Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Eugene held on to the gun. “I go with you, then. That man crazy.”

“No, you stay with the children. Go on now, get the wagon ready.” Eugene hesitated for a moment, and then did as she told him.

Louisa grabbed some things and put them in a lard bucket, slipped a small packet of cloths in her pocket, bundled together a number of clean sheets, and started for the door.

“Louisa, I’m coming with you,” said Lou.

“No, ain’t a good place for you.”

“I’m coming, Louisa. Whether in the wagon or on Sue, but I’m coming. I want to help you.” She glanced at Billy. “And them.”

Louisa thought for a minute and then said, “Prob’ly could use another set of hands. Billy, your pa there?”

“Gotta mare gonna drop its foal. Pa said he ain’t coming out the barn till it born.”

Louisa stared at the boy. Then, shaking her head, she headed for the door.

They followed Billy in the wagon. He rode an old mule, its muzzle white, part of its right ear torn away. The boy swung a kerosene lamp in one hand to help guide them. It was so dark, Louisa said, a hand right in front of your face could still get the drop on you.

“Don’t whip up the mules none, Lou. Ain’t do no good for Sally Davis we end up in a ditch.”

“That’s Billy’s mother?”

Louisa nodded, as the wagon swayed along, the woods close on either side of them, their only light that arcing lamp. To Lou it appeared either as a beacon, true and reliable, or as a Siren of sorts, leading them to shipwreck.

“First wife die in childbirth. His children by that poor woman got away from George fast as they could, afore he could work or beat or starve ’em to death.”

“Why did Sally marry him if he was so bad?”

“ ’Cause he got his own land, livestock, and he were a widower with a strong back. Up here, ’bout all it takes. And weren’t nothing else for Sally. She were only fifteen.”

“Fifteen! That’s only three years older than me.”

“People get married quick up here. Start birthing, raising a family to help work the land. How it goes. I was in front of the preacher at fo’teen.”

“She could have left the mountain.”

“All she ever know. Scary thing leave that.”

“Did you ever think of leaving the mountain?”

Louisa thought about this for a number of turns of the wagon wheel. “I could’a if’n I wanted. But I ain’t believe in my heart I be happier anywhere else. Went down the Valley one time. Wind blow strange over flat land. Ain’t liked it too much. Me and this mountain get along right fine for the most part.” She fell silent, her eyes watching the rise and fall of the light up ahead.

Lou said, “I saw the graves up behind the house.”

Louisa stiffened a bit. “Did you?”

“Who was Annie?”

Louisa stared at her feet. “Annie were my daughter.”

“I thought you only had Jacob.”

“No. I had me my little Annie.”

“Did she die young?”

“She lived but a minute.”

Lou could sense her distress. “I’m sorry. I was just curious about my family.”

Louisa settled back against the hard wood of the wagon seat and stared at the black sky as though it was the first time she’d ever gazed upon it.

“I always had me a hard time carrying the babies. Wanted me a big family, but I kept on losing ’em long afore they ready to be born. Longest time I thought Jake be it. But then Annie were born on a cool spring evening with a full mane’a black hair. She come quick, no time for midwife. It were a terrible hard birth. But oh, Lou, she were so purty. So warm. Her little fingers wrapped tight round mine, tips not even touching.” Here Louisa stopped. The sounds of the mules trotting along and the turn of wagon wheel were the only noises. Louisa finally continued in a low voice, as she eyed the depthless sky. “And her little chest rose and fell, rose and fell, and then it just forgit to rise agin. It t’were amazing how quick she took cold, but then she were so tiny.” Louisa took a number of quick breaths, as though still trying to breathe for her child. “It were like a bit of ice on your tongue on a hot day. Feel so good, and then it gone so fast you ain’t sure it was ever there.”

Lou put her hand over Louisa’s. “I’m sorry.”

“Long time ago, though it don’t never seem it.” Louisa slid a hand across her eyes. “Her daddy made her coffin, no more’n a little box. And I stayed up all night and sewed her the finest dress I ever stitched in my whole life. Come morning I laid her out in it. I would’a give all I had to see her eyes looking at me just one time. It ain’t seem right that a momma don’t get to see her baby’s eyes just one time. And then her daddy put her in that little box, we carried her on up to that knoll, and laid her to rest and prayed over her. And then we planted an evergreen on the south end so she’d have her shade all year round.” Louisa closed her eyes.

“Did you ever go up there?”

Louisa nodded. “Ever day. But I ain’t been back since I buried my other child. It just got to be too long a walk.”

She took the reins from Lou and, despite her own earlier warning, Louisa whipped up the mules. “We best get on. We got a child to help into the world this night.”

Lou could not make out much of the Davis farmyard or the buildings because of the darkness, and she prayed that George Davis would stay in the barn until the baby was born and they were gone.

The house was surprisingly small. The room they entered was obviously the kitchen, because the stove was there, but there were also cots with bare mattresses lined up here. In three of the beds were a like number of children, two of them, who looked to be twin girls about five, lying naked and asleep. The third, a boy Oz’s age, had on a man’s undershirt, dirty and sweat-stained, and he watched Lou and Louisa with frightened eyes. Lou recognized him as the other boy from the tractor coming down the mountain. In an apple crate by the stove a baby barely a year old lay under a stained blanket. Louisa went to the sink, pumped water, and used the bar of lye soap she had brought to thoroughly clean her hands and forearms. Then Billy led them down a narrow hallway and opened a door.

Sally Davis lay in the bed, her knees drawn up, low moans shooting from her. A thin girl of ten, dressed in what looked like a seed sack, her chestnut hair hacked short, stood barefoot next to the bed. Lou recognized her too from the wild tractor encounter. She looked just as scared now as she had then.

Louisa nodded at her. “Jesse, you heat me up some water, two pots, honey. Billy, all the sheets you got, son. And they’s got to be real clean.”

Louisa put the sheets she had brought on a wobbly oak slat chair, sat next to Sally, and took her hand. “Sally, it’s Louisa. You be just fine, honey.”

Lou looked at Sally. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her few teeth and her gums stained dark. She couldn’t be thirty yet, but the woman looked twice that old, hair gray, skin drawn and wrinkled, blue veins throbbing through malnourished flesh, face sunken like a winter potato.

Louisa lifted the covers and saw the soaked sheet underneath. “How long since your water bag broke?”

Sally gasped, “After Billy gone fer you.”

“How far apart your pains?” Louisa asked.

“Seem like just one big one,” the woman groaned.

Louisa felt around the swollen belly. “Baby feel like it want’a come?”

Sally gripped Louisa’s hand. “Lord I hope so, afore it kill me.”

Billy came in with a couple of sheets, dropped them on the chair, looked once at his ma, and then fled.

“Lou, help me move Sally over so we can lay clean sheets.” They did so, maneuvering the suffering woman as gently as they could. “Now go help Jesse with the water. And take these.” She handed Lou a number of cloth pads that were layered one over the top of the other, along with some narrow bobbin string. “Wrap the string in the middle of the cloths, and put it all in the oven and cook it till the outside part be scorched brown.”