I got the car started and climbed into the back.
Henry took off at a clip, and I sat down hard and muttered under my breath.
Soon I was saying prayers as Henry sped through the streets of Kansas City, scaring horses, other automobile drivers, and people out for a Saturday evening stroll. He careened so close to a mother and child I saw the woman’s eyes show white all the way around.
“Slow down!” I screamed.
In ten minutes, we were out of town and headed west, and my heart was sinking faster than the sun in front of us.
I leaned over the seat back between the other two. “What did you do?”
“I had some good luck,” Henry shouted.
“What kind of luck?”
“I said good luck!”
Paul said, “I think John’s asking you at whose expense?”
Henry hooted. “Let’s say I found a . . . whatchacallit. A sponsor. For our trip.”
“A sponsor,” Paul and I both repeated.
“Yep.”
“At the slaughterhouse?” I asked.
“Nope. Somebody downtown.” Henry turned and flashed me the devil’s smile.
“D-downtown.” Paul’s voice shook.
That grin was so evil I’m sure Paul heard it. “Yep, downtown.”
None of us spoke for the next five miles. Then Paul cleared his throat and asked, “How much?”
“Four hundred dollars.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
A mile or so went by that might have been filled with circus elephants and tigers, for all I saw of it. Then I blurted out, “How long are we on the run?”
“Jes’ till my face heals.” Henry chuckled, and the wind carried it back to me. “Jes’ till I don’t look like this no more.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Henry didn’t say any more about his newfound wealth, and it just about killed me not to ask. But I didn’t. If the law caught up to him, I wanted to be able to say that all I knew, by God, was that he said he’d found a sponsor. Let him hang alone. I wasn’t about to be punished for something I had no hand in.
But profiting from somebody else’s wrong did present a dilemma. I could feel saintly all I wanted and tell myself I was above all the ugly details, but at the end of the day I was eating pork chops paid for by sin, and I knew it.
Outside Kansas City, we passed through Bonner Springs, Kansas, and stopped at a store for food. Henry’s money in my pocket made me feel dirty. When I handed some to the man behind the counter, I couldn’t meet his gaze.
I found out, though, that half an auto seat loaded with bread and cheese and cured meat and root beer raised my spirits considerably.
We found a copse of trees on a lonesome stretch of road outside town and pulled over to make camp.
We sat in the car and tore into the food.
“Is it safe to build a fire, do you think?” I ventured.
Henry looked all around. “Well, I don’t think we’re gonna burn down the countryside, if that’s what you mean.”
I swallowed a hunk of sandwich. “No, I mean if somebody notices it and comes by to see what’s going on, are they—?”
“Are they gonna recognize me from a wanted poster or somethin’ and haul us all in? Hell, no. Besides, there’s nobody around for miles. I don’t know what you’re all hinky about.”
“Well, you damn well ought—”
Paul cut me off. “Oh, calm down, John, would you? Damn it. You’re worse than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
Paul was taking Henry’s side? And swearing? What the hell was this?
Later, when we turned in, I put my bedroll a little farther away from both of them than was absolutely necessary.
Next morning, I saved some of the food back and warned the other two that it was Sunday and we might not be able to add to what we had on hand. They grumbled about it, and I told them to stop being babies. They might not think about little stuff like how to stay alive and keep the Ford running, but I did.
We set out across Kansas and tried to make some distance. And even if I hadn’t wanted to get Henry as far away from Kansas City as possible, that turned out to be the way to go. The hardest thing about describing the Kansas countryside to Paul was explaining there was nothing to describe. Land so flat you could see for miles in every direction. Mile after mile of dirt, wherever you looked. The areas that hadn’t been scoured clean by prairie wildfire were covered in long grass that was doing a poor job of holding the dirt down beneath it.
We ate a fair amount of Kansas that day. We were covered in brown silt before noon and coughing our heads off, trying not to swallow it. The windscreen might have kept the wind down some, but it was powerless against blowing dirt. It was hard to keep my eyes open, and I thought maybe those fancy driving goggles I’d seen pictures of weren’t as silly as I’d judged them to be.
Paul took out a clean handkerchief and tied it over his nose and mouth like a stagecoach robber in a movie picture. It made me uneasy. I didn’t need any reminders of thievery.
When the sun was directly above us, we stopped near a small creek and laid down belly-first on flat rocks to scoop cool water over our faces.
I doled out a ration of food and unfolded the map Stuart Kassen had given me a week before we left home. I calculated how far we’d come and how long it took and did some ciphering. “Gentlemen? We should try to make Mission Creek by dark so we can get our clothes off and get clean.”
Paul and Henry just kept eating and didn’t look at me.
I counted to twenty in my head instead of telling them again to stop acting like babies.
When Paul finished, he brushed his hands together and said, “What’s it look like?”
“What’s what look like?” I asked.
“Around here. What’s it look like?”
“Like I already told you.” I tried to sound patient. “Not gonna be much to see in Kansas other than Topeka, and I’m not gonna stop in a big city just now.”
Henry’s face was a rainbow of colors in the sunshine.
“Don’t we get a vote?” Paul said.
That put me back on my heels. “Well, yeah, I guess so. I just—”
Henry interrupted. “There’s a little bridge here, Paul, that we haven’t crossed yet. Wood floor, looks like iron frame, old enough to be all rusted.”
“What color is the sky today?” Paul asked.
I had no idea what was going on with them, but it was starting to make me mad.
“Oh, I dunno,” Henry answered him. “Blue like always. It’s the color of hot, you might say. You know how when the sun’s beatin’ down, you see kind of shimmery lines in the air?”
“No.”
Henry snorted. “Aw, hell, course not. I’m no good at this. I can’t tell you about somethin’ you never seen.”
Paul spoke before I could. “What about the water we just washed in. Is it clear? Is anything living in it?”
“Well, we didn’t let you wash in mud.” Henry guffawed, but he took a look. “Yeah, there’s some minnows, half a dozen tadpoles I see. Water bugs skittering around on the surface.”
Paul smiled. “See? You do just fine.”
Henry spat a wad of phlegm so close to Paul’s shoes I flinched. “Yeah? How do you know? I could tell you gypsies were dancing naked on the other side of the creek.”
“Okay, then. You’re doing fine for a horse’s ass.”
To my surprise, Henry grinned.
Paul turned to me. “We haven’t passed a single person all morning, John, is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know we’ve not gotten off the main route?”
My eyebrows went to visit my hairline. “Well, hell, Paul, Stuart Kassen got me this map from the Automobile Club of America. You know that. We haven’t passed any towns today, but this thing’s marked out pretty well with forks in the road and dogleg turns at the township lines. And don’t forget the one gigantic tree we p
assed early on today. That’s right here.” I pointed to the map before I realized how useless that was.
“Uh-huh.” His expression was the same as if I’d said we were lost nine ways to Tuesday.
“Paul. It’s Sunday. Folks go to church. They go home. It doesn’t mean nothin’ we’ve seen nobody. We’ve not gotten off anything, Mr. English Teacher.” I told them to pack up so we could move on.
We got to the edge of Topeka an hour later. Mature person that I am, I did not scream, “Told you so!”
In the thick of the main business area, Henry let out a whoop and veered across oncoming traffic. He stopped in front of a shop with Ford painted on the front window in front of the flying pyramid I knew so well.
I was about to remind him it was Sunday when a man in a suit and a black derby came out and locked the door behind him.
Henry vaulted out. “Kind sir,” he started.
I rolled my eyes.
“Could you be troubled to sell us some spare parts? A tire casing, for sure, and anything else you might recommend for a long trip?”
Paul piped up from the passenger seat, “And some gasoline too, sir, if you could.”
The man looked the car over. “Well, now, boys, I wish you well in your travels, but today’s Sunday and we’re closed. I just came down to check on something nagging at me, and the missus is expecting me home for dinner five minutes ago.” He started toward his own Model T.
“But, sir,” Henry said, “we’re travelers headed for Yellowstone Park, and we’ve already drove a hundred and fifty miles or so. We’re likely gonna need somethin’ for the car before we get to the next town that’s got it.”
The man squinted at Henry’s face. “What happened to you?”
I slid lower in my seat.
“Defending her honor, sir,” Henry said and bowed his head.
“Whose honor?”
Henry’s voice tolled like a bell. “The Ford.” He shook his head and went on. “Fellow back in Kansas City had an Eye-talian car, the Eye-tala, I believe it’s called, and he called my Ford a piece of junk. I reminded him that a Model T whipped his heap of scrap iron last year and anybody with a brain knew it was the rightful winner of the Guggenheim Trophy and, well”—Henry pointed to his nose—“he did not care to be reminded.”
The dealer debated for so long I knew Henry had won even before the man sighed and got out his key. “Oh, well,” he said. “That woman would have found something wrong with me coming home an hour ago.”
We left with a full tank of gasoline, two tire casings and a spare inner tube, a gallon of oil, and a list of the few Ford dealerships scattered between Topeka and Cheyenne, Wyoming.
I cranked the Ford to life and hopped in.
Paul piped up from the backseat, “Sir? Do you know where we can get today’s newspaper?”
After the man puzzled at that, looking at Paul’s cloudy eyes, he walked over to his own Model T and came back with a folded paper. He handed it to Paul, who thanked him profusely as Henry started away.
The dealer looked confused but nevertheless waved us off with, “Good luck, boys! God be with you!”
Henry yelled back, “I hope not! We ain’t got room in this piece a shit!” but we were far enough away that he couldn’t have been heard. Then Henry cut the wheel sharp toward the right, and I grabbed for handholds. Two colored men were standing on the sidewalk talking, and Henry came within a foot of hitting them.
They jumped back, wide-eyed, before he turned back onto the street proper.
I took a breath to yell at Henry, but the look on his face struck me silent. That same look of satisfaction he’d had in Waverly when he forced the couple off the sidewalk. That look of accomplishment. I shook my head and was glad Paul didn’t ask what had happened.
When we were almost out of town, Henry pulled over and set the car to idle. He turned sideways in the seat and said, “Well, I ain’t seen no food for sale yet. I’d say we head back into town and find a hotel with a fat woman in the kitchen, but I’m afraid Nervous Nelly here would piss his drawers.”
It took a minute to realize he meant me.
Paul did his finger rubbing thing.
Oh, and I’m the Nervous Nelly? I thought.
“Well, tell me, Henry,” Paul said, “how does your face look today?”
“Bee-yoo-ti-ful,” Henry said, snickering.
“Bad enough for that fellow back there to ask about it,” I said.
We all waited.
“Aw, hell,” Henry said and put the car in gear. “We only camped out one night so far. And we don’t want Nelly to get too soft.”
It didn’t feel a lot like victory.
The first house outside the city had a road stand the likes of which we hadn’t seen since home. A basket of eggs, some dried beef, early peas and potatoes, and a price list next to a box for money.
Henry grabbed my duffel and started stuffing it full.
“Whoa!” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“The man said, ‘God be with you,’ and I figure this is Him providin’.”
“Goddamn it, Henry!” He was piling potatoes and peas on top of the beef. “We don’t even have a pan to cook that stuff in!”
“I do,” Paul said. “Well, I guess I do. What is it we’re talking about?”
Hell’s bells. “Potatoes and peas.”
“Yes, I can handle that,” Paul said. I threw up my hands and Paul went on. “Although if Henry is planning not to pay, I’d remind him our sponsor can take care of it.”
“Like hell,” Henry said.
Paul held up the Model T’s crank, the signal for You’re not going anywhere.
“Shit.” Then Henry laughed and said, “Oh, yeah. I guess I do got more money than God now.” He started taking food out of the duffel and putting it back.
I guess we needed a lot less food that was paid for than what might be free.
When we were on our way again, Paul passed the newspaper up front to me. “Just the highlights? Please? While you’ve got light?”
I glanced at the front page and threw over my shoulder, “They’re putting on a Sherlock Holmes play in London,” then looked back to see Paul pull a sour face. “What?”
“Unless there’s a natural disaster or a war has broken out, just tell me if there’s any news about the fight.”
Behind the steering wheel, Henry harrumphed.
I read to myself for a bit and then reported, “San Francisco is just about going nuts. That’s the long and short of it.”
“Nuts, how?”
I could feel a harrumph coming on, myself. This was getting old. “Preachers are all preaching against the fight and hoping they can stop it. All the stores got statuettes of both guys, Johnson and Jeffries—”
“Jeffries and Johnson,” Henry interrupted.
“Jeffries and Johnson. Anyway, it looks like the whole city—more like the whole country, really—is pretty much split up between them that want to stop it, them that think it’s a fix and won’t happen, and them that can’t wait.”
Paul nodded. From his expression, I had no idea what he was thinking. And he still hadn’t explained why he was so all-fired fascinated with the subject.
We made it to Mission Creek just before sundown and found a good spot off the road to bunk down. The ground was so hard we drove the Ford over and parked it under a tree. I got the map out again and figured we’d made a hundred miles that day. That was really something, considering the farthest I’d ever been from home before was eighty miles, with that distance spread over two days.
Home. If you couldn’t wait to get away, is it right to still think of it as home?
I thought about my mom making sad pancakes and bacon the morning I left. My dad staring a hole in the table. The neighbors pretending they weren’t watching. I wondered how Catherine was doing with me gone. I wondered where I’d end up after this trip was over and if, wherever it was, it would feel like home. Five days on the road and already I fel
t rootless.
I jumped up and got busy sorting out what we needed from the auto. Busy enough to stop thinking.
Once we got unloaded and got the kinks out, we stripped down and got Saturday-night clean. Paul had even brought soap. I washed out my dirtiest set of clothes and hung them over a branch to dry. I offered to do the same for Paul, but he stumbled around washing out his clothes in the shallows. He fell hard on the wet rocks a few times while I shook my head. Then he did ask for help hanging up the clean clothes to dry, and I wanted to kick myself for feeling flattered.
Henry washed out his one set of clothes and went about building a fire in nothing but his underdrawers.
In no time, potatoes and peas were cooking. We laid back away from the heat with the last of our root beer and some dried beef. By the time we’d finished the vegetables and some leftover cornbread, my stomach was as tight as a tick. It must have shrunk some over the meals I’d missed.
I laid there food-stupid and watched the fire for a while.
Out of nowhere, Henry said, “What’s it like?” He was looking at Paul.
Time went by before Paul said, “I assume you’re talking to me?”
“Yeah.”
“It helps if you say my name. What’s what like?”
“Being blind.”
Paul blinked a few times. “Well, shut your eyes. It’s like that. Except imagine you can’t open them.”
“No, I know that. Feelin’ your way around and runnin’ into stuff. What I mean is, what’s it like livin’ around normal people?”
Oh, hell. Here we went.
“Hmm. Well, that depends. Around most people I just feel normal as well. Around people who think I’m some kind of monster, I feel normal, but I want to bash their heads in.” At least he smiled.
“Real funny.” Henry grunted. “But seriously. Wasn’t it easier when you was in St. Louis?”
“Ohhh.” Paul nodded. “I think I know what you’re getting at. Wasn’t I more comfortable living around my own kind?”
Seeing America Page 9
