Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

This was just such another morning of flaming skies, brooding mountains, the playful lift of birds, the efficient business of animals, trees, and flowers. However, Lou was not prepared for the sight of Diamond and Jeb slipping out of the barn and heading off down the road.

Lou dressed quickly and went downstairs. Louisa had food on the table, though Oz had not yet appeared.

“That was fun last night,” Lou said, sitting at the table.

“You prob’ly laugh now, but when I’s younger, I could do me some stompin’,” remarked Louisa, as she put a biscuit covered with gravy and a glass of milk on the table for Lou.

“Diamond must have slept in the barn,” said Lou as she bit into her biscuit. “Don’t his parents worry about him?” She gave Louisa a sideways glance and added, “Or I guess I should be asking if he has any parents.”

Louisa sighed and then stared at Lou. “His mother passed when he was born. Happen right often up here. Too often. His daddy joined her four year ago.”

Lou put down her biscuit. “How did his father die?”

“No business of ours, Lou.”

“Does this have anything to do with what Diamond did to that man’s car?”

Louisa sat and tapped her fingers against the table.

“Please, Louisa, please. I really want to know. I care about Diamond. He’s my friend.”

“Blasting at one of the mines,” Louisa said bluntly. “Took down a hillside. A hillside Donovan Skinner was farming.”

“Who does Diamond live with then?”

“He a wild bird. Put him in a cage, he just shrivel up and die. He need anythin’, he know to come to me.”

“Did the coal company have to pay for what happened?”

Louisa shook her head. “Played legal tricks. Cotton tried to help but weren’t much he could do. Southern Valley’s a powerful force hereabouts.”

“Poor Diamond.”

“Boy sure didn’t take it lying down,” Louisa said. “One time the wheels of a motorman’s car fell off when it come out the mine. And then a coal tipple wouldn’t open and they had to send for some people from Roanoke. Found a rock stuck in the gears. That same coal mine boss, he was in an outhouse one time got tipped over. Durn door wouldn’t open, and he spent a sorry hour in there. To this day nobody ever figgered out who tipped it over or how that rope got round it.”

“Did Diamond ever get in trouble?”

“Henry Atkins the judge. He a good man, know what was what, so’s nothing ever come of it. But Cotton kept talking to Diamond, and the mischief finally quit.” She paused. “Least it did till the horse manure got in that man’s car.”

Louisa turned away, but Lou had already seen the woman’s broad smile.

Lou and Oz rode Sue every day and had gotten to the point where Louisa had proclaimed them good, competent riders. Lou loved riding Sue. She could see forever, it seemed, from that high perch, the mare’s body wide enough that falling off seemed impossible.

After morning chores, they would go swimming with Diamond at Scott’s Hole, a patch of water Diamond had introduced them to, and which he claimed had no bottom. As the summer went along Lou and Oz became dark brown, while Diamond simply grew larger freckles.

Eugene came with them as often as he could, and Lou was surprised to learn he was only twenty-one. He did not know how to swim, but the children remedied that, and Eugene was soon performing different strokes, and even flips, in the cool water, his bad leg not holding him back any in that environment.

They played baseball in a field of bluegrass they had scythed. Eugene had fashioned a bat from an oak plank shaved narrow at one end. They used Diamond’s coverless ball and another made from a bit of rubber wound round with sheep’s wool and knitted twine. The bases were pieces of shale set in a straight line, this being the proper way according to Diamond, who termed it straight-town baseball. New York Yankees’ fan Lou said nothing about this, and let the boy have his fun. It got so that none of them, not even Eugene, could hit a ball that Oz threw, so fast and tricky did it come.

They spent many afternoons running through the adventures of the Wizard of Oz, making up parts they had forgotten, or which they thought, with youthful confidence, could be improved upon. Diamond was quite partial to the Scarecrow; Oz, of course, had to be the cowardly lion; and, by default, Lou was the heartless tin man. They unanimously proclaimed Eugene the Great and Mighty Wizard, and he would come out from behind a rock and bellow out lines they had taught him so loud and with such a depth of feigned anger that Oz, the Cowardly Lion, asked Eugene, the Mighty Wizard, if he could please tone it down a bit. They fought many pitched battles against flying monkeys and melting witches, and with a little ingenuity and some luck at just the right moments, good always triumphed over evil on the glorious Virginia mountain.

Diamond told them of how in the winter he would skate on the top of Scott’s Hole. And how using a short-handled ax he would cleave off a strip of bark from an oak and use that as his sled to go sailing down the iced slopes of the mountains at speeds never before achieved by a human being. He said he would be glad to show them how he did it, but would have to swear them to secrecy, lest the wrong sort of folks found out and maybe took over the world with such valuable knowledge.

Lou did not once let on that she knew about Diamond’s parents. After hours of fun, they would say their good-byes and Lou and Oz would ride home on Sue or take turns with Eugene when he came with them. Diamond would stay behind and swim some more or hit the ball, doing, as he often said, just as he pleased.

On the ride back home after one of these outings, Lou decided to take a different way. A fine mist hung over the mountains as she and Oz approached the farmhouse from the rear. They cleared a rise, and on top of a little knoll about a half-mile from the house, Lou reined Sue to a halt. Oz squirmed behind her.

“Come on, Lou, we need to get back. We’ve got chores.”

Instead, the girl clambered off Sue, leaving Oz to grab at the reins, which almost made him fall off the animal. He called crossly after her, but she seemed not to hear.

Lou went over to the little cleared space under the dense shade of an evergreen and knelt down. The grave markers were simple pieces of wood grayed by the weather. And clearly much time had passed. Lou read the names of the dead and the bracket dates of their existence, which were carved deeply into the wood and were probably about as distinct as the day they were chiseled.

The first name was Joshua Cardinal. The date of his birth and death made Lou believe that he must have been Louisa’s husband, Lou and Oz’s great-grandfather. He had passed in his fifty-second year—not that long of a life, Lou thought. The second grave marker was a name that Lou knew from her father. Jacob Cardinal was her father’s father, her and Oz’s grandfather. As she recited the name, Oz joined her and knelt down in the grass. He pulled off his straw hat and said nothing. Their grandfather had died far younger than even his father. Was there something about this place? Lou wondered. But then she thought of how old Louisa was, and the wondering stopped there.

The third grave marker looked to be the oldest. It only had a name on it, no dates of birth or death.

“Annie Cardinal,” Lou said out loud. For a time the two just knelt there and stared at the pieces of board marking the remains of family they had never known. Then Lou rose, went over to Sue, gripped the horse’s brushy mane, climbed up, and then helped Oz on board. Neither spoke all the way back.

At supper that night, more than once Lou was about to venture a question to Louisa about what they had seen, but then something made her not. Oz was obviously just as curious, yet, like always, he was inclined to follow his sister’s lead. They had time, Lou figured, for all of their questions to be answered. Before she went to sleep that night, Lou went out on the back porch and looked up to that knoll. Even with a nice slice of moon she could not see the graveyard from here, yet now she knew where it was. She had never much been interested in the dead, particularly since losing her father. Now she knew that she would go back soon to that burying ground and look once more at those bits of plain board set in dirt and engraved with the names of her flesh and blood.