The Well and the Mine (13 page)

It was a big thing for me to realize about all the bad magic creatures that must be out there to fight against the good ones, and before long I had a head full of them.

“Maybe we never knew she was pregnant,” said Virgie as I kept an eye out for red eyes. “Maybe she hid it.”

“Hid carryin’ a baby?” That got my attention. Soon the solution dawned on me. “So we’re lookin’ for a big, fat woman?”

She frowned and stepped over a rotten log. “She could’ve worn a corset.”

“But it’d be easier to hide it if you were big. We should think about a list of big women.”

She didn’t stop frowning, just started chewing her lip again. “I was thinkin’ our list was too simple. Maybe we shouldn’t be accountin’ for babies. And maybe we shouldn’t be thinkin’ of who’s big as a house. We should be figurin’ what kind of woman would throw a dead baby in a well.”

“A crazy one,” I said.

She ignored me. “Not one that did wrong by her baby. She prob’bly loved him.”

“She could’ve killed him ahead of time. Clubbed him on the head.”

I’d dreamed of bruises the night before. Not my own. Just pale, pale skin and purple blotches. Water dripping from everything, making the bruises shine. I couldn’t remember more than that.

Virgie shook her head. “Papa said the chief said there was no sign of that. Not bruises or nothin’. Just as likely he died from bein’ sickly.”

It’d rained enough to fill up the creek to the edge of the bank, and the planks we walked across were wet. The water nearly touched them, splashing over them from time to time. We both hiked up our skirts.

“I’d rather hop across the rocks,” I said. “It’s more fun.”

“All we need’s for you to fall in,” she said, halfway across. I think it was looking around to give me a scowl she borrowed from Papa that upset her balance. Or maybe she stepped on a leaf or something. At any rate, Virgie toppled over into the creek with the same slowness a glassful of milk has when you knock it off the table.

The creek was no more than waist-deep at its highest, but she got soaked good. She managed to keep her head above water, so her curls didn’t get wet, and her right hand held her satchel in the air. But every inch below her neck was sopping. She didn’t sit there long; before I could even say anything, she was standing and wading to shore. More like stomping.

“Ohhhhh,” was all I could say. “Oh, Virgie.” But then I got a good look at her, water streaming from the bottom of her dress, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“This isn’t funny,” she said. “I’m gone be late—I’ll have to run home and change my clothes.” But she was fighting a smile herself. She almost laughed, then it turned to a spluttery cough, and I saw she had goose bumps.

“You’ll catch cold,” I said, worried then. “Run on home. I’ll tell your teacher.”

“Not in front of the whole class!”

“Okay, I’ll tell her real quiet.” She decided to believe me and took off running back toward the house. She got almost to the road when I yelled her name. “You should’ve went across the rocks,” I told her; she didn’t even look back.

I tiptoed on across the planks without any trouble—it was faster than going across the rocks, and I didn’t have extra time if I had to go to Virgie’s classroom first. I started running on the other side of the creek, thinking I’d slow down when I got back in view of people. (I moved better in water than I did on land. My legs were a little too long for me and my knees were always bloodied from tripping over nothing more than my feet. It seemed like I had more than just two of them.)

So Virgie thought the Well Woman wasn’t evil. But if she wasn’t evil, she had to be crazy. I couldn’t see no other reason to it—no mama like ours could do such a thing. I could hear Virgie’s voice in my head, though. If it’s so plain, why doesn’t she stick out? Evil or crazy must look different than we thought.

Virgie
I WAS ONLY HALF AN HOUR LATE. MAMA HELPED ME
pull off my wet dress and underthings. That was after I burst open the back door—still standing on the porch so I wouldn’t drip on the floors—and announced I fell in the creek.

Mama looked up from the breakfast dishes and blinked at me, then she was right beside me with a towel before I could say another word.

“Take off your shoes and leave them here,” she said first. Second she said, “How come you fell in and not Tess?”

Back in the bedroom, towel wrapped around me and not wearing a stitch, I stood while Mama hunted for bloomers and stockings for me. “I don’t believe you’ve ever fell in the creek before,” she said. “Hardly ever even scraped your knees.”

I just stood there.

She seemed more puzzled than anything, not the least bit mad. She held my hands in hers and then held the back of her hand to my forehead to be sure I was warm enough…but not so warm as to have a temperature. Then she kissed my forehead and whacked me lightly on the rear end as I turned to the door.

I did not enjoy being wet or mussed or late, and I sank into my seat as quietly as possible. Tess must’ve said something to Miss Etheridge because she didn’t say a word to me, and normally you’d be called to the front of the room for being late. Being tardy twice would get your knuckles rapped with the ruler. Well, Miss Etheridge never used the ruler, but Jack’s teacher had left welts the year before when Jack lost track of time digging for crawdads before school.

Three seats away from the potbellied stove, I could feel its heat already. Too close to it and you’d be too warm, turning groggy and stupid with the coziness of it. Three seats away was perfect.

Miss Etheridge’s eyes flickered to mine, and she smiled enough to let me know I wasn’t in trouble. I wondered how old she was. She only had a few lines around her eyes. She was pretty enough, slender and neat, with penny-colored hair. Ella and Lois thought she was a bit standoffish, but I didn’t mind that. She was friendly in her quiet way, always glad to stay after school to go over an assignment. And when she read aloud, she was beautiful, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink. Her voice turned into something new and strong and fascinating when she had somebody else’s words to read instead of her own.

I asked her once if she enjoyed being a teacher, and she said, “I do, Virgie. I enjoy it quite a bit.” Then she asked me if I thought I might want to be a teacher myself someday, and I answered something about thinking I might enjoy it. I really meant that I knew I’d have to do some sort of work, and I thought teaching would be better than nursing. She said I was well able and smart and a few other things I appreciated being called, but all the while I was thinking about how she looked when she read Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson. My cousin Naomi read all the time, but it had never caught fire with me. I wondered if it might if I was a teacher, if it was something in the training.

“Quite a bit.” Really, she loved it in a way that lit a bulb in her face. Loved it in some deep, unfamiliar way that was worlds apart from drawing water and washing floors and sewing until your head ached from the bad light.

Of course, she’d have to quit if she decided to get married. And if she kept teaching for too long, she might never marry because she’d be an old maid and nobody would want her. An educated old maid was the worst of all, bottom of the list. Aunt Celia said no man wanted a woman who cared more about books than she did about him. When I was learning long division, the numbers all swam together and I hated it. Aunt Celia said then that it didn’t pay to be too smart, that it wouldn’t serve me well anyhow. I figured out long division anyway, partly because that made me mad, and partly because when I repeated it to Papa, he said, “It don’t pay to be too stupid, neither.”

I wondered about Miss Etheridge and how she filled the rest of her day after school was over. What did she do at home with no one to look after? Could you fix a pone of cornbread or fry a chicken for just one person? Or maybe she ate every night in a restaurant, a napkin in her lap and her handbag beside her, and the only thing she had in her kitchen was a pitcher of tea. Sometimes teachers lived with older women who rented them a room. I wondered if she slept in an attic with no windows and the sound of mice running across the floor or if her bedroom window let in the sun and she woke up looking at dogwoods every morning.

Leta
WHEN I STRAIGHTENED FROM STIRRING THE CLOTHES,
I saw a woman’s boots with the soles coming off. Turned out Lola Lowe was attached to them. She’d never been by the house before, so it took me aback. But before I could even wish her a good morning, she said, “Your girls come by to see me.”

That jolted me. “Virgie and Tess?”

“Ain’t got no other girls do you?” She didn’t smile when she said it, but I didn’t take offense. It was her way. If I had such a mess of children, I wouldn’t bother too much with politeness, either.

“Reckon not.”

I didn’t want her to feel unwelcome, but I couldn’t leave the clothes. The fire had got going strong and the clothes were boiling, all but chaining me there to the pot. I found myself wishing she’d come a few hours earlier when I’d have welcomed a break.

It took twelve trips from the creek to fill up the iron wash pot sitting at the edge of the hackberries, and after six trips my arms felt like they might pop out of their sockets. Then there was the fire to be stoked underneath, which at least didn’t take much strength. While the straw and twigs lit up and teased the bigger logs into burning, I’d sort through the clothes, making piles of the darks and lights and whites. Only needed to boil work clothes, sheets, and anything really dirty. That meant about everything of Jack’s.

But once the wood was going, I couldn’t afford to waste it by taking a break, no matter how my arms screamed or my face burned or my throat begged for a gulp of cool, dry air instead of the steam pouring out of the pot. The clothes were tossing around, overalls and shirts and socks bobbing over and through the foam. It was the dirtiest load, in need of the longest soak. I’d do sheets separate. The dresses and the rest of the clothes—ones not needing boiling—I’d scrub over the washboard as the others boiled. The clean, sudsy dresses were piled on top of an old blanket, waiting to be rinsed. I looked at Lola, then looked at my piles of clothes, then looked down at the clothes still cooking and gave them a swirl with the old broom handle. Lola spoke before I figured out what I wanted to say.

“No need to stop,” she said. She was standing over the soapy pile. “These done?”

“They’re done.”

“And this the rinsin’ tub?”

“It is,” I said, nodding at the silver circle filled with clean water. “But don’t you be doin’ that, Lola. Just pull a chair out from the kitchen and visit with me a spell. I’ll take a rest before rinsin’ time.”

The wash took a whole day’s work once a week. It would be nice to have another pair of hands, even if I didn’t want to admit it. If the sun was bright, I might be able to finish the ironing before bedtime. But if it turned cloudy and cooler, the ironing would have to wait until tomorrow. I liked to wash in the creek on account of the heat from the fire, but without the girls to help, it wasn’t worth the hike there and back.

Lola made an impolite, horselike kind of sound. “I sure as Sam Hill ain’t gone sit here and yammer while you work,” she said. “I got time—Ellen’s mindin’ the little ones.”

So I kept on stirring while she started dunking clothes piece by piece, drenching them then wringing them out, finally draping them over the clothesline.

“I’ll leave you to hang ’em as you like,” she said.

We went on like that for a while, no sound but water sloshing and wood crackling. I pulled a pair of overalls out, shook them until the steam died down, and looked them over. I used the tips of my fingers to hold up first one leg, then the other, then smoothed out the bib to where I could see it without any shadows or folds. Mostly clean. No smell to them. I added them to the washtub, which Lola had almost emptied.

“I’ll work on scrubbing these,” she said. “You get to hangin’ when you finish up.”

By the time I finished dipping out the sheets, the fire had died down of its own accord. I did as she’d told me, not seeing any sense in commenting or arguing. If she was rinsing, then I ought to be hanging. We got into a good rhythm by the time she started rinsing the second batch of clothes, handing me a piece at a time to pin up. After the heat making my face pour sweat (“perspiration,” I always corrected the girls) and the steam making my hair woolly, I welcomed the easiness of hanging. Nothing but snapping and tucking and smoothing.

“Good girls you got,” Lola said. “Pretty.”

“Nice of you to say so,” I said. I looked over and noticed the basket by her feet then—our old straw basket. Lola saw my eyes fix on it and waved one wet hand toward it.

“Girls left this for me with apples in it. Nice of them.”

“You didn’t have to bring it back. But I thank you.”

I did wonder what possessed the girls to take her apples. I hadn’t gone by her house in more than a year. Last time I went over I took her some eggs, and I could barely remember even visiting with her. But the last year had been a hard one, and we’d been giving away all of our extra. Between kin on Albert’s side and mine, plus whoever happened by the door seeing if we could spare anything, I hadn’t even thought to make a visit.

“They wanted to see my new baby.” Lola had both hands back in the water.

Now that was more unusual than apples. The girls weren’t baby crazy, hadn’t ever been ones for doting on dolls or making cow eyes at little ones. And they didn’t even know Lola. “Can’t imagine what put that in their heads,” I said, more to myself than to her.

The bag of clothespins slapped against my hip as I inched my way down the line. My face had already dried, but I could taste the salt on my knuckles when I’d stick one wooden pin in my mouth while I clamped another one on the line.

“I figured they were worried about Frankie,” Lola said.

I only looked at her, clothespin between my teeth.

“I couldn’t think why they’d come by at first,” she kept on. “Thought maybe you’d sent ’em to say hello, but they didn’t even know we’d growed up together. I asked Ellen if she was friendly with them, and she said not particularly. Then I thought about that dead baby. Thought they might be feelin’ kindly toward babies right now. Maybe needed to see a healthy one.”