Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Oz gaped at his ex–blood brother. “Why not?”

“Right chere’s good, Hell No. Come on now, Jeb.”

Hell No stopped the car. Directly in front of them was the bridge, although it was the puniest such one Lou had ever seen. It was a mere twenty feet of warped wooden planks laid over six-by-six tarred railroad ties, with an arch of rusted metal on either side to prevent one from plummeting all of five feet into what looked to be a creek full of more flat rock than water. Suicide by bridge jumping did not appear to be a realistic option here. And, judging from the shallow water, Lou did not hold out much hope for a lard-fried fish dinner, not that such a meal sounded particularly appealing to her anyway.

As Diamond pulled his gear from the back of the Hudson, Lou, who was a little sorry for what she had said, but more curious than sorry, leaned over the seat and whispered to him through the open rear window.

“Why do you call him Hell No?”

Her unexpected attention brought Diamond back to good spirits and he smiled at her. “ ’Cause that be his name,” he said in an inoffensive manner. “He live with Miss Louisa.”

“Where did he get that kind of a name?”

Diamond glanced toward the front seat and pretended to fiddle with something in his tackle box. In a low voice he said, “His daddy pass through these parts when Hell No ain’t no more’n a baby. Plunked him right on the dirt. Well, a body say to him, ‘You gonna come back, take that child?’ And he say, ‘Hell no.’ Now, Hell No, he never done nobody wrong his whole life. Ain’t many folk say that. And no rich ones.”

Diamond grabbed his tackle box and swung the pole to his shoulder. He walked to the bridge, whistling a tune, and Hell No drove the Hudson across, the structure groaning and complaining with each turn of the car wheels. Diamond waved and Oz returned it with his stained hand, hope welling back for maybe a friendship of enduring degree with Jimmy “Diamond” Skinner, crimson-crowned fisherboy of the mountain.

Lou simply stared at the front seat. At a man named Hell No.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The drop was a good three thousand feet if it was an inch. The Appalachians might pale in size if leveled against the upstart Rockies, but to the Cardinal children they seemed abundantly tall enough.

After leaving the small bridge and Diamond behind, the ninety-six horses of the Hudson’s engine had started to whine, and Hell No had dropped to a lower gear. The car’s protest was understandable, for now the uneven dirt road headed up at almost a forty-five-degree angle and wound around the mountain like a rattler’s coils. The road’s supposed twin lanes, by any reasonable measurement, were really only a single pregnant one. Fallen rock lay along the roadside, like solid tears from the mountain’s face.

Oz looked out only once at this potential drop to heaven, and then he chose to look no more. Lou stared off, their rise to the sky not really bothering her any.

Then, suddenly flying around a curve at them was a farm tractor, mostly rust and missing pieces and held together with coils of rusty wire and other assorted trash. It was almost too big for the narrow road all by itself, much less with a lumbering Hudson coming at it. Children were hanging and dangling every which way on the bulky equipment, as if it were a mobile jungle gym. One young boy about Lou’s age was actually suspended over nothing but air, hanging on only by his own ten fingers and God’s will, and he was laughing! The other children, a girl of about ten and a boy about Oz’s age, were clamped tight around whatever they could find to hold, their expressions seized with terror.

The man piloting this contraption was far more frightening even than the vision of out-of-control machinery holding flailing children hostage. A felt hat covered his head, years of sweat having leached to all points of the material. His beard was bristly rough, and his face was burnt dark and heavily wrinkled by the unforgiving sun. He seemed to be short, but his body was thick and muscular. His clothes, and those of the children, were almost rags.

The tractor was almost on top of the Hudson. Oz covered his eyes, too afraid even to attempt a scream. But Lou cried out as the tractor bore down on them.

Hell No, with an air of practiced calm, somehow drove the car out of the tractor’s path and stopped to let the other vehicle safely pass. So close were they to the edge that a full third of the Hudson’s tires were gripping nothing but the chilly brace of mountain air. Displaced rock and dirt dribbled over the side and were instantly scattered in the swirl of wind. For a moment Lou was certain they were going over, and she gripped Oz with all her strength, as though that would make a difference.

As the tractor roared by, the man glared at them all before settling on Hell No and shouting, “Stupid nig—”

The rest, thankfully, was covered by the whine of the tractor and the laughter and whoops of the suspended-in-air boy. Lou looked at Hell No, who didn’t flinch at any of this. Not the first time, she imagined—the near fatal collision and the awful name calling.

And then like a strike of hail in July, this rolling circus was gone. Hell No drove on.

As she got her nerves settled down, Lou could see loaded coal trucks far below them inching down one side of a road, while on the other side empty trucks flew hell-bent back up, like honeybees, to gorge some more. All around here the face of the mountains had been gashed open in places, exposing rock underneath, the topsoil and trees all gone. Lou watched as coal trolleys emerged from these wounds in the mountains, like drips of blackened blood, and the coal was tippled into the truck beds.

“Name’s Eugene.”

Lou and Oz both stared toward the front seat. The young man was looking at them in the mirror.

“Name’s Eugene,” he said again. “Diamond, he fergit sometime. But he a good boy. My frien’.”

“Hi, Eugene,” said Oz. And then Lou said hello too.

“Ain’t see folks much. Words ain’t come easy for me. I sorry for that.”

“That’s okay, Eugene,” said Lou. “Meeting strangers is hard.”

“Miss Louisa and me, we real glad you come. She a good woman. Take me in when I ain’t got no home. You lucky she your kin.”

“Well, that’s good because we haven’t been very lucky lately,” said Lou.

“She talk ’bout y’all much. And your daddy and momma. She care for your momma. Miss Louisa, she heal the sick.”

Oz looked at Lou with renewed hope, but she shook her head.

More miles went by, and then Eugene turned the car down a lane that wasn’t much more than twin ruts in the dirt spread over with still dormant grass and bracketed by thick wild brush. As they were obviously drawing near to their destination, Oz and Lou exchanged a glance. Excitement, nervousness, panic, and hope competed for space on the small landscapes of their faces.

The dirt lane nudged over to the north as it cleared a rise. Here the land splayed out into a broad valley of simple beauty. Green meadows were bracketed by vast forests of every wood the state boasted. Next to the meadows were cleared patchwork fields that yielded to split-rail corrals, weathered gray and wrapped with naked rambler rose vines. Anchoring the corrals was a large two-story plank barn, topped by a gambrel roof with rain hood, all covered by cedar shingles fashioned with froe and maul. It had large double doors at each end, with a set of hay doors above. A projecting timber was immediately above this portal and used to support the hay fork dangling from it. Three cows lay in the grass in one protected space, while a roan horse grazed alone in a small snake-rail corral. Lou counted a half dozen sheared sheep in another pen. And behind that was another fenced space where enormous hogs rolled in a wallow of mud, like giant babies at play. A pair of mules were doubletreed to a large wagon that sat by the barn, the sun reflecting off its tin-wrapped wooden wheels. Near the barn was a farmhouse of modest proportion.