Wish You Well (18 page)

The store was stacked high with dry goods, tools, and foodstuffs. The aromas of tobacco and coffee were strong and seemed to have settled into the bones of the place. Horse collars hung next to racks of spooled thread, which sat alongside fat barrels of candies. Lou bought a pair of socks for herself and a pocketknife for Diamond, who was reluctant to accept it until she told him that in return he had to whittle something for her. She purchased a stuffed bear for Oz and handed it to him without commenting on the whereabouts of the old one.

Lou disappeared for a few minutes and returned with an object which she handed to Cotton. It was a magnifying glass. “For all that reading,” she said and smiled, and Cotton smiled back. “Thank you, Lou. This way I’ll think of you every time I open a book.” She bought a shawl for Louisa and a straw hat for Eugene. Oz borrowed some money from her and went off with Cotton to browse. When they came back, he held a parcel wrapped in brown paper and steadfastly refused to reveal what it was.

After wandering the town, Cotton showing them things that Lou and Oz had certainly seen before, but Diamond never had, they piled into Cotton’s Oldsmobile, which sat parked in front of the courthouse. They headed off, Diamond and Lou squeezed into the rumble seat while Oz and Jeb rode with Cotton in front. The sun was just beginning its descent now and the breeze felt good to all. There didn’t seem to be anything so pretty as sun setting over mountain.

They passed through Tremont and a while later crossed the tiny bridge near McKenzie’s and started up the first ridge. They came to a railroad crossing, and instead of continuing on the road, Cotton turned and drove the Oldsmobile on down the tracks.

“Smoother than the roads up here,” he explained. “We’ll pick it back up later on. They’ve got asphalt and macadam at the foothills, but not up here. These mountain roads were built by hands swinging picks and shovels. Law used to be every able-bodied man between sixteen and sixty had to help build the roads ten days a year and bring his own tools and sweat to do it. Only teachers and preachers were exempt from having to do it, although I imagine those workers could’ve used some powerful prayers every now and again. They did a right good job, built eighty miles of road over forty years, but it’s still hard on one’s bottom to travel across the results of all that fine work.”

“What if a train comes?” asked an anxious Oz.

“Then I suspect we’ll have to get off,” Cotton said.

They eventually did hear the whistle and Cotton pulled the car to safety and waited. A few minutes later a fully loaded train rolled past, looking like a giant serpent. It was moving slowly, for the track was curvy here.

“Is that coal?” Oz said, eyeing the great lumps of rock visible in the open train cars.

Cotton shook his head. “Coke. Made from slack coal and cooked in the ovens. Ship it out to the steel mills.” He shook his head slowly. “Trains come up here empty and leave full. Coal, coke, lumber. Don’t bring anything here except more bodies for labor.”

On a spur off the main line, Cotton showed them a coal company town made up of small, identical homes, with a train track dead center of the place and a commissary store that had goods piled floor to ceiling, Cotton informed them, because he had been inside before. A long series of connected brick structures shaped like beehives were set along one high road. Each one had a metal door and a chimney with fill dirt packed around it. Smoke belched from each stack, turning the darkening sky ever blacker. “Coke ovens,” Cotton explained. There was one large house with a shiny new Chrysler Crown Imperial parked out front. The mine superintendent’s home, Cotton told them. Next to this house was a corral with a few grazing mares and a couple of energetic yearlings leaping and galloping around.

“I got to take care of some personal business,” said Diamond, already pulling his overall straps down. “Too much soder pop. Won’t be one minute, just duck behind that shed.”

Cotton stopped the car and Diamond got out and ran off. Cotton and the children talked while they waited, and the lawyer pointed out some other things of interest.

“This is a Southern Valley coal mining operation. The Clinch Number Two mine, they call it. Coal mining pays pretty good, but the work is terribly hard, and with the way the company stores are set up the miners end up owing more to the company than they earn in wages.” Cotton stopped talking and looked thoughtfully in the direction of where Diamond had gone, a frown easing across his face. He continued, “And the men also get sick and die of the black lung, or from cave-ins, accidents, and such.”

A whistle sounded and they watched as a group of charcoal-faced, probably bone-tired men emerged from the mine entrance. A group of women and children ran to greet them, and they all walked toward the copycat houses, the men swinging metal dinner pails and pulling out their smokes and liquor bottles. Another group of men, looking as tired as the other, trudged past them to take their place under the earth.

“They used to run three shifts here, but now they only have two,” said Cotton. “Coal’s starting to run out.”

Diamond returned and vaulted into the rumble seat.

“You all right, Diamond?” asked Cotton.

“Am now,” said the boy, a smile pushing against his cheeks, his feline green eyes lighted up.

Louisa was upset when she learned they had gone to town. Cotton explained that he should not have kept the children as long as he had, therefore she should blame him. But then Louisa said she recalled that their daddy had done the very same thing, and the pioneer spirit was a hard one to dodge, so it was okay. Louisa accepted the shawl with tears in her eyes, and Eugene tried on the hat and proclaimed it the nicest gift he had ever gotten.

After supper that night Oz excused himself and went to his mother’s room. Curious, Lou followed him, spying on her brother as usual from the narrow opening between door and wall. Oz carefully unwrapped the parcel he had purchased in town and held the hairbrush firmly. Amanda’s face was peaceful, her eyes, as always, shut. To Lou, her mother was a princess reclining in a deathlike state, and none of them possessed the necessary antidote. Oz knelt on the bed and began brushing Amanda’s hair and telling his mother of their wonderfully fine day in town. Lou watched him struggle with the brushing for a few moments and then went in to help. She held out her mother’s hair and showed Oz how to properly perform the strokes. Their mother’s hair had grown out some, but it was still short.

Later that night Lou went to her room, put away the socks she had bought, lay on the bed fully dressed down to her boots, thinking about their trip to town, and never once closed her eyes until it was time to milk the cows the next morning.

They all were sitting down to dinner a few nights later while the rain poured down outside. Diamond had come for supper, wearing a tattered piece of worn canvas with a hole cut out for his head, his homegrown mackintosh of sorts. Jeb had shaken himself off and headed for the fire as though he owned the place. When Diamond freed himself from the canvas coat, Lou saw something tied around his neck. And it wasn’t particularly sweet-smelling.

“What is
that
?” Lou asked, her fingers pinching her nose, for the stench was awful.

“Asafetida,” Louisa answered for the boy. “A root. Ward off sickness. Diamond, honey, I think if you warm yourself by the fire, you can give that to me. I thank you.” While Diamond wasn’t looking, she carried the root out to the back porch and flung the foul thing away into the darkness.

Louisa’s frying pan held the dual aromas of popping lard and ribs cut thick with so much fat they didn’t dare curl. The meat had come from one of the hogs they had had to slaughter. Usually a winter task, they had been compelled, by a variety of circumstances, to perform the deed in spring. Actually, Eugene had done the killing while the children were at school. But at Oz’s insistence Eugene had agreed to let him help scrape down the hog and get off the ribs, middle meat, bacon, and chitlins. However, when Oz saw the dead animal strung up on a wooden tripod, a steel hook through its bloody mouth, and a cauldron of boiling water nearby— just waiting, he no doubt believed, for the hide of a little boy to give it the right spice, he had run off. His screams echoed back and forth across the valley, as though from a careless giant who had stubbed his toe. Eugene had admired both the boy’s speed and lung capacity and then gone on to work the hog himself.

They all ate heartily of the meat, and also of canned tomatoes and green beans that had marinated for the better part of six months in brine and sugar, and the last of the pinto beans.

Louisa kept all plates full, except her own. She nibbled on some of the tomato chunks and beans, and dipped cornbread into heated lard, but that was all. She sipped on a cup of chicory coffee and looked around the table where all were enjoying themselves, laughing hard at something silly Diamond had said. She listened to the rain on the roof. So far so good, though rain now meant nothing; if none fell in July and August, the crop would still be dust, blown off in a gentle breeze, and dust had never lined anyone’s belly. Very soon they would be laying in their food crops: corn, pole beans, tomatoes, squash, rutabaga, late potatoes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, and string beans. Irish potatoes and onions were already in the ground, and duly hilled over, frost not bothering them any. The land would be good to them this year; it was their due this time around.

Louisa listened to the rain some more.
Thank you, Lord, but be sure to send us some more of your bounty come summer. Not too much so’s the tomatoes burst and rot on the vines, and not too little that the corn only grows waist high. I know it’s asking a lot, but it’d be much appreciated.
She said a silent amen and then did her best to join in the festivities.

There came a rap on the door and Cotton walked in, his outer coat soaked through even though the walk from car to porch was a quick one. He was not his usual self; the man did not even smile. He accepted a cup of coffee, a bit of cornbread, and sat next to Diamond. The boy stared up at him as though he knew what was coming.

“Sheriff came by to see me, Diamond.”

Everyone looked at Cotton first and then they all stared at Diamond. Oz’s eyes were open so wide the boy looked like an owl without feathers.

“Is that right?” Diamond said, as he took a mouthful of beans and stewed onions.

“Seems a pile of horse manure got in the mine superintendent’s brand-new Chrysler at the Clinch Number Two. The man sat in it without knowing, it still being dark and all, and he had the bad cold in the nose and couldn’t smell it. He was understandably upset by the experience.”

“Durn, how ’bout that,” said Diamond. “Wonder how the horse done got that in there? Pro’bly just backed itself up to the window and let fly.” That said, Diamond went right on eating, though none of the others did.

“I recall I dropped you off to do some personal business right around there on our drive back from Dickens.”

“You tell the sheriff that?” Diamond asked quickly.

“No, my memory curiously abandoned me about the time he asked.” Diamond looked relieved as Cotton continued. “But I spent a sorry hour over at the courthouse with the superintendent and a coal company lawyer who were all-fire sure that you had done it. Now upon my careful cross-examination I was able to demonstrate that there were no eyewitnesses and no other evidence tying you to the scene of this . . . little situation. And, fortunately, one can’t take fingerprints from horse manure. Judge Atkins held with my side of things, and so there we are. But those coal folk have long memories, son, you know that.”

“Not so long as mine,” countered Diamond.

“Why would he do something like that?” said Lou.

Louisa looked at Cotton and he looked at her, and then Cotton said, “Diamond, my heart’s with you on this, son, it really is. You know that. But the law’s not. And next time, it might not be so easy to get out of it. And folk might start taking matters into their own hands. So my advice to you is to get on with things. I’m saying it for your own good, Diamond, you know that I am.”