Interstate, Second Version

Interstate

By Rory McClannahan

Pap knew about weather. His whole life he kept a weather log wherever he was living. Most of it logged the weather patterns of the Estancia Valley, because my father hadn’t really lived anywhere else. He was born in New Jersey and came to the valley in between the world wars. He grew up in a city and left as soon as he could, traveling around the country in a vaudeville troupe. Once he found the place where he wanted to die he decided he would stay there. That place turned out to be the valley. I never understood his affinity for the area. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t leave soon enough. Summertime was hot and dry, winters could be long and cold. All seasons were punctuated by the wind.

“I can breath here,” Pap told me once when I asked. He offered no further explanation. He never went back East again, except just after V-E Day to buy an old Indian motorcycle with a sidecar at a military auction. He rode the bike back to our front doorstep at Wicked Pete’s Trading Post on Route 66, one hundred and fifty-two miles west of the Texas border. I didn’t know Pap then – I wasn’t born until he was in his fifties. But I heard every story he ever told from behind the counter of Wicked Pete’s, which Pap claimed he bought for a dime during the Depression. At the time, Wicked Pete’s was mostly a shack by the side of the flat top. Pap took the shack and made it into what people would now call a tourist trap. Back then, it was a roadside attraction. Pap’s stories changed over the years as he improved the way he told them. He always said the tourists who stopped in to buy gasoline and souvenirs expected to be entertained. Pap practiced his stories out on me, usually during the afternoon doldrums at the store. It was the time of the day when the chores were done and the customers were scarce.

“Kit,” Pap would start pulling out a pen knife to clean his fingernails, “did I ever tell you about the time when Al Capone stopped here?” Even if I had heard the story, I would always say no. I loved to listen to his tales, and although I’d heard most of them many times, I was always unsure if they would end the same way. Everyone loved Pap’s stories, especially the tourists.

Besides tourists, Wicked Pete’s also attracted almost every farmer in the area. Maam made the best coffee in the world and the farmers would come in first thing in the morning to fill their Thermos jugs. Sometimes, especially in the fall, she would make apple turnovers from the horrible green apples that grew on our tree next to Pap’s weather shed. We would sell the turnovers for a nickel apiece. I wasn’t allowed to eat any unless I spent my own nickel for one.

The summer when I was 10 years old, Eisenhower was on his way out and the country was wondering if Kennedy would be able to beat Nixon. The talk around our little town in the middle of New Mexico, though, centered on two things -- the weather and the freeway. Pap knew about both better than most folks in town. They were his obsessions.

Ever since he was a child, Pap had kept track of the weather. The spark of his obsession with the weather started with a 1914 issue of Popular Science. There was an article showing how to build a barometer. Pap, who was a boy at the time, was hooked on the weather. When he bought Wicked Pete’s in 1934, the first thing he built was a shed to house his weather equipment that he ordered out of magazine or built himself. The shed was small, but built to withstand the wind. Inside, one wall was covered with large dials that recorded the temperature, wind speed and barometric pressure. The dials were connected to equipment and probes that poked up through the roof of the shed. To me, it kind of looked like Frankenstein’s laboratory with official looking dials connected to old farm tools that Pap used when he needed to rig a part. On another wall of the shed was a bookshelf that held the log books he kept. Pap used to keep feed for a buffalo in the shed, which was next to its pen. The buff had long died before I was born and Maam wouldn’t allow another one on the property.

Each year, Pap would make a proclamation on when the summer rains would begin, and he was rarely wrong. He and Maam would make a big deal of it every year, kind of a celebration to end winter and have everyone over. Every March he would have a barbecue – it was the social event of the spring in our little corner of the world. If you were invited, you showed up – mostly because Maam made the best barbecue. In March of the year I was 10, he announced that the summer rains would start on July 8. Three months seemed like a long time to wait for rain that year. During the winter and spring there had hardly been any snow or rain. People in the valley said the word drought as if it were dirty, and I guess it was. Pap knew everything about the weather, including when it would rain. As far as I knew, his predictions were never wrong. This gift of weather prognostication earned him the respect of every farmer and rancher in the valley, and that isn’t easy to do.

Because there wasn’t much water falling from the sky that year, the farmers had to pump more water than usual from the ground. Pumping cost money and in a year where one crop could make or break you, the drought had a lot of the farmers on edge. It had Pap on edge, too. Many of those farmers had tabs. Some were big tabs.

Pap’s other obsession was the freeway.

Everyone knew the freeway was coming, but that didn’t make the appearance of the road crews any less of a surprise. Most people in our little town had never seen earth movers the size that were hauled through town on equally huge trailers. Like all the farmers in the valley, the roads crews also would get their Thermos jugs filled with coffee at Wicked Pete’s. Pap cussed like crazy about the guys who would come into the shop and run off his regular customers, but he treated each as nice as his best friends and jacked up his prices 13 percent. Pap hated the freeway because he knew it was going to ruin him. His connections weren’t good enough and when the surveyors had come through the year before, the exit for town was planned on McQueen property. The McQueens did not hesitate to capitalize on their “good fortune.” They were already busy building a brand new Holiday Inn right where the exit was going to be. Next to that, they had plans for a truck stop that was going to be open 24 hours a day.

That spring, Pap spent his days on top of the weather shed in back by the old buffalo pen watching the road machines through a surveyor’s glass. More than two miles away, the crews were clearing the land and building a road bed. Each morning, Pap would climb on top to the shed and not come down until supper time. When the bell dinged for a customer, Pap would yell to me.

“Kit. Customer,” he would say over his shoulder, not even looking to see who it was. I pumped gas, checked the oil and washed the windshield. I usually asked if they wanted me to check belts and the radiator. During some point, I was supposed to push our deluxe car wash, but I rarely convinced anyone to buy one. I hated washing cars most of all. I also made sure to invite the family to take a look inside at our “extravagant selection of Indian artifacts.” Usually Pap would take over from there, acting like what he thought a carload of Easterners would think a Westerner acted like. He told stories about the area, the Indians who had camped nearby, the stagecoach and the Santa Fe Trail. During his performances, Pap would eventually talk the family into buying more than just gasoline and a quart of oil. Indian headdresses and rubber tomahawks made in Taiwan were usually bought for the kids, and the mothers usually got a cheap turquoise bauble. Pap was good at what he did and could sell a Bible to the devil.

But that spring, me and Maam tried our best to fill Pap’s shoes while he kept vigil over the interstate. After a customer left, Pap would call me over and I would be expected to give a report of everything, but especially about the freeway. Pap wanted to know how it was coming, and the best information came from the folks who were driving it. Long-haul truckers knew the most, but Pap said he would never trust a man who drove trucks for a living.

“Pap,” I told him once, “the guy said he drove from Okie City to Santa Rosa in four hours on the new road. He said he loved it because you can’t get stuck behind slower traffic. He said it’s real safe, too. He didn’t see any wrecks.” As an afterthought, I added something that must have broke Pap’s heart.

“I can’t hardly wait ‘til it comes through here,” I said.

“Why’s that?”

“I’ll be able to get on that road and drive all the way to California,” I said. “And when I get there, I’ll be able to turn around and drive all the way to New York.”

“You can do that now.”

“I know, but it would be neat to drive on the new road and not have to stop in every dinky town.”

Pap shook his head sadly and sighed.

“I’d hope you stop here every now and again and see Maam. She’d be disappointed if you didn’t at least stop to say hello.”

“I’d take you guys with me,” I said.

He slung one of his lanky arms around my shoulder and pulled me close. I could smell his sweet scent of Aqua Velva mixed with sweat. Although it was hot, Pap had a good set-up on the tin roof of the weather shed. He rigged up a chair and umbrella set up and a cooler full of water in canning jars. He wore green aviator’s glasses and wide-brimmed hat. The trees he had planted years before assured that he was always sitting in the shade. I looked in the cooler for a Pepsi.

“You know what that highway means, don’t you, Kit?” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure -- something about military convoys I ventured, repeating something I had overheard somewhere. I hadn’t thought much about it, I was caught up in the excitement of the whole thing.

“That freeway is being built by the government to make our lives easier. Cars and trucks are going to replace trains as the best way to move things across the country. That road is the future and it will make it so people don’t have to stop here for gasoline. The country is speeding up, Kit, it’s been like that since the war ended. A smart person would try and get an exit on his property. It takes money to make money, though.

“They been planning this thing for five years. Up and down that whole road, and others like it, clear across the country, people been making money, and not fairly. I’m afraid your Pap doesn’t have the connections to get them to stop here.”

“The McQueens do?” Everyone who grew up in the valley knew the McQueens. Shoot, I had two of them in school with me. Cooper McQueen was a bully, but his little sister Bea was always nice to me. I had heard about some people who resented the McQueens, but I didn’t understand why until I was talking with Pap on the roof of the shed.

“The McQueens were lucky enough to homestead the in the valley first. The Armijos were second. They bought up the land close to Route 66 when it was being planned. By the time I got here, we only got this piece here, and it’s five miles out of town. But we done good with it. The freeway will make this place obsolete, no one will ever stop here again. They’ll all pull off at the exit down by the new motor lodge and truck stop. They won’t have any reason to come down here.”

“Isn’t there any way to talk them into putting an exit here?”

Pap looked at me sideways and grinned, and I knew he was about to let me in on a secret.

“You be ready to go after Maam goes to bed. If you don’t fall asleep, I’ll take you with me. But you have to promise me that never tell anyone about what you see.”

“Never?”

“Only after I’m long dead and even then, I don’t think you better.”

I promised on my mother’s grave and he reminded me that was a serious promise and Maam had better never find out.

My mother’s real name was Rachel, but everyone called her Maam. She was the kind of woman who commanded respect. Pap was 10 years older than her and it was her that told him they were going to marry. She always said that if she’d left up to him, he’d still be a bachelor. I’m sure at one time my mother was a girl, but it didn’t last long. She took care of her three bothers after her dad died in a farming accident and her mom went crazy and just disappeared. Maam was nobody’s fool, and while I suspect she knew most of what I was up to, she only made an issue of the things that were important. Sneaking out at night – even if it was with Pap – would have been one of the things that would get both of us in trouble. It was a risk I was willing to take, though.

That night, I made sure to leave my bedroom window open just a crack and snuck out when I saw the lights go out under the crack in my bedroom door. I met Pap by the shed and he already had his motorcycle pulled out. We were going to ride the motorcycle! My whole life I wanted to ride on the two-wheeled behemoth, but Maam would never allow Pap to take me. Pap tossed me a leather helmet and put his fingers to his lips to shushed me before I could scream with excitement.

We pushed the bike down 66 for a mile in silence. The only noise was the soft thuds of my sneakers and Pap’s work boots on the pavement. There was a slight breeze and I was glad I had brought a jacket. It was spring, but it could still get cold at night. The night was clear and a crescent moon steadily crept up the eastern horizon. I could barely contain my excitement, which was making me sort of skip as my father pushed the motorcycle along. The bike had always been presence in my life, but I never got to ride on it. Pap had taken off the sidecar because he said it made the bike handle different. I used to watch Pap carefully every time he took the bike out to wash it or change the oil. When he got on it, to make one of his frequent forays onto the backroads of the valley, I always longed to go with him. Oddly enough, it wasn’t Maam that withheld permission, it was Pap. Pap would let me do most anything I wanted, but the motorcycle was off limits. It was what kept him sane, he claimed, and we all left it at that.

After we had walked far enough from Wicked Pete’s where the engine of the bike couldn’t be heard, Pap straddled it and kicked it to life.

“Get on back and hold on,” he said. “When we go into a corner, lean into it.”

We were off and gained speed quickly.

If anyone ever asked me to define happiness I would say it is holding onto your Pap on the back of an Army issue Indian motorcycle while it cruised down Highway 66 in the dead of the night.

Soon Pap screamed at me to hold on tight and we left the paved road and headed north on a farm road. We rode for miles and I can remember I nearly fell off twice. Pap would ride on one dirt road with rows small corn stalks on both sides, then turn suddenly on another and ride for what seemed forever. I was expecting the sun to pop up, and was kind of wishing for it so I would have an idea where I was. We rode for what seemed hours like that and eventually the farmland dropped away. The thrill of being on the bike eventually wore off and I began to feel like I wanted to get off and stretch my legs.

Then we stopped. When I looked up I could see every star in the universe. It was the first time I had really noticed the stars and the wide band of the Milky Way. I had a tendency to always be looking down, not up. Pap startled me when he tooted the rubber horn on the handlebars. In the distance, an air horn tooted back, and Pap fired up the bike again and rode in the direction of the sound. After a few minutes we came upon a road grader hidden off the road by some juniper bushes. The cabin was softly lit by a kerosene lantern and sitting in the seat was Slim O’Rourke. When we got close, Slim jumped out of the cabin.

“Well hello there, Kit Carson,” he said when he saw me get off the bike. I liked Slim, and I especially liked it when he called me Kit Carson. Slim was older than Pap and long past the physique that earned him his nickname. He was a tall, thin man with an enormous gut and a host of ailments that focused on a bad back he said was caused by fighting the Kaiser in France. I was fascinated by his fabulous handlebar moustache that held its shape perfectly no matter when I saw him. Since as long as I could remember, Slim had always offered me a bite off his tobacco plug whenever we met.

“Hello, Mr. O’Rourke,” I said.

“You can call me Slim, Kit. You know that.”

“Maam got mad last time I called you that and I had a lecture for an hour about respecting adults.” Slim looked around cautiously as if Maam might jump out from behind a cedar. She cast her spell far and wide.

“Well, you should do what your ma tells you, I guess.” He pulled his plug out of a front shirt pocket and offered some to Pap, who took a bite and rolled it into his mouth and handed the wad back to Slim. He held it out to me. I looked to Pap, who shrugged his shoulders.

“If your mother finds out, I don’t know nothing.” He made a show of moving the tobacco around in his mouth and turning to spit. He wiped his mouth cooly on his shirt sleeve. “Keep in mind that it’ll make you sick.”

The desire to take a big bite was immense, but the pressure of getting sick and getting caught by Maam forced me to beg off.

“So where we at as far as our little project, Slim?” Pap asked.

“I think we’re almost done. I remembered to bring the maps tonight.”

Slim hustled back to the grader in a stuttering walk favoring his left knee and pulled out a roll of papers. He spread them out on the ground in front of the grader’s headlights and all three of us hunched over the map, each holding a corner so it wouldn’t roll back up.

“You ever seen an arroyo after a thunderstorm, Kit?” Pap asked me. I nodded -- me and my best friend Jimmie Street hunted for toads after a rain in the ditch close to the house.

“Well, then you know that when the rains come -- especially the quick ones, the arroyos around here fill up so fast that it can wash away a truck before you know what’s happened. It don’t even have to be raining here for them to fill up. It rains in the mountains and the water collects into little stream beds, they connect into larger ones and by the time in hits the valley floor, you’ve got troubles. Now arroyos have been around here since before people were and its kind of like a road map. There’s big ones and there is little ones. What we’re trying to do is make a little one into a huge one.”

He pointed at the map showing me where all the arroyos were and where they started and where they joined with others. And he showed me how him and Slim had been putting a little dirt here, a ditch there and reworking the arroyos 20 miles from home. He explained that when the rain came, a whole bunch of water was going to end up flooding one spot. He pointed at the map and I looked close. In tiny blue print it said, “Lands of McQueen.” I looked at my dad, puzzled. He shrugged.

Pap may have had land, and a newer model car, but that didn’t make him rich. His land was bought with scrimps and scraps saved over the years. Half of it was financed through the bank, which was owned by one of the McQueens. There were seven major land holders in the valley, and Pap’s 300 acres were nothing compared to the miles of land the McQueen’s held. Before anyone had ever thought of building the interstate, Pap was betting that the town would grow up around Route 66, and he was right. But he bought on the wrong side of town. Land speculation could make or break a man and it worked simply: a rich land owner would subdivide his land and sell the first couple of lots real cheap. The deal would include electricity and sewage hook ups if they bought there. Once a few people were attracted, the price of the property went up. It worked great if you had the land and the means to get electricity to your land. Pap couldn’t afford the up front cost to put in power lines. The co-op might do it, if one of the McQueen’s had an interest. But the McQueen’s, who always had a family member on the co-op board, rarely had an interest in helping anyone but themselves. Everyone knew that and accepted it.

“It’s nothing personal, son. I just can’t let myself sit by and be ruined.” It finally dawned on me. The interstate would keep people from stopping at Wicked Pete’s and eventually the bank would have to step in and take Pap’s land back.

“Bullcrap it ain’t personal.” Slim stood up and spit to one side. “That son of a biscuit screwed us all over. He made it so my land was split in two. I can’t run a farm like that. Your old man got it all figured out, Kit. All we got to do is wait for the rains.”

Pap stood up and looked away into the darkness.

“It’s more complicated than that, Slim. It’s a race, and they’re winning.”

“What do you mean?” both me and Slim asked.

“They’re going faster because they didn’t have the bad weather during winter. If they get that road bed done before the rains, this little scheme is going to flood both of us, when it does. I think.”

“How do you know this?” Slim was spitting again and a little more than worried.

“I’ve been watching them. The way they’re going, they’ll have the road bed in real close to when the rains start. They build the road in twenty-mile sections. Once one crew gets done, they move ahead to the next section. I’ve seen their construction schedule; they’re way ahead. The road bed will work as a dike and spread the water out over here and here,” Pap said pointing to areas on the map. “It’s going to be close. I won’t lie to you. If you want to back out, now’s the time.”

Slim ran his fingers across his moustache, spit and took his hat off. He spit again.

“Goddangit, Pap. We’re ruined whether we do this in time or not. Can’t be anymore ruined than ruined. Let’s get this done.” He slammed his hat back on his head and walked over to the grader and started it up.

We spent the rest of the night moving dirt and digging ditches. Before the sun came up, Pap and I got back on the motorcycle and rode back home. I was dog tired when I got back in my bed in time for Maam to come in and wake me.

The rest of the day, a I kept an eye on Pap on the roof and realized for the first time he was probably sleeping most of the day up there in his chair. The only thing that roused him was the ding of the customer bell. For my part, I was tired and Maam was suspicious. I was 10, which meant I would normally would be bouncing off the walls. That’s why boys are always getting into trouble if there isn’t enough chores to be done, and Maam never kept me idle. That day, though, I was practically falling asleep every time I sat down.

“Are you feeling okay?” Maam asked when I forgot to put a gas cap back on a car. I tried to act like everything was fine, but I don’t think she was fooled. She went out and talked to Pap, and that’s the last I heard of it. That night, although I wanted to go with Pap, I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to sneak out.

We all went on through the month of May pretending nothing was happening. Sometimes Pap would take me with him, but most nights I laid awake wishing I had gone with him and Slim. During the day, Pap would nap on the roof of the shed and watch the workmen through his glass. My father had his obsessions and I was beginning to have mine, namely, watching my father.

Halfway through June, Pap climbed down off the shed in the middle of the day. He was grinning, but he was talking to himself as he walked into the office Maam used to do the books. All he said was, “Puzzling.”

He told me later on, out at where we were doing the dirt work that it looked like the work on the road was slowing down. Each day, he said, it seemed like something went wrong for the workmen. But they were still moving at a pretty good speed. That night though, was the last of the clandestine dirt work. Pap announced we were done, and now it was time to watch and wait for the rains. It was two of the longest weeks of my life, waiting and watching them build the road.

After the first week, the road equipment and workmen stopped working altogether. Pap had been watching them closely all that day through his glass. He even called me up to the roof to have a look and asked me what I thought. There were men scratching their heads and motioning for the men to go away while they looked at the equipment. They had the hoods up all day long, but not one machine fired up that day.

The next day, a man showed up at the store demanding to talk to Pap. This stranger was mad at my father before he even talked to Pap.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man screamed when I brought Pap. Pap immediately told me to go around back. I’d seen my father charm people before, but I’d never seen him fight anyone. I wasn’t sure which it was going to be. My Pap was an easygoing man, but even I knew he must have had his limits. I quickly went around the back of the store and set up a wooden ladder to get on the roof. I wasn’t about to miss what was about to happen.

In a loud and irritated voice, the man accused my father of sabotage. None of the road equipment was working and he said he was sure Pap had something to do with it. Pap denied any knowledge of what was going on. The man said everyone knew Pap spent his days spying on them. Everyone also knew Pap had tried hard to get an exit off the interstate. Who else could it be? Kids, Pap told him. They were always getting into things. Pap said he wasn’t doing anything, except watching. He’d always been interested in engineering, he told the man, and was thinking about pointing me in that vocation. That’s when I knew Pap was selling the man on Pap’s innocence. It didn’t take long until he had won the man over. By the time he left, he was apologizing to Pap and promised he would drop off some literature on his college alma mater, in case Pap wanted to send me there.

He shook Pap’s hand, got in his car and drove off. I watched as he pulled a u-turn and waved at Pap as he passed by, Maam was apparently watching, too. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I turned and saw her also looking after the car. I thought I was going to be in big trouble.

But she just sighed and turned back toward the ladder. She smiled slightly, but it was an expression more of worry than happiness.

“Just remember, Christopher,” she said. “Your father was blessed with the charm God had meant to set aside for us.” She climbed down the ladder and didn’t say anything else to me about the incident. I sat thinking. At first I was mad at her suggestion I didn’t have my father’s charm, but it was true. Sometimes it was tough being his kid. If my Pap had stayed back East and stuck it out as a vaudeville performer, he would be rich and famous now. I’ll never understand why he chose to stay in the valley. Maybe it was because most people spend their whole lives looking for happiness, and I guess Pap found it early in life. He was just doing what he could to hang on to it. I guess that’s the way Maam felt about Pap. I don’t know, but I learned a little about her that day.

I climbed down the ladder and went in search of Pap. Maam told me he had gone to Slim’s farm. He didn’t get back until long after we had been sent to bed. My curiosity was killing me, and over the weeks, Pap rarely talked to me. If he knew who was causing trouble for the work crew, he wasn’t saying.

We all waited. Each day, the sun came up and scorched the earth. The days passed and there was no sign that it would ever rain. And the earth movers were getting closer and closer. June ended. July 1 -- no rain. July 2 -- no rain. The farmers were making fun of Pap’s prediction. July 3 -- no rain, not even a cloud.

On the Fourth of July, we went to the carnival and saw the fireworks. The wind blew hard, but no rain. July 6, Pap stayed in bed all day saying he was sick. The workers were starting to move earth on the McQueen land and laying out stakes for the freeway exit. It still didn’t rain. July 7 came and went. No rain.

On July 8, I woke up and there were clouds. It stayed cloudy all day, but nothing fell from the sky. In the evening, the clouds broke and we watched a beautiful sun begin to set over the Sandias. Slim came over and Maam fixed him dinner. We all sat in silence, slowly taking bite after bite. Then we heard it, away from the north. It was a giant rumbling sound like God turning over in the middle of the night. Slim was heading to the door before the thunder died away. We were all behind him and he let out a giant “Wahoo!”

Away to the north, we watched as lightning flashed beyond the horizon. Maam tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the south. Another giant storm was lightning up the sky there, too.

Maam rarely smiled, but when she did, it was magical. Looking up, I noticed Maam was grinning from ear to ear. She even hugged me and then fell into Pap’s arms. Slim was out in the yard trying to splash in puddles that hadn’t yet formed and screaming like a maniac.

“You did it, then, didn’t you? You did something to their graders?” Maam asked. I was sure Pap had done something to the road equipment. Apparently, Maam thought the same. Pap shrugged and pointed at Slim, who was skipping up to the porch.

“Nope, it was that old sad sack who claims he is too crippled to do anything.”

“I ain’t too old and crippled to pee in the gas tanks.” Slim took off his sweat-stained hat and wiped his brow. From out of his pocket he pulled out his tobacco. He offered it to me, without looking at Maam, I took it from him and bit off a small chunk and tried to roll it around like I had seen Pap do. I finally got it in my cheek.

“Kit, it looks like after you and me were done sneaking out at night, Slim took up the cause. It seems our co-conspirator was partaking in a little espionage,” Pap said throwing his arm around my shoulder.

The black clouds were now overhead. It didn’t sprinkle, it wasn’t misting. It was a deluge that would have scared Noah.

Pap and Maam ran out into the rain. Slim was busy watching the rain and taking another bite off his plug before running out and splashing in the real puddles.

Me, I stood for a minute and spit out the wad of tobacco into my hand and threw it away while no one was looking. I was getting sick.