Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

“What y’all doing here?”

The man had stepped from behind a stand of hickory trees, the shotgun in his right hand. Under the moonlight Lou could make out the glow of an evil pair of eyes staring dead at them. The three stood frozen as the fellow approached. Lou recognized him as the crazy man on the tractor recklessly flying down the mountain. He stopped in front of them and his mouth delivered a shot of chew spit near their feet.

“Got no bizness round here,” the man said, as he lifted up the shotgun and rested the barrel on his left forearm such that the muzzle was pointed at them, his forefinger near the trigger.

Diamond stepped forward. “Ain’t doing nuthin’, George Davis, ’cept running round, and ain’t no law agin that.”

“You shet your mouth, Diamond Skinner, afore I put my fist to it.” He peered over at quaking Oz, who drew back and clutched his sister’s arm.

“You ’em chillin Louisa take in. Got the crippled ma. Ain’tcha?” He spit again.

Diamond said, “You ain’t got no bizness with ’em, so leave ’em be.”

Davis moved closer to Oz. “Mountain cat round, boy,” he said, his voice low and taunting. And then he cried out, “You want it git you!” At the same time he said this, Davis feigned a lunge at Oz, who threw himself down and huddled in the high grass. Davis cackled wickedly at the terrified boy.

Lou stood between her brother and the man. “You stay away from us!”

“Gawd damn you, girl,” Davis said. “Telling a man what to do?” He looked at Diamond. “You on my land, boy.”

“T’ain’t your land!” said Diamond, his hands making fists, his anxious gaze fixed on that shotgun. “Don’t belong nobody.”

“Calling me a liar?” snapped Davis, in a fearsome voice.

Then the scream came. It rose higher and higher until Lou figured the trees must surely topple from the force, or the rocks would work loose and slide down the mountain and maybe, with luck, crush their antagonist. Jeb came around growling, his hackles up. Davis stared off anxiously into the trees.

“You got you a gun,” said Diamond, “then go git your old mountain cat. ’Cept mebbe you scared.”

Davis’s gaze burned into the boy, but then the scream came again, and hit them all just as hard, and Davis took off at a half-trot toward the trees.

“Come on now!” cried out Diamond, and they ran as fast as they could between trees and along more open fields. Owls hooted at them, and a bobwhite bobwhited at them. Things they couldn’t see ran up and down tall oaks, or flitted in front of them, yet none of it came close to scaring them as much as they already had been by George Davis and his shotgun. Lou was a blur, faster even than Diamond. But when Oz tripped and fell, she rounded back and helped him.

They finally stopped and squatted in the high grass, breathing heavy and listening for a crazy man or a wildcat coming after them.

“Who is that awful man?” asked Lou.

Diamond checked behind him before answering. “George Davis. He got a farm next Miss Louisa’s. He a hard man. A bad man! Dropped on his head when he were a baby, or mebbe mule kicked him, don’t know which. He got a corn liquor still up here in one of the hollows, so’s he don’t like people coming round. I wish somebody just shoot him.”

They soon reached another small clearing. Diamond held up his hand for them to stop and then proudly pointed up ahead, as though he had just discovered Noah’s Ark on a simple mountaintop in Virginia.

“There she is.”

The well was moss-crusted brick, crumbling in places, and yet undeniably spooky. The three glided up to it; Jeb guarded their rear flank while hunting small prey in the high grass.

They all peered over the edge of the well’s opening. It was black, seemingly without bottom; they could have been staring at the other side of the world. All sorts of things could have been peering back.

“Why do you say it’s haunted?” Oz asked breathlessly.

Diamond sprawled in the grass next to the well and they joined him.

“ ’Bout a thousand million years ago,” he began in a thick and thrilling voice that made Oz’s eyes widen, fast-blink, and water all at the same time, “they was a man and woman live up chere. Now, they was in love, ain’t no denying that. And so’s they wanted to get hitched o’course. But they’s family hated each other, wouldn’t let ’em do it. No sir. So they come up with a plan to run off. Only somethin’ went bad and the feller thought the woman had done got herself kilt. He was so broke up, he came to this here well and jumped in. It’s way deep, shoot, you seed that. And he drowned hisself. Now the girl found out what was what, and she come and jumped in herself too. Never found ’em ’cause it was like they was plopped on the sun. Not a durn thing left.”

Lou was completely unmoved by this sad tale. “That sounds a lot like Romeo and Juliet.”

Diamond looked puzzled. “That kin of yours?”

“You’re making this up,” she said.

All around them sounds of peculiar quality started up, like millions of tiny voices all trying to jabber at once, as though ants had suddenly acquired larynxes.

“What’s that?” Oz said, clinging to Lou.

“Don’t be doubting my words, Lou,” Diamond hissed, his face the color of cream. “You riling the spirits.”

“Yeah, Lou,” said Oz, who was looking everywhere for demons of hell coming for them. “Don’t be riling the spirits.”

The noises finally died down, and Diamond, regaining his confidence, stared triumphantly at Lou. “Shoot, any fool can see this well’s magic. You see a house anywhere round? No, and I tell you why. This well growed up right out of the earth, that’s why. And it ain’t just a haunted well. It what you call a wishing well.”

Oz said, “A wishing well? How?”

“Them two people lost each other, but they’s still in love. Now, people die, but love don’t never die. Made the well magic. Anybody done got a wish, they come here, wish for it, and it’ll happen. Ever time. Rain or shine.”

Oz clutched his arm. “Any wish? You’re sure?”

“Yep. ’Cept they’s one little catch.”

Lou spoke up, “I thought so. What is it?”

“ ’Cause them folks died to make this here a wishing well, anybody want a wish, they’s got to give up somethin’ too.”

“Give up what?” This came from Oz, who was so excited the boy seemed to float above the supple grass like a tethered bubble.

Diamond lifted his arms to the dark sky. “Like just the most grandest, importantest thing they got in the whole dang world.”

Lou was surprised he didn’t take a bow. She knew what was coming now, as Oz tugged at her sleeve.

“Lou, maybe we can—”

“No!” she said sharply. “Oz, you have got to understand that dangling necklaces and wishing wells won’t work. Nothing will.”

“But, Lou.”

The girl stood and pulled her brother’s hand free. “Don’t be stupid, Oz. You’ll just end up crying your eyes out again.”

Lou ran off. After a second’s hesitation Oz followed her.

Diamond was left with the spoils of something, surely not victory, judging by his disappointed face. He looked around and whistled, and Jeb came running. “Let’s get on home, Jeb,” he said quietly.

The pair ran off in the opposite direction from Lou and Oz, as the mountains headed for sleep.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was no trace of outside light as yet, when Lou heard the creak of foot on stair. The door to her room opened and Lou sat up in bed. The glow of lantern light eased into the space, followed by Louisa, already fully dressed. With her flow of silver hair and the gentle illumination around her, the woman seemed a messenger from heaven to Lou’s sleepy mind. The air in the room was chilly; Lou thought she could see her own breath.