Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(28)
At times it seemed like summer had forgotten about Alabama, but when it finally arrived it roared in with a vengeance. In just a handful of days the temperature zoomed from a cool 60 degrees to well over 90, and the sun baked the ground until it was so hot you couldn’t walk across the road without having your feet blistered.
Alabamans could generally expect a thunderstorm to pass through in the evening and cool the heat of day, but for the entire month of July there was not a drop of rain. After the first two weeks Benjamin began to draw water from the well and carry it to the fields. He climbed from the bed and started work three hours before dawn. While the sky was still too dark for a man to see where he was walking, Benjamin worked his way through the rows by counting the number of steps he’d taken. When the sun moved high in the sky he stopped carrying buckets of water and sat on the porch, but after an hour or two of rest he was back at it.
When Delia saw Benjamin nearing exhaustion, she and Isaac both began to help. They used anything that would hold water: cleaning buckets, cooking pots, jars even. Otis, whose leg was worse than ever, stayed behind to help draw water from the well and fill the jars. There were any number of times Delia was tempted to tell Benjamin that if they’d move north he could be working as a mechanic and wouldn’t have to be carrying buckets of water, but she held her tongue. When a man had that much worry strapped to his back, it seemed cruel to add another brick.
The heat of July moved into August, and still there was no rain. Twice they saw lightning flash across the sky and heard thunder boom with such ferocity it shook the house, but then there was nothing. Benjamin stood on the porch waiting and watching.
“Please, God,” he prayed, but still the rain never materialized. It was the kind of summer where rain thundered down on one farm and then bypassed the one next to it.
On a morning in late August, Benjamin lowered the bucket into the well and waited. It was several seconds before he heard the splash. The water table was low. Too low. They could live without a lot of things, but they couldn’t live without water. He dipped a tin cup into the bucket of water, took a long drink, and then poured the remainder of the water back into the well. There would be no more watering of crops.
When Delia rose that morning she found Benjamin sitting on the porch step. Seeing the sorrowful way his head was buried in his hands, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“The well’s running dry,” he said. There was no need for further explanation; anyone who lived in Grinder’s Corner knew what a dry well meant.
Once Benjamin could no longer carry water to the fields, he sat on the porch looking to the sky then looking back at the stalks of corn. They were half the size they should have been and leaning over like a man ready to die. Sometimes Benjamin prayed; other times he shouted angry curses at the God who would deny him rain.
In the third week of August it came. Benjamin was inside the house when he first heard the thunder, but by then he’d given up hoping.
“Sounds like we’re gonna get a storm,” Otis said.
Benjamin grunted. It was neither a confirmation nor denial; it was simply a grunt of annoyance. Too many times he’d been disappointed. Too many times he’d prayed for rain and gotten no answer.
“This one sounds real close,” Delia added.
Benjamin remained at the table drinking his coffee.
Moments later the downpour started.
The rain came in huge sheets of water that were too much for the baked-dry ground to absorb. A small portion soaked through, but much of it ran off and created puddles in low-lying areas. Although the downpour did little to restore the crops it replenished the well, for which Benjamin was thankful.
That summer there was no harvest. Benjamin pulled the dead corn stalks from the ground and plowed the fields under. In the years of abundance he’d set aside a bit of money, and he took it from the jar saying he was going to buy seed for the winter planting. When a look of worry settled on Delia’s face he assured her things had to get better.
“Money’s a bit tight now,” he said, “but come next summer we’ll be fine.”
Delia could no longer hold back. “Rain ain’t something you can swear to,” she said and once again brought up the thought of moving north.
Benjamin moved toward her, his expression not one of anger but resignation. He wrapped his muscular arms around her and said, “Delia, sugar, I loves you more ’n anything else in this world, but I still ain’t gonna leave here. Grinder’s Corner may not be much, but it’s where I was born and where I’m gonna die.”
When he kissed her full on the lips, Delia felt the depth of love he offered and she knew this was where she also would die. Her love for Benjamin outweighed her hatred of Grinder’s Corner.
It was the last time she ever mentioned moving.
Bad Luck Years
For the next two years bad luck clung to Grinder’s Corner like a devil with razor sharp claws. The weather was hot and dry all summer, and the rain skipped over the struggling farms like they weren’t worth wasting water on. Left with few options, a number of farmers gave up trying to scratch a living out of the dry dirt and left town. Some went west, believing Louisiana had to be better; others went north claiming that at least the mountains of Tennessee would be a bit cooler. Tom Burns, a man who’d been friends with Benjamin since they were in grade school, left town with his wife, Sarah, and all five kids but never said a word of goodbye to anyone, so there was no telling where he’d gone.