Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

The store was stacked high with dry goods, tools, and foodstuffs. The aromas of tobacco and coffee were strong and seemed to have settled into the bones of the place. Horse collars hung next to racks of spooled thread, which sat alongside fat barrels of candies. Lou bought a pair of socks for herself and a pocketknife for Diamond, who was reluctant to accept it until she told him that in return he had to whittle something for her. She purchased a stuffed bear for Oz and handed it to him without commenting on the whereabouts of the old one.

Lou disappeared for a few minutes and returned with an object which she handed to Cotton. It was a magnifying glass. “For all that reading,” she said and smiled, and Cotton smiled back. “Thank you, Lou. This way I’ll think of you every time I open a book.” She bought a shawl for Louisa and a straw hat for Eugene. Oz borrowed some money from her and went off with Cotton to browse. When they came back, he held a parcel wrapped in brown paper and steadfastly refused to reveal what it was.

After wandering the town, Cotton showing them things that Lou and Oz had certainly seen before, but Diamond never had, they piled into Cotton’s Oldsmobile, which sat parked in front of the courthouse. They headed off, Diamond and Lou squeezed into the rumble seat while Oz and Jeb rode with Cotton in front. The sun was just beginning its descent now and the breeze felt good to all. There didn’t seem to be anything so pretty as sun setting over mountain.

They passed through Tremont and a while later crossed the tiny bridge near McKenzie’s and started up the first ridge. They came to a railroad crossing, and instead of continuing on the road, Cotton turned and drove the Oldsmobile on down the tracks.

“Smoother than the roads up here,” he explained. “We’ll pick it back up later on. They’ve got asphalt and macadam at the foothills, but not up here. These mountain roads were built by hands swinging picks and shovels. Law used to be every able-bodied man between sixteen and sixty had to help build the roads ten days a year and bring his own tools and sweat to do it. Only teachers and preachers were exempt from having to do it, although I imagine those workers could’ve used some powerful prayers every now and again. They did a right good job, built eighty miles of road over forty years, but it’s still hard on one’s bottom to travel across the results of all that fine work.”

“What if a train comes?” asked an anxious Oz.

“Then I suspect we’ll have to get off,” Cotton said.

They eventually did hear the whistle and Cotton pulled the car to safety and waited. A few minutes later a fully loaded train rolled past, looking like a giant serpent. It was moving slowly, for the track was curvy here.

“Is that coal?” Oz said, eyeing the great lumps of rock visible in the open train cars.

Cotton shook his head. “Coke. Made from slack coal and cooked in the ovens. Ship it out to the steel mills.” He shook his head slowly. “Trains come up here empty and leave full. Coal, coke, lumber. Don’t bring anything here except more bodies for labor.”

On a spur off the main line, Cotton showed them a coal company town made up of small, identical homes, with a train track dead center of the place and a commissary store that had goods piled floor to ceiling, Cotton informed them, because he had been inside before. A long series of connected brick structures shaped like beehives were set along one high road. Each one had a metal door and a chimney with fill dirt packed around it. Smoke belched from each stack, turning the darkening sky ever blacker. “Coke ovens,” Cotton explained. There was one large house with a shiny new Chrysler Crown Imperial parked out front. The mine superintendent’s home, Cotton told them. Next to this house was a corral with a few grazing mares and a couple of energetic yearlings leaping and galloping around.

“I got to take care of some personal business,” said Diamond, already pulling his overall straps down. “Too much soder pop. Won’t be one minute, just duck behind that shed.”

Cotton stopped the car and Diamond got out and ran off. Cotton and the children talked while they waited, and the lawyer pointed out some other things of interest.

“This is a Southern Valley coal mining operation. The Clinch Number Two mine, they call it. Coal mining pays pretty good, but the work is terribly hard, and with the way the company stores are set up the miners end up owing more to the company than they earn in wages.” Cotton stopped talking and looked thoughtfully in the direction of where Diamond had gone, a frown easing across his face. He continued, “And the men also get sick and die of the black lung, or from cave-ins, accidents, and such.”

A whistle sounded and they watched as a group of charcoal-faced, probably bone-tired men emerged from the mine entrance. A group of women and children ran to greet them, and they all walked toward the copycat houses, the men swinging metal dinner pails and pulling out their smokes and liquor bottles. Another group of men, looking as tired as the other, trudged past them to take their place under the earth.

“They used to run three shifts here, but now they only have two,” said Cotton. “Coal’s starting to run out.”

Diamond returned and vaulted into the rumble seat.

“You all right, Diamond?” asked Cotton.

“Am now,” said the boy, a smile pushing against his cheeks, his feline green eyes lighted up.

Louisa was upset when she learned they had gone to town. Cotton explained that he should not have kept the children as long as he had, therefore she should blame him. But then Louisa said she recalled that their daddy had done the very same thing, and the pioneer spirit was a hard one to dodge, so it was okay. Louisa accepted the shawl with tears in her eyes, and Eugene tried on the hat and proclaimed it the nicest gift he had ever gotten.

After supper that night Oz excused himself and went to his mother’s room. Curious, Lou followed him, spying on her brother as usual from the narrow opening between door and wall. Oz carefully unwrapped the parcel he had purchased in town and held the hairbrush firmly. Amanda’s face was peaceful, her eyes, as always, shut. To Lou, her mother was a princess reclining in a deathlike state, and none of them possessed the necessary antidote. Oz knelt on the bed and began brushing Amanda’s hair and telling his mother of their wonderfully fine day in town. Lou watched him struggle with the brushing for a few moments and then went in to help. She held out her mother’s hair and showed Oz how to properly perform the strokes. Their mother’s hair had grown out some, but it was still short.

Later that night Lou went to her room, put away the socks she had bought, lay on the bed fully dressed down to her boots, thinking about their trip to town, and never once closed her eyes until it was time to milk the cows the next morning.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They all were sitting down to dinner a few nights later while the rain poured down outside. Diamond had come for supper, wearing a tattered piece of worn canvas with a hole cut out for his head, his homegrown mackintosh of sorts. Jeb had shaken himself off and headed for the fire as though he owned the place. When Diamond freed himself from the canvas coat, Lou saw something tied around his neck. And it wasn’t particularly sweet-smelling.

“What is that ?” Lou asked, her fingers pinching her nose, for the stench was awful.

“Asafetida,” Louisa answered for the boy. “A root. Ward off sickness. Diamond, honey, I think if you warm yourself by the fire, you can give that to me. I thank you.” While Diamond wasn’t looking, she carried the root out to the back porch and flung the foul thing away into the darkness.