him die. Maybe"— Lou swallowed with difficulty—"maybe I was partly the reason he
did die." She rubbed at her eyes and then Lou's hands curled to fists. "And it's not like
she's laying in there healing. I listened to the doctors. I heard everything all the grownups said about her, even though they tried to hide it from me. Like it wasn't my business!
They let us take her home, because there was nothing more they could do for her." She
paused, took a long breath, and slowly grew calm. "And you just don't know Oz. He gets
his hopes up so high, starts doing crazy things. And then..." Lou's voice trailed off, and
she looked down. "I'll see you in the morning."
In the fade of lantern light and the flickering coal fire, Louisa could only stare after the
young girl as she trudged off. When her footsteps faded away, Louisa once more picked
up her sewing, but the needle did not move. When Eugene came in and went to bed, she
was still there, the fire having died down low, as thoughts as humbling as the mountains
outside consumed her.
After a bit, though, Louisa rose and went into her bedroom, where she pulled out a short
stack of letters from her dresser. She went up the stairs to Lou's room and found the girl
wide awake, staring out the window.
Lou turned and saw the letters.
"What are those?"
"Letters your mother wrote to me. I want you to read 'em."
"What for?"
" 'Cause words say a lot about a person."
"Words won't change anything. Oz can believe if he wants to. But he doesn't know any
better."
Louisa placed the letters on the bed. "Sometime older folks do right good to follow the
young'uns. Might learn 'em something."
After Louisa left, Lou put the letters in her father's old desk and very firmly shut the
drawer.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LOU GOT UP ESPECIALLY EARLY AND WENT INTO HER mother's room, where she watched
for a bit the even rise and fall of the woman's chest. Perched on the bed, Lou pulled back
the covers and massaged and moved her mother's arms. Then she spent considerable time
exercising her mother's legs the way the doctors back in New York City had shown her.
Lou was just about finished when she caught Louisa watching her from the doorway.
"We have to make her comfortable," explained Lou. She covered her mother and went
into the kitchen. Louisa trailed her.
When Lou put on a kettle to boil, Louisa said, "I can do that, honey."
"I've got it." Lou mixed some oat flakes in the hot water and added butter taken from a
lard bucket. She took the bowl back into her mother's room and carefully spooned the
food into her mother's mouth. Amanda ate and drank readily enough, with just a tap of
spoon or cup against her lips, though she could only manage soft food. Yet that was all
she could do. Louisa sat with them, and Lou pointed to the ferrotypes on the wall. "Who
are those people?'
"My daddy and momma. That me with 'em when I just a spit. Some of my momma's
folks too. First time I ever had my pitcher took. I liked it. But Momma scared." She
pointed to another ferrotype. "That pitcher mere my brother Robert. He dead now. They
all dead now."
"Your parents and brother were tall."
"Run in the line. Funny how that get passed down. Your daddy, he were already six feet
when he weren't more'n fourteen. I still tall, but I growed down some from what I was.
You gonna be big too."
Lou cleaned the bowl and spoon and afterward helped Louisa make breakfast for
everyone else. Eugene was in the barn now, and they both heard Oz stirring in his room.
Lou said, "I need to show Oz how to move Mom's arms and legs. And he can help feed
her too."
"That right fine." She laid a hand on Lou's shoulder. "Now, did you read any of them
letters?"
Lou looked at her. "I didn't want to lose my mother and father. But I have. Now I've got
to look after Oz. And I have to look ahead, not back." She added wiUi firmness, "You
may not understand that, but it's what I have to do."
After morning chores, Eugene took Lou and Oz by mule and wagon to the school and
men left to continue his work. In old burlap seed bags, Lou and Oz carried their worn
books, a few sheets of precious paper tucked inside the pages. They each had one fat lead
pencil, with dire orders from Louisa to trim it down only when absolutely necessary, and
to use a sharp knife when doing so. The books were the same ones their father had
learned with, and Lou hugged hers to her chest like it was a present direct from Jesus.
They also carried a dented lard bucket with some cornbread chunks, a small jar of apple
butter jelly, and a jug of milk for their lunch.