only two more years! Then Redwine can’t bother me though he might still try to control me through taking charge of Buddy.”

  “He better not try!” Buddy’s freckled face was getting thinner and sometimes gave a hint of the man he would be, with Daddy’s chin and smile and widow’s peak to his sun-streaked hair. “I’m going to be a soldier if the war lasts till I’m old enough!”

  “Well, don’t sound so happy about it,” Laurie snapped. Surely no war could last that long but her heart contracted with fear for him and all the boys everywhere who might die in battle before they had even lived.

  In a few weeks, Russia invaded Poland from the east. They divided Poland with Germany. Early in November, the neutrality act was changed to let Great Britain and France buy arms from the United States. For the first time in Laurie’s memory, there were jobs for any worker willing to move near a, defense plant. Nazi submarines sank ships twice as fast as U. S. and British shipyards could build them.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, Buddy helped Way with the pumping. A week before Christmas, he came running into the hotel kitchen, where Laurie was picking up a tray with two plates of grits, ham, and eggs.

  “Some—some detectives and Mr. Redwine drove up while Way was reading a gauge,” Buddy panted. “They took him down to the jail!”

  Marilys turned pale and leaned on the sink. Laurie set down the tray and gripped Buddy’s shoulders. “Did Redwine see you?”

  Buddy nodded, gulping convulsively. “Yes, but I don’t think he recognized me.”

  Entirely possible. Redwine had never seemed to really see Buddy and that had been three years ago. “I—I’ve got to go down there.” Marilys fumbled at her apron strings.

  “No! Redwine’s accused you of kidnapping. That’s a lot worse than stealing. He may not know you’re here.”

  They stared at each other. Laurie dreaded confronting Redwine but it seemed the only hope. “I’ll go to the jail,” she said. “Maybe Redwine will drop his charges if we pay him for his detectives and whatever he claims Way took.”

  “We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “We can borrow against the trailer and truck and we do have a couple of hundred dollars saved.” They kept it under the mattress. None of them trusted banks after the way so many of them had closed.

  The tiny lines in Marilys’s face seemed to have deepened. “This isn’t about money. It’s Dub getting even with Way.”

  “I know that. But if I beg Redwine and offer the money besides—We have to do something, Marilys!”

  “What if he wants to make you and Buddy live with him?”

  Laurie froze inside at the very notion. “I—I guess we’d have to. But he wanted a son. He can see now that I’m not that.”

  “He knew you were a girl.”

  “Yes, but now I’m almost a woman.” Laurie tried to smile. “I don’t think he’ll want me.”

  “What if he does?”

  Laurie shrugged. “I’ll go with him and get away the first chance I get.” She took off her apron and lapped it around Buddy. “You wait tables while I’m gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She pulled on her coat, more because it would shield her from Redwine’s eyes than because the wind blew chill outside. The jail, she knew, was at the back of the courthouse next to the sheriff’s office. Go with Redwine? Every fiber shrank. She remembered the women he’d had at his Truck-Inns and shivered. Maybe he’d be satisfied if she pleaded hard and offered the money. At the courthouse, she summoned her courage, turned the heavy brass doorknob, and stepped inside.

  A dark-haired man stood arguing with Redwine and a thin, narrow man with a hatchet face. The dark one turned at the sound of the door and she looked into gray eyes with a shimmer of green. She forgot why she was there, forgot everything. It was Morrigan.

  22

  He stood there, black hair winging across his forehead, the cleft in his chin a little deeper like the sun lines at the corners of his eyes. But it was him, like a prayer, looking taller than he was because of the way muscle and bone fitted smooth and easy so that every move he made was graceful as if he’d practiced it yet was careless as his smile.

  “Morrigan!” she breathed. “Johnny Morrigan!”

  He tilted his head. His brow furrowed. “You have the advantage of me, ma’am.” He smiled. “Not for long, I hope.”

  His voice filled her, spread into every nerve, every part, warming her, calming her fear. Then she knew, in the depths of her that were becoming a woman’s, that it wasn’t because he’d come to her at the end of one world and help her start in another that she hadn’t forgotten him, that she hadn’t been interested in any of the men who tried to get her attention. His voice and smile and image were sealed up in her heart. Only he could unlock it. Foolishly, desperately, she wanted him to remember her, at least just a little.

  “Laurie!” Turning from a deputy whose pale brown moustache looked like a shaving brush, W. S. Redwine bulked larger than ever but he still had the same squashed nose above a jaw broader than cheekbones and forehead. Gray dirtied his straw-colored hair. His
yellow eyes flickered like a cat’s in a dark room with only a blink of light. “Damned if it’s not Larry-Laurie of the Field Brothers, alias the Tumbleweeds and Roadsters!” Square white teeth showed as his lips peeled back. “I couldn’t track you after you half-killed those deputies close to Duncan three years ago but I guess this means you kids and that slut managed to find old Wayburn and dry him out.”

  “Laurie Field.” Morrigan studied her, frowning. Suddenly, he laughed. “Why, sure, you’ve gone and grown up on me! We shared a camp once. You still got the harmonica?”

  All Laurie could do was nod. From the back of the jail, she heard muffled coughing. Well, this was more than enough to bring on Way’s asthma.

  “I’ve wondered about you folks,” John Morrigan said. “Hope California worked fine for your dad.”

  “He—he died out there.”

  “And then she and her brother fell in with that old hobo locked up in the back cell,” Redwine said. “I gave him a job, tried to straighten him out, but like I’ve been telling you, Johnny, he went on a bender and stole a lot of expensive equipment.”

  “He didn’t,” said Laurie. “You got him drunk—that’s why he left us. But he didn’t steal from you any more than Marilys kidnapped Buddy and me.”

  More to Johnny than to Laurie, Redwine said in an aggrieved tone, “I wanted to give the kids a chance, good educations, help with their music. If they’d stayed with me, they’d be making records by now like the Carter Family.” He shook his head. “Must be in their nature—they ran off with a tramp woman. God only knows what tricks she’s taught them.”

  “Here’s one!” Laurie couldn’t help herself. She kicked him as hard as she could on the side of the knee, hard enough to break the knee of an average man.

  Redwine wasn’t average. He lurched sideways and grunted. “So she’s turned you into a tough little bitch just like her!”

  “Marilys wasn’t tough. You had her scared to breathe.”

  “She’ll be scared a sight more when she’s tried for kidnap across a state line. Wonder if a woman fries faster than a man?”

  Morrigan stepped between them. “What kind of talk is that, Dub? I don’t understand what all this is about but it’s pretty clear Laurie’s not a child now and she doesn’t think she was kidnapped.” He paused, catching and holding the older man’s eyes. “Like I told you before, I can’t see throwin’ someone with bad asthma in jail for something you can’t be sure he did. He didn’t sound or look like a sneak-thief to me.”

  “Next thing you’ll want to hire the old bum!”

  “Guess I would, if he’s been a friend to Laurie and her kid brother.”

  The two men dueled with their gazes. Way’s coughing echoed along the corridor. The deputy said, “I don’t want that guy dyin’ in one of our cells. He better have a doctor.”

  “Please,” Laurie said. “Please, Mr. Redwine!”

  “Well, that’s a change! To hear you saying ‘Please’!”

  Johnny cut in. “W.S., let the man go or start hunting another partner.”

  “Oh hell,” said Redwine. “Let him go!”

  The deputy went down the hall, selecting a key from the ring at his belt. Redwine dropped a dark-furred hand on Morrigan’s shoulder. “All right, boy. Have it your way.” He glanced dismissingly at Laurie. “It’s too late to do what I wanted to for the kids. If they’d rather be oil-field trash, they’re welcome to it.”

  “Guess I’m oil-field trash, too,” said Johnny.

  “You’ve been my partner in the company these past two years.” Redwine’s tone softened and there was a proud light in his tawny eyes. He gave Morrigan an affectionate shake before taking his hand off the younger man’s shoulder. “What’s more, Johnny, you’re like a son to me.” His eyes slued to Laurie as if he’d never seen her before. “Reckon you and this girl got some catching up to do. I’ll see you out at the rig.”

  Johnny nodded. “Okay, Dub. May have to shoot that well to bring it in.”

  Redwine chuckled. “You’re the one that can do that, son.” He went out without speaking to or even glancing at Way, who was gasping for breath between fits of coughing as he labored along the corridor.

  Laurie hurried to slip her shoulder beneath his arm and help him into the office. “Would you please heat some water?” she asked the deputy as she eased Way into a chair.

  “Can I borrow a cup of your coffee, officer?” Johnny was already pouring a cup from the enameled pot steaming on a hot plate.

  “Make yourselves to home!” The deputy’s moustache fluffed as he vented sarcastic exasperation but he did produce a washbasin, fill it, and set it on a burner.

  Two cups of coffee controlled the worst of Way’s gasping. By the time he’d inhaled steam from the basin while Laurie held a towel around it and his head, his face had lost its bluish pallor and he regarded Johnny with frank interest.

  “So you’re Laurie’s Morrigan. Walked on any water lately?”

  Laurie blushed. Johnny laughed. “Only on slush and bottom settlings. Why don’t we go get some dinner?”

  “Got to get back to my job or I won’t have one,” Way said. He got up but had to steady himself against the wall.

  “You drive over to the hotel and I’ll bring you a sandwich and some lemon pie,” Laurie commanded.

  “Can I get the same?” asked Morrigan.

  “You can have anything you want,” she said, and took Way’s arm in spite of his protests.

  An hour later, Morrigan finished off his T-bone, glanced at his watch, and forked up the last delectable bit of lemon meringue. “Got to get out to the rig,” he said. “After all the grief that hole’s given us, it better make a one-hundred-barrel well! We’ve lost two strings of tools down it, had to fish for five days for the last bunch. And the bit keeps twisting off. If we don’t hit oil this afternoon, it’s time for a good charge of soup.”

  Nitroglycerin. Laurie didn’t want to think about what an explosive that fractured rock formations could do to a human being. “If you’re a producer, why don’t you hire another shooter?” she asked.

  “Because I’m the best.” It was said with a grin and without bravado. “Anyhow, the way Redwine-Morrigan Production works is Dub takes care of wheeling and dealing and I stay in the field. Suits us both right down to the ground.”

  Laurie couldn’t help but think it was risky to leave the finances and records to Redwine, but in the moments of talk they’d managed while she waited tables, she heard affection in Johnny’s voice when he spoke of Redwine, so she forbore to fill Morrigan’s ears with accusations against his partner. Redwine had wanted a son. Maybe he’d learned something since he drove his real one to suicidal recklessness. Anyway, Johnny was grown up. He’d have defenses against Redwine’s possessiveness.

  “Do you still have your guitar?”

  “Hocked that one, but I have another. Say, I sure want to hear you play and sing.”

  “I want to hear you, too.” She took the dollar he’d stuffed under the napkin and thrust it into his shirt pocket. “Don’t try to pay for your dinner. It’s a present from Marilys. She wants to meet you but she’s been too busy cooking. Gould you come by our place tonight? Bring your guitar.”

  “What I do tonight depends on that hole. But tell me where you live and when you’re likely to be there. I’ll come by first chance I get and we’ll celebrate. If Crystal’s not busy, I’ll bring her.”

  “Crystal?”

  “My girl.” Pride and a hint of something else deepened his voice. “She’s Dub’s private secretary. Keeps the company’s books.” He shook his head and sounded abashed. “Don’t see how anyone that pretty can be so smart with numbers and all, but Crystal can figure percentages faster than a machine. Don’t know what she sees in me. I wouldn’t know a decimal if it kicked me in the teeth.”

  Laurie felt kicked in her center. To find him after all these years only to have him crazy in love with this Crystal woman, a little awed by her. I hate her—hate her! It took
all Laurie’s willpower to hush that jealous wail. From things Johnny had said before, she reckoned him to be about twenty-five. He might well have been married by now. And she, Laurie, was going to have to try hard to like Johnny’s woman because he loved her and his happiness was tied to her.

  Still, Laurie’s lips were so numb she could barely force a smile. “You’ll certainly have to bring her to meet us.” Giving directions to the trailer, Laurie pretended not to see Johnny’s outstretched hand. She called good-bye and her thanks as she hurried to take an impatient diner’s order.

  “I got a peek at your Morrigan,” Marilys said, spooning gravy over a mound of whipped potatoes. “Got a smile like sunlight breaking through a cloud. I like the way he moves—not brash or pushy but you know he’s going wherever he starts.”

  “Mmhm,” was as far as Laurie could trust herself.

  “Isn’t that something?” Marilys went on. “Imagine him being Dub’s partner!” She made a face. “Your Morrigan’s going to need all his guts and backbone.”

  “He’s not my Morrigan!”

  “Why, honey!” Marilys put down the ladle and stared. “What in the world’s the matter?”

  “He—he’s got a girlfriend!”

  “Well, of course! Why wouldn’t he?”

  Laurie gulped and blinked at the stinging in her eyes. “I—I just—”

  “Oh, sugar!” Marilys’s blue eyes darkened. In a way that said she understood everything, she held out her arms. Laurie ran into them and burst into tears.

  Crystal wasn’t pretty. She was gorgeous. Long, silver-blond hair rippled when she threw back her slender throat to laugh with a tinkling that reminded Laurie of tiny hail stones striking glass. Johnny had shot the well late that evening, bringing in an eighty-barrel-a-day producer, so he looked tired but satisfied when he brought his sweetheart to the trailer. Shedding her fur coat into Johnny’s hands, she revealed a jade green knit dress that molded her narrow flanks, small waist, and high firm breasts. Three-inch heels made her almost as tall as Johnny.

  She glanced around the trailer’s kitchen–dining–living room, gave an almost imperceptible shrug, and occupied the edge of the big easy chair that had been the family’s Christmas present to Way. The place was meticulously clean. Marilys and Laurie had made striped monks’ cloth curtains to brighten the beige linoleum, walls, and built-ins. The second bedroom was divided with painted wallboard for Laurie and Buddy, her side done in white and yellow, his in blue. The small bathroom was painted sage green and the shower had a matching curtain and mat. There was water and electricity.