David Baldacci Read online

  “Thanks for bringing us,” said Lou.

  “Tote all my friends here,” he said amiably and then looked to the sky. “Hey, y’all knowed your stars good?”

  “Some of them,” Lou said. “The Big Dipper, and Pegasus.”

  “Ain’t never heard’a none of them.” Diamond pointed to the northern sky. “Turn your head a little and right there’s what I call the bear what missing one leg. And over to there’s the stone chimbly. And right there”—he stabbed his finger more to the south—”now right there is Jesus a’sitting next to God. Only God ain’t there, ’cause he off doing good. ’Cause he God. But you see the chair.” He looked back at them. “Ain’tcha’ now? See it?”

  Oz said that he could see them all, clear as day though it was night. Lou hesitated, wondering whether it was better to instruct Diamond on proper constellations or not. She finally smiled. “You know a lot more about stars than we do, Diamond. Now that you pointed them out, I can see them all too.”

  Diamond grinned big. “Well, up here on the mountain, we a lot closer to ’em than down to the city. Don’t worry, I teach you good.”

  They spent a pleasant hour there and then Lou thought it would be best if they got back.

  They were about halfway home when Jeb started growling and making slow circles in the tall grass, his snout wrinkled and his teeth bared.

  “What’s wrong with him, Diamond?” asked Lou.

  “Just smells something. Lotta critters round. Don’t pay him no mind.”

  Suddenly Jeb took off running hard and howling so loud it hurt their ears.

  “Jeb!” Diamond called after him. “You come back here now.” The dog never slowed, though, and they finally saw why. The black bear was moving in long strides across the far fringe of the meadow.

  “Dang it, Jeb, leave that bear be.” Diamond raced after the dog, and Lou and Oz ran after Diamond. But dog and bear soon left the two-legs in the dust. Diamond finally stopped, gasping for air, and Lou and Oz ran up to him and fell on the ground, their lungs near bursting.

  Diamond smacked his fist into his palm. “Dang that dog.”

  “Will that bear hurt him?” asked Oz anxiously.

  “Shoot, naw. Jeb pro’bly tree the durn thing and then get tired and go on home.” Diamond didn’t look convinced though. “Come on now.”

  They walked briskly for some minutes, until Diamond slowed, looked around, and held up his hand for them to stop. He turned, put a finger to his lips, and motioned for them to follow, but to keep low. They scooted along for about thirty feet, and then Diamond went down on his belly and Lou and Oz did too. They crawled forward and were soon on the rim of a little hollow. It was surrounded by trees and underbrush, the limbs and vines overhanging the place and forming a natural roof, but the shafts of moonlight had broken through in places, leaving the space well illuminated.

  “What is it?” Lou wanted to know.

  “Shh,” Diamond said, and then cupped his hand around her ear and whispered. “Man’s still.”

  Lou looked again, and picked up on the bulky contraption with its big metal belly, copper tubing, and wooden block legs. Jugs to be filled with the corn whiskey sat on boards placed over stacked stone. A lit kerosene lamp was hooked to a slender post thrust into the moist ground. Steam rose from the still. They heard movement.

  Lou flinched as George Davis appeared next to the still and flopped down a forty-pound burlap bag. The man was intent on his work and apparently never heard them. Lou looked at Oz, who was shaking so hard Lou was afraid George Davis might feel the ground vibrating. She tugged at Diamond and pointed to where they had come from. Diamond nodded in agreement and they began to slither backward. Lou glanced back at the still, but Davis had disappeared. She froze. And then she nearly screamed because she heard something coming and feared the worst.

  The bear flashed by her line of sight first and into the hollow. Then came Jeb. The bear cut a sharp corner, and the dog skidded into the post holding the lamp and knocked it over. The lamp hit the ground and smashed. The bear careened into the still, and metal gave way under three hundred pounds of black bear and fell over, breaking open and tearing loose the copper tubing. Diamond raced into the hollow, yelling at his dog.

  The bear apparently was weary of being chased and turned and rose up on its hind legs, its claws and teeth now quite prominent. Jeb stopped dead at the sight of the six-foot black wall that could bite him in half, and backed up, growling. Diamond reached the hound and pulled at his neck.

  “Jeb, you fool thing!”

  “Diamond!” Lou called out as she too jumped up and saw the man coming at her friend.

  “What the hell!” Davis had emerged from the darkness, shotgun in hand.

  “Diamond, look out!” screamed Lou again.

  The bear roared, the dog barked, Diamond hollered, and Davis pointed his shotgun and swore. The gun fired twice, and bear, dog, and boy took off running like the holy hell. Lou ducked as the buckshot tore through leaves and imbedded in bark. “Run, Oz, run,” screamed Lou. Oz jumped up and ran, but the boy was confused, for he headed into the hollow instead of away from it. Davis was reloading his shotgun when Oz came upon him. The boy realized his mistake too late, and Davis snagged him by the collar. Lou ran toward them. “Diamond!” screamed Lou once more. “Help!”

  Davis had Oz pinned against his leg with one hand and was trying to reload his gun with the other.

  “Gawd damn you,” the man thundered at the cowering boy.

  Lou flung her fists into him but didn’t do any damage, for though he was short, George Davis was hard as brick.

  “You let him go,” Lou yelled. “Let him go!”

  Davis did let go of Oz, but only so he could strike Lou. She crumpled to the ground, her mouth bleeding. But the man never saw Diamond. The boy picked up the fallen post, swung it, and clipped Davis’s legs out from under him, sending the man down hard. Then Diamond conked Davis on the head with the post for good measure. Lou grabbed Oz, and Diamond grabbed Lou, and the three were more than fifty yards from the hollow by the time George Davis regained his legs in a lathered fury. A few seconds after that, they heard one more shotgun blast, but they were well out of range by then.

  They heard running behind them and picked up their pace. Then Diamond looked back and said that it was okay, it was only Jeb. They ran all the way back to the farmhouse, where they collapsed on the front porch, their breathing tortured, their limbs shaking from both fatigue and fright.

  When they sat up, Lou considered taking up the run once more because Louisa was standing there in her nightdress looking at them and holding a kerosene lamp. She wanted to know where they’d been. Diamond tried to answer for them, but Louisa told him to hush in a tone so sharp it struck the always chatty Diamond mute.

  “The truth, Lou,” ordered the woman.

  And Lou told her, including the almost deadly run-in with George Davis. “But it wasn’t our fault,” she said. “That bear—”

  Louisa snapped, “Get yourself to the barn, Diamond. And take that dang dog with you.”

  “Yes’m,” said Diamond, and he and Jeb slunk away.

  Louisa turned back to Lou and Oz. Lou could see she was trembling. “Oz, you get yourself to bed. Right now.”

  Oz glanced once at Lou and fled inside. And then it was just Lou and Louisa.

  Lou stood there as nervous as she had ever been.

  “You could’a got yourself kilt tonight. Worse’n that you could’a got you and your brother kilt.”

  “But, Louisa, it wasn’t our fault. You see—”

  “Is your fault!” Louisa said fiercely, and Lou felt the tears rush to her eyes at the woman’s tone.

  “I didn’t have you come to this mountain to die at the sorry hands of George Davis, girl. You gone off on your own bad enough. But taking your little brother too—and he follow you cross fire, not knowing no better— I’m ashamed of you!”

  Lou bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
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br />   Louisa stood very erect. “I ain’t never raised my hand to a child, though my patience run sore over the years. But if you ever do somethin’ like that agin, you gonna find my hand ’cross your skin, missy, and it be somethin’ you ain’t never forget. You unnerstand me?” Lou nodded dumbly. “Then get to bed,” said Louisa. “And we speak no more of it.”

  The next morning George Davis rode up on his wagon pulled by a pair of mules. Louisa came outside to face him, her hands behind her back.

  Davis spit chew onto the ground next to the wagon wheel. “Them devils broke up my propity. Here to get paid.”

  “You mean for busting up your still.”

  Lou and Oz came outside and stared at the man.

  “Devils!” he roared. “Gawd damn you!”

  Louisa stepped off the porch. “If you gonna talk that way, git yourself off my land. Now!”

  “I want my money! And I want them beat bad for what they done!”

  “You fetch the sheriff and go show him what they done to your still, and then he can tell me what’s fair.”

  Davis stared at her dumbly, the mule whip clenched in one hand. “You knowed I can’t do that, woman.”

  “Then you know the way off my land, George.”

  “How ’bout I put the torch to your farm?”

  Eugene came outside, a long stick in his big hand.

  Davis held up the whip. “Hell No, you keep your nigger self right there afore I put the whip to you just like your granddaddy had ’cross his back!” Davis started to get down from the wagon. “Mebbe I’ll just do it anyway, boy. Mebbe all’a you!”

  Louisa pulled the rifle from behind her back and leveled it at George Davis. The man stopped halfway off his wagon when he saw the Winchester’s long barrel pointed at him.

  “Get off my land,” Louisa said quietly, as she cocked the weapon and rested its butt against her shoulder, her finger on the trigger. “Afore I lose my patience, and you lose some blood.”

  “I pay you, George Davis,” Diamond called out as he came out of the barn, Jeb trailing him.

  Davis visibly shook, he was so angry. “My damn head’s still ringing from where you done walloped me, boy.”

  “You durn lucky then, ’cause I could’a hit you a lot harder if ’n I wanted to.”

  “Don’t you smartmouth me!” Davis roared.

  “You want’a git your money or not?” said Diamond.

  “What you got? You ain’t got nuthin’.”

  Diamond put his hand in his pocket and drew out a coin. “Got me this. Silver dollar.”

  “Dollar! You wreck my still, boy. Think a damn dollar gonna fix that? Fool!”

  “It done come from my great-granddaddy five times removed. A hunnerd year old it is. Man down Tremont say he gimme twenty dollar for it.”

  Davis’s eyes lighted up at this. “Lemme see it.”

  “Naw. Take it or leave it. I telling the truth. Twenty dollar. Man named Monroe Darcy. He run the store down Tremont. You knowed him.”

  Davis was silent for a bit. “Gimme it.”

  “Diamond,” Lou called out, “don’t do it.”

  “Man got to pay his debts,” said Diamond. He sauntered over to the wagon. When Davis reached out for the coin, Diamond pulled it back. “Look here, George Davis, this means we square. You ain’t coming round to Miss Louisa for nuthin’ if ’n I give you this. You got to swear.”

  Davis looked like he might put the whip to Diamond’s back instead, but he said, “I swear. Now gimme it!”

  Diamond flipped the coin to Davis, who caught it, studied it, bit on it, and then stashed it in his pocket.

  “Now git yourself gone, George,” said Louisa.

  Davis glared at her. “Next time, my gun don’t miss.”

  He turned mules and wagon around and left in a whirl of dust. Lou stared at Louisa, who held the rifle on Davis until the man was out of sight. “Would you really have shot him?” she asked.

  Louisa uncocked the rifle and went inside without answering the question.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  LOU WAS CLEANING UP THE SUPPER DISHES two nights later while Oz carefully wrote out his letters on a piece of paper at the kitchen table. Louisa sat next to him, helping. She looked tired, Lou thought. She was old, and life up here wasn’t easy; Lou had certainly experienced that first-hand. One had to fight for each little thing. And Louisa had been doing this all her life. How much longer could she?

  By the time Lou had dried the last plate, there came a knock on the door. Oz ran to open it.

  Cotton was standing at the front door, wearing his suit and tie, a large box cradled in his arms. Behind him was Diamond. The boy was dressed in a clean white shirt, face scrubbed, hair pounded down with water and maybe sticky sap, and Lou almost gasped, because the boy was wearing shoes. It was true she could see his toes, but still most of the boy’s feet were covered. Diamond nodded shyly to all, as though being scrubbed and shod made him a circus spectacle of sorts.

  Oz eyed the box. “What’s in there?”

  Cotton set the box on the table and took his time opening it. “While there is much to be said for the written word,” he told them, “we must never forget that other great creative body of work.” With a flourish to rival the best of vaudeville performances, he unveiled the gramophone.

  “Music!”

  Cotton took a record out of a slipcase and carefully placed it on the gramophone. Then he vigorously turned the crank and set the needle in place. It scratched the wobbly record for a moment, and then the room was filled with what Lou recognized as the music of Beethoven. Cotton looked around the room and then moved a chair against the wall. He motioned to the other men. “Gentlemen, if you please.” Oz, Diamond, and Eugene pitched in, and they soon had an open space in the middle of the room.

  Cotton went down the hallway and opened Amanda’s door. “Miss Amanda, we have a variety of popular tunes for your listening pleasure tonight.”

  Cotton came back to the front room.

  “Why did you move the furniture?” Lou asked.

  Cotton smiled and removed his suit coat. “Because you can’t simply listen to music, you must become one with it.” He bowed deeply to Lou. “May I have this dance, ma’am?”

  Lou found herself blushing at this formal invitation. “Cotton, you’re crazy, you really are.”

  Oz said, “Go ahead, Lou, you’re a good dancer.” He added, “Mom taught her.”

  And they danced. Awkwardly at first, but then they picked up their pace and soon were spinning around the room. All smiled at the pair, and Lou found herself giggling.

  Overcome with excitement, as he so often was, Oz ran to his mother’s room. “Mom, we’re dancing, we’re dancing.” And then he raced back to see some more.

  Louisa was moving her hands to the music, and her foot was tapping against the floor. Diamond came up.

  “Care to stroll the floor, Miss Louisa?”

  She took his hands. “Best offer I had me in years.”

  As they joined Lou and Cotton, Eugene stood Oz on the tops of his shoes, and they clomped around with the others.