The Longest Road (23 page)

“Swap your Packard?” Way asked, folding up his legs.

Mr. Redwine jerked his head toward the garage. “That's my California car. This one's for Arizona and New Mexico, where there's lots of unpaved roads. In the rainy season, from July to September, I've got an old Chevy truck that can get through most of the washes unless they're flooding.”

This car either didn't have a radio or Mr. Redwine was too busy steering the car once the paving gave out. In either case, Laurie was grateful that he wasn't exhorting her to learn his music. She wished he'd say more about her becoming a musican, though she didn't want to ask. Maybe the conversation would lead around to it.

Only there wasn't much conversation beyond Mr. Redwine's cussing. They couldn't go much more than ten miles an hour on the bumpy road, which seemed to be either sand or jaggedy rocks or both at the same time. A tire went flat about an hour outside Kingman.

“Guess you know how to change a tire, Wayburn.” Mr. Redwine had looked tired when he picked them up. Now his face was red and dripping sweat where it hadn't caked with dust. “There's two spares in the trunk.”

“Never had a car,” said Way. “Reckon you'll have to show me.”

Mr. Redwine said some words Laurie hadn't heard before, even from hoboes on the train. “Have to drive and change tires, too! That's a helluva note! Get out, you kids. No use having to jack up your weight, too!”

Way fixed the next flat while Mr. Redwine smoked cigarettes and didn't even wave back at families packed into ancient trucks and flivvers that rattled past with everything from trunks to a piano tied on top or lashed onto the running boards. This might be a highway but it was about the worst road Laurie had ever seen, through the harshest country. The desert stretched to sawtooth mountains and what looked like ancient gray volcano peaks. The banks of the washes were streaked with red and green and gray. God might live here, or the devil, but it wasn't for humans.

Nor was the cliff-edged mesa country into which they ascended, a vast high tableland where wind whipped dark evergreens into tortured shapes, yet Mr. Redwine told them the highway ran through the corner of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. What had to be pronghorn antelope skimmed through the high grass, flashing white rump patches. There had been herds of them on the Kansas and Oklahoma plains, Daddy said, till they were hunted out or died because they wouldn't jump fences to get to water or feed. The prairie must have been beautiful then—forever stretches of grass and wild flowers like that tiny strip between fields and schoolyard she'd called the Little Prairie.

“Mountain sheep.” Mr. Redwine nodded at white creatures poised along a precarious rock ledge.

Just around the curve, a Model A was pulled over to the side. A blond lady nursed her baby while several little ones ran and squealed as they gathered pinecones. A skinny, sunburned man in overalls was struggling to jack up the front.

“Let's stop and give him a hand, Mr. Redwine,” urged Way.

“He'll manage.”

“But the woman and kids—”

“Oh, some other Okies'll come along and help them,” shrugged Redwine. He sent Way a hard glance. “It's my car and I'm driving. I'll decide when we stop.”

“'Cept when you have a flat.”

Mr. Redwine slewed his head toward Way as Laurie, looking over her shoulder, cried out in relief, “A truck's stopping.”

“I told you,” shrugged Redwine. “That kind look out for each other.”

“Now ain't it damned lucky they do?” said Way dryly.

When it seemed they would never see another human being, they came to a little village called Peach Springs and pulled in at the trading post from whence dirt tracks ran off in all directions. A couple of old trucks were parked beside mules and ponies. Dark-skinned men in overalls, trousers, and ordinary shirts lounged in the shade.

“Shucks!” sighed Buddy. “They're dressed just like anybody else.”

Laurie was disappointed, too. These were the first “real” Indians she'd ever seen—people like Rosalie and Morrigan who lived like everybody else didn't seem Indian, though Laurie wasn't sure exactly what Indians could be like in these times. Daddy had worked with Indian cowboys up in South Dakota, and there were lots of Indians in eastern Oklahoma, but she hadn't realized that some groups still lived mostly on reservations and didn't mix with whites the way they had in Oklahoma. It began to dawn on her that Indian tribes could be as different from each other as European nations.

“How do the Hual—Indians make a living?” she asked Mr. Redwine.

He snorted. “Government handouts mostly, you can bet. But there's deer and antelope and mountain sheep to hunt, and rabbits, naturally. Their agent says they even eat porcupines and badgers and gather nuts and acorns, berries and grapes, and they use a lot of kinds of cactus. Down in the canyons, they grow little patches of corn, squash, melons, beans.” He spat out the window. “About twenty years ago the government started giving them cattle so they could build up herds.” He added grudgingly, “The agent says they're doing pretty well with that.”

The white trader ordered a young Indian helper to patch the innertubes of the two tires in the trunk. Redwine selected a Coca-Cola from a tub of water-cooled soft drinks. “Want one?” he asked Laurie.

“Thanks, Mr. Redwine, we've got some money.” She said to Way, “Let me pay for our drinks, Gramp. You've been working for our food and ride and room.”

She got a 7UP, Buddy chose a Hires root beer, and Way pulled out a pale green Coke bottle. Laurie looked around for something the Hualapai had made, but except for some pitch-daubed baskets patterned in red and a blanket that looked like it was woven from strips of rabbit hide, the shelves and counters were piled with bolts of bright cloth, ready-made garments, shoes, felt and straw hats, blankets, canned foods, farm implements, tools, dishes, pans, and lamps—everything people would need from the outer world that ran through this edge of their high, wild one.

Seligman, with its ore cars and cattle pens and loading chutes near the railroad, was the only town till they pulled into Ash-fork with the road winding up the great hill above it. Laurie stared at a long, two-story building with arches supporting a balconied roof that stretched all along the front. “Is—is that a palace?” she whispered.

Redwine laughed. “Nope. It's the Escalante—a Harvey House. There was one smart Englishman. When he took the Santa Fe out west back in the 1870s, the food was so awful that he made a deal with the railroad. The Santa Fe would build the fancy restaurants and furnish 'em, bring in food, and pay the help's wages. Harvey hired French chefs and saw that every restaurant served the best of everything. The pretty waitresses got married so fast that he took to hiring plain ones, but they all had to be decent women and I guess they were watched after stricter than nuns.” Redwine grinned. “I don't have to compete with the Escalante. After all, they can't service trucks.”

Way got the sign painted before dark while Buddy roamed and Laurie washed out their dirty clothes and finished patching the dry ones. She'd never expected to treasure scissors, needles, and thread, but now she did, and kept them in the paper bag the store had given her. It gave her a good feeling to acquire things she'd taken for granted at home but which made all the difference in keeping respectable looking. Mama always said a patch or darn was no disgrace but a hole was.

There weren't many customers in the café that evening, but several tanned young cowboys taught Laurie a rollicking song about some cowboys riding home drunk from Prescott who met the devil, roped and branded him, and tied knots in his tail. “Gail Gardner made it up while he was bound for Washington, D.C., on the Santa Fe, fixin' to join up in the World War,” said one of the men. “My daddy worked cattle with him on the Mogollon Rim and Gail was one of the best. Postmaster over to Prescott, he is now.”

The song delighted Laurie. She got them to sing it till she had the words and valued the lesson more than the quarter and half-dollar they left for her when they jingled out. As Way and the children walked to the last cabin in the row, Buddy started singing the song. He had learned it, too! His boy's voice thinned here and there but it was clear and sweet.

Laurie gave him a jubilant hug. “Buddy! If you can sing while I play, we'll be twice as good!”

Wresting free, Buddy protested. “I can't learn all them songs, Laurie!”

“
Those
songs. Of course you can—most, anyway. We can practice in the car if Mr. Redwine doesn't mind. If he does, we'll practice at night. Just think! You'll have your own money again.”

That brightened him considerably. “Do I get half?”

Laurie thought a minute. “Yes, if you buy your clothes and a share of groceries and whatever else we have to spend.”

Buddy groaned. “I don't want to worry about all that! How much can I have to spend on good stuff like funnies and gum and candy and drinks and ice cream?”

Laurie glanced up at Way but he just grinned. “Well, Buddy,” she thought aloud, trying to impress him with the facts of existence, “we all need clothes. We have to eat once Way's job with Mr. Redwine's over. When we get to Texas, we'll need to rent a place to live. It depends on how much we earn, too. The Kingman truckers gave us four dollars and ten cents. Tonight we only got a dollar and a quarter.” Hastily, she added, “But that's good—and we have to be real grateful—when a man can work hard all day for a dollar.”

“How much do I get?” Buddy persisted.

Way whooped. Aggravated, but giving up on educating her brother anytime soon, Laurie said, “Let's try fifteen cents.”

That would have been riches to Buddy before the recent windfalls but now he wheedled. “What if we get—oh,
five
dollars? What if someone puts money in
my
bib pocket?”

“You've been spending some they put in mine.”

“Yeah, but you're a lot older than me!”

“That's why I have to look out for you and why I can't let you blow money we need.”

Buddy pouted as they entered the cabin. “Why should I sing when you'll give me almost as much if I don't?”

“You ought to like to sing! You should want to earn your money—and if you won't, then I'm not going to give it to you!”

“You—you're a mean old—” Buddy groped for a name bad enough and came up with one W. S. Redwine had hurled at their flat tires. “You're a mean, stingy old sow bitch!”

“Buddy!” Way caught the boy's shoulders and stared down at him till Buddy stopped trying to twist away and hung his head. “You think that's the way to talk to your sister?”

Reddening till Laurie's outrage turned to pity for him, Buddy finally, reluctantly, shook his head. “Then,” said Way, stern with either of them for the first time, “don't you reckon you'd better tell her you're sorry?”

Tears glinted in Buddy's eyes. As Way released him, he rubbed his sleeve across his face. “I-I'm sorry,” he snuffled. “I didn't mean it, Laurie. You're not a—”

“Don't say it,” she cut in swiftly. “Mama would hate to hear you talk that way.”

“I'll sing,” he promised in a small voice. “We can practice right now if you want to learn me some.”

“
Teach
,” Laurie sighed. “You learn and I'll teach.” She sat down on the cot and got out her harmonica though she was so tired that she wanted to go right to bed. “All right. Let's try it.”

Before they turned in, they had the words and music sounding right together, and if Buddy wasn't having fun, his zest was deceiving. Apparently, he'd picked up parts of Morrigan's songs, too, and it wasn't hard to work up “So Long, It's Been Good to Know You” and several of the spirituals.

“Sounds mighty good,” nodded Way. “Why, you kiddos might get as famous as the Carter Family!”

Somehow, Laurie couldn't imagine Buddy singing as a career but she couldn't picture him doing anything else, either, except hunting rabbits. She was asleep the moment she stretched out on the cot.

12

Grassy meadows grazed by deer and antelope overlay ancient lava flows that here and there spread in terraces or jutted up like frozen waves. Pines, some bearing scars of lightning or fire, reared tall and straight into the sky, often so close together that there were no or few branches till close to the top, where they at last found the sun. A few yellow leaves still clung to graceful silver-trunked trees that were surrounded by a golden carpet.

“Is that a
bear?
” Buddy gasped as a dark hulk ambled unhurriedly into a thicket.

“Plenty of them up here,” said Mr. Redwine. He had vanished into a cabin last night and they hadn't seen him till they were finishing breakfast when he came in the café, bleary-eyed and unshaven, to drink three cups of black coffee. “Mountain lions, too, but you could live here all your life and never see one.”

A little east of Williams, cinder cones rose against the sky, their fervent heat extinguished millennia ago. Had that been one end of the World? Did it end over and over and make itself again all fresh and new?

This high world was so beautiful, so green and cool and different from the desert and plains, that Laurie feasted her eyes, unwilling to practice songs with Buddy while they had all this to see and admire.

“San Francisco Peaks.” Mr. Redwine flicked his thumb toward a vast mountain with three separate crests thrust into the clouds, glistening with snow. “It's an old volcano. Fire and ice wore down the crater edge till it looks like that.”

It was a shock when the forest abruptly gave way to substantial buildings of brick, stone, and wood fronting the wide streets of Flagstaff. It really was a city, the biggest Laurie had ever seen, except from the train. Signs announced a teacher's college, an observatory, and a museum. There were many church spires, a depot for the Santa Fe Railroad, an imposing Harvey House, and all kinds of nice big stores.