The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams Read Free Book Online

“You’re sure welcome to what we have. If we’re travelin’ your direction, you can squeeze in and ride with us.”
    â€œWouldn’t want to crowd you.”
    Daddy grinned. It was the first time Laurie had seen him really grin big since Mama died. “You can help me fix flats.”
    â€œI’m good at that.” John Morrigan had a deep, soft chuckle, kind of surprised, like he’d just learned something nice.
    â€œI’m Ed Field,” Daddy said. “This is my daughter, Laurie, and Buddy’s havin’ a nap.”
    Daddy’s eyes filled and a tear oozed through the dust on his cheek. Don’t tell him about us! Laurie begged silently, making as much noise as she could in taking lids off the lard cans, sticking a spoon in the slaw, and setting forks in the pie pans they were using on the road, pushing hers toward Morrigan. Don’t tell him Mama’s dead and you’re dumping us like kittens you don’t have the heart to drown .
    Daddy had loved Mama an awful lot but he enjoyed sympathy. Laurie hated it, at least the kind you bought by showing your sores and deformities like the beggars she’d heard about in big cities. She felt poor and ashamed because Mama was dead. Daddy’s leaving made it worse. So she shrank and suffered while Daddy told Morrigan about Mama and his plans.
    â€œDid I hear you mention California?” Daddy asked.
    Morrigan nodded. “I just got to Amarillo in time for that storm. Goin’ out to see my mother for the first time in a couple of years. She lives north of McAlester.”
    â€œAnd then you’ll go back to California?” Daddy asked.
    Morrigan’s chuckle wasn’t pleasant this time. “If I’m goin’ to starve, I’d rather do it closer to home.”
    â€œBut there’s all that fruit to pick—all that cotton.”
    â€œYeah, and there’s a hundred men for every job of work, Mr. Field. I’ve worked in the oil patch since I was fourteen, got to be a tool dresser.” At Laurie’s puzzled look, he grinned. “That means I dressed the tools, honey—heated the bits when they got dull from drillin’ and hammered ’em out. A toolie’s second to the driller, and I drilled a little, too. But oil prices went way down a few years back and the way Alfalfa Bill Murray—he was governor of Oklahoma in thirty-one—the bright idea he had to fix that was to close down the wells complete.”
    â€œDoesn’t seem to make much sense.” Daddy’s tone was sympathetic, though he’d always said he’d never work in the oil fields. On top of a rig was a good place to get killed, and oil-field people drank, gambled, and cussed a lot worse than the cowboys who came to Prairieville once a month after payday.
    â€œWhen I couldn’t get work in Texas,” Morrigan went on, “I’d heard about jobs in Arizona and headed that way. The ads and promises those big Arizona growers had spread all over this part of the world sucked in so many folks the farmers took their choice just like a slave market—and let me tell you, people are slaves to their bellies, they got to eat. Arizona’s got real tough laws about drawin’ relief—can’t get a dime unless you’ve lived there a couple of years.” He laughed grimly. “In the last few years, I’ve walked the tracks and rode the rails and slept under most of the important bridges in this land of the free and I can tell you in lots of places it’s a jailhouse crime not to have a job unless your daddy had a pile of money and left it to you. Well, when the cotton was picked and the main work done, Arizona shoved us over into California, and it was the same thing all over again. I’d heard they was payin’ five dollars a day but instead I wound up glad to get a dollar.”
    â€œMaybe you weren’t in the right place.” Daddy looked pale