Wish You Well(15)

through the open rear window.

"Why do you call him Hell No?"

Her unexpected attention brought Diamond back to good spirits and he smiled at her. "

'Cause that be his name," he said in an inoffensive manner. "He live with Miss Louisa."

"Where did he get that kind of a name?"

Diamond glanced toward the front seat and pretended to fiddle with something in his

tackle box. In a low voice he said, "His daddy pass through these parts when Hell No ain't

no more'n a baby. Plunked him right on the dirt. Well, a body say to him, 'You gonna

come back, take that child?' And he say, 'Hell no.' Now, Hell No, he never done nobody

wrong his whole life. Ain't many folk say that. And no rich ones."

Diamond grabbed his tackle box and swung the pole to his shoulder. He walked to the

bridge, whistling a tune, and Hell No drove the Hudson across, the structure groaning and

complaining with each turn of the car wheels. Diamond waved and Oz returned it with

his stained hand, hope welling back for maybe a friendship of enduring degree with

Jimmy "Diamond" Skinner, crimson-crowned fisherboy of the mountain.

Lou simply stared at the front seat. At a man named Hell No.



CHAPTER SEVEN

THE DROP WAS A GOOD THREE THOUSAND FEET IF it was an inch. The Appalachians

might pale in size if leveled against the upstart Rockies, but to the Cardinal children they

seemed abundantly tall enough.

After leaving the small bridge and Diamond behind, the ninety-six horses of the Hudson's

engine had started to whine, and Hell No had dropped to a lower gear. The car's protest

was understandable, for now the uneven dirt road headed up at almost a forty-five-degree

angle and wound around the mountain like a rattler's coils. The road's supposed twin

lanes, by any reasonable measurement, were really only a single pregnant one. Fallen

rock lay along the roadside, like solid tears from the mountain's face.

Oz looked out only once at this potential drop to heaven, and then he chose to look no

more. Lou stared off, their rise to the sky not really bothering her any.

Then, suddenly flying around a curve at them was a farm tractor, mostly rust and missing

pieces and held together with coils of rusty wire and other assorted trash.

It was almost too big for the narrow road all by itself, much less with a lumbering

Hudson coming at it. Children were hanging and dangling every which way on the bulky

equipment, as if it were a mobile jungle gym. One young boy about Lou's age was

actually suspended over nothing but air, hanging on only by his own ten fingers and

God's will, and he was laughing! The other children, a girl of about ten and a boy about

Oz's age, were clamped tight around whatever they could find to hold, their expressions

seized with terror.

The man piloting this contraption was far more frightening even than the vision of out-ofcontrol machinery holding flailing children hostage. A felt hat covered his head, years of

sweat having leached to all points of the material. His beard was bristly rough, and his

face was burnt dark and heavily wrinkled by the unforgiving sun. He seemed to be short,

but his body was thick and muscular. His clothes, and those of the children, were almost

rags.

The tractor was almost on top of the Hudson. Oz covered his eyes, too afraid even to

attempt a scream. But Lou cried out as the tractor bore down on them.

Hell No, with an air of practiced calm, somehow drove the car out of the tractor's path

and stopped to let the other vehicle safely pass. So close were they to the edge that a full

third of the Hudson's tires were gripping nothing but the chilly brace of mountain air.

Displaced rock and dirt dribbled over the side and were instantly scattered in the swirl of

wind. For a moment Lou was certain they were going over, and she gripped Oz with all

her strength, as though that would make a difference.

As the tractor roared by, the man glared at them all before settling on Hell No and

shouting, "Stupid nig—"

The rest, thankfully, was covered by the whine of the tractor and the laughter and whoops

of the suspended-in-air boy. Lou looked at Hell No, who didn't flinch at any of this. Not

the first time, she imagined—the near fatal collision and the awful name calling.

And then like a strike of hail in July, this rolling circus was gone. Hell No drove on.

As she got her nerves settled down, Lou could see loaded coal trucks far below them

inching down one side of a road, while on the other side empty trucks flew hellbent back

up, like honeybees, to gorge some more. All around here the face of the mountains had

been gashed open in places, exposing rock underneath, the topsoil and trees all gone. Lou

watched as coal trolleys emerged from these wounds in the mountains, like drips of