The Longest Road (20 page)

“We're much obliged to you, mister,” Way said to the lanky old man. “Mighty good of you to offer, but we're headed for Texas and Holbrook is a good chunk of the way.”

“Why, sure,” their would-be benefactor nodded. “You better ride far as you can at one crack, 'specially with the kids. Good luck.”

“Same to you,” said Way.

The lady came out of the kitchen with two sacks that gave out delicious smells and a bottle of milk that she handed to Laurie. “Cinnamon rolls and fried chicken,” she said. “You folks be careful now!”

“That's way too much!” protested Laurie, reaching in her pocket. “Please, we'd like to pay.”

“That pretty sign's worth every bite,” said the woman.

“Let me give you a song, then,” Laurie said. She got out Morrigan's harmonica and played “So Long, It's Been Good to Know You.” The lady didn't know the words, of course, but they were true.

10

It seemed almost sacrilege to deposit their scruffy bundles in the spacious carpeted floor of the back of the Packard, or sink down in seats covered with butterscotch-colored suede leather so soft it felt like velvet. Laurie's awed delight was penetrated by the stranger's hearty voice.

“Guess it's time we got acquainted.” It must have been a trick of the light but those yellow eyes seemed to blaze as the man settled heavily behind the wheel. This buggy didn't need cranking. It was the first car Laurie had ever ridden in that had a starter. As the motor throbbed eagerly, the driver swung the big, fancy car onto the highway. “I'm W. S. Redwine.”

“I'm Wayburn Kirkendall and these are my grandkids, Larry and Bud Field.”

“Their mother must be your daughter.”

Laurie squirmed and waved a last time at the nice café lady. She hoped Mr. Redwine wouldn't get too curious. She wasn't good at lying. It was a bad sin and till she'd taken on a boy's identity, she had seldom even fibbed. Buddy lied a lot to escape punishment but always gave himself away and got spanked for that on top of his original misdeed. Way, however, nodded easily.

“My onliest child,” he said in a mournful tone. “She died of dust pneumony. Her man went to pick crops in California and got drowned.” Laurie filled with scandalized admiration at how he mingled truth with invention. Probably that was the secret of lying convincingly—stick to the truth as much as possible so it wouldn't be hard to sound sincere, like Way did. “So now the kiddos are with me. I'm all they've got. My wife and their other grandparents are dead.”

“That's quite a burden, especially since you seem to be having a hard time of it. Lots of men in your fix would put the kids in an orphanage or find some good family to adopt them.”

“Not while there's breath in my carcass,” Way said fiercely.

After a pause, Mr. Redwine asked, “So you're headed for Texas? Got family there?”

“No, but I've worked in the oil fields. There's generally some kind of job in a boomtown. We'll get along.”

“I started my truck centers in Texas,” W. S. Redwine said idly. “Spread into New Mexico and kept going west. I may put one in back there in Tarry.”

“What's the need?” asked Way. “There's a café, cabins, and garage already.”

Mr. Redwine gave his shoulder a negligent hitch. “A modern center—everything new and all together—would close down those hick outfits inside a month. Local folks might go on using them but it's the highway trade that counts.”

“And I reckon you could cut prices.” Way's tone was dry. “Raise 'em again once you didn't have any competition.”

“That's business.”

If Mr. Redwine owned the café, Laurie was sure no traveler would get a bag of food like the one the lady gave them. It hurt to think of her and her husband and Seth Hanna being forced out of business in spite of the beautiful signs Way had painted. Kids weren't supposed to cut into grown-up talk, but even if it imperiled their ride, Laurie had to say, “That's a mighty mean kind of business!”

“Only kind there is.” Mr. Redwine chuckled, not the least bit upset. “Let's hear a tune on your harmonica, sonny.”

Laurie didn't want to play for him. She couldn't very well refuse when they were riding in his car but she played songs he wouldn't like and
thought
the words at him—“Ludlow Massacre,” “Seven-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat,” and “You'll Eat Pie in the Sky.”

“I'm not partial to church songs,” interrupted Mr. Redwine. The pie song used the tune of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” “Let's see what we can get on the radio.”

He fiddled with knobs, swore at the static, and finally located a music station that suited him. He tapped his fingers on the wheel to something called “The Music Goes 'Round and 'Round” and said over his shoulder, “Get the tune to that one, kid.”

She wasn't his slave. It was a silly song, but she did like a couple of the songs that followed, “Red Sails in the Sunset” and “Tumbling Tumbleweed,” though she didn't think whoever made up the last one had ever been caught out where the wind was whipping tumbleweeds across the plains. There was nothing lazy and melodic about that. She was getting the tunes in her head when Mr. Redwine switched off the radio and said, “Okay, Larry. Play it.”

She played the songs she'd liked. “Fine,” said the man, whose square shoulders bulked twice as wide as Way's. “Now how about the one I asked you to pick up?”

Laurie's mouth felt dry. “I couldn't.”

They were traveling through desert country that looked as bad as the Dust Bowl. The only cheerful thing about it was the Burma-Shave jingles on signs along the way. She didn't want to be the cause of the three of them getting thrown out by the side of the road but something told her it would be dangerous to buckle in to W. S. Redwine. Besides, Morrigan had given her his music; it seemed unfaithful to let Redwine tell her what to learn.

“Pay attention,” he said. “I'll whistle it.”

“Whistle all you want.” Way's voice was soft and drawly but something in it made Laurie think of the knife inside his coat and turned her cold. “But Larry don't have to play songs he don't like. Music's not a paid kind of thing.”

“Didn't see him turning down any cash when he was playing outside the café.”

“Larry gave his music. It was free. Anyone could listen. Folks who liked it and could afford to gave him money.”

“Since I'm giving you this ride, you'd think he could give me a song.”

“He gave you a bunch of 'em.”

“But not what I asked for.”

“That's how music is,” said Way. “Anyhow, you ain't exactly givin' us this ride, Mr. Redwine. I'm goin' to paint you a bunch of signs.” He chuckled. “Now that is business. I'll paint exactly what you want 'long as it won't get me throwed in jail.”

Redwine turned on the radio.

Snaking, twisting, hairpin curves that made Laurie's stomach lurch. She had thought the bleached Mojave Desert looked the way the world would after the angels dumped out all the vials of God's wrath but these Black Mountains of western Arizona were even worse, rock melted in hell and spewed out to harden in fantastic monster shapes.

Surrounded by layers of what Way explained were mine tailings, the old mining town of Oatman clung to a hillside. Stores and offices shaded by wooden awnings were built on one side of the highway, which was also the only street. Wooden steps led up to a plank boardwalk supported by stilts to make it level. Houses perched wherever they found a flat space, many on steep hilltops ribboned by a road or trail. Some were neatly painted but the majority were weather-beaten gray.

It was a relief to reach desert again and see a few stunted trees with small, delicate leaves a little like those of honey locusts, growing along sandy watercourses. She had seen cactus before, of course, but not some of these kinds, nor did she recognize a scrubby bush with tiny, dark green, glossy leaves and little yellow flowers, or tall, thorny wands covered with small leaves and tipped with brilliant red blooms.

“Must've rained lately,” said W. S. Redwine. “The creosote and ocotillo are blooming. Good thing we didn't get caught in it. The desert's so rocky that rain just runs off into the washes and sends a flood crashing along so fast it can catch a car and sweep it right along with it. I've sat here for a couple hours waiting for a flash flood to go down so's I could get across. And I remember when the desert road was just planks laid across the sand. If you met another car, you each kept the tires on one side up on the planks so you wouldn't get stuck.”

The road edged a range of mountains of dark rock patterned with light that glowed crimson, azure, and gold in the sunset as the Packard slowed down a little for Kingman. Here the highway passed an inspection station, where they were waved on after Mr. Redwine genially told the man that of course he wasn't carrying any California fruit. Merged with the highway, Front Street ran past warehouses, businesses, and the depot for the Santa Fe Railroad. Buddy nudged Laurie.

“Aren't you glad we're not sneakin' around the yards looking for a boxcar?” he whispered.

Laurie smiled and nodded but she wasn't sure. Even if it had been scary coming through the mountains, the Packard was a lot more comfortable than any car, truck, or train she'd ever ridden in. The cushions were so deep that they sort of hugged you so you didn't jounce around and Mr. Redwine was a good driver even if he went faster than Laurie liked, especially on those terrible curves where you looked down and saw the road coiling dizzily beneath you.

But there was something about Mr. Redwine that made her determine never to play “Begin the Beguine” or learn the songs he tried to make her play. She'd learned all of Morrigan's that she could, and had been glad to pick up tunes from tramps and hoboes, but a fear deep inside her warned that he'd take over her music if she didn't fight him, and then it wouldn't be hers anymore or Morrigan's either.

Where was Morrigan? Would she ever see him again? If it weren't for the harmonica and his songs, she'd think that she'd imagined him, dreamed him into flesh and blood during that awful trip from home to Grandpa's. Usually she wouldn't let herself yearn for him because it seemed ungrateful to want more luck in her whole life than that he'd come along the way he had, traveled with them for that day, and given them his music. It still seemed to her that he was a kind of angel Mama had sent to help them through that journey. But it would be so wonderful to see him at least one more time and he'd been heading for work in the Texas oil fields just like they were.…

W. S. Redwine swung the Packard left off the highway and parked to the side of a long stucco building with four gas pumps in front of it, a big garage on one end, and about ten cabins behind it. A metal sign over the garage, where several men were working on a truck, said
TRUCK CENTER—CAFE—CABINS
. A neon sign rearing high above the center said
DUB
'
S TRUCK CENTER
.

“Bet you can improve on that, Wayburn.” Redwine jerked his head toward the plain white sign with black lettering. “The neon catches folks at night but I need something good for daytime. Seth Hanna said you thought up that cat sign of his.”

“Well, Mr. Redwine—”

“Call me Dub.”

“Well, sir, I'd like to think it over some but how about ‘Square meals—square deals' and something about what a good rest a trucker can get here? Maybe you'd ought to think on a name for your centers so's drivers could wait for the next one. If they take a cabin, maybe you could give a discount for one at the next place.”

“That'd be a good idea where I have competition, like here. No use offering cut rates where they've got no choice, though.” Redwine stretched his blocky shoulders and got out. “Let's see if there's an empty cabin for you. Wayburn, you can do some sketches to show me before you turn in tonight. I'll pick out the best one and get you started early in the morning. I'd like to make Ashfork Junction in time for you to do that sign tomorrow evening. We run out of paving a little piece out of Kingman and it's a long day from Ashfork to Flagstaff even when the washes aren't running.”

Way grinned as he unfurled his gangly body from the Packard. “If you want the same thing on all the signs, I'll only have to think that up once.”

“Guess that café woman gave you plenty of food for supper. You can have breakfast at half price.”

Way folded his arms. “If that's how it is, then I guess you better think up what you want on your sign. You want me to figure that out, we'd ought to get our meals.”

“You think your signs are worth a ride in a Packard, a place to sleep,
and
food for the three of you?”

“Reckon you thought so or you wouldn't have offered the ride.”

“You better think up something good!” Mr. Redwine poked his head in the café. “Martha, are all the cabins full?”

A frowsy plump redhead with beautiful green eyes glanced up from pouring coffee for two men in stained khakis. “There's four empty, Mr. Redwine.”

“Okay, I'll need one and these folks'll take another.”

She hurried to the cash register and got two keys from a drawer beneath it. “There's a big bed and a cot in Number Seven,” she said, glancing curiously at Way and the children. “Cot's not made up, though.”

“No need.” Mr. Redwine didn't thank her for the keys. “They can all sleep in the bed. Save getting more sheets dirty.”

“We'll need the cot,” Way said. “My back won't take the boys' thrashin' around.”

“The brass you've got, you'd ought to be a millionaire.” The glint in W. S. Redwine's eyes seemed more appreciative than annoyed. “All right, Martha, you or Helen bring a sheet to Seven when you get around to it.” He led the way around the building to the cabins and opened Number 7 for them. “This good enough for you, Wayburn?”