GodPretty in the Tobacco Field by Kim Michele Richardson Page A

her hands on her knees, blowing out tiny breaths. “Sister’s baby . . . the baby . . . it’s coming. C’mon, Gunnar said to fill the buckets and help me get the water up the hill. Th-them baby-buyers are up there waiting—and we still don’t have water.”
    â€œLordy-jones!” I said, feeling sick and legs filling with sap. I sat down in the field. Henny jerked on my arm. “ Come on, Roo, hurry!” she cried, shaking me out of my collapse.
    â€œRoo, you okay?” Rainey stepped forward, concerned.
    I found my legs, and we ran to Gunnar’s barn and hauled out the buckets to the pump in the side yard. After we’d filled them, Rainey toted two, and me and Henny lagged behind him carrying one each up the mountain.
    That no more than fifteen-minute walk uphill turned into thirty minutes, what with trying to keep our water from sloshing out of the buckets along the narrow rutted trails. The new baby, Rainey’s lost question, and what lay ahead kept me company.
    The hill swelled under our feet as we dragged ourselves through scents of pine, damp leaves, and ragged breaths of silence. At the first switchback we passed a shiny green station wagon with wood paneled doors parked next to the old pickup that belonged to midwife Oretta. We stopped to stare a minute and flex our hands.
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Stump over on one of the trails. I wondered if he was hunting squirrel or rabbit for his family’s supper.
    Gunnar said Mr. Stump wasn’t much of a worker, or hunter for that matter, just a blowhard mostly. Mr. Stump liked to boast that the government worked it out to let him draw the “Pappy Pay” after he groused once too often about the one-anda-half-mile hitch his kids had to walk to get to school. And when they couldn’t get a school bus to ride up his ridge, he’d flat out told them his kids weren’t going. Mr. Stump spent most of ’68 being fined, and when he didn’t pay the fines, jailed. This year the government came up with a “solution” to feed the Stump bellies and brains: During the school year Mr. Stump would get up at six to walk his children to school and then collect them at three . This made for one happy pappy, who earned just shy of three hundred a month for walking his kids to and from school and idling around moonshine stills along the way back home.
    Rainey bumped me lightly, pushing me onward.
    When we reached the Stumps’ house, Henny’s brothers and sisters were playing loudly on the long raised porch propped on stilts.
    I climbed up, stepping high over the tall weeds shooting out between each board. I set my water down near a broken porch board and the kids swarmed the bucket, cupping their hands to dip up water, slurping, splashing, and taking turns to stick their blackened feet inside.
    Baby Jane stood back from the others, wiping a puddle of worry off her face. I motioned to her. She rushed to my side. “Best get, Baby Jane.” I squeezed her shoulder and gently pushed her toward the steps. Unsure, she clutched my skirt.
    â€œGo on.” I nudged again. Reluctant, Baby Jane took off.
    Beside the ratty screen door, a man wearing glasses with a dark jacket hanging over his arm and polished black shoes and a woman wearing a yellow summer dress sat on wood crates. The woman had one of those fine city faces, like a Hollywood movie star in Rose’s magazines. She held a small green knitted blanket, her hands balling up an edge, over and over, while the man sat with one leg perched over the other, kicking at the air.
    Two bony dogs, long robbed of their tail wags, shared the shade of the porch, not bothering to rise to sniff a greeting.
    Mrs. Stump pushed open the screen door, stepped out, and clapped her hands, shooing away the noisy kids. One of the toddlers rubbed his sunken belly, crying for food. The older ones scattered off into a cluster of scraggly pine, and the