“Our hands are shaped alike,” I said. “But I can’t sing.”
Daddy stared ahead, and I thought he’d forgotten what I’d asked him to do. But I guess he was just finding the rhythm in the road, because soon he started low and built up, the sad story of the little blue-eyed girl who lost her mama to the wandering gypsy Davy.
It was late last night when the boss came home,
He was asking about his lady.
The only answer he received
Was she’s gone with the gypsy Davy,
Gone with the gypsy Dave.
When the man goes looking for his wife, he finds her sitting around the campfire, happy with the singing gypsy.
Daddy’s voice pleaded when he sang:
Have you forsaken your house and home?
Have you forsaken your baby?
Have you forsaken your husband dear?
To go with the gypsy Davy
And sing with the gypsy Dave?
The mother is happy to forsake him, but she weeps at leaving her daughter.
Daddy sang about the husband begging her:
Take off, take off your buckskin gloves
Made of Spanish leather.
Give to me your lily-white hand,
And we’ll ride back home together.
I hoped she’d go with her husband, back home where she belonged. I looked at my hand again, trying to imagine it in Spanish leather. How could the mama not go home to her baby?
But Daddy sang of her resolve to follow the gypsy.
No, I won’t take off my buckskin gloves.
They’re made of Spanish leather.
I’ll go my way from day to day
And sing with the gypsy Davy,
That song of the gypsy Dave.
That song of the gypsy Davy,
That song of the gypsy Dave.
I stayed awake most of the night, feeling safe as long as Daddy was singing. I rested my head on his leg, feeling it move as he clutched and accelerated, and listened to the story over and over of the mama who left her baby. Thank goodness the daddy was still there.
I must have fallen asleep again, because Daddy’s hand on my head woke me up.
“We’re coming to the river.”
I heard the excitement in his voice and pushed myself up, my head feeling like it had been stuffed with cotton wool.
Daddy’s green work shirt showed dark sweat stains across his back as he stretched forward over the steering wheel.
“About to go to sleep myself,” he said. “You want to drive when we get across the river?”
I tried to grin, but my lips were stuck together with the dryness of sleep. The air from the floor vent rushed against my legs, drying the sweat.
The bridge surface sang beneath the truck’s tires and struts of the bridge flashed by.
I sat on my knees and put my head out the open window.
“Slow down, Daddy,” I said.
How could a river be so wide? It glinted steely gray, like metal, strong with its size. Tiny whitecaps crossed its currents in drifting triangles. A gull, bluish white, swooped between the struts of the bridge.
Daddy crept along, letting me watch the barges and tugboats until a car came up on our tail.
“Did you know it’s the biggest river on the North American continent?” I asked, sitting back in the seat. “We learned that in school.”
“Yep,” Daddy said, staring just as much as I was at the water traffic passing right under us.
“Have you seen this river before, Daddy?”
He nodded. “Several times.”
The air floating through the truck cab smelled of the river.
When we came off the bridge on the other side of the water, in a whole other state, I said, “Wait until I tell them at school!”—forgetful for a second that I wouldn’t be going there.
Daddy glanced at me. “Do you reckon you’ll do okay in a big town school?” he asked.
“A big town school?”
I’d thought about where I wouldn’t be. I hadn’t thought about where I would be.
“I probably won’t be the only sixth grader,” I said.
Daddy shook his head, and I saw a shadow of concern.
“Did you ever go to a town school?” I asked.
“Not until high school. And then it wasn’t very big.”
“Will they have more books in a big town school?”
He shrugged. “It stands to reason that they would. More pupils should mean more books.”
I thought of the storybook from Grandfather Clark in my box in the back of the truck. I’d like to read many more books like that.
“Town school might be okay,” I said after a while.
Daddy seemed to relax. He shifted gears and the truck growled as we began the long climb out of the river valley.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“What time is it?”
“Time to eat. Your grandma sent us enough grub to feed the navy.”
In a few more miles, Daddy pulled into the tall grass at the side of the road and stopped. A couple of small farmsteads, with red outbuildings, lay in valleys of low hills.
“Want to stretch your legs?” Daddy asked.
I’d forgotten what my feet felt like, and I staggered as I slid off the high seat to the ground. I walked into the field, each step sending up a spray of grasshoppers.
A cloudless hazy sky capped the Missouri hills.
When a cow bawled in the distance, making me remember Old Jerse, I thought I’d just die of homesickness right there in the grass.
But the wave of homesickness passed, and I felt so hungry, there might have been a pinching bug running around inside my stomach.
“Did Nana send biscuits?” I yelled back to Daddy, who was opening up the back of the truck.
He handed out a white box. When I opened it, all the biscuits left from breakfast, sliced and filled with bacon, made my mouth water.
We spooned peaches out of a quart jar and shared the sandwiches, then we got back on the road.
We drove through hilly country, with houses and little towns hugging the hillsides like the thumb of God had pressed them in. We read so many Burma Shave signs, Daddy said they were making his whiskers grow. Seemed like every hundred yards we’d see another clothesline of pretty chenille bedspreads with peacocks and butterflies in bright colors for sale. But all the road signs telling about this and that sometimes made it hard to see the bedspreads.
About midafternoon we got in the middle of an army convoy, and going up and down the hills became a lot slower.
“How much longer, Daddy?” I finally asked once we saw the sign saying Welcome to Oklahoma.
“Depends. If we could get out of this army convoy, we could drive faster.”
But when we got past one army truck, another just took its place, and the afternoon went by.
Finally we got rid of the convoy, but then the road curved so much, we seemed to be going more sideways than forward.
Daddy started singing, The Cumberland Gap, the Cumberland Gap, seventeen miles to the Cumberland Gap. When the road curved, he’d sing, Nineteen miles to the Cumberland Gap.
I hated thinking we were getting farther away from where we were going and wished we were like the gulls we had seen on the river and could fly straight over the hills. But Daddy’s music at least made the minutes go faster.
By the time we got to the town where Uncle Les lived, and where we were going to live, the low sun cast long shadows. The country looked red, like places I’d seen in western movies with Nana and Grandpa on Saturday night.
I put on my shoes as we drove past the square with a big sandstone courthouse sheltered by giant elms. The businesses lining the square made me think of Huxley.
Then I saw the school, a fire escape coming out of the third floor like a giant covered sliding board.
“Look, Daddy,” I said, pointing.
But he was thinking about street names. “You see Linden anyplace?” he
asked.
“There,” I said, a minute later.
And in no time, we’d found the address Uncle Les had sent Daddy and parked the truck in front. A landlady, who acted like she knew she’d made a mistake renting to us, led us up a dark, creaky staircase. We stood in the middle of a dim, almost empty room that stunk of mothballs and dust. Nana would have had her rags and cleaning bucket out in a second.
“I thought you said Uncle Lesley had found us a furnished apartment, Daddy,” I said as soon as Mrs. Stanton, the landlady, had shut the door behind herself. My voice echoed. “How come there’s one bed, a little old card table, two folding chairs, and that’s all?”
Daddy sounded tired and disappointed too. “Well, this is Oklahoma, Mae Bug. Times haven’t caught up with the war being over yet, I guess.”
“Harold Clark.”
We turned toward the door, and in walked a tall blue-eyed giraffe of a man in fancy boots, holding a cowboy hat to his stomach.
“Lesley Clark.” Daddy crossed the room in two strides and took Uncle Les by the hand, pumping his arm up and down.
Uncle Lesley pounded Daddy on the back, then hugged him.
“And who’s this?” he asked, bending down and looking at me at eye level.
“I’m Willa Mae Clark,” I said, fighting off the urge to giggle, then putting out my hand.
The giraffe clasped it. “I’m your uncle Lesley Clark. Pleased to meet you, kitten.
“Saw the truck go by my place of business when you drove through town,” he said to Daddy. “Came to help you unload.”
They talked a while about Grandmother and Grandfather Clark and Aunt Belle and how good it was for Daddy to be home after all those years, then they went back to the truck to get our boxes.
Meanwhile I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the cracked, worn green linoleum. How could I live in this awful place? I’d bet there were cockroaches.
Daddy and Uncle Lesley thudded up the stairs, and when Uncle Lesley came through the door, the room exploded with light.
I squeaked, then felt my face flaming with embarrassment.
“Fooled you, huh?” Uncle Lesley said, laughing. “Pretty little country girl who’s not used to electric lights.”
I gazed around. With Uncle Lesley and the lights, the place didn’t seem quite so bad. Or maybe the lights made it seem worse. The lights showed the water stains on the walls and the grime ground into the cracks.
While Daddy and Uncle Les made the second trip, I toured the apartment, flipping on lights. I’d never done such a thing before, and I felt a God-like power. Let there be light. Just wait until I told them back home.
But then I discovered something even more wonderful than electric lights.
“Daddy, come here!” I yelled, hearing their footsteps on the stairs. “Look!” I pointed to the little room I’d found in the back of the apartment. “Look!”
A claw-footed bathtub stood below a window on the back wall.
“And look, Daddy. There’s a pot and basin and everything. Faucets and running water. Drain holes. It’s a bathroom, Daddy. Just like in town. Just like in the movies.”
Daddy grinned. “The expression on your face is worth a dollar,” he said. “Is it better than the Mississippi?”
“Can I take a bath?” I said, not wanting to take time debating the wonders of the world.
“Right now?”
“Right this very minute.”
“Why not? Les and I’ll finish unloading, then we’ll think about supper. Sure. You go ahead and have a bath.”
I’d never done this before. But I didn’t need anybody to draw pictures for me. I just yanked off my clothes and got in the tub and plugged up the hole and let the water run.
Running the cool water until it was clear up to my armpits, I leaned back and slid all the way under. Then I sat up, shaking my head. My private pond—with no water moccasins. My private swimming pool. Aunty Rose would be green when I wrote her about the bathtub.
The last tenant had left a sliver of soap, cracked and dry, which I worked a little lather out of. Then I lay back in the water again, up to my nostrils, like a spoiled hippo in Africa.
“You learning to swim in there?” Daddy called through the closed door.
I drained the tub and wrung out my hair. “I could,” I said. “I got it deep enough.”
“Well, Les wants to show us around town.”
“I’m coming.”
I patted myself dry with my clothes and pulled them back on.
“Who’s that looks and smells like flowers after a rain?” Uncle Les asked when I climbed in his pickup.
By this time, darkness had fallen, but the streetlights and the houses glowing with electricity made the night seem almost like day.
“This is my place of business,” Uncle Lesley said, stopping in front of a store near the square. Lesley Clark’s Sales the sign painted on the big plate glass window said.
He tooted the horn, and the pretty red-haired woman inside, wearing a green dress with polka dots, smiled and waved.
“That a friend of yours?” Daddy asked Uncle Les.
Uncle Les grinned. “You might say.”
“I’m hungry,” I said when we had been around the square twice and through town both ways. “When will we fix supper, Daddy?”
Uncle Les threw back his head and laughed, and Daddy got a funny look on his face.
“Mae Bug, we’ve not got any pots and pans to cook with, and we’ve eaten all the ready-made food your grandma sent. Maybe Les knows where there’s a café. Tomorrow we’ll set up housekeeping.”
* * *
After our supper in a café on the square, Uncle Les took us back to the apartment, and Daddy and I set about making the place ready to sleep in. We used some quilts and blankets Mrs. Stanton brought up to make me a pallet beside the bed.
Eventually, from the hard, musty-smelling floor, my stomach churning from the spicy food, I stared out the window of our “furnished” apartment. Then I stared at the cracked, water-marked ceiling. Would the plaster come crashing down in the night and land right on me?
I said my bedtime prayer. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
I worried about the plaster for a while, but at least I had made arrangements with God.
But how could I sleep with streetlights making the room glow practically as bright as day? And about a million cars and trucks going by down below? Without a bed? So far from home?
“Daddy, you asleep?” I whispered.
“No,” he whispered back. “You?”
“Yes, I’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“Good,” he whispered.
“Let’s hold hands,” I said. “Every night when we go to bed.”
I knew a family needed traditions, like eating mashed potatoes out of the same bowl every Sunday, and this could be Daddy’s tradition and mine. It wasn’t much, but it would help.
Chapter 9
The next morning, I filled the bathtub before Daddy woke up. The water rose over my ankles, then my knees, and up to my waist. I remembered an illustration in the book that Grandfather Clark had given me of children diving off a giant bar of white soap, swimming under it, lazing on its snowy surface.
Twiddling the ever smaller sliver of old, green soap, I wondered what Aunty Rose was doing right now.
Since it was Saturday, she was probably racing to get all the sweeping done so she could go to Lorrimer’s with Nana and Grandpa.
Now that I was gone, who would do the Saturday dusting?
Lowering myself under the water and making bubbles with my breath, I tried not to think about it.
Finally I got out and dried off on my dirty underwear, wondering when Daddy was planning to get us some towels. I pulled an everyday dress over my head and opened the door.
“I’ve been standing in this line till my feet have gone flat,” Daddy teased. “Is there any wa
ter left?”
“We need towels,” I said, my voice sounding as cross as I felt. “My hair’s dripping down my back and my dress is getting all wet.”
Daddy looked at me for a long minute. “I’ve got an idea. Stay right there and shut your eyes.”
I hated the feel of the water trickling behind my ear, down my neck and back, not stopping until it hit the elastic waist of my underpants.
Daddy rustled around in the other room. “Keep your eyes shut,” he called.
I pressed my arm to my side to blot the water. What was he doing?
When he came back, I felt something soft and clean-smelling press against my head. Daddy squeezed the water out of my hair, then he began to rub, moving the cloth over my scalp.
“Keep your eyes shut,” he said again. “Pretend you’re the princess in one of those stories Grandfather used to read to you. And I’m your slave. And I’ll dry your hair. I may not know how to sew or do fancy cooking like your Nana, but I can dry hair real good.”
That was the truth. Nobody had ever dried my hair like this before, taking longer than necessary. My neck relaxed and I turned my head over to his hands.
“What are we having for breakfast?” I asked when he finally stepped back and I opened my eyes, seeing one of his white undershirts in his hand.
“How about we go to that café again? Then we’ll see about getting some kitchen supplies.”
He spread the shirt over the sunny windowsill to dry. “That can be your special hair-drying cloth,” he said. “We won’t use it for anything else.”
By the time Daddy shaved and we walked downtown, my hair was completely dry. We ordered bacon and eggs, which didn’t seem fulfilling without Nana’s biscuits and gravy, and Daddy downed three cups of coffee. Then we drove to Uncle Lesley’s store.
The red-haired pretty woman I’d seen through the window the night before greeted us.
“Les told me you might stop by,” she said, shaking hands with my daddy. She winked at me, nice and friendly under all that rouge and nail polish.
“I’m Margaret McKenna, according to my birth certificate. But everybody calls me Red. Les went to Arkansas last night, Harold, but he said if you’d take the Wilsons that refrigerator that’s out in back, he’ll pay you a delivery fee.”
While she drew a map, showing Daddy how to get to the Wilsons’, I looked around. The store was mainly empty. A saddle hung over a sawhorse in one corner, and a glass case displayed pocketknives. A large sign in the front window said Appliances for Sale, but I didn’t see any.
Over the River Page 8