Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

After a long, bumpy ride the truck dropped them off in the middle of Dickens proper. Diamond’s bare toes had hardly touched asphalt when he quickly lifted first one foot and then the other. “Feels funny,” he said. “Ain’t liking it none.”

“Diamond, I swear, you’d walk on nails without a word,” Lou said as she looked around. Dickens wasn’t even a bump in the road compared to what she was used to, but after their time on the mountain it seemed like the most sophisticated metropolis she had ever seen. The sidewalks were filled with people on this fine Saturday morning, and small pockets of them spilled onto the streets. Most were dressed in nice clothes, but the miners were easy enough to spot, lumbering along with their wrecked backs and the loud, hacking coughs coming from their ruined lungs.

A huge banner had been stretched across the street. It read “Coal Is King” in letters black as the mineral. Directly under where the banner had been tied off to a beam jutting from one of the buildings was a Southern Valley Coal and Gas office. There was a line of men going in, and a line of them coming out, all with smiles on their faces, clutching either cash, or, presumably, promises of a good job.

Smartly dressed men in fedoras and three-piece suits chucked silver coins to eager children in the streets. The automobile dealership was doing a brisk business, and the shops were filled with both quality goods and folks clamoring to purchase them. Prosperity was clearly alive and well at the foot of this Virginia mountain. It was a happy, energetic scene, and it made Lou homesick for the city.

“How come your parents have never brought you down here?” Lou asked Diamond as they walked along.

“Ain’t never had no reason to come here, that’s why.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared up at a telephone pole with wires sprouting from it and smacking into one building. Then he eyed a droop-shouldered man in a suit and a little boy in dark slacks and a dress shirt as they came out of a store with a big paper bag of something. The two went over to one of the slant-parked cars that lined both sides of the street, and the man opened the car door. The boy stared over at Diamond and asked him where he was from.

“How you know I ain’t from right here, son?” said Diamond, glaring at the town boy.

The child looked at Diamond’s dirty clothes and face, his bare feet and wild hair, then jumped in the car and locked the door.

They kept walking and passed the Esso gas station with its twin pumps and a smiling man in crisp company uniform standing out front as rigidly as a cigar store Indian. Next they peered through the glass of a Rexall drugstore. The store was running an “all-in-the-window” sale. The two dozen or so varied items could be had for the sum of three dollars.

“Shoot, why? You can make all that stuff yourself. Ain’t got to buy it,” Diamond pointed out, apparently sensing that Lou was tempted to go inside and clean out the display.

“Diamond, we’re here to spend money. Have fun.”

“I’m having fun,” he said with a scowl. “Don’t be telling me I ain’t having no fun.”

They headed past the Dominion Café with its Chero Cola and “Ice Cream Here” signs, and then Lou stopped.

“Let’s go in,” she said. Lou gripped the door, pulled it open, setting a bell to tinkling, and stepped inside. Oz followed her. Diamond stayed outside for a long enough time to show his displeasure with this decision and then hurried in after them.

The place smelled of coffee, wood smoke, and baking fruit pies. Umbrellas for sale hung from the ceiling. There was a bench down one wall, and three swivel chrome barstools with padded green seats were bolted to the floor in front of a waist-high counter. Glass containers filled with candy rested on the display cabinets. There was a modest soda and ice cream fountain machine, and through a pair of saloon doors they could hear the clatter of dishes and smell the aromas of food cooking. In one corner was a potbellied stove, its smoke pipe supported by wire and cutting through one wall.

A man dressed in a white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, a short wide tie, and wearing an apron passed through the saloon doors and stood behind the counter. He had a smooth face and hair parted equally to either side, held down with what appeared to Lou to be a slop bucket of grease.

He looked at them as though they were a brigade of Union troops sent directly from General Grant to rub the good Virginians’ noses in it a little more. He edged back a bit as they moved forward. Lou got up on one of the stools and looked at the menu neatly written in loopy cursive on a blackboard. The man moved back farther. His hand glided out and one of his knuckles rapped against a glass cabinet set against the wall. The words “No Credit” had been written in thick white strokes on the glass.

In response to this not-so-subtle gesture, Lou pulled out five one-dollar bills and aligned them neatly on the counter. The man’s eyes went to the folding cash and he smiled, showing off a gold front tooth. He came forward, now their good friend for all time. Oz scooted up on another of the barstools, leaned on the counter, and sniffed the wonderful smells coming through those saloon doors. Diamond hung back, as though wanting to be nearest the door when they had to make a run for it.

“How much for a slice of pie?” Lou asked.

“Nickel,” the man said, his gaze locked on the five Washingtons on his counter.

“How about a whole pie?”

“Fifty cents.”

“So I could buy ten pies with this money?”

“Ten pies?” exclaimed Diamond. “God dog!”

“That’s right,” the man said quickly. “And we can make ’em for you too.” He glanced over at Diamond, his gaze descending from the boy’s explosion of cowlicks to his bare toes. “He with you?”

“Naw, they with me,” said Diamond, ambling over to the counter, fingers tucked around his overall straps.

Oz was staring at another sign on the wall. “Only Whites Served,” he read out loud, and then glanced in confusion at the man. “Well, our hair’s blond, and Diamond’s is red. Does that mean only old people can get pie?”

The fellow looked at Oz like the boy was “special” in the head, stuck a toothpick between his teeth, and eyed Diamond. “Shoes are required in my establishment. Where you from, boy? Mountain?”

“Naw, the moon.” Diamond leaned forward and flashed an exaggerated smile. “Want’a see my green teeth?”

As though brandishing a tiny sword, the man waved the toothpick in front of Diamond’s face. “You smart mouth. Just march yourself right outta here. Go on. Git back up that mountain where you belong and stay there!”

Instead, Diamond went up on his toes, grabbed an umbrella off the ceiling rack, and opened it.

The man came around from behind the counter.

“Don’t you do that now. That’s bad luck.”

“Why, I doing it. Mebbe a chunk of rock’ll fall off the mountain and squash you to poultice!”

Before the man reached him, Diamond tossed the opened umbrella into the air and it landed on the soda machine. A stream of goo shot out and painted one cabinet a nice shade of brown.

“Hey!” the man yelled, but Diamond had already fled.

Lou scooped up her money, and she and Oz stood to leave.

“Where y’all going?” the man said.

“I decided I didn’t want pie,” Lou said amiably and shut the door quietly behind her and Oz.

They heard the man yell out, “Hicks!”

They caught up with Diamond, and all three bent over laughing while people walked around them, staring curiously.

“Nice to see you having a good time,” a voice said.

They turned and saw Cotton standing there, wearing vest, tie, and coat, briefcase in hand, yet with a clear look of mirth in his eyes.