David Baldacci Page 11

  As Lou and Oz came outside, Billy stopped his workout and strolled over to them.

  “Why, it’s Miss Louisa Mae. You been up see the president, Miss Louisa Mae?” he said in a loud, mocking voice.

  “Keep walking, Lou, please,” said Oz.

  Billy spoke even louder. “Did he get you to sign one of your daddy’s books, him being dead and all?”

  Lou stopped. Oz, sensing that further pleading was futile, stepped back. Lou turned to look at her tormentor.

  “What’s the matter, you still sore because us Yankees kicked your tail, you dumb hillbilly?”

  The other children, sensing blood, quietly formed a circle to shield from the eyes of Mrs. McCoy a potentially good fight.

  Billy scowled. “You best take that back.”

  Lou dropped her bag. “You best make me, if you think you can.”

  “Shoot, I ain’t hitting no girl.”

  This made Lou angrier than ever a thrown fist could have. She grabbed Billy by his overall straps and threw him to the dirt, where he lay stunned, probably both at her strength and at her audacity. The crowd moved closer.

  “I’ll kick your tail if you don’t take that back,” Lou said, and she leaned down and dug a finger in his chest.

  Oz pulled at her as the crowd closed even tighter, as though a hand becoming a fist. “Come on, Lou, please don’t fight. Please.”

  Billy jumped up and proceeded to commit a major offense. Instead of swinging at Lou, he grabbed Oz and threw him down hard.

  “No-good stinking northerner.”

  His look of triumph was short-lived because it ran smack into Lou’s bony right fist. Billy joined Oz on the ground, blood spurting from his nose. Lou was straddling Billy before the boy could take a breath, both her fists pounding away. Billy, howling like a whipped dog, swung his arms wildly back. One blow caught Lou on the lip, but she kept slugging until Billy finally stopped swinging and just covered his face.

  Then the seas parted, and Mrs. McCoy poured through this gap. She managed to pull Lou off Billy, but not without an effort that left her breathing hard.

  “Louisa Mae! What would your daddy think?” she said.

  Lou’s chest rose and fell hard, her hands still balled into mighty, boy-bashing instruments.

  Estelle McCoy helped Billy up. The boy covered his face with his sleeve, quietly sobbing into his armpit. “Now, you tell Billy you’re sorry,” she said.

  Lou’s response was to lunge and take another furious swing at him. Billy jumped back like a rabbit cornered by a snake intent on eating it.

  Mrs. McCoy pulled hard on Lou’s arm. “Louisa Mae, you stop that right now and tell him you’re sorry.”

  “He can go straight on to hell.”

  Estelle McCoy looked ready to keel over in the face of such language from the daughter of a famous man.

  “Louisa Mae! Your mouth!”

  Lou jerked free and ran like the wind down the road.

  Billy fled in the other direction. And Estelle McCoy stood there empty-handed on the field of battle.

  Oz, forgotten in all this, quietly got off the ground, picked up his sister’s burlap bag, brushed it off, and went and tugged on his teacher’s dress. She looked down at him.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Oz said. “But her name is Lou.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LOUISA CLEANED THE CUT ON LOU’S FACE with water and lye soap, and applied some homemade tincture that stung like fire, but Lou made herself not even flinch.

  “Glad you got yourself off to such a good start, Lou.”

  “They called us Yankees!”

  “Well, good Lord,” Louisa said with mock indignity. “Ain’t that evil!”

  “And he hurt Oz.”

  Louisa’s expression softened. “You got to go to school, honey. You got to learn to get along.”

  Lou scowled. “Why can’t they get along with us?”

  “ ’Cause this their home. They act like that ’cause you’re not like nobody they ever seen.”

  Lou stood. “You don’t know what it’s like to be an outsider.” She ran out the door, while Louisa looked after her, shaking her head.

  Oz was waiting for his sister on the front porch.

  “I put your bag in your room,” he told her.

  Lou sat on the steps and rested her chin on her knees.

  “I’m okay, Lou.” Oz stood and spun in a circle to show her and almost fell off the porch. “See, he didn’t hurt me any.”

  “Good thing, or I really would’ve pounded him.”

  Oz closely studied her cut lip. “Does it hurt much?”

  “Don’t feel a thing. Shoot, they might be able to milk cows and plow fields, but mountain boys sure can’t hit worth anything.”

  They looked up as Cotton’s Oldsmobile pulled into the front yard. He got out, a book cradled under one arm.

  “I heard about your little adventure over at the school today,” he said, walking up.

  Lou looked surprised. “That was fast.”

  Cotton sat next to them on the steps. “Up here when a good fight breaks out people will move heaven and earth to get the word around.”

  “Wasn’t much of a fight,” said Lou proudly. “Billy Davis just curled up and squawked like a baby.”

  Oz added, “He cut Lou’s lip, but it doesn’t hurt any.”

  She said, “They called us Yankees, like it was some kind of disease.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a Yankee too. From Boston. And they’ve accepted me here. Well, at least most of them have.”

  Lou’s eyes widened as she made the connection and wondered why she hadn’t before. “Boston? Longfellow. Are you—”

  “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was my grandfather’s great-grandfather. I guess that’s the easiest way to put it.”

  “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Gosh!”

  “Yeah, gosh!” Oz said, though in fact he had no idea who they were talking about.

  “Yes, gosh indeed. I wanted to be a writer since I was a child.”

  “Well, why aren’t you?” asked Lou.

  Cotton smiled. “While I can appreciate inspired, well-crafted writing better than most, I’m absolutely confounded when attempting to do it myself. Maybe that’s why I came here after I got my law degree. As far from Longfellow’s Boston as one can be. I’m not a particularly good lawyer, but I get by. And it gives me time to read those who can write well.” He cleared his throat and recited in a pleasant voice: “Often I think of the beautiful town, that is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down—”

  Lou took up the verse: “The pleasant streets of that dear old town. And my youth comes back to me.”

  Cotton looked impressed. “You can quote Longfellow?”

  “He was one of my dad’s favorites.”

  He held up the book he was carrying. “And this is one of my favorite writers.”

  Lou glanced at the book. “That’s the first novel my dad ever wrote.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “My dad read part of it to me. A mother loses her only son, thinks she’s all alone. It’s very sad.”

  “But it’s also a story of healing, Lou. Of one helping another.” He paused. “I’m going to read it to your mother.”

  “Dad already read all his books to her,” she said coldly.

  Cotton realized what he had just done. “Lou, I’m not trying to replace your father.”

  She stood. “He was a real writer. He didn’t have to go around quoting other people.”

  Cotton stood too. “I am sure if your father were here he would tell you that there is no shame in repeating the words of others. That it’s a show of respect, in fact. And I have the greatest respect for your father’s talents.”

  “You think it might help? Reading to her,” said Oz.

  “Waste your time if you want.” Lou walked off.

  “It’s okay with me if you read to her,” said Oz.

  Cotton shook the boy’s hand. �
��Thank you much for your permission, Oz. I’ll do my best.”

  “Come on, Oz, there’s chores to do,” called Lou.

  As Oz ran off, Cotton glanced down at the book and then went inside. Louisa was in the kitchen.

  “You here to do your reading?” she asked.

  “Well, that was my thinking, but Lou made it very clear she doesn’t want me to read from her father’s books. And maybe she’s right.”

  Louisa looked out the window and saw Lou and Oz disappear into the barn. “Well, I tell you what, I got lots of letters Jack wrote to me over the years. They’s some he sent me from college that I always liked. He use some big words then I ain’t know what they mean, but the letters’ still nice. Why don’t you read those to her? See, Cotton, my thinking is it ain’t what folks read to her that’s important. I think the best thing is for us to spend time with her, to let Amanda know we ain’t give up hope.”

  Cotton smiled. “You are a wise woman, Louisa. I think that’s a fine idea.”

  Lou carried the coal bucket in and filled the bin next to the fireplace. Then she crept to the hallway and listened. Murmurs of a single voice drifted down the hall. She scooted back outside and stared at Cotton’s car, the curiosity bug finally getting the better of her. She ran around the side of the house and came up under her mother’s bedroom window. The window was open, but it was too high for her to look in. She stood on tiptoe, but that didn’t work either.

  “Hey there.”

  She whirled around and saw Diamond. She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the window. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling.

  She noticed he had something behind his back. “What do you have there?”

  “Where?”

  “Right there behind your back, Diamond.”

  “Oh, that. Well, you see I was just walking down by the meadow, and, well, they was just sitting there all purty like. And swear to Jesus they was saying your name.”

  “What was?”

  Diamond pulled out a bunch of yellow crocuses and handed them to her.

  Lou was touched, but of course she didn’t want to show it. She said thank you to Diamond and gave him a hard smack on the back that made him cough.

  “I didn’t see you at school today, Diamond.”

  “Oh, well.” He pawed the ground with one bare foot, gripped his overalls, and looked everywhere except at Lou. “Hey, what you be doing at that window when I come up?” he finally said.

  Lou forgot about school for now. She had an idea, and like Diamond, she wished to defer the explanation behind her actions. “You want to help me with something?”

  A few moments later, Diamond fidgeted some, and Lou smacked him on the head to make him be still. This was easy for her to do since she was sitting on his shoulders while peering into her mother’s room. Amanda was propped in the bed. Cotton was in the rocking chair next to her, reading. Lou noted with surprise that he was not reading from the novel he had brought, but rather from a letter he was holding. And Lou had to admit, the man had a pleasant voice.

  Cotton had selected the letter he was reading from a number Louisa had given him. This letter, he had thought, was particularly appropriate.

  “Well, Louisa, you’ll be pleased to know the memories of the mountain are as strong right now as the day I left three years ago. In fact, it is rather easy for me to transport myself back to the high rock in Virginia. I simply close my eyes, and I immediately see many examples of reliable friends parceled here and there, like favorite books kept in special places. You know the stand of river birch down by the creek. Well, when their branches pressed together, I always imagined they were imparting secrets to each other. Then right in front of me a wisp of does and fawns creep along the fringe where your plowed fields snuggle up against the hardwood. Then I look to the sky and follow the jagged flight of irascible black crows, and then settle upon a solitary hawk tacked against a sky of cobalt blue.

  “That sky. Oh, that sky. You told me so many times that up on the mountain it seems you can just reach up and take it, hold it in your hand, stroke it like a dozing cat, admire its abundant grace. I always found it to be a generous blanket I just wanted to wrap myself in, Louisa, take a long nap on the porch with as I settled under its cool warmth. And when night came, I would always hold the memory of that sky tight and fast, as though an honored dream, right up to the smoldering pink of sunrise.

  “I also remember you telling me that you often looked out upon your land knowing full well that it never truly belonged to you, no more than you could hold deed to the sunlight or save up the air you breathed. I sometimes imagine many of our line standing at the door of the farmhouse and staring out at that same ground. But, at some point, the Cardinal family will all be gone. After that, my dear Louisa, you take heart, for the sweep of open land across the valley, the race of busy rivers, and the gentle bumps of green-shrouded hills, with little beads of light poking out here and there, like bits of sly gold— they all will continue on. And they won’t be worse off either, for our mortal dabbling in their forever existence, seeing that God made them to last forever, as you’ve also told me so many times.

  “Though I have a new life now, and am enjoying the city for the most part, I will never forget that the passing down of memories is the strongest link in the gossamer bridge that binds us as people. I plan to devote my life to doing just that. And if you taught me anything, it’s that what we hold in our hearts is truly the fiercest component of our humanity.”

  Cotton heard a noise, glanced toward the window, and saw a glimpse of Lou right before she ducked down. Cotton silently read the last part of the letter and then decided to read it in a very loud voice. He would be speaking as much to the daughter, who the man knew lurked right outside the window, as to the mother lying in bed.

  “And from watching you all those years conduct your life with honesty, dignity, and compassion, I know that there is nothing so powerful as the emboldened kindness of one human being reaching out to another, who is held only by despair. I think of you every day, Louisa, and so I will, as long as my heart continues to beat. With much love, Jack.”

  Lou poked her head over the sill again. Inch by inch she turned until she was looking at her mother. But there was no change in the woman, none at all. Lou angrily pushed away from the window. Poor Diamond was teetering mightily now, for her shove against the windowsill had done his balancing efforts no kindness. Diamond finally lost the battle, and both he and Lou went tumbling over, their plummet ending in a series of grunts and groans as they sprawled on the ground.

  Cotton rushed to the window in time to see the pair race around the house. He turned back to the woman in bed. “You really must come and join us, Miss Amanda,” he said, and then added quietly, as though afraid that anyone other than himself would hear, “for a lot of reasons.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK, THE SKY A MESS OF clouds that promised a good rain come morning. However, when skittish clouds and fragile currents bumped over high rock, the weather often changed quickly: snow became rain and clear became foul, and a body got wet or cold when he least expected to. The cows, hogs, and sheep were safely in the barn, for Old Mo, the mountain lion, had been seen around, and there had been talk of the Tyler farm losing a calf, and the Ramseys a pig. All those on the mountain handy with a shotgun or rifle were keeping their eyes peeled for the old scavenger.