Seeing America by Nancy Crocker

Author:Nancy Crocker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781605425740
Publisher: Medallion Media Group
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Friday morning, the seventeenth, we said good-bye to the Williamsons. Jack shook hands, and Anna gave us hugs a lot more innocent than the thoughts they inspired. She sent us off with a parcel to rival the Heversons’ and told us to be sure and stop back by on our way home later in the summer. We had no problem promising we would.

We’d been stopped so long it felt like we were starting our trip all over again—but with a different group. Henry didn’t spend any time at all trying to get a rise out of me, his laugh didn’t raise the hair on my neck, and—best of all—he’d started talking to Paul like he might have been anybody.

I didn’t know if it would last. In his quiet moments, it was pretty clear Henry was wrestling with something. He couldn’t think too hard about anything without the effort showing up on his face. But as long as he was being civil, I was determined to enjoy it and not ask. Like my mom always says, when you see a can of worms, remember it’s for the birds.

The company was more pleasant, but the drive itself was starting to feel like work. West of Junction City, past the farmed ground, there still wasn’t a lot to Kansas other than flat miles of blowing dust. Trees here and there, but none close to the road and not enough of them to anchor the dirt anyway. Then more grain fields as we got closer to the next cow town that looked just like the one before it. Carry Nation and her temperance union had shut down every saloon in the state long before we got there, so there wasn’t even that distraction at the end of the day.

We did find a rhythm. We’d drive into a town—Abilene, Salina, Ellsworth—find the biggest store, and go in for provisions. We could tell by the way we were told hello and the way people acted toward Paul whether we wanted to find a room in town or push on and camp out. Mostly we camped out.

We’d build a fire, and after we finished cooking supper, it was like a hearth with the whole prairie our parlor and the sky a ceiling shot through with stars. More than once, I thought of the great comet that I knew was just out of sight. If it was still there to see, the night sky would’ve been even more spectacular, but I always hurried that thought away as quick as I could. I didn’t want to be regretful about any part of it whatsoever. A good luck charm is a good luck charm.

We’d listen to the coyotes sing, and the wood would crackle and send sparks spiraling into the black sky, and we’d talk. Henry and I saved up things to describe to Paul at night—since swallowing road dust was not a favorite pastime for either of us.

Often as not, we’d sit around the fire and argue over what we’d seen.

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