Wish You Well(31)

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.