"I'm sorry, Lou. Diamond was a fine boy."

"He was a man. A fine man" man. A fine man"

"I suppose you're right. He was a man."

Lou eyed Jeb, who sat mournfully at the mine entrance.

"Diamond didn't have to go in that mine after Jeb."

"Well, that dog was all Diamond had. When you love something, you can't just sit by and not do anything."

Lou picked up some pine needles and then let a few trickle out between her fingers. Minutes pa.s.sed before she spoke again. "Why do things like this happen, Cotton?"

He sighed deeply. "I suppose it may be G.o.d's way of telling us to love people while they're here, because tomorrow they may be gone. I guess that's a pretty sorry answer, but I'm afraid it's the only one I've got."

They were silent for a bit longer.

"I'd like to read to my mom," said Lou.

Cotton said, "That's the finest idea I've ever heard."

"Why is it a fine idea?" she demanded. "I really need to know."

"Well, if someone she knew, someone she... loved would read to her, it might make all the difference."

"Do you really think she knows?"

"When I carried your mother outside that day, I was holding a living person fighting like the devil to get out. I could feel it. And she will one day. I believe it with all m my heart, Lou."

She shook her head. "It's hard, Cotton. To let yourself love something you know you may never have."

Cotton nodded slowly. "You're wise beyond your years. And what you say makes perfect sense. But I think when it comes to matters of the heart, perfect sense may be the last thing you want to listen to."

Lou let the rest of the needles fall and wiped her hands clean. "You're a good man too, Cotton."

He put his arm around her and they sat there together, neither one of them willing to look at the blackened, swollen cavity of the coal mine that had taken their friend from them forever.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THERE WAS ENOUGH STEADY RAIN, AND SOME THUN-derstorms added to the plenty, such that virtually all the crops came in healthy and in abundance. One fierce hailstorm damaged some of the corn, but not to any great extent. A stretch of powerful rain did wash a gully out of a hill, like a scoop of ice cream, but no person, animal, or crop was hurt by it.

Harvesting time was full upon them, and Louisa, Eugene, Lou, and Oz worked hard and long, which was good, because it gave them little time to think about Diamond not being with them anymore. Occasionally they would hear the mine siren, and then a bit later the slow rumbling of the explosion would come. And each time Louisa would lead them all in a song to take their minds off Diamond's having been killed by such an awful thing. Louisa did not speak much of Diamond's pa.s.sing. Yet Lou noted that she read her Bible a lot more often by the firelight, and her eyes swelled with tears whenever his name was mentioned, or when she looked at Jeb. It was hard for all of them, yet all they could do was keep going, and there was much to do.

They harvested the pinto beans, cast them in Chop bags, stomped them to get the husks off, and had them for dinner every night with gravy and biscuits. They picked the pole beans, which had grown up around the cornstalks, careful, as Louisa schooled them, to avoid the green stinger worms that lived under the leaves. They scythed the cornfield and bundled the cornstalks into shocks, which they stood in the field, and which would later be used for livestock feed. They shucked the corn, hauled it by sled to the corncrib, and filled it to almost overflowing. From a distance the tumble of cobs looked like yel-lowjackets at frenzied play.

The potatoes came in thick and fat, and with churned b.u.t.ter were a meal by themselves. The tomatoes came in too, plump and blood red, eaten whole or sliced, and also cut up and canned in jars in a great iron kettle on the stove, along with beans and peppers and many other vegetables. They stacked the jars in the foodsafe and under the stairs. They filled lard buckets with wild strawberries and gooseberries, and apples by the bushel, made jams and pies, and canned the rest. They ground down the cane stalks and made mola.s.ses, and sh.e.l.led some of the corn and made cornmeal and fried crackling bread.

It seemed to Lou that nothing was wasted; it was an efficient process and she admired it, even as she and Oz worked themselves to near death from before sunup to long after sundown. Everywhere they turned with tool or hand, food was flying at them. This made Lou think of Billy Davis and his family having nothing to eat. She thought about it so much she talked to Louisa about it.

"You stay up tomorrow night, Lou, and you'll find that you and me thinking on the same line."

All of them were waiting by the barn late that night when they heard a wagon coming down the road. Eugene held up a lantern and the light fell upon Billy Davis as he pulled the mules to a halt and nervously stared at Lou and Oz.

Louisa approached the wagon. "Billy, I thought we might need some help. I want'a make sure you get a good load. Land been real fine to us this year."

Billy looked embarra.s.sed for a moment, but then Lou said, "Hey, Billy, come on, I'm going to need your muscle to lift this bucket."

Thus encouraged, Billy jumped down to help. They all spent a solid hour loading bags of cornmeal, canning jars full of beans and tomatoes, and buckets of rutabagas, col-lards, cuc.u.mbers, potatoes, apples, plump cabbages, pears, sweet potatoes, onions, and even some cuts of salted hog meat on that wagon.

While Lou was loading, she saw Louisa take Billy to a corner of the barn and look at his face with a lantern. Then she had him raise his shirt, and she did an examination there and came away apparently satisfied.

When Billy turned the wagon around and left, the mules strained under the new weight, and the boy carried a big smile as he flicked the whip and disappeared into the night.

"They can't hide all that food from George Davis," Lou said.

"I been doing this many a year now. Man never once fretted about where the bounty come from."

Lou looked angry. "That's not fair. He sells his crop and makes money, and we we feed his family." feed his family."

"What's fair is a momma and her children eating good," answered Louisa.

"What were you checking for under his shirt?" asked Lou.

"George is smart. Most times. .h.i.ts where the clothing covers."

"Why didn't you just ask Billy if he had hit him?" "Just like an empty lunch pail, children will lie when they shamed."

With all their surplus, Louisa decided the four would drive the wagon laden with crops down to the lumber camp. On the day of the trip Cotton came over to look after Amanda. The lumber folks were expecting them, for quite a crowd had gathered by the time they arrived. The camp was large, with its own school, store, and post office. Because the camp was forced to move frequently when forests had been exhausted, the entire town was on rails, including the workers' homes, the school, and the store. They were laid out on various spurs like a neighborhood. When a move was called for, the locomotives hooked up to the cars and off the entire town went in short order.

The lumber camp families paid for the crops either with cash money or with barter items, such as coffee, sugar, toilet paper, stamps, pencils and paper, some throw-off clothes and shoes, and old newspapers. Lou had ridden Sue down, and she and Oz took turns giving the camp children rides free of charge, but the patrons could "donate" peppermint sticks and other delicacies if they saw fit, and many did.

Later, from atop the sharp spine of a ridge, they looked down where a shaft of the McCloud River flowed. A splashdam of stone and wood had been created downriver, artificially backing the water up and covering boulders and other obstructions that made log transport by river difficult. Here the water was filled bank to bank with trees, mostly mighty poplar, the bottoms of the trunks scored with the lumber company's brand. They looked like pencils from this great height, but then Oz and Lou noted that the small specks on each of them were actually full-grown men riding the logs. They would float down to the splashdam, where a vital wedge would be kicked out, and the thundering water would carry the trees downriver, where they would be tied off and Virginia logs would ride on to Kentucky markets.

As Lou surveyed the land from this high perch, something seemed to be missing. It took her a moment to realize that what was absent was the trees. As far as she could see, there were just stumps. When they went back down to the camp, she also noted that some of the rail lines were empty.

"Sucked just 'bout all the wood we can from here," one of the lumberjacks proudly explained. "Be heading out soon." He didn't seem bothered by this at all. Lou figured he was probably used to it. Conquer and move on, the only trace of their presence the b.u.t.ts of wood left behind.

On the trip home they tied Sue to the wagon and Lou and Oz rode in the back with Eugene. It had been a good day for everyone, but Oz was the happiest of them all, for he had "won" an official baseball from one of the camp boys by throwing it farther than any of them. He told them it was his proudest possession behind the graveyard rabbit's foot Diamond Skinner had given him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

IN READING TO HER MOTHER, LOU CHOSE NOT BOOKS, but rather but rather Grit Grit newspapers, and some copies of the newspapers, and some copies of the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post they had gotten from the lumber camp. Lou would stand against the wall of her mother's room, the paper or magazine held in front of her, and read of the economy, world catastrophes, Hitler's bludgeoning war across Europe, politics, the arts, movies, and the latest news of writing and writers, which made Lou realize how long it had been since she had actually read a book. School would start again very soon; even so, she had ridden Sue over to Big Spruce a few days before and borrowed some reading material for her and Oz from the "lending library," with Estelle McCoy's permission of course. they had gotten from the lumber camp. Lou would stand against the wall of her mother's room, the paper or magazine held in front of her, and read of the economy, world catastrophes, Hitler's bludgeoning war across Europe, politics, the arts, movies, and the latest news of writing and writers, which made Lou realize how long it had been since she had actually read a book. School would start again very soon; even so, she had ridden Sue over to Big Spruce a few days before and borrowed some reading material for her and Oz from the "lending library," with Estelle McCoy's permission of course.

Louisa had taught Eugene to read when he was a child, and so Lou brought a book for him too. He was concerned he would find no time to read it, and yet he did, late at night under lamplight, his moistened thumb slowly turning the pages as he concentrated. Other times Lou helped him with his words as they worked the fields in preparation for the coming winter, or when milking the cows by kerosene lamp. Lou would take him through the Grits Grits and the and the Posts Posts and Eugene particularly liked saying "Roooosevelt, President Roooosevelt," a name that appeared often in the and Eugene particularly liked saying "Roooosevelt, President Roooosevelt," a name that appeared often in the Grit Grit pages. The cows looked at him strangely whenever he said "Roooosevelt," as though they thought he was actually mooing at them in a peculiar way. And Lou couldn't help but gape when Eugene asked her why somebody would name their child President. pages. The cows looked at him strangely whenever he said "Roooosevelt," as though they thought he was actually mooing at them in a peculiar way. And Lou couldn't help but gape when Eugene asked her why somebody would name their child President.

"You ever think about living somewhere else?" Lou asked him one morning while they were milking.

He said, "Mountain all I seed, but I knowed they a lot mo' to this world."

"I could take you to the city one day. Buildings so tall you can't walk up them. You ride in an elevator." He looked at her curiously. "A little car that pulls you up and down," she explained.

"Car? What, like'n the Hudson?"

"No, more like a little room you stand in."

Eugene thought that interesting, but said he'd probably just stick to farming on the mountain. "Want'a get hitched, have me a family, raise the chillin good."

"You'd make a good dad," she said.

He grinned. "Well, you'd be a fine ma. How you is with your brother and all."

Lou stared at him and said, "My mother was a great mom." Lou tried to recall if she had ever actually told her mother that. Lou knew she had spent most of her adoration on her father. It was a very troubling thought to her, since it was now beyond remedy.

A week after her ride to the school library, Lou had just finished reading to Amanda, when she went out to the barn to be by herself. She climbed to me hayloft and sat in the opening of the double doors and looked across the valley to the mountains beyond. Pondering her mother's depressing future, Lou finally turned her thoughts to the loss of Diamond. She had tried to put it out of her mind, but she realized she never really could.

Diamond's funeral had been a strange yet heartfelt affair. People had emerged from slivers of farms and crevices of homesteads that Lou was unaware even existed, and all these people came to Louisa's home by horse, ox, mule, foot, and tractor, and even one battered Packard with all its doors missing. Folks trooped through with plates of good food and jugs of cider. There were no formal preachers in attendance, but a number of folks stood and with shy voices offered comfort for the friends of the deceased. The cedar coffin sat in the front room, its lid securely nailed down, for no one had a desire to see what dynamite had done to Diamond Skinner.

Lou was not sure that all the older folks were really Diamond's friends, yet she a.s.sumed they had been friends of his father. In fact she had heard one old gent by the name of Buford Rose, who had a head of thick white hair and few teeth, mutter about the blunt irony of both father and son having been done in by the d.a.m.n mines.

They laid Diamond to rest next to the graves of his parents, their mounds long since pulled back into the earth. Various people read from the Bible and there were more than a few tears. Oz stood in the center of mem all and boldly announced that his often-baptized friend was a lock for heaven. Louisa laid a bundle of dried wildflowers in the grave, stepped back, started to talk but then couldn't.

Cotton offered up a fine eulogy to his young friend and recited a few examples from a storyteller he said he much admired: Jimmy "Diamond" Skinner. "In his own way," said Cotton, "he would put to shame many of the finest taletellers of the day."

Lou said a few quiet words, addressing them really to her friend in the box under the freshly turned dirt that smelled sweet yet sickened her. But he was not between those planks of cedar, Lou knew. He had gone on to a place higher even than the mountains. He was back with his father, and was seeing his mother for the very first time. He must surely be happy. Lou raised her hand to the sky and waved good-bye once again to a person who had come to mean so much to her, and who was now gone forever.

A few days after the burial, Lou and Oz had ventured to Diamond's tree house and took an accounting of his belongings. Lou said Diamond would naturally want Oz to have the bird skeleton, the Civil War bullet, the flint arrowhead, and the crude telescope.

"But what do you get?" asked Oz, as he examined his inherited spoils.

Lou picked up the box and took out the lump of coal, the one allegedly containing the diamond. She would make it her mission to chip carefully away at it, for as long as it took, until the brilliant center was finally revealed, and then she would go and bury it with Diamond. When she noted the small piece of wood lying on the floor in the back of the tree house, she sensed what it was before ever she picked it up. It was a whittled piece, not yet finished.

It was cut from hickory, shape of a heart, the letter L carved on one side, an almost finished D on the other. Diamond Skinner had had known his letters. Lou pocketed me wood and coal, climbed down the tree, and didn't stop running until she was back home. known his letters. Lou pocketed me wood and coal, climbed down the tree, and didn't stop running until she was back home.

They had, of course, adopted the loyal Jeb, and he seemed comfortable around them, though he would sometimes grow depressed and pine for his old master. Yet he too seemed to enjoy the trips Lou and Oz took to see Diamond's grave, and the dog, in the mysterious way of the canine pet, would start to yip and do spins in the air when they drew near to it. Lou and Oz would spread fall leaves over the mound and sit and talk to Diamond and to each other and retell the funny things the boy had done or said, and there was no short supply of either. Then they would wipe their eyes and head home, sure in their hearts that his spirit was roaming freely on his beloved mountain, his hair just as stuck up, his smile just as wide, his feet just as bare. Diamond Skinner had had no material possessions to his name and yet had been the happiest creature Lou had ever met. He and G.o.d would no doubt get along famously.

They prepared for winter by sharpening tools with the grinder and rattail files, mucking out the stalls and spreading the manure over the plowed-under fields. Louisa had been wrong about that, though, for Lou never grew to love the smell of manure. They brought the livestock in, kept them fed and watered, milked the cows, and did their other ch.o.r.es, which now all seemed as natural as breathing. They carried jugs of milk and b.u.t.ter, and jars of mixed pickles in vinegar and brine, and canned sauerkraut and beans down to the partially underground dairy house, which had thick log walls, daubed and c.h.i.n.ked, and paper stuffed where mud had fallen away. And they repaired everything on the farm that called for it.

School started, and, true to his father's words, Billy Davis never came back. No mention was made of his absence, as though the boy had never existed. Lou found herself thinking of him from time to time, though, and hoped he was all right.

After ch.o.r.es were done one late fall evening, Louisa sent Lou and Oz down to the creek that ran on the south side of the property to fetch b.a.l.l.s from the sycamore trees that grew in abundance there. The b.a.l.l.s had sharp stickers, but Louisa told them they would be used for Christmas decorations. Christmas was still a ways off, but Lou and Oz did as they were told.

When they got back, they were surprised to see Cotton's car in front. The house was dark and they cautiously opened the door, unsure of what they would find. The lights flew up as Louisa and Eugene took the black cloths from around the lanterns and they and Cotton called out "Happy Birthday," in a most excited tone. And it was their birthday, both of them, for Lou and Oz had been born on the same day, five years apart, as Amanda had informed Louisa in one of her letters. Lou was officially a teenager now, and Oz had survived to the ripe old age of eight.

A wild-strawberry pie was on the table, along with c cups of hot cider. Two small candles were in the pie and Oz and Lou together blew them out. Louisa pulled out the presents she had been working on all this time, on her Singer sewing machine: a Chop bag dress for Lou that was a pretty floral pattern of red and green, and a smart jacket, trousers, and white shirt for Oz that had been created from clothes Cotton had given her.

Eugene had carved two whistles for them that gave off different tunes, such that they could communicate when apart in the deep woods or across acres of field. The mountains would send an echo to the sun and back, Louisa told them. They gave their whistles a blast, which tickled their lips, making them giggle.

Cotton presented Lou with a book of poems by Walt Whitman. "My ancestor's superior in the arena of the poem, if I may so humbly admit," he said. And then he pulled from a box something that made Oz forget to breathe. The baseball mitts were things of beauty, well-oiled, worn to perfection, smelling of fine leather, sweat, and summer gra.s.s, and no doubt holding timeless and cherished childhood dreams. "They were mine growing up," Cotton said. "But I'm embarra.s.sed to admit that while I'm not that good of a lawyer, I'm a far better lawyer than I ever was a ballplayer. Two mitts, for you and Lou. And me too, if you'll put up with my feeble athletic skills from time to time."

Oz said he would be proud to, and he hugged the gloves tight to his chest. Then they ate heartily of the pie and drank down the cider. Afterward Oz put on his suit, which fit very nicely; he looked almost like a tiny lawyer. Louisa had wisely tucked extra material under the hems to allow for the boy's growth, which seemed now to occur daily. So dressed, Oz took his baseball gloves and his whistle and went to show his mother. A little while later Lou heard strange sounds coming from Amanda's bedroom. When she went to check, she saw Oz standing on a stool, a sheet around his shoulders, a baseball glove on his head like a crown, and brandishing a long stick.

"And the great Oz the brave, and not cowardly lion anymore, killed all the dragons and saved all the moms and they all lived happily ever after in Virginia." He took off his crown of oiled leather and gave a series of sweeping bows. "Thank you, my loyal subjects, no trouble a'-tall."

Oz sat next to his mother, lifted a book off the night-stand, and opened it to a place marked by a slip of paper. "Okay, Mom," said Oz, "this is the scary part, but just so you know, the witch doesn't eat the children." He inched close to her, draped one of her arms around his waist, and with big eyes started to read the scary part.

Lou went back to me kitchen, sat at the table in her Chop bag dress, which also well suited her, and read the brilliant words of Whitman by the glow of reliable kerosene. It became so late that Cotton stayed, and slept curled up in front of the coal fire. And another fine day had pa.s.sed on the mountain.

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 me horse and stared at the mouth of that cave as though it were the direct portal to h.e.l.l. "I'm not going in there," he declared Lou took a lantern and a match and she and Oz rode Sue down to the mine. Lou jumped down, but Oz sat on me horse and stared at the mouth of that cave as though it were the direct portal to h.e.l.l. "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.