The Well and the Mine Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the world here in Carbon Hill, they said. Always heard tell that long after Pennsylvania and Virginia mines had been picked clean, Alabama would supply the world. Was hard to conjure the future by the light coming off my cap.

    Tess COAL WAS SCATTERED AROUND THE GROUND LIKE BEETLES, all shiny black shells. My hair was that color, not corn-silk yellow like Virgie’s or silver like Papa’s or dirt-road-colored like Mama’s. Coal colored.
    But there was no coal rock in our yard, only down past the chickens. They were the start of the animals, who were all in a line down the hill—chickens then Moses then Horse then smelly pigs. Then outhouse. And then creek. Our part of outside was as neat and tidy as inside the house: The yard was swept hard and smooth, a brown, still lake with rosebush islands. It wasn’t hardly ever dusty because Mama swept it every day. It shined like peanut butter when it rained.
    We’d got home from school, and Virgie’d gone straight to see if Mama needed anything. I hugged Mama then headed right to the warmer over the stove, cracking open its door to see what Mama left for us. Biscuits, still soft and warm. Mama’d always make a few too many at breakfast or lunch; they made for the best eating after school, once you ripped one apart and spread pear preserves inside. I was licking my fingers by the time I headed to the outhouse, walking a wide path around Moses, who was always sharpening her hooves to stomp me or gritting her teeth into points to snap at me. Mama nor Papa neither one would listen to me, but that cow was full of hate and vinegar. Virgie and me both knew it. Once maybe she was a good cow, pure white like her milk, but then some evil spirit came on her, eating her up inside and turning her soul black as sin. That’s when the black splotches started spreading over her hide. That cow always looked like she’d like to tear me to bits, even though without me, she wouldn’t have had a name.
    I didn’t like the outhouse. You had to hold your breath, and it was dark and my bottom was bony and might could’ve fit through the hole, I thought. (It was a two-seater, but both the holes were adult size.) Before I pulled the door open, I took a deep breath, then jumped in and hiked down my bloomers just as fast as I could, counting the whole time. I could only hold my breath up to sixty-three.
    Usually by forty, I’d finished my business, pulled out the bit of Sears Roebuck catalog I’d carried down in my pocket, and got out with a good ten seconds to go. If I could, I held my breath till I was back up by the horse instead of gulping air by the pigs.
    I was done by thirty—Aunt Celia was coming, and I didn’t want to miss seeing her spit—and I leaned down for my bloomers. But right on the seat next to me was a fat spider—not a daddy long legs or a little grass spider, but something foreign. It wasn’t like nothing I’d ever seen before, all legs and squirming body the size of a finger. I jumped up and thumped it hard, and down it went, disappearing down the hole. It made me scream, and once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I hollered and hollered, took a gulp of air, and hollered again.

    Virgie MR. DOBSON SHOWED UP AT THE DOOR, SACK OF PEARS in one hand, his straw hat in the other. He nodded at me, just a blink with his whole head.
    “Thought I’d bring your ma some pears.”
    “I’ll get her, sir.”
    Mr. Dobson stood still, like he wasn’t even breathing, except for his right foot tapping. He’d do that until Mama got to the door. He brought pears about once a week, and I always paid attention to that foot. He looked somewhere over my head, at some spot on the wall that wasn’t at all interesting, and I didn’t feel it was right to look him in the eyes when he was doing such a good job of avoiding mine. So he watched the wall and I watched his foot and it was a few seconds before I remembered I needed to run get Mama.
    She hated for us to holler for each other in