Aquifer: A Novel Read Free Page A

can’t give my baby away like a sack of flour.”
    “Now Valoura Sutton!” Otho sternly reprimanded. “Yer just a child yerself . . . barely fifteen. Ya know we can’t afford to feed another mouth.”
    “But Papa, it’s my baby. I’ll find a way to feed it.” Valoura begged.
    “Listen here now girl! We ain’t got much, but we got our pride. Yer with child and ya got no man to support ya. Doc here’s found a good home for the young’un and that’s whar he’s a goin’!”
    Knowing from past experience that arguing with her father would be futile, Valoura burst into tears, turned, and briskly ran back down the path to the deep blue spring.
    *
    The limestone bluff majestically rose a hundred feet above the water in the spring at its base. Above the bluff the tree-covered mountain top opened into a lush meadow. The area around the bluff was shaded by a thick forest. Valoura loved the blue spring. Ordinarily she would spend several hours a day there, thinking, dreaming, wishing, dangling her bare feet off the edge of the wooden platform into the cool water that flowed from the spring’s exit branch. Not this day, however.
    She breathlessly ran along the dirt path past the spring and then veered to the left as the path descended into the depths of the dense forest. The path wound through the trees then curved to the right and looped up the back side of the bluff. She ran up the hill, oblivious to the pain in her side and the heaving of her chest as she gasped for air.
    The trail suddenly broke out of the woods about halfway up the bluff and knifed its way across a narrow ledge traversing the bluff’s rocky face. One false step and she would plunge over the edge into the spring fifty feet below. Yet she did not slow her pace. She knew this trail well and easily crossed the bluff. On the far side the trail was again lost in the dense forest. Here, Valoura slowed her pace. The trail before her began to drop very steeply as it twisted back and forth in sharp switchbacks down the mountainside toward the spring at its base.
    Reaching the bottom of the bluff, the trail doubled back sharply to the right squeezing between the bluff wall and the water’s edge. Twenty feet ahead, a large, nearly pyramid-shaped boulder had fallen from a cleft at the base of the bluff in long forgotten eons past. The boulder had landed on its side, partially shielding the hole that it had created.
    The missing boulder left the bluff wall scarred by a gaping triangular hole forming a grotto nearly twelve feet high and extending into the bluff for about ten feet. Near the apex of the opening, the rock strata of the bluff face contained two thin horizontal veins of white limestone which subtly contrasted the surrounding greyer limestone of the bluff.
    Valoura stood panting for a moment to catch her breath outside the entrance to her place of personal refuge. She glanced across the spring at the wooden platform from which she had previously filled the water bucket. Then she entered the mini-cavern of the partially concealed grotto. In the privacy of her sanctuary she sat upon the grassy dirt floor and began to pout.
    “I’m not a child anymore,” she blurted out. “Who does Papa think he is, trying to control my life like that?” She reached her right hand into her hip pocket, pulled out a red and white plaid bandana and blew her nose. Then she drew both of her knees up and wrapped her arms about them. She lowered her head and gently bounced it several times upon her knees. “It’s my baby. He doesn’t have the right to give it away. How can he be so mean and selfish?” She then flung herself upon the grotto’s grassy floor and began to sob uncontrollably.
    *
    Doc slowly turned the DeSoto around and began to drive back down the dirt road. Armenda stepped from the screen door, letting it bang shut behind her. She slowly crossed the dusty yard to her husband. There she stood a moment, turning her head to follow the DeSoto as it lumbered