The Longest Road (10 page)

They had learned. Learned to dig down to uncover the roots of the Johnson grass and pull every single little rootling put with the edge of the hoe so it wouldn't start another clump; learned to chop out the crabgrass without hitting a good plant, cotton or watermelon, peas, pumpkin, and corn; learned to chop down deep at the tender part of the careless weed roots, which could grow thick as her ankle, so tough a blade couldn't dent them. All the time the sun beat down, and if it wasn't gnats or blister bugs or great big horseflies making you miserable, it was grasshoppers whirring up from the leaves they'd been chewing full of holes, landing on your clothes or skin with their raspy feet, or tangling in your hair.

Sometimes they got inside the overalls Rosalie had bought Laurie for field work. She knew they couldn't bite or sting or do any real harm, but the scratch of their brittle bodies against her skin sent Laurie almost into fits. This delighted the boys, who added entertainment to their labor by sticking hoppers down her back till Rosalie put a stop to it.

Laurie was grateful for Rosalie, whose nature, like her body, was soft and comfortable till you pushed against the underlying bone and sinew. Rosalie seldom scolded or instructed her children, or interfered in their fusses, but when she did, they paid attention. From what Laurie could see, Rosalie had much the same attitude toward Grandpa and what she expected. Apparently she didn't grudge his spending money on tractors and such while she scrubbed out clothes on a washboard and lived in a tarpaper shack, but she insisted on keeping cows and chickens so there'd be milk and eggs for the children, and on the well-built cement storm cellar, which was stocked with water, canned food, and a lantern.

“I saw a tornado pick up a house and smash it down on some folks once,” she said. “When one of them big black funnels comes twistin' out of the sky, I want a good place to run.”

Rosalie was so different from Mama or anyone else Laurie had known that she spent considerable time puzzling over her. It was the first time Laurie had tried to understand grown-up, what they did, what they felt, and most of all
why
. It seemed a little indecent and underhanded to be examining someone without their knowing, like peeking at them while they undressed, but it was like unraveling a mystery, looking for clues the way Nancy Drew did.

Rosalie didn't have nice furniture or curtains at the windows but she had a radio—with a loudspeaker so you didn't have to plug in earphones—on which she listened to “Stella Dallas” and “Our Gal Sunday.” The whole family enjoyed “Fibber McGee and Mollie,” the Carter Family's gospel singing, “Saturday Night Barn Dance,” “Gangbusters,” “Death Valley Days,” and listening to Bing Crosby on the “Kraft Music Hall.” After Grandpa was in bed, Rosalie loved to listen to Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, or Wayne King. She especially loved Will Rogers.

“That's a good man,” she told Laurie. “Hasn't got stuck up over gettin' rich and famous. He's raised scads of money for Dust Bowl folks and when there was an earthquake in Nicaragua, he flew down there and raised money for the ones that'd lost their homes. If he was president, this country would be in a lot better shape.” That spurred her into saying that Pretty Boy Floyd, who'd come from her part of the state and been shot by lawmen the year before, wasn't as much a robber as the banks he'd held up. “At least Pretty Boy helped out a lot of poor families and he was better thought of and liked by folks who knew him than any governor Oklahoma had ever had, or any president of the U.S., either!”

Most of the time, though, Rosalie didn't fret about politics. She bought movie magazines and
True Story
and
True Confessions
. She had an ornate bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, which she was glad to share with Laurie and Belle, a spilled-over cake pan of Tangee lipsticks, powder, rouge, mascara, face creams, and Cutex nail polish, and she had earrings and necklaces and bracelets, shiny patent leather shoes with high heels and two good dresses, one of swingy, flowered, navy rayon, the other of yellow chiffon.

When she put on the low-cut chiffon for the Fourth of July, Grandpa caressed her bare arm and called her his sunflower. She laughed and kissed him full on the mouth.

The kiss wasn't a bit like the way Daddy and Mama kissed when he went to work or even when he came back from a haul to Colorado. It made Laurie blush and look away. She could hear the bedsprings creaking almost every night and knew Grandpa and Rosalie were doing what got babies. Because he was so much older—Rosalie was twenty-seven—it seemed wrong even if they were married. As pretty and young as Rosalie was, it looked like she'd hate to have the old man touch her, but there was no mistaking that she loved him, or that he cared for her, though he ignored his children except to give orders. The times Rosalie didn't go along when he took cream or eggs to town, he always handed her all the egg money and anything left from selling the cream after buying chicken feed and the few groceries they needed, and he never fussed over how she spent it.

About once a month, the whole family went to town. Laurie was stunned the first time at being given a whole shiny nickel to spend just like her cousins. Except when Rosalie had visited, Laurie had never gotten more than a penny at a time, and that not often, which was especially galling since Buddy had his rabbit money. He'd lost that income since Grandpa ruled that any rabbits shot belonged on the table. It was the only fresh meat they had except on the Fourth when Rosalie killed two old hens to fry up for their picnic. Side meat and a few jars of sausage were still left from the hog butchered last fall. It made Laurie feel a little queasy to know that the friendly spotted hog she fed every day would, on some cold November day, stop his eager hunting for morsels and become food himself. She tried not to think about it but she was sure she couldn't eat him.

Those wonderful nickels, though, would buy a double-dip ice-cream cone, a fizzy limeade or cherry Coke from the drugstore fountain, a Big Little Book, a package of chewing gum or pieces of Dubble Bubble, Life Savers, or you could pick from an array of candy bars—Baby Ruth, named for President Cleveland's daughter; Milky Way; Charleston Chew, named after the dance; Tootsie Rolls; and Hershey's. On Laurie's first trip to town, she stretched her nickel by getting a 3 Musketeers with three sections, vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. She swapped Buddy the chocolate section and half the strawberry for the top dip of his ice-cream cone.

The nickel was only the start of the orgy. They got hamburgers with lots of sliced onions and dill pickles at a café, and then went to the Saturday afternoon movie. Laurie had a wrestle with her conscience over this. Movies were denounced by the tabernacle for being every bit as sinful as dancing, bobbing your hair, or smoking.

Buddy had no qualms. He marched right along with the boys and Belle. “Come on, honey,” called Rosalie, hoisting Babe to her shoulder as she paused in the dark entrance.

“I-I—” Tempted but afraid—it was so dark in there, just like the mouth of hell—“Mama never let us.”

Rosalie came back and got Laurie seated beside her on a bench out of the way of people going in. Her dark eyebrows puckered as she thought for a moment. “Listen, dear,” she said at last. “I sure don't want to undermine what your Mama taught you, but you can't very well do everything she said all your life unless it grows out of your own heart and makes sense to you. For one thing, you're going to come up against things she won't have told you about. Now you know there are all kinds of churches and over the ocean, there's plumb different kinds of religion, but there has to be just one God. What do you suppose he thinks about all these rules folks make up for worshiping him, especially when they hate and kill each over the rules? My guess is it makes him pretty sad and disgusted.”

“But people do bad things in the movies. They smoke and drink and lust and—”

“Laurie, do you know what lust is?”

Laurie flushed. “Not—not
exactly
. But it's when men and women want to do things with each other that they shouldn't till they're married.”

“Mmm.” Rosalie smothered a chuckle. “I reckon we'd better have a talk about all of that one of these days. But look, honey, there are books that have bad things in them, too. Your Mama never told you not to read, did she?”

“No, but—”

“To my way of thinkin', movies are the same way. Of course there are some you shouldn't see now and some you shouldn't see ever, prob'ly. But this afternoon—gracious, Laurie, besides the previews and newsreel, there's Donald Duck and Porky Pig cartoons, the main feature's
In Old Santa Fe
with that new singing cowboy star, Gene Autry, and the second feature is an Andy Hardy show with Mickey Rooney. Not a thing your Mama could worry about if she'd seen some movies for herself instead of taking her church's word that they're wicked.” Rosalie paused. “Now I'm not tryin' to talk you into this. You can go to the library if you want, or over to the park. If you do come in, and they start showin' something you think is wrong, just get up and go and meet us outside when the show's over.”

It was scary, doing something she'd been taught was sinful, but it was true that Mama had never seen a movie—and equally true that she'd have been scandalized had she known what was in some of the books Laurie had checked out of the library, especially those about Greek and Roman and Norse gods. But to use her own judgment instead of her mother's—oh, that made Laurie feel guilty and nervous and at the same time exhilarated as if she'd been breathing fresh, clean air real fast after having been shut up in a stale, musty closet.

I'll leave if they show anything bad, she assured herself, and followed Rosalie down the aisle just as light hit the screen. On her two other trips to town, apart from the Fourth of July, she'd seen
King Kong
and a dancing couple named Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
Flying Down to Rio
. Mama wouldn't have approved of the dancing but it was beautiful to watch and again Laurie couldn't see what was wrong about it.

She had never been able to even get saved and now she fatalistically concluded that since she couldn't go to heaven anyway, she might as well enjoy what was lovely and fun in this world—though of course she wouldn't do anything against her conscience. This line of thought was probably what Mama would have called “hardening the heart” and maybe Laurie's would wind up tough as a football, but losing herself in the world on the screen made her forget for a little while that Mama was dead and Daddy had left them.

Among the differences between Mama and Rosalie was how they used money. In the Field household, one-tenth, the tithe, would go to the tabernacle first thing of all, because it was God's. Then came food, the rent, light bill, doctor, and the most necessary clothing. If there was anything left after that, and in Laurie's memory there'd never been a time when at least one of the family wasn't in desperate need of shoes, the children got a penny to spend and Mama might slip a few coins in her “home” box.

This was a syrup tin with a slit in the top that set on top of the little tablet Mama used to write letters. She used it for another purpose, too, as Laurie found out when she was packing. Daddy must have added the coins to his money because the tin was empty but when Laurie glanced through the tablet, she found the back pages filled with plans of the home Rachel had silently longed for.

There was a sketch of the whole house, with both vegetable and flower gardens and trees, and drawings of each room with furniture marked in. A room each for Laurie and Buddy; a big kitchen with a Frigidaire and real sink; a screened-in porch with a washing machine and closet for cleaning supplies and the ironing board; a small dining room with a china cabinet and the round table; and a living room with big overstuffed armchairs, a radio, Victrola, library table with a globe; and a spare room. It was unthinkable to have a room that went unused except when there was company so this one had a daybed and dresser and housed a sewing machine and dress form. One door opened to the bathroom, which of course served everyone. A real bathroom with toilets like those at school, a sink, and tub.

“White linoleum,” Mama's girlish handwriting detailed. “Blue curtains. White and blue striped wallpaper and blue towels and bath mat.”

This glimpse of Rachel, wistful for nice things like any woman though she had never complained, stabbed Laurie then and still did. It gave her a quick flash of Mama as something other than dauntingly good with her heart and mind completely bent on heaven. It made Mama a real person who had wanted a nice home with indoor plumbing and a Frigidaire and washing machine.

Now she could never have them. No matter what Laurie did, even if she somehow won a million dollars, she couldn't give Mama anything, never in this world. Wrestling with this final part of death was what hurt worst, realizing that Mama would never smile again or see the cherry tree bloom or sit with Laurie in the night to vanquish nightmares.

Laurie burned the tablet out by the cherry tree and buried the ashes there, deep, so they wouldn't blow away. It was a private grave for the woman who'd had secret, human dreams and longings, who had lived inside the wife, mother, and Christian in the cemetery. When grief about this overwhelmed Laurie, she slipped to the barn at her first chance and played Morrigan's harmonica.

He had given her songs for every need, and his voice resonated within her as she played the Negro spirituals that seemed to hold all the sorrow in the world along with the will to endure.

No more weepin', no more weepin',

No more weepin' after while,

And before I'll be a slave,

I'll be buried in my grave,

And go home to my Lord and be free.

She sang, too, when she was doing dishes or ironing, any work that didn't need concentration, and soon Belle was singing along with her. “
Goin' to lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside, down by the riverside …”