The Longest Road (37 page)

In Waurika, there were Way-signs but no one knew where he'd gone, not the owners of the gas station, the tourist court, or the café, which each had a new sign. The one at the café had been painted only three days ago.

Three days! “At least we're on his trail,” Marilys said, spreading out the Oklahoma map she'd gotten at the gas station.

That was both
en
couraging and
dis
couraging. Would they always be a week behind, a few days, even a couple of hours after someone saw him hop a freight or hitch a ride? “I guess we'll try the oil fields,” Marilys decided, folding the map. “Duncan first.”

“Just so we don't get over around Altus where Grandpa Field might see us,” Laurie said. When she grew up, when it was safe, she'd go to visit Rosalie.

That night they camped off a dirt road branching from the highway, parking beside a small creek. The winter-bare cottonwoods, ashes, and willows didn't completely shield them from view, but Marilys was afraid of getting stuck in the sand if they went farther.

Laurie and Buddy gathered fallen limbs and built a cheerful fire while Marilys made potato soup with lots of onions and baked biscuits in the dutch oven. This was the closest they'd been to Way yet. If they could just find him and get back across the border to Texas where kidnapping didn't mean the electric chair! Or maybe, with Way, they'd just head for the Louisiana oil fields, where Dub was much less likely to find them.

“We'd better get rid of these Texas plates tomorrow, maybe trade trucks if we can,” said Marilys. “Dub will have the law watching for us. There'll be lots of vehicles with Texas plates around the oil towns but maybe not so many with a woman driver and two kids.”

That was true but Laurie was sad at swapping off the Ford that had carried them so many miles. Sleeping in it as they did, it felt like home, the only home they had. As soon as the dishes were done, Laurie got out the harmonica and began to play.

All the roads, all the miles, rivers and plains, canyons and hills, all the people and all the towns …
Well, yes, Morrigan, you gave me a song for that
.

I've been a-wandering early and late,

Oklahoma to the Golden Gate,

And it just sure looks like

I ain't ever goin' to cease my wandering.…

Buddy started singing. Marilys got the guitar. They hadn't sang or played for several days and the music poured out of them now, hope and fear, loving people and places and losing them, and how it was to be human. They were finishing “Tumbling Tumbleweed” when two men stepped from behind the truck.

Pulled-down hats, light-colored and broad-brimmed, darkened their eyes. Fire glinted off their badges and pistols. “You sound so purty we hate to interrupt,” drawled the shorter, stockier one. “But I've got a warrant here for Marilys Shannon, wanted for kidnapping two boys or one boy and a girl across a state line.” He quoted from memory. “‘May play a guitar and harmonica and sing to raise money.' Hold out your hands, ma'am.”

He pulled linked metal ovals out of his pocket. “Don't!” Buddy yelled, running to shield Marilys. “She didn't kidnap us!”

“We
want
to be with her,” Laurie pleaded, grasping the man's arm. “Please, mister—”

He brushed her away. Marilys said nothing. She put down the guitar and got to her feet. Slowly, she put out her slender, graceful hands. The officer bent to slip on the handcuffs.

Laurie didn't really think. She caught up the guitar, stepped back, and crashed it down as hard as she could on the man's skull. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Buddy launching himself at the other lawman, hanging onto his arm, grappling for the gun.

The bottom of the guitar shattered but the man only fell to his knees, though his hat pitched to the earth. Marilys grabbed his gun. “Stay right where you are!” she ordered both men, and to the one trying to break Buddy's bulldog grasp, “Give the boy your gun, mister.”

The officer shook Buddy like a pup, clouted him sideways so that the boy rolled over and over, but before the man could level the pistol, Marilys pulled the trigger. He staggered back, half-whirled around by the impact of the bullet, clutching his right shoulder while the gun dropped to the sand.

Buddy sprang for it and scooted to the side. “Let's tie them up,” said Marilys. “Use the rope that holds the tarp over the back of the truck.”

Laurie hurried to obey. Blood running through his fingers, which he held now at the back of his shoulder, the wounded man spoke through gritted teeth. “Aren't you goin' to stop this bleedin'? Let me bleed to death, woman, and it'll be murder of a law officer on top of kidnap.”

“We'll bandage you up soon as you can't give us any more grief,” Marilys said.

The stocky man, still on his knees, lunged at her. She swung the barrel of the pistol down on his head. This time he went all the way to the ground. Blood ran out of his dark hair, dripped to the sand. Laurie gasped, then swallowed and kept on tying the other man's hands before Marilys ordered him over to a young cottonwood and told him to sit down so Laurie could tie his feet together.

“Scalp wounds bleed a lot,” Marilys said as Laurie started on the heavyset officer. “I don't think I hit him hard enough to crack his head. Here, let's tie him to this tree.”

“We—we aren't going to just leave them out here, are we?” Laurie quavered.

“Oh, they could get loose after a while and it's not cold enough to freeze them, but because they were dumb enough to get shot I suppose we'd better let someone know about it.” Marilys sounded so disgusted that Laurie didn't press further. “Get our oldest clean towel and a pillowcase,” Marilys instructed as she checked Laurie's knots and added some of her own.

The bullet had gone out the back of the shoulder, making a much bigger wound than the neat hole in front, Marilys deftly plugged it with toweling and a pad and had Laurie hold the dressing in place while it was secured with strips of pillowcase.

“You bitch!” the man snarled. “You can't get away. Now you've pulled this, everyone'll be ready to shoot you on sight.” His face twisted in a savage grin. “Maybe you ain't heard but that Bruno Hauptman's been convicted of murdering that Lindbergh baby he kidnapped. Sentenced to die next month in the electric chair. I'd sure like to pull the switch on
you
, sweetheart.”

Laurie blanched. The hate in his eyes and voice was terrible and she understood that some of it was because he'd been bested by a woman and two kids. Marilys didn't answer him, but tied the last knot on the bandage carefully before going to the other man. Laurie helped pad and bandage the creased scalp while Buddy put their cooking things in the truck. He held up the splintered guitar.

“What about this?”

“Put it in.” Marilys hugged Laurie as they got to their feet. “I'm sorry it can't be fixed, honey. You sure crowned that fellow. The sound board's broken, too. But we can save the strings, and we'll get you another guitar soon as we can.”

“It's all right,” Laurie said.

Only it wasn't, no more than shooting law officers and leaving them tied to trees. She quailed at what Mama would have thought of that. But what else could they have done? It was W.S. Redwine's fault! Even if it was a sin, she wished he was dead so he couldn't keep causing them trouble, maybe even get Marilys sent to the pen if not the electric chair. And the guitar, the wonderful Christmas guitar, was broken!

Laurie blinked back tears. She needed music and thought Buddy and Marilys might, too. She brought out the harmonica and played it all the way to Duncan, where Laurie called the police from a gas station and directed them to “some folks who need help.”

She hung up immediately and they drove on through the night, fearful every time a car passed them or as they drove through slumbering small towns. How long would it take the police to locate the tied-up wounded men? At least a couple of hours. How long would it be till sheriffs, police, highway patrol—gracious, maybe even FBI men—were watching for a Ford truck with Texas plates?

At last a wide dirt road turned off the highway. Distant lights blazed miles away, lots of them. What was such a big place doing so far off the main road?

“Got to be an oil boom.” Marilys sighed with relief. “Lots of strangers coming and going, lots of Texas plates and trucks.”

“But—”

“Stay on the highway and we're bound to get stopped.” Marilys turned the Ford into the best tracks she could find among the ruts. They couldn't go better than ten jostling miles an hour. They could smell oil and hear the rumble of bull wheels and thud of drills pounding at rock and sand long before they drove into the sprawl of tents, shacks, and flimsy buildings that were surrounded on all sides by derricks, some only partly built.

Work-stained men came in and out of cafés, boarding places, hotels, and dance halls, most of which were only tents. The signs were crude, not Way's handiwork. Broken-down flivvers, trucks, and new autos that shone where they weren't splattered with oil or mud were parked wherever there was room. Plenty of Texas license tags. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kansas, too, though most were Oklahoma.

Marilys's tight-held shoulders relaxed a little. She steered off the road around some tents and parked among vehicles from half-a-dozen states. Buddy was asleep, his head in Laurie's lap. They got him into the back of the truck, arranged the ropeless tarpaulin as best they could, and fell into sleep.

Next morning they traded the Ford for a Studebaker truck. It had more miles on it and the tires were worn but it had Oklahoma tags. Laurie fought back tears and gave the fender a farewell pat when no one was looking. The truck didn't know or care that it was being swapped to a redheaded roughneck. It was silly for her to feel they were abandoning it, and yet she did.

Avoiding highways, keeping to country roads, they rattled from oil field to oil field, but found no trace of Way. Laurie didn't say anything, but she watched for Morrigan, too. They were afraid to sing or play as a group but they blew a tire and replacing it took most of their dwindling cash. Marilys took a job waiting tables and Laurie played her harmonica in a different restaurant, jumpy, constantly on the alert for the law, while Buddy prowled to watch for police vehicles.

At the end of a week, they had enough money to put brand-new tires on the Chevy truck they traded the Studebaker for, stock up on groceries, and buy gas for a while. They hadn't seen hide nor hair of lawmen apart from harried constables who had their hands full with drunken roughnecks who were trying to kill each other or beat up their women. The newer camps didn't have jails so the rowdies were usually chained or handcuffed to heavy logging chains strung between two trees or poles.

“We haven't seen a Way-sign in a couple of weeks,” said Buddy with a weary sigh as they headed out of town.

“Maybe he got rid of his brushes.” Laurie hated even to say it. That would mean Way had slid all the way into trampdom, even worse than before, because then he at least had kept his brushes.

“Then how'll we find him?” Buddy's face crumpled. He turned his face away and scrubbed at a tear.

“We'll just keep looking,” Marilys said.

“
Forever?
”

Marilys and Laurie laughed at that. “We'll find him before forever,” Marilys promised.

“What if we don't?” Buddy persisted. Laurie felt a twinge of guilt. Buddy had been worried all this time and she'd been too full of her own fears to encourage him to say what was on his mind. His brown eyes were scared and solemn. “If—if we can't find him, Marilys, are you goin' to leave us somewhere?”

“What in the
hell
makes you think such a thing?” Marilys had never sworn at them before. Her cheeks burned and her eyes flashed blue fire. “Of course I won't leave you!” She swallowed and glared down the road.

“I—I'm sorry,” Buddy mumbled.

She reached over and smoothed his cheek, gave his hair a tousle. “Listen, you're my family! You'll be the ones who leave me someday when you grow up.” She thought a moment, then pondered each word as she measured it out. “If we don't find Way after we've looked all over Oklahoma and the near parts of Arkansas and Louisiana, then we'll settle someplace that we like. I'll be a widow lady. You kids'll go to school. Who knows? Maybe someday Way'll find us.” She gave them a heartening grin. “Meanwhile, we're going to hunt him. We'll look around the railroad yards, we'll watch for his signs, we'll ask at jails. And where there aren't any jails, we'll look over prisoners they put on a chain.”

That was where they found Way. In the next boomtown, handcuffed to a chain.

20

Five men were fastened to the chain, tarps and blankets beneath and over them. It was nine in the morning and none of them stirred. An enormous man with gummed yellow hair and a bruised, cut face snored with his mouth open. The thin dark one who looked Indian had a bandaged head. Two boyish, freckled, sandy-haired ones curled close together might be brothers.

At the far end, arms splayed above his head to where his wrists were cuffed to the chain, Way had only the side of his face exposed, but the old scar showed in spite of the wild, crinkly, gray beard and moustache.

Laurie dropped to her knees, not only to embrace him but because her legs wouldn't hold her and her head swam. “Way! Oh, Way!”

“Are you sure?” Marilys whispered.

“Sure! It's how he looked when we met him.” How he'd smelled, too, of sweat and filth, except now the sour stink of whiskey overwhelmed the other odors.

Laurie didn't care. It was heaven to hold him, kiss the scar, lift him up. Marilys was down, too, cradling him to her breast, murmuring.

His eyes opened slowly. He blinked, groaned as if the light hurt, then stared, coming awake. “Marilys!” It was a croak. “Larry-Laurie!” He elbowed up, trying to move away. “Why'd you come after me? I'm just an old sot.”