Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Thirty minutes later the last contractions pushed the afterbirth out and Louisa and Lou cleaned that up, changing the sheets once more and scrubbing the mother down for the final time using the last of the baked cloths.

The last things Louisa took out from her bucket were a pencil and a slip of paper. She gave them to Lou and told her to write down the day’s date and time. Louisa pulled an old windup pocket watch from her trousers and told Lou the time of birth.

“Sally, what you be calling the baby?” Louisa asked.

Sally looked over at Lou. “She call you Lou, that be your name, girl?” she asked in a weak voice.

“Yes. Well, sort of,” said Lou.

“Then it be Lou. After you, child. I thank you.”

Lou looked astonished. “What about your husband?”

“He ain’t care if’n it got name or ain’t got one. Only if’n it a boy and it work. And I ain’t seed him in here hepping. Name’s Lou. Put it down now, girl.”

Louisa smiled as Lou wrote down the name Lou Davis.

“We give that to Cotton,” Louisa said. “He take it on down the courthouse so’s everybody know we got us another beautiful child on this mountain.”

Sally fell asleep and Louisa sat there with mother and son all night, rousing Sally to nurse when Lou Davis cried and smacked his lips. George Davis never once entered the room. They could hear him stomping around in the front for some time, and then the door slammed shut.

Louisa slipped out several times to check on the other children. She gave Billy, Jesse, and the other boy, whose name Louisa didn’t know, a small jar of molasses and some biscuits she had brought with her. It pained her to see how fast the children devoured this simple meal. She also gave Billy a jar of strawberry jelly and some cornbread to save for the other children when they woke.

They left in the late morning. Mother was doing fine, and the baby’s color had improved greatly. He was nursing feverishly, and the boy’s lungs seemed strong.

Sally and Billy said their thanks, and even Jesse managed a grunt. But Lou noticed that the stove was cold and there was no smell of food.

George Davis and his hired men were in the fields. But before Billy joined them, Louisa took the boy aside and talked with him about things Lou could not hear.

As they drove the wagon out, they passed corrals filled with enough cattle to qualify as a herd, and hogs and sheep, a yard full of hens, four fine horses, and double that number of mules. The crop fields extended as far as the eye could see, and dangerous barbed wire encircled all of it. Lou could see George and his men working the fields with mechanized equipment, clouds of dirt being thrown up from the swift pace of the machines.

“They have more fields and livestock than we do,” Lou said. “So how come they don’t have anything to eat?”

“ ’Cause their daddy want it that way. And his daddy were the same way with George Davis. Tight with a dollar. Didn’t let none go till his feet wedged agin root.”

They rattled by one building and Louisa pointed out a sturdy padlock on the door. “Man’ll let the meat in that smokehouse rot afore he give it up to his children. George Davis sells every last bit of his crop down at the lumber camp, and to the miners, and hauls it to Tremont and Dickens.” She pointed to a large building that had a line of doors all around the first floor. The doors were open, and plainly visible inside were large green plant leaves hanging from hooks. “That’s burley tobacco curing. It weakens the soil, and what he don’t chew hisself, he sells. He got that still and ain’t never drunk a drop of the corn whiskey, but sells that wicked syrup to other men who ought be spending their time and money on they’s families. And he goes round with a fat roll of dollar bills, and got this nice farm, and all them fancy machines, and man let his family starve.” She flicked the reins. “But I got to feel sorry for him in a way, for he be the most miserable soul I ever come across. Now, one day God’ll let George Davis know ’xactly what He thinks of it all. But that day ain’t here yet.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Eugene was driving the wagon pulled by the mules. Oz, Lou, and Diamond were in the back, sitting on sacks of seed and other supplies purchased from McKenzie’s Mercantile using egg money and some of the dollars Lou had left over from her shopping excursion in Dickens.

Their path took them near a good-sized tributary of the McCloud River, and Lou was surprised to see a number of automobiles and schooner wagons pulled up near the flat, grassy bank. Folks were hanging about by the river’s edge, and some were actually in the brown water, its surface choppy from an earlier rain and good wind. A man with rolled-up sleeves was just then submerging a young woman in the water.

“Dunking,” Diamond exclaimed. “Let’s have a look.”

Eugene pulled the mules to a stop and the three children jumped off. Lou looked back at Eugene, who was making no move to join them.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“You g’on, Miss Lou, I gonna rest my bones here.”

Lou frowned at this, but joined the others.

Diamond had made his way through a crowd of onlookers and was peering anxiously at something. As Oz and Lou drew next to him and saw what it was, they both jumped back.

An elderly woman, dressed in what looked to be a turban made from pinned-together homespun sheets and a long piece of hemp with a tie at the waist, was moving in small, deliberate circles, unintelligible chants drifting from her, her speech that of the drunk, insane, or fanatically religious in full, flowering tongues. Next to her a man was in a T-shirt and dress slacks, a cigarette dangling like a fall leaf from his mouth. A serpent was in either of the man’s hands, the reptiles rigid, unmoving, like bent pieces of metal.

“Are they poisonous?” whispered Lou to Diamond.

“Course! Don’t work lessen use viper.”

A cowering Oz had his gaze fixed on the motionless creatures and seemed prepared to leap for the trees once they started swaying. Lou sensed this, and when the snakes did start to move, she gripped Oz’s hand and pulled him away. Diamond grudgingly followed, till they were off by themselves.

“What stuff are they doing with those snakes, Diamond?” asked Lou.

“Scaring off bad spirits, making it good for dunking.” He looked at them. “You two been dunked?”

“Christened, Diamond,” Lou answered. “We were christened in a Catholic Church. And the priest just sprinkles water on your head.” She looked to the river where the woman was emerging and spitting up mouthfuls of the tributary. “He doesn’t try to drown you.”

“Catolick? Ain’t never heard’a that one. It new?”

Lou almost laughed. “Not quite. Our mom is Catholic. Dad never really cared for church all that much. They even have their own schools. Oz and I went to one in New York. It’s really structured and you learn things like the Sacraments, the Creed, the Rosary, the Lord’s Prayer. And you learn the Mortal Sins. And the Venial Sins. And you have First Confession and First Communion. And then Confirmation.”

“Yeah,” said Oz, “and when you’re dying you get the . . . what that’s thing, Lou?”

“The Sacrament of Extreme Unction. The Last Rites.”

“So you won’t rot in hell,” Oz informed Diamond.

Diamond pulled at three or four of his cowlicks and looked truly bewildered. “Huh. Who’d thunk believing in God be such hard work? Prob’ly why ain’t no Catolicks up this way. Tax the head too much.”

Diamond nodded at the group near the river. “Now, them folk Primitive Baptists. They got some right funny beliefs. Like you ain’t go and cut your hair, and women ain’t be putting on no face paint. And they got some ’ticular ideas on going to hell and such. People break the rules, they ain’t too happy. Live and die by the Scriptures. Prob’ly ain’t as ’ticular as you Catolicks, but they still be a pain where the sun don’t shine.” Diamond yawned and stretched his arms. “See, that why I ain’t go to church. Figger I got me a church wherever I be. Want’a talk to God, well I say, ‘Howdy-howdy, God,’ and we jaw fer a bit.”