The Longest Road (22 page)

Swallowing hard and blinking, Laurie said, “Do you have the sign done, Way?”

11

Next morning, Martha kept flipping hot buckwheat cakes onto their plates till they begged her to stop. So full they could scarcely wiggle, Laurie and Buddy sipped their second glasses of milk while Way got started on the sign, which had been taken down from over the garage so he could do a better job than if he were hanging on a ladder. Last night, he'd painted over the old lettering so the background would be good and dry today.

Laurie had cut his hair and he had shaved and shaped his moustache so that he looked like a different person, years younger and, if not exactly handsome, interesting. He'd evened up Laurie's hair and she'd trimmed Buddy's. The clothing they'd washed and rinsed in the tub and draped around the bathroom was now on a clothesline Martha had said they could use. The desert sun should dry even the overalls before it was time to go.

W. S. Redwine wasn't to be seen, and that increased Laurie's appetite. As soon as she and Buddy drank the last of their milk, they thanked Martha and went out to see how Way was doing. Of his several ideas, the one Mr. Redwine chose was:

DUB
'
S TRUCK
-
INNS

FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

Square meals—square deals

Your truck will be glad you stopped!

Way had used a pencil to mark the words and rough in a cloud cradling a pillow with a smiling, slumbering man's head and shoulders. He was painting the cloud now. It looked soft and fleecy against the light blue background, trailing off fluffily behind where some of the black lettering would be.

“It's going to beautiful, Way!” said Laurie.

He stepped back, cocking his head. “It'll do.”

Martha came out with a cup of coffee for him and a rag he could hold it with. “That cloud and pillow would make anyone sleepy, much less a trucker coming in off the dirt stretch of sixty-six.” She shook her frizzy red head admiringly and widened her green eyes. “I declare, Mr. Kirkendall, you got a talent.”

Why, she was flirting! And Way was grinning, shy and pleased as a youngster. Laurie tugged at Buddy's sleeve and hustled him off. “Buddy, if you'll go to the post office—see, it's right over there with the flag flying—and get me a stamped three-cent envelope, you can have a dime to spend.”

“A dime!”

Poor Buddy, fallen from the glory of his nickel-a-rabbit days! Probably, in a boomtown, he could run errands after school or find some way of earning a little spending money. Laurie smiled at him, digging a dime and nickel out of her pocket. “You can keep the two cents change from the envelope nickel, too.”

“Why do you need an envelope?” Buddy's mouth quivered. “We-we ain't got anyone to write to.”

“
Don't
have anyone,” Laurie corrected. “Goodness, Buddy, try to talk right or you'll get put back when you start school. We do too have someone to write! Have you forgotten Rosalie, how nice she was to us?”

Buddy scuffed his almost new shoe on the gravel. “
She
was. But Grandpa didn't like us worth shucks.”

“Well, I'm not writing to him. But in case Halsells didn't get to write, I have to tell Rosalie about—about Daddy.” Tears welled suddenly in Laurie's eyes and her throat ached.
Oh, Mama, is Daddy with you? He must be even if he was backslid because he kept that little boy from drowning. If we'd just got there in time to see him
—
if he hadn't left us
—
if you hadn't died
—Getting hold of herself, Laurie gulped and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “I want to let Rosalie know we're all right. It's not fair to worry her. Now you go get that envelope.”

Writing about Daddy was one of the hardest things Laurie had ever done, only it seemed there'd been lots of hard things since Mama died so you'd think she'd be getting used to it. Her eyes kept blurring. She tried to keep her face wiped, but tears still spotted the tablet paper.

At the end of the second page, she wrote that they'd been sort of adopted by a real nice man who'd lost his family and that she and Buddy would soon be back in school. Taking the three dollar bills out of her bib, Laurie smoothed and folded them carefully. She had seen some beautiful plaid shirts in the mercantile yesterday evening and both pairs of her overalls had sprung holes in the knees during the journey. If people at the Ashfork truck center were as generous as the ones last night, she could send Rosalie money from there.

But she still couldn't believe that the harmonica was a reliable way of earning anything. Just because she'd been lucky so far, she mustn't count on it. “Pay God first,” Daddy used to say, setting aside the ten-percent tithe from his wages. Laurie figured God could take care of himself, no better a job than he'd done looking after her family and plenty of other folks, but Rosalie was different.

Laurie sighed and poked the dollars in the envelope. “This is to pay back a little of what you spent on us,” she finished. “I'll send more when I can and write sometimes. Thanks for being so good to us when we weren't really any kin, and don't worry about us, we're going to be just fine. Please save the bird quilt and cedar chest and books and Buddy's things, but it's all right for the kids to read the books. We'll come see you sometime and get them.” But not till she was grown up enough that Grandpa couldn't make her stay there and be a sharecropper and fight off his landlord's son.

Buddy dropped the envelope on the table and scooted off to spend his money. Laurie sealed the letter, cupped cold water to her swollen eyes, and started for the post office. As she passed Cabin 1, W. S. Redwine stepped out. Before he shut the door, Laurie glimpsed a dark-haired woman in the bed, sprawled out buck naked. Laurie had never seen a naked human except when she'd helped Mama change Buddy's diapers or bathe him. The hair on the woman's crotch was dark, too, which shocked Laurie as much as the large purplish nipples on the big breasts. Did all grown-up women have hair on that place? Rosalie hadn't said anything about that. Had Mama—?

Ashamed at even wondering, Laurie ducked her head and hurried past, muttering a response to Mr. Redwine's yawned greeting. He caught up with her in a long stride. His shadow blocked the sun. He wasn't as tall as Way or Morrigan or Daddy but he was a lot heavier. Somehow he reminded Laurie of a mass of rock.

“Martha told me you had quite a concert last night. Truckers gave you a bunch of change.”

Laurie didn't want to talk to him but she couldn't resist saying, “They liked my music.”

He raised a thick shoulder. “Hell, kid, they liked
you
. Most truckers are family men.”

“Daddy was a trucker after we lost our farm.” Of course Daddy had carried food Mama packed for him and slept in the truck. He couldn't afford to eat in a café, much less rent a cabin. Those sketches of Mama's dream house had made Laurie achingly aware of how much her mother had gone without, but she hadn't thought much about Daddy.

Now, with a flood of grief—and guilt, too, for having hated him when he hit her and left her and Buddy at Grandpa's, she understood a little of how hard Daddy had worked for them, how desperately he had tried to take care of his family.

She wished she could tell him that. Wished she could hug him and say that she loved him. Laurie averted her face so W. S. Redwine couldn't see her tears.

“Well,” he said, “just like your pa missed you boys, other truckers miss their kids. That was part of why they filled up your pocket even if you didn't know the latest songs.” He stroked his stubbled boxlike jaw. “But the other part is you're good—you could make a musician.”

Laurie's heart leaped. She didn't like this man but he was a good enough businessman to have centers spread out over several states. He was probably richer than the banker or anyone else back in Prairieville and he'd been a lot of places. Mama would have called him worldly but that meant he should pretty well know what people liked even if he'd guessed wrong about the truckers.

What kind of musician? she wanted to ask. Good enough to play on street corners or—He couldn't mean she could ever be like the
real
musicians you heard on the radio or phonograph, Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry, Kate Smith, Jeannette MacDonald, stars like that.

Before she could figure out a way to find out what he thought without making a fool of herself, he said, “You can all have your lunch at the café. Be ready to leave right after that.” Without looking at her, he turned toward the café and moved over to see how Way was doing.

Laurie went to the post office, wishing he had said more. Maybe he would on the way to Ashfork. She didn't know what she wanted to do when she grew up. She loved to read and learn things but you couldn't get paid for doing that unless, maybe, you went to college and became a teacher. You could teach even if you were a married woman. It would be wonderful to have a job. That way there might be enough money for things a family needed and if a husband was mean or took to drinking like Floyd, you could move out and support yourself. Even Mama had said it was a shame Margie couldn't do that.

Apart from teaching, women were clerks and waitresses and secretaries, or they took in ironing or sewed. If you married a farmer, you raised chickens and had a big garden and helped with the milking and crops and cooked for harvest hands if the land was planted to wheat. That kind of life would be fine if you had your own farm—
not
mortgaged—and had a good husband, but you wouldn't have any money of your own unless your husband let you keep the butter and egg money.

Was it possible that she, Laurie Field, blown like the dust clear across the country from the little town of Prairieville, could make her living with music? Wouldn't that make Morrigan proud of her? She was so excited at the idea that she floated to the post office, but came down to earth with the reality of the holes in her overalls.

Ignoring the lovely plaid shirts in the mercantile, she bought blue ticking remnant that would serve for patching. As she left the mercantile, Buddy trotted out of the drugstore licking a chocolate ice-cream cone and hugging a Superman comic book.

“Come back to the cabin,” she said. “We're going to read the New Testament before you get into that funny book.”

“It ain't—it's not Sunday!”

“We missed Sunday because we were on the train. We'll make it up now.”

Buddy scowled but evidently remembered he wouldn't have the comic if Laurie hadn't given him some money. He consoled himself by running his tongue around the cone so none of the ice cream would drip and be wasted.

Laurie recited Daddy's favorite Psalm, the Twenty-third, which she knew by heart, and read Daddy's favorite story about the Good Samaritan, and the place where Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

Buddy snuffled a little. “Is this a kind of fun'ral for Daddy?”

Laurie shook her head. “No, it's just—remembering.” She didn't feel able to make up a fitting prayer so she prompted Buddy through the familar chant of the Lord's Prayer.

He sprawled then on the bed with Superman. Laurie took the butcher knife out of Way's inside jacket pocket, which he had lined till it was sort of a sheath. She sewed on the buttons and mended the frayed cuffs before fetching their clean clothes from the clothesline and starting the patches.

Mama had always kept their clothes in repair but Rosalie never got past fixing Grandpa's garments, so that summer Laurie had progressed from awkward, pigeon-track, quarter-inch stitches to smaller, neater ones. What her patching lacked in delicacy it made up for in strength. She stitched till she was sure the patches would outwear the surrounding cloth. And all the time her head churned over Mr. Redwine's careless remark.

A musician! Was it possible—could she be a
real
one?

Way finished the sign well before noon so W. S. Redwine had him paint a new menu board to go above the counter and retouch the faded numerals on the cabins. “Eat up, kiddos,” Way urged, sliding into the booth across from them. He smelled pungently of the turpentine he'd used to clean himself and his brushes. “Redwine owes us a good feed!”

“He sure does,” agreed Martha. She'd done something to her hair so it wasn't nearly as frizzy and her green eyes were a bit wistful. “That's a wonderful sign, Mr. Kirkendall. If Dub weren't as tight as shrunk rawhide, he'd pay you some cash on top of your board and a ride to where he's headed anyhow.”

“We'll take it out in chow.” Way twinkled at her. Laurie thought again how different he looked with a haircut and shave. That wasn't all of it, though. Instead of slouching, he walked proud and his voice was confident instead of apologetic. “While I was paintin' that menu, I had plenty of time to figger out that I wanted chicken-fried steak with gravy and smashed potatoes, green beans, lots of coffee with cream, and a big chunk of pecan pie. That is, if it won't get you in trouble?”

“Dub'll never know it,” Martha said.

“Where is he? He said he wanted to take out of here by one o'clock sharp.”

“He's having dessert in his room.” Martha gave Way a slow wink and Laurie blushed, guessing that the naked woman with that interesting patch of hair was still in Cabin 1. “He'll be raring to go at one, though,” Martha warned, “so I'll tell Jim to hurry that steak. Now, boys, how about you?”

They were waiting outside the café when a somewhat battered green Pontiac swung up beside them. “Hop in,” called Mr. Redwine.

These seat covers were a scratchy kind of checked fabric and there wasn't much room after the bundles were stowed in back with Laurie and Buddy, but it was still far ahead of the old Model T and it didn't have to be cranked.