Wish You Well(62)

I ever seen. The less rain there was, the harder we worked. My boy soon lost his stake,

and they moved in with us. Still no rain. Went through our animals. Went through durn

near everything we had." Louisa clenched her hands and then released them. "But we still

got by. And then the rains come and we fine after that. But when your daddy was seven,

his momma had had enough of this life and she left. She ain't never bothered to learn the

farm, and even the way round a frying pan, so's she weren't much help to Jake a'tall."

"But didn't Jake want to go with her?"

"Oh, I 'xpect he did, for she was a real purty little thing, and a young man is a young man.

They ain't 'xactly made'a wood. But she didn't want him along, if you un-nerstand me

right, him being from the mountains and all. And she didn't want her own child neither."

Louisa shook her head at this painful remembrance.

"Course, Jake never got over that. Then his daddy died soon after, which didn't help

matters none for any of us." Louisa smiled. "But your father were the shiny star in our

days. Even with that, though, we watched a man we loved die a little more each day, and

there weren't nothing we could do. Two days after your daddy was ten years old, Jake

died. Some say heart attack. I say heartbreak. And then it was just me and your daddy up

here. We had us good times, Lou, lot of love twixt us. But your daddy suffered a lotta

pain too." She stopped and took a drink of the cool water. "But I still wonder why he

never come back not once."

"Do I remind you of him?" Lou asked quietly.

Louisa smiled. "Same fire, same bullheadedness. Big heart too. Like how you are with

your brother. Your daddy always made me laugh twice a day. When I got up and right

afore I went to bed. He say he want me begin and end my day with a smile."

"I wish Mom had let us write you. She said she would one day, but it never happened."

"Like to knock me over with a stick when the first letter come. I wrote her back some, but

my eyes ain't that good no more. And paper and stamp scarce."

Lou looked very uncomfortable. "Mom asked Dad to move back to Virginia."

Louisa looked surprised. "And what'd your daddy say?"

Lou could not tell her the truth. "I don't know." "Oh" was all Louisa offered in response.

Lou found herself growing upset with her father, something she could never remember

doing before. "I can't believe he just left you here by yourself." "I made him go.

Mountain no place for somebody like him. Got to share that boy with the world. And

your daddy wrote to me all these years. And he give me money he ain't got. He done right

by me. Don't you never think badly of him for that."

"But didn't it hurt, that he never came back?" Louisa put an arm around the girl. "He did

come back. I got me the three people he loved most in the whole world."



It had been a hard trek along a narrow trail that often petered out to harsh tangles, forcing

Lou to dismount and walk the mare. It was a nice ride, though, for the birds were in full

warbling splendor, and flowering horsemint poked up from piles of slate. She had passed

secret coves overhung with willow and corralled by rock. Many of the coves were graced

with cups of frothing springwater. There were neglected fields of long-vanished

homesteads the broomsedge flourishing there around the rock bones of chimneys without

houses.

Finally, following the directions Louisa had given her, Lou found herself at the small

house in the clearing. She looked over the property. It appeared likely that in another

couple of years this homestead would also surrender to the wild that pressed against it on

all sides. Trees stretched over the roof that had almost as many holes as shingles.

Window glass was missing at various spots; a sapling was growing up through an

opening in the front porch, and wild sumac clung to the splintered porch rails. The front

door was hanging by a single nail; in fact it had been tied back so that the door always

stood open. A horseshoe was nailed over the doorway, for luck, Lou assumed, and the

place looked like it could use some. The surrounding fields, too, were all overgrown. And

yet the dirt yard was neatly swept, there was no trash about, and a bed of peonies sat next

to the house, with a lilac behind that, and a large snowball bush flourished by a small

hand-crank well. A rosebush ran up a trellis on one side of the house. Lou had heard that

roses thrived on neglect. If true, this was the most ignored rosebush Lou had ever seen,

since it was bent over with the weight of its deep red blooms. Jeb came around the corner

and barked at rider and horse. When Diamond came out of the house, he stopped dead