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