The Longest Road (3 page)

“And we did,” said Jack Dakin. “I remember planting all night and running a combine all night. We bought tractors and combines on credit and then prices fell after the war and we had to plant more to pay our debts.”

“Yeah.” Barney nodded. “Wheat that brought sixty cents a bushel in nineteen-twelve was only worth thirty cents in nineteen-twenty.”

“We broke a lot of virgin sod in Ford County,” remembered Dakin. “Tore up old knotted grass roots meshed so deep they tied down the topsoil just like a net of anchored ropes. Once I plowed through a prairie-dog village that must have covered eighty acres. Couldn't keep from hitting some of the little critters, slicin' 'em apart. Kind of a shame.”

“Might of been better if more grass had been left for grazing cattle,” said Dakin.

Mr. Echols shrugged. “One good wheat crop pays more than ten years of raising cattle on the same acreage.”

“You've got to sell your machinery, Mr. Echols,” Dakin allowed. “But what cattle are left are crowded onto land that won't carry 'em. That's just as hard on the soil as wearin' it out with plowing. There's been years as dry as this spell but the land wasn't ground to powder then. One of them farm-extension fellas says this kind of earth gets so pulverized in about five years that unless something's done to root it down and bring it back to life, it's rained, plumb and absolutely.”

“Blows away down to hardpan,” Barney grunted dolefully. “But some don't care, like them suitcase farmers, if they get a few good crops first.”

“Sure.” Dakin scowled. “They don't live here. They got another business. They can hire broke farmers to plant and harvest for 'em on the shares or get a few hands and come do it themselves now that machinery speeds everything up so much. If there's a poor crop, they don't even bother to harvest. Why, instead of plowin' a bad crop back into the ground for fertilizer, they just burn it off—don't add nothin' to the soil. Don't care about it except for what they can get fast.”

“They're like men who don't pay any attention to their wives except when they want a quick—”

“Mr. Smith!” objected Brother Arlo.

“Beg pardon, ladies, preacher,” mumbled Barney.

“Turn your thoughts from worldly things,” Brother Arlo advised severely. “If there's anything you need to say to each other, do it. Bare your hearts and make your peace.”

Barney's big ruddy head turned as he looked around. “So long,” he said with a grin. “It's been good to know you. And now, good neighbors, storm or no storm, I got to have a cigarette. I'll go out the back door, Miz Field, so you won't get a lot of dust in here.”

“Don't go out in this,” Mama pled. “Smoke on the porch.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Barney, but a second after the back door shut, they heard the one to the porch close, too.

“A dog to his vomit,” Brother Arlo said. “God have mercy!” He lifted his arms. “Oh Lord, we know Thou art a God of wrath as well as a God of love. We implore—”

Laurie wished they'd sing instead of pray. Singing made her feel better when she was blue or scared. Sometimes a tune got in her head and she hummed it for days. Softly, so no one could hear above the storm and Brother Arlo, she started humming “Onward, Christian Soldiers” because it had a brave, marching swing to it.

Brother Arlo was still praying when she worked through all the verses so she began “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” All the time, she was praying, too, that the world wouldn't end, that Daddy and Bud would come home safe—and that the cherry tree would live.

2

Bud slit the soft gray-brown hide from neck to bottom, peeled it off, and gutted the rabbit. That made three of them—three nickels he'd get from Mr. Haynes. It would've been four but one skinny old rabbit had boils and Mr. Haynes wouldn't take the ones that did. The rabbits weighed three to seven pounds before they were dressed out. Bud left the guts and skin for the coyotes, bundled the rabbits in a gunnysack, and started for the river to wash.

At first he'd got sick at his stomach when he cleaned a rabbit but it didn't bother him now except when he didn't kill one with a shot and had to finish it. Daddy had given him the old .22 last Christmas and taught him to use it. Since then, he'd had his own money and didn't have to ask for a penny or nickel like Laurie did if she wanted an ice-cream cone or candy. After he saved up enough for a pump for the .22 so it could shoot more than once without being reloaded, he was going to buy Laurie that book of poems she wanted so bad, maybe in time for her birthday that October. Even if she had thrown that hot oatmeal on him, most of the time she was a lot better than his friends' big sisters. Let's see—there were fifty shots in a box that cost six cents and when he was real careful, he almost never missed unless the jackrabbit heard him and ran. They covered the ground, too. Daddy said they could go thirty miles an hour, at least for a while. Supposing he hit forty out of fifty, that was—he frowned, struggling with the sums.

Two whole dollars! After he paid for the box of shorts, that left $1.94 profit. Till now, he'd never thought about it that way, just spent his nickels as he got them, choosing Big Little Books that Mama wouldn't forbid the way she did comic books, reveling in whole Baby Ruth candy bars, or getting a dip of strawberry as well as one of chocolate, sometimes treating his friends. It felt good to do that but he was going to have to cut out his free spending so he could buy the pump and Laurie's book and some cowboy boots to wear to school that fall.

As he wiped his hands on his overalls, the cottonwoods bent at the top, making a sound like rushing water. Boy howdy! Why hadn't he seen that big black cloud before? It was boiling over the plain, heading right for him. Oh, if only he hadn't come on out here when he couldn't find Daddy!

He wouldn't leave the rabbits behind, though, or his .22. Guessing that Mama would be too glad to see him to spank him and forgetting the blood on his clothes, he struggled to get the bag over his shoulder so it would balance more easily, grabbed the rifle, and trotted toward town.

Within a few minutes, his side ached and he panted for breath. The wind gusted harder now that he was out of the shelter of the trees and the lower land near the river. Dust blinded him. He burrowed his head against the arm holding the rifle and stumbled on, coughing.

So dark. Couldn't see the sun, see anything. The storm wailed like ghosts. He went to his knees, dropping the rifle, groped for it, and went forward, doubled over. At least he thought it was forward. He didn't know where he was.

Was it the end of the world? It sure was dark, like Brother Arlo said it would be. Would he go to hell? Would Mama and Daddy ever know what had happened to him? He told lies to get out of whippings and sometimes, in his room, he and Tom MacKay showed each other their things and played with them, seeing whose got biggest. Once a rabbit had just one little boil and he'd cut it away and sold it to Mr. Haynes. He'd stolen and smoked one of Floyd's cigarettes and—and—

The list of sins grew. Bud was sure that he'd reached that awful age of accountability, all right, or he wouldn't know what he'd done wrong. Moaning as a trickle ran down his leg, he began to yell, not that he expected anyone to hear, but he was just too scared not to holler.

“Mama! Daddy! Mama!”

The wind snatched away his cries. The rifle was loaded. If he fired it, maybe someone would hear. Dumping the rabbits at his feet, he held the .22 as straight up as he could and pulled the trigger.

“Son!” Buddy's heart leaped. The call was far away but it sounded like Daddy. He managed to reload and fired again. “Dad! Dad!”

If he just comes, I'll never be bad again! I'll put a nickel in the collection plate every Sunday! I won't cuss and—

“Buddy!” The voice was nearer.

“Dad!” Bud lunged forward with the bag and rifle. “You came!”

Shielded inside his father's jacket, a wet cloth held over his nose, he felt safe even though they were still out in the storm. He didn't want to die, didn't want the world to end, but if one or the other had to happen, it was sure a sight better to be with your father or mother.

“Bud, we're going to wait till the storm dies down.” Daddy ripped the towel in half. “Hold that over your nose and sit down so I can hold my jacket around us both.”

Through the cloth, Bud croaked, “Daddy—is the world comin' to an end?”

“I don't know, son. But you're young enough you don't have to worry, and your mama's praying for us. I'm with you. Whatever happens, I'm going to hang on to you.”

The jacket smelled like Daddy. The wind tried to tug it away but Daddy held on tight and knotted the arms. He fumbled and thrust something into Bud's hand. “Here's a stick of gum, Bud. Your favorite. Juicy Fruit.”

It didn't seem like you could chew gum if the world was ending. Maybe it was just an extra-bad storm. Bud hadn't sat in his father's lap for years but now he snuggled close and chewed real slow to make the sweet flavor last.

When he really knew what was happening again, Daddy was untying the jacket sleeves. Dust fine as Mama's lilac talcum powder poured in on them as the sleeves unfolded. Dust that was packed solid against their legs and up to their waists slid away reluctantly. More, sifted from Daddy's shoulders as he straightened. Bud sneezed and gazed through eyes watering with grit at what must be the sun.

It looked like a spoiled brown orange in a brown sky. The bag of rabbits was a mound in smoother drifts, like a small grave. Bud began to shake, though he wasn't cold.

If Daddy hadn't come, he'd be like that. Dead as the rabbits. It made him feel a stab of pity for them. Thinking of the nickels they'd bring and what the nickels would buy, he'd got so he really didn't think about them dying, guts or brains smashed by a shot, but seeing them like that as if they were buried—the way he would have been—never to see the light or breathe or move—

Bud hadn't cried in two years. He tried not to now. His throat ached with the effort but tears crawled down his nose anyway.

“It's all right, son.” Daddy helped him up, steadied him since his feet had gone to sleep. “Let's get home. Your mother'll be worried.” He fished the .22 out of the dust that covered it though the barrel had been tucked between them and with his foot cleared away the mound. “Get your rabbits and let's go.”

Bud didn't want to pick them up, but Daddy would think he was a baby if he said so. And there were the nickels.

It was a scary, brown, dead world they moved through. Not even a grasshopper chirred up from the Johnson grass and young Russian thistles that had choked the ditches when Bud had come this way. Everything was buried. The lacy new fronds had been scoured off the few black locust trees. The sandhill plum thicket was stripped of leaves and tender buds, only a few bare twigs thrusting from a mound of dust.

Maybe the world had ended. Shaking again, Bud tightened his grip on Daddy's hand. Maybe Mama had been raptured up to heaven and managed to take Laurie with her. Maybe he and Daddy were the only people left! But Daddy was saved. He'd have gone to heaven, too. Unless—unless his coming after Bud, trying to keep him from dying, was some kind of a sin.

Through the veil of dust, the elevator's dull sheen towered above the rest of the town, higher than the Methodist steeple, which Bud had to squint to make out, higher than the square, dark hulk of the red-brick bank building. Then there was a sound of engines and headlights flickered on the road out of town.

Two shapes took form, one smaller than the other. One was coughing. “Rachel!” Daddy let go of Bud and hurried through the drifts as fast as he could.

Bud plunged after him. Mama, wrapped in a damp sheet, left Daddy's arms to hold Bud tight. Laurie hugged Daddy and he gathered them all close. They were still like that when the first of a line of trucks and cars pulled up and Barney Smith shouted to the vehicles behind, “They're here! Both of them! They're all right!”

The world hadn't come to an end.

But it did. Mama kept coughing. She came down with dust pneumonia again, coughed up mud, clots of it that were filling her lungs. This time she died.

The body in the coffin looked like a life-size china-faced doll in Mama's only good dress and the white summer shoes she had admired in the store window. Bud had bought them with his hoarded nickels because Daddy had been so ashamed that her only pair of shoes had worn-out soles.

Dust rippled like a bleached tan ocean over the grass in the cemetery, covering the headstones. At least Mama's grave was under a honey locust. The storm had buried all the irises and daffodils but the tabernacle ladies sent a big spray of white carnations. Mama's only living close relative, a half-brother who'd gone out to Oregon to rive timber, wired American Beauty roses. Laurie had broken off the only branch of the cherry tree that still had a few buds left when the sheet was untied. The tabernacle women had been bringing in food since Mama got sick. After the funeral, they put the extension leaf in the round table and spread a big dinner. Laurie couldn't eat though there were things that had seldom been on the table before: ham and fried chicken, all kinds of salads, pickles, and relishes, besides mashed potatoes and canned green beans and peas, canned peaches and pears, and a dozen kinds of pies and cakes.

People said what a good woman Mama had been and how she was bound to be in heaven and the dust had broken her health and who knew what lay ahead so maybe God had been merciful to take her home.

Laurie wanted to scream at them, yank the tablecloth off and crash the food to the floor. She ran to her room and cried, though she still thought she'd surely wake up and find out it wasn't real, that Mama was alive.

The next week passed in a haze, though Laurie made sure Buddy's face was clean and his eyes clear of duck-butter before they went to school. Every night, she dreamed the world was ending and woke up half out of bed, wanting to run to her mother. Then she remembered. Strange how she forgot, how it would seem for a few minutes that everything was all right, and then it flooded over her and she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.