The Big Wander Read online

  THE BIG WANDER

  Books by WILL HOBBS

  Changes in Latitudes

  Bearstone

  Downriver

  The Big Wander

  Beardance

  Beardream

  Kokopelli’s Flute

  THE BIG WANDER

  WILL HOBBS

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition September 2004

  Copyright © 1992 by Will Hobbs

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of

  reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Hobbs, Will.

  The Big Wander / Will Hobbs.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Although his older brother decides to return home to Seattle,

  fourteen-year-old Clay continues his search for his uncle through the ruggedly beautiful

  Southwest canyon country.

  ISBN 0-689-31767-0 (hc.)

  [1. Southwest, New—Fiction. 2. Uncles—Fiction. 3. Horses—Fiction. 4. Navaho Indians—Fiction. 5. Indians of North America—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.H6524Bi 1992

  [Fic]—dc20 92-825

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87070-5 (Aladdin pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-87070-1 (Aladdin pbk.)

  Dedication

  For my mother

  I’m glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

  —ALDO LEOPOLD

  1

  Clay Lancaster rolled the window down and drank in the wind and the rolling red desert, the clouds impossibly tall in Arizona’s turquoise sky. He read the billboards aloud to his brother Mike at the wheel of the pickup.

  PRAIRIE DOG VILLAGE!

  GENUINE INDIAN MOCCASINS!

  LIVE TWO-HEADED CALF!

  Clay had never seen so many billboards in his life as lined Route 66. Dozens, even hundreds, advertised the same few roadside attractions. You started seeing the signs hundreds of miles away and you came to think of them as companions on this thin strip through the big emptiness.

  Ahead, a long-promised trading post appeared on the red horizon, with a dozen tepees circling a cluster of gift shops disguised as a fort.

  “Chief Yellowhorse Village coming up, Mike. Hey, that last sign said something about rattlers. Slow down.”

  “Slow down—that’s a good one,” his brother Mike said with a smile, coming a bit out of the daze he’d been in ever since they left Seattle. “Clay, we could’ve raced a tortoise into Arizona and lost.”

  “C’mon, Mike, your Studebaker has character.” To Clay everything about their trip was perfect, even the way the truck backfired going down the hills. They were on the loose at last and four days into the Big Wander.

  “These places are all phony as wooden nickels,” Mike scoffed. “The Indians in the desert didn’t live in tepees.”

  “There it is again—BABY RATTLERS—hey, Mike, let’s take a look at ’em! I bet it’s time to check the oil again anyway.”

  It was always time to check the oil. They’d left a plume of blue smoke behind them all the way down through Washington State and Oregon and practically the whole length of California. The truck was new, bought especially for this summer out of Mike’s savings for seventy-five dollars. Well, not exactly new, Clay thought, but new for them. Its original red showed in places, but mostly you’d have to say it looked rusty, which came close to matching the color of the desert and seemed a lucky thing at the moment. Another lucky thing about the truck was its age, Clay thought, it being a ’48 model, same as me, and that makes us both fourteen.

  They walked onto the wooden porch of the trading post and Clay’s eyes looked past the cigar store Indian to the footlocker with BABY RATTLERS spelled out large. As Clay knelt and cautiously began to lift the lid, a pair of little boys came streaming out of a station wagon and bounded onto the porch, their parents trying in vain to call them back. Twins, Clay figured. They froze big-eyed as Clay peered through the opening into the box. “These rattlers are a little different from the ones back home,” he reported to Mike. “Maybe they’re desert rattlers.”

  A little smile came to Clay’s face as he looked from his brother to the buzz-headed twins, crowding as close as they dared, deliciously terrified and hair-triggered to run. Their older sister was stepping onto the porch, curious to find out what was going on.

  “Careful,” Mike warned.

  Clay’s right hand started into the box. The blond girl and her little brothers gasped.

  “Clay!” Mike shouted.

  “I think I can get one behind the head,” Clay said calmly, and his arm disappeared inside the box. The twins took two steps back and eyed their escape routes. Even Mike backed up a little.

  Clay reached inside, carefully, carefully. Suddenly it wasn’t so easy for anyone to tell what had happened, with all the rattling and commotion and Clay’s elbow flying back. But the sudden look of terror on his face said it all—he’d been bitten!

  Now, Clay thought, crying out in pain and throwing the lid open, springing in one motion on the twins with two of the rattlers in his right hand. The boys screamed and fell back against their sister and their parents who were backpedaling nearly as fast, until they all spied the baby rattles in Clay’s hand—a pink one and a blue one.

  “Hey,” one of the twins exclaimed, “those are rattles, not rattlers!”

  By now everyone was laughing with relief. The twins took the rattles from Clay’s hand, wanting to hold the “snakes” too and shake them menacingly. Clay was much more aware of their sister, who looked to be about his age. She was watching him, and she was smiling. Her glistening hair, curling into a flip at her shoulders, shone about as bright as the sun.

  “Are you fellas on your own?” their father inquired. Clay had never met a Texan before, but he recognized the accent from the movies.

  “We sure are,” he answered proudly. “My name’s Clay and this is my big brother Mike and we’re on the loose.”

  Both parents looked a little confused. “You’re on the loose,” the mother repeated, sounding a little concerned.

  Mike was standing back and seemed to be enjoying this. Clay thought he’d better explain. “We’ve been talking about a big trip for a long time, just the two of us, for the summer after Mike graduated. He’s starting college in the fall—at the California Institute of Technology.”

  The man whistled and raised his eyebrows. “Good school.”

  “Where’re y’all from?” the girl he liked asked cheerfully. Her hair was blonder than blond. To his amazement, she was speaking to him.

  “Seattle,” Clay answered, enchanted with her
accent and hair and everything about her. She was shining that warm, sweet smile on him.

  She must be wearing perfume, he thought, and as they started to talk he could feel its delicate scent wafting through his nostrils and overcoming his brain, making him dizzy. Tropical flowers, that’s what it is. Like they have in Hawaii.

  A miracle was happening. He was usually so shy with girls….

  Her name was Marilyn, which awed him, because the only Marilyn he’d ever heard of was a blonde too, and her name was Marilyn Monroe. As they talked, he started remembering Marilyn Monroe in one of the most memorable scenes of one of his favorite movies, River of No Return. He could see her now, struggling to keep her feet on that lurching makeshift raft out in the middle of the rapids. He’d often pictured himself rescuing a girl in just such a situation and earning her eternal gratitude.

  2

  By a great stroke of luck, her father wanted to treat him and Mike to milk shakes at the soda fountain, and in a heartbeat Clay was sitting next to Marilyn at the counter. “We’re going to see everything, go everywhere, do everything,” he declared. “At the ends of the roads we’re going to take off with our backpacks.” He hoped Mike was hearing this—he needed to be reminded—but Mike was a few feet away at one of the tables and busy talking to Marilyn’s father.

  Marilyn had the bluest eyes. She looked interested in what he was saying. What did she think of him?

  “We call our trip the Big Wander,” he told her. “I can’t believe we’re finally on the road after thinking about it for so long. What makes it even better, we have this uncle we haven’t seen for a couple of years…. Nobody know’s what’s happened to him, and we’re out to find him. Did you ever hear of Clay Jenkins, the rodeo star?”

  “I guess not,” Marilyn said apologetically.

  “He was All-Around Cowboy in 1956. That means he was the world’s best. Here, I’ve got a few pictures in my shirt pocket.” He showed her his favorite first, Uncle Clay under a black cowboy hat with that trademark smile all over his face, standing by a fancy pickup that had his name and a bucking Brahma bull painted on the side. Then he showed her the one with Uncle Clay in all his sequins and bangles standing in front of bright lights that spelled out MADISON SQUARE GARDEN.

  “That’s the biggest belt buckle I ever saw.”

  “That’s for All-Around Cowboy,” Clay said proudly. “He did it all—he rode bareback broncs and saddle broncs, bulldogged steers, even rode the bulls. He hit all the big-time rodeos, like Pendleton, Cheyenne, the Calgary Stampede…. Wait, there’s one more.”

  Clay took another photograph from his pocket and held it out. Uncle Clay’s face didn’t show very well under his black Stetson, and his chipped tooth and three-day beard made him look a little like an outlaw. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and a silk neckerchief, and he was leading a burro.

  “He doesn’t look the same.”

  “Well, it’s our most recent, from two years ago. He’s older—it was taken after he left the rodeo. The last we knew, he was trying to make a living as a uranium miner.”

  “‘The Lonesome Trail,’” she read from the border at the bottom of the picture. “Where is he now?”

  “That’s just it,” Clay said. “We don’t really know, and that’s what’s going to make it interesting. All we know is where he was when that picture was taken—near Grants, New Mexico, at the Bluewater uranium mill. And he was leaving there. He could be anywhere from Tucumcari to Mexican Hat.” They were just names off the map, but they sure sounded good when he said them.

  “Mexican Hat. Why do they call it that?”

  “Because people wear sombreros a lot there, I’m pretty sure.”

  Clay noticed Mike’s smirk, but Mike kept on talking to Marilyn’s parents, telling how they’d saved up for the trip and assuring them that their mother was all in favor of it.

  Before any time at all, their milk shakes were dry and they were standing outside shaking hands and saying good-bye. Clay noticed someone in the station wagon, a boy a year or so younger than Mike. “My brother,” Marilyn explained. “He’s not in a very good mood. I think he’s just tired of our trip and being jammed in with all of us.”

  Awkwardly, Clay reached to shake Marilyn’s hand. It wasn’t anywhere to be found, but finally she produced it, which was a relief.

  “Good luck finding your uncle,” Marilyn was saying.

  “You too,” he replied, and flushed as he realized it hadn’t come out right.

  She chuckled, and then her family all turned for the station wagon.

  “Did you get her address?” Mike asked under his breath.

  Clay felt his face flushing red and his throat going tight. It was all he could do to wave as the station wagon pulled out. “What was I supposed to—”

  Mike was shaking his head. “I’d swear your last name was Pigeon.”

  “It’s not like I’ll ever see her again….”

  “You never know, Clay, you never know. You could have written her at least.”

  I could have, Clay thought. Why didn’t I think of that?

  “You were too wound up to think,” his brother said. “I saw you. You’ve never kissed a girl, have you?”

  “’Course I have.”

  “Yeah, right. That’s why your face is bright red. You’re the worst liar I ever saw. All good things in all good time, Clay Pigeon. Look, you’re tall, you’ve got that dark hair, and you’re handsome—the girls are going to be knocking down your door.”

  “Sure, Mike.”

  “You check the oil while I make a call, okay?”

  It was time for Mike to disappear into a phone booth again and talk, talk, talk with his girlfriend, Sheila. Every day, and sometimes twice, Mike would slide into a phone booth and then afterward drive in a trance for a hundred miles. Clay had a bad feeling. He didn’t even want to think about it. The Big Wander was supposed to be better than all the old days put together when they were hiking in the Cascades, swimming rivers, busting salmon and steelies, messin’ around. But Mike’s heart wasn’t really in it.

  The oil was down a quart—no surprise. At least we’re on the way, Clay thought. Fifteen hundred miles from home and out in the middle of Arizona. Maybe Mike will snap out of it. The only trouble was, he’d been this way all spring, like he’d even forgotten he had a brother and the Big Wander was coming up. In the days just before the trip it was a matter of holding your breath and ducking out every time Mike seemed to be getting worked up to making a speech or something. If it hadn’t been for the blowup with Sheila, Mike might’ve called the whole trip off.

  Back on the road, Mike didn’t speak for a long time, except to mutter, “In search of the ‘Real West’ …” Clay didn’t want to ask him what he was getting at. As the shadows grew long and they drove through the Painted Desert, Clay could see the Real West out there, glowing and magical, beyond the billboards. Mike was missing it, but there was no budging him when he was in a funk like this.

  Eventually it was starting to get dark, and KOMA was beginning to come in. KOMA would make his brother feel better. They’d never heard such a great radio station. It played all the great songs and it seemed to reach about everywhere, as if most of the country was in the neighborhood. The deejays would announce dances from Tyler, Texas, clear up to Aberdeen, South Dakota, and from Columbia, Missouri, all across to Needles, California.

  “Ricky Dare here, riding your way on the big signal coming at you from Ok-la-homa City, Ok-la-homa, playing the songs you want to hear when you want to hear ’em, and that’s right now. From John in Cody, Wyoming, for Betty Ann in Casper, here’s Gene Pitney and ‘Only Love Can Break a Heart’….”

  Unfortunately for Mike, the signal faded just as the song began. Mike was in the mood for sad songs, sad love songs. Clay glanced at his brother, who was reaching for the dial and trying to get that song back. Mike was hurting, it wasn’t hard to tell.

  It wasn’t as easy to talk to Mike as it used to be. For the last yea
r it seemed like all his brother thought about was his girlfriend Sheila. There hadn’t been time for him and Mike to do things anymore.

  Now that Mike and Sheila had broken up, you couldn’t just ask what had caused the big blowup. Clay felt bad for him but really was thankful it had happened and Mike had wanted to get out of town. Otherwise all those old plans for the big road trip would have been just a pipe dream. The phone call from Uncle Clay had helped too, but the call wouldn’t have been enough.

  I’d be mowing lawns this summer, Clay thought, and Mike would be pumping gas and hanging out with Sheila. We wouldn’t be together out in the middle of the desert heading for New Mexico and points beyond, that’s for sure.

  Clay started to write a postcard.

  “Who you writin’ to?” Mike was still trying to tune KOMA back in.

  “President Kennedy.”

  “Oh, yeah? No kiddin’? Just thought you’d stay in touch with the president?”

  “Well, you know, I think he’s the greatest … and I always kind of wanted to write to him.” Clay was a little embarrassed now, but at least his brother was back poking fun again. “I figured out that we wouldn’t be doing this trip if it weren’t for him.”

  “How’d you figure that?”

  “Well, I think it’s because of President Kennedy that Mom got the idea about going to Guatemala for the summer, about helping other people—you know.”

  “‘Ask not what your country can do for you …,’” Mike began, imitating the president’s voice and Boston accent to perfection, “‘ask what you can do … for your country.’ Is that what you mean?”

  “Yeah, sort of. If she hadn’t come up with such a great idea for her own summer, she might not have been so easy on us about being gone so long—you know, if we were leaving her home by herself.”

  “So we have the president to thank? Pretty farfetched, if you ask me.”

  “And just think if we find Uncle Clay! Then she’ll really be proud.”

  Mike tried the radio dial again. “That’s just a long shot, you know.”