David Baldacci

by Wish You Well (v5)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  WITHOUT EITHER LOUISA OR EUGENE knowing, Lou took a lantern and a match and she and Oz rode Sue down to the mine. Lou jumped down, but Oz sat on the horse and stared at the mouth of that cave as though it were the direct portal to hell. “I’m not going in there,” he declared.

  “Then wait out here,” said his sister.

  “Why do you want to go in there? After what happened to Diamond? The mountain might fall in on you. And I bet it’d hurt bad.”

  “I want to know what the men Diamond saw were up to.”

  Lou lit the lantern and went in. Oz waited near the entrance, pacing nervously, and then he ran in, quickly catching up to his sister.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” Lou said.

  “I thought you might get scared,” Oz answered, even as he clutched at her shirt.

  They moved along, shivering from the cool air and their tender nerves. Lou looked around and saw what appeared to be new support beams along the walls and ceiling of the shaft. On the walls she also saw various markings in what looked to be white paint. A loud hissing sound reached out to them from up ahead.

  “A snake?” asked Oz.

  “If it is, it’s about the size of the Empire State Building. Come on.” They hurried ahead and the hissing sound grew louder with each step. They turned one corner, and the sound became even louder, like steam escaping. They cleared one more turn, ran forward, edged around a final bend in the rock, and stopped. The men wore hard hats and carried battery-powered lights, and their faces were covered with masks. In the floor of the mine was a hole, with a large metal pipe inserted in it. A machine that looked like a pump was attached by hoses to the pipe and was making the hissing sound they had heard. The masked men were standing around the hole, but didn’t see the children. Lou and Oz backed up slowly and then turned and ran. Right into Judd Wheeler. Then they dodged around him and kept right on running.

  A minute later Lou and Oz burst out of the mine. Lou stopped next to Sue and scrambled on, but Oz, apparently unwilling to trust his survival to something as slow as a horse, flew by sister and mare like a rocket. Lou punched Sue in the ribs with her shoes and took off after her brother. She didn’t gain any ground on the boy, however, as Oz was suddenly faster than a car.

  Cotton, Louisa, Lou, and Oz were having a powwow around the kitchen table.

  “You crazy to go in that mine,” said Louisa angrily.

  “Then we wouldn’t have seen those men,” replied Lou.

  Louisa struggled with this and then said, “G’on now. Me and Cotton need to talk.”

  After Lou and Oz left, she looked at Cotton.

  “So what you think?” she asked.

  “From how Lou described it, I think they were looking for natural gas instead of oil. And found it.”

  “What should we do?”

  “They’re on your property without your permission, and they know that we know. I think they’ll come to you.”

  “I ain’t selling my land, Cotton.”

  Cotton shook his head. “No, what you can do is sell the mineral rights. And keep the land. And gas isn’t like coal mining. They won’t have to destroy the land.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “Had us a good harvest. Don’t need no help from nobody.”

  Cotton looked down and spoke slowly. “Louisa, I hope you outlive all of us. But the fact is, if those children come into the farm while they’re still under age, it’d be right difficult for them to get along.” He paused and then added quietly, “And Amanda may need special care.”

  Louisa nodded slightly at his words but said nothing.

  Later, she watched Cotton drive off, while Oz and Lou playfully chased his convertible down the road, and Eugene diligently worked on some farm equipment. This was the sum total of Louisa’s world. Everything seemed to move along smoothly, yet it was all very fragile, she well knew. The woman leaned against the door with a most weary face.

  The Southern Valley men came the very next afternoon.

  Louisa opened the door and Judd Wheeler stood there, and beside him was a little man with snake eyes and a slick smile, dressed in a well-cut three-piece suit.

  “Miss Cardinal, my name’s Judd Wheeler. I work for Southern Valley Coal and Gas. This is Hugh Miller, the vice president of Southern.”

  “And you want my natural gas?” she said bluntly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Wheeler.

  “Well, it’s a right good thing my lawyer’s here,” she said, glancing at Cotton, who had come into the kitchen from Amanda’s bedroom.

  “Miss Cardinal,” said Hugh Miller as they sat down, “I don’t believe in beating around the bush. I understand that you’ve inherited some additional family responsibilities, and I know how trying that can be. So I am most happy to offer you…a hundred thousand dollars for your property. And I’ve got the check, and the paperwork for you to sign, right here.”

  Louisa had never held more than five dollars cash money in her whole life, so “My goodness!” was all she could manage.

  “Just so we all understand,” Cotton said, “Louisa would just be selling the underlying mineral rights.”

  Miller smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid for that kind of money, we expect to get the land too.”

  “I ain’t gonna do that,” said Louisa.

  Cotton said, “Why can’t she just convey the mineral rights? It’s a common practice up here.”

  “We have big plans for her property. Gonna level the mountain, put in a good road system, and build an extraction, production, and shipping facility. And the longest durn pipeline anybody’s seen outside of Texas. We’ve spent a while looking. This property is perfect. Don’t see one negative.”

  Louisa scowled at him. “ ’Cept I ain’t selling it to you. You ain’t scalping this land like you done everywhere else.”

  Miller leaned forward. “This area is dying, Miss Cardinal. Lumber gone. Mines closing. Folks losing their jobs. What good are the mountains unless you use them to help people? It’s just rock and trees.”

  “I got me a deed to this land says I own it, but nobody really own the mountains. I just watching over ’em while I here. And they give me all I need.”

  Miller looked around. “All you need? Why, you don’t even have electricity or phones up here. As a God-fearing woman I’m sure you realize that our creator gave us brains so that we can take advantage of our surroundings. What’s a mountain compared to people making a good living? Why, what you’re doing is going against the Scriptures, I do believe.”

  Louisa stared at the little man and looked as though she might laugh. “God made these mountains so’s they last forever. Yet he put us people here for just a littlebitty time. Now, what does that tell you?”

  Miller looked exasperated. “Look here now, my company is looking to make a substantial investment in bringing this place back to life. How can you stand in the way of all that?”

  Louisa stood. “Just like I always done. On my own two feet.”

  Cotton followed Miller and Wheeler to their car.

  “Mr. Longfellow,” said Miller, “you ought to talk your client into accepting our proposal.”

  Cotton shook his head. “Once Louisa Mae Cardinal makes up her mind, changing it is akin to trying to stop the sun from rising.”

  “Well, the sun goes down every night too,” said Miller.

  Cotton watched as the Southern Valley men drove off.

  The small church was in a meadow a few miles from the Cardinal farm. It was built of rough-hewn timbers and had a small steeple, one modest window of ordinary glass, and an abundance of charm. It was time for a down-on-the-ground church service and supper, and Cotton had driven Lou, Oz, and Eugene. They called it down-on-the-ground, Cotton explained, because there were no tables or chairs, but only blankets, sheets, and canvas; one large picnic under the guise of churchgoing.

  Lou had offered to stay home with her mother so Louisa could go, but the woman wouldn’t hear
of it. “I read me my Bible, I pray to my Lord, but I ain’t needing to be sitting and singing with folks to prove my faith.”

  “Why should I go then?” Lou had asked.

  “ ’Cause after church is supper, and that food ain’t to be beat, girl,” Louisa answered with a smile.

  Oz had on his suit, and Lou wore her Chop bag dress and thick brown stockings held up by rubber bands, while Eugene wore the hat Lou had given him and a clean shirt. There were a few other Negroes there, including one petite young woman with remarkable eyes and beautifully smooth skin with whom Eugene spent considerable time talking. Cotton explained that there were so few Negroes up this way, they didn’t have a separate church. “And I’m right glad of that,” he said. “Not usually that way down south, and in the towns the prejudice is surely there.”

  “We saw the ‘Whites Only’ sign in Dickens,” said Lou.

  “I’m sure you did,” said Cotton. “But mountains are different. I’m not saying everybody up here is a saint, because they’re surely not, but life is hard and folks just trying to get by. Doesn’t leave much time to dwell on things they shouldn’t dwell on in the first place.” He pointed to the first row and said, “George Davis and a few others excepted, that is.”

  Lou looked on in shock at George Davis sitting in the front pew. He had on a suit of clean clothes, his hair was combed, and he had shaved. Lou had to grudgingly admit that he looked respectable. None of his family was with him, though. His head was bowed in prayer. Before the service started, Lou asked Cotton about this spectacle.

  He said, “George Davis almost always comes to services, but he never stays for the meal. And he never brings his family because that’s just the way he is. I would hope he comes and prays because he feels he has much to atone for. But I think he’s just hedging his bets. A calculating man, he is.”

  Lou looked at Davis there praying like God was in his heart and home, while his family remained behind in rags and fear and would have starved except for the kindness of Louisa Cardinal. She could only shake her head. Then she said to Cotton, “Whatever you do, don’t stand next to that man.”

  Cotton looked at her, puzzled. “Why not?”

  “Lightning bolts,” she answered.

  For too many hours they listened to the circuit minister, their rumps worn sore by hard oak benches, their noses tickled by the scents of lye soap, lilac water, and grittier smells from those who had not bothered to wash before coming. Oz nodded off twice, and Lou had to kick him each time to rouse him. Cotton offered up a special prayer for Amanda, which Lou and Oz very much appreciated. However, it seemed they were all doomed to hell according to this fleshy Baptist minister. Jesus had given his life for them, and a sorry lot they were, he said, himself included. Not good for much other than sinning and similar lax ways. Then the holy man really got going and reduced every human being in the place to near tears, or to at least the shakes, at their extreme uselessness and at the guilt dwelling in their awful sinned-out souls. And then he passed the collection plate and asked very politely for the cold hard cash of all the fine folks there today, their awful sin and extreme uselessness notwithstanding.

  After services they all headed outside. “My father’s a pastor in Massachusetts,” said Cotton, as they walked down the church steps. “And he’s also right partial to the fire and brimstone method of religion. One of his heroes was Cotton Mather, which is where I got my rather curious name. And I know that my father was greatly upset when I did not follow him on to the pulpit, but such is life. I had no great calling from the Lord, and didn’t want to do the ministry any disservice just to please my father. Now, I’m no expert on the subject, yet a body does get weary of being dragged through the holy briar patch only to have his pocket regularly picked by a pious hand.” Cotton smiled as he surveyed the folks gathering around the food. “But I guess it’s a fair price to pay to sample some of these good vittles.”

  The food indeed was some of the best Lou and Oz had ever had: baked chicken, sugar-cured Virginia ham, collard greens and bacon, fluffy grits heaped with churned butter, fried crackling bread, vegetable casseroles, many-kind beans, and warm fruit pies—all no doubt created with the most sacred and closely guarded of family recipes. The children ate until they could eat no more, and then lay under a tree to rest.

  Cotton was sitting on the church steps, working on a chicken leg and a cup of hot cider, and enjoying the peace of a good church supper, when the men approached. They were all farmers, with strong arms and blocky shoulders, a forward lean to all of them, their fingers curled tight, as though they were still working the hoe or scythe, toting buckets of water or pulling udder teats.

  “Evening, Buford,” said Cotton, inclining his head at one of the men who stepped forward from the pack, felt hat in hand. Cotton knew Buford Rose to be a toiler in dirt and seed of long standing here, and a good, decent man. His farm was small, but he ran it efficiently. He was not so old as Louisa, but he had said so long to middle age years ago. He made no move to talk, his gaze fixed on his crumbling brogans. Cotton looked at the other men, most of whom he knew from helping them with some legal problem, usually to do with their deeds, wills, or land taxes. “Something on your minds?” he prompted.

  Buford said, “Coal folk come by to see us all, Cotton. Talk ’bout the land. Selling it, that is.”

  “Hear they’re offering good money,” said Cotton.

  Buford glanced nervously at his companions, his fingers digging into his hat brim. “Well, they ain’t got that fer yet. See, thing is, they ain’t a’wanting to buy our land ’less Louisa sell. Say it got to do with how the gas lie and all. I ain’t unnerstand it none, but that what they say.”

  “Good crops this year,” said Cotton. “Land generous to all. Maybe you don’t need to sell.”

  “What ’bout next year?” said a man who was younger than Cotton but looked a good ten years older. He was a third-generation farmer up here, Cotton knew, and he didn’t look all that happy about it right now. “One good year ain’t make up fer three bad.”

  “Why ain’t Louisa want’a sell, Cotton?” asked Buford. “She way older’n me even, and I done all worked out, and my boy he ain’t want to do this no more. And she got them chillin, and the sick woman care for. Ain’t make no sense to me she ain’t partial to sell.”

  “This is her home, Buford. Just like it is yours. And it doesn’t have to make sense to us. It’s her wishes. We have to respect that.”

  “But can’t you talk to her?”

  “She’s made up her mind. I’m sorry.”

  The men stared at him in silence, clearly not a single one of them pleased with this answer. Then they turned and walked away, leaving a very troubled Cotton Longfellow behind.

  Oz had brought his ball and gloves to the church supper, and he threw with Lou and then with some of the other boys. The men gawked at his prowess and said Oz had an arm like they had never seen before. Then Lou happened upon a group of children talking about the death of Diamond Skinner.

  “Stupid as a mule, getting hisself blowed up like that,” said one fat-cheeked boy Lou didn’t know.

  “Going in a mine with dynamite lit,” said another. “Good Lord, what a fool.”

  “Course, he never went to school,” said a girl with dark hair rolled in sausage curls who wore an expensive wide-brimmed hat with a ribbon around it and a frilly dress of similar cost. Lou knew her as Charlotte Ramsey, whose family didn’t farm but owned one of the smaller coal mines, and did well with it. “So poor thing probably didn’t know any better.”