The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

  “What would I get out of it?”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “I can make six hundred a load at least, hauling for myself.”

  “But you take chances,” Heimie said. “You take a lot more chances. Law all over the place, and getting thicker. And they have to pinch somebody, see? They’re fixed not to pinch our boys, so they have to make their reputations on the stragglers and lone wolves. It’s a good setup to be in on.”

  “How much?” Bo said.

  “What about two hundred a load?”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “That’s high pay, boy, for a job that’s safe as a church.”

  “But it isn’t high enough,” Bo said, “and it isn’t as safe as you make out. What if I got hijacked?”

  He watched Heimie’s face closely, but Heimie didn’t tumble. His face was still smiling, faintly amused.

  The organization will take that chance, not you,” Heimie said.

  “But I don’t think it’s much of a risk.” He grew more confidential, huddling across the table and squinting as he figured in his head. “Now look,” he said, “you’re the best man I know at getting in and out with stuff. We can use you, and you can use us. We’d be suckers to work against each other, but that’s what we’d be doing if you didn’t come in. But two hundred a load—well, make it two fifty—is damn good for what you’d be doing.”

  “We aren’t getting anywhere,” Bo said heavily. “Now I’ll make you a proposition. I’m willing to come in, on any kind of terms that gives me a decent cut. I’ll haul down from Govenlock for you for fifteen bucks a case, no less, you putting up the money for the stuff and paying me cash on the nose when I bring it in. You guarantee protection, and let me be the judge of when it’s safe to make a trip. And if I don’t haul for anybody but you, you’d have to furnish me a car.”

  “Say, now, wait a minute!” Heimie had his hands up, warding off imaginary blows. “Fifteen a case? And protection? And a car? You want a gold mine.”

  “That’s what you’ve got,” Bo said. “Why shouldn’t I want one?”

  “You’ve got an exaggerated idea of how much there is in this business,” Heimie said, still playfully. He took out a pencil and figured on an envelope. “Make it twelve a case, and you furnish the car, and it’s a go.”

  “Couldn’t do it,” Bo said.

  “Fifteen a case would be four hundred and fifty a load.”

  “That’s a whole lot less than I’m making now.”

  Heimie shook his head, at first slowly, then emphatically. “We couldn’t afford that kind of money.”

  “Listen,” Bo said. “This is a business deal, isn’t it?”

  “What else?”

  “And I’m going to be a kind of hired man in it.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Exactly,” Bo said. “And I’ll be doing the hard and the dangerous part, and you know it damn well. So I’m worth wages enough to keep me interested in working hard for you, and it’s up to you to put up the car. You don’t ask a truck driver’ to furnish his own hack.”

  “Suppose we did put up a car,” Heimie said after a pause. “Would you haul for twelve?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Then I guess we can’t get together.” Heimie’s voice grew crisp. “Twelve a case, and we’ll put up a car. That’s as deep as we can go. Take it or leave it?”

  For a moment Bo hesitated. He didn’t like it at any price, but there wasn’t much else he could do. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll take it.”

  4

  Toward the end of May Bo came home from town with his special look of excited secrecy, his air of being possessed by great schemes, which could only be divulged little by little, with suspense and the aggravation of Elsa’s curiosity. He began by asking, quite casually, if she wanted to go on a-little trip.

  “Up to Govenlock?” she said.

  “No. A real trip.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Yellowstone, maybe. Salt Lake City. All around.”

  “You mean—just for the trip?”

  “Sure.”

  “Kids too?”

  “Kids too.”

  “That would be wonderful!” she said. “Can we afford it?”

  Bo’s wink was almost grim. “I’m going to see that we can afford it. This is where I catch up a little on Heimie and his outfit.”

  “Oh,” she said, and her animation faded. “You mean we’ll be hauling a load.”

  “For the love of Mike,” he said, “did you think we could go off touring just for the fun of it?”

  “Some people do.”

  “Some people are richer than we are, too. Come on out in the garage, I want to show you something.”

  He took her out and showed her: an auto tent, folding beds that hooked to the running boards, a food box bolted to the right front fender, with shelves and boxes and a lid that folded down for a table. “Everything the very latest,” he said. “This is due to be a trip in style.”

  “But the kids,” she said. “What if we should get caught?”

  “That’s just it. With the kids along we wouldn’t even get stopped. No prohi is stopping families on a tour. He’d lose his job the first time he searched some big shot’s car.”

  She was silent, and her eyes came up to meet his. “It’s so much like using them,” she said.

  He snorted. “They’d have the time of their lives. We’d camp out, see some scenery, take it easy. There isn’t a chance for a hitch.”

  “Where would we be hauling to?”

  Bo smiled, his lips tight across his teeth. “Heimie wants to open up some new territory. Salt Lake City, especially. And I’ve been such a good dog he’s sending me. It’s only incidental that if I get knocked over down there he’d wash his hands of me and not know anything about any agreement. But that’s all right.”

  “Why?” she said. “Why would you go?”

  “Because I can get even with the son of a bitch,” Bo said. “I’m taking his load in the car, all right, but I’m hooking on a trailer of my own.”

  “That’s double-crossing him.”

  “You’re damned right,” Bo said. “The old double-x, just what he pulled on me.”

  He pulled her back to the house, talking all the time. “I’m going up to Govenlock day after tomorrow. You’ll have to pack up and store what stuff we’ve collected. We’ve lived in this house long enough. Can you be ready soon as the kids are out of school?”

  “I guess so,” she said, “but ...”

  “But nothing. This is going to be the nicest trip you ever had.”

  “I know it would be fun for me. I was thinking about the kids.”

  “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars they’d stow away if we tried to leave them behind.”

  She laughed uncertainly. “I guess they would, at that.” Her laugh died, and she threw him a pained and anxious look. “I keep thinking of that dummy you took along once,” she said. “Now you’re taking all of us for the same reason. We’ll all be camouflage.”

  He looked at her with such utter lack of comprehension that she gave up.

  They pulled out in broad daylight, with the neighbors out to see them off, going publicly like any tourists, their lunch box high on the right fender, the rest of that whole side wedged with suitcases in the luggage carrier, the tent and camp beds strapped on the iron grill back of the spare tire. In the tonneau the boys’ heads stuck up through a mountainous load. Bo laughed as he packed them in. “Whiskey to right of them, whiskey to left of them, whiskey on top of them gurgled and thundered,” he said. Sixteen cases of whiskey, camping equipment, food, and four people were in the car. They sat on dynamite and waved goodbye to the neighbors and pulled out boldly through the town on the road to Fort Benton, and at Fort Benton, back in a dusty alley behind a warehouse, they picked up the loaded trailer carrying fourteen more cases of whiskey, and crossed the Missouri and started south. The detour to Fort Benton took them almost a half day
out of their way, but it made the trailer safe. Eventually, that night, they wound up in the pass above where Bo had been hijacked in November.

  The next night, after slogging all day through heavy gumbo mud, they camped in the clear evening with the sun pink on the Crazy Mountains east of them, and the next day they were in Yellowstone, one loaded car among dozens of dusty loaded cars, one family of tourists among the hundreds who peeked into the smoking caverns of geysers and tossed chocolate bars to bears and strung out behind the road construction gangs on dusty unsurfaced grades through the timber. All of that was fun. Elsa never failed to wave at cars they met or passed; they rarely failed to wave at her, and the feeling of being free and open and in society again, part of a good-natured fraternity of gypsies, pleased her almost more than the scenery.

  Yellowstone took them exactly one day. In spite of his belief that he was taking it easy, seeing the sights, Bo pushed the Hudson along. A half hour was enough for the canyon, fifteen minutes apiece sufficed for two or three of the more notable geysers, ten minutes was enough to stop and feed some old robber bear. Elsa and the boys looked enviously at parties starting out on horseback, at enticing trails leading off to Mount Washburn or Cody or the Tetons. For all that, they were outside the boundaries of the park by seven the next morning, and that night they were creeping through heavy construction again on the edge of Blackfoot, Idaho.

  The roadbed was almost impassable, the detours worse. When they were within sight of the trees of the town they hit a chuckhole that rocked them clear to the axle. Bo winced and gritted his teeth, and the boys whooped from the back seat, pushing the shifted load back off them.

  “Smell anything?” Bo said.

  Elsa sniffed. “No.”

  “I do,” Chet said.

  “God damn!” Bo said. He stopped the car and got out, sniffing over the load. “Busted one, that’s sure,” he said finally. “But it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Nothing, now. If we get to a good out-of-the-way camp I can unload.”

  Ahead of them the late sun burned through the tops of a long line of Lombardy poplars, and the roadside was deep green and cool-smelling with alfalfa. “This is a pretty town,” Elsa said. “I don’t know when I’ve seen a town so green.”

  “Irrigation,” Bo said.

  There were ditches along the road, a wide canal running off across the meadow toward the north. When they pulled past the big U.S. ROYAL CORD scroll bearing the history of Blackfoot, Elsa said, “It would be nice if we could camp here somewhere, it’s so cool and green,” and five minutes later, when they came to the town tourist park, green-lawned under a canopy of trees, Bo looked at her once and pulled in. Broken bottle or no broken bottle, this was too pleasant a camp ground to miss.

  They found a spot under the trees near the irrigation ditch, and after supper Bo rummaged a little in search of the broken bottle. But the load was too solid, and he didn’t dare unload completely now, with tourists pulling in every few minutes and settling down for the night. A car was parked and a tent went up hardly fifty feet away. All he could do was settle everything back in and tuck quilts and blankets in tightly all around, to keep the smell as muffled as possible. By nine o‘clock they were in bed.

  It was barely daylight when Bo sat up abruptly, creaking the iron framework of the bed. “Hey!” a voice was saying outside the tent. “Hey, wake up!”

  He poked his head through the tent flap. A man on a horse was outside, and as the horse moved, its feet splashed in the sodden grass. “What’s the matter?” Bo said, wide awake now, his mind stiff with the prospect of the law.

  “Ditch has busted loose,” the man said. “There’s already two inches of water running through here. You better pack up and get out or your car’ll bog down.” In the gray light he kicked his horse closer. “With that trailer, you might have trouble,” he said. “I can get you a team after while if ...”

  His nostrils pinched in, dilated once. Bo, sitting up to get shoes on, saw his attention wander. That God damned smell ...

  “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll get out of here right now.” He shouted to the boys and shook Elsa. As the rider turned away, looking back over his shoulder, Bo said, “How’s the road to Ashton?”

  “‘Sall right. Might be some snow up high, but the road’s open.”

  “Thanks,” Bo said again. He swung on Elsa the minute he let the tent flap fall. “Hustle!” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here damn fast.”

  “Ashton?” Elsa said, still only half awake. “Isn’t that back up in Idaho?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But ...”

  “Let it go!” Bo hissed. “That damn snooper smelled us, see? We’ve got to move.”

  He set his feet down and felt cold water as high as his ankles. The thought of the slippery lawn, the soaked topsoil, under the heavy wheels of the overloaded Hudson made him want to knock somebody down. The Hudson was no good in mud anyway. Too much power, too much weight. A lighter car would walk right through mud that would mire this elephant ...

  In ten minutes they were packed, the tent and beds and blankets thrown in hastily, any which way, on the load. Bo slid in and stepped on the starter.

  “You get out and be ready to push,” he said to Chet and Bruce. Elsa climbed out too, and the three braced themselves in water that flowed in a silvery sheet over the whole lawn. It had been almost fifteen minutes since the rider had left. He would have had time to get a cop and come back, if he was the kind that would turn you in. Five minutes more might be too many to delay. They had to make it out the first time or they were sunk.

  A gravelled driveway circled the park, fifty or sixty feet to their left. If they could make that ...,Bo leaned out the window. “Push like the devil,” he said. “Now!” He let out the clutch and felt the Hudson strain, roll.,At the first sign of spinning he eased up, feeding only enough gas to keep the car moving. He heard one of the boys yell and fall down, but he kept easing it, inching it, heavy and lumbering, toward the drive. Ten feet, fifteen, three car lengths. It was like driving a loaded wagon over thin ice. The minute the wheels started to spin in mud instead of on grass, they would be in to the hubs.

  The lawn sloped slightly downward, a barely perceptible dip, and, then upward again to the drive. He would have to run for it. He stepped down on the throttle, felt the clumsy car spin and swerve, but gain momentum. As long as it was downhill it was all right. But he had to gun it up that slope. In fury he stamped down on the accelerator and went roaring, throwing mud and water, skidding and whipping back into line, his hind wheels digging in and his speed slowing, slowing, until he barely crept for all the noise of the motor and threshing of the wheels. His front wheels made the gravel, he swung left to ease the hill, and his hind wheels spun, dug, found something solid and pushed him two feet, spun again. Elsa and the boys came panting, threw themselves against the fenders, and gradually, painfully, inch by inch, the car crept up on hard surface until one wheel caught. Elsa jumped aside to avoid the trailer. Bruce was flat on his face in the mud, his upraised forehead spattered. Chet trotted triumphantly alongside.

  Bo started again before they were half into the car. “Keep your eye peeled,” he said over his shoulder. “If you see any cars behind us, you tell me.”

  “If he believed that Ashton business we may be all right,” he said to Elsa, “but if he didn’t we may have to run for it.”

  She looked at him with her mouth set, turned her head and looked at the boys, muddy and wet, crowding their faces against the spattered back window. They didn’t look scared, they weren’t bothered by what might happen. They were only excited. She sighed.

  “There’s a car!” Bruce said. Chet crowded him aside to see better, and they fought for the window.

  “Nope,” Chet said. “It’s turned off again.”

  They clung precariously balancing on their knees while Bo drove fast down the straight road to Pocatello. On smooth str
etches he took it up to sixty, and gravel spanged under the fenders, the tires whined on little curves, the trailer behind wove from side to side, the car rocked with a monumental, dangerous weight on the punished springs.

  “Whoopee!” Chet yelled. He grabbed for the top brace to steady himself. Bruce, a little white around the eyes, yelled in echo, and they both screeched hysterically, drunk with excitement and speed, until Bo turned and yelled at them to shut up.

  “Sit down,” Elsa said quietly. “I don’t think there’s anybody coming now.” She looked back a long time. The road was clear as far as she could see, and a white curtain of dust blew eastward to meet the sun. “You can slow down,” she said to Bo. “I’m sure it’s all right.”

  Bo let the Hudson back down to forty, looked once at her, and pressed his lips together. “That could have been bad,” he said. “Scare you?”

  “Yes.”

  So that, her mind was saying, is the end of any pretense that this is a picnic trip. Now at least we aren’t trying to fool ourselves any more.

  It was a day when, having started wrong, they could not do anything right. After the first hundred miles, which they made before breakfast because Bo would not stop until he was clear of possible pursuit, they made bad time. At breakfast Bruce cut himself deeply with the butcher knife, and in his surprise and pain swore furiously out loud, and Bo slapped him end over end. An hour after they had started again it clouded over and began to rain, a slow, insistent, misty drizzle. At three o‘clock, after a cold lunch huddled in the car, they were descending a dugway into a river valley. A yellow delivery truck was coming up the grade toward them, hogging the road. Bo rode the horn, pulled the Hudson as far over toward the edge as he dared, and bent, swearing, to peer through the streaming windshield. At the last minute the truck saw them, swerved, skidded, slewed around, and shot by in second gear, and at the instant the soft clay shoulder of the bank began to give under the Hudson’s rear wheels. Bo swung in and stepped on the throttle, but the weight of the car bore them down, the trailer slipped half over the edge and pulled at them, and in the end they stuck there, two wheels over the edge and the Hudson balanced precariously on its universal housing like a balancing rock.