Дэвид Балдаччи - Wish You Well

Lou just stared at him, absolutely dumbstruck in the face of this outpouring of ecclesiastical wisdom from Professor of Religion Diamond Skinner.

Diamond suddenly stared off in wonder. “Well, will you look at that.”

They all watched as Eugene walked down to the water’s edge and spoke with someone, who in turn called to the preacher out in the river, as he was pulling up a fresh victim.

The preacher came ashore, spoke with Eugene for a minute or two, and then led him out into the water, dunked him so that nothing was showing of his person, and then preached over him. The man kept Eugene down so long, Lou and Oz started to worry. But when Eugene came up, he smiled, thanked the man, and then went back to the wagon. Diamond set off on a dead run toward the preacher, who was looking around for other takers of divine immersion.

Lou and Oz crept closer as Diamond went out in the water with the holy man and was fully plunged under too. He finally surfaced, talked with the man for a minute, slipped something in his pocket, and, soaking wet and smiling, rejoined them, and they all headed to the wagon.

“You’ve never been baptized before?” said Lou.

“Shoot,” said Diamond, shaking the water from his hair, the cowlick of which had not been disturbed in the least, “that’s my ninth time dunked.”

“You’re only supposed to do it once, Diamond!”

“Well, ain’t hurt keep doing it. Plan to work me up to a hunnerd. Figger I be a lock for heaven then.”

“That’s not how it works,” exclaimed Lou.

“Is so,” he shot back. “Say so in the Bible. Ever time you get dunked it means God’s sending an angel to come look after you. I figger I got me a right good regiment by now.”

“That is not in the Bible,” insisted Lou.

“Maybe you ought’n read your Bible agin.”

“Which part of the Bible is it in? Tell me that.”

“Front part.” Diamond whistled for Jeb, ran the rest of the way to the wagon, and climbed on.

“Hey, Eugene,” he said, “I let you knowed next time they’s dunking. We go swimming together.”

“You were never baptized, Eugene?” asked Lou as she and Oz clambored onto the wagon.

He shook his head. “But sitting here I got me a hankering to do just that. ’Bout time, I ’xpect.”

“I’m surprised Louisa never had you baptized.”

“Miz Louisa, she believe in God with all her soul. But she don’t subscribe to church much. She say the way some folk run they’s churches, it take God right out cha heart.”

As the wagon pulled off, Diamond slid from his pocket a small glass jar with a tin screw cap. “Hey, Oz, I got me this from the preacher. Holy dunking water.” He handed it to Oz, who looked down at it curiously. “I figger you put some on your ma from time to time. Bet it hep.”

Lou was about to protest, when she received the shock of her life. Oz handed the jar back to Diamond.

“No, thanks,” he said quietly and looked away.

“You sure?” asked Diamond. Oz said he was real sure, and so Diamond tipped the bottle over and poured out the blessed water. Lou and Oz exchanged a glance, and the sad look on his face stunned her again. Lou looked to the sky, because she figured if Oz had given up hope, the end of the world must not be far behind. She turned her back to them all and pretended to be admiring the sweep of mountains.

It was late afternoon. Cotton had just finished reading to Amanda and it was apparent that he was experiencing a growing sense of frustration.

At the window, Lou watched, standing on an overturned lard bucket.

Cotton looked at the woman. “Amanda, now I just know you can hear me. You have two children who need you badly. You have to get out of that bed. For them if for no other reason.” He paused, seeming to select his words with care. “Please, Amanda. I would give all I will ever have if you would get up right now.” An anxious few moments went by, and Lou held her breath, yet the woman didn’t budge. Cotton finally bowed his head in despair.

When Cotton came out of the house later and got in his Olds to leave, Lou hurried up carrying a basket of food.

“Reading probably gives a man an appetite.”

“Well, thank you, Lou.”

He put the basket of food in the seat next to him. “Louisa tells me you’re a writer. What do you want to write about?”

Lou stood on the roadster’s running board. “My dad wrote about this place, but nothing’s really coming to me.”

Cotton looked out over the mountains. “Your daddy was actually one of the reasons I came here. When I was in law school at the University of Virginia, I read his very first novel and was struck by both its power and beauty. And then I saw a story in the newspaper about him. He talked about how the mountains had inspired him so. I thought coming here would do the same for me. I walked all over these parts with my pad and pencil, waiting for beautiful phrases to seep into my head so I could put them down on the paper.” He smiled wistfully. “Didn’t exactly work that way.”

Lou said quietly, “Maybe not for me either.”

“Well, people seem to spend most of their lives chasing something. Maybe that’s part of what makes us human.” Cotton pointed down the road. “You see that old shack down there?” Lou looked at a mud-chinked, falling-down log cabin they no longer used. “Louisa told me about a story your father wrote when he was a little boy. It was about a family that survived one winter up here in that little house. Without wood, or food.”

“How’d they do it?”

“They believed in things.”

“Like what? Wishing wells?” she said with scorn.

“No, they believed in each other. And created something of a miracle. Some say truth is stranger than fiction. I think that means that whatever a person can imagine really does exist, somewhere. Isn’t that a wonderful possibility?”

“I don’t know if my imagination is that good, Cotton. In fact, I don’t even know if I’m much of a writer. The things I put down on paper don’t seem to have much life to them.”

“Keep at it, you might surprise yourself. And rest assured, Lou, miracles do happen. You and Oz coming here and getting to know Louisa being one of them.”

Lou sat on her bed later that night, looking at her mother’s letters. When Oz came in, Lou hurriedly stuffed them under her pillow.

“Can I sleep with you?” asked Oz. “Kind’a scary in my room. Pretty sure I saw a troll in the corner.”

Lou said, “Get up here.” Oz climbed next to her.

Oz suddenly looked troubled. “When you get married, who am I going to come get in bed with when I’m scared, Lou?”

“One day you’re gonna get bigger than me, then I’m going to be running to you when I get scared.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s the deal God makes between big sisters and their little brothers.”

“Me bigger than you? Really?”

“Look at those clodhoppers of yours. You grow into those feet all the way, you’ll be bigger than Eugene.”

Oz snuggled in, happy now. Then he saw the letters under the pillow.

“What are those?”

“Just some old letters Mom wrote,” Lou said quickly.

“What did she say?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t read them.”

“Will you read them to me?”

“Oz, it’s late and I’m tired.”

“Please, Lou. Please.”

He looked so pitiful Lou took out a single letter and turned up the wick on the kerosene lamp that sat on the table next to her bed.

“All right, but just one.”

Oz settled down as Lou began to read.

“Dear Louisa, I hope you are doing well. We all are. Oz is over the croup and is sleeping through the night.”