The Friendship Doll (17 page)

“Thank you, Mrs. Foley.” Lucy handed Vernon to his mother and then took the flour sack. “I’ll miss you and Vernon.”

“There’ll always be a job for your daddy here. You, too.” Mrs. Foley walked her to the door.

“Pop says old Betsy will only go one direction on the Mother Road and that’s west.” Lucy’s stomach grumbled at the smell of the onion in the sack. There’d been no breakfast this morning or supper last night. They were saving every penny, every crust of bread, for the next leg of their trip. “But I could write you.”

Mrs. Foley nodded. “You do that. Let me know how you make out in sunny California.”

When she got to the end of the walk, Lucy turned to wave. But Mrs. Foley and Vernon had gone back inside the house. That was no nevermind. Easier to say goodbye that way. She tossed the sack over her shoulder and didn’t mind one bit how it caused her neck to ache on the
walk back to the camp. Because what was inside would help take away the ache in her belly. At least for a little while.

Lucy and Pop were in good spirits as they sailed through Tucumcari, New Mexico. “Too bad we can’t stop and stay awhile,” Lucy said. “That name sounds like a song.” Pop agreed, making up a little ditty that he sang loudly off-key: “To live in Tucumcari, you must be very hairy.” As they were passing through Winslow, Arizona, the patched tube gave clean out. Pop steered the car to a parking spot in front of a bakery and then sat there for the longest time, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his head bowed. The smell of cinnamon and sugar and yeast made Lucy woozy. She swallowed hard, pretending she was swallowing a bite of one of those sweet rolls in the bakery window. Finally Pop shoved the driver’s-side door open and got out. “Come on. We gotta find an inner tube.”

He stopped a man wearing a suit coat over his overalls and was pointed to the hardware store a few blocks away. The store carried the inner tube Pop needed. And they had something else.

“Puppies!” Lucy exclaimed as Pop took out his paper-thin billfold. She scooped one of the spotted powder puffs up in her arms. The pup wiggled to get at her face to give it a good washing. “Look!” She held the puppy out so Pop could see its tiny black nose and kind eyes.

“Don’t even ask!” The sharpness in Pop’s voice nearly made Lucy drop the puppy.

I sit on the shelf, watching the seamstress mend my kimono. It seems I am being prepared for something, but I do not know what that is.

There is a new feeling in my heart—how strange and yet how sweet to say that word. It is a bit like being nudged awake by the sun, before it has even risen. Or like hearing a gentle tune on the wind, when there is no
yokobue
, no flute, in sight.

Or like there is a string tied to my heart, as if it is a kite being tugged by a kite flier whose face I cannot see.

Yet.

Lucy set the fluffball back in the cardboard box with its sign, “Free to Good Homes.” “I wasn’t going to ask for a puppy,” she said quietly. It was tough enough to feed themselves; she knew they couldn’t take on a pet. But what was the harm in cuddling this dog? For a short moment, the puppy’s meaty breath, wet tongue, and soft fur had taken her away from this place and their troubles. Holding him, she’d felt almost as good as she had back when Mama was alive, when they still had the farm.

She ducked her head and slipped out of the store, waiting on a splintery bench out front while Pop paid for the inner tube. She was sure when he came out, he’d tell her he was sorry for snapping at her. It wasn’t like Pop, who never raised his voice at her, not even when she burned the first batch of hotcakes she tried to cook.

But when Pop came out, he brushed past her without a word. She couldn’t move, she was that surprised.

About ten steps away he stopped and called over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Biting her bottom lip to stop it from trembling, she eased off the bench and followed him back to old Betsy.

Lucy thought it would be the best present ever to roll across the California state line on Christmas Eve. Out of Kingman, Arizona, Route 66 had changed its temperament. Most of the way, the Mother Road had been easygoing and easy to maneuver, if a bit bumpy and lumpy now and again. Past Kingman, she got a sharpness to her. She’d turned all unfriendly, as if to say, “You want California? It’ll cost you.” The road went up and up and up, with steep grades that set Betsy to chugging. And the curves were as tight as Aunt Miriam’s pin curls—without a guardrail in sight.

They’d skittered and rumbled their way a good part of the morning, but when the road leveled out a bit, Pop set the hand brake. “You best walk, Lucy.” He nodded toward the back. “Carry that wash bucket and maybe your clothes. Gotta lighten the load.”

Lucy didn’t move at first, thinking the old Pop had come back and was pulling her leg. But she saw the ring of white around his mouth and the same white in his knuckles as he grasped the steering wheel, so she hopped to. She pulled out her box of clothes, the washtub, the coffeepot, and the cast-iron skillet. As Pop eased away, she also snagged a bit of rope from the backseat. Old Betsy’s gears groaned as she lurched upward.

“Meet you at the top!” Pop called. Betsy was like a high-strung colt, skittish to think of climbing that hill. If anyone could get her up and over, it’d be Pop.

Lucy stood there, trying not to feel all alone in the world as Pop and Betsy bumped out of sight. She looked
at the pile of belongings next to her and wondered how in the world she was going to carry them. Best thing to do was toss everything in the tub and drag it along with the rope, hoping she didn’t wear a hole in it. She was tying the rope to the handle of the washtub when she heard a car chug-chugging up behind her. She yanked on the rope to pull her load out of its way.

Next thing she knew, a string bean of a boy was next to her, struggling with his own mess of stuff, and calling, “See ya soon,” toward the car. A woman’s voice called out, “Watch your brother!” Lucy saw that with the string bean was another boy, maybe four years old.

“Walking to the top?” the string bean asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Nope. I’m planning to fly.”

He laughed out loud, showing a mouthful of missing teeth. “That’s a good’un.” He pointed at himself with his thumb. “I’m Winston. And this here’s Wilson.”

Lucy softened. There wasn’t any call to be so snooty. Besides, with these two scarecrows at least she wouldn’t be alone on the climb up. “I’m Lucy.”

“Wilson doesn’t say much,” Winston said. “You might say I’m the mouth of the family. But he’s the brains, and I can see he’s got a plan.”

Lucy looked at Wilson, whose eyes were barely visible under a shock of hair in bad need of cutting. He didn’t look much like a mastermind to her. Not with that thumb in his mouth. “What’s the plan?”

Wilson removed his thumb and pointed at the washtub. Winston translated.

“We stuff everythin’ in the tub and you take one handle and I take the other. That way, we divide the load and multiply the joy.” Winston grinned. Lucy couldn’t help but grin back.

“That’s a great idea, Wilson,” she said. The little boy popped his thumb back in his mouth as his big brother and Lucy loaded their respective belongings into the tub.

“Heave ho!” said Winston, and they hefted the tub off the ground. Winston reminded Lucy of Mama, chattering away about this thing and that. She learned that they’d lost their farm, like Pop and Lucy, but in Nebraska. They were headed to their uncle’s place in Bakersfield. “You should come, too,” Winston said. “He needs lots of help picking his grapes. He’s got the biggest farm around.”

“Really?” Lucy motioned to Winston to hold up so she could pull a burr from her foot.

“Course.” He threw his shoulders back. “He’s my uncle, ain’t he?”

All that long uphill trudge, the only breeze came from Winston’s flapping lips. But Lucy didn’t mind. The talk took her mind off her hot, sore feet and the muscles in her shoulders that grumbled so about toting that washtub.

The whole walk, Wilson didn’t say a word. He toddled along behind them, bending every now and again to pick up a stone or a feather or some other roadside treasure. He didn’t even exclaim when he found a penny—head up!—in the dust. He tapped at Lucy until she turned and he unfolded his grubby fingers.

“Well, this is your lucky day,” she told him.

The corners of his mouth worked into a smile around his thumb. He held the penny tight in his left hand. Lucy understood that: every pocket she owned was more hole than pocket. She imagined that was the case for Wilson, too.

It was an hour or more that they went along. When they crested the hill, they found their parents leaning on Betsy’s hood, talking like old friends. Lucy and Winston dropped the washtub and joined the adults. After introductions around, Lucy got herself a swig of water from the canteen, then thought to offer Winston and Wilson a swallow.

“Thanks, but we got a canteen ourselves.” Winston jerked his thumb toward the back of their truck.

“Best of luck to you,” Pop was saying, sticking his hand out to shake with Winston’s father.

“Same to you. Remember—it’s the Hoffman place. In Bakersfield. I’m sure my brother would have work for you.” Winston’s father shook Pop’s hand, then slapped his hand on Betsy’s fender. “She looks like she’ll get you wherever you want to go,” he said.

“I sure hope so.” Pop pulled open the driver’s-side door.

Lucy ran around to the passenger’s side. “Bye, Winston. Bye, Wilson!”

Wilson’s thumb popped out of his mouth. “Bye, Lucy.”

She smiled and leaned out the window, waving at her hiking partners until she couldn’t see anything but clouds of dust behind them.

She settled into her seat. She knew from studying the
map they still had to cross 140 miles of desert, but that was their last test. The last barrier between them and a new life in California. “California, here I come,” she started to sing, but one look from Pop and she quieted down.

“We’re not there yet,” he said.

Lucy scrunched down in her seat, wishing they were there, wishing her old Pop—the one who would’ve been singing right along with her—was there, too.