Wish You Well(68)

open while Louisa placed two drops inside each one, while the child squirmed and cried

out.

She told Lou, "So baby ain't go blind. Travis Barnes gimme it. Law say you got to do

this."

Using the hot cans and some blankets, Louisa fashioned a crude incubator and placed the

baby in it. His breathing was so shallow she kept sticking a goose feather under his

mouth to see the ripple of air graze it.

Thirty minutes later the last contractions pushed the afterbirth out and Louisa and Lou

cleaned that up, changing the sheets once more and scrubbing the mother down for the

final time using the last of the baked cloths.

The last things Louisa took out from her bucket were a pencil and a slip of paper. She

gave them to Lou and told her to write down the day's date and time. Louisa pulled an old

windup pocket watch from her trousers and told Lou the time of birth.

"Sally, what you be calling the baby?" Louisa asked.

Sally looked over at Lou. "She call you Lou, that be your name, girl?" she asked in a

weak voice.

"Yes. Well, sort of," said Lou.

"Then it be Lou. After you, child. I thank you."

Lou looked astonished. "What about your husband?"

"He ain't care if'n it got name or ain't got one. Only if' n it a boy and it work. And I ain't

seed him in here hepping. Name's Lou. Put it down now, girl."

Louisa smiled as Lou wrote down the name Lou Davis.

"We give that to Cotton," Louisa said. "He take it on down the courthouse so's everybody

know we got us another beautiful child on this mountain."

Sally fell asleep and Louisa sat there with mother and son all night, rousing Sally to nurse

when Lou Davis cried and smacked his lips. George Davis never once entered the room.

They could hear him stomping around in the front for some time, and then the door

slammed shut.

Louisa slipped out several times to check on the other children. She gave Billy, Jesse, and

the other boy, whose name Louisa didn't know, a small jar of molasses and some biscuits

she had brought with her. It pained her to see how fast the children devoured this simple

meal. She also gave Billy a jar of strawberry jelly and some corn-bread to save for the

other children when they woke.

They left in the late morning. Mother was doing fine, and the baby's color had improved

greatly. He was nursing feverishly, and the boy's lungs seemed strong.

Sally and Billy said their thanks, and even Jesse managed a grunt. But Lou noticed that

the stove was cold and there was no smell of food.

George Davis and his hired men were in the fields. But before Billy joined them, Louisa

took the boy aside and talked with him about things Lou could not hear.

As they drove the wagon out, they passed corrals filled with enough cattle to qualify as a

herd, and hogs and sheep, a yard full of hens, four fine horses, and double that number of

mules. The crop fields extended as far as the eye could see, and dangerous barbed wire

encircled all of it. Lou could see George and his men working the fields with mechanized

equipment, clouds of dirt being thrown up from the swift pace of the machines.

"They have more fields and livestock than we do," Lou said. "So how come they don't

have anything to eat?"

" 'Cause their daddy want it that way. And his daddy were the same way with George

Davis. Tight with a dollar. Didn't let none go till his feet wedged agin root."

They rattled by one building and Louisa pointed out a sturdy padlock on the door.

"Man'11 let the meat in that smokehouse rot afore he give it up to his children. George

Davis sells every last bit of his crop down at the lumber camp, and to the miners, and

hauls it to Tremont and Dickens." She pointed to a large building that had a line of doors

all around the first floor. The doors were open, and plainly visible inside were large green

plant leaves hanging from hooks. "That's burley tobacco curing. It weakens the soil, and

what he don't chew hisself, he sells. He got that still and ain't never drunk a drop of the

corn whiskey, but sells that wicked syrup to other men who ought be spending their time

and money on they's families. And he goes round with a fat roll of dollar bills, and got

this nice farm, and all them fancy machines, and man let his family starve." She flicked

the reins. "But I got to feel sorry for him in a way, for he be the most miserable soul I

ever come across. Now, one day God'll let George Davis know 'xactly what He thinks of

it all. But that day ain't here yet."



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

EUGENE WAS DRIVING THE WAGON PULLED BY THE mules. Oz, Lou, and Diamond were

in the back, sitting on sacks of seed and other supplies purchased from McKenzie's

Mercantile using egg money and some of the dollars Lou had left over from her shopping