Night Light by Terri Blackstock Read Free Book Online

long since closed, empty of merchandise and unable to pay its employees. No, they’d first had to scout around for abandoned buildings that could be demolished for their bricks and lumber.
    Most of the men working on the well had been reluctant to use their much-needed tools on this job, unwilling to dull their sharp ax blades or break their picks hacking through layers of rock. So they’d managed to come up with several steel rods that they hammered to fracture the stone.
    It would all be worth it when they hit the water table. Doug had prayed often over the last few weeks that when that happened, the water would be clean enough for drinking — not rusty water from iron-rich earth, or sulfur-contaminated water they couldn’t drink.
    Brad thrust his shovel into the dirt and leaned on the wooden handle. Soil covered his brown skin, and he glistened with sweat. “What time is it?”
    Doug looked at his windup Timex. “One-thirty. Thirty minutes more.” He was thankful that the neighborhood men had seen the wisdom in their taking only hour-long shifts and rotating the schedule so that no one had to continually work in the hottest part of the day. Today he and Brad had started at one, and tomorrow their shift would be at two. By the weekend they’d be shoveling during the late daylight hours, when it would be cooler.
    Brad wiped the sweat off his forehead, then opened his milk jug of water. Taking a long drag, he looked up to see how much progress they’d made.
    They’d at least deepened the well by another foot. It was time to stop and lay some more bricks.
    “Hey, Dad.”
    It was Jeff’s voice, and Doug looked up to see his son’s face at the top of the hole. Relief washed through him. “Jeff, did you catch the thieves?”
    “Yeah, kind of.”
    “So you got the food back?”
    Jeff hesitated. “Well … some of it.”
    Doug braced himself. “Some of it? Why didn’t you get it all?”
    “Because they were four kids living by themselves in a hole-in-the-wall apartment. The oldest didn’t look more than nine, and the littlest was three or four. No parents. They’ve been fending for themselves. They stole to eat, Dad. I don’t really know what choice they had.”
    Doug looked at Brad. His friend rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t believe that, man. It’s a con if I ever heard one.”
    Doug agreed. He looked up at Jeff. “Son, four kids living alone would probably have starved to death. No neighbors in their right minds would let that happen.”
    “Dad, I’m telling you, they didn’t have any adults in that apartment. They said their mother took off weeks ago and never came back. The neighbors know they have a gun, so that’s probably why they haven’t bothered them. That and the fact that they can barely feed themselves, much less four more kids.”
    Their mother was probably the one who’d come up with that cockamamie story to keep from having to work hard like everybody else. Anger tightened his chest. “So are you telling me you didn’t get our food back?”
    “I got some of it, but they had already eaten some. And I didn’t want to take everything. How will they eat?”
    If Doug could have gotten out of the hole easily, he would have throttled his son. He wiped his forehead on his arm, and longed for some water. But those deadbeat kids had taken all the sterilized drinking water they had, so he hadn’t been able to bring any.
    “All right, we’ll talk about it later. For now, just help Deni get water, and as soon as it’s filtered and boiled, bring me some.”
    “Okay, Dad. But I really think we need to do something about those kids.”
    Brad picked up his jug and thrust it at Doug. “Here, drink some of mine. Our shift’ll be over before yours is boiled and cooled enough to drink.”
    Gladly, Doug accepted the jug and took a long swig.
    Above him came his son’s voice again. “Dad?”
    “I heard you, son. We’ll discuss this later. The Boxcar kids can wait. They’ve