The Longest Road (26 page)

“It is through town.” Redwine's voice followed Laurie as she ran back to the cabin for her bundle. “I've got two trucks there. One's usually running.”

Was he a little crazy? Surely no one else in the world would think of keeping a Packard for California, an old car for dirt roads, a Cadillac for good Texas roads, and a couple of trucks. She could understand being stingy all the way or always extravagant if you could afford it, but she guessed W. S. Redwine was the only person who had plenty of money but threw the clutch into neutral to coast far as he could without burning gas. She wondered what kind of a house he had. It was hard to imagine him living anywhere.

The Cadillac whizzed by so many oil derricks before they got to Black Spring late that afternoon that Laurie didn't see how there could be that much oil beneath the sandy drifts or the scoured underlying hardpan. Hadn't she read in her geography that oil formed from decayed plants and animals buried ages ago? At first she sort of liked the smell of oil but by the time they stopped for chili at a Dub's Truck-Inn, the oil stank like something dead to her, like the guts of the earth had rotted after men finished gashing and stripping and killing it. She felt sick at her stomach and paid for a Coke. Redwine let her and Buddy order milk but announced at the start that he wasn't providing soft drinks.

She still felt so bad that she rolled down the window for air. There was no telling what anyone as peculiar as he was might do if she threw up all over his soft leather seat and thick carpet. As soon as he stopped, she got the door open and stumbled to the side of the road. Fortunately, it was outside town. Nobody saw her except the others in the Cadillac.

Way was bending over her in seconds, awkwardly holding her head, supporting her. As soon as her stomach emptied, she felt better and stopped sweating. Way wiped her face and mouth with a raggedy handkerchief. “You all right, Lau-Larry?”

“Yes. I-I'm sorry—”

“Comes of swillin' pop.” Redwine got out of his car, which was not so shiny now. “Get your stuff and I'll show you your house.” He peered down the rutted track. “You're in luck. Hasn't been rented. See that first house after the tents, the white one?”

“Don't look no color to me,” said Way. “And it don't look very big for a family.”

“It's a three-roomer,” Redwine said indignantly. “Rents for five dollars a week furnished.”

“May be why it ain't rented,” Way grunted.

“You can start walking. I'll get the key and a truck and be there by the time you are.”

The old main part of town lay just ahead on either side of the pavement, the solid frame, stone, and brick businesses and buildings that Redwine said were raised by cotton and cattle money. Church spires rose above substantial dwellings and a turreted courthouse dominated a square. Well, that was for folks who belonged to Black Spring. But a block from the highway was a yellow brick school with a fenced playground where some boys were playing baseball. School was for everybody—at least, if you lived in a town, they had to let you come even if you got called a dirty cropper or Okie or oil-field trash.

Laurie picked up her bundle and trudged beside Way. “Cold-blooded sucker!” Way growled. “You sick but he wouldn't get his damn Caddy in the dust!”

“I think he was more scared I'd upchuck in it,” Laurie grinned. “Don't fret, Way. I feel better walking.”

Rows of tents stretched along both sides of the road, which splayed out widely in places to avoid bumpy hollows that must have been impassable after a rain. Trucks and wagons clunked and rattled past, piled high with all sizes of pipe, with barrels and tanks, engines, wheels, and all manner of mysterious gear. Some of the tents were reinforced waist-high with boards. As a couple of shouting boys burst out of one, she glimpsed a wooden floor. Chimneys stuck out of the tent tops and smoke came from some of them.

Laurie shuddered at the thought of how fast a fire could jump from tent to tent. The shacks couldn't be much sturdier but the playing youngsters and the women chatting with each other or going in and out of the half-dozen stores and cafés looked well fed and wore good clothes.

These people were on the move, just like the Okie pickers in California. Laurie had scarcely learned the names of some of the oil kids who went to school in Prairieville before they moved away. But though this was a tent-and-shanty camp, it wasn't a bit like that awful, despairing, starving place where Daddy had wound up with the Halsells.

Where were they now? Would the Model T get them to the next job? Would the little boy Daddy died to save grow up and have some kind of chance for a decent life? What would happen to Jack, who was smart, and Bernice, who hated to go to school because the town kids were mean? How come President Roosevelt didn't make the growers stop sending those lying handbills to the Dust Bowl and other places where folks were losing their jobs or farms? How come the government didn't warn people there weren't steady jobs in California? But if most of them swarmed to the oil fields, there wouldn't be enough work. It just wasn't right! If folks wanted to work, they ought to be able to, and they ought to earn enough to live decent even if the work kept them moving.

Almost as much as food and shelter, though, Laurie wanted a real home, a place to belong. Black Spring wasn't it, at least not while it was booming. When it went back to being a cattle and farming town—if it ever could, what with drought and dust—they'd have to move on to make a living. Still, there was a school. She and Buddy could go on with their educations the way Mama and Daddy had wanted.

A Chevy truck with a few muddy patches of pocked maroon rusted metal swerved around them to park by the shack with the
FOR RENT—FURNISHED
sign. About all you could say for it was that it didn't look any worse than most of the houses scattered two or three deep along the road. It was at least all made of boards, not like some that were cobbled together out of old crates, rotting wood, sheet iron, and buckets and oil barrels cut open and pounded flat. It had two cracked glass windows. One had a hole stuffed with a rag but some windows didn't have panes or screens, only gunnysacks or pieces of tarp. The roof was corrugated tin.

Redwine unlocked the door and entered the cabin. He almost filled the narrow room that was crowded with a kerosene cook-stove, a packing crate stood on one end with a couple of shelves that served as table and cupboard, and apple crates for chairs. “Plenty of houses have dirt floors,” Redwine said. “You've got wood
and
linoleum.”

It looked more like tarpaper with cracked enamel showing under the stove and close to the edges where it didn't get walked on. Plasterboard walled off two even narrower rooms with spaces between it and the outer wall left for doors. A lopsided army cot took up most of one room and a double bed with rusty springs but no mattress fitted tight against the wall in the end room, leaving less than a foot between it and the plasterboard divider. A half-dozen nails hammered into the solider wood of the framing served as the wardrobe.

“Like I said, this fetches five dollars a week, but you can have it for a month for painting my signs.”

“How many signs?” asked Way.

Redwine paused as if to count but Laurie thought that if you'd roused him from deep sleep and he'd wanted to, he could say exactly what he owned where, what it cost to run and what it brought in. “Well, here there'll be the hotel, a Truck-Inn, the lumberyard, and hardware store. Selkirk, Tyson, and Cross Trails have Truck-Inns, hotels, and hardwares. Cumberland and Rimrock have Inns and hardware stores.”

Way's eyebrows bristled together. “Whereat are them towns?”

“Oh, they're all within a hundred miles,” Redwine said easily. “I'll see you get rides back and forth, no charge.”

“Big of you. Sounds like you got about seventeen signs you want painted. I reckon you'll want me to think up something catchy for your hardware stores. Fella at Holbrook told me he got ten dollars a day for paintin' signs.” Way rubbed his chin. “Tell you what, Mr. Redwine. You get decent mattresses on the bed and cot, lend us sheets and pillows and enough dishes and pans to get by on, put in a heating stove, and I'll do your signs—the ones you mentioned—for the house and three dollars a day.”

“Why, you broke-down old tramp—”

“We got to eat.”

Laurie put her hand on Way's sleeve. “We've got enough money to go someplace else, Gramp.” She spoke to him but it was for Redwine's benefit.

“You kiddos need to be in school.”

“There's schools in other towns.” But how tired she was of being on the road, on the move, a different place each night. Repressing a sigh, she picked up her bundle. “Come on, Buddy.”

Redwine's hand dropped to her shoulder. She felt it like a giant paw—maybe the sphinx's—clamping her down. “Ride over to the hotel with me and pick out what you need, boy.” To Way, he said, “Three dollars a day, then, if you think up a good slogan for the hardware stores.”

Laurie shrugged out from under Redwine's hand as soon as they were outside. She still felt as if he had hold of her. She climbed into the truck and he slammed the door. “None of my business,” he said after he got the Chevy running and yanked it around, narrowly missing the shanty across the road. “But you better get that kid brother of yours in school before he gets so used to bein' on the tramp that he can't settle down.”

That was Laurie's fear, especially since getting put back a grade that fall had further disgusted Buddy with school, but she said hotly, “We're not on the tramp! Mama and Daddy died and—”

Redwine held up a square, dismissing hand. “Son, I admire your stickin' up for your grandpa but if he's not a tramp, or anyway a hobo, I've never seen one. He may try to stay put for you kids' sake but wandering gets in the blood. You're quite a bit older than your brother. It's up to you to see he has a chance to amount to something.”

“Gramp hasn't had any reason to settle down before,” Laurie defended though she couldn't help but think back to how Way had been when they met—eating up their food, ready to panhandle rather than work.

But he
had
changed. He'd got out his paintbrushes and earned their lodging, food, and transportation all the way from California. He and she and Buddy were a family. Tomorrow was Thursday and Laurie had been thinking she'd wait till Monday to take Buddy to school and get enrolled. The truth was that much as she wanted to get them in class, her stomach knotted tight when she remembered how they'd been treated at the Oklahoma school. Mr. Redwine was right, though. She was responsible for Buddy. Tomorrow morning, no matter how he fussed, they'd cross the highway to that yellow brick school.

The Redwine House was the largest, handsomest building in Black Spring, two-story red brick with a long veranda where guests could sit and watch the doings up and down Main Street. Its owner drove around in back and parked by the black Cadillac.

“We'll go in through the kitchen, Larry,” said Redwine. “You can pick out the stuff you need there while the manager's wife decides which mattresses and bedding you can use. Clem'll drive you back. I've got business to attend to.” He paused at the back door. “When you starting school?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Fine. The county superintendent of schools is a friend of mine. I'll find time to call him so he can tell the principal at this school that I'm taking a special interest in you and you're not just oil-field brats.”

“You don't need to do that, Mr. Redwine.” Instinct warned Laurie that it wasn't good, being beholden to him, no matter how nice—and different—it would be to have an important citizen vouch for them.

“I will, though.” Redwine's chuckle was hearty but it didn't warm his yellow eyes. “You've got guts, Larry. The way you've made a good thing out of that old harmonica sure makes me suspect you could do real well in music if you got the right breaks.”

It was the first time he'd mentioned that since way back in Arizona. What did he mean? Surely not that she and Buddy could ever be like Jimmy Rodgers or the Carter Family? Bemused, Laurie followed him into the kitchen.

“Edna,” he said to the skinny, gray-haired woman who was frosting a huge cake. “Larry here needs a few dishes and pans for three people—old stuff you can spare. Might give him a chunk of that cake, too.”

“All we got to cook with is stuff Noah left on the ark, Dub,” said the woman tartly. “I been tellin' you I need some stainless steel instead of cast iron that's so heavy it puts my back out to lift it and dented old aluminum that's worn so thin a body can well nigh see through it and—”

Redwine threw up his hands and made for the swinging door to the restaurant. “All right, Edna, all right! Go over to the hardware and get what you want. Damn fine thing when I can't walk in the door after a long trip without your bellyachin'!”

“That's what I say!” she shrilled after him.

As soon as he vanished, she cackled, did a kind of jig step, and peered over her wire-rimmed glasses at Laurie. “Lord bless you, child, pick out whatever you want so long as it's not the good china and silverware on those shelves by the door! Never thought I'd get new cooking gear out of Dub. Unless somethin' shows, he's tighter'n new bark on a green tree, you savvy.” She larruped a broad spatula across the cake, scooping up a luscious slather of chocolate frosting, and handed it to Laurie. “You need a glass of milk with that,” she said, pouring one. “Your folks renting one of Dub's shacks down in Sludge Town?”

The frosting didn't taste quite as good as it had before Edna said that, though her tone was kindly. Laurie put down the spatula, though there was still frosting on it. “Is—is that what town people call the oil camp?”

“When they don't call it B. S. Flats,” Edna laughed. At Laurie's puzzled stare, she explained, “You must be new to the oil patch, lad, not to know that B. S. stands for bottom settlin's or sediment, same as bullshit.”