“I don’t know. I imagine they would. Why wouldn’t they?”
Ned stretched and mewed, opened his eyes and puckered his lips, then was instantly asleep again. He smelled sweet and the trees stood tall and the truck jostled across furrows in the rut. Heavy clouds rimmed the northwestern distance, a warning border of bustling gray creeping into the plain sky.
“Blond Milton said him’n Sonya’d take Sonny. I tell you that? Raise him on up from here for me.”
“He did? That might help some.”
“But he’ll make Sonny what I hoped he wouldn’t be.”
“Of course he will. That’s why he wants him. That’s why they all want sons. What about Harold?”
“Harold don’t shine for him. Mom neither.”
“Well, what else can you do? You thought about that?”
Pills shunted the pain aside from her body but did nothing for her pained thoughts but slow them to a yawning pace, make them linger. The shotgun was upright between her knees and she choked the double barrels with both hands. She said, “Carry Mom to the booby hatch’n leave her on the steps, I guess. Beg Victoria’n Teardrop to take Harold in.”
Gail shook her head slowly, touched two fingers to Ned’s chest.
“Oh, god, I hope that ain’t the way it goes, Sweet Pea. I hope to hell it ain’t. I don’t believe Harold’ll be the type can hack prison.”
Ree stared ahead down the loose dirt rut while low dust dogs appeared alongside and chased the truck tires. The road was mostly straight and fairly smooth through the government trees. The truck crested a ridge and rolled downhill into a stark valley that narrowed to a springwater creek. Bluffs of dour stone shrugged above the bottoms, streaked black by ages of drip, with like boulders knocked low to the water’s edge. The bluffs kept the creek shadowed but for two hours on either side of noon. Turkey buzzards spanned their wings and wafted in patient tightening circles high above the creek bed.
“Is this where you’re takin’ me?”
“Yup. Bucket Spring. Remember Bucket Spring? The water here’s good for you.”
“That water’s colder’n hell!”
“That’s what makes it good. That’s what makes it help all your bruises’n bumps’n stuff.”
“It’s colder’n a goddam witch’s tit in there!”
“Trust me.”
Above the springhead there was a space to park, and logs pounded into the slope lengthwise made steps leading down to the clean, clean water. Where the spring boiled from the earth the water was a cool holy blue and rose to make jouncy plashes across the surface. As the water spread downstream the blue dimmed to crystal clarity and watercress grew in swaths of brilliant green along the bed. Boulders had fallen into haphazard stacks near the springhead and a few reached the pool of blue water and made angled sitting spots.
Gail helped Ree from the truck. Ree poked her way down the few dirt steps with their timber edges, leaning on the broomstick, while Gail carried Ned by the swinging handle of his carrier. They stopped on a gravel spit beside the pool.
“I’ll make us a little fire, first. For when we come back out wet. You just rest ’til I get some heat raised, hear, Sweet Pea? Then we’ll doctor you up good.”
“Okey-doke.”
“I’ll set Ned here.”
“Okey-doke.”
The water was a color Ree’d pick for the jewel in a meaningful finger ring. She leaned on her broomstick, the end sinking into gravel, zoned still by pills and staring into the pool of jewel-colored water. Where the stream ran from the pool the water was so clear she could appreciate individual rocks on the bottom, clumps of green that swayed, skittish tiny fish facing upstream.
She sat on the spit next to Ned and stared. There was a metal ladle on a rope hanging from a sapling by the springhead, a ladle the old ones still came and dipped and raised to drink from the freshest of water. At school teachers said don’t do that anymore, stuff has leaked to the heart of the earth and maybe soured even the deepest deep springs, but plenty of old ones crouched and sipped from the ladle yet. The pool of water loosed a scent, a blessed flavorful scent that folks couldn’t often resist, something in the bones and meat made them bend, drink, step out and drop into the flow.
The fire was slow in starting, but Gail fed twigs to the first tiny flicker and calmly raised a fine strapping circle of flame. The smoke bent with the breeze and trailed away downstream, low above the creek. The fire flung heat as wide as two spread arms and Ned was set where the farthest hand would be. Gail said, “On your feet, Sweet Pea. Time to get naked.”
“Other people could come here today, too, you know.”
“Oh, goodness, I sure hope not—they’ll see us both naked if they do.”
Ree stood and dropped Mamaw’s coat to the gravel spit, began to unbutton, and said, “I ain’t swam naked since I don’t know when.”
“I bet the last time was in that pond over the ridge behind Mr. Seiberling’s place. That was a purt-near perfect swimmin’ hole, back before he started runnin’ cattle and they filled it with flops.”
“Yup. That was when.”
Gail stripped to the buff quickly, then crouched to undo the laces of Ree’s boots, tugged them off and set them near the fire. Ree stood bare to the wind, looking up at the tall dour bluffs. Her many bruises were changing colors by the hour, nearly, all of them hurtful to see. Gail took her hand and they stepped into Bucket Spring, waded straddle-deep into the chill water, and shivered and clattered, looking at each other with eyes popped wide until both began to laugh. Gail led on, pulling Ree toward the deeper blue center, feet shifting in the gravel underfoot, cold numbing legs to the hips. She dropped her haunches, water rose to her neck, and she said, “Sit.”
“I already about can’t feel my legs.”
“Sit. Sit all at once’n get the shock over fast.”
Ree let herself drop into the spring, sat cross-legged on the stone bottom. She lowered her face to the water and held her breath, letting the cold embrace her knotted features and sore spots. The cold went through her like wind. When she looked up she said, “Man! It blasts the hurt right out of you!”
“Don’t it, though. Now get out’n get warm awhile. Then we do it again.”
They stepped from the spring, hands rubbing at their skin. The pink on their bodies had become red and the white become pink and ringlets of splashed hair clung to their necks. They squatted near the fire, wore coats like cloaks draped around their shoulders, leaned toward the heat and watched the flames ripple.
Gail said, “I’m gonna go home.”
“Home?”
“The trailer. Back to the trailer.”
“You are? Back? Why?”
“Ned’s gonna need more than me in this life, Ree. You had ought to know that real well yourself. Plus, you got all these troubles, and I sure shouldn’t be in the middle of ’em, not with my baby along.”
“I think most likely they’re done with me.”
“You can’t know what’s gonna happen. Me’n Ned need to get home.”
Ree threw Mamaw’s coat off, flung it at her piled clothes. She walked hunched over into the spring and fell in completely. She held her breath underwater and opened her eye and gained a clean misty view of rocks polished slick by ages and heard the murmur of a living spring in her ears, the mumbles and plops of water from forever rushing past. When she stood up, the breeze instantly made her soaked head too cold and she jumped from the spring toward the fire.
Gail said, “You’re movin’ better already.”
“I forgot where I hurt.”
“Might as well get dressed.”
“Do you really love him or somethin’?”
“I don’t know. My heart don’t exactly bust out the trumpets every time I hear his name or nothin’. Nothin’ like that—but I love Ned. I way, way love Ned.”