The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips Page A

Ban’s breath, but he knew better than to pull out his flask on my porch. My kids thought of liquor as some far-off thing from stories, and I didn’t intend to let them get a closer look.
    Still and all, they wasn’t men to let a few drinks rattle them. Walking steady, they’d taken the steps several at a time, nodded their heads politely at Leta. Long as she didn’t get within breathing distance, she wouldn’t guess a thing…or at least she wouldn’t be forced to admit she’d noticed. She said hello, then stood up from her chair, waving off Ban and Oscar’s don’t-trouble-yourselfs, and walked over to the girls. Which I thought meant she’d caught a whiff but was in a forgiving mood. She slid to the top step smooth as a leaf falling, pulling Tess toward her to smooth her hair. I’d lost track of what Oscar was saying.
    “…say Pete’s never gone see again. Blind as a mole.”
    “Thought we’d take up whatever we could for him,” Ban said.
    Pete had gone to work for DeBardeleben in Birmingham after Galloway let him go, and he’d lost his eyesight in an explosion a month or so back. There’d been some thought he might get better, and he’d had them bandaged since it happened, hoping they’d be good as new when he got unwrapped. That was the way I’d heard it anyway.
    “DeBardeleben send anybody over?”
    “Gave him and his wife nothing more than pocket change,” Oscar said. He was a block of a man, short, with arms so thick you could hardly see the elbows. His wife was bigger than three of Leta and probably couldn’t have squeezed into the rocker. I couldn’t shake the thought that he must roll into the center of the mattress every time she got into bed. Now her, she could’ve gotten the cover off the well lickety-split.
    “Yep, we ought to take up a little something for him,” I said.
    “They’re comin’ back to town next week,” Oscar said, propping his feet on the rail. “Wife’s got family here to help out. Thought we’d let you collect the money if you don’t mind. Fellas’ll feel better about you holdin’ on to it.”
    I nodded. Now, I knew Oscar’s wife hadn’t had a baby anytime recent, but I couldn’t help but think that nobody’d have noticed if she was carrying a child. She didn’t strike me as a cruel one, though. She packed a good lunch for Oscar, sometimes slipped in ginger cookies.
    Wasn’t a normal thing for me to be thinking on women. Leta was Leta, of course, and it didn’t seem right to lump her in with all the rest. The rest were made up of dresses and small hands and hair twisted into complicated knots. Ban’s wife was just his wife. Oscar’s wife—though I puzzled over the size of her—wasn’t no more than his wife. I had no notion of what went on underneath those complicated hair knots.
    “So that’s alright with you?” Oscar leaned back with his eyes closed, not even looking at me.
    I left off thinking about wives. “Yeah. Sure, I’ll take up the money.”
    We’d done it plenty of times before. None of the operators wanted to do a thing for you. Living in their big houses with maids and gardeners, cream in their coffee and roast chicken whenever they wanted, they could empty out the change in their pockets and pay a crippled man a year’s wages. But they didn’t. Could be money was a sickness that spread through their veins, but they couldn’t ever have enough. They’d let a man die from bad mine construction, with his wife and children looking forward to starving as soon as the funeral was over, and they’d no more than toss a bill or two on the coffin. Hearts choked off, no feeling at all. Like a woman who could kill her own child. We couldn’t do nothing about them. But we might could do something about her.
    The sky turned a darker and darker pink-red that night, with trees blowing toward the burning pink like they were trying to warm themselves.
    “Carried the nigger fellow to work yesterday, did you?” Ban asked.
    Crickets were