So Brave, Young, and Handsome: A Novel Page 8

  We had no table but a modest altar and Glendon laid the food on it saying, “Here we are, God, and grateful for the bread.” He opened the brown loaf and we fell to. The patient dog sat watching us and sometimes Glendon threw it a chunk which it snapped skillfully from the air.

  “I’d planned to see you off, Becket,” he said. “Things being what they are, however—”

  “I’ll go along,” I said.

  “No. We agreed on this.”

  I didn’t want to explain; it would sound senseless. Yet at last I knew my mind on the matter. If I went home now I would be the living failure scribbling on the porch. The alien in the mirror with his bones below the surface. In short: not much use in this world.

  “If I go home, I will disappear,” I said.

  Glendon gave me a narrow look. “I think Susannah won’t forgive me.”

  But I knew she would forgive him, and me as well. “I told her six weeks. We have been gone only two.”

  We finished the bread and embarked on the pie. “Charlie Siringo, think of that,” he mused. “You’ll get a kick out of this, Becket—Siringo’s an author. He wrote his life story, I think. There’s hardly a felon he ain’t chased. Never read it myself, but I knew a young man who carried that book around like the Bible.”

  “He called you a ‘short reprobate.’”

  Glendon smiled shyly. “What about that? Somebody must still be interested.”

  “You’re the gifted sidestepper, isn’t that correct?” I inquired, with an eye to the windows.

  “Oh, I’m light on my feet,” he said, “but Siringo’s no deficient. We know each other well, which complicates the matter. Moreover, I dealt him a slight once.” Glendon fed the dog a handful of pie. “Of course it’s been years, but I doubt forgiveness is the sort of fruit he cultivates.”

  11

  Revival’s livery had three horses in clean stalls, then several empty stalls, and in back of the building two Ford A coupes on their tidy springs and a Packard with twisted green fenders. The Packard’s front lid was propped wide and a boy was scrambling over its vast innards.

  “We’d like to buy an auto,” I told the boy.

  He was a grimy handsome child of sixteen or so—blond curls, girlish cheeks that must’ve vexed him no end. He said, “Those two Fords are new. My boss Lewis knows Mr. Ford himself.”

  “What about this one,” I said, nodding at the Packard.

  “I’m still fixing it. Dr. Burke fell asleep and drove it smack into a grain bin.” The boy smiled at the ground and when he looked back at us his eyes were full of private comedy.

  “How much for a Ford?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he said. I suppose neither Glendon nor I looked like new-car prospects.

  “What about the Packard?”

  He looked it over. “Lewis wants forty dollars for it. Don’t those fenders look dumb? I can make it run, though.”

  “Thirty sounds fair,” I said.

  “’Course it might bust a axle or a fuel line,” the boy added. “Where are you gentlemen off to?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You wouldn’t be going south by any stretch?”

  “What’s your name, son?” Glendon inquired.

  “Hood Roberts.” He stood arranging feet and shoulders as if to make himself taller. His hands were black and he wore two different boots. He had a puffy lip. He said, “I could ride along as far as Oklahoma. I’m full grown and a good mechanic.”

  “How come you want to go?”

  “Sick of Kansas,” Hood replied.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  The boy gave a dimpled grin. “Down in Ponca City they got a ranch called the Hundred and One. They run western shows. They got Russian Hassocks and camel riders and gorillas in a cage. They buy horses by the trainload and sometimes they buy the train too. You drop me off at the Hundred and One I’ll be just fine.”

  I had to smile. In his certainty, his tumbleforth speech, was a trace of my own Redstart.

  Glendon said, “I know what the Hundred and One is. I asked were you in trouble.”

  “No sir.”

  Glendon shook his head. “Cowboy days are finished, Hood. You need to be thinking along other lines.”

  “Over nuts,” said Hood Roberts, his cheeks pinking with disappointment.

  “Look, you know how to fix this automobile,” said Glendon gently. “That’s worth ten times knowing how to rope cows. There are a thousand automobiles in Kansas City and half of them need fixing. You got a good start, son.”

  “You think cowboying’s done you don’t know the Hundred and One,” said the boy in a small voice, looking away from us.

  In no way did I believe Glendon would venture to give that boy a lift to Oklahoma. It was foolish, for we were truly absconders now—wanted men, sought not just by polite officers like Royal Davies but by the fiery Siringo, who happened to be within two hundred yards of us at that moment.

  “I’ll drive you there, if the Packard busts I’ll fix it,” Hood declared in a burst. “I’ll work through the night. We can leave tomorrow. I’m a capable traveler.”

  Glendon was quiet. Who hasn’t had it happen? You see your blundering self in another, and your instincts turn to powder. For that matter, looking at the Packard, the idea of an included mechanic had its allure. The boy stood before us in his mismatched boots. Glendon said, “Is that what you really want, son?”

  “That and that’s all,” Hood answered.

  12

  We slept in the tall grass by the river. It wasn’t bad except I woke in the night to the sound of pigs rooting up a yard. A livid rending of sod a few yards from our campsite—when they finally moved off and I got back to sleep it was only to dream their eyes and tusks.

  But it dawned at last, a shimmery morning. We emptied the johnboat and set her adrift. Lugging our gear we stumbled across a pocket of ripped earth twenty feet across.

  “Gracious, what’s this?” Glendon asked.

  “Some pigs tore it up in the night, the noisy brutes,” I replied.

  Glendon paled slightly. “You heard the pigs?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, I didn’t. You’ll laugh, Becket, but I dread those animals. A pig’s a devilish creature—I’m just as glad I slept through it.”

  We walked up toward the town. It was a cool day but not for long; already the sun was drawing misty coils from the grass.

  “I didn’t sleep through it,” I said.

  Hood Roberts had worked all night, as promised. The Packard ran, though noisily, and I handed thirty-five dollars to a sandy-haired man named Lewis, who walked me round the car with its torn spokes and mauled fenders before handing me a bill of sale. Here is one of those moments a man remembers. Should you be considering the use of an alias, let me advise you not to pass too much time in choosing it; just reach in the old hat and pick one out rapidly. That’s what I did. Jack Waits, I wrote, with a salty flourish, and handed back the paper.

  “Traveling mercies, Mr. Waits,” said the courteous Lewis, and we were on our way.

  Glendon, as mentioned, did not drive, so that part was up to me. Oh yes, Hood could drive, but I rarely allowed it—he was too distractible. He might cruise along evenly for twenty or thirty minutes, but say he observed something interesting off to the right: a Canada goose flaring in to land or an appealing horse throwing its mane about. Such spectacles made Hood forget about steering the Packard, and off the road we’d drift into whatever pasture or plowed field or other lumpy piece of Kansas was at hand. We had some dire flights! After the first day I drove all the time. Hood sulked a little, but he couldn’t stay blue for long—his spirits were just too high.

  “Did you see the way that farmer looked us over?” he would ask. “Did you see that girl beating out the rugs? She wanted to come with us, I bet—she had a funny look.”

  Everything looked funny to Hood in those early days. He talked and he laughed; he talked himself hoarse; he talked
like a former mute distrustful of the cure. He told how he’d been to see the doctor—Burke, who’d wrecked the car—and how Burke cut a prodigous wart off the thumb of his right hand. Hood spoke proudly of that wart; he said it was dark and fuzzy like a small mammal. A mouse. A vole. Once he forgot it and reached for a girl’s hand and she screamed and ran down the road. He told us this story our first night out, camped beside the riverbank.

  “Let’s see the thumb now,” said Glendon, and Hood held up his hand; there was a dishy place where the skin was glazed shellac.

  “It’s a fine job,” Glendon remarked.

  “Yes, he’s a good doctor, but a sorry driver—this was the third car he spoiled in two years,” Hood said, adding, “Doctors oughtn’t be allowed to drive!”

  It seemed fitting, having the boy along. I was glad for his company, his lifted soul. He laughed about the doctor, laughed about the wart; later, curled by the little pile of coals, he laughed in his sleep. Glendon sometimes did that too. In my whole life I have known just two people to laugh in their sleep. On that short trip from Revival to the Hundred and One, I was kept awake by both of them.

  13

  What can be said for Kansas? Plain describes it nicely, both as grassy tableland and unadorned prospect. It’s wide and there you have it. To one born amid forest and bluff on the upper Mississippi, Kansas is so wide and its sky so flat it’s disturbing.

  “Aren’t there any hills at all?” I asked Hood Roberts as we built up the fire in the morning. We were camped by the road and in that rosy sunrise could see miles of plain at every point of compass.

  “Supposed to be some not far to the south, the Flint Hills, they’re called. You don’t seem happy,” he added, to me.

  “I would be happier if there were a few hills,” I said, though I couldn’t have explained why this was so. It wasn’t just being out in the open that troubled me—though it’s true a pursuer like Charles Siringo could see us from far away, it’s also true we would see him coming. No, my anxiety was of another order. I felt laden. Air itself has weight and mass, and Kansas had the most air of anywhere I’d ever been.

  “Even one hill,” I muttered.

  But Hood only looked at me as though I were past understanding, and as for Glendon, he was almost merry. We’d bought a few pounds of bacon in Revival and he had some snapping in a skillet. A tin pot sat on the coals, jetting steam.

  “Here now, be useful—pour us some coffee,” Glendon said.

  “Oughtn’t we get going, pretty soon?” I asked.

  “Settle down,” he replied.

  I handed him a smoky cup. “I just can’t seem to feel at ease.”

  “You will.” He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. “We’re sure small, wouldn’t you say? Takes the onus off, somehow.”

  Later, after I’d crossed hundreds of similar miles—after I’d slept on my share of plains—I would begin to see what Glendon meant. The time would arrive when I too exulted in something as slight as fresh bacon under big skies. But that morning there was little exultation for me. The rosy sunrise that lifted Glendon only made me think of Susannah and my poor judgment in leaving her—not just once, now, but several times. My various exits, my reluctance to go home, seemed expressions of abandonment. Even the hissing bacon made me glum, for bacon was Redstart’s favorite breakfast. Deep in remorse I thought how poorly I’d repaid my family’s trust. I cast my eyes about but found no comfort, only the fixed flat horizon, the limitless sky.

  “Mr. Waits,” Hood said.

  He may have said it more than once—I wasn’t used to the name.

  “What is it?”

  “You ain’t had but one chunk of bacon. Are you ailing?”

  I gave him the rest and told him I missed my wife.

  “Your wife. Is she pretty?”

  “Pretty and smart—am I right, Glendon?”

  “Those things, plus she paints like a Frenchman,” he replied.

  Hood gave me a skewed smile. I said, “You’d like her, Hood. She’s got a feel for the road. You ought to see her drive.”

  Hood said, “Come on, Mr. Waits. You do the driving, I guess.”

  “We trade off. She drives faster than me though it isn’t really a contest. Once we drove all night up toward Lake Superior—we had three gasoline cans in back but still ran the tank dry and had to walk a few miles. The moon was so bright we could see wolf tracks by the road. She sang every song we could think of until we saw the harbor lights, and then we knew where we were.”

  “Does she make good pastries?” Hood wanted to know.

  “Orange rolls every Saturday morning.”

  Glendon said, “Do we have to talk about the rolls? A minute ago I was glad to be here.”

  “I had a Danish one time, that Lewis give me,” Hood said. “He called it a Danish, and there’s a widow makes doughnuts for people she likes.” He regarded me a moment. “If she’s pretty, and good at pastries, then how come you’re here instead of back home?”

  I said, “Would you like to answer that one, Glendon?”

  “Not right now.”

  Hood remarked, “When I get a wife, you can bet I won’t be off without her. I’ll take her with me on a sorrel mare, or we’ll drive someplace. Go to the city, go see the pictures.”

  “She’ll like that,” I said.

  “Yes, she will, only she won’t be driving. I’m the driver. I ain’t having none of that.” Drawn by something, Hood got to his feet. “Say, look—somebody’s coming.”

  The automobile was a glinting dot pulling a train of dust. It might have been six miles away. It was the only bright bit on the brown curved earth.

  “Could be anybody,” I said.

  “Could be,” said Glendon, but it seemed to me a little of the burden had grown on him again.

  We kicked down the fire and tucked the bedrolls into the Packard. We didn’t act like men in a hurry, though we surely were. All the while the strange automobile crept closer, dragging its dust like a comet.

  14

  The auto did not catch up with us that day, or the next. I drove faster than I cared to. We bought cornmeal and frijoles in dustbound villages, petroleum from a farmer who had a scaffolded tank and whose wife came out with fresh cold water. We bought a floury loaf of brown bread and a ripe cheese that made no friends. Glendon stayed out of view while we ran these errands. I was unaware Hood noticed this until we were stretching our legs at a vacant crossroads and he said, “Do you gentlemen want to tell me who you’re running from?”

  Glendon spoke up. “An old acquaintance of mine.”

  “He got a grudge against you, Mr. Dobie?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “What kind of grudge?”

  But Glendon felt he’d given enough. “I assume it’s the angry kind. We’d rather not see him, that’s all.”

  “What happens if he sees you?” Hood asked—he did tend to persist.

  With a glance at me Glendon said, “You’re a clever lad, Hood, but there’s a confidence or two you ain’t properly earned. The man has a complaint against me. Now you can fret about it or not as you like, but that’s all you get. A child’s ears shouldn’t hear these things.”

  Hood said nothing to this, but I was watching his face, something like excitement building in his eyes and the trim of his mouth right up until Glendon made that comment about a child’s ears. I never met a child who liked being called one; sure enough it turned a switch, and Hood nodded all right then and climbed back in the car.

  * * *

  Kansas continued flat. I still hungered for a hillside or building to break the tedium. Sculptors call this relief and they are right. I learned to take pleasure in the windmills spinning bravely along the route, announcing farms. Hood also loved the windmills and named the brands by heart: there’s a Dempster, he’d say. There’s a Aermotor. There’s a Monitor. He knew them by profile and the action of their blades in flight. Some rose thirty or more feet into the sky and to me seemed grand signals of
optimism or defiance; many were mounted only on stubby legs reaching nine or ten feet in the air. I asked Hood what Kansas did for water before the windmill came—he replied, Before the windmill there wasn’t no Kansas.

  All this time the Packard performed heroically. Time to time we’d stop and wait for our dust to settle and look back for the strange auto. Sometimes it was there, other times not. Once a brown cloud came between us and the shining automobile, a large cloud tumbling in from the west comprising Heaven knows what magnitude of topsoil. When it had passed the auto was still there but shiny no longer and had also lost its tail of dust. Hood suggested it had broken down and the driver was underneath it, working, and that might have been the truth.

  On the third day the plains gave out to hills. They were green and dusty and creeks ran out of them, and the road curved up and round and felt natural again. I could have leapt from the Packard and kissed the earth. As for Hood, he had never before seen anything but plains. “Look up there,” he kept saying—he believed us to have reached the mountains, though they were only the Flint Hills he himself had told us to expect.

  We had gone some way into these pretty knobs when the Packard made a loud noise and quit. The noise was of something large knocking about loose inside the motor. At this time we were climbing a slight gradient and the Packard stopped and began to roll backward. Jumping out Hood threw a wedge of firewood behind a tire, then opened the lid and scouted the sighing motor.

  “All right, mechanic,” Glendon said.

  “I can fix it,” Hood replied. He didn’t look sure. He horsed his greasewood toolbox from the car and rattled through implements like a wizard through his totems.

  “Would you like some assistance?” I asked, as Hood wormed on his back under the Packard.

  “Don’t take it wrong but you ain’t going to be no help to me.”

  As it was evening we lit a fire and cut pieces off a loaf of bread and toasted them on sticks.

  “So these are the Flint Hills,” said Glendon.