The Longest Road (14 page)

He asked gently. “Sure you don't want to hop off and go home, boys?”

“We don't have a home,” said Laurie, relieved that he'd taken her for a boy.

She wasn't sure what that other man had wanted but evidently being a boy hadn't mattered. She was wearing overalls and had hacked her hair off with Buddy's jackknife in one of the warehouses. Knowing that they could never catch a moving car, Laurie and Buddy had crept on while the railroad detectives flourished their billy clubs at the hoboes and told them they weren't going to ride. Huddled in the dark corner, Laurie and Buddy hadn't been seen by the brakeman who'd poked in his head to look for tramps just before the train blew its whistle, shuddered mightily, and began to chug.

“No home?” said the stranger. “You're mighty young to be ridin' the rails.”

“I'm fourteen, mister,” Laurie said.

That wasn't as whopping a lie as the one she'd written in her note to Rosalie, saying that she'd met family friends from Prairieville who were heading for California and offered to take her and Buddy. “You've been mighty good to us, Rosalie,” Laurie had concluded on the note she'd written in the rest room before going back down the dark aisle of the movie and whispering to Rosalie that her stomach hurt and she was going to wait in the truck.

Collecting Buddy, whom Rosalie thought was sitting with the boys, Laurie hurried to the truck and left the note on Rosalie's seat before scrambling up in the back and tossing down her bundle and Buddy's, which she'd hid under gunnysacks the night before. The double feature wouldn't be over for two more hours and by then the westbound train should be roaring through Texas.

“We just have to go to Daddy,” Laurie had finished the note. “Will you keep our books and things and the bird quilt and Mama's cedar chest till we can get them? We won't need our winter clothes so the kids can wear them. I want you to have the ruby glass pitcher and sugar bowl. Please don't worry about us. We'll be fine.”

To the curious stranger in the boxcar, Laurie finished explaining. “Our mother died so we're going out to find our dad. He's working in California.”

“Sho', young'uns, California's a big state.” The stranger shook his head so forcefully that his moustache jerked. “Don't you know whereat he is?”

“A place called Eden.”

“I bin there. Might be Eden if you owned one of them big farms but it's a sight more like hell if you're workin' on one.”

Buddy looked scared. It frightened Laurie, too, but she shrugged. “Guess it can't be much worse than pulling cotton. Least if we were picking fruit, we could eat some.”

“Sho'. That's why so many babies and little kids die out there. All they get to eat's fresh fruit and maybe some beans. Empties out their guts.”

“We'll be with our dad,” Laurie said. “That's the main thing.”

“Sho'. He'll be glad to see you. What's your names?”

“I'm Larry Field. My brother's real name is Edwin but we call him Buddy.”

“Pleased to meet you.” The man put out a leathery hand and shook theirs in turn. Laurie noticed that both his hands had livid patches like the one on the side of his face. “I'm Wayburn Kirkendall, Way for short. First time you hopped a freight?”

Laurie nodded. She was already hoping it was the last. These men scared her. Several had produced bottles and a couple of card games were in progress. Murder and cursing God were the worst sins, next came stealing and adultery, lying, swearing, drinking, smoking, dancing, and playing cards. Less heinous were going to movies and reading worldly books and magazines. Most of the hoboes were committing as many sins as they could all at once, and in the dim light, with cigarette smoke curling around them and filling the air, they looked like denizens of hell.

“Well, you just stay close to me and I'll look out for you,” the crinkly-haired man offered. He eyed their bundles. “Don't happen to have some grub?”

Ever since her decision to leave, Laurie had saved food that would keep, enough, she hoped, to get them to Daddy, because the only money they had was the nickel she'd saved last week and the one she'd kept today, a dollar that Buddy still had hoarded from his nickel-a-rabbit bonanza, and his nickel from today. She had been tempted to take three dollars from Rosalie's jar to make up for the three dollars Daddy had sent, but her conscience insisted that Rosalie had spent a whole lot more than that on them.

Now, at their self-appointed protector's hungry stare, Laurie got a lard pail from her bundle. The one in Buddy's things held the same assortment—buttered cornbread and biscuits, some smeared with jelly or molasses; boiled eggs; molasses cookies and gingerbread saved from school lunches; and several pieces of fried rabbit tucked away from last night's supper.

The rabbit wouldn't keep long and was intended for tonight's supper, but there seemed to be no time in this boxcar rumbling across the plains, and no place, either. In this curious passage between real places where there were real times, it didn't matter when they ate. Laurie offered the man the rabbit after handing Buddy a piece. By the time she'd put some biscuits and corn-bread on the pail lid, the rabbit had disappeared.

It was stringy, Laurie told herself. Goodness, if the man was that hungry … She and Buddy ate a biscuit apiece while their guest demolished four and longingly gazed at the pail. Their food wouldn't last to California at this rate, but she and Buddy had eaten big hamburgers that noon, and big breakfasts.

Laurie got out some gingerbread, broke off a third for Buddy, and gave the man the rest before firmly putting the lid back on the pail and shoving it into her bundle between her new dress, which was rolled up inside her other pair of overalls and plaid shirt, and one of Mama's quilts—not the one with birds, which Rosalie had put away in her trunk to keep it nice.

A couple of washrags, an old towel, soap, toothbrush, comb, Mama's New Testament, Morrigan's harmonica—that was all Laurie had, and now the things she'd left at Grandpa's seemed many and infinitely dear, the bird quilt, books, ruby dishes, and the little cedar chest with the lavaliere, grandmother's tortoise-shell combs, and locks of hair.

How she'd ached when she brought them from the Model T and put them in the apple crate, saw everything left of their home packed into that box to be kept under the bed! She'd have felt rich if she had them with her now, just as it wouldn't have been quite so terrible to leave Prairieville if they could have taken the round table where the family had gathered for so many meals, and the carved rocker that had been Mama's mother's.

If you moved enough, like these men, you soon wouldn't carry any of the little things that made a home and reminded you who you were. Maybe some people, like Morrigan, could carry all they needed to stay real in their heads but most couldn't. In order to believe they were who they thought they were, folks needed a home with things you couldn't pack in suitcases—and a family, and a town or a piece of land.

This was just one boxcar on one train. How many other trains all over the country were carrying men like this, men scattered from their roots like the dead, powdered dust of the prairies?

“Can you play that mouth organ I saw in your stuff?” Way asked hopefully. Morrigan had ridden in many a boxcar. Certainly he must have played his guitar, and the harmonica, too.

“I can't play very well,” Laurie said.

“It'll sound better'n the wind howlin' through the cracks and these guys' dirty jokes and cussin'.”

Laurie suspected that Way was more concerned with protecting her and Buddy's ears than with the quality of her performance. That was nice of him. Besides, playing always summoned Morrigan, and that was the most comforting thing in the world.

As she played, one of the drinkers stuck his bottle in his things and moved closer. A card game broke up. Before long, everyone in the car was listening, humming, or singing along to the songs they knew. When Laurie stopped to rest, they praised her and clamored for more.

“You know ‘The Ludlow Massacre'?” Way asked.

“No, but if you sing it I can probably get the tune pretty close.”

“Ain't got much of a voice, but it's a song you'd ought to know 'cause it sure happened.” Way glanced around at the men. “You older fellers should've heard tell of Ludlow.”

“Hell, yes,” shouted, one grizzled man over the chorus of assent. “That was when John D. Rockefeller hired scabs to break the miners' strike up in southern Colorado in 1913—brought in gunmen and militia with tear gas and machine guns. Somethin' touched off fightin' and when it was over, there were thirty-three on the miners' side shot dead or burned to death.”

That
had happened in the United States? Just over in Colorado? Daddy would have been about Buddy's age then, but he'd never mentioned it. Well, maybe a person wouldn't. Maybe it was something to forget as quick as you could.

“Half of 'em were women and kids, and there was a hundred more hurt bad,” growled a big redheaded man in stained clothes that smelled like oil. “My uncle got shot in his tent, and his wife burned to a crisp when the camp caught fire.”

“I was there, too.” Way held up his scarred hands and touched the pale scar on his face. “I was eighteen. Worked with my dad in the mine. We wanted shorter hours, wanted to buy groceries wherever they were best and cheapest, not at the company store. Wanted our union recognized. But John D., he said it was against his principles to do that. Wasn't against his principles to kill us, though. Well, here's the song.”

It was long, it was bitter and Laurie still didn't want to think such a thing could happen in this country. But she saw Way's scarred hands and face, heard grief and rage in the thready, rasping voice, and had to believe, so she locked the words in her mind.

A scrawny man in bib overalls who had a slower drawl than Oklahomans asked if she knew “Seven-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat.” After that, a chubby blond kid who said he was from Arkansas sang “Cotton Mill Colic” and they wound up with the songs colored folks had made to ease their hard times, “Ain't Gonna Study War No More,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “No More Mournin'”—all the ones Laurie knew and the others could remember.

It had been dark a long time when Way said, “Larry's tired, boys. Reckon it's time to turn in.”

Most of the men came up to thank her, looming shadows, who weren't so scary now that they'd sung together. The music that had joined them for a while gave them weight and substance the way rain might gradually get that pulverized dust to cling to other pieces and turn into real earth again, earth that would stay where it belonged and grow things.

A man she'd heard boast about the farm he used to have in Tennessee gave her a bottle of orange pop. One who'd talked about all the wheat he'd raised in Nebraska gave her a whole Milky Way candy bar. There wasn't much of a way to brush teeth and Mama had trained them not to eat at night after that chore, so Laurie stowed the treats away in her bundle.

She and Buddy each had a quart jar of water but they'd drunk most of it so Laurie didn't squander any by washing. From the sounds, she knew men were going to the boxcar door and urinating. Way took Buddy over and held on to him so he wouldn't fall out while trying to squirt past the train. Laurie couldn't do that though she felt ready to burst. She'd just have to wait till she could get off the train.

It was warm enough to do without cover so she doubled her quilt and Buddy's, spread them on the floor, and mounded their extra clothes under the top quilt for pillows.

After taking off her shoes, she lay facing the side, figuring that Way would bed down on between Buddy and the rest of the men, which, in fact, he did. Long after he was snoring, Laurie dozed only fitfully, afraid that if she really went to sleep, she'd lose control of her bladder.

After what seemed forever, the train lessened its speed and churned to a jerky stop. Laurie tested each step before she put her weight down, making her way as quietly as she could to the door. A few lights far up ahead looked like a small town.

She scrambled down to the cinders. Not daring to go far in case the train started, she let down her suspenders and squatted a little way from the door. Feeling much better, light enough to float, she got hold of the door, swung up one leg and dragged herself into the car as the train lurched into motion.

Blessedly comfortable now, lulled by the sound and Way's presence, she smiled to think of how glad Daddy would be to see them. Of course, he'd worry about not having a nice house for them, but once they were together, he was bound to see that was what mattered most. They'd be a family again, the way Mama wanted. Curling up with that thought, she slept more peacefully than she had since the night Morrigan camped with them.

Sometimes the train pulled onto a siding to let what Way had called a highball, a train with the right of way, thunder past. In different railroad yards, some cars were shunted onto sidings and others added. The population of the boxcar changed, too, as hoboes got off or jumped on. As it got light, Laurie saw that the way they got on a moving freight was to toss in their gear, run along by the car, and then grasp the door or ladder and spring aboard. One inexperienced boy tried to jump on from where he stood and was knocked backwards, sprawling in the cinders.

“He's lucky,” Way said at Laurie's cry. “Could've gone under the wheels.”

That started the men telling of gruesome deaths they'd seen along the railroads, men hanging between cars till their numb hands gave way and they fell, leaping from car to car and missing, catching a door wrong and getting jerked beneath. Laurie began to shiver. Way cut in at the next pause.

“Say, any of you fellers ever attend the Hobo College in Chicago?”

“I got a diploma from it.” A big, burly, white-haired man brought out a shabby wallet and carefully produced a ragged piece of paper that was split at the creases. “Why, I was on the debating team that whipped the team from the University of Chicago—what chance did those kids have against guys who lived by their wits?” He peered at the diploma though it was too dark to read. “Says right here I ‘attended the lectures, discussions, musicals, readings, and visits to art galleries and theaters.'”