Two miles further a weathered shack called itself the Split Rail Restaurant. A woman in her early thirties ran the place and lived in two rooms behind the restaurant. She was tall and thin, wore her blond hair in a braid, and wore jeans and boots and a man’s shirt. She didn’t say much, just listened to their conversation as they had their coffee, but when it was time to pay they couldn’t find her. She appeared after a couple of minutes wearing a hat and carrying a canvas shoulder bag.
“I don’t have a backpack,” she said. “I figure this’ll do until I get something better. But I haven’t got a canteen either, and there’s some dry country between here and the Rockies.” John said that he hadn’t a canteen either, that he was carrying his water in a plastic bottle with a screw cap. “Now I should have thought of that myself,” she said. She got a half-liter container of Coke from the icebox, cracked the cap, spilled out its contents, filled it from the tap, capped it and tucked it into her bag. “I should have asked did anybody want some of that Coke,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
She wouldn’t take money for the coffee. She rang “No Sale” on the cash register, stuffed the bills into a pocket of her jeans, and left the change where it was. She switched off the fire under the coffee, threw a couple of other switches, and turned the sign in the window from “Open” to “Closed.” She started to lock the front door, then turned away from it. “Anyone wants to move in,” she said, “they’re welcome to it. It’s just the best place in the world if you want to put in twelve hours a day to clear a dollar an hour.” After they’d walked together for a few hundred yards, she said, “My name’s Martha Detweiller. You folks want to tell me your names?”
Within the hour a four-wheel-drive AMC Eagle pulled up on the other side of the road. The rear doors opened and a man and woman got out, both of them wearing backpacks. The man had freckles and a chunky grin, and one of his front teeth was missing.
“I thought about it,” he said, “and I couldn’t think why everybody couldn’t do what they wanted, and just ’cause somebody has to pump Mr. Ballard’s gas doesn’t mean it has to be me. I had to close up and I had to call Ballard and let him know I was taking off, and then I had to go home and explain to Ellie what was goin’ on. This here is Ellie, an’ she still don’t know what’s goin’ on, but she’s up for it whatever it is. And I’m Marion but everybody calls me Bud, and that there’s Richard and it’s too early to tell yet what everybody’s gonna call him.”
And it was then that Guthrie noticed that Ellie’s backpack was not a knapsack but a sling, and that there was a baby riding in it. Ellie was a slender woman with long brown hair and luminous skin. She looked slightly glassy-eyed, and Guthrie didn’t blame her.
He found Sara and took her by the hand. “You didn’t mention that somebody was going to show up with a baby,” he said. “I suppose you didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“I’m as surprised as you are.”
“Oh yeah? The Prophet Disarmed. I hate to be a spoil-sport, but—”
“But is it safe to have a baby along on a trip like this?”
“That’s my question, yeah.”
“Can I see him?”
“You just about have to take a number and wait. Little Richard’s very popular right now.”
Sara extended both her index fingers and the baby gripped the tip of each and made fists about them. Pure heart energy flowed forth from the infant; the only reading she could get was serenity and love and joy. When Richard released her fingers she took Ellie’s hand and was not surprised to pick up the same vibrations, the identical sweet innocence.
“It’s safe to have a baby along,” she told Guthrie.
“Safe for us or safe for him?”
“Both.”
“How the hell are they going to feed him? Babies drink milk, don’t they?”
“What a fount of information you are, Guthrie.”
“I am smiling benignly at you, Sara. I just wanted you to know that.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“The point is they drink milk and they have it fairly frequently, don’t they?”
“Every four hours, when they’re very young.”
“And they have to get their diapers changed.”
“Very good, Guthrie.”
“Well, you can carry diapers, but what about milk? You bump a canteen of milk on your hip for a couple of hours and you wind up with cottage cheese.”
“Guthrie, don’t tell me you thought they were strictly decorative.”
“What?”
“Breasts.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said.
“I know. What’ll they think of next?”
They spent the night in an unplowed field. There was no one around of whom to ask permission, and no one sensed they’d be at risk. Bud and Ellie had brought a zip-up sleeping sack for Richard. Everyone else slept uncovered, and even without a fire everyone was warm enough.
“I think we can forget about motels from here on in,” Guthrie told Jody. “There’s eight of us now, nine counting Richard. Four rooms minimum, arid you can’t count on finding that many vacancies. And we went from four to nine in a day. God only knows how many of us there’ll be a week from now.”
“Motels cost, too. Not everybody’s got money.”
“I know. Last night was great, having supper with the Powerses and sleeping in the barn. And it’s good we did it last night, because there’s too many of us to do it again. It’s a good thing we can sleep out safely because we don’t have a whole lot of other choices.”
“You sound like it bothers you some, hoss.”
“Maybe I just have trouble adjusting to new realities. What are we going to do if it rains?”
“Grab a bar of soap and take a shower.”
“That’s another thing. How are we going to take showers if we never get motel rooms?”
“They’ve got showers at public campgrounds, and we can pay a fee and use them even if we don’t stay at the site. And there’s no law says we have to all stay in a bunch every damn minute, you know. Some of us could stay at a motel or in somebody’s barn and some more could find a place on down the road. We stay flexible, we’ll know what to do when we have to do it.”
“You’re right.”
“Besides,” Jody said, “we got good people today. John’s got something stuck in his throat, but soon as he spits it out he’ll have a lot to say. He’s got two older brothers, and he grew up thinking nothing he had to say was important. He’ll get over that. And Martha’s purely a no-bullshit type, she cuts right through the crap. She’s been madder’n hell at somebody, and when she quits sittin’ on it she may carry on enough to make the hills shake some, but you just wait an’ see what she’s like afterward.”
“Sara tell you all this stuff?”
“No.”
“Where’d you get it, then?”
“I don’t know.” Jody tugged at his beard. “Just come to me, I guess. Now Bud an’ Ellie, they’re real neat, and ol’ Richard’s just loving the whole trip. He looks out at the mountains like they belong to him.”
“I just hope they don’t slow us down too much.”
“They won’t. I noticed something. The first day somebody walks with us they’re a little slow, or their feet bother them, or whatever it is. But once they get caught up in the flow, why, the others just carry them. It’s like we pass energy back and forth, and the more it gets passed around the more there is of it. I tell you, hoss, I feel stronger the more of us there are.”
“How do you mean stronger?”
“Every way there is. Stronger in the body and stronger in my mind and spirit. Don’t you feel it?”
He thought for a moment. “I guess I do feel it,” he admitted. “I just don’t trust it.”