Song of the Road Page 2

  Her mother obviously hadn’t been glad to see her. She hadn’t even noticed that she was going to have a grandchild. And how had she become tangled up with that sorry, good-for-nothing Frank Pierce? Mary Lee’s mind went in a dozen different directions.

  “It’s going to be hard, baby.” Mary Lee had assumed the habit of talking to her unborn child. “Daddy worked hard to build this place. I’m not going to let her run it into the ground. He loved Mama and tried to help her. Even when she came to my high school play so drunk that she staggered, he’d said she couldn’t help her craving for alcohol. He had taken her home. I’d had to stay and endure the whispers of my classmates and the pitying glances from their parents.

  “I’m not going to let Daddy’s motor court go to wrack and ruin. The first thing I’ve got to do is to go see Mr. Morales and find out what authority I have here. You’re all I have, baby, now that Daddy’s gone. I’ve got to take care of you, and the only way to do it is to make this place pay.”

  Mary Lee drifted off to sleep thinking that she and her daddy were a lot alike. He had married her mother hoping to cure her drinking habit. She had married Bobby thinking that he needed her, that she could make him face up to his responsibilities. Both of them had failed.

  Mary Lee awakened to the sound of a car. Someone was revving the engine. By the time she swung her feet off the bed, a flatbed truck was passing the window.

  The person in number six was leaving early.

  In the light of day, the cabin was even more filthy than she had noticed last night. Thankful that her father had bullied the Cross Roads city council members into bring sewer and gas out to the motor court, Mary Lee used the bathroom, squatting over the toilet because she couldn’t bring herself to sit on it.

  Feeling better, although she was so hungry she was weak, she washed and dressed, putting her bare feet in her shoes and carefully rolling her hose into a ball to take back to her suitcase. She combed her fingers through her hair and looked at herself in the mirror hanging above the lavatory.

  She knew that she was no beauty, but she was passably pretty, or so she had been told numerous times. Her hair, dark red and curly, came from her daddy; eyes, slate blue from her mother. She was of average height, small-boned and slim, except for the rounded abdomen where she carried her baby. She was still able to wear two of her dresses if she didn’t belt them.

  Leaving the cabin, she locked the door and put the key in her pocket. Walking up to the house, she realized how weak she was. She’d had only crackers and cheese the day before. When the bus stopped in Amarillo, she had been tempted to buy a hamburger but chose to wait because she was only a few hours from home.

  It was broad daylight when she reached the house. Cars were going by on the highway, their tires singing. Her daddy used to call it the song of the road.

  Oh, Daddy, you were such a good, sweet man. You deserved so much more than you got: a drunken wife and a daughter who ran off and left you because she was tired of being ashamed of her mother.

  The door was open. Mary Lee went to the kitchen thankful that both bedroom doors were closed. A deck of cards, an empty whiskey bottle and several glasses were still on the kitchen table. She resisted the impulse to crash the whiskey bottle against the sink that overflowed with dirty dishes. Instead she left it where it was and opened the door of the icebox to find only a small chunk of ice. The smell that came from the interior told her that it hadn’t been washed out in weeks. The only things in it that she could use were eggs and butter. She went to the front room and turned the ice card so that when the iceman passed, he would know to stop and bring in fifty pounds.

  After washing a skillet, she buttered two pieces of bread, pan-fried them, then scrambled three eggs.

  She felt much better after she had eaten.

  Mary Lee had changed her dress in the living room, added a touch of lip color and was putting on a blue cloth-crowned hat with a stiff brim when her mother came out of the bedroom. She was barefoot and wearing a thin voile nightgown that came down to just past her knees. She cupped her hand over her eyes to shield them from the light.

  “You goin’?” she asked on her way to the kitchen.

  “Just to town. I’ll be back.” Mary Lee followed and watched her mother pick up the whiskey bottle then slam it down when she saw that it was empty.

  “Son of a bitch!” Completely ignoring her daughter, Dolly Finley pulled open the door to a side cabinet and swore again.

  As she had done so many times before when her father had hidden it, Mary Lee watched her mother search for the whiskey.

  “Go back to bed, Mama, until you sober up.”

  “You think I’m drunk? A hell of a lot you know.”

  “No, I think you’re hungover. You’d better get yourself straightened out, because we’re going to have a talk as soon as I get back from town.”

  “ ’Bout what?”

  “About getting your friends out of my room, for one thing.”

  “Pearl’s got nowhere to go.”

  “Neither have I. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Shit!”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to tell her to get in here and help you clean up this mess.” Mary Lee went to the door. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  Chapter 2

  CROSS ROADS WAS A PLEASANT LITTLE TOWN, considered a good place to live by the slightly more than five thousand residents. The businesses were nearly all located along Main Street. Branching off it were ten streets of homes, most of which were small, some with ample space for a garden and chickens. On the outer edge of town were acreages with barns and pastures. This was ranch country, and almost everyone who had a place to keep a horse had one or two.

  Not all the houses in Cross Roads were small. As in every place where people settle, there were those who had more than their neighbors. The banker’s house and several others would have looked quite at home in the affluent sections of Amarillo or Albuquerque.

  There were three churches in town, a school with grades one through twelve, one hotel, two barbershops, a five-and-dime, two dry-goods stores, a shoe repairer, a hat shop, a pawn shop, hardware /lumber yard, feed store and four beer joints. There were no known whorehouses, but circulated among the men were names of women who would, for a price, scratch any particular itch they happened to have.

  The business area of Cross Roads was large because it served ranches that were spread across two counties. The town was justifiably proud that its bank had remained solvent while banks all over the country had gone broke.

  One overworked doctor cared for the sick and injured. Three lawyers, one of whom Mary Lee was on her way to see, took care of the citizens’ legal problems.

  She took her time, knowing that Mr. Morales might not reach his office until eight o’clock. In front of the post office, she stopped to speak to Miss Watson, one of her high school teachers.

  “Mary Lee! It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, Miss Watson.” Mary Lee was sincere. The teacher had been a good friend while she was in school.

  “Are you here on a visit, or do you plan to stay?”

  “I’m staying … awhile.”

  “And heavens! You’re going to have a baby. Poor little thing. I know you’ll handle being without your husband just as you’ve handled everything else in your life.” She gave Mary Lee a hug. “You’ll make a wonderful mother.”

  “Thank you, Miss Watson.”

  “I was sorry to hear about Bobby.”

  “It was a shock.”

  “I imagine it was. Come by and see me. You were one of my favorites, you know.”

  “I’ll do that. Good-bye, Miss Watson.”

  Mary Lee continued down the street. She knew perfectly well to what Miss Watson was referring. Not only had her mother’s drinking been an embarrassment to her, she had married a weak, shiftless man. She had known almost from the start that her marriage had been a mistake. She couldn’t undo a lifetime of the undermining of Bob
by’s self-confidence. But the time she had been with him had not been for naught. It had given her a baby to love and to work for.

  A few of the men she met on the street nodded and tipped their hats. One woman looked at her curiously, and another turned her head and pretended to be looking in the window of the hat shop until Mary Lee passed.

  Even in a town the size of Cross Roads there were class distinctions. Because her mother had made a spectacle of herself more times than Mary Lee had fingers and toes, she wasn’t welcome and, at times, not even acknowledged by those in the higher social circle, even though her father had been a respected businessman. Such discrimination didn’t hurt as much now as it had while she was in school. She no longer had an interest in hobnobbing with a bunch of snobs.

  At eight o’clock according to the clock in front of the barbershop, Mary Lee climbed the stairway that separated the dry-goods store from the billiard parlor. In the upper hallway she paused when she reached a frosted-glass door. On it, printed in fancy gold lettering, was the sign: SIDNEY MORALES, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

  After a moment of hesitation, she opened the door. Mr. Morales was sitting at a paper-strewn desk. He looked up over glasses perched low on his nose, then got to his feet.

  “Morning, ma’am.”

  “Morning, Mr. Morales.” Mary Lee held out her hand. “Do you remember me? Mary Lee Clawson, Scott Finley’s daughter.”

  “I thought you looked familiar. I just couldn’t place you for a minute. It’s been some time since I saw you.”

  “I’ve been away for a while.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband. The whole town was shocked.”

  “It was a shock to me too.”

  “Sit down, Mrs. Clawson, and tell me what I can do for you. I sent you a copy of your father’s will. When I didn’t hear back, I presumed that you understood the conditions.”

  Mary Lee gave him a blank stare. “I never received a copy of Daddy’s will. I’d no idea he even had one.”

  The lawyer looked at her steadily for a minute, then said, “I mailed it a week after Scott passed away. Let me see”— he pulled open a file and took out a folder —“it’s right here. I mailed it on the third of January and sent it registered. According to the post office, Bob Clawson signed for it.”

  “Mr. Morales, I’ve not seen it. I came to ask you if I had any authority at all to make some changes out at the motor court. Things out there are in a mess.”

  “You have all the authority you need, Mrs. Clawson. Your father left all his possessions, including the motor court, to you with the request that you take care of your mother.”

  “He … did?”

  “Yes, he did. I’ve a copy of the will right here.”

  “I wonder why Bobby didn’t tell me.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  He was afraid that if I knew, I would leave him and come home. He couldn’t stand the thought of being alone, and he’d rather be anywhere in the world than in Cross Roads, so he didn’t tell me about the will. The … weasel!

  While these thoughts were going through Mary Lee’s head, she looked away from the lawyer, lest he see how embarrassed she was that her husband would keep such important news from her.

  “Frankly, Mrs. Clawson, I’ve been disturbed by the conditions out at the motor court and wondered if you were aware of how it was being run. Scott took out a small loan to do some painting and minor repair about a month before he died. I don’t think he had time to do the work.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. The place is terribly run-down, and Mama has rented at least one cabin by the month.”

  “I don’t mean to be unkind, but it’s common knowledge that she has some unsavory hangers-on out there.”

  “Do I have the authority to clear them out?” Mary Lee asked bluntly.

  “The place is yours, lock, stock and barrel. Your father requested that you take care of your mother. He knew, and I’m sure you know, that she has a drinking problem.”

  “I’ve known it all my life. It’s one reason I wanted to get away from here. I should never have left him —”

  “Now, now. Your father understood that you had a right to a life separate from your parents.”

  “He told me that. But I … jumped out of the frying pan into the fire,” she admitted. “I exchanged one set of problems for another.”

  “Have you seen Bobby’s father?”

  “I just got here last night.”

  “He’ll probably be interested in your … ah … condition.”

  “Why is that? He kicked Bobby out. Disinherited him. He’ll have no claim on Bobby’s baby.”

  “Well, I could be mistaken.” Mr. Morales made busy work straightening the papers on his desk. “But after all, Bobby was his sole heir, and now that he’s gone —”

  “Bobby wasn’t and never was going to be Mr. Clawson’s heir. He made that plain enough. He didn’t even acknowledge the wire I sent him when Bobby was killed. The county had to bury the son of a rich man!”

  “Perhaps he would have changed his mind.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mary Lee said heatedly. “He’s partly responsible for the way Bobby … was.”

  After a small silence, Mr. Morales said, “Would you like to see a copy of Scott’s will?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Mary Lee turned slightly to the side so that the light from the window fell on the document. She quickly glanced over the legal heading. Tears dimmed her vision as she read: To my beloved daughter, Mary Lee Finley Clawson, I leave the total sum of my worldly goods …

  The lawyer accepted the document when she returned it. “You should see Mr. Rosen over at the bank and find out if anything has been paid on the loan.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And, Mrs. Clawson, it might be a good idea to have your mother’s name taken off the bank account … if there’s anything left in it.”

  “Thank you for the advice, Mr. Morales.”

  “One more thing, Mrs. Clawson. I’m sure you know that nothing goes on in a town this size that isn’t gossiped about. Jake Ramero has been staying out at the motor court. He got out of the pen a few months ago and has been working out at the Quitman ranch and doing some steel work on a bridge now and then.”

  “What was he in prison for?”

  “Cattle rustling. Ocie Clawson accused him of stealing fifty steers. The judge gave him two years. I’m surprised he came back here.”

  Mary Lee frowned. “Bobby talked about him a time or two. He didn’t like him. He said he would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.”

  “I don’t think he’s quite that bad, but I understand why Bobby would say so.”

  The lawyer swung his chair around to the file cabinet, clearly ending the conversation about Jake Ramero. Mary Lee went to the door.

  “Is there anything I need to sign?”

  “No. It’s been taken care of. The deed has been registered in your name.”

  “Thank you. Do I owe you anything?”

  “Scott paid for my services when the will was drawn up. I wonder if he had a premonition that something was going to happen to him.”

  Mary Lee walked down the stairs holding tightly to the railing. The shock of what she learned in Mr. Morales’s office had made her weak.

  “I would like to speak with Mr. Rosen.”

  “I’ll see if he’s busy.”

  The teller had been polite and businesslike, but had not acknowledged knowing her. He had been several grades ahead of her in school. Mary Lee remembered vividly the night he and another boy had followed her home from play practice, scaring her with their lewd remarks. Holding her head high, she looked him in the eye when he returned to say the banker would see her in a few minutes.

  Mary Lee waited in the bank lobby for twenty minutes, sitting on a hard bench, before she was ushered in to see Mr. Rosen.

  “Come in, Mrs. Clawson. Have a seat.”

  “Thank you. I’m here about the motor court. I was told my
father took out a loan just before he died.”

  “He did. Three hundred dollars.”

  “Has any of the loan been paid?”

  “Not a cent.”

  “When is it due?”

  “October first.”

  “Is there a balance in the checking account?”

  “Not a cent,” the banker said again. “There has not been a deposit made since Scott died.”

  “That will be changed now. I was unaware that my father had left the motor court to me.”

  “Unaware? How can that be?”

  “A slipup in the mail.” Mary Lee kept her eyes on his and refused to say more.

  “May I make partial payments so the loan will be extended?”

  “No. It must be paid in full,” he said briskly. “I may have a buyer for the court.”

  “It isn’t for sale.”

  “My advice would be that you sell before it’s run completely into the ground.”

  Mary Lee stood up. “Thank you for the advice. I have four months to pay the three hundred dollars, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “The bank will take over the property and sell it. We protect our stockholders.”

  “You would sell it out from under me for a three-hundred-dollar loan?”

  “Business is business. We’re a bank, not a charity institution.” He stood up and looked her over as if she had come riding into town on a freight train.

  “I wasn’t asking for charity. Just a reasonable amount of time to pay the loan.”

  “October first, Mrs. Clawson.”

  “Good day, Mr. Rosen.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Clawson.”

  Mary Lee left the bank with questions floating around in her mind. Her father hadn’t had time to spend the money he borrowed on repairs. And he always kept a small balance in a checking account. Her mother had either blown the money on booze or had let her worthless friends take advantage of her.

  More determined than she’d been in all her life, Mary Lee headed home, forgetting that she had planned to buy tooth powder until she was a block past the drugstore. Her future and that of her unborn child depended on her making the motor court pay. Her father had done it, and so could she.