The Longest Road (29 page)

“If they don't, we'll go back to the Black Gold.”

“Aw, Laurie, who cares as long as we get paid?”

“We're not paid!”

“What else would you call it?”

Laurie floundered. But there was a difference, there was! “We give our music—that's a present. Whatever folks give us back, that's a present, too. They don't have to, they're not being charged.”

“Yeah,” said Buddy doubtfully. “But if they didn't give us anything, we'd have to find some other way to make money. The grocery won't swap us grub for a song and we can't buy clothes with one.”

Laurie retreated to the superiority of older-sisterdom. “You just like to argue.” She glanced at the gilded foyer clock. “Come on. If we're going to do a few more songs before nine, we'd better get started.”

At nine o'clock, Way stepped quietly in. He had changed from his painting clothes, was shaved, and looked real nice. He stood at the side of the room, beaming, and joined in the applause as the harmonica's notes and Buddy's high, sweet voice trailed away—“
and we've got to be driftin' along
.”

“Thought I'd catch the end of your show and walk you home,” Way said, unfolding from the wall. “Clem's rheumatics give him fits of an evening and I told him he didn't have to stay up in order to drive you.”

Marilys had come over and the little lines around her mouth and eyes disappeared when she smiled at Way, tilting up her head. “So you're the Field Brothers' grandfather! You must be proud of them.”

“I am.” Way's dark eyes shone and though his laughter was soft, it came from deep in his chest. He suddenly looked younger, just like Marilys did. “But I'm sure sorry I didn't get to hear you play the piano, ma'am. Clem says you sound like an angel.”

She lifted one slim shoulder. “Clem's sweet but I don't know how he could hear me over the racket. Folks seem to think the piano's just to make enough noise to keep people at other tables from hearing what deals they're cooking up.” She smiled without rancor and her long, graceful fingers brushed Laurie's cheek and Buddy's. “Your boys really held the crowd.”

“But you—you're a real musician, Miss Marilys!” Laurie cried. “All I know is what John Morrigan taught me and what I've learned myself. I—I'd give anything to play like you!”

“Would you?” None of them had heard or seen Redwine till he bulked at Marilys's side. His big square hand closed on Marilys's blue-veined wrist. The sparkle and life went out of her. She shrank into herself like a trapped creature that realizes there's no use in fighting. “Marilys, you studied at all those fancy schools. You could teach Larry a few hours a week, couldn't you?”

Some of the life came back. “I'd love to. Why don't you come by after school, Larry, as often as you can? I don't start work till five.”

Laurie ached to accept but even though Marilys seemed eager, Laurie still didn't like to take favors from Redwine. “Not much use my learning the piano. I don't have one, probably never will.”

“It would still be good for you to learn to read music, know your scales and notes.” Marilys's eyes pleaded. For some reason, this was important to her. “Besides,” she added a trifle bitterly, “you don't have to own a piano to play one, God knows, I haven't had my own since I was a kid but I've made my living banging away on them.”

“You don't bang!” Laurie cried. “You—you play like all the feelings and things in the world are shut up in the dark inside the piano and you're bringing them out in the light.”

Marilys blinked. After a moment she said, just to Laurie, “You'll come then?”

“Yes. I'll come.”

15

That began a pattern. After school let out at four o'clock, Laurie and Buddy walked four blocks to the hotel. Edna fortified them with cookies and milk—she was still elated over all the new cookware she'd been able to acquire—and Buddy got his homework done while Marilys taught Laurie. “I don't see why I can't stay and play at school,” Buddy grumbled.

“The boys who do are all older, and town boys to boot.”

“Well, I could go home with Billy.”

That caused Laurie a guilty pang. Catharine had to walk home by herself now. So that the kids wouldn't notice, she stayed ten or fifteen minutes and dusted erasers for Miss Larson. When Laurie got home, Catharine hurried over, usually bringing the baby, a wizened little thing that cried a lot and burped smelly white curds on Catharine's shoulder.

While Laurie got supper, she tried to respond wholeheartedly to Catharine's chatter about school that day, but her mind was full of what Marilys had taught her. She heard the notes of the composition she was learning rather than Catharine's remarks about how the banker's daughter looked like a barrel in plaid and what a pretty dress Miss Larson had worn. What with music and study, Laurie didn't need a friend so much. As if sensing this, Catharine clung tighter. Laurie tried to be extra nice but she would really have rather gone quietly about her work and pondered Marilys's lesson.

Now, to Buddy, Laurie spoke sharply. “You can't go home with Billy because Mrs. Harris has enough on her plate without trying to keep track of you.” She softened her tone. “But look, Buddy! This way when we get home your lessons are done and you can play till supper.”

That didn't entirely reconcile him, but Edna's cookies did, especially when she added a dish of ice cream or a chunk of her gold-crusted pie. With her children grown and scattered and her grandchildren far away, she enjoyed having youngsters around, as did Clem. They had known W. S. Redwine since his days as a roustabout in the Permian Basin farther south and east, and of all his employees, they alone didn't seem afraid of him.

“I was lookin' for a job when I found this one, Dub,” Clem told him once when Redwine swore at him over some trifle.

Marilys was afraid of him. Just as her color brightened and the blue eyes grew bluer when Way happened in, she went still as a creature feigning death when Redwine rested his hand on her like a big cat claiming its prey. She never talked much about her past but from things she dropped, she came from an East Texas family that could afford a piano and lessons for her, and later some kind of fancy girls' school in Dallas. It was hard to guess her age. Around Way, she looked young, almost a girl, but when Redwine's eyes touched her, even when his hand did not, she seemed to wither and shrink.

It was almost time for school to let out for Christmas when Way finished painting signs in Cumberland, Selkirk, and Cross Trails, hotels, Truck-Inns and
DUB
'
S HARDWARE FOR HARD WEAR
stores. He'd been able to come home every night, but now Redwine wanted him to finish signing his other Texas businesses, which stretched as far east as Abilene and south to Odessa.

“Dub's going to loan me one of his old trucks,” Way said. He'd started calling Redwine that since most all other grownups did. “That feller has every durned car or truck he ever owned. Most of 'em don't run, of course. They're just rustin' away a few miles out of town on this farm he foreclosed on. I asked him to sell me a pretty good old Ford truck on credit but he wouldn't.”

Laurie thought with a moment's regret of Daddy's Model T before she shrugged and just hoped it was holding up, getting the Halsells from one job to the next. “It sure would be nice to have our own truck or flivver,” she said. “How much would one cost, Way?”

“Feller over at Cross Trails is askin' two hundred dollars for a thirty-three half-ton Chevy pickup with good tires. Figger it's a pretty fair deal. They cost about six hundred fifty dollars new and this one only has thirty thousand miles on it.”

Two hundred dollars! It seemed a fortune. Laurie's first dismay subsided a bit, though, when she considered their position. Just as soon as they'd bought necessities and clothes, she'd figured out how much cash Rosalie had spent on them—the Saturday movies, hamburgers and ice cream, school supplies and clothes. The two of them had certainly worked hard enough to pay for their food.

The sum was close to twenty dollars, all of it taken from Rosalie's butter, cream, and egg money. Overcome afresh at how kind Rosalie had been to them when they were no real kin of hers, ashamed to compare how many eggs and how much cream and butter and work it took to bring that much when she and Buddy got that much or more for a night's music at the Redwine House, Laurie next day swapped all her hoarded dollar bills and half-dollars to the pretty blond restaurant cashier, who handed back three tens, a five, and several dollars.

“Going to start a bank account, Larry?” the young woman asked. “You're getting to be a real plutocrat!”

A bank account? That was for rich people. The idea of having more money than was needed to get by on struck Laurie with jarring force. Someday, though …

Sticking the bills in her pocket, she grinned at the cashier. “I owe this to a lady, Beth. Guess it'll be a long time before we have money in the bank.”

“May be just as well, the way so many closed and took folks' savings,” Beth said. “My dad was a carpenter. Had enough put by to take it easy the rest of his life, even take Ma to Wales so she could look up her great-greats' gravestones in the little village her grandparents left eighty years ago. His bank closed in 'thirty-two. He's still working, and glad he can at seventy-eight. At that they were luckier than lots of people. Owned their home and car free and clear. Doubt if Hank and I ever will.”

“Hank makes good money in the oil field, doesn't he?” Laurie asked.

“Sure. But everything's sky-high in an oil town, kid. Rent on a shack Ma wouldn't keep hens in sets us back thirty bucks a month and we've got to keep a good car to get from one boom to another. If Hank could get a job where we stayed in one place, we could get ahead on half the money and start buying our own house, too. But—” She sighed philosophically. “We're lucky to have work. When I see Okies going through in their old jalopies, well, I just ask the Lord to look after them.”

Laurie wrote Rosalie as much of a letter as she could without giving away where they were or what they were doing. “The money's honest-earned,” she explained. “The man who sort of adopted us got a real good job.” She trusted Rosalie but if Grandpa found out that she and Buddy were making as much money as they were, he'd certainly try to channel their earnings into his pockets.

So Rosalie had back her money with interest and Laurie would send more now and then. She wished she knew how to share their good fortune with the Halsells or some of the others in the camps Or on the road. Way, now that he had some cash wages in his pocket, had bought tires, gas, or groceries for stranded families he met at the Truck-Inns. That was why Laurie insisted he take five dollars a week from the Field Brothers' earnings. Even so, five weeks after their arrival in Black Spring, Way had no savings while there was close to fifty dollars in the peanut-butter jar Laurie kept under her bed.

Two hundred for a truck didn't seem so impossible when she cast up some quick sums and reckoned that she and Buddy had made close to that at the Redwine House. She had trouble believing that folks were always going to be generous, especially when they'd heard the Field Brothers several times, but they always were. The crystal bowl had never held less than twenty dollars and had yielded as much as thirty-five, which seemed incredible, even wicked.

This Christmas, Laurie had vowed, was going to be a happy one in spite of the grief that flooded her when she thought of last year—the plates with oranges and candy Mama and Daddy had put out so she and Buddy saw them first thing Christmas morning, and the few gifts under the little tree that brought so much delight. As long as Mama was alive, Laurie had never really felt poor. Now that Mama and Daddy were both gone, Laurie didn't think she'd ever
not
feel poor even if she had a million dollars.

Christmas could never be the same again but they had Way and he had them. Morrigan was surely alive somewhere in the world and she had his music and could share it with others. Buddy was back in school and at least not failing. Instead of paying a lot for one of the scraggly wilted trees leaning against the Sludge Town grocery store, Laurie had captured a huge tumbleweed. With Catharine's help, she'd strung popcorn and cranberries and covered pasteboard cutouts with pretty paper and foil from gum wrappers. They'd have Christmas dinner in the afternoon so that Marilys and Clem and Edna could come. They'd been so happy when Laurie invited them and Edna was bringing the turkey, Marilys some pies—yes, this would be a good Christmas even if it was a new kind of one in a new place with new people.

Buddy had wanted another .22 but Laurie had suggested that she and Way contribute half toward the shiny red bicycle in the window of the hardware store, and Buddy pay the rest out of his saved money. After some argument and tears on both sides, Way's intervention had settled that Buddy got fifty cents a week of their earnings and the rest of his half went in another peanut-butter jar for clothing, school supplies, maybe even college someday. Laurie had paid her share on the bicycle and it was safely put away in the store's back room. She'd got Edna and Marilys pretty scarves and pretty blue bottles of Evening in Paris. For Catharine, there was a heart locket, and for Miss Larson a gray paisley scarf to match her eyes. Clem loved cowboy stories so the newest Zane Grey was wrapped for him.

Ticking off the gifts, Laurie discovered that the only money she owed on presents was five dollars to finish paying for the stylish hat she was getting Way—not a Stetson, he wasn't the type, but a broad-brimmed, fine-quality fedora in dark gray with a black grosgrain band. Holding back ten dollars for the Christmas feast and any unforeseen expenses still left thirty-five. She hurried to get it and handed it to Way.