CHAPTER 1 "Water Calling"
TESS After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash. The back porch comes right off our kitchen, with wide gray brown boards you can lose a penny between if you’re not careful. The boards were warm with heat from the August air, but breathing was less trouble than it was during daytime. Everybody else was on the front porch after supper, so I could sit by myself, nothing but night and trees around me, a thin moon punched out of the sky. The garden smelled stronger than the left- over fried cornbread and field peas with onions. And the breeze tiptoed across the porch, carrying those smells of meals done and still to come, along with a whiff of Papa’s cigarette and snatches of talk from out front. It was the best time of the day to sit with the well, its wooden box taking up one corner of the porch and me taking up another.
I loved the well then.
I leaned against the kitchen door and looked through the wood posts of the railing, even though I couldn’t see anything but black. There weren’t clouds covering that slice of moon or the blinking stars, but they still didn’t throw enough light. The light from the kitchen door let me see to the edge of the porch. But the woman she didn’t see me, I guess. Sometimes the Hudsons down below got their drinking water here—they didn’t have their own well—and I thought it was Mrs. Hudson at first. But she was like a bird, and this was a big, solid woman, with shoulders like a man. She climbed the stairs two at a time. Then she hefted that heavy cover off the well, like a man would, with no trouble. I couldn’t see the baby at first ’cause it was underneath her coat. But she took it out, a still, little, bean-shaped bundle wrapped up like it was January.
I could have reached her in five or six steps. If I’d moved. She held the bundle like a baby for a minute, tucked under her chin like she was patting it to sleep, whispering. The blanket fell back from its head, and I saw a flash of skin. Then she tossed it in. Just like that. Not long after the splash—just a quiet, small sound—she lifted the square cover again and fit it back into its cut-out space, settling it in with careful little touches. Even with all that weight, the porch boards didn’t creak when she left. The splash wasn’t so much the sound of the baby hitting the water as it was the yelp my well made; it sounded shocked and upset knowing something inside it was awful. Wanting my help.
I felt my teeth dig into my bottom lip, maybe drawing blood, but I was quiet as a mouse and stiller than one. Mice scatter like marbles.
After I don’t know how long, Virgie pushed at the door. I knew the sound of her feet on the floorboards. I scooted up, and she poked her head out.
Virgie wore cicada shells, pinned like brooches at her collar. We used to wear them all the time, rows of them like buttons down our shirts during summer, but since she’d be going to the high school next year, she wouldn’t wear them to school no more. She’d gotten too old.
“We’re all out front—why’re you hidin’ back here?” She looked down at me, then up at the well. “I swear, you’d marry that well if it’d give you a ring.”
Beyond it was pitch. The kind of black you think you’d smash into like a wall if you were to run into it. The woman was gone.
“Some lady threw a baby down it,” I said.
Virgie looked at me some more. “Down the well?”
I nodded.
She laughed, and I knew without looking at her she was rolling her eyes. “Hush up and go inside.”
“She did!” My mouth was still the only part of me I could make work—it felt like I’d taken root in the floorboards.
“Nobody’s been near our well. Quit tellin’ stories.”
She knew I didn’t tell stories. I swallowed hard, and it loosened my feet. I pushed myself up and took a step toward the well. “She was, too! A big woman with a baby in her arms. And she threw her baby in without sayin’ a thing.” “Why would she do it with you watchin’ her?” She said it like she was grown-up, not just 14 and only five years older than me.
“She didn’t see me.” My voice was high, and my chest ached with wanting her to believe. At the well, I tried to slide the cover back, but it was too heavy. “Look in here.”
“You don’t have a lick of sense.”
“ Virgie…” I was begging.
She looked a little bit sorry, and came over to stroke my hair like Mama did when I got upset. “Were you daydreamin’? Maybe you saw somebody walk by the porch and you imagined it.”
“No. We have to look in the well.”
“How do you know it was a baby?”
“It was.”
“Was it cryin’?”
“No.”
Finally she looked worried, looking out at the night instead of looking at me. “Somebody mighta thrown some garbage or somethin’ in there outta spite. But who’d do it?”
“It wasn’t garbage. It was a baby. And I’m gone tell Papa.”
I turned and marched off toward the front porch, going back through the house with Virgie right behind me. That last week in August, the nighttime wind was enough to cool your face but not enough to carry off a day’s worth of sunshine. The sun was twice its normal size at the tail end of summer. We’d all stay outside until it was about time to go to bed. Papa and Mama were in their rockers, with Mama shelling peas and Papa smoking a cigarette. They were lit from the lights in the den— Papa was still smudged, even though he’d washed and washed his face and hands. He was bluish instead of black.
Virgie announced it before I could. “Tess says she saw somebody throw somethin’ in the well.”
Papa caught my arm and pulled me over to him. He curled one arm around my waist and set me on his lap. I reached down and felt the leather of his hand, snuggled closer to him.
“What did you see, Tessie?”
“It was a woman, Papa. And she had a baby in her arms, wrapped up, and she threw it in the well.” I spoke slowly and carefully.
Papa used his knuckle to nudge my chin up. “It’s awful dark out back. Maybe you just saw some shadows.”
I shook my head until a curl popped loose from my ribbon.
They were always coming loose. (Virgie had gotten her blond angel hair bobbed to her shoulders and she curled it like in magazines at the newsstand.)
“I saw her. I did. I was sittin’ by the door, and I was gettin’ too chilled so I was gone come in, but then I saw her walkin’ up the back road. I didn’t know her, but she was comin’ right straight here, so I sat and waited and nearly said hello to her when she got to the steps, but then she didn’t walk towards the door at all. She stopped at the well. She looked around, moved the cover, and tossed a baby in. And then she left.”
“I think maybe somebody tossed an old sack of trash or maybe a dead squirrel or somethin’ in there just for meanness,” Virgie said.
I looked straight at Papa. “I swear, it was a baby.”
“Don’t ever swear, Tess,” he said with a little shake of his head, looking back toward the dark. Two lightning bugs went off at the same time.
Mama looked puzzled, the lines in her forehead deeper than usual. “Why would she throw it in our well?” Virgie looked mad at me. “Now you’ve upset Mama.”
ALBERT I didn’t believe her when she told me. Even though her face was white as chalk and her eyes big as silver dollars. They’ve all got Leta’s eyes, wet-earth eyes. Rich like good soil. She was always a dreamer, but the girl never made up tales. Didn’t look for attention. Some girls her age did that, though. And it didn’t make no sense what she was saying. Land’s sake, no woman’d toss her baby in a well.
But Tessie kept on about it, nagging me. Not like her one bit. There was a sweetness about Tess. She liked to please, didn’t like to upset nobody. Not to say she lacked spirit. She’d bend, but that girl wouldn’t ever break.
The night she was so wrought up, I lifted the cover off and looked down in there, but she just said, no, I couldn’t see proper without any light. I ain’t never home during good daylight when I’m on the day shift, so I told her the next night I’d shine a lamp down there and we’d have a good look.
If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s shining a light in the dark. I know the dark. I’m stained with it. It’s caked permanent in the creases of my elbows, in the lines on my hands, under my fingernails. I can taste it deep down my throat and I cough it up in the middle of the night. Up in the daylight, men sort and clean the coal we bring up, picking out slate while they squint in the sun and crisp their skin, and I am no part of them. I wasn’t that much older than Tess when I started tending to the mules, getting used to hours without the sun, headed down and down and down, my boots clomping along next to the hooves. I got used to the heft of an axe and the smell of burned powder and the burn of dirt falling in my eyes and every bit of it was in pitch black with the fuzzy weak lamps on our heads and on the walls making just the slightest dent in that pitch. So you would think this one thing my baby girl asked of me, this one time she wanted me to shine my light in the dark for her, I could have done it as easy as breathing. Wouldn’t have cost me nothing but a little time. But I didn’t have it for her. Thought there wasn’t no-thing to it, no reason to give up those few precious minutes of sitting in my chair and letting the day roll off me.
‘Course then the next day afore I got home, Leta felt the bucket hit something when she was getting water to boil the corn. Pulled up the bucket, and it had a blanket in it.
LETA I thought sure we’d get sick. Can’t even think about it—the poor little thing. But in the drinking water. I waited ’til Albert came home from work. When I pulled up the blanket with the morning water, I knew Tess had been telling the truth, and we’d all ought to have known that. She’s a good girl. I didn’t let the bucket down again, just sat the blanket on the side of the well. I hurried to the store and bought a new tin bucket, too, thinking I wouldn’t want to be using that one again if the night passed like I thought it would. When the girls and Jack came home from school, I told ‘em we’d be having cornbread and milk for lunch. Couldn’t do much else with no water, and I wasn’t touching what I’d already drawn.
“ You found it didn’t you, Mama?” Tess asked. Her voice was hoarse, and she was chewing on her braid. I didn’t get on to her for it.
“Found a blanket. We’ll get it all straightened out when your Papa comes home.”
“ You believe me now, don’t you?” She seemed concerned, like I might actually still say she was making things up. I knelt down, took the braid from her mouth, and kissed her forehead— dirty already from who knows what.
“I believe you, Tessie. Get washed up for dinner.”
I poured fresh milk over dewberries for dessert. None of them complained.
With the last touches of sun in the sky, backs sore from peering in and eyes tired from squinting, we thought we’d have to find some netting. Then, when we’d lost count of how many times we’d tried, Albert pulled it up with a tiny, pale arm hanging over that tall tin bucket. It was naked, and it was a boy.
My mama died when I was four, and I remember her laying there with the blood soaking the sheets and the sweat not even dried off her face. I saw the baby she’d had die two days later, its face blue and its body shrunk like a dried peach. I’ve seen men carried home from the mines with eyes torn out and arms just about ripped clean off still hanging by pieces of skin. None if it stuck in my head like that little swollen thing that used to be a baby hanging over the side of our water bucket.
VIRGIE I thought she mAde it up at first. To feel important. Tess was the hatefulest thing when she was little. Mama would leave me watching her, and she’d wander off and I’d have to drag her back just a’screaming. The white fence around the yard had to be built to keep her in. Then she just learned to unlatch the gate. She wouldn’t mind worth a flip. And after Jack came, she didn’t ever get tired of tattling on him. But she never told lies.
She couldn’t sleep that first night, and I didn’t even say a word to her. I thought she was being silly. I lay there mad at her, listening to the sleep sounds coming from the rest of the house. Papa’s snores. Mama’s restless shifting—even in her sleep, she couldn’t be still. Jack murmuring as he rolled over. The train whistle outside. Wind against the glass panes. But no sounds from Tess. She was lying there awake just like I was, and I didn’t even say good night.
The next night, the night the baby had laid on top of our well covered in its still-damp blanket and the sheriff had come and carried it off in a basket, Tess didn’t say a word to me.
I watched her for a while, tucked into a little S with her back to me in bed, and I inched over to her, even though the pins for my curls stuck into my head when I moved.
“Tessie,” I whispered. It tickled her ear, and she hitched her shoulder up.
“What?”
“Y’alright?”
She didn’t answer me. I poked her with my big toe, aiming for the sole of her foot.
“Stop.”
I jabbed at her calf next.
“Stop it, Virgie,” she hissed. “ You’ll draw blood with that toe.”
“Roll over.”
She did, looking sleepy and put-upon. Her pretty black curls were spread over the pillow, falling into her face, too, so that she kept swatting at it. She kicked at my feet. “Keep your feet on your side.”
I slid my hand over, just touching her arm.
“Keep your hand on your side,” she whispered.
I flopped over on my back, looked at the ceiling for a while, then met her wide-open eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“I know,” she answered, and that was that.
I woke up hours later to her thrashing around, moonlight streaming through the window. She’d pulled the sheet off me and twisted our top quilt, the one with the bluebirds on it, around her like a cocoon. Her legs were flailing, and she was talking nonsense. I couldn’t make it out.
I said her name softly. “Tess, Tess, wake up.” I touched her shoulder, shook her lightly. “Tess, it’s alright. Wake up.” A little louder. Still mumbling and tossing. I felt her forehead for fever.
“Shh. You’re having a nightmare.”
She rolled to the left suddenly and, thump, she was on the floor. I lurched toward her, peering over the bed. Soon a head popped up.
“I fell out of bed,” she announced. She shifted and the moon hit her so that I saw the tears streaked down her face. I didn’t say anything.
She looked around, looked at me, looked at her empty pillow, and repeated—for no good reason— “I fell out of bed.”
My mouth started twitching then, and so did hers, and soon we were sniggering so hard we had tears rolling down our cheeks. She climbed back in bed, and we both struggled for breath.
Finally we settled down, tugging the covers back over us, burrowing down in the feathers, and I felt sleep pulling me down. “I dreamed I was in the well with him,” she whispered, but before I could answer, we were asleep.
ALBERT The thing was, you’d have to work to take the cover off the well. That cover was a square of wood no bigger across than from my elbow to my fingertips—just big enough to let the bucket go down—but it was wedged tight into its slot. I’d sawed it out of the center of the wooden piece that made the well top, before I nailed the top onto the wooden sides, so the cover always fit snug. Rain blowing on it over the years had warped it, making it mighty hard to pry out, especially on muggy days. Plus it was heavy, thick pine, unwieldy enough to make Leta gasp when she moved it, strong as she is for a woman. You had to grab it just right, wedge your fingers underneath, and lift in one great pull. And I worried that only somebody who’d seen us do it, who knew how it worked would be able to get it off in one tug. Wouldn’t be no spur of the moment thing.
TESS I missed my well. There wasn’t much space in the house for five people, even when one of them was as small as Jack. At the front of the house was the sitting room on one side, with a door leading out to the porch; the bedroom where Virgie and I slept was on the other side, with another door to the porch. Our bedroom connected to Mama and Papa’s bedroom through a big, open space with no door—from our pillows we could see just their heads, small and still against the big curlicued headboard at night—and off from their bedroom was the dining room connected to the kitchen. Five rooms for five people. The two fireplaces, one in each bedroom, shared a chimney, and we closed the doors during the winter so only the bedrooms stayed warm. No use wastin’ heat, Mama would say as she went around tugging doors shut, them scraping against the frames before they clicked, shiiii-shunk. Jack got his own bed because he was the boy, but it was just a pallet near the fireplace. Ours was a feather bed like Mama and Papa’s. Not from our chickens— Grandpa Tobin made it for Mama when she got married. I felt sorry for those hens, naked and cold and wanting to curl up with us in their stolen clothes.
But, still and all, Jack had his own place. Mama had her rosebushes. Virgie took off for long walks in the woods. Papa had the mines...even though he wasn’t really alone there and sometimes walls fell in and killed bushels of men. He still had a place that was separate. And I had my well.
The well was really only a planked-in holeful of creek—a part you could keep and watch and have, like a June bug on a string. Underground, a little stream trickled into the well, stayed awhile, and went on its way, but you could pull up a bucket of that stream anytime you wanted. After sunset, the back porch was quiet and closed in by trees; the sounds of frogs and crickets reminded me of when I stayed too late swimming and had to run back for supper. Of course, I couldn’t swim in the well water, but sometimes I could draw up a bucket and take a swallow straight from it, even though Mama told me it wasn’t right to drink from something that hung where bugs could land and crawl on it. (I saw flies land on the tea pitcher sometimes when we’d forget to lay the cloth back over it, but Mama’d just wipe it off and still pour from it. But that was inside and different somehow.) She always poured the water from the tall, narrow well bucket to the inside bucket, shorter and squatter, and only from there would it splash into our washbowls and pitchers and cooking pots. But I’d take long, cool mouthfuls at night, then dump the rest back into the well’s black mouth.
I was the only girl who would swim in the swimming hole, and first all the boys went off for a while, telling me they’d never come back if I was gone be mucking around, but they did. Papa didn’t like me swimmin’ with them, but I started taking Jack with me, and that made him feel better. Jack’d play with the boys if they were around his age, and I’d stay separate, seeing how deep I could dive, pushing my arms back and forth through the water to make butterfly wings, letting my hair swirl around me and pretending I was a sea witch with seaweed hair.
But you couldn’t go to the creek just anytime. The well was always there, waiting. I could smell the water in it, and I knew that at the bottom it was cool with slippery moss like on creek rocks. I used to stare down it and imagine that we might scoop up mermaids or talking fish with the bathwater.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
After the dead baby, I didn’t like to stare down there anymore. I didn’t think about talking fish. I thought about the nightmares. They started with me diving down underwater with my eyes open, and then I’d see a baby reaching for me. I was running out of breath, but I couldn’t swim up because the baby’s hands were in my hair, and I couldn’t move him. I couldn’t see his face at first, but when he lifted his head, I could see he had black holes where his eyes should be. It was the first nightmare I could ever remember when I woke up. And I’d remember it all day long until I fell asleep the next night.
VIRGIE Papa said it was an abomination what that woman did. That God would judge her. But I wondered did that woman think she couldn’t scare up enough food for another lunch, and with the others barefoot and winter coming, this would be the better way. Or did he just cry and cry until she thought her head would burst? Was it that she couldn’t handle it anymore, that this was the fifth or the sixth or the tenth little one underfoot and it was more than she could stand?
I wondered did Mama ever stand by the well and think how her life could be easier.
TESS Nobody talked much at supper that night. Mainly the forks and knifes went clank, clank. Then there’d be chewing, tea-swallowing sounds, a little smacking from Jack.
Then Mama’d say, “Don’t smack your food, Jack.” Then clank, clank. Good yellow squash and sugar snap peas and some fried ham and biscuits. We hadn’t had ham for months and we didn’t even have to kill a pig, Mama said. She told us to tell the Hudsons thank you when we saw them.
Finally, Papa wiped his mouth. He was always the first one finished. “Enjoyed it, Leta.”
We all echoed him, telling Mama how good it was. She smiled and said “thank you” as fast and soft as she could. Then she looked at my plate and frowned. “You’re not eatin’ much, Tessie.”
“You still upset?” asked Papa.
I didn’t know how to answer that. “Just not too hungry.” “You’re leavin’ your ham on your plate?” asked Jack, sounding like it was the same as taking my head off and leaving it there.
“’Course not,” I said. I started to nibble on the ham again. You didn’t leave anything on your plate.
“Don’t know why a baby in the well’s got anything to do with eatin’ ham,” he muttered.
“ You shouldn’t talk about the poor thing like that, Jack,” said Mama. “It was a child, same as you or Virgie or Tess.” Papa put his hand on mine, the one that wasn’t holding my fork. “Tessie, you got every right to be upset. Must’ve been a shock to you. Still is. It don’t matter about the ham.”
“I’ll eat it,” said Jack.
I kicked at him under the table. “Not if I eat it myself, you little pig.”
But that kick didn’t have much feeling behind it; I only managed it out of habit. I couldn’t get worked up over Jack being a bottomless pit. I knew Papa was feeling guilty. Mama, too. Wasn’t no reason to—I knew they didn’t have space in their heads to be thinking on babies being in the well.
“I’m gettin’ better ‘bout it,” I told Papa.
“I heard you tossin’ in your sleep,” Mama said. “ You were whimperin’ like a baby.”
I put my fork down. “Just bad dreams,” I said.
“Aren’t y’all thinking about it?” Virgie asked, looking back and forth from Mama to Papa. “’Bout who did it? Why she’d do it?” Mama and Papa looked at each other but didn’t really answer. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up my fork again, even if
Jack did get to eat my ham. Mama noticed that I’d wiped my mouth and given up.
“Sure you don’t want her ham, Albert?” asked Mama. Papa shook his head and flicked his hand toward Jack. “Go on then, Jack,” she said.
“I can’t imagine,” Virgie said, as Jack forked my ham.
“But eat your squash,” Mama said to me.
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