Face the Winter Naked (14 page)

"Sooooeeeeeeeeeeee.
Heeere Buttercup. Here pig."

"I
know some don't like Mr. Pendergast," Daniel said. "Sure, he's just
another politician and one's bad as another. But I figure he must have a decent
streak if he puts men to work. At least he's not as bad as Hoover."

Daniel
didn't like talking politics, especially with people who disagreed with him.
Nothing he could say would change their opinions anyway. What was he doing
discussing politics with a feisty old woman in the middle of the woods?

"You're
entitled to your opinion," she said.

"Maybe
your other folks could do the plowing if the mister can't," Daniel said,
changing the subject, "or even a neighbor. Your hog farmer, for
instance."

"He
won't. Nobody feels like plowing. The little ones can't and their mama's gotta
save her energy for nursing the baby. Why, the poor girl's all wore out. She's
like a dead woman sitting and staring with a baby hanging on her, and he
prob'ly gets as much milk from her as he would from a boar hog."

"I'm
sorry," he said again.

"Sorry
don't help and sorry don't feed people." The woman shrugged her skinny shoulders.
"Got no tractor, anyhow, just a miserable ol' mule. What could we plant?
Something that don't need water, I reckon, cause we ain't getting any rain
soon, are we?"

"Maybe
that's why the hog took off," Daniel said, "looking for a pond to
wallow in."

"Sow,"
she corrected. "Or maybe she's teched in the head, it being hot and her so
close to farrowin'."

Daniel
rose and stretched. "Yes, ma'am. Everything's dry and dusty. It's been so
long since it rained, I almost forgot what it looks like."

The
woman stuck out her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr.—?"

"Daniel."
He clasped her hand gently.

"Mr.
Daniel, I'm Bess. You got family somewhere?"

"Yep."

She
nodded but didn't pry. Daniel assumed he wasn't the first family man she'd seen
roaming through the hills in search of work.

"When
the new piggies are big enough, we'll sell 'em to a butcher across town."

"That
right?" Daniel looked around for a town, but didn't see any.

The
town is a mirage. Old lady Bess is a mirage. The train I come in on and myself,
too, are just mirages. The whole of life is nothing but a big spankin' mirage.

"Well,
it was nice talking to you," Bess said, "but I need to find my cussed
sow or there won't be any babies to sell. I hope you find work, but I wouldn't
count on it too much if I was you." She stopped him with her hand on his
forearm as he turned to leave. "Hold on now—can you dig wells?"

Daniel
pulled off his cap and wiped his sweaty head.
The last thing I want to do is
dig a well.

"Yes,
ma'am, I've dug me up some wells in my lifetime."

She
let out a whoop and grabbed his arm. "You're coming with me. The well we
got now is going dry. We're hauling water from the pond, and if it don't rain,
the pond's going dry, too."

"Well
now, I don't know."

Bess
wouldn't take no for an answer.

"C'mon
now, Mr. Daniel. You can meet the old man and the rest of the bunch. Ezra
started digging a well 'fore his back give out, but he couldn't find no
water."

Daniel
hadn't witched in ages—did he dare get her hopes up?

"I've
dowsed some," he told the husband a short time later.

Ezra
was probably not as old as he looked—his body showed the ravages of the
Depression and he walked with a hickory cane. Hard times took a lot out of a
man, and he looked like he was down to his last wish.

Daniel's
own family had fared well—at least before he left, the situation hadn't gotten
that bad. What they were doing now, though, he was afraid to guess. But he
counted on Clay and LaDaisy's family to take care of the Tomelin brood till he
got himself together.

Daniel
Tomelin was embarrassed to find himself in the company of such poverty: an
empty-eyed, unsmiling young women in a dress held together by safety pins
nursed a scrawny boy of about a year old, him taking all her strength as he
pulled at her flat, sagging breast.

Three
filthy children of walking age leaned against one another on an old davenport,
staring at the stranger with deep, hungry eyes, one with a thumb in her mouth.
Birthing so close together had pulled all the meat off their mother's frame.

Another
man, who Daniel guessed was the young woman's husband, snored on a bed seen
through an open doorway. On the wall over the bed hung a framed marriage
certificate—in plain sight, lest someone thought the couple lived in sin. But
it made no sense. If God looked down at this poor family, he wouldn't find sin,
but instead hunger and dejection.

Now
Ezra nodded at Daniel.

"I'd
be much obliged if you could help me dig. If the sow she ever comes back, you
can have one of her babies for pay."

Daniel
could just see himself swinging along a country road with Buttercup's baby in
one arm, a banjo on his shoulder, tools spilling out of his clothes, seeing and
hearing things that weren't there.

"It's
worth a try," he said, and they went outdoors together, Ezra prodding the
ground with his walking stick.

Daniel
spotted the diggings immediately and went over to examine the hole.

"You
did a lot of work already. Not a drop, huh?"

"Nary
a drop."

"Did
you dowse first?"

"I
don't have a gift for dowsing," Ezra said. "There was a man come by a
couple years ago offering to dowse, but I sent him away. We didn't need him
then. Now my dang well's going dry and the new one smelt like rotten eggs after
digging down a few feet."

"Sulfur,"
Daniel said, nodding. "Now you watch. I'll see what I can do. It's been a
long time since I done this, but I'll try to find you some clean drinking
water."

"Be
nice to stop bringing water from the crik." Ezra glanced at his wife as
she came over. Bess looked at Daniel, and Daniel guessed she was the one who
carried the water.

"We'll
be blessed if y'all find water," she said, nodding her head.

"And
that's just what I'm going to do, good woman, God willing."

Daniel
found a forked branch from a huge weeping willow in front of the house. He
surmised that for a tree to grow as big as it had, its roots had to be near an
underground stream. He took out his pocketknife and trimmed the branch to a Y
shape that stuck out stiff as a young man's pecker.

The
whole family—minus the snoring husband—came out on the porch and watched solemnly
as he walked slowly around and around the yard holding the dowsing branch out
before him by both handles, with the point facing straight ahead. While he
walked, he concentrated on the water he knew was there—he'd seen the full moon
a few days before, and some dowsers believed the moon pulled water from the
earth.

About
thirty feet from the tree, the pointed end of the branch quivered suddenly and
made a nosedive at the ground. Daniel looked up and grinned.

"Right
here's your water, folks."

Ezra
hobbled over and looked to where the twig pointed.

"Nah,
I don't think so." He squinted at Daniel in the bright sunshine. "A
county agent said I wouldn't find no water here. Said it's on the other side of
the house."

"County
agents are wrong sometimes. Your water's right here or my name ain't
fiddlesticks."

The
sun was a blasting furnace whose rays penetrated his hat and shirt—even now
sweat trickled down his sides into his underwear, and he already stunk so bad
he'd never get clean again. This was no time to be digging a well, but seeing
the long faces of the folks on the front porch, he turned to Ezra.

"Bring
me a shovel, a pick, and a steel rod, if you got any. Get a shovel, dirt
bucket, and stout rope for the young man sleeping in there. I can't do this by myself."

He
went back to the porch and removed his tools from the pockets and loops of his
overalls, laying them next to the gunnysack. Then he uncapped his water jug and
poured some down his parched throat, careful not to spill any. He nodded at the
young woman sitting there, thinking he should share his water, but knowing
there wasn't enough to go around.

"I've
got a family of my own," he said, "and I wouldn't want them to
thirst. So I'll dig you a well." Putting his jug away again, he turned to
the child staring up at him with big, brown eyes. "I reckon you're about
the same age as my own little girl. Her name's Catherine, what's yours?"
When she didn't reply, he patted the top of her head and went back to where
Ezra waited with the tools.

From
inside the house came Bess's high-pitched voice.

"Get
up, William, you lazy cuss. There's a man here to dig a new well. You're gonna
help, so get up."

Daniel
heard the man swear, but after a while William came outdoors. He stared
suspiciously at the stranger who ordered his family around like he owned them,
then came over to the spot Daniel had marked. Ezra produced two short-handled
shovels, one for Daniel and one for William. An old five-gallon bucket sat on
the ground near a long steel rod and a rope coiled like a rattlesnake.

"Ain't
no water here," William said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Daniel
picked up one of the spades and looked the younger man squarely in the eye. He
reminded himself to go gently with William. From the looks of the unshaven,
hollow-eyed man, he belonged in the old graveyard he'd passed a few days ago.

"There
sure as shootin'
is
water here, and not too far down, neither. Now, if
you'll grab the handle of that there shovel, you can help me bring it up."

Daniel
turned up the cuffs of his pants, and William helped him shovel dirt and rock
from a hole barely wide enough for one man to maneuver with pick and shovel,
let alone two. William didn't speak, and to his credit he didn't complain. He
worked as hard as his partner as they broke through the rock with their picks
and scooped it up with a shovel.

"There's
more rock than dirt down here," Daniel said.

He
stopped to wipe sweat off his brow. Growing too warm now, he unbuckled his
overalls, pulled off his shirt and threw it up out of the hole. Securing his
straps again, he commenced working shirtless. A wave of dizziness washed over
him momentarily—from the heat and from hunger—and for one horrible moment, he
imagined he was digging a trench back at the front. With great effort and his
head spinning, he forced himself back to the task at hand. There were no wild
poppies growing outside this hole. He'd almost slipped back into the nightmare,
but had caught himself before the sandbags blew up and caved in on him.

This
is Missouri, not France. I'm not Shine
and William is not Frank.

He
turned to his helper. "Much obliged for your work, William." But the
man didn't speak.

When
the well got too deep to throw out the dirt, William climbed out and lowered
the bucket on the rope for Daniel to fill, after which he pulled it back up to
the top and emptied it on the ground beside the hole. This action he repeated
time and again as daylight passed into evening. The mound of dirt beside the
hole rose higher. The heat of the day had lessened somewhat as the sun began
sinking over the western hills in a blaze of color, ready to disappear till
morning.

Inside
the hole, Daniel was cooler than he'd been all day. He loved the damp mineral
smell of the dirt as he used the pick to pry out the rocks. When William
lowered the bucket, Daniel often had to load it with all rock, instead of dirt.
The work was backbreaking and dirty.

Layer
after layer of rock and dirt went up as the shaft grew deeper. Daniel had now
made it square so the prop-boards could be positioned to keep the sides from
caving in.

Bess
dragged over some boards from an old barn, "still good and clean,"
she said, and William tipped them into the hole and slid them down to Daniel.

Daniel
filled bucket after bucket, each time shouting up to William, who would lower
the bucket again. When it was too dark to see—and the hole deeper than Daniel
was high—he grabbed hold of the last bucket of dirt so William could pull him
to the top as he walked his feet up the wall. Outside the hole, he sat on the
ground catching his breath and mopping his sweaty body with his shirt before
putting it back on.

William
emptied the bucket and went back to the house as Ezra came over and looked in
the hole.

"Not
sure you're going to find water down there," he said. "But for the
hard work, you deserve a meal. We don't have much, but you're welcome to share
what we have."

Daniel
rolled down his pant-legs and shook the dirt out of the cuffs. He brushed the
dust from his cap before replacing it on his head.

"Much
obliged. I think water's close, so I'll just bunk on your porch and get it out
in the morning, unless William don't get up that early."