Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

They ate beef and roasted potatoes and three different vegetables from the kitchen garden. There was a pitcher of fresh milk on the table and big graniteware mugs of coffee served with the meal and replenished throughout. Lindy Powers was a little dumpling of a woman, a soap opera fan and a member of a quilters’ club. She called her husband Ockie and never allowed his plate to be empty.

Two Powers sons were with them at the table; a third boy, older, lived with his wife in Corvallis. “He went to school there,” Powers explained, “and now he has an office job working with computers. I can’t hold it against any boy who doesn’t want to farm these days. I wouldn’t have any other life for myself, but I have to say I wouldn’t wish it on a dog.”

There was pie for dessert, topped with thick cream. Afterward they had hot showers before trooping back to the barn, and in the morning Mrs. Powers sent her youngest boy to the barn with a basket of hot breads and a pot of coffee. The same boy returned as they were getting ready to leave, his father at his side.

“John here has it in mind that he’d like to walk a ways with you,” he said. “If you’ve no objection.”

The boy was nineteen, tall and loose-limbed, with dark home-barbered hair and a tentative expression. He had hardly said a word at dinner.

“I don’t mind him going,” Oscar Powers said. “He’s a help to me but his brother and I can manage. And there’s nothing here for him. Half a year at State was all the college he wanted, and he’s not crazy enough to be a farmer. His mother’s putting clothes in a sack for him, if you don’t mind him going with you.”

Guthrie said, “You want to come with us, John?” The boy nodded, smiling, and Guthrie told him he’d be welcome.

Powers said, “He’s been talking about enlisting in the service. I can’t say I understand what you folks are up to, but I’d sooner trust him to you than to the generals.”

A few miles down the road they stopped at a gas station to top up their canteens and buy snack-packs of cheese and crackers. The attendant, a cheerful young man with freckles and a missing incisor, knew John and asked him what he was up to. When he learned the group was walking east to the Idaho line he thought that was the greatest thing he’d ever heard.

“I never done anything like that,” he said. “I never done anything, really.”

“Come on along,” Jody suggested.

“Aw, now,” he said. “Somebody’s got to run this place. Everybody can’t just do what they want.”

“Why’s that?”

He shrugged and shook his head, still smiling, the tip of his tongue showing where the tooth was missing.

Two miles further a weathered shack called itself the Split Rail Restaurant. A woman in her early thirties ran the place and lived in two rooms behind the restaurant. She was tall and thin, wore her blond hair in a braid, and wore jeans and boots and a man’s shirt. She didn’t say much, just listened to their conversation as they had their coffee, but when it was time to pay they couldn’t find her. She appeared after a couple of minutes wearing a hat and carrying a canvas shoulder bag.

“I don’t have a backpack,” she said. “I figure this’ll do until I get something better. But I haven’t got a canteen either, and there’s some dry country between here and the Rockies.” John said that he hadn’t a canteen either, that he was carrying his water in a plastic bottle with a screw cap. “Now I should have thought of that myself,” she said. She got a half-liter container of Coke from the icebox, cracked the cap, spilled out its contents, filled it from the tap, capped it and tucked it into her bag. “I should have asked did anybody want some of that Coke,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She wouldn’t take money for the coffee. She rang “No Sale” on the cash register, stuffed the bills into a pocket of her jeans, and left the change where it was. She switched off the fire under the coffee, threw a couple of other switches, and turned the sign in the window from “Open” to “Closed.” She started to lock the front door, then turned away from it. “Anyone wants to move in,” she said, “they’re welcome to it. It’s just the best place in the world if you want to put in twelve hours a day to clear a dollar an hour.” After they’d walked together for a few hundred yards, she said, “My name’s Martha Detweiller. You folks want to tell me your names?”

Within the hour a four-wheel-drive AMC Eagle pulled up on the other side of the road. The rear doors opened and a man and woman got out, both of them wearing backpacks. The man had freckles and a chunky grin, and one of his front teeth was missing.

“I thought about it,” he said, “and I couldn’t think why everybody couldn’t do what they wanted, and just ’cause somebody has to pump Mr. Ballard’s gas doesn’t mean it has to be me. I had to close up and I had to call Ballard and let him know I was taking off, and then I had to go home and explain to Ellie what was goin’ on. This here is Ellie, an’ she still don’t know what’s goin’ on, but she’s up for it whatever it is. And I’m Marion but everybody calls me Bud, and that there’s Richard and it’s too early to tell yet what everybody’s gonna call him.”

And it was then that Guthrie noticed that Ellie’s backpack was not a knapsack but a sling, and that there was a baby riding in it. Ellie was a slender woman with long brown hair and luminous skin. She looked slightly glassy-eyed, and Guthrie didn’t blame her.

He found Sara and took her by the hand. “You didn’t mention that somebody was going to show up with a baby,” he said. “I suppose you didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“I’m as surprised as you are.”

“Oh yeah? The Prophet Disarmed. I hate to be a spoil-sport, but—”

“But is it safe to have a baby along on a trip like this?”

“That’s my question, yeah.”

“Can I see him?”

“You just about have to take a number and wait. Little Richard’s very popular right now.”

Sara extended both her index fingers and the baby gripped the tip of each and made fists about them. Pure heart energy flowed forth from the infant; the only reading she could get was serenity and love and joy. When Richard released her fingers she took Ellie’s hand and was not surprised to pick up the same vibrations, the identical sweet innocence.

“It’s safe to have a baby along,” she told Guthrie.

“Safe for us or safe for him?”

“Both.”

“How the hell are they going to feed him? Babies drink milk, don’t they?”

“What a fount of information you are, Guthrie.”

“I am smiling benignly at you, Sara. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“The point is they drink milk and they have it fairly frequently, don’t they?”

“Every four hours, when they’re very young.”

“And they have to get their diapers changed.”

“Very good, Guthrie.”

“Well, you can carry diapers, but what about milk? You bump a canteen of milk on your hip for a couple of hours and you wind up with cottage cheese.”

“Guthrie, don’t tell me you thought they were strictly decorative.”

“What?”

“Breasts.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said.

“I know. What’ll they think of next?”

They spent the night in an unplowed field. There was no one around of whom to ask permission, and no one sensed they’d be at risk. Bud and Ellie had brought a zip-up sleeping sack for Richard. Everyone else slept uncovered, and even without a fire everyone was warm enough.

“I think we can forget about motels from here on in,” Guthrie told Jody. “There’s eight of us now, nine counting Richard. Four rooms minimum, arid you can’t count on finding that many vacancies. And we went from four to nine in a day. God only knows how many of us there’ll be a week from now.”