Wish You Well(74)

going to need your muscle to lift this bucket."

Thus encouraged, Billy jumped down to help. They all spent a solid hour loading bags of

cornmeal, canning jars full of beans and tomatoes, and buckets of rutabagas, col-lards,

cucumbers, potatoes, apples, plump cabbages, pears, sweet potatoes, onions, and even

some cuts of salted hog meat on that wagon.

While Lou was loading, she saw Louisa take Billy to a corner of the barn and look at his

face with a lantern. Then she had him raise his shirt, and she did an examination there

and came away apparently satisfied.

When Billy turned the wagon around and left, the mules strained under the new weight,

and the boy carried a big smile as he flicked the whip and disappeared into the night.

"They can't hide all that food from George Davis," Lou said.

"I been doing this many a year now. Man never once fretted about where the bounty

come from."

Lou looked angry. "That's not fair. He sells his crop and makes money, and we feed his

family."

"What's fair is a momma and her children eating good," answered Louisa.

"What were you checking for under his shirt?" asked Lou.

"George is smart. Most times hits where the clothing covers."

"Why didn't you just ask Billy if he had hit him?" "Just like an empty lunch pail, children

will lie when they shamed."

With all their surplus, Louisa decided the four would drive the wagon laden with crops

down to the lumber camp. On the day of the trip Cotton came over to look after Amanda.

The lumber folks were expecting them, for quite a crowd had gathered by the time they

arrived. The camp was large, with its own school, store, and post office. Because the

camp was forced to move frequently when forests had been exhausted, the entire town

was on rails, including the workers' homes, the school, and the store. They were laid out

on various spurs like a neighborhood. When a move was called for, the locomotives

hooked up to the cars and off the entire town went in short order.

The lumber camp families paid for the crops either with cash money or with barter items,

such as coffee, sugar, toilet paper, stamps, pencils and paper, some throw-off clothes and

shoes, and old newspapers. Lou had ridden Sue down, and she and Oz took turns giving

the camp children rides free of charge, but the patrons could "donate" peppermint sticks

and other delicacies if they saw fit, and many did.

Later, from atop the sharp spine of a ridge, they looked down where a shaft of the

McCloud River flowed. A splashdam of stone and wood had been created downriver,

artificially backing the water up and covering boulders and other obstructions that made

log transport by river difficult. Here the water was filled bank to bank with trees, mostly

mighty poplar, the bottoms of the trunks scored with the lumber company's brand. They

looked like pencils from this great height, but then Oz and Lou noted that the small

specks on each of them were actually full-grown men riding the logs. They would float

down to the splashdam, where a vital wedge would be kicked out, and the thundering

water would carry the trees downriver, where they would be tied off and Virginia logs

would ride on to Kentucky markets.

As Lou surveyed the land from this high perch, something seemed to be missing. It took

her a moment to realize that what was absent was the trees. As far as she could see, there

were just stumps. When they went back down to the camp, she also noted that some of

the rail lines were empty.

"Sucked just 'bout all the wood we can from here," one of the lumberjacks proudly

explained. "Be heading out soon." He didn't seem bothered by this at all. Lou figured he

was probably used to it. Conquer and move on, the only trace of their presence the butts

of wood left behind.

On the trip home they tied Sue to the wagon and Lou and Oz rode in the back with

Eugene. It had been a good day for everyone, but Oz was the happiest of them all, for he

had "won" an official baseball from one of the camp boys by throwing it farther than any

of them. He told them it was his proudest possession behind the graveyard rabbit's foot

Diamond Skinner had given him.



CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

IN READING TO HER MOTHER, LOU CHOSE NOT BOOKS, but rather Grit newspapers, and

some copies of the Saturday Evening Post they had gotten from the lumber camp. Lou

would stand against the wall of her mother's room, the paper or magazine held in front of

her, and read of the economy, world catastrophes, Hitler's bludgeoning war across

Europe, politics, the arts, movies, and the latest news of writing and writers, which made

Lou realize how long it had been since she had actually read a book. School would start

again very soon; even so, she had ridden Sue over to Big Spruce a few days before and