Wish You Well(73)

Minutes passed before she spoke again. "Why do things like this happen, Cotton?"

He sighed deeply. "I suppose it may be God's way of telling us to love people while

they're here, because tomorrow they may be gone. I guess that's a pretty sorry answer, but

I'm afraid it's the only one I've got."

They were silent for a bit longer.

"I'd like to read to my mom," said Lou.

Cotton said, "That's the finest idea I've ever heard."

"Why is it a fine idea?" she demanded. "I really need to know."

"Well, if someone she knew, someone she... loved would read to her, it might make all

the difference."

"Do you really think she knows?"

"When I carried your mother outside that day, I was holding a living person fighting like

the devil to get out. I could feel it. And she will one day. I believe it with all my heart,

Lou."

She shook her head. "It's hard, Cotton. To let yourself love something you know you may

never have."

Cotton nodded slowly. "You're wise beyond your years. And what you say makes perfect

sense. But I think when it comes to matters of the heart, perfect sense may be the last

thing you want to listen to."

Lou let the rest of the needles fall and wiped her hands clean. "You're a good man too,

Cotton."

He put his arm around her and they sat there together, neither one of them willing to look

at the blackened, swollen cavity of the coal mine that had taken their friend from them

forever.



CHAPTER THIRTY

THERE WAS ENOUGH STEADY RAIN, AND SOME THUN-derstorms added to the plenty, such

that virtually all the crops came in healthy and in abundance. One fierce hailstorm

damaged some of the corn, but not to any great extent. A stretch of powerful rain did

wash a gully out of a hill, like a scoop of ice cream, but no person, animal, or crop was

hurt by it.

Harvesting time was full upon them, and Louisa, Eugene, Lou, and Oz worked hard and

long, which was good, because it gave them little time to think about Diamond not being

with them anymore. Occasionally they would hear the mine siren, and then a bit later the

slow rumbling of the explosion would come. And each time Louisa would lead them all

in a song to take their minds off Diamond's having been killed by such an awful thing.

Louisa did not speak much of Diamond's passing. Yet Lou noted that she read her Bible a

lot more often by the firelight, and her eyes swelled with tears whenever his name was

mentioned, or when she looked at Jeb. It was hard for all of them, yet all they could do

was keep going, and there was much to do.

They harvested the pinto beans, cast them in Chop bags, stomped them to get the husks

off, and had them for dinner every night with gravy and biscuits. They picked the pole

beans, which had grown up around the cornstalks, careful, as Louisa schooled them, to

avoid the green stinger worms that lived under the leaves. They scythed the cornfield and

bundled the cornstalks into shocks, which they stood in the field, and which would later

be used for livestock feed. They shucked the corn, hauled it by sled to the corncrib, and

filled it to almost overflowing. From a distance the tumble of cobs looked like yellowjackets at frenzied play.

The potatoes came in thick and fat, and with churned butter were a meal by themselves.

The tomatoes came in too, plump and blood red, eaten whole or sliced, and also cut up

and canned in jars in a great iron kettle on the stove, along with beans and peppers and

many other vegetables. They stacked the jars in the foodsafe and under the stairs. They

filled lard buckets with wild strawberries and gooseberries, and apples by the bushel,

made jams and pies, and canned the rest. They ground down the cane stalks and made

molasses, and shelled some of the corn and made cornmeal and fried crackling bread.

It seemed to Lou that nothing was wasted; it was an efficient process and she admired it,

even as she and Oz worked themselves to near death from before sunup to long after

sundown. Everywhere they turned with tool or hand, food was flying at them. This made

Lou think of Billy Davis and his family having nothing to eat. She thought about it so

much she talked to Louisa about it.

"You stay up tomorrow night, Lou, and you'll find that you and me thinking on the same

line."

All of them were waiting by the barn late that night when they heard a wagon coming

down the road. Eugene held up a lantern and the light fell upon Billy Davis as he pulled

the mules to a halt and nervously stared at Lou and Oz.

Louisa approached the wagon. "Billy, I thought we might need some help. I want'a make

sure you get a good load. Land been real fine to us this year."

Billy looked embarrassed for a moment, but then Lou said, "Hey, Billy, come on, I'm