The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

clothes.
    “What about Tom Olsen?” I said. I fingered the cicada lightly, checking if it was stuck good.
    “Don’t you think he’s absolutely divine?”
    “Ella…” She thought most boys were absolutely divine.
    “Well, the first basketball game’s at the end of the month, and I’ll go with Hanson, ’course.” He’d been calling on her for six months—her parents weren’t as strict as Mama and Papa, so boys had been walking her home ever since she turned fourteen. “I want his cousin to take Lois, and Tom could take you. We could the six of us go together.”
    “With the boys?”
    “Yes,” she said patiently, hands still on her hips. “That’s what makes it six. With no boys, it’d be three.”
    “Likely that’s the highest math she can do,” said Lois.
    “I don’t think Papa would let me.”
    “You could ask him,” pointed out Lois. “It’d just be as friends. And all six of us would be together the whole time.”
    “Hanson’ll drive us. He’s got loan of a car while his brother’s working in Kentucky.”
    I’d never ridden in a car with anybody but Papa. He got the first car in Carbon Hill, and the five years since then, he’d been carting everybody around. Relatives needing to go to the doctor, men riding to work with him, shopping trips to Birmingham. Sometimes he’d get woken up in the middle of the night to go get the doctor if somebody was having a baby. I think Mama’d ridden in the car twice other than going to church on Sundays—every time she was about to get to go somewhere, somebody squeezed in and took her place. And she’d stay there at home, smiling at us and waving from the porch as we left.

    Leta I WISHED THEY HADN’T’VE COME ON CANNING DAY. I know word about the baby must’ve spread all over town before the sheriff even carried him off, but somehow the women all waited a week to drop by. And then all at once, like locusts.
    Midway through the morning, with two pots boiling on the stove and the fire going strong, even with the windows open, my face was red with the heat. No matter how often I swiped at my forehead, I could feel the salty drops running down my cheeks and upper lip. My dress was wet under the arms. I was pouring more sugar into the pickles when I heard a shout at the front door.
    “You home, Leta?”
    “Come back to the kitchen!” I recognized the voice—Charlene Burch from down the hill. Small woman, big eyes, voice like train brakes squealing. She stepped into the kitchen, nose lifted.
    “How many jars of pickles you done?”
    “Six quarts so far. Second batch has another day to go. Just got sugar left.” I moved to the first bowl, the smell of vinegar sharp and strong, and carried it with both hands out to the back porch. I poured the vinegar off, then came back in and started to carry the second bowl out to do the same.
    Charlene had set down at the table and was biting into a sliced pear from a bowl. It’d been soaking in sugar overnight, and she took tiny, mousy bites like it was a piece of chocolate. “Didn’t grow cucumbers this year,” she said. “Kids ain’t too fond of ’em.”
    “The boys doin’ good?” I asked, calling over my shoulder as I stepped on the porch. “Jolie gettin’ on well at the high school?” Jolie was their oldest, a year ahead of Virgie.
    “They’re all just fine. Our youngest is startin’ a paper route next week—bring in a little extra. Yours gettin’ on?”
    “All right as rain.” I poured the sugar on the cucumbers, covered ’em with a towel. Water in the reservoir was hot enough to start on the preserves.
    “Not upset by the poor baby?”
    I filled up the pot halfway, ladling water slowly. “Not so’s you’d notice. Tess was real shook up at first.”
    “She saw the woman—that’s what I heard at the post office.”
    “Just shadows.”
    “Who do you think would do it?”
    “Can’t say.” I leaned over and pulled the sugared pears away from her.
    “Think it might have been