The Longest Road (43 page)

She didn't voice her distrust of the closeness that existed between Redwine and Crystal and how she sometimes felt that Crystal kept an eye on Morrigan for Redwine's benefit. You don't like Crystal, she told herself. Fact is, you're green-eyed jealous of her so of course you're ready to think she's lower than a snake's belly. At least you can keep that kind of nonsense to yourself.

“Just think of you and Buddy making a living with that harmonica and your songs!” Rosalie enthused. “You did bring your harmonica, didn't you?”

“Sure, and I've learned a lot more songs since I left.”

“Good. Maybe you can play before we go back to the fields after dinner.”

“If there's a pair of overalls that'll fit me, I'll help.”

“No. You're company. Besides you're not used to the work. You'll get blisters and sunburn.”

“Lend me some work gloves and a big hat. Honest, Rosalie, I'd a lot rather chop out weeds with the rest of you than laze in the house.”

Grandpa Field had shrunken a little but he still had the savage look of a one-eyed hawk. He snorted on seeing her and then shrugged as he sat down and switched on the radio. “If you'd had any sense, you'd have let that rich old boy adopt you,” he yelled above the blare. “But you're mule-stubborn, just like your ma. Damn good thing you don't seem to be as puny and ailin'.”

After that, he ignored her, which was fine with Laurie. He didn't like her and she didn't like him but he seemed to accept that he had no control over her. The boys stared at her from beneath sun-bleached thatches. Everett, who must be about fourteen, was taller than she, all arms and legs and blue eyes. Sandy-haired thirteen-year-old Billy had hazel eyes almost the color of hers. Ernie, a year younger, gazed at her with brown eyes that were on a level with Laurie's.

Belle, in overalls and barefoot like her brothers, was brown and fleet and soft-eyed as a fawn. She shadowed Laurie adoringly, touching her dress and hair. Babe, now six, was an elfin little blond, her hair drawn back into one plump braid. Her sagging dirty diapers, thank goodness, were long forgotten. She and Belle insisted on sitting next to Laurie. Instead of apple crates, there were chairs now for everyone. Rosalie's cream biscuits and gravy were delectable as ever and the juicy, gold-crusted plum cobbler brought memories of picking plums along the North Fork of the Red River in what seemed lifetimes ago.

After dishes were done, Laurie got presents out of her luggage, letting Belle and Babe hand them around after
ooh
-ing and
ah
-ing over the birthstone necklaces she'd brought them, with matching bracelets and adjustable rings. They could scarcely be dissuaded, dirty from field work as they were, from slipping on their quilted rosebud seersucker robes with padded house slippers. For Rosalie, there was a cut-glass bottle of French perfume, chocolates, a copy of
Gone With the Wind
, and silk stockings; for Grandpa Field, a nice striped shirt; each boy got a baseball cap and jackknife with an amazing array of blades and tools. For all the children, there was a Chinese checkers game, animal dominoes, and books to take the place of those Laurie was at last reclaiming.

Then, in the heat of the day, Laurie played the harmonica while her grandfather snored from the couch. The boys liked cowboy songs, Rosalie favored church-house blues, and Belle sang the songs she knew in a sweet, shrill voice while Babe swung her scratched brown feet in cadence.

Grandpa Field woke himself up from his nap with a loud, whiffling snore, swung his legs off the couch, and glared at his offspring. “Time to get back to them weeds!” he ordered.

Laurie slipped into patched overalls, long-sleeved shirt, hat, and gloves Rosalie unearthed for her, and put on the old shoes she'd brought for wearing around the farm. As she worked her way along a row, she chopped cautiously, turning the blade to hook out the tiniest roots of Johnson grass, and hacked deep at big, tough roots of pigweed without damaging the cotton.

The late April afternoon sun was hot, though nothing to what it would be in June, July, and August. Beneath the frayed straw hat, her hair plastered itself damply to her skull and forehead. Gnats got in her eyes and nose and a fat green horsefly decided to buzz around her ears. She had to push to keep up with Belle. The others, except for Babe, soon edged ahead. Babe's little hoe wouldn't get the toughest roots. Someone else would have to clean up her row, but she was learning.

Learning what? To be a sharecropper, wear herself out on land that would never belong to her? Laurie swept a glance around at her cousins, doggedly waging their eternal, season-after-season wars with insects, weather, and weeds. If she could manage it, they were going to have a choice. Starting with Everett.

Almost under her breath, she started a song. Pretty soon, Belle and Everett were singing, too.

“Boll weevil is a little black bug

Come from Mexico, they say—

Come all the way to Texas,

Just lookin' for a place to stay—

Lookin' for a home,

Gonna find a home.…”

Two days later, Rosalie drove Laurie and Everett to the train depot. Grandpa Field had refused to let his son go till Everett desperately promised to send home half his wages. “You can hire good help for less'n that, pa,” he argued.

“Yeah, and what am I gonna do when Ernie takes it in his head to go, and then Billie?”

Rosalie laid her hand on his arm. “They're all goin' sooner or later, Harry, and you're not gettin' any younger. I've been savin' butter and egg money and most of what Laurie's sent. What we'll do when Belle's high school age is buy a little place on the edge of town.”

“
What?
” From Grandpa's tone, you'd think she'd proposed that they homestead the moon. “God-a-mighty, woman, how'd we make a living?”

“Well, for one thing, what we grow'll be ours, not half some landlord's.” Rosalie spoke in the voice that meant she'd made up her mind. “Belle and Babe are goin' to get good educations so they can teach school or be secretaries or something nice and clean. We'll have a great big garden, fruit and pecan trees, chickens, and keep a few good milk cows.”

“But—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips and smiled in that coaxing way that made it clear she loved this man, that for her he had a kindness he'd never shown anyone else but his daughters. “You deserve to take it easier, Harry. And
I
deserve to have my own house and fix it up the way I want it.” She paused and looked him in the eye. “Harry, you've been a good man to me. I'm not sorry about a thing. But I don't want our kids to work their guts out sharecropping.”

He stared at her a long moment. “All right, young sprout,” he said to Everett. “But you send half your wages reg'lar till you're twenty-one or I'll have you back in the field.”

Now, at the depot, Rosalie kissed her squirming eldest son. “Be good, son, and don't give Laurie and her folks any trouble.” Hugging Laurie, she whispered, “Thanks, honey. Thanks for giving him a chance.”

Laurie squeezed her tight. “I don't know what we'd have done if you hadn't loved us.”

“Quit bawlin',” implored Everett. “Here comes the train!”

23

Helen's Babies
and
Black Beauty
had torn loose from their covers but
A Wonder Book, A Child's Garden of Verses
, and
The Little Lame Prince
didn't look as if they'd been more than briefly opened since Laurie last put them in the crate. Mama had written inside each book Laurie's name, the date, and “Happy birthday!” or “Merry Christmas!” Each book was signed, “With love to our dear little daughter from Mama and Daddy.”

Laurie probably wouldn't read the books again till she read them to some child, but she felt as if some missing part of her had been restored. The round oak table and rocking chair and brave little cherry tree were lost forever but it was wonderful to have these beloved things from that time of being a family. She put the books on the shelf with others she'd slowly accumulated. The latest was John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath
, which had just won the Pulitzer Prize. Some Oklahomans didn't like it but Laurie thought it the truest book she had ever read. She planned to go the movie, which would star a young, long-faced actor named Henry Fonda.

It would be terrible for the bird quilt to wear out so she folded it at the bottom of the bed after examining each block and pressing it to her face to breathe in the smell of lilacs. Mama's little cedar chest went on the built-in dresser. It still held locks of baby hair, embroidered voile gift handkerchiefs, Mama's amethyst lavaliere, and Grandma Phares's jet brooch and tortoiseshell combs. Laurie wept while she arranged these things but they were happy tears. Of the safe, protected world she had lost, she now had something to touch, something of her mother's to give her own daughter if she ever had one.

Buddy hadn't wanted her to bring his Big Little Books—lucky, since they'd been read to tatters—but he put the coyote skull above his door and proudly hung the Sioux beaded belt and watch fob on the wall. Everett had declined to move into his tiny room.

“I'd as lief sleep on the couch,” he insisted. Relief made Buddy ready to share his closet and chest of drawers with his older cousin. While Everett was putting away his things, Marilys drew Laurie into the kitchen.

“I think you ought to know, Laurie, so you won't think Dub's turned nice and charitable.” Marilys frowned, looking away.

Fear gripped Laurie. “What, Marilys? Did he—” Surely not even he would try to get her back now she was married to Way.

But Marilys nodded. “First, he tried sweet talk.” Her lips twisted. “He had the nerve to pretend he really cared about me. When that didn't work, he said he hadn't told Way all about me before. If some of the truth had been enough to send Way on a binge back in Black Spring, what would the whole story do?”

“Way wouldn't care!” Laurie threw her arms around Marilys. “He'll never forget that you hunted all over Texas and Oklahoma for him.”

Hugging Laurie back, Marilys said, “Before we got married, I told Way everything there was to tell. He didn't want to hear it, but I made him.”

Startled at the raw note in her voice, Laurie stared at her friend. “Marilys—”

“I held my baby once. Just once. Then I had to give her away because I wasn't married and there was no one at all to help.” Marilys released a jagged breath. “I can't have another child.” Laurie put out a comforting hand. Marilys squeezed it and managed a smile. “You're the age my daughter is, Laurie. I hope you don't mind that sometimes I've pretended you were her.”

“I'm glad. Proud, too.”

Laughing through tears, they embraced each other. People were like books with stuck-together pages, Laurie thought. There were always things you didn't know. She was beginning to have quite a few stuck pages herself.

“I'm mighty glad now I told Way,” went on Marilys. “Because I looked Dub in the eye and said Way knew a lot more about me than
he
did and all he'd get with his tales was a good fight.” Her blue eyes glinted. “I also told Dub I'd sooner get in bed with a dead, rotting rattlesnake than with him. Maybe I shouldn't have. He finds ways of getting back at people who hurt his pride. But it sure was fun to see him swell up and turn purple.”

“I'm glad you set him straight.” Laurie's grin faded and she sighed. “We'll have to watch out for him. Why can't he just leave us alone?”

Marilys's brow furrowed. “Well, he's never liked it if people got out from under his thumb before he was through squashing them. He wasn't through squashing me. And I think he's jealous of Way.”

Laurie stared. “Why? Way doesn't have money or power or any of the things that matter to Redwine.”

“No, but Way's got what Dub's money can't buy, Laurie.”

“You mean he's happy? He's got a family?”

Marilys nodded. “And he's got the kind of self-respect you only get after you've sunk to the bottom and fought your way up again.”

It was a strange notion, Redwine envying the man he'd patronized as a derelict, but when Laurie thought it over, it sounded true. “We'll just have to watch W.S.,” she said. “At least now we know he hasn't got religion and he'll hurt us if he can without Johnny finding out about it.”

Everett was so glad to “be off the end of a hoe handle” and earning real wages that he was painstakingly careful not to make extra work or cause any worries. Upon his insistence, he was allowed to chip in on groceries, but that was his only living expense so that he felt rich even after sending home half of the three dollars a day Johnny paid him while he was learning the various jobs around a rig.

Johnny became his hero, of course. His conversation was a litany of “Johnny says …” and “Johnny did …” till Buddy erupted. “I'm sick and tired of hearing about your old job!” he hollered, banging shut his arithmetic book.

Everett blinked. The slight stoop of his shoulders had straightened in the month he'd been with them and his blunt boy's features were firming into a handsome young man's. “Sorry, Buddy. I just—”

“It's bad enough I have to go to school without your rubbin' it in that you're earning wages, while all I've got's a paper route and this summer job delivering groceries,” Buddy grouched.

“I finished eighth grade,” Everett defended. “Gosh, Buddy, I'm a lot older than you!”

“Well, the second I get that ninth-grade report card Laurie says I gotta have, I'll never set foot inside a school again,” Buddy glowered.

“You'll only be fifteen,” said Laurie. “You'd do a lot better to finish high school, maybe go on to college and be a geologist or engineer.”

Buddy snorted. “That's how all of you talk—all of you who never got past eighth or ninth grade except for Marilys.”