The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [3]
The fourth bucket came up and the fifth one went down. Dusty wind flapped our shirts, skirts, and pants, making hollow flat sounds. I pressed my bandanna close to my mouth. Grit vexed my eyes, but I wanted it to. I deserved far worse for doing this to Liz.
“Air,” I said to Isaac. “Is there enough down there?”
“She’s all right.”
It had to stink down there. Anything that deep in the ground always did.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
When we were building our wood house, there was nothing better than the smell of the fresh-cut lumber. Isaac had gone all the way into the Black Hills, figuring lumber prices were better there than in Rapid City. I’d never smelled anything finer than that wood. Growing up in Louisiana, my family lived in the shack where my father had been born a slave. That shack lost its wood smell years back. When we moved to Chicago, there was nothing to smell but the sooty stink of the slaughterhouses. But our Black Hills wood was filled with a raw crispness that made a person think about the goodness of the earth. I used to put my nose right up to that lumber and fill my lungs with its smell.
Thou anointest my head with oil.
The fifth bucket came up. It wasn’t even half full. “No more,” I said to Isaac. “Please. No more.”
“All right,” Isaac said.
Bearing down, him and Mary pushed the handle up, fighting to keep it steady when it turned down. Mary’s toes curled and gripped the earth. Isaac’s face glistened with sweat.
Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus.
The top of Liz’s head showed, then her face—grayer than I had ever seen her—and finally the rest of her. There was a long, jagged rip in her left sleeve, and the hem of her pants dripped water. Her knuckles were scraped raw, and one of her toes was bleeding. Her eyes were squinted shut against the sun, but that didn’t stop the tears.
“Mama,” she said, the plank turning in the wind.
John and I reached out, caught the plank, and pulled Liz to us.
My cup runneth over.
I worked at the harness’s knot, my fingers all thumbs. When at last it came loose, me and John got her off the plank and onto the ground. Isaac and Mary let go of the handle, and it spun wildly as the plank dropped to the bottom, making a cracking splash.
Liz pressed her face into my swelled-up belly and cried. I let her. I wondered if she was thinking how she’d done this thing for us—for Mary, for John, and for her two little sisters latched in their bedroom. I wondered if she knew there was a baby inside of me needing that water too. I wondered if she’d ever forgive us. I believed that she wouldn’t.
Isaac and Mary slumped on the ground, their backs against the well, their legs out before them. Isaac glanced up at me, then looked away.
“What?” I said.
He didn’t say anything. But I knew. He would do this again to Liz. We all would. Every day until the drought broke. Or until there was no water left to scoop.
I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting to put a stop to this, wanting to say, “Isaac. We’ve got to think of something better.” But I had to save it for later. It wasn’t our way to talk over worries when the children were listening.
I pulled out my handkerchief that I kept tucked in my dress sleeve. Liz blew her nose. When she was done, Isaac got to his feet and put out his arms to her. She ran to him, and he held her high.
“You’re a DuPree, Liz,” he said. “Through and through. You too, John and Mary.”
Liz’s arms were tight around Isaac’s neck, her face pressed into his shoulder.
“She