Wish You Well(23)

"Where is it?" asked Lou, running beside Diamond.

"Shhh! Getting close, so's we got to be real quiet. Spooks round."

They kept moving forward. Suddenly Diamond called out, "Hit the ground!"

They all dropped as though attached by taut rope.

Oz said in a trembling voice, "What is it, Diamond?"

Diamond hid a smile. "Thought mebbe I hear something, is all. Can't never be too careful

round spooks." They all rose.

"What y'all doing here?"

The man had stepped from behind a stand of hickory trees, the shotgun in his right hand.

Under the moonlight Lou could make out the glow of an evil pair of eyes staring dead at

them. The three stood frozen as the fellow approached. Lou recognized him as the crazy

man on the tractor recklessly flying down the mountain. He stopped in front of them and

his mouth delivered a shot of chew spit near their feet.

"Got no bizness round here," the man said, as he lifted up the shotgun and rested the

barrel on his left forearm such that the muzzle was pointed at them, his forefinger near

the trigger.

Diamond stepped forward. "Ain't doing nuthin', George Davis, 'cept running round, and

ain't no law agin that."

"You shet your mouth, Diamond Skinner, afore I put my fist to it." He peered over at

quaking Oz, who drew back and clutched his sister's arm.

"You 'em chillin Louisa take in. Got the crippled ma. Ain'tcha?" He spit again.

Diamond said, "You ain't got no bizness with 'em, so leave 'em be."

Davis moved closer to Oz. "Mountain cat round, boy," he said, his voice low and

taunting. And then he cried out, "You want it git you!" At the same time he said this,

Davis feigned a lunge at Oz, who threw himself down and huddled in the high grass.

Davis cackled wickedly at the terrified boy.

Lou stood between her brother and the man. "You stay away from us!"

"Gawd damn you, girl," Davis said. "Telling a man what to do?" He looked at Diamond.

"You on my land, boy."

'Tain't your land!" said Diamond, his hands making fists, his anxious gaze fixed on that

shotgun. "Don't belong nobody."

"Calling me a liar?" snapped Davis, in a fearsome voice.

Then the scream came. It rose higher and higher until Lou figured the trees must surely

topple from the force, or the rocks would work loose and slide down the mountain and

maybe, with luck, crush their antagonist. Jeb came around growling, his hackles up.

Davis stared off anxiously into the trees.

"You got you a gun," said Diamond, "then go git your old mountain cat. 'Cept mebbe you

scared."

Davis's gaze burned into the boy, but then the scream came again, and hit them all just as

hard, and Davis took off at a half-trot toward the trees.

"Come on now!" cried out Diamond, and they ran as fast as they could between trees and

along more open fields. Owls hooted at them, and a bobwhite bobwhited at them. Things

they couldn't see ran up and down tall oaks, or flitted in front of them, yet none of it came

close to scaring them as much as they already had been by George Davis and his shotgun.

Lou was a blur, faster even than Diamond. But when Oz tripped and fell, she rounded

back and helped him.

They finally stopped and squatted in the high grass, breathing heavy and listening for a

crazy man or a wildcat coming after them.

"Who is that awful man?" asked Lou.

Diamond checked behind him before answering. "George Davis. He got a farm next Miss

Louisa's. He a hard man. A bad man! Dropped on his head when he were a baby, or

mebbe mule kicked him, don't know which. He got a corn liquor still up here in one of

the hollows, so's he don't like people coming round. I wish somebody just shoot him."

They soon reached another small clearing. Diamond held up his hand for them to stop

and then proudly pointed up ahead, as though he had just discovered Noah's Ark on a

simple mountaintop in Virginia.

"There she is."

The well was moss-crusted brick, crumbling in places, and yet undeniably spooky. The

three glided up to it; Jeb guarded their rear flank while hunting small prey in the high

grass.

They all peered over the edge of the well's opening. It was black, seemingly without

bottom; they could have been staring at the other side of the world. All sorts of things

could have been peering back.

"Why do you say it's haunted?" Oz asked breathlessly.

Diamond sprawled in the grass next to the well and they joined him.

" 'Bout a thousand million years ago," he began in a thick and thrilling voice that made

Oz's eyes widen, fast-blink, and water all at the same time, "they was a man and woman

live up chere. Now, they was in love, ain't no denying that. And so's they wanted to get