Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  Every bone in his body ached from the long driving day. He longed to put his head on his pillow. He got up to poke the fire. With the sun down, the temperature had dropped and it was chilly.

  He tossed their paper plates in the fire. An insistent breeze tugged at them and clouds covered the stars. “I’m gonna lay out the sleeping bags,” he said. “I’m beat. I’ll bring you your sweatshirt. It’s getting cold.”

  “Take the record player,” said Molly. “I’m right behind you.”

  As Norman made their beds ready in the bus and Molly consulted her maps with a flashlight by the fire, footsteps approached them in the dark.

  “We heard your music,” said a boy’s voice.

  Molly leaped to her feet with a small scream. Map pages scattered and the boy raced to catch them before they swirled into the fire.

  Molly grabbed her Rand McNally Road Atlas and held it in front of her like a shield. “Who are you?”

  “We come in peace!” the boy hurried to say. “I’m Ben!”

  “I’m Carol!” said a girl.

  He was black. She was white. She held up a brown-eyed baby with soft black curls. “This is Moonglow.” As if she’d been coached, Moonglow leaned away from Carol and reached out both of her arms for Molly.

  Thunder split the heavens over them and the sky opened up.

  * * *

  Inside the bus, Norman lit a lantern and hung it on a hook from the ceiling. It swayed wildly, casting ghostly shadows, while the rain and wind pounded the bus in a quick and sudden rage that gave way to a popping sound like a BB gun, its pellets banging the roof and hood like something was trying to get inside.

  “What’s that!” yelled Molly.

  “It’s hail!” shouted Ben.

  The sound was so loud, Molly covered her ears and Moonglow began to cry. Carol nestled herself into the front passenger seat opposite Molly and pulled up her shirt to nurse her baby. Norman froze with the realization, sat down hard in the driver’s seat, put a hand on each knee, and stared straight ahead, into the downpour.

  Moonglow stopped crying and the hailstorm ended. The sounds of Moonglow’s nursing seemed to fill the bus. Molly wanted to cover Carol with a sheet. She was red with embarrassment and couldn’t imagine what Norman must be feeling. She stared out her window into the darkness.

  Ben sat behind Carol and spoke in soft tones to the baby while he stroked Carol’s hair. Molly couldn’t help but steal glances their way. We can’t even go to school together peaceably in Charleston! This would cause a riot! She walked to the back of the bus and stood on her sleeping bag while she pulled on her sweatshirt.

  The storm left as abruptly as it had arrived, leaving an impressive lightning display in its wake, with thunder crackling in the distance. Moonglow finished her supper and was asleep at her mother’s breast in the front passenger seat of the bus. Carol sang softly to her daughter and rocked in the seat as the rain moved on to the grasslands.

  Norman grabbed a flashlight from the box by the driver’s seat, lunged open the folding door, and dashed down the steps to survey the damage.

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” he said to nobody. “We’ll know more in the morning.”

  “It rains like this now and then,” said Ben, who had followed Norman outside, with Molly close behind him. “Never lasts long. The rain feeds the tumbleweeds.”

  “I’ve seen the tumbleweeds,” said Molly.

  The air filled with the songs of frogs rejoicing over the rainwater. A coyote howled. Another took up its call and soon a band of coyotes bayed in noisy chorus at the moon sliding out from behind the clouds. Molly shivered.

  Norman stepped around a giant puddle and played his flashlight into the woods.

  “They won’t hurt you,” said Ben. “They’re farther away than they sound.”

  Carol snapped down her window inside the bus and whispered, “She’s asleep. I put her on a sleeping bag in the back.” Norman glanced at Molly and breathed a long sigh through his lips. Carol and Moonglow. Emily and Christian. Ray and his promise.

  He addressed Ben with a tired curiosity.

  “What do you need?”

  GOING UP THE COUNTRY

  Written by Alan Wilson

  Performed by Canned Heat

  Recorded at ID Sound Recorders, Hollywood, California, 1968

  Drummer: Aldolfo “Fito” De La Parra

  The next morning, Molly read out loud from An Adventurer’s Guide to Travel across America as they rode through a landscape of shinnery oaks and prickly pears, past the vast grasslands inhabited long ago by plentiful buffalo and bison herds, land tended by the Kiowa and other tribes before the Homestead Act of 1862 sent white settlers pouring into the territory.

  “You mean before invaders brought cholera and chaos to Indian land,” said Ben.

  “It doesn’t say that,” said Molly.

  “It wouldn’t,” said Ben.

  Molly frowned. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Because ‘the Kiowa and other tribes’ didn’t write that book,” said Ben.

  “This is an official guidebook,” said Molly, looking in confusion at the cover.

  “That’s the problem,” said Ben. “There’s the official version of the past, and there’s the real past.”

  “How do you know which version is real?” Molly asked, genuinely curious.

  “Start paying attention to who’s telling the story,” said Carol. “The story changes depending on who’s telling it.”

  Molly put the book away but not her questions.

  They entered New Mexico at Texline. They stopped three times in the crossroads town of Clayton, once at a diner for a hearty breakfast, then at a grocery store for supplies, and finally for gas and ice. It felt good to be well stocked and ready for the long day ahead, although Norman’s breakfast was sitting like a brick in the bottom of his stomach, and his eyelids were heavy with fatigue. He and Ben had slept on bus seats and he’d given Carol and Moonglow his space and sleeping bag on the foam rubber mattress in the back.

  As they left the gas station, a skinny red dog boarded the bus with them.

  “Hey!” said Norman. “Who do you belong to?”

  “You,” said the attendant.

  “Nossir, he’s not ours.”

  “We can’t keep feeding him here,” said the attendant, “and nobody will claim him. He’s a stray. Been here a couple of weeks. Somebody on the way to Colorado or Texas or Oklahoma dumped him. A nuisance. Seems to like you, though.”

  He was the ugliest dog Norman had ever seen. Probably mangy, certainly flea-bitten. Absolutely filthy.

  The dog trotted down the aisle of the bus and helped himself to Norman’s sleeping bag.

  “Here, boy!” Norman called, and the dog trotted back up the aisle. “Sit.” The dog sat. He seemed to smile at Norman with huge brown eyes and a flappy snout. He offered a paw and Norman took it.

  Did a dog qualify as a body in need?

  Norman scratched the side of his face and asked the attendant, “Got any flea powder?”

  * * *

  Molly came around the corner from the bathrooms and the ice machine and saw her cousin with a garden hose, a bottle of shampoo, and something living, white with foamy suds.

  “We’ve got a dog!” Norman called as he wrestled with the animal, who wanted dearly to be anywhere but where he currently was.

  Molly stalked past Norman without a word and boarded the bus.

  They had a dog.

  * * *

  They rumbled onto the highway, a sextet in the bus: two boys, two girls, one baby girl, and a boy dog. The dog immediately shook himself dry at the front of the bus, in the middle of the bus, and at the back, where he settled once again on Norman’s sleeping bag.

  “Here, boy! Here, Flam!” Norman called.

  “That’s his name? Flam?” Molly asked. “What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s a drum rudiment. A practice pattern. I miss practicing.”

  “Can he be an
other pattern?”

  “Paradiddle?”

  “Fine. Get in the back, Flam, you’re wet!” The dog flopped at Molly’s feet.

  Norman had pointedly given Carol one of his white T-shirts to drape across her shoulder for Moonglow’s meals. “For modesty,” he explained.

  “Do you mind if I stretch out for a few in the back?” asked Ben. “These seats aren’t much for sleeping overnight.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Norman. “Go ahead.” Molly watched Ben as he kissed Carol on the top of her head and asked her if she’d rather take his place. Carol shook her head and smiled at Ben. She fed Moonglow and pointed to the New Mexico road map that Molly had folded open just so on her lap on top of the road atlas.

  “There aren’t many roads out here. The best way to get back to Route 66 is to drop us home, then travel two hours south to Santa Fe — maybe three with the bus — then two hours to Albuquerque, and then it’s a straight shot on Route 66 to Los Angeles. You’ll be there before you know it.”

  Molly had her ruler, pencil, and poodle pad ready. “This puts us at least two hours behind my schedule,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Probably three.”

  “No problem, man,” said Ben, in a sincere voice. “Let us off. We can hitch from here.” Norman’s and Molly’s eyes met in the student mirror above Norman’s head.

  Molly went back to figuring. “We could still make it to Albuquerque in one day, if we just drop them off and keep going.”

  “Drop and go?” said Norman. He raised his eyebrows and gave Molly in the mirror a weary half smile.

  She blushed at the remembrance. “Stop.”

  “Can we get there before dark?”

  “If we don’t mess around,” Molly said. They had to shout because all the bus windows were down and the hot air buffeted them. Flam panted in the aisle, at Molly’s feet. “You understand it’s adding two or three hours to our time, to go north first, then down to Santa Fe.”

  “I get it,” said Norman. “We’ll … make up the time tomorrow.” He didn’t sound sure.

  “We really appreciate it,” said Ben.

  “You should stay the night,” said Carol. “We have beds and plenty of room. And you look spent, Norman. Did you get enough sleep last night?”

  “I got some,” said Norman.

  “And tomorrow’s the summer solstice,” said Carol. “The longest day of the year. We always do something special. You don’t want to miss it.”

  “We won’t miss it,” said Molly. “We’ll be driving right into it.”

  “Mol,” said Norman, adjusting in his seat and sitting up straighter at the thought of a real bed. “Yesterday I drove over six hundred miles, do you know that?”

  “I know that, Norm.” Molly glanced at Carol, who suddenly seemed more thoughtful than Molly was. “I know it was a lot, Norman.”

  I’m beat. That’s what he wanted to say. I need to sleep for a week. I don’t feel good. He could hear Phyllis correcting him at Kyle’s kitchen table — Well, Norman! You don’t feel well! Then she would put a hand to his forehead. Are you all right?

  He said nothing.

  “We have plenty of room,” Carol repeated. “And we can feed you a home-cooked meal.”

  Molly stifled a nasty retort. Instead, she said, “We can camp along the way if it starts to get dark. We have food.”

  “Whatever you want,” said Norman. He was in no mood to argue. His head hurt.

  He tried to concentrate on the road ahead. Everything but the hot-white sky was brown and ochre and red. They rode past mesas and jagged outcroppings reaching for the sky and a desert floor dotted with clumps of grasses and mesquite. There were tiny towns and enormous ranches and all the barbed-wire fencing in the world along a long lonesome road with a mountain range ahead in the distance. The sun spilled into the bus from all sides. The glare was impossible.

  The wind was constant and the gusts were wild. Norman struggled to keep the bus in his lane. Not that it mattered too much, as there were scant few cars on this road. Flam had positioned himself beside Norman, and Norman had given him a blanket from Aunt Pam’s stash. Ben snored on Norman’s sleeping bag. Moonglow snoozed on her mother. Molly plugged in her earphone and tried her transistor again, but got nothing. Carol stood up with Moonglow. “I think I’ll go nap with Ben,” she said, just as Molly looked ahead of them and saw something on the sandy desert floor racing like lightning, heading straight for the bus.

  “Look out!”

  It was the size of a buffalo. With ease it had rolled over its companions jammed against the barbed-wire fence and now it galloped toward them at a frightening pace. Norman swerved into the empty oncoming lane, but still it hit them and exploded on impact. It slammed into the grille of the bus and tumbleweed shards showered the windshield. The bus rocked wildly as Norman applied the brakes and tried to keep it steady. Thorny fragments of tumbleweed flew up and over the bus and in through the open windows. Flam yelped and slid into the stepwell, then scrambled to get to his feet.

  The impact of the crash sent Moonglow airborne. She popped out of her mother’s arms and vaulted across the bus aisle where Molly, heart in throat, caught her like she was a football.

  No one had screamed. No one had spoken. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

  Norman pulled the bus to the side of the road. “Everybody okay?”

  Ben was on his feet. “What happened?”

  “We hit a tumbleweed,” said Norman. “Or it hit us.”

  He opened the bus door, and he and Ben followed Flam out into the sun.

  Moonglow gurgled at Molly and reached for her face. Carol had tears in her eyes as she collected her baby. “Thank you so much!” and Molly felt moved by the exchange. “You’re welcome” were the first kind words she’d spoken to Carol. She felt like crying. They were alive.

  Outside, Norman and Ben squinted at the bus in the brilliant sunshine. A chunk of the grille was missing. Woody tumbleweed stems stuck out like long pins in a metal pincushion. The glass on the right front headlight was broken and the light was hanging from its socket. The hood was scratched like wild cats had been fighting there.

  Norman got on his back and scooted a few inches under the bus. He came out and brushed off his hands as he stood up. He felt dizzy. “I can’t tell if it hurt anything underneath. Nothing’s leaking that I can see.”

  “Once you get into those mountains, you’re almost to our place,” said Ben. “We’ve got friends who know a lot about keeping engines running. It’s only an hour away.”

  “Okay,” Norman agreed. He rubbed at his temples. He was suddenly queasy. The brick that was his breakfast heaved up his gullet. He turned away from Ben and the bus and threw up.

  WASN’T BORN TO FOLLOW

  Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King

  Performed by the Byrds

  Recorded at Columbia Studios, Hollywood, California, 1967

  Drummer: Michael Clarke (concert)/Jim Gordon (studio)

  When Norman opened his eyes, Molly was there beside him. There was worry in her voice. “Want some water?”

  Norman half sat up and sipped cool water from a tin cup. He was in a real bed in a tiny adobe room with a fireplace that warmed the walls and everything within them. It was the coziest he’d felt since leaving Charleston.

  “Where are we?” He vaguely remembered pulling into the yard and children crowding the bus, happy waiting arms taking Moonglow from Carol, and other, capable arms guiding him to a place to sleep.

  “You’re at New Buffalo,” said a voice on the other side of the bed. Norman turned to look at a young woman with smoky brown eyes and corkscrew black curls spilling around a head scarf like a halo around her head. “My name is Sadie.” Norman blinked and swallowed.

  Sadie gestured Shhh to a girl who entered the adobe room in a breathless rush. She had golden hair that tumbled over her shoulders, and bold blue eyes that shone like stars from a freshly scrubbed face. “This is Sweet Caroline,” said Sadie. “She’
s been away this afternoon.”

  “And now here I am!” said Sweet Caroline, blinking her eyes at Norman. “Who are you?” Then she giggled like it was the silliest thing to even ask. Or like she was the cutest being on the planet and didn’t Norman see that.

  Molly answered for Norman. “I’m Eleanor Rigby,” she said, annoyed at this new girl. “And this is my cousin Florsheim.”

  Sweet Caroline laughed with her mouth open in glee. Sadie put a hand on Sweet Caroline’s leg and said, “I’m glad you’re back. Let’s check our patient.”

  Sweet Caroline opened her eyes wide, like she was about to impart state secrets, and whispered, “Sadie is the Loving Earth Mother. I’m observing.”

  “Observing what?” asked Molly.

  Sadie placed the back of her hand gently on Norman’s pale forehead. “Your fever has broken. It must have come from exhaustion. Or a bit of altitude sickness. We are almost seven thousand feet above sea level here. You’ve had quite a climb from the Texas panhandle, where you picked up Ben and Carol and Moonglow.”

  “And Flam,” said Molly. “Let’s not forget about Flam.” She tried not to sound ugly, but they really didn’t need a dog.

  At the bottom of the bed, curled in a comfortable circle, Flam thumped his tail and looked at Norman through eyes half-hidden in his furry red legs.

  “Sweet doggie!” chirped Sweet Caroline. Norman tried to sit up. His head hurt.

  “There are a lot of people here,” said Molly. “Some of them looked under the bus and said it’s all right. They replaced the headlight, too — they have lots of car parts here and bunches of trucks they’re trying to get running again.”

  “Are they sure it’s all right?” Norman supported his weight on his elbows.

  “Yes. The headlight doesn’t exactly fit, but it’s good enough for now. They spent a lot of time with gloves on, yanking tumbleweed pieces out of the grille, too. I thanked them. Profusely.”

  “I want to look at it.” Norman swung his feet to the side of the bed, sat up, and realized he was still dizzy. He held on to the mattress with both hands and got very still.

  “Uh-oh!” said Sweet Caroline.