Free The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams

according to inheritance. Step-grand-pop got him a woman with three headrights. Far as I know the old devil’s still buyin’ a Cadillac every year and drinkin’ the best bourbon his bootlegger can rustle.”
    None of the Fields could think of anything to say to that. A little way on the other side of town, Morrigan pulled over and sat with his lean brown fingers loose on the wheel. “Well, folks, guess this is where we part company. I hope everything works out fine and it won’t be long till you can get back together.”
    â€œGood luck to you, John.” Daddy offered his hand. “We sure have appreciated your help and your singin’. You’re always welcome to share whatever we’ve got.”
    â€œWho knows?” Morrigan smiled and his eyes rested on Laurie. “I’m just like a tumbleweed, blowin’ all over the country. Could be we’ll meet again.”
    Laurie’s throat ached. He’d only been with them less than a day, yet it seemed she’d known him forever, that he was intended to be part of her life. How could he just disappear? Vanish down the road or swing onto a train?
    But if he hadn’t come—if he hadn’t known what to do for Buddy, helped Daddy with the flats and convinced him not to drive in the heat of the day—if he hadn’t made music and sung, how awful the trip would have been. And she had learned most of the words of his songs she’d liked best. She was glad he’d come, thankful, even if it hurt so bad to think she’d probably never see him again. It was almost as if Mama had begged God into sending them an angel, and angels, of course, never stay long.
    He started to climb out of the car. “Mr. Morrigan,” she ventured. “Could you sing that song about ‘So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You’?”
    â€œWhy, sure I can.” He got down his guitar. The Fields got out to stretch while they listened. Standing there, Morrigan played and sang, grinning at the passersby who stopped to hear. He wound up with a rousing sweep of the strings, put his guitar in its case, and reached into his bundle. “You keep this harmonica, Laurie,” he said, giving it to her. “It’s a good friend. You can always tell it exactly how you feel.”
    Her fingers caressed the silver whorls even as she protested. “But you’ll need it!”
    â€œGot my guitar. And I can buy another harmonica. Rather you had this one.” He touched her cheek before he shook hands with Buddy and again with Daddy. “So long.” He picked up his bundle and guitar. “It really has been good to know you.”
    They waved till, with a last salute, he passed out of sight behind some warehouses. Slowly, the Fields got into the Model T. Daddy tried to make a joke. “Hope we don’t have any more flats.”
    Too choked to answer, Laurie nodded.
    â€œLet me see that harmonica,” Buddy wheedled.
    Laurie started to refuse—it was all she had of Morrigan now—but you can’t be selfish with what’s been given you, especially by a sort of angel.
    Rutted wheel tracks turned in at the tarpaper-covered shack with its windmill and rickety outbuildings, while other ruts ran on toward endless fields of young green plants that Laurie knew must be cotton and corn because that was mostly what Grandpa Field grew for his landlord. This was far enough east to have missed the worst of the storm and besides, the rolling hills and valleys to the west made farming difficult so that land had been left for grazing and was held down by matted, interlocking grass roots.
    It was the plowed prairie, long broken to wheat, that had swirled into the sky all the way from the Texas Panhandle to southern Nebraska, from eastern New Mexico and Colorado to the edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle. Morrigan had drawn a map in the dust for them, traced the Dust Bowl in the shape of what looked like an