Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Oz took this in stride, his optimism barely tarnished. Lou absorbed this information simply as further validation of what she already knew.

School had been going more smoothly than Lou had thought it would. She and Oz found the mountain children to be far more accepting of them now than before Lou had thrown her punches. Lou didn’t feel she would ever be close to any of them, but at least the outright hostility had waned. Billy Davis did not return to school for several days. By the time he did, the bruises she had inflicted were mostly healed, though there were fresh ones which Lou suspected had originated with the awful George Davis. And that was enough to make her feel a certain guilt. For his part, Billy avoided her like she was a water moccasin looking to get the jump on him, yet Lou was still on her guard. She knew by now: It was right when you least expected it that trouble tended to smack you in the head.

Estelle McCoy, too, was subdued around her. It was apparent that Lou and Oz were well ahead of the others in terms of book learning. They did not flaunt this advantage, though, and Estelle McCoy seemed appreciative of that. And she never again referred to Lou as Louisa Mae. Lou and Oz had given the school library a box of their own books, and the children had slipped by one after the other to thank them. It was a steady if not spectacular truce all around.

Lou rose before dawn, did her chores, then went to school and did her work there. At lunchtime she ate her cornbread and drank her milk with Oz under the walnut tree, which was scored with the initials and names of those who had done their learning here. Lou never felt an urge to carve her name there, for it suggested a permanency she was far from willing to accept. They went back to the farm to work in the afternoon, and then went to bed, exhausted, not long after the sun set. It was a steady, uninspired life much appreciated by Lou right now.

Head lice had made their way through Big Spruce, though, and both Lou and Oz had endured shampoos in kerosene. “Don’t get near the fire,” Louisa had warned.

“This is disgusting,” said Lou, fingering the coated strands.

“When I was at school and got me the lice, they put sulfur, lard, and gunpowder on my hair,” Louisa told them. “I couldn’t bear to smell myself, and I was terrible afraid somebody’d strike a match and my head would blow.”

“They had school when you were little?” Oz asked.

Louisa smiled. “They had what was called subscription school, Oz. A dollar a month for three month a year, and I were a right good student. We was a hunnerd people in a one-room log cabin with a puncheon floor that was splintery on hot days and ice on cold. Teacher quick with the whip or strap, some bad child standing on tippy-toe a good half hour with his nose stuck in a circle the teacher drawed on the board. I ain’t never had to stand on tippy-toe. I weren’t always good, but I ain’t never got caught neither. Some were growed men not long from the War missing arms and legs, come to learn they’s letters and numbers. Used to say our spelling words out loud. Got so the durn noise spooked the horses.” Her hazel eyes sparkled. “Had me one teacher who used the markings on his cow to learn us geography. To this day, I can’t never look at no map without thinking of that durn animal.” She looked at them. “I guess you can fill up your head just about anywhere. So you learn what you got to. Just like your daddy done,” she added, mostly for Lou’s benefit, and the girl finally stopped complaining about her kerosene hair.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Louisa felt sorry for them one morning and gave Lou and Oz a much needed Saturday off to do as they pleased. The day was fine, with a clean breeze from the west across a blue sky, trees flushed with green swaying to its touch. Diamond and Jeb came calling that morning, because Diamond said there was a special place in the woods he wanted to show them, and they started off.

His appearance was little changed: same overalls, same shirt, no shoes. The bottoms of his feet must have had every nerve deadened like hoofs, Lou thought, because she saw him run across sharp rocks, over briars, and even through a thorny thicket, and never once did she see blood drawn or face wince. He wore an oily cap pulled low on his forehead. She asked him if it was his father’s, but received only a grunt in response.

They came to a tall oak set in a clearing, or at least where underbrush had been cut away some. Lou noted that pieces of sawed wood had been nailed into the tree’s trunk, forming a rough ladder. Diamond put a foot up on the first rung and started to climb.

“Where are you going?” asked Lou, as Oz kept a grip on Jeb because the hound was acting as though he too wanted to head up the tree behind his master.

“See God,” Diamond hollered back, pointing straight up. Lou and Oz looked to the sky.

Far up a number of stripped scrub pines were laid side by side on a couple of the oak’s massive branches, forming a floor. A canvas tarp had been flung over a sturdy limb above, and the sides had been tied down to the pines with rope to form a crude tent. While promising all sorts of pleasant times, the tree house looked a good puff of wind away from hitting the ground.

Diamond was already three-quarters up, moving with an easy grace. “Come on now,” he said.

Lou, who would have preferred to die a death of impossible agony rather than concede that anything was beyond her, put a hand and a foot on two of the pieces of wood. “You can stay down here if you want, Oz,” she said. “We probably won’t be long.” She started up.

“I got me neat stuff up here, yes sir,” Diamond said enticingly. He had reached the summit, his bare feet dangling over the edge.

Oz ceremoniously spit on his hands, gripped a wood piece, and clambered up behind his sister. They sat cross-legged on the laid pines, which formed about a six-by-six square, the canvas roof throwing a nice shade, and Diamond showed them his wares. First out was a flint arrowhead he said was at least one million years old and had been given to him in a dream. Then from a cloth bag rank with outside damp he pulled the skeleton of a small bird that he said had not been seen since shortly after God put the universe together.

“You mean it’s extinct,” Lou said.

“Naw, I mean it ain’t round no more.”

Oz was intrigued by a hollow length of metal that had a thick bit of glass fitted into one end. He looked through it, and while the sights were magnified some, the glass was so dirty and scratched, it started giving him a headache.

“See a body coming from miles away,” proclaimed Diamond, sweeping a hand across his kingdom. “Enemy or friend.” He next showed them a bullet fired from what he said was an 1861 U.S. Springfield rifle.

“How do you know that?” said Lou.

“ ’Cause my great-granddaddy five times removed passed it on down and my granddaddy give it to me afore he died. My great-granddaddy five times removed, he fought for the Union, you know.”

“Wow,” Oz said.

“Yep, turned his pitcher to the wall and everythin’, they did. But he weren’t taking up a gun for nobody owning nobody else. T’ain’t right.”

“That’s admirable,” said Lou.

“Look here now,” said Diamond. From a small wooden box, he pulled forth a lump of coal and handed it to Lou. “What d’ya think?” he asked. She looked down at it. The rock was all chipped and rough.

“It’s a lump of coal,” she said, giving it back and wiping her hand clean on her pants leg.

“No, it ain’t just that. You see, they’s a diamond in there. A diamond, just like me.”

Oz inched over and held the rock. “Wow” was again all he could manage.

“A diamond?” Lou said. “How do you know?”