The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams

time, though, Rosalie didn’t fret about politics. She bought movie magazines and True Story and True Confessions . She had an ornate bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, which she was glad to share with Laurie and Belle, a spilled-over cake pan of Tangee lipsticks, powder, rouge, mascara, face creams, and Cutex nail polish, and she had earrings and necklaces and bracelets, shiny patent leather shoes with high heels and two good dresses, one of swingy, flowered, navy rayon, the other of yellow chiffon.
    When she put on the low-cut chiffon for the Fourth of July, Grandpa caressed her bare arm and called her his sunflower. She laughed and kissed him full on the mouth.
    The kiss wasn’t a bit like the way Daddy and Mama kissed when he went to work or even when he came back from a haul to Colorado. It made Laurie blush and look away. She could hear the bedsprings creaking almost every night and knew Grandpa and Rosalie were doing what got babies. Because he was so much older—Rosalie was twenty-seven—it seemed wrong even if they were married. As pretty and young as Rosalie was, it looked like she’d hate to have the old man touch her, but there was no mistaking that she loved him, or that he cared for her, though he ignored his children except to give orders. The times Rosalie didn’t go along when he took cream or eggs to town, he always handed her all the egg money and anything left from selling the cream after buying chicken feed and the few groceries they needed, and he never fussed over how she spent it.
    About once a month, the whole family went to town. Laurie was stunned the first time at being given a whole shiny nickel to spend just like her cousins. Except when Rosalie had visited, Laurie had never gotten more than a penny at a time, and that not often, which was especially galling since Buddy had his rabbit money. He’d lost that income since Grandpa ruled that any rabbits shot belonged on the table. It was the only fresh meat they had except on the Fourth when Rosalie killed two old hens to fry up for their picnic. Side meat and a few jars of sausage were still left from the hog butchered last fall. It made Laurie feel a little queasy to know that the friendly spotted hog she fed every day would, on some cold November day, stop his eager hunting for morsels and become food himself. She tried not to think about it but she was sure she couldn’t eat him.
    Those wonderful nickels, though, would buy a double-dip ice-cream cone, a fizzy limeade or cherry Coke from the drugstore fountain, a Big Little Book, a package of chewing gum or pieces of Dubble Bubble, Life Savers, or you could pick from an array of candy bars—Baby Ruth, named for President Cleveland’s daughter; Milky Way; Charleston Chew, named after the dance; Tootsie Rolls; and Hershey’s. On Laurie’s first trip to town, she stretched her nickel by getting a 3 Musketeers with three sections, vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. She swapped Buddy the chocolate section and half the strawberry for the top dip of his ice-cream cone.
    The nickel was only the start of the orgy. They got hamburgers with lots of sliced onions and dill pickles at a café, and then went to the Saturday afternoon movie. Laurie had a wrestle with her conscience over this. Movies were denounced by the tabernacle for being every bit as sinful as dancing, bobbing your hair, or smoking.
    Buddy had no qualms. He marched right along with the boys and Belle. “Come on, honey,” called Rosalie, hoisting Babe to her shoulder as she paused in the dark entrance.
    â€œI-I—” Tempted but afraid—it was so dark in there, just like the mouth of hell—“Mama never let us.”
    Rosalie came back and got Laurie seated beside her on a bench out of the way of people going in. Her dark eyebrows puckered as she thought for a moment. “Listen, dear,” she said at last. “I sure don’t want to undermine what your