Wish You Well(61)

cornfield, and it was a hot day and the flies and gnats were particularly bothersome. Lou

scraped at the dirt, something just not seeming right. "We already planted the seeds. Can't

they grow by themselves?"

"Lot of things go wrong in farming and one or two most always do," Louisa answered.

"And the work don't never stop, Lou. Just the way it is here."

Lou swung the hoe over her shoulder. "All I can say is, this corn better taste good."

"This here's field corn," Louisa told her. "For the animals."

Lou almost dropped her hoe. "We're doing all this work to feed the animals?"

"They work hard for us, we got to do the same for them. They got to eat too."

"Yeah, Lou," said Oz as he attacked the weeds with vigorous strokes. "How can hogs get

fat if they don't eat? Tell me that."

They worked the hills of corn, side by side under the fierce sun, which was so close it

almost seemed to Lou that she could reach up and pocket it. The katydids and crickets

scraped tunes at them from all corners. Lou stopped hoeing and watched Cotton drive up

to the house and get out.

"Cotton coming every day and reading to Mom is making Oz believe that she's going to

get better," said Lou to Louisa, taking care that her brother did not hear her.

Louisa wielded the hoe blade with the energy of a young person and the skill of an old.

"You right, it's so terrible bad having Cotton helping your momma."

"I didn't mean it like that. I like Cotton."

Louisa stopped and leaned on her hoe. "You should, because Cotton Longfellow's a good

man, none better. He's helped me through many a hard time since he come here. Not just

with his lawyering, but with his strong back. When Eugene hurt his leg bad, he was here

ever day for a month doing field work when he could've been in Dickens making himself

good money. He's helping your ma 'cause he wants her to get better. He wants her to be

able to hold you and Oz agin."

Lou said nothing to this, but was having trouble getting the hoeing down, chopping

instead of slicing. Louisa took a minute to show her again, and Lou picked up the proper

technique quickly.

They worked for a while longer in silence, until Louisa straightened up and rubbed at her

back. "Body's telling me to slow down a bit. But my body wants to eat come winter."

Lou stared out at the countryside. The sky looked painted in oils today, and the trees

seemed to fill every spare inch with alluring green.

"How come Dad never came back?" Lou asked quietly.

Louisa followed Lou's gaze. "No law say a person got to come back to his home," she

said.

"But he wrote about it in all his books. I know he loved it here."

Louisa stared at the girl and then said, "Let's go get us a cool drink." She told Oz to rest

some, and they would bring him back some water. He immediately dropped his hoe,

picked up some rocks, and started heaving and whooping at each toss, in a manner it

seemed only Utile boys could successfully accomplish. He had taken to placing a tin can

on top of a fence post and then throwing rocks at it until he knocked it off. He had

become so good that one hard toss would now send the can flying.

They left him to his fun and went to the springhouse, which clung to one side of a steep

slope below the house and was shaded by leaning oak and ash trees and a wall of giant

rhododendrons. Next to this shack was a split poplar stump, the tip of a large honeycomb

protruding from it, a swell of bees above that.

They took metal cups from nails on the wall and dipped them in the water, and then sat

outside and drank. Louisa picked up the green leaves of a mountain spurge growing next

to the springhouse, which revealed beautiful purple blossoms completely hidden

underneath. "One of God's little secrets," she explained. Lou sat there, cup cradled

between her dimpled knees, watching and listening to her great-grandmother in the

pleasant shade as Louisa pointed out other things of interest. "Right there's an oriole.

Don't see them much no more. Don't know why not." She pointed to another bird on a

maple branch. "That's a chuck's-will-widder. Don't ask me how the durn thing got its

name, 'cause I don't know." Finally, her face and tone grew serious.

"Your daddy's momma was never happy here. She from down the Shenandoah Valley.

My son Jake met her at a cakewalk she come up for. They got married, way too fast, put

up a little cabin near here. But I know she was all set for the city, though. The Valley was

backward for her. Lord, these mountains must've seemed like the birth of the world to the

poor girl. But she had your daddy, and for the next few years we had us the worst drought