The Longest Road (55 page)

“What—what can we do?” she choked.

“The only way to stop it is drill more wells faster on Johnny's side than Redwine's crews can drill on his. No way we can do that.”

A wild hope thrilled through Laurie. “I've served a lot of meals to a lot of men and Johnny's worked with dozens. Maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe we can get Redwine's drillers to quit. It's worth a try.” Laurie started to clear the last tables but Mrs. Marriott, who had overheard, came over and untied Laurie's apron.

“You run along! I can handle things here. Next time Dub Redwine comes in here I'll tell him I don't serve sidewinders!” She gave Laurie a push. “Good luck, honey!”

The dirt road to the farm was clogged with trucks hauling machinery, drilling pipe, boilers, and all the parts it took to build derricks. As Jim maneuvered the truck close to the fence, crews worked up and down the boundary, at least a dozen different outfits, getting ready to build derricks. Over the boundary in Johnny's pasture, Morrigan No. 1 pumped away. A quarter mile east, the little spudder was valiantly making hole, though Vance Morrow had to know how hopeless it was.

Jim brought the truck into the middle of Redwine's swarming workers and leaned on the horn.

A driller came running up. “What in hell—” he began, saw Laurie, and checked, doffing his Stetson. “Beg pardon, ma'am, but what the devil are you barging in here for?”

He was a stranger but she had to hope. “Did you know Johnny Morrigan?”

“Sure I did. Shot a bunch of wells for me. Tackled me out of the way of a falling beam once.” Other men were gathering. Laurie didn't know a soul and her hopes dimmed. Redwine had hired crews who didn't know the story behind what he was trying to do. The driller's blue eyes stared at her. “But what's Morrigan got to do with you bustin' in here?”

“Did you know he's missing in action? At Guadalcanal?”

The driller paled, shaking his head. Laurie pointed across the fence at the pumping well and the spudder. “That's Johnny's land across the fence—his first well pumping, his spudder digging another hole.”

Jaw dropping, the driller said, “I didn't know that.”

“And you probably didn't know that Dub Redwine waited till Johnny was overseas to take over Johnny's share of their partnership. Now Redwine's trying to make sure Johnny doesn't have anything left if he
does
come home—and he's missing in action, so that's possible.”

“I sure pray he does,” said the driller, and others murmured assent.

“Just where do you come into this, lady?” The blue-eyed driller scanned her narrowly. “Seems like I heard his wife ran off. You Johnny's sister?”

Jim tensed. Before he could make a sharp retort, Laurie got out of the truck. Standing in the prairie wind that blew back her hair and molded her dress against her body, she glanced at the faces—strangers, all of them, yet had not strangers been kind, most of them, all along the road?

“Johnny Morrigan happened by and helped us when our Model T was broken down seven years ago,” she said clearly, loud enough for the men at the back to hear. “I've loved him ever since though I guess he doesn't know it. Anyway, when Dub cut off credit to this operation of Johnny's, my folks and I—and Jim, here—pitched in to keep the outfit drilling. We took out a bigger mortgage on our house to do that—and if you don't believe me, you can go ask Mrs. Marriott at the hotel, or see the banker, or lawyer.”

The driller watched her appreciatively. Slowly, his mouth curved in a grin. “I believe you, lady.” Turning, he called to the men. “Fellas, I'm pulling my crew out of here.”

“So'm I,” growled a man built like a bulldog. “I knew John Morrigan and I'll have no part of robbin' him or his friends.” Thrusting out a massive undershot jaw, he scowled around the circle. “What's more, I'll whup anybody who tries to stay!”

“No one's stayin', Brick,” said a whippet-lean worker. “But if you want a fight, I'll be glad to oblige.”

“Hold it, guys,” called the first driller. “No need to tussle, Brick. It looks like everybody's ready to go. And let's make it our business to spread the word. No one's going to drill Dub Redwine's offset wells.”

“If they try,” rumbled Brick, “They'll sure wish they hadn't!”

The blue-eyed man took off his battered hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “I've got my own rotary drilling outfit. While we're here, men, why don't we make a well or two for Johnny? Prove that we're countin' on him to come safe home?”

Laurie glanced toward Jim, who said, “We can't pay you unless you bring in a well. If you do, we'll pay you shares.”

“We'll drill two locations for Johnny. After that, if it looks like we've got a field and you want us, we'll work out something fair.” He offered his hand. “I'm Bill Stafford.”

Laurie and Jim shook hands and introduced themselves. They drove around to explain to Vance that he was going to have a rotary rig for a neighbor.

“Dadburn mud-eaters!” he grumbled. Old cable-tool men called rotary workers that. “Well, I reckon they're better on this side of the fence than the other. And I bet I bring in this well before they get their durned old skyscraper derrick set up!”

He did. And it only took the rotary men two weeks to make two more wells, Morrigan No. 3 and Morrigan No. 4, which both flowed eighty barrels a day. The partnership had a field. Vance kept using the spudder but he and Jim made a deal with Bill Stafford to drill up the farm on shares. It wasn't riches for anyone but the partnership could pay back the money the Kirkendalls and Fields had put into the drilling.

They needed it. Way had pretty well run out of farmers within a range where he could deliver without losing money. The contractors who detested Dub too much to buy from him weren't numerous enough to keep Way's business going, even with business from Bill Stafford and his friends. It was money from the roomers and what Marilys and Laurie earned that paid the bills and kept Way's office open.

His pride wouldn't let that go on much longer. If only Redwine would get tired of losing money in order to harass them! But Laurie shivered when she remembered how he'd tried to get her to go away with him.

Buddy finished ninth grade late that May as the United States battled the Japanese on the island of Attu in the Aleutians. When defeat was certain, many Japanese killed themselves by hari-kari, the traditional disembowelment, or with shots to the head. Fighting on the other side, Nisei of the 442nd Regiment and the 100th Battalion had been equally brave. There were no Nisei frontline desertions and the men were receiving so many Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, Silver Stars, Distinguished Service Crosses, and Legions of Merit that they seemed likely to become the most decorated fighters in all American history—while, their families lived behind barbed wire.

Hearing of Attu's fall on the radio, Buddy exploded. “The war's gonna be over before I get to fight!”

“I certainly hope so,” Laurie said.

“That's because you're just a girl!” He flung out, banging the screen door.

Next morning when he didn't come downstairs, Laurie knocked at his door. No answer. “Buddy?”

When there was no response, she opened the door. There was a note on his pillow. “I'm going to tell recruiters I'm eighteen till one of them believes me. Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'll write when I'm so long gone you can't get hold of me. Laurie, I just have to do this, don't be mad. Don't be sorry.”

She ran downstairs with the note. “Shall we call the police?” she asked Way, Jim, and Marilys. “Shall we try to get him back?”

“He'll never forgive you if you do,” said Jim. “And he'll keep running off.”

Way nodded. Laurie went into Marilys's outstretched arms. Buddy was on the road again, and this time she couldn't protect him.

29

Again, Laurie dreamed of the end of the world, of Buddy disappearing into a violent black storm, running to meet it, not heeding her cries, and this time Daddy couldn't save him. As she guiltily thought back over the last few years, it seemed to Laurie that she'd talked very little to her brother except to fuss at him about staying in school. She had been so busy working, so absorbed in her own concerns, that she hadn't paid proper attention to Buddy. He'd been well loved by Marilys and Way, of course, but all the same, Laurie was his only close blood-kin.

So she grieved for him, reproached herself, woke up sweating from the terrible dream, and really hadn't noticed that Way was looking drawn and worried till he came home one evening and announced his presence with a joyful whoop. Grabbing Marilys, he swung her in a spirited pirouette.

“I've worked a deal that ought to get the salvage yard back on its feet—pardon me, ma'am—it's pipes! Company that's going out of business called me this morning, wanted to sell a humongous inventory cheap. Ordinarily, my mouth would just have to water while I missed out on a big chance, but the last couple days it happens that I've had calls for the biggest part of the stuff!”

“Why, darling, that's—that's wonderful!” Marilys raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him. “If you're getting that kind of offers and orders, it has to mean that contractors are learning they're better off dealing with you than with Dub.”

“That's how I see it, sugar.” He looked ten years younger and his eyes danced. “I always figgered if we held on long enough, things would break our way. Dub just naturally can't, not for very long, keep from pullin' scuzzy tricks and cheatin'.”

“So will you tell your buyers you've made deals for them and then send on their money to the company after you take out your share?” Laurie asked.

“Can't do that this time,” Way said. “The company wants its money all at once and I've got to deliver some of the supplies and a couple of the buyers said they'd pay me after they pick up their equipment.”

Marilys frowned. “You mean you'll need to write a whopping big check before there's money in the bank to cover it?”

“Everybody does it,” Way said. “I've told the company they'll have to hold the check for three-four days. The boss said fine, in fact he wouldn't cash it till I called to say it was okay to put it through.”

“I guess I'm chickenhearted but I hate writing checks if the money's not there.”

Way's face fell. “Aw, honey—”

Marilys said quickly, “You know a lot more about it than I do, dear. It certainly is great to have a breakthrough after all the aggravation! You go ahead with the deal just like you think you ought to.”

Laurie was nervous about overdrafts, too, but she knew lots of business in the oil fields was conducted that way. A lease speculator, for example, seldom paid for a lease before selling it. Fortunes were made that way, though Laurie didn't have the gall or the nerve for it. When Way glanced at her for approval, she smiled and said, “I'm sure it'll work out fine.”

Way left before dawn next morning to pick up a load of supplies from the company in Oklahoma City. He'd deliver them to a buyer at Ardmore, then had to return to the city and truck another order to Enid, so he wouldn't be home for several days.

After waving him off, Marilys and Laurie exchanged glances. Marilys sighed. “It's wonderful to see Way so excited and happy again—but I'll be glad when all those buyers' checks are deposited!”

Laurie nodded. The feeling of doom she'd had since Buddy ran off had deepened since Way took on this venture, and renewed her futile and continuous anxiety over Johnny. Sometimes, awful as it was, she almost wished she knew for sure he was dead if indeed he was, then would harshly rebuke herself.

There was hope. He
might
come home. It was wicked not to be grateful for that sliver of a chance.

When Way didn't return on the third day, the women began to worry. They sat up late waiting for him and went to bed heavy of heart and troubled. “I looked in the office today for the name of the Oklahoma City company,” Marilys said as they climbed the stairs. “I couldn't find it, or anything that looked like the buyers' orders. Way must have taken all the papers with him.”

“The truck may have broken down,” Laurie offered.

“He could have phoned or asked someone else to,” said Marilys. Her face crumpled and she reached out blindly. “Oh, Laurie, I'm scared!”

“Now, darling—”

“It—it's like the way he disappeared at Black Spring after Dub got him drunk,” Marilys choked. “What—what if something went wrong with those deals? Something so bad he couldn't face us?”

Laurie's spine chilled but she said firmly, “There's nothing that bad. I can't believe Way would ever leave us again, no matter what.”

“He might if he thought we'd be better off without him.”

“Whatever's happened, he ought to know better than that.” Thinking of Johnny, Laurie swallowed hard. “As long as people are alive, they can always start over.” She held Marilys close, comforting the older woman who had so often consoled her. “Listen, dear. If Way doesn't come home by morning, we'll ask Jim to put out the word through the oil fields. Why, he could be picking up so many new orders that he's forgot what day it is!”

Marilys relaxed slightly. “That could be,” she said with a wavering smile. “And after all, he never said exactly when he'd be back. I'm being silly.”

“When he shows up, we'll give him strict orders to report in every day from now on,” Laurie said in her briskest tone. The cats were rubbing against her legs. She scooped up Runcible and handed him to Marilys. “Here, you cuddle up with this critter tonight and get a good rest.”

Kissing Marilys good-night, Laurie swept up a purring Winks and went up to the attic, which seemed vast and forlorn now that Buddy was gone. At least it was some comfort to have Johnny's things stored on top of some old trunks. She'd kept his hat where she could take it down and press it against her, breathe in his lingering odor of salty sweat and oil. She took the hat now and put it beside her pillow.
Oh Johnny, please be alive! Please come home!