The Ordways (21 page)

“The question is,” my grandfather had said, “where is our little Ned? That is what we have got to find out.”

The girls had sidled away then, as they did of late, he thought he had noticed, whenever Ned's name was brought up. Peeved, he had called them back. “You haven't begun to forget your little brother, I hope, have you, girls?” he asked.

Tears had sprung to the eyes of both, and he was sorry he had doubted them. Then Winnie cried, “Oh, Pa, don't go! Stay home, Pa! Don't leave us!”

“But you want me to go and find our little Ned and bring him back home again, don't you, hon? Of course you do.”

“No, I don't!” she cried. “I want you to stay home with us. Get us another little brother. Oh, Pa, I'm afraid you'll get lost and never find your way back again.”

“I won't get lost. Don't you worry about that. See, I have a map. You just be good girls and mind your ma and help her while I'm gone, and I'll come back, all right, bringing little Ned with me.” He had glanced at Bea then, and said, “You believe I'll find him, don't you, Bea?”

“Yes, Pa,” said Bea. And nothing yet had made it seem so unlikely as that prompt childish certitude.

“Now you all run and play, girls,” said my grandmother, and then to him, “Duck your head while I trim your neck.” He had, and as she leaned against him he felt the rounded firmness of her belly.

“You want to take good care of yourself, Hester, while I'm away,” he said.

She was anxious that he feel no sense of duty towards her, but free in his mind to search for the child that she blamed herself for the loss of. “Having a child is a lot easier than finding one,” she said. From the start she had approved his plan. Not that she encouraged him to believe that he would succeed. “But you must go,” she had said. “Even if you don't find him, you'll feel better for having tried. And so will I. Only…”

He thought she would say, “Only remember, he has three children of his own,” or words to that effect, to which he had ready the reply, “He ought to have thought of that before taking another man's.”

“Only, be careful,” she said. “Remember you've got three other children, and another on the way.”

Bea returned as Hester was shaving over his ears, with a drawing for his approval. It was a picture of a man. “Oh, nice!” said my grandfather.

“It's a picture of Mr. Vinson,” said Bea. “To show to people and ask if they have seen him.”

“Well, thank you, Bea! That will certainly be a big help, all right. It looks just like him! You see, Hester, we were both wrong. He's got purple eyes.”

He had it with him now, had found it in his pocket when he replaced the photograph of Ned, and now he unfolded it, and smiled. He ought not to smile, though; it was better than he had been able to do. For he had tried—first making sure that his women were all occupied and not likely to walk in and catch him at it—had gotten the idea from Bea and had tried himself to draw a picture of Will Vinson later that evening. First he attempted a front-face, and produced a jack-o'-lantern. Then he tried a profile, and that had wound up looking like an orangutan.

Now as he jogged along he grew conscious of the wind strumming the telegraph wires overhead. The poles marched westward across the prairie and over the distant rim. Looking at that line of diminishing crosses, my grandfather imagined how, during the first few hours of his flight, along this very stretch of road, Will Vinson must have fancied that in that sound he could all but hear the alarms racing ahead of him down the line. How could Will, wanting the boy bad enough to do what he was doing, suppose that Sam Ordway was such an indifferent father that he was letting those critical first few days go by without taking after him in pursuit, without even suspecting anything amiss? From the map there now arose a new image of Will Vinson. My grandfather saw Will looking backwards, over his shoulder, fearfully, at him.

He unfolded the final, westernmost fold. All of Texas, from Clarksville to El Paso, lay stretched out before him. And now when fully spread, what the map gave back to him was no longer an image of Will Vinson at all, but rather an image of himself. Of Will Vinson's image of him. And along with an inkling of the enormous quest which lay before him, he felt a sickening sense of compliment unmerited, the ignominy of an enemy's esteem. As big as Texas: that would be Will Vinson's estimation, based on his own reckless love for his boy, of the scope and reach of Sam Ordway's revenge.

In Bagwell, or just the other side of Bagwell, my grandfather stopped and called on his only known informant, Mr. Ingram, the farmer who had reported seeing the Vinsons on the day of their flight. He turned out to be a good deal less positive about it than the sheriff had reported him as being. He lived on the main road, and as he now said, lots of wagonloads of folks headed west went past his door. Still, a man had stopped at his place that day to ask for water from the well, a man whose team was lathered with sweat, and who struck him as nervous, jumpy, suspicious. He fitted grandfather's description of Will Vinson, though as my grandfather said to himself, so did this man, so did ninety-nine men out of a hundred. The farmer said yes, he believed it was four younguns they had with them, but when shown the photograph of Ned he could not say if that was one of them or not. Scratching his head, he said he guessed the truth was, he never took much notice of kids. Truth was, my grandfather reflected, neither did he. Never had. “Oh, you're old Bill So-and-so's boy,” he would say. “Yes, you take after your daddy.” And he would be reminded of some quirk of old Bill's, or of Bill's old father, and the boy himself would be forgotten. Little boys had no names, no identities, hardly any faces of their own. Did other men, he wondered, take as little notice of children as this man, and he himself?

“Going after him on your own, are you? Them law never done you no good?” Mr. Ingram asked. He seemed to smirk, whether from contempt for the law, or for a man who had gone to law, or both, my grandfather could not tell.

“Yes, well I wouldn't have left it up to them, you understand, only I had my crop to make, my family to look after. I've got three more youngsters, and another on the way.”

“I know how it is. Got six myself,” Mr. Ingram said with a sigh. “A poor farming man ain't even free to get mad just whenever the mood takes him. Well, Mr. Ordway, I wish I could do more for you. I sure wish you luck,” he concluded, his gaze stealing westward and his head shaking involuntarily.

One mile past that farmer's house my grandfather came to the first of many, many crossroads that he was to stop at and ponder which way to take, or to pass and wonder if he had done the right thing. He decided to keep on the main Paris road. Now he was on his own. Now he would have to introduce himself and tell his story. As he rode along he rehearsed his speech. “How do you do, ma'am,” he would begin. “I wonder if you can help me?” That would disarm right off any housewife's suspicions that he was a peddler and wanted to sell her something. “My name is Ordway?” he would say, giving it that slight interrogative inflection that removed any hint of self-assertiveness. “I'm from over in Red River County” (for he had crossed the Lamar County line now). “I'm on the trail of a man named Vinson. That is, I hope I'm on his trail. Will Vinson. He was my neighbor, and we were in the habit of leaving our little boy” (“
our
little boy,” he would say; no point in mentioning Aggie) “to play with his whenever we went anywhere for the day. One Saturday last spring—the seventh of May, to be exact—when we came home from town and stopped to pick up our little Ned, they were gone.” No point in anticipating the problem of describing Will unless she showed some signs of recollection astir. Just say, “Do you recall seeing a wagonload of strangers passing through here sometime around then—man, wife, four youngsters running from nine months up to three years, in a wagon drawn by a team of two brown four-year-old mules?”

A housetop rose into view. Looking about, my grandfather said to himself, well, if anybody did pass through here you couldn't miss him, unless he went through by night. You would know he was on his way a day ahead. His own approach was greeted half a mile off by a chorus of yapping dogs. He had a moment of misgiving. What would people make of him and his story? The unfortunate are so often regarded with suspicion. But one good omen: there were young children at this house, the wash on the line (it was a Monday) proclaimed them. He drew up at the gate, got down, went through the yard, giving a wide berth to the dogs, and around to the back door, conscious all the while of eyes watching him from behind window curtains. The door opened before he could call hello, and before he could get his hat off, the lady of the house, wiping her puckered sudsy red hands on her apron, stuck her head out and said, “Thank you, but we don't need nothing.”

He wasn't selling anything, he told her. He wondered if she could help him? This phrase had the opposite effect from what he had expected. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and her head commenced to shake. He told her his tale. Her reaction was to shrink from him and clutch her children to her, as if he carried some child-losing germ which she might catch if he came too close. He thanked her, went back to the wagon, and set off down the road.

The woman at the second stop had finished her wash and was now baking, came to the door wiping clots of dough on her apron. She was not so old as the woman who lived in the shoe, but like her she had so many children she didn't know what to do. They all came and gaped at the stranger like goldfish flocking to the side of the bowl. She listened confusedly, and shook her head. “None of you children saw any folks like that, did you?” my grandfather asked, and they fled like goldfish at the movement of a hand.

“Wellsir,” said the ancient sitting on the front porch at the next stop, “if they went past here they just kept on going. I seen em if they did, no doubt about that. Don't n'ere a dog go down this road but I don't know about it. Been setting here in this rocker for the last two years. It's this left leg of mine. Always served me perfectly well till one day last January a year. Locked. Just froze up tight. You can't no more bend it than a stick of stovewood. They have to set me out here in the morning and take me indoors at night like a piece of furniture. This is where you'll find me every day from around the first of April till frost. So it ain't much happens along this stretch of road but I don't know about it, and the folks you say you're after, well, if they did go by then I just waved at em like I do everybody whether I know em or not, and never give em another thought in this world. Unless of course I had just dozed off. It does happen sometimes and so it's just barely possible—”

“Well, I'm much obliged to you just the same. And I hope your leg gets well real soon.”

“Don't mention it. Glad to help you out, son. Low-down trick, stealing a man's boy. Your own neighbor, you say? What is the world coming to? Well, if and when you do catch him, stomp him once for me, hear? As for the leg, well, I don't know. I appreciate the thought, but if it ain't got no better in two years, why …”

So it went. Stopping everywhere along the road, at every farmhouse, at every crossroads store, blacksmith shop, my grandfather spoke to old and young, male and female, black and white, and not one did he find who could honestly say he recalled the folks he was looking for.

Now my grandfather made his first deduction. As he entered Paris on the evening of the second day he put himself in Will Vinson's place and pondered what he should do at this point, how, feeling the hot breath of Sam Ordway down his neck, or imagining that he did, he ought to proceed. The question was, whether to go through the town or skirt round it. Out in the country you ran less risk of being seen by anyone; for that very reason, though, anyone who did see you was more apt to remember it. In town the chances of your being seen were multiplied; but by the same token, they were lessened of your being noticed and remembered. So at this point (assuming that Will had reached this point) the clever thing would have been to plunge right in, lose yourself down these streets, amid these crowds (my grandfather was afoot now, carrying his satchel, having left the wagon and team at a livery stable, and proceeding to a hotel), and like a fox crossing water, break your trail. And because that would have been the clever thing to do, Will Vinson had done the other thing. The instinct of a country fellow like Will would have been to stay out in his own element. He knew, because he felt it himself. Will Vinson had never even approached Paris. The reason no one after Bagwell remembered seeing him was that somewhere down one of those many side roads which he had passed today, Will, knowing that Paris lay ahead of him, had foolishly turned off. He knew, because that was what he would have done in Will's place. To admit it gave him an odd momentary little sensation of fellowship with that other country boy, his former neighbor, and what was even odder, it was a not unwelcome feeling as he made his way alone through the streets of this strange city.

“Well, I wouldn't say civilized, no. That I don't reckon it'll ever be. But you don't find any more red Indians out there nowadays. I wasn't scalped. I've been like this for years. I'm told one family of Choctaws went out and had a go at sod-busting, but wound up saying give it back to the white man.”

“Whereabouts was you?”

“All over. Up in the Panhandle. Out around Lubbock, Wichita Falls. All the way out to Amarillo. I was in one town called Sundown and another called Halfway and one called Pep and one called Needmore (most fittingly named place I believe I ever was in) and then when I come to one called Circle Back, I did.”

“Who do you travel for, Mr. Hewlett?”

“The Good Neighbors Company. Out of St. Louis. Barb-wire fencing. You?”

“I'm in the wholesale hardware line myself. Nuts and bolts. Nails.”