The Well and the Mine Read Online Free Page B

the feel of it. You feel a good dough in the tips of your fingers—when you need to add more milk, when to throw in more flour. It’s gotta be soft like a child’s cheek, but not so dry it’ll crack. I never even looked as I poured in flour and milk at the same time, tossed in a pinch of baking soda, salt, cut in the lard.
    I threw the biscuit circles in the iron skillet and set ’em in the door of the stove. Ten minutes. Lay a couple of slices of ham in another skillet—the Hudsons had brought us a part of their pig. Not much left, but enough for everybody to have some to go with their biscuits. A jar of pear preserves on the table, slab of fresh-made butter. The children didn’t smear it on their bread like they used to before they started churning it, so it lasted longer. From the back of the cupboard, I took a jar of honey. Albert saw it, and his eyes, blue like robins’ eggs, lit up.
    “Thought we were out.”
    “Just told them that.” Honey was too precious to have it dripping on them from head to toe after one piece of toast. Albert loved it.
    We sat there, not touching, as he sipped his coffee. “I heard Henry Harken’s boy is sweet on Virgie.”
    “Ain’t they all?” he answered me. “You’d swear that girl was walkin’ an inch off the ground. Pretty as a picture.”
    We didn’t ever mention Virgie being beautiful, partly because we didn’t want Tess to feel like she was any less beautiful, and partly because we didn’t want Virgie getting a swelled head. Sometimes it was hard to ignore, though, especially since she was getting older. I’d often look over to tell her to fetch something for me, and she’d just take my breath away, like fireworks or fresh snow. She never fit in a town where everything was covered in a layer of black dust.
    “You’re gone have to beat the boys off with a stick soon,” I said.
    “Likely.”
    I looked at Albert, with his lovely eyes, his lined face pale from lack of sunlight, his jaw still crooked where it had been shattered. I looked at my own hands, always cracked and dry from doing dishes, and thought of my tired face, leathery from too much sun.
    “How’d we make her?” I asked, half to myself.
    “Looks just like you did,” he answered immediately, talking around his cup. “Ain’t no surprise.”
    I pointed at his right eye, gone weak from a stray rock in a cave-in. It looked normal, but he saw less and less out of it each year. “You done lost your memory, well as your sight.” I looked to check for the girls, then kissed him quickly on the forehead. He smiled.
    I took out the biscuits, forking two on his plate. He smashed the butter into a pool of honey as it streamed down on his dish. He scooped a forkful of the golden stuff on top of a biscuit half as I put out plates for the children and slid the biscuits onto a plate in the middle of the table. I covered them with a towel to keep them warm.
    “Not gone eat with me?” he asked.
    “I’ll eat with them,” I said.
    The rooster crowed, and Albert gobbled down his second biscuit, using the sorghum syrup on it instead of the honey. He wanted to stretch that honey out for another few weeks. I took his plate from him, waited for him to drain his coffee, and set the dishes in the basin. He pecked my cheek, looking out the window behind me at the sky. “Not gone have time to do the milkin’ today, Leta-ree. Promise I’ll make it out in time tomorrow.”
    “I don’t mind,” I said. “Lord knows I’m down there with the rest of the animals anyway.” He did the milking most mornings, knowing that I didn’t enjoy it. Not many men did the milking before they headed to the mines.
    I could hear the girls stirring, and they’d wake Jack so I wouldn’t have to. That boy could sleep through a cyclone, even if he was swirling around in it. I could do the milking and feeding and get the eggs before the children left for school.
    Before I got out the door, Virgie called to me, sitting on the floor