Chapter 9
Ranee Martin had taken the car on Thursday morning to a neighborhood garage, where the owner was a friend of his and had actually bought jewelry from him, and by the end of the day he was happy to report to his beautiful wife Eleanor and to Kenny and Dorothy that the Buick was in tiptop condition. They all went to bed early that night so that they could be up at dawn on Friday to start the drive to California.
Dorothy Martin and her brother had maintained a guarded truce since the previous Saturday. Dorothy couldn't help blushing every time her brother looked at her, because she was wondering whether he had actually seen her performing self-relief. And in turn, she couldn't forget the graphic scene between him and Dody which she had spied on through that crack in the wall which let her see right into her brother's room and the bed ... the bed on which he had been mounted over that young tramp, fucking her!
Ranee Martin and his wife, however, didn't seem to notice anything amiss, except that Eleanor did laughingly chide her son by remarking, "Kenny, honey, you've certainly become awfully quiet in a hurry. Usually you're such a chatterbox, especially when there's something new in the family schedule. I thought you'd be all excited about this trip to California." And he had flushed and nodded and said, "Sur^ I'm excited, Mom, but after all, we haven't smarted yet, and there's time enough to get excited when we start seeing some of the scenery along the way,"
"You're just trying to act grown up, that's all, that's your trouble," she had affectionately chuckled and given him a quick kiss on the cheek. And Dorothy Martin had lowered her eyes and told herself that her mother's remark had been much righter than Eleanor Martin knew, because Kenny was certainly grown up and practically overnight-but hardly in a way that would appeal to his beautiful mature mother.
The weather was glorious as the Martin quartet got into the Buick, with Ranee at the wheel, and the virile jeweler turned the car down Lake Shore Drive to head for the freeway which was farther north and west that would take them on the first lap of their journey. Eleanor Martin, in the front seat, was studying the map. Her husband had already worked out a tentative itinerary. They wouldn't try to break any speed records at all. There was so much scenery between here and California which none of them had ever enjoyed that they would keep an average of forty to forty-five miles an hour except on those stretches of highway where a higher speed was obligatory. "I figure we'll reach Abilene, Kansas by about Sunday noon or thereabouts," Ranee glanced over at his desirable blonde wife. "There's a lot of historical background to Kansas, you know. John Brown and his abolitionist movement came from around there. And then there were the famous Kansas Jayhawkers, sort of highwaymen who raided anybody that came into the territory in those early days. Most people think Kansas is a flat dreary state, but there are lots of very scenic spots, and the route I've chosen on the map is going to take us through most of them. We'll skirt the Dakotas, and see a good deal of Colorado and maybe even Wyoming and Utah, before heading down to California." He glanced back at his daughter with a grin: "You know, Dorothy, Cousin Edgar has got three practically grown children ... I wouldn't even call them children. His oldest boy, Dan, is all of eighteen. Going on nineteen, your age, honey. Why, who knows, you might take a shine to him."
"Please, Daddy," Dorothy Martin blushed hotly. In the back seat, with her brother to her right, she was keeping as quiet as she could and not looking at Kenny. Every time she did so, he gave her a kind of insolent grin, and once he had even winked at her. Oh, the devil! She was more than ever certain that by an unlucky chance he had stuck his head in the bedroom just when she was ... was playing with herself. She didn't dare come right out and ask him, of course, but the waiting and the suspense about whether he had or hadn't actually seen her doing that was driving her just about crazy. Of course, if he ever once opened his big yap about it, she could tell him a thing or two about what she'd coon him do to Dody Brandon. Still, insolent though she was by temperament, Dorothy Martin had reasoned that the best thing to do was to let well enough alone. Maybe the trip and all its novelties would make Kenny Martin hold his tongue and mind his manners and quit riding her.
It would indeed. But hardly in the way that any of the Martins could have dreamed would happen....
Just as the Martins were starting out for California, the Kansas State Prison in Hanford, about fifteen miles northeast of Abilene, was waking up to breakfast and to Sunday chapel ... and also the fact that four of its inmates weren't going to be present for either nutritional or spiritual comfort.