The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

got?”
    â€œThat’s what it is.” Morrigan poured willow brew into a cup and handed it to Laurie. “Maybe your brother will take it better from you.”
    Laurie doubted that. Buddy had to be spanked sometimes before he’d take his medicine. Mama always made sure he’d swallowed it because otherwise he’d hold a pill in his mouth till he could get away and spit it out. As Laurie gingerly raised the cup to Buddy’s lips, Morrigan smiled at the boy.
    â€œThat’s what Choctaw Indians use for upsets like yours, son. It’s broke me out of a bad fever many a time.”
    Buddy took a sip, struggled not to make a face, and gazed at Morrigan with wide, glittering eyes. “Are you a Choctaw, mister?”
    â€œGrandma was a full-blood married to a quarter-Scots MacIntosh so that made my mother seven-eighths Choctaw. Grandpa Morrigan came over from Ireland and married a girl who was half Chickasaw. That made Dad a quarter Chickasaw. So—let’s see now, Bud: I’m one-eighth Chickasaw on my father’s side and one-sixteenth white on my mother’s side, so what do you figure that makes me?”
    Spellbound by Morrigan’s teasing, lilting words, Buddy drank without protest, but shook his head at the question. “What does it make you, mister?”
    For a moment, Laurie was afraid Morrigan would say “half-breed” but instead he laughed and gave Buddy’s hair a gentle ruffling. “One mean Irish Injun! Shall I sing you a song about a man who was even more mixed up?”
    Buddy nodded. By the time Morrigan got out his guitar, wiped it lovingly with a soft rag, tuned it, and rollicked through “I’m My Own Grandpa,” Buddy had finished another cup of tea and was sweating. His eyes had lost some of their mirrorlike blankness and he didn’t squirm when Laurie, sparing of water since they might not be able to fill their jars that day, moistened the rag again and bathed his face, neck, and arms.
    When she started to fold the cloth across Buddy’s forehead, Morrigan said, “It’ll do more good across his throat where it’ll cool those big arteries on either side of his windpipe. Like some special song, Buddy?”
    â€œDo you know ‘I Love Bananas Because They Have No Bones’?”
    Morrigan did. And he played “Amazing Grace” for Daddy and “Pretty Redwing” for Laurie. “Now here’s one about that dust storm,” he said. “I was visitin’ this friend out by Pampa, Texas, when it came up and he wrote this song, ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.’ Mighty good songmaker Woody Guthrie is. This was just how it was, folks thinkin’ the end had come and just sayin’ good-bye to their neighbors.”
    There were a lot of verses. They told exactly how it had been, and how it was, but this wasn’t a sad song or a sad tune. Morrigan’s deep sweet voice lilted soft or swelled high, rollicked along till your foot tapped, and made you believe that even if the dusty wind was blowing you and other folks away from home, there’d be a place to stop, a place to live again, in your own house with your own family.…
    No, that couldn’t ever be. Mama was gone. Without her the finest mansion wouldn’t be home, but there could’ve been a kind of a one, even under a tarp, if Daddy would take them with him.
    But he won’t, thought Laurie, struggling with tears. He still wants to go to California even after Mr. Morrigan told him there aren’t any good jobs. Daddy wants to get away from us. I guess we remind him too much of Mama and how it was. I guess he can’t stand it. But how are we going to stand living at Grandpa Field’s? It’s not fair. Daddy can leave us wherever he wants and it doesn’t matter a bit what we want.
    Still, she was heartened by Morrigan’s singing, and cheered that Buddy was looking better. She