Wish You Well(70)

fully plunged under too. He finally surfaced, talked with the man for a minute, slipped

something in his pocket, and, soaking wet and smiling, rejoined them, and they all headed

to the wagon.

"You've never been baptized before?" said Lou.

"Shoot," said Diamond, shaking the water from his hair, the cowlick of which had not

been disturbed in the least, "that's my ninth time dunked."

"You're only supposed to do it once, Diamond!"

"Well, ain't hurt keep doing it. Plan to work me up to a hunnerd. Figger I be a lock for

heaven then."

"That's not how it works," exclaimed Lou.

"Is so," he shot back. "Say so in the Bible. Ever time you get dunked it means God's

sending an angel to come look after you. I figger I got me a right good regiment by now."

"That is not in the Bible," insisted Lou.

"Maybe you ought'n read your Bible agin."

"Which part of the Bible is it in? Tell me that."

"Front part." Diamond whistled for Jeb, ran the rest of the way to the wagon, and climbed

on.

"Hey, Eugene," he said, "I let you knowed next time they's dunking. We go swimming

together."

"You were never baptized, Eugene?" asked Lou as she and Oz clambored onto the

wagon.

He shook his head. "But sitting here I got me a hankering to do just that. 'Bout time, I

'xpect."

"I'm surprised Louisa never had you baptized."

"Miz Louisa, she believe in God with all her soul. But she don't subscribe to church

much. She say the way some folk ran they's churches, it take God right out cha heart."

As the wagon pulled off, Diamond slid from his pocket a small glass jar with a tin screw

cap. "Hey, Oz, I got me this from the preacher. Holy dunking water." He handed it to Oz,

who looked down at it curiously. "I figger you put some on your ma from time to time.

Bet it hep."

Lou was about to protest, when she received the shock of her life. Oz handed the jar back

to Diamond.

"No, thanks," he said quietly and looked away.

"You sure?" asked Diamond. Oz said he was real sure, and so Diamond tipped the bottle

over and poured out the blessed water. Lou and Oz exchanged a glance, and the sad look

on his face stunned her again. Lou looked to the sky, because she figured if Oz had given

up hope, the end of the world must not be far behind. She turned her back to them all and

pretended to be admiring the sweep of mountains.

It was late afternoon. Cotton had just finished reading to Amanda and it was apparent that

he was experiencing a growing sense of frustration.

At the window, Lou watched, standing on an overturned lard bucket.

Cotton looked at the woman. "Amanda, now I just know you can hear me. You have two

children who need you badly. You have to get out of that bed. For them if for no other

reason." He paused, seeming to select his words with care. "Please, Amanda. I would

give all I will ever have if you would get up right now." An anxious few moments went

by, and Lou held her breath, yet the woman didn't budge. Cotton finally bowed his head

in despair.

When Cotton came out of the house later and got in his Olds to leave, Lou hurried up

carrying a basket of food.

"Reading probably gives a man an appetite."

"Well, thank you, Lou."

He put the basket of food in the seat next to him. "Louisa tells me you're a writer. What

do you want to write about?"

Lou stood on the roadster's running board. "My dad wrote about this place, but nothing's

really coming to me."

Cotton looked out over the mountains. "Your daddy was actually one of the reasons I

came here. When I was in law school at the University of Virginia, I read his very first

novel and was struck by both its power and beauty. And then I saw a story in the

newspaper about him. He talked about how the mountains had inspired him so. I thought

coming here would do the same for me. I walked all over these parts with my pad and

pencil, waiting for beautiful phrases to seep into my head so I could put them down on

the paper." He smiled wistfully. "Didn't exactly work that way."

Lou said quietly, "Maybe not for me either."

"Well, people seem to spend most of their lives chasing something. Maybe that's part of

what makes us human." Cotton pointed down the road. "You see that old shack down

there?" Lou looked at a mud-chinked, falling-down log cabin they no longer used.

"Louisa told me about a story your father wrote when he was a little boy. It was about a

family that survived one winter up here in that little house. Without wood, or food."

"How'd they do it?"

"They believed in things."