Wish You Well by David Baldacci Page B

prayer they would. If’n the boots too big, we fill ’em with rags.”
    “They’re fine,” said Lou, though they were actually too small, pinching her feet some.
    Louisa brought over a bucket and a glass. She put the glass on the table, draped a cloth over it, and poured the milk from the bucket into it, foam bubbling up on the cloth. “Want molasses on your cornbread?” she asked. “Real good that way. Line your belly.”
    “It’s great,” gushed Oz as he swallowed the last bite of his meal and washed it down with the rest of his milk.
    Lou looked at her glass. “What’s the cloth for?”
    “Take things out the milk you don’t need in you,” answered Louisa.
    “You mean the milk’s not pasteurized?” Lou said this in such a distressed tone that Oz gaped at his empty glass, looking as though he might drop dead that very instant.
    “What’s pastures?” he asked anxiously. “Can it get me?”
    “The milk’s fine,” Louisa said in a calm tone. “I’ve had it this way all my life. And your daddy too.”
    At her words, a relieved Oz sat back and commenced breathing again. Lou sniffed at her milk, tasted it gingerly a couple of times, and then took a longer swallow.
    “I told you it was good,” Oz said. “Putting it out to pasture probably makes it taste bad, I bet.”
    Lou said, “Pasteurization is named after Louis Pasteur, the scientist who discovered a process that kills bacteria and makes milk safe to drink.”
    “I’m sure he were a smart man,” said Louisa, as she set down a bowl of cornbread and molasses in front of Lou. “But we boil the cloth in between, and we get by just fine.” The way she said this made Lou not want to wrestle the issue anymore.
    Lou took a forkful of the cornbread and molasses. Her eyes widened at the taste. “Where do you buy this?” she asked Louisa.
    “Buy what?”
    “This food. It’s really good.”
    “Told you,” said Oz again smugly.
    Louisa said, “Don’t buy it, honey. Make it.”
    “How do you do that?”
    “Show, remember? A lot better’n telling. And best way of all is doing. Now, hurry up and you get yourself together with a cow by the name of Bran. Old Bran’s got trouble you two can help Eugene fix.”
    With this enticement, Lou quickly finished her breakfast, and she and Oz hurried to the door.
    “Wait, children,” Louisa said. “Plates in the tub here, and you gonna need this.” She picked up another lantern and lit it. The smell of working kerosene filled the room.
    “This house really doesn’t have electricity?” Lou asked.
    “Know some folks down Tremont got the dang thing. It go off sometimes and they got no idea what to do with theirselves. Like they forgot how to light kerosene. Just give me a good lantern in hand and I be fine.”
    Oz and Lou carried their plates to the sink.
    “After you done in the barn, I show you the springhouse. Where we get our water. Haul it up twice a day. Be one of your chores.”
    Lou looked confused. “But you have the pump.”
    “That just for dishes and such. Need water for lots of things. Animals, washing, tool grinder, bathing. Pump ain’t got no pressure. Take you a day to fill up a good-sized lard bucket.” She smiled. “Sometimes seems we spend most our breath hauling wood and water. First ten years’a my life, I thought my name was ‘git.’ ”
    They were about to go out the door again, Lou carrying the lantern, when she stopped. “Uh, which one’s the cow barn?”
    “How’s ’bout I
show
you?”
    The air was bone-hurting cold and Lou was grateful for the thick shirt, but still wedged her bare hands under her armpits. With Louisa and her lantern leading the way, they went past the chicken coop and corrals and over to the barn, a big A-frame building with a wide set of double doors. These doors stood open and a solitary light was on inside. From the barn Lou heard the snorts and calls of animals, the shuffling of restless hoofs on dirt, and from the coop came the flapping