The Longest Road (34 page)

Snug and warm between Marilys and Buddy, Laurie couldn't quite believe their plan had worked out so well, though she felt a pang at thinking that she hadn't been able to tell Miss Larson good-bye and thank her for being such a good teacher. She'd just had to be content with complimenting Miss Larson on her dress and the new way she was wearing her hair. Laurie had told Catharine good-bye right after school, saying she was going to live with a nice lady and explaining that was all she was allowed to tell. Tears had formed in Catharine's hazel eyes and in Laurie's, too. They had stepped into an empty first-grade room and gave each other a hard, fast hug.

“You'll always be my best friend,” Catharine snuffled.

“And you'll always be mine,” Laurie assured her, feeling guilty at leaving her but knowing they'd been close because they were Sludge Town kids starting at a new school on the same day. New families moved into Sludge Town all the time. It shouldn't be long before Catharine found a newcomer as eager to be friends as she had been. Were friendships mostly like that—a means of not being alone rather than because you really liked each other?

All the same, Laurie missed Catharine, and Miss Larson and Edna and Clem. She'd kissed Edna that morning, and thanked her for the hotcakes, laughed hard at one of Clem's jokes that wasn't really funny. The note she left under her pillow said, “Thanks for everything, Clem and Edna, and don't worry, we'll be fine. When we grow up, maybe we can come back to see you.”

No notes for Redwine, though. While they ate breakfast, he'd had a cup of black coffee, standing in the kitchen. “When I get back,” he said with what Laurie thought was a perfectly heartless grin, “we'll get you turned into a girl, Laurie. I've already told Marilys to take you shopping.”

Laurie didn't answer. “Did you hear me?” he rapped.

“Yes.”

“You won't get anywhere by sulling, girl. Make up your mind to that.” He set down the cup so hard it cracked and went out the door.

“Oh my, oh dear gracious!” murmured Edna, examining the cup. “That's exactly the way he used to talk to young Will. Remember, Clem?”

“Yeah.” Clem tousled Laurie's hair. “But this one's a sight different from Will. Have some more hotcakes, kids, they're the best in Texas!”

Buddy made a sound in his sleep like a lost puppy. Laurie put her arm around him and snugged the covers around their ears. “It's all right, Buddy,” she whispered. “I'm here.”

While they'd been driving, Way's hat was placed carefully on the back of the seat against the rear window. Now it set on top of their bundles and Marilys's suitcase, watching over them, sort of. Laurie said a prayer for him wherever he was, heard coyotes yodeling far away. Somehow that made her think of Morrigan. She drowsily said a prayer for him, too, and then she was asleep.

She woke to the aroma of coffee, stretched, blinked, and remembered. Rolled in a quilt cocoon beneath their shared blankets, Buddy burrowed deeper into his pillow. In the dim light, Laurie smiled at Way's hat and wished him good morning wherever he was.
And you, John Morrigan, good morning to you
. He was always ready to flash his grin from the back of her thoughts but being on the road again brought him powerfully to mind.

Pulling on her clothes and jacket, Laurie scrambled out of the truck. Marilys had brought a box of cooking things, including a dark blue enamel coffeepot. This belched contentedly on a grill set over a fire in a hole dug in the sandy earth. Marilys's eyes were hollowed but she wrinkled her nose like a kid and grinned as she poured out two mugs of coffee, tipping evaporated milk into Laurie's.

“Sleep good, honey?”

Laurie nodded. “Did you?”

“Too excited.” Marilys moved with eager expectancy as she opened a white bakery bag and offered Laurie a cinnamon roll. “When I think Way might be in the next town, or the next one, I can't wait to get started.”

“We can let Buddy sleep and go soon as you're ready,” Laurie suggested. “If he wakes up to one of these cinnamon rolls—boy, they're good, all chewy with lots of nuts!—he'll be happy.” She hunkered close to the cheerful flame, enjoying its warmth. The heat of the rich coffee felt good slipping down her throat to her stomach. She watched dawn streak the sky behind some spiky yuccas on a gentle slope rising above the dry creekbed. A nibbled moon still shone in the west. She sighed with near bliss.

“Marilys, if Way were here, wouldn't it be perfect? To be out like this together while the world wakes up? Of course, we'd be on vacation or camping out for fun—we'd have a home somewhere.”

“That would be perfect.” Marilys took a deep breath and threw back her head. “But this feels good, Laurie. You can't know how good!”

They sipped more coffee, put out the fire with great care, propped the rolls beside Buddy, and were on their way with the rising sun pushing at their back and besplendoring the wide plain before them.

18

No telling where Way would go, or how. He could be in a bus or car or truck, passing them, or being passed. He could be in any boxcar pounding along the tracks. Laurie racked her brain for the name of some place he especially liked, but all she was sure of was that he hated California and was uneasy traveling the high mountain country of Arizona. Nor, surely, would he head into the most blighted part of the Dust Bowl, that animal's skull Morrigan had sketched in the sand.

“Makes sense that he'd stick to oil towns where there's money to pay for signs and, usually some kind of work,” Marilys said. “That could take us all the way across Texas into Louisiana and Arkansas and back west through Oklahoma and Kansas. The trick is going to be looking for him without getting caught by Dub.”

Laurie's heart jumped into her mouth. “He—he won't hunt us, will he?”

“Not himself. But when he gets back from Oklahoma, he'll alert the law all over Texas and probably the neighboring states.” Marilys flashed a grin. Even with the prospect of Dub on their trail, she was merry and lighthearted as she'd been at their tumbleweed Christmas tree. “One thing sure, we won't stay at any of his Truck-Inns.”

They picked up Highway 287 at Claude about thirty miles east of Amarillo and descended from the Cap Rock, the rugged, tortuously winding shelf that set off the high plains of the Llano Estacado from the sweeping lower prairies, the rugged country between cut by eroded canyons where angles of recent snow whitened the clefts. Scrubby mesquite and cedars tufted the wall of the escarpment wherever a seed had found soil enough to root and grow squat and strong to withstand scouring winds and blizzards.

Goodnight was a few businesses caught in a bent elbow of the highway. A few newer frame houses kept a respectful distance from what Marilys said was Colonel Goodnight's old ranch house. Behind the house, narrow-flanked, great-humped creatures roamed, horns protruding from what looked like kinky wigs.

“Buffalo!” Buddy yelled. “Hey, those got to be buffalo!”

They pulled off the road and went over to the fence to watch the big animals. “Goodnight was the first settler out here,” Marilys explained. “He saw how in just a couple of years hunters killed off most of the southern herds just for their hides and left the meat to rot. When the herds were gone, folks sold the bones east for buttons, dice, knife handles, collar and corset stays. Anyhow, the colonel hated to see all the buffalo gone, so he started a herd on his ranch.”

These were the beasts that fed the Indians who once ranged the plains stretching from Nebraska to the Rio Grande. And the buffalo fed on grass, grass and flowers like that tiny strip near the Oklahoma school, Laurie's Little Prairie. At least much of this land had never been broken by the plow. Daddy, as a boy, had picked up buffalo and cattle bones after the wheat was planted, after the snow had thawed, driven a wagon around the draws where the tired creatures died. The market in Dodge City was between the river and Hampton's livery barn and the big boneyard was on the bank of the Cimarron River about three-quarters of a mile east of Boot Hill. Daddy had heard Billy Sunday preach once when the evangelist pitched his tent on the hill.

How quickly it had all vanished. That prairie world would never come again, never. The sod of a vast part of the Great Plains was powdered dust that couldn't nourish anything even if it hadn't swirled up to blacken the sky and fill the air anytime the wind rose.

“We'd better go,” said Marilys. “The sooner we get to a place where we can swap this Chevy, the easier I'll breathe.”

They camped that night by a diminished lake ten miles out of Childress and were in town by the time businesses opened. No used-car dealer would trade even and they found no signs that looked like Way had painted them.

“That's most of my cash,” Marilys said as they paid for groceries after filling up with gas. “But before we try singing and playing, we need to be in a different vehicle. We'll do better in an oil town, too, where folks don't depend on cotton, wheat, and cattle for money.”

Just in case, they went to the jail. Way wasn't there. But it was a place they'd have to check in every town that had one. Electra came in sight before sundown, prosperous-looking, with factories to make oil machinery and drilling tools. “W. T. Waggoner was drilling for water for his cattle back in 1911 when he struck oil instead,” explained Marilys. “Named the town for his daughter. The field's still producing, not like some that boom and play out fast.” She slowed down by Myrt's Roadside Cafe. “With a name like this, there's got to be at least one woman around. Why don't we see if we can sing for out supper here?” They had already agreed that the Field Brothers had to disappear, though Laurie still posed as a boy, and their signature song had to change. For a while, they'd be the Tumbleweeds, but they'd be switching names often. “We'll drive out of town to camp and light out early for Wichita Falls,” Marilys finished. “For sure, we can trade off the Chevy there.”

Myrt, an enormous blond woman with chins that undulated as she laughed, looked at them keenly over potatoes she was mashing into creamy peaks and glanced from the guitar Marilys held to Laurie with her harmonica and on to Buddy. “Can't say I ever heard of you, but if I had, you prob'ly wouldn't be in Electra. Sure, you can have supper for makin' music for an hour or so, and keep anything folks care to leave you. Kids make a big hit even if they can't sing for shucks and these oil-field hands don't get to see many pretty
ladies
.”

Two hours and a bowl of silver and bills later, The Tumbleweeds ended with “Tumbling Tumbleweed.” Amid shouts, stamping, and whistling, Myrt urged them into the kitchen, not forgetting to pick up their money. “Try to eat out there and they won't give you any peace! I swan if you hadn't ought to be on the radio like the Carter Family.” There were two chairs at a small table by a window and Myrt scooted over a stool for Buddy and started pouring glasses of milk. “Coffee for you, dear?” she asked Marilys.

“Milk for all of us, please, if there's enough.”

“Oh, there's still a few cows on ranches that never got oil,” Myrt chuckled. She brought meatloaf, potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and green beans and set three-quarters of a fluffy-topped lemon-meringue pie in the middle of the table before she went out to tend the cash register and tell her customers to hurry back while a brisk gray-haired waitress cleared tables while serving latecomers.

“Aren't you going to count the money?” Buddy demanded, eyeing the overflowing bowl beside the pie.

“After we finish eating,” Marilys said. “There's no telling what kind of germs are on those bills. I'll bet your mama told you to always wash your hands after you touched money.”

“Awww!” His eyes widened. “Boy howdy! There's a five-dollar bill on top!”

“I think that cowboy way at the back left it,” said Laurie. “He just kept ordering coffee, Marilys, and watching you.”

Marilys blushed. “Well, there's gas and groceries for a while.” Her eyes sparkled, though she must have been tired after wrestling the truck down the winding road from the Cap Rock and singing while she played the guitar.

“You don't look old enough to be the boys' mother,” Myrt said to her, returning now that she'd locked the outer door.

“I'm their aunt. We're hoping to run across my brother who's probably in the oil fields somewhere.”

“His name Tumbleweed, too?”

Marilys ignored the hint for information. “He may not be using his right name. His last boss is accusing him of stealing some equipment, but I know he didn't. He's tall and skinny with real curly gray hair and dark eyes, scars on his cheek and hands. Anyone like that asked if he could paint you a sign?”

“If he had, I'd have a new one,” said Myrt. “But if he passes through, I'll tell him his family tumbled through lookin' for him.” She poured more milk. “Reckon you wouldn't want to stay a while? Between my cookin' and your singin', we could just about put the other eating places out of business.”

“Thanks, but we really do want to find my brother.”

Myrt filled one sack with big spice molasses cookies and another with biscuits. “Well, you be careful on the road,” she said. “Can't say I like the notion of your travelin' after dark. If you don't want to spend money on a tourist court, you're welcome to my spare room.”

“Thank you, ma'am.” Marilys accepted the biscuits and Buddy hugged the fragrant cookies. “We'll be real careful about where we stop but we'd like to get a little farther tonight.”

“Good luck, then.” Myrt smoothed Buddy's head. “If you get back this way, stop and see me. I'll pray the good Lord to keep you from havin' flats and trouble, 'least when you're a long way from help.”

She let them out the back door. They called a final thanks and good night and piled into the Chevy. Buddy was asleep before they spotted a dirt road that didn't seem to have any lights along it. Several miles off the highway, they pulled behind some mesquites, moved Buddy into the back, fastened the tarp, and were soon asleep.