Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

“Sure,” she said. “It’ll be easy.”

Eugene set her up properly, put the guide straps around her waist, handed her the whip, and then stepped back. Hit apparently summed her up as an easy mark, because he took off unexpectedly fast. Strong Lou very quickly got a taste of the rich earth.

As Louisa pulled her up and wiped her face, she said, “That old mule had the best of you this time. Bet it won’t next go round.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Lou said, hiding her face with her sleeve, spitting up chunks of things she didn’t want to think about. Her cheeks were red, and tears edged from under her eyelids.

Louisa knelt in front of her. “First time your daddy tried to plow, he your age. Mule took him on a ride ended in the crick. Took me the better part of a day to get him and that durn animal out. Your daddy said the same thing you did. And I decided to let him be about it.”

Lou stopped brushing at her face, her eyes drying up. “And what happened?”

“For two days he wouldn’t go near the fields. Or that mule. And then I come out here to work one morning and there he was.”

“And he plowed the whole field?” Oz guessed.

Louisa shook her head. “Mule and your daddy ended up in the hog pen with enough slop on both choke a bear.” Oz and Lou laughed, and then Louisa continued, “Next time, boy and mule reached an unnerstanding. Boy had paid his dues, and mule had had his fun, and them two made the best plow team I ever saw.”

From across the valley there came the sound of a siren. It was so loud that Lou and Oz had to cover their ears. The mule snorted and jerked against its harness. Louisa frowned.

“What is that?” Lou shouted.

“Coal mine horn,” said Louisa.

“Was there a cave-in?”

“No, hush now,” Louisa said, her eyes scanning the slopes. Five anxious minutes passed by and the siren finally stopped. And then from all sides they heard the low rumbling sound. It rose around them like an avalanche coming. Lou thought she could see the trees, even the mountain, shaking. She gripped Oz’s hand and was thinking of fleeing, but she didn’t because Louisa hadn’t budged. And then the quiet returned.

Louisa turned back to them. “Coal folks sound the horn afore they blast. They use dynamite. Sometimes too much and they’s hill slides. And people get hurt. Not miners. Farmers working the land.” Louisa scowled once more in the direction where the blast seemed to have come from, and then they went back to farming.

At supper, they had steaming plates of pinto beans mixed with cornbread, grease, and milk, and washed down with springwater so cold it hurt. The night was chilly, the wind howling fiercely as it attacked the structure, but the walls and roof withstood this charge. The coal fire was warm, and the lantern light gentle on the eye. Oz was so tired he almost fell asleep in his Crystal Winters Oatmeal plate the color of the sky.

After supper Eugene went out to the barn, while Oz lay in front of the fire, his little body so obviously sore and spent. Louisa watched as Lou went over to him, put his head in her lap, and stroked his hair. Louisa slid a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles over her eyes and worked on mending a shirt by the firelight. After a while, she stopped and sat down beside the children.

“He’s just tired,” Lou said. “He’s not used to this.”

“Can’t say a body ever gets used to hard work.” Louisa rubbed at Oz’s hair too. It seemed the little boy just had a head people liked to touch. Maybe for luck.

“You doing a good job. Real good. Better’n me when I your age. And I ain’t come from no big city. Make it harder, don’t it?”

The door opened and the wind rushed in. Eugene looked worried. “Calf coming.”

In the barn the cow called Purty lay on her side in a wide birthing stall, pitching and rolling in agony. Eugene knelt and held her down, while Louisa got in behind her and pried with her fingers, looking for the slicked package of a fresh calf emerging. It was a hard-fought battle, the calf seeming not to want to enter the world just yet. But Eugene and Louisa coaxed it out, a slippery mass of limbs, eyes scrunched tight. The event was bloody, and Lou’s and Oz’s stomach took another jolt when Purty ate the afterbirth, but Louisa told them that was natural. Purty started licking her baby and didn’t stop until its hair was sticking out all over. With Eugene’s help, the calf rose on tottering stick legs, while Louisa got Purty ready for the next step, which the calf took to as the most natural endeavor of all: suckling. Eugene stayed with the mother and her calf while Louisa and the children went back inside.

Lou and Oz were both excited and exhausted, the grandmother clock showing it was nearing midnight.

“I’ve never seen a cow born before,” said Oz.

“You’ve never seen anything born before,” said his sister.

Oz thought about this. “Yes, I did. I was there when I was born.”

“That doesn’t count,” Lou shot back.

“Well, it should,” countered Oz. “It was a lot of work. Mom told me so.”

Louisa put another rock of coal on the fire, drove it into the flames with an iron poker, and then sat back down with her mending. The woman’s dark-veined and knotted hands moved slowly yet with precision.

“You get on to bed, both of you,” she said.

Oz said, “I’m going to see Mom first. Tell her about the cow.” He looked at Lou. “My second time.” He walked off.

His sister made no move to leave the fire’s warmth.

“Lou, g’on see your mother too,” said Louisa.

Lou stared into the depths of the coal fire. “Oz is too young to understand, but I do.”

Louisa put down her mending. “Unnerstand what?”

“The doctors in New York said that each day there was less chance Mom would come back. It’s been too long now.”

“But you can’t give up hope, honey.”

Lou turned to look at her. “You don’t understand either, Louisa. Our dad’s gone. I saw him die. Maybe”— Lou swallowed with difficulty—“maybe I was partly the reason he did die.” She rubbed at her eyes and then Lou’s hands curled to fists. “And it’s not like she’s laying in there healing. I listened to the doctors. I heard everything all the grown-ups said about her, even though they tried to hide it from me. Like it wasn’t my business! They let us take her home, because there was nothing more they could do for her.” She paused, took a long breath, and slowly grew calm. “And you just don’t know Oz. He gets his hopes up so high, starts doing crazy things. And then . . .” Lou’s voice trailed off, and she looked down. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

In the fade of lantern light and the flickering coal fire, Louisa could only stare after the young girl as she trudged off. When her footsteps faded away, Louisa once more picked up her sewing, but the needle did not move. When Eugene came in and went to bed, she was still there, the fire having died down low, as thoughts as humbling as the mountains outside consumed her.

After a bit, though, Louisa rose and went into her bedroom, where she pulled out a short stack of letters from her dresser. She went up the stairs to Lou’s room and found the girl wide awake, staring out the window.

Lou turned and saw the letters.

“What are those?”

“Letters your mother wrote to me. I want you to read ’em.”

“What for?”

“ ’Cause words say a lot about a person.”

“Words won’t change anything. Oz can believe if he wants to. But he doesn’t know any better.”

Louisa placed the letters on the bed. “Sometime older folks do right good to follow the young’uns. Might learn ’em something.”

After Louisa left, Lou put the letters in her father’s old desk and very firmly shut the drawer.