The Longest Road (9 page)

The handkerchiefs, mostly gifts to Mama from women friends, were lawn and voile and linen, fancy with embroidery, cutwork, or lace, much too nice to use, Mama said, and anyway, they'd scratch your nose. Mama's only jewelry besides her wedding ring, with which she'd been buried, was a little lavaliere, an amethyst pendant on a fine silver chain that Daddy had given her while they were courting. Wedding rings and watches were the only jewelry the tabernacle allowed so after she got sanctified, Mama had put the lavaliere in the box along with locks of her mother's and children's hair—Laurie's had been yellow though it was now a dreary dishwater blond—and other small treasures.

Rosalie swept the chest out of Belle's hands. “Now listen, Belle, you leave Laurie's things alone, hear? Don't you touch her stuff unless she says you can.” Rosalie handed the box to Laurie, who felt selfish and ashamed enough to lift the catch and select a pink lawn handkerchief embroidered in silk with deeper pink roses for Belle and a lace-edged white linen one for Rosalie.

“Please take them,” Laurie urged over Rosalie's protest. “Mama would have liked you to have a remembrance.”

“She was a real lady.” Tears glinted in Rosalie's dark eyes and her voice trembled. “I know Rachel didn't approve of Harry but she was always nice to me. I'd have given the moon to talk educated like she did, have good manners, and—well, be like she was, exceptin' for quite so much religion.” Rosalie laughed sheepishly. “No offense, honey, but your mama was so good it plumb discouraged me. Only time I ever saw her rile up was when Harry made some kind of slightin' remark about Ed.” Rosalie gave Laurie's shoulder a pat. “I'm going to change the baby and lay down with her and a magazine for a little bit. You just make yourself at home. We're glad to have you. Here, let me put away your winter coats and mittens and caps. You won't need 'em till October, maybe later.”

Oh Mama
, Laurie pleaded.
Help us be gone by then! Help Daddy get a job quick so he can send for us!
Shooing Babe into the bedroom, Rosalie closed the door most of the way. Laurie put the chest in the bottom of the box along with the ruby-glass pitcher and sugar bowl and then looked helplessly at the bird quilt and piles of belongings, hers and Buddy's, that had been dumped on the bed.

It gave her a funny, sick feeling to realize this was all they had left in the world, that they truly didn't have a home but were just stuffed into the corners of another family's life. Laurie chewed her lip, blinked at tears, and conjured up Morrigan's smile, his deep, warm voice saying, “If any part of us lasts, it has to be love.”

Steadied, Laurie went at her task. Daddy was taking Mama's red-letter Bible, but Laurie had the treasured books she'd gotten for Christmas and her birthdays: Hawthorne's
A Wonder Book; The Little Lame Prince
by Dinah Craik Mulock; Anna Sewell's
Black Beauty
, so sad Laurie had only read it once; and Robert Louis Stevenson's
A Child's Garden of Verses
, which was a mighty disappointment to Laurie. Why, when she only got a book or two a year and wanted so many, didn't her parents ask which one she wanted? When it came to poetry, she much preferred Alfred Noyes, Rudyard Kipling, Vachel Lindsay, and some of Longfellow, like “The Skeleton in Armor,” which she'd learned by heart from library books while she was doing the ironing or the dishes. She had enough poems in her head to recite for hours. That was almost as good as having the books. She loved the gallant colonel's son in “The Ballad of East and West” and thrilled as she declaimed haughtily:

“Lightly then answered the Colonel's son: ‘Do good to bird and beast,

But count who comes for the broken bones before thou makest a feast.…'”

And while reciting “The Highwayman,” her heart swelled with pity for the landlord's red-lipped daughter who “watched for her love in the moonlight and died in the darkness there,” and for the bold outlaw.

The last of the books, which she placed standing up in the box so she could get to them without messing up her clothes, was
Helen's Babies
. Mr. John Habberton had written it in 1876 and the title went on and on:
Some Account of Their Ways, Innocent, Crafty, Angelic, Impish, Witching and Repulsive. Also a Partial Record of Their Actions During Ten Days of Their Existence, by Their Latest Victim
. The bachelor uncle's verdict on his small nephews—“Born to be hung, both of them!”—always sent Buddy into laughing fits. Maybe Belle and the other children would enjoy it.

Touching the beloved books, all of them written in by Mama, even the little Faultless Starch booklets, made Laurie feel a little better. Rosalie was nice and would certainly be glad of her help. There wasn't any question of being more than able to earn her and Buddy's keep. They wouldn't be taking charity. So far, Grandpa hadn't said a word to either of them. That suited Laurie fine.

At least it seemed likely that Rosalie wouldn't make her wear long stockings and suspenders, especially since she'd gotten rid of her old ones. The clean dress was wrinkled. Laurie shook it out as best she could and placed it on top of the muslin underskirts, bloomers, and nightgowns Mama had sewn for her, two of each besides the underwear she had on.

That was all, except for her comb and toothbrush.… No, there was still the best thing of all except for Mama's lavaliere and the books! Morrigan's harmonica. She tucked it into a nightgown, just in case one of her “cousins” snooped.

Buddy had more keepsakes than she did: a rattlesnake's whispery transparent shed skin, the coyote's skull and coarse pelt, a bag of flints and arrowheads picked up around Point of Rocks. There was his trove of Big Little Books and a tobacco pouch of small treasures like his G-Man ring secret decoder and two boxes of .22 shorts. Buddy, so protective of his tiny lair, was going to miss it, but maybe he'd have enough fun with the boys to partly make up for the loss of his private kingdom.

Laurie didn't know what to do with the snakeskin but she stacked the thick, chunky little books from bottom to top on one side of the box and then put her brother's keepsakes on the other, placing on top his socks, underwear, other pair of overalls, and two shirts. She folded the bird quilt neatly and put it at the bottom of the bed. Rosalie had taken charge of their other bedding except for the pillow and sheet Laurie would use that night. Sleeping with Belle wouldn't be so awful if Laurie could roll up in the quilt stitched by Mama's hands but she'd have to be careful not to get it dirty.

Now to find something to hold their toothbrushes, a jar or can. Rosalie's children never brushed their teeth but Mama had always been particular about that.

Going outside, Laurie was grateful that the hounds had gone with the boys and averted her eyes from the savaged rabbit. Thank goodness, there was a toilet. It buzzed with flies and spiders and had webs in several corners but Laurie was grateful for it. Holding her breath while she relieved herself, she got out of range of its smell and squinted in the hard, bright glare as she surveyed the surroundings.

Down by the rickety barn, the turning blades of the windmill caught the sun and creaked dolefully as it pumped water into a big, round metal watering tank. Would Grandpa let them get in there this summer to cool off? The corral with the tank opened to a pasture where five black-and-white Holstein cows rested under the only two trees in sight, drowsily watching three calves play king of the hill on a little slope, charging each other, heads down, their tails seeming almost as thick as their rangy legs.

A tractor and other machinery ranged outside the corral along with a truck so rusty there was no guessing its original color. Using the corral for its back fence was a good-sized garden with rows and hills of young plants. A sag-wired pen enclosed a chicken house and barren sand pecked over by a score of Rhode Island Red hens and a floppy-combed rooster. In the nearby pigpen, a big spotted hog slept beneath a tin roof extending from a rough shelter and a sow suckled squirming little piglets that showed pink through coarse white hair.

On all sides of this farmhouse center stretched planted fields that Laurie vaguely knew required a lot of work even before the cotton was picked or corn harvested. High above, a chicken hawk circled, hunting for a meal. Laurie hugged her arms close to her, a little cold in spite of the heat.

She wished her own grandfather didn't remind her of the bird of prey, especially since she was going to have to live with him a while. Oh, if Daddy could just find a place for them soon! Right now, with Mama dead and Daddy leaving, it was as if their family was blown like the dust, swept up from where it belonged and scattered by the winds. She'd hold tight to Buddy, though. As long as they stayed together, they were a still a
little
bit of a family.

There was a trash pile, mostly rusting tin cans and broken dishes, between the chicken pen and pigpen. Laurie hunted till she found a small cracked jar for the toothbrushes and went to the pump to wash it. She had to really throw her weight on the handle to bring it down, but after a few downward pushes, water gushed out, and she scrubbed the jar clean enough to use.

She was rinsing it when the crunch of steps made her turn. Daddy took off his hat and rubbed sweat from his forehead. “Laurie doll, I think I'm goin' to take off soon as Buddy gets back.”

She gasped as if he'd hit her in the stomach and knocked the breath out of her. “Daddy—”

“I can get a hundred miles or so down the road before dark,” he said hastily, looking away out over her head. He swallowed and put his hand on her shoulder. “Honey, the sooner I get to California, the sooner I can get work and send for you and Buddy.”

Through the thin sleeve of her dress, his fingers didn't feel alive, or maybe it was her shoulder that was numb. The baked earth moved under her feet and her head went swimmy. Why did it matter, whether he left now or tomorrow? But it did. Tears squeezed from her eyes though she struggled not to make a sound.

“Bawlin' won't help.” Daddy's tone roughened. “You're old enough to understand. I'll send for you kiddies as quick as I can. That's what you want, isn't it?”

She nodded, gulping, tasting the salt of the tears that had trickled to the edge of her mouth. “Rosalie's a nice woman,” Daddy went on, “but she was brought up by worldly folks and Pa never set foot in a church in his life. It's up to you, Laurie, to make sure Buddy says his prayers every night, and on Sundays you can read a chapter out of your mother's New Testament.” He did look at her then. His light blue eyes were wet. “You try to remember all the things your mother taught you, try to behave like she'd want you to, and teach Buddy.”

“I—I'll try.”

“That's Daddy's girl.”

He hugged her and kissed her cheek but Laurie still felt as if she or he or both of them were made of wood or rock and their blood was drained away. She carried the jar inside and set it under the bed between her box and Buddy's. Somehow, when she put their toothbrushes in it, it made her feel more than anything else had that they didn't have a home. She reached blindly for the harmonica, gripped it tight, and ran out to the barn.

5

The barn was always cooler than the house and soothingly dusky. Besides two doors it only had one small window up in the hayloft through which a square of light gilded the fragrant cured hay. It was often Laurie's refuge as days ran into weeks and weeks into the months of that long summer.

The real refuge, of course, was John Morrigan's music, and the memory of that brief time, less than a day, when he'd made a difference to all of them but especially to her. She'd never forget the way his eyes changed or how he laughed or the things he'd said, but mostly she remembered him singing, made him as real as she could whether it was while she slapped at gnats and chopped weeds or when she woke, heart pounding, as the sun fell toward the earth, or when she missed Mama so bad that her insides weighed heavy as stone.

Practicing in the barn, sometimes tagged by Belle, she experimented with brushing her fingers over the reeds and the effects she could get with her tongue. She learned to play most of Morrigan's tunes well enough to be recognized and made up a few of her own, about how she felt every morning when she woke up and realized she wasn't in her own room, in her own home—that she'd never sleep there again. She hoped whoever rented the place was watering the cherry tree.

Several postcards had come from Daddy. Moving from one job to the next, he lived in the car and under a tarp stretched from its door to wherever he could fasten it. “Saving every dime I can,” he scrawled. “If there's any five-dollar-a-day jobs, I ain't found them. Have met up with a nice family here, the Halsells, and I get my meals with them. Mind Rosalie, kiddies, and Laurie, you remember to read the New Testament to Buddy on Sundays. Not any use trying to write to me, we have to keep moving from one job to another.”

A father you couldn't even write to or know where he was! It gave Laurie a queer, empty feeling. She did read the New Testament to Buddy, though he fidgeted impatiently except when she read about how John the Baptist was beheaded, or Herod had all the boy babies killed, or Jesus cast devils out of people and sent them into swine. She herself liked where Jesus comforted his friends by telling them that in his Father's house were many mansions and that he was going to prepare a place for them. Mama was in that place, really, not in the dust-blown grave on the plains.

As for taking refuge, there hadn't been much time for that, right from that afternoon in mid-May when Buddy and the boys came up to the house with four half-grown rabbits, and Daddy had kissed both his children, rubbed at his eyes, and driven off.

Before the dust cloud raised by the Model T had faded from sight, Grandpa said to his grandchildren, “Find a hoe that fits you and choose your row. Ev'rett, you show 'em how to cut the weeds under the ground good and get out all the roots.”