Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (2 page)

“Sure do. Come right over here to our Visitor Center.” From a card table two steps away, Faye Beth plucked a four-color brochure, a map, and a “Welcome to Ella Louise” coffee mug for each of them. “Take your time; look around.
Ella Louise is a wonderful town.” She unfolded the
brochure. “You’ll want to see the library; it’s in an old historic building. Then there’s Big Rock Monument, Lover’s Leap Scenic Outlook, and the American Indian Arrowhead and Artifact Museum.”

“Wow.” Rocky’s interest was caught. “An Indian museum? Here?”

“Sure is. And it is something to see. Chief Johnson built it in front of his house. Been five years, I guess.”

“There’s an Indian chief living in Ella Louise?”

“Oh, honey, not a real Indian,” Faye Beth said with a wink. “His people’s mostly Irish, I think. William Earl is his real name, but ever since he was a child,
he’s
loved Indian stuff. Museum’s open every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. You’ll know Chief when you see him. He’s the only man in town what wears that Indian jewelry.”

“Sure wish he was open today,” Rocky said as he studied the brochure.

“Guess that just means y’all will have to come back,” said Faye Beth. “We could use a pair of young folks like you. Why, you ought to just move yourselves up here.”

Rocky and Rochelle went home; he to study, she to dream. Because after visiting Ella Louise, Rochelle, who had lived in the city all her life, decided she wanted to move there.

Every weekend, she tried to cajole Rocky into taking a drive back to Ella Louise. Most weekends his answer was the same. “Not today, Rochelle. I’ve got to study.” He was in his last and most time-consuming semester.

“Come on! You never want to do anything fun.”

He winced at her words.

“Someday we’re going to move there. I know it,” Rochelle told him.

“Someday.” But Rocky, keeper of their budget, didn’t see how it could ever happen—especially if he didn’t graduate and get a full-time job.

Then, six months after their visit to Ella Louise, Rochelle’s great-aunt passed away. Soon as her will was read, Someday arrived. Rochelle was the woman’s sole heir.

By then, Rocky had graduated. And he and Rochelle promptly moved to Ella Louise.

Faye Beth Newman took credit for Rocky and Rochelle’s move. “I told those kids they should move here,” she bragged. “They went and took me up on my invitation.”

R
OCKY SECURED HIS FIRST TEACHING JOB
—social studies at Ella Louise Middle School. He spent hours at night preparing his lessons so as to be ready for the next day’s classes.

Rocky’s dedication to his work rankled Rochelle. She wanted to throw block parties, go shopping for curtain fabric, and take hikes along the creek. “Come on, Rocky! Let’s do something spontaneous!”

He would, he’d tell her, just as soon as he finished his lesson plans and averaged all his students’ end-of-semester grades.

After a few months in Ella Louise, Rochelle, who had learned how to cook in her great-aunt’s kitchen, bought
the town’s old Dairy Queen, which had been closed for
over a year. Rocky, after school and on weekends, helped her clean it, paint it, and fix it up. Once it was done, Rochelle hung a sign that said “Welcome to the Wild Flour Café” and began serving breakfast and lunch.

They also bought a tidy frame house—white with green trim—next door to the library. The house needed work,
but Rocky fixed it up too. Months after moving in, he
made a surprising discovery in the backyard. He’d finally had a free afternoon to spend cleaning up along their lot’s back fence. Several seasons of fallen branches, tall grass, and climbing vines had nearly taken over the back half of the yard. “Rochelle, come look at this.”

“What is it?”

“A well, I think.”

“Like for water?”

“What it looks like.”

“Does it have water in it?”

Turns out, it did.

The next day at the Wild Flour Café, Rochelle questioned Crow Buxley, one of her best breakfast customers.

“Crow, you know anything about the history of my place?”

Sure enough, he did. Place used to be in his family. Years and years ago.

Rochelle plied him with a slice of homemade pumpkin bread.

“Honey, there’s a story about that well. When my great-grandparents settled on that place, wasn’t no such thing as running water. My grandmother had to haul it in buckets, up from the creek.”

“How long ago was that?” asked Rochelle.

“Hundred years, at least. Wasn’t really much town here
then. More like a settlement, I guess you’d say. Anyway,
my great-grandfather George was crazy about my great-grand
mother Lizzie. Growing up, the two of them lived neigh
bors. Played together when they was children.”

“That’s so romantic,” gushed Rochelle.

“Well, one day when they was about seventeen and
eighteen years old, George and Lizzie up and decided to
get married. Them and a couple of their friends—they had to have witnesses—loaded up in George’s daddy’s wagon, drove over to the preacher’s house, and sent someone in after him. The man came out and married them right there in the wagon.”

“They didn’t even get out?”

“Nope. Back in them days times were hard. People didn’t make any big production out of everday events like they do now.”

Rochelle hid a smile and poured Crow a glass of lemon iced tea.

“Anyways, they got hitched. For the first few years of their married life, they lived with George’s folks. His mother wasn’t well, and Lizzie was a big help to her. Then George’s mother passed, and his daddy remarried. That was when George commenced to building them a little house on the same spot where yours sits now.”

“And Lizzie had to haul water?”

“Yes. Hauling heavy water buckets wore even fleshy women out, and she was a tiny little thing. You can see her in old pictures. Ninety pounds soakin’ wet’d be my guess. Now Lizzie didn’t complain much; she just did what had to be done. But George decided he was gonna dig her a well.”

“By hand?”

“All by hand. Weren’t no drilling machines ’round here back then. He went at it with a pickax and a shovel. Dug through forty feet of rock. Took him four years ’cause he had to do all the digging when his other labor was done—and there was plenty of that. Didn’t work on it ever day, just when he could.”

Ten feet a year,
figured Rochelle. “Four years? And he didn’t give up? Did he ever wonder if he was digging in the right spot?”

“Sure he did. Took a lot of ribbin’ from his neighbors. After the first year or two, they thought he was crazy to keep it up. And Lizzie—sweet a woman as she was—got tired of it too. Ever bit of his spare time, George was out digging. Many a time Lizzie would want to go visitin’ her sister or she’d want to take a ride into town, but George wouldn’t do it, because he had to work on that well. Just dig, dig, dig, ever minute he got.”

“When he finally hit water, I bet George was really excited.”

“He was. He’d been diggin’ a couple hours when from
the side of the well, down low, he noticed a real small
trickle, so small that you ’bout couldn’t see it. Four years, he’d been diggin’. That was the first sight of water he saw.”

“I bet he called for Lizzie to come see.”

“No. He kept it to hisself. The next day, when he climbed down in that well, the floor where he was digging was a little damp. By the end of the day—he let his other work go that day—it was muddy. He knew he was close, but still he didn’t tell Lizzie. He had in mind a surprise. When he came in for dinner, she noticed that his boots was wet, and she questioned him about it. He told her he’d spilled water on them when he was washing up.”

Rochelle poured Crow a second glass of tea.

“That night, George could hardly sleep, he was so excited. Next morning, he got up way before Lizzie did, when it was barely getting light outside, went out to the well, and climbed down inside it. And after just an hour of work, he found himself standing in six inches of water.”

“Did he go get Lizzie then?”

“No, not then. What he did was creep into the house, careful not to let the screen door slam. He got a teacup out of the cupboard, run back out to the well, and filled the cup with water. Careful, so as not to spill it, for his hands were shaking something terrible, he carried it back into the house, knelt down beside the bed, woke Lizzie up, and showed her that cup of water.”

Rochelle sighed. “What a sweet man. He must have loved her so much!”

“Yep,” Crow went on. “George had dreamed of that moment for four years. The thought of bringing her that water was with him ever time he got down in that hole and picked up his shovel. The smile on her face was what he had waited for.”

Rochelle sighed again, enthralled by Crow’s romantic tale.

Crow pushed his plate back and drained his glass of tea. “Honey, I’ve got to get on home, but before I do, I’m gone let you in on a little secret that most women don’t know. My great-grandpa George weren’t all that special.”

“What do you mean? He spent four long years digging a well for his wife!”

“Naw, now listen up. Sugar, most ever bit of what a good
man does is to please his woman. He may not dig her a
well, or build her a mansion, or fight her a bear, but when he puts in overtime at work, feeling like he’s come down with the flu, it’s with her on his mind. When he’s barely twenty years old and spends his Saturday mowing the yard, put
ting a new seat on the toilet, and changing the oil in the
car, he’s doing it for her. When he goes to the store because the baby got the diarrhea and needs diapers even though the score’s tied and it’s the bottom of the ninth, he’s hoping she’ll smile at him when
he gets back. I’m telling you,
a man won’t let on, but pleasing his wife is the thing he
wants
most. That’s all great-grandpa George was looking for
when he spent four years diggin’ that well that right now is sittin’ in your backyard.”

Rochelle couldn’t think of what to say.

Crow scooted his chair back. “Now. How much do I owe you? Reckon you got change for a hundred?”

That evening after dinner, Rochelle asked Rocky to walk out with her so she could take another look at the
well. Even in the twilight, she could see that he had
repaired the rotten frame around it and had hung a shiny new bucket from a strong new rope.

“Looks nice,” she said.

Rocky dropped the bucket down, let it fill, and then slowly pulled it up. “I took a sample in to be tested. Turns out this is good water. Pure enough to drink. Want a taste?”

“Sure.”

Rocky dipped his cupped hands into the bucket and raised them to Rochelle’s lips.

Water dribbled from his fingertips down her chin.

“Good?”

“Very. Best water I ever tasted.”

He smiled.

She smiled.

T
HEY TELL ME
that it is good water indeed.

2

H
OT
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OG’S ON THE
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OUSE