The Lincoln Highway (26 page)

I
found my father out
on the north corner fixing a stretch of fence with Bobby and Miguel, their horses standing idly by and a few hundred head of cattle grazing on the range behind them.

Turning off the road onto the shoulder, I skidded to a stop right where they were working and climbed from the cab as they shielded their eyes from the dust.

Always the comedian, Bobby made an elaborate show of coughing while my father shook his head.

—Sally, he said, you keep driving that truck over rough road like that and it’s going to give out on you.

—I imagine I know by now what Betty can handle and what she can’t.

—All I can say is that when the transmission falls out, don’t expect me to replace it.

—Don’t you worry about that. Because if I know what to expect from my truck, I know even better what to expect from you.

He was silent for a moment, and I suspect he was trying to decide if he should send the boys on their way.

—All right, he said, as if he were coming to an understanding with himself. You’ve barreled out here for a reason. I can see that plain enough. You might as well tell me what it is.

I opened the passenger-side door, took out the
For Sale
sign that was lying on the seat, and held it up so he could get a good long look at it.

—I found this in the trash.

He nodded.

—That’s where I put it.

—And where, if you don’t mind my asking, did it come from?

—The Watson place.

—Why would you take down the
For Sale
sign from the Watson place?

—Because it’s no longer for sale.

—And how would you happen to know that?

—Because I bought it.

He said this in a curt and definitive manner, trying to show that he’d been about as patient as he intended to be, that he didn’t have time for this sort of talk, that he and the boys had work to do, and that the moment had come for me to get in my truck and head back to the house, where, surely, I should be in the middle of making supper by now. But he was talking to the wrong person if he thought he knew something about patience that I didn’t know.

For a moment, I bided my time. Without taking a step, I looked off in the distance in a thoughtful fashion, then I turned my gaze right back upon him.

—The speed with which you bought the place . . . It makes one wonder just how long you’ve been lying in wait to do so.

Bobby pushed the dust on the ground with the tip of his boot and Miguel looked back at the cattle while my father scratched the back of his neck.

—Boys, he said after a moment, I suspect you’ve got some work to do.

—Yes, sir, Mr. Ransom.

They mounted their horses and rode off toward the herd in the unhurried fashion of men at work. My father didn’t turn to watch them go, but he waited for the sound of their hooves to recede before he spoke again.

—Sally, he said, using his I’m-going-to-say-this-once-and-only-once voice, there’s been no lying and there’s been no waiting. Charlie defaulted on his mortgage, the bank foreclosed, they put it up for sale, and I bought it. That’s all there is to it. It didn’t come as a surprise to anyone at the bank, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone in the county, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. Because that’s what ranchers do. When the opportunity presents itself and the price is right, a rancher will add to his land, contiguously.

—
Contiguously
, I said, impressed.

—Yes, he replied. Contiguously.

We stared at each other.

—So, in all those years that Mr. Watson struggled with the farm, you were too busy to lend a hand. But the moment the opportunity
presented itself
, your appointment book was clear. Is that about it? It sure sounds like lying and waiting to me.

For the first time, he raised his voice.

—Damn it, Sally. What did you expect me to do? Drive over there and take up his plow? Plant his seeds and harvest his crops? You cannot live another man’s life for him. If a man has got the least bit of pride, he wouldn’t want you to. And Charlie Watson may not have been a very good farmer, but he was a proud man. Prouder than most.

I gave the distance another thoughtful look.

—It is interesting, though, isn’t it, how even as the bank was getting ready to put the property on the market, you were sitting on the porch step, telling the son of the owner that maybe it was time for him to pick up stakes and make a fresh start somewhere else.

He studied me for a moment.

—Is that what this is about? You and Emmett?

—Don’t try to change the subject.

He shook his head again, like he had when I’d first arrived.

—He was never going to stay, Sally. Any more than his mother was. You watched it yourself. As soon as he could, he took a job in town.
And what did he do with his first bit of savings? He bought himself a car. Not a truck or a tractor, Sally. A car. Though I have no doubt that Emmett grieved deeply for the loss of his father, I suspect he was
relieved
by the loss of the farm.

—Don’t talk to me about Emmett Watson like you know him so well. You don’t know the first thing that’s going through his mind.

—Maybe. But after fifty-five years in Nebraska, I think I can tell a stayer from a goer.

—Is that so, I said. Then tell me, Mr. Ransom: Which am I?

You should have seen his face when I said that. For a moment he went all white. Then, just as quickly, he went red.

—I know it’s not easy for a young girl to lose her mother. In some ways it’s harder on her than it is on the husband who’s lost his wife. Because a father is not equipped to raise a young girl in the manner she should be raised. But that is especially so when the girl in question is contrary by nature.

Here he gave me a good long look, just in case it wasn’t perfectly clear that he was talking about me.

—Many has been the night that I have knelt at the side of my bed and prayed to your mother, asking for guidance on how best to respond to your willfulness. And in all these years, your mother—God rest her soul—has not answered me once. So I have had to rely on my memories of how she cared for you. Though you were only twelve when she died, you were plenty contrary already. And when I would express my concern about that, your mother would tell me to be patient. Ed, she would say, our youngest is strong in spirit, and that should stand her in good stead when she becomes a woman. What we need to do is give her a little time and space.

It was his turn to look off in the distance for a moment.

—Well, I trusted your mother’s counsel then and I trust it now. And that’s why I have indulged you. I have indulged you in your manner and your habits; indulged you in your temper and your tongue.
But Sally, so help me God, I have come to see that I may have done you a terrible disservice. For by giving you full rein, I have allowed you to become a willful young woman, one who is accustomed to nursing her furies and speaking her mind, and who is, in all likelihood, unsuited to matrimony.

Oh, he enjoyed delivering that little speech. Standing there with his legs apart and his feet planted firmly on the ground, he acted as if he could draw his strength straight from the land because he owned it.

Then his expression softened and he gave me a look of sympathy that served only to infuriate.

Tossing the sign at his feet, I turned and climbed in the cab of my truck. Putting her in gear, I revved the engine, then drove down the road at seventy miles an hour, kicking up every piece of gravel, taking every divot, so that the chassis shook and the doors and windows rattled. Swerving into the entrance of the ranch, I aimed her at the front door and skidded to a stop with five feet to spare.

It was only as the dust blew past that I noticed a man with a hat sitting on our porch. And it was only when he rose and stepped into the light that I could see it was the sheriff.

A
s Ulysses watched the
Watson boys retreat from the campfire in order to get ready for bed, Stew came to his side.

—They moving on tomorrow?

—No, said Ulysses. The older boy’s got some business to see to uptown. He should be back in the afternoon and they’ll be spending the night.

—All right then. I’ll keep their bedding in place.

—You can keep mine too.

Stew turned a little sharply in order to look at Ulysses.

—You staying another night?

Ulysses looked back at Stew.

—That’s what I just said, didn’t I?

—That’s what you said.

—There a problem with that?

—Nope, said Stew. No problem by me. Just that I seem to remember someone saying at some point that he never spent two nights in a row in the same place.

—Well then, said Ulysses, come Friday, he will have.

Stew nodded his head.

—I left some coffee on the fire, he said after a moment. I guess I’ll go see to it.

—Sounds like a good idea, said Ulysses.

After watching Stew return to the campfire, Ulysses found himself
scanning the lights of the city all the way from Battery Park to the George Washington Bridge—lights that held no enticement for him and promised no comfort.

But Billy had told him about the understanding he had with his brother, and it struck Ulysses as a reasonable one. He would stay two nights on the island of Manhattan. Come tomorrow, he and the boy would pass time as acquaintances, so the next day they could part company as friends.

A
s they pulled into
his sister’s driveway, Woolly could see that no one was home.

Woolly could always tell when a house was empty just by looking at the windows. Sometimes when he looked at the windows, he could hear all the activity inside the house, like the sounds of footsteps running up and down the stairs or celery stalks being chopped in the kitchen. Sometimes, he could hear the silence of two people sitting alone in different rooms. And sometimes, like now, from the way the windows looked back, he could tell that no one was home.

When Woolly turned off the engine, Duchess whistled.

—How many people did you say live here?

—Just my sister and her husband, Woolly replied. Although my sister’s expecting.

—Expecting what? Quintuplets?

Woolly and Duchess got out of the Studebaker.

—Should we knock? asked Duchess.

—They won’t be here.

—Will you be able to get in?

—They like to keep the front door locked, but they often leave the door in the garage open.

Woolly followed Duchess to one of the garage doors and watched as he pulled it up with a rattle.

Inside, the first two bays were empty. The first bay must have been
where his sister parked, thought Woolly, because the oil spot on the concrete had the shape of a great big balloon—just like the one in Billy’s book. The oil spot in the second bay, on the other hand, looked like one of those little storm clouds that hang over the head of a character in the funny papers when he’s in a bad mood.

Duchess whistled again.

—What is that, he said, pointing to the fourth bay.

—A Cadillac convertible.

—Your brother-in-law’s?

—No, said Woolly a little apologetically. It’s mine.

—Yours!

Duchess spun on Woolly with an expression of such exaggerated surprise it made Woolly smile. Duchess didn’t get surprised very often, so it always made Woolly smile when it happened. Woolly followed Duchess as he crossed the garage to have a better look.

—Where’d you get it?

—I inherited it, I guess. From my father.

Duchess gave Woolly a solemn acknowledgment. Then he walked the length of the car, running his hand along the long black hood and admiring the whitewall tires.

Woolly was glad that Duchess hadn’t walked all the way around the car, because on the other side were the dents in the door from when Woolly had bumped into a lamppost.

“Dennis” had been very, very upset when Woolly had arrived with the dents one Saturday evening. Woolly knew that “Dennis” had been very, very upset because that’s exactly how upset he’d said he was.

Just look at what you’ve done
, he said to Woolly, while glaring at the damage.

Dennis
, said his sister, interceding.
It isn’t your car. It’s Woolly’s.

Which was probably something that Woolly should have said:
It isn’t your car, “Dennis.” It’s mine.
But Woolly hadn’t thought to say it. At least, he hadn’t thought to say it until after Sarah had said it already. Sarah
always knew the right thing to say before Woolly did. When Woolly was in the middle of a conversation at boarding school or at a party in New York, he often thought to himself how much easier the conversation would be going if Sarah were there to say the right things on his behalf.

But the evening he had arrived with the dents in the door and Sarah had said to “Dennis” that the car wasn’t his, it was Woolly’s, this had only seemed to make “Dennis” more upset.

That it is his car is precisely my point.
(Woolly’s brother-in-law always made his points precisely. Even when he was very, very upset, he was very, very precise.)
When a young man is fortunate enough to be given something of great value from his own father, he should treat it with respect. And if he doesn’t know how to treat it with respect, then he doesn’t deserve to have it at all.

Oh, Dennis
, said Sarah.
It’s not a Manet, for God’s sake. It’s a machine.

Machines are the foundation of everything this family has
, said “Dennis.”

And everything it hasn’t
, said Sarah.

There she goes again, thought Woolly with a smile.

—May I? asked Duchess, gesturing to the car.

—What’s that? Oh, yes. Of course, of course.

Duchess reached for the handle of the driver’s door, hesitated, then took a step to his right and opened the door to the back.

—After you, he said with a flourish.

Woolly slid into the back seat and Duchess slid in after him. After closing the door, Duchess gave a sigh of appreciation.

—Forget the Studebaker, he said. This is how Emmett should arrive in Hollywood.

—Billy and Emmett are going to San Francisco, Woolly pointed out.

—Either way. This is how they should make the trip to California.

—If Billy and Emmett would like to make the trip to California in the Cadillac, they’re welcome to do so.

—On the level?

—Nothing would make me happier, assured Woolly. The only problem is that the Cadillac is much older than the Studebaker, so it probably wouldn’t get them to California anywhere near as quickly.

—Maybe so, said Duchess. But in a car like this, what’s the rush.

As it turned out, the door inside the garage was locked, so Woolly and Duchess went back outside, and Woolly took a seat on the front step beside the flowerpots as Duchess removed the bags from the trunk.

—It could take me a few hours, said Duchess. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?

—Most definitely, said Woolly. I’ll just wait here until my sister comes back. I’m sure she won’t be long.

Woolly watched as Duchess got in the Studebaker and backed out of the driveway with a wave. Once alone, Woolly retrieved the extra bottle of medicine from the book bag, unscrewed the eyedropper, and squeezed a few extra drops onto the tip of his tongue. Then he took a moment to admire the enthusiasm of the sunshine.

—There is nothing more enthusiastic than sunshine, he said to himself. And no one more reliable than grass.

At the word
reliable
, Woolly suddenly thought of his sister Sarah, who was another paragon of reliability. Putting the bottle in his pocket, he stood, lifted, and looked—and, sure enough, waiting patiently under the flowerpot was the key to his sister’s house. All keys look alike, of course, but Woolly could tell that this one was the key to his sister’s house because it turned in the lock.

Opening the door, Woolly stepped inside and paused.

—Hallo? he called. Hallo, hallo?

Just to be certain, Woolly gave a fourth hallo into the hallway that led to the kitchen, and another up the stairs. Then he waited to see if anyone would answer.

As he waited and listened, he happened to look down at the little table at the bottom of the staircase where a telephone sat. Shiny, smooth, and black, it looked like a younger cousin of the Cadillac. One thing about it that wasn’t shiny, smooth, and black was the little rectangle of paper in the middle of the dial on which the phone number of the house had been written in a delicate hand—so that the phone would know exactly who it was, thought Woolly.

When no one answered Woolly’s hallo, he stepped into the large, sunlit room on his left.

—This is the living room, he said, as if he were giving himself a tour.

Not much had changed in the room since he had been there last. His grandfather’s grandfather clock was still by the window unwound. The piano was still in the corner unplayed. And the books still sat on their shelves unread.

One thing different was that there was now a giant oriental fan in front of the fireplace, as if the fireplace were shy of its appearance. Woolly wondered if it was there all the time, or if his sister removed it in winter so that they could build a fire. But if she did remove it, where did she put it? It seemed so delicate and awkward. Perhaps it could be folded up like a normal fan, thought Woolly, and tucked away in a drawer.

Satisfied with this notion, Woolly took a moment to wind the clock, then exited the living room and continued with his tour.

—This is the dining room, he said, where you will have dinner on birthdays and holidays. . . . Here is the only door in the house that doesn’t have a doorknob and that swings back and forth. . . . And this is the kitchen. . . . And this is the back hallway. . . . And here is “Dennis’s” office, in which no one is supposed to go.

Working his way through the rooms in this manner, Woolly completed a circuit such that he was right back at the foot of the stairs.

—And this is the staircase, he said as he ascended it. This is the hall. This is my sister and “Dennis’s” room. This is the bathroom. And here . . .

Woolly stopped before a door that was slightly ajar. Easing it open, he entered a room that both was and wasn’t what he expected.

For while his bed was still there, it had been moved to the center of the room and was covered with a great big piece of canvas. The canvas, which was a dingy white, had been splattered with hundreds of blue and gray driplets—like one of those paintings at the Museum of Modern Art. The closet, where Woolly’s dress shirts and jackets had hung, was utterly empty. Not even a hanger had been left behind, or the box of mothballs that used to hide in the shadows of the upper shelf.

Three of the room’s four walls were still white, but one of them—the one where the ladder was standing—was now blue. A bright friendly blue, like the blue of Emmett’s car.

Woolly couldn’t take issue with the fact that his closet was empty or that his bed was under a tarp because the room both was and wasn’t his. When his mother had remarried and moved to Palm Beach, Sarah had let him use this room. She had let him use it over the Thanksgiving and Easter vacations, and for those weeks when he had left one boarding school and had yet to go to the next. Even though Sarah had encouraged him to think of the room as his own, he had always known that it wasn’t meant to be a forever room, at least not for him. It was meant to be a forever room for somebody else.

From the lumpy shape of the tarp, Woolly could tell that some boxes had been stacked on the bed before it had been covered—giving it the appearance of a very little barge.

Checking first to make sure that none of the driplets on the tarp were wet, Woolly folded it back. On the bed were four cardboard boxes with his name written on them.

Woolly paused for a moment to marvel at the handwriting. For even though his name had been written in letters two inches tall with a big
black marker, you could still tell it was his sister’s handwriting—the very same handwriting that had been used to write the tiny little numbers on the tiny little rectangle in the telephone dial. Isn’t that interesting, thought Woolly, that a person’s handwriting is the same no matter how big or small.

Reaching out to open the box that was nearest, Woolly hesitated. He suddenly remembered the troubling theory of Schrödinger’s Cat, which had been described by Professor Freely in physics class. In this theory, a physicist named Schrödinger had posited (that was the word that Professor Freely used:
posited
) that there was a cat with some poison in a box in a state of benign uncertainty. But once you opened the box, then the cat would either be purring or poisoned. So it was with a touch of caution that any man should venture to open a box, even if it was one that had his name on it. Or perhaps, especially if it had his name on it.

Steeling his nerves, Woolly opened the lid and breathed a sigh of relief. Inside were all the clothes that had been in the bureau that was and wasn’t his. In the box below, Woolly found all of the things that had been on top of the bureau. Like the old cigar box, and the bottle of aftershave that he had been given for Christmas and never used, and the runner-up’s trophy from the tennis club with the little golden man who would be serving a tennis ball for all eternity. And at the very bottom of the box was the dark blue dictionary that Woolly’s mother had conferred upon him when he was headed off to boarding school for the very first time.

Woolly took the dictionary out and felt its reassuring heft in his hands. How he had loved this dictionary—because its purpose was to tell you exactly what a word meant. Pick a word, turn to the appropriate page, and there was the word’s meaning. And if there was a word in the definition you didn’t recognize, you could look up that word to find out exactly what
it
meant.

When his mother had given him the dictionary, it had been part of
a set—tucked in a slipcase alongside a matching thesaurus. And as much as Woolly had loved the dictionary, he had loathed the thesaurus. Just the thought of it gave him the heebie-jeebies. Because the whole purpose of it seemed to be the opposite of the dictionary’s. Instead of telling you exactly what a word meant, it took a word and gave you ten other words that could be used in its place.

How was one to communicate an idea to another person if when one had something to say, one could choose from ten different words for every word in a sentence? The number of potential variations boggled the mind. So much so that shortly after arriving at St. Paul’s, Woolly had gone to his math teacher, Mr. Kehlenbeck, and asked him if one had a sentence with ten words and each word could be substituted with ten other words, then how many sentences could there be? And without a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Kehlenbeck had gone to the chalkboard, scratched out a formula, and done a few quick calculations to prove incontrovertibly that the answer to Woolly’s question was ten billion. Well, when confronted with a revelation like that, how was one to even begin writing an answer to an essay question during end-of-term exams?

Nonetheless, when Woolly left St. Paul’s to attend St. Mark’s, he had dutifully carried the thesaurus with him and set it down on his desk, where it remained snugly in its case, smirking at him with its tens of thousands of words that could be substituted one for the other. For the next year, it taunted, teased, and goaded him until finally, one evening shortly before Thanksgiving break, Woolly had taken the thesaurus from its case, carried it down to the football field, doused it with some gasoline that he’d discovered in the crew coach’s launch, and set the dastardly thing on fire.