Down to Earth

by Betty Culley

  “He said he was going to do that?”

  Mr. Stockford pats the top of my head lightly and laughs.

  “I’m just kidding you, but you sure look just like your grandfather when he was young. Are you going to be a dowser, too?”

  No matter how many times I’m asked that question, I’m not sure what the right answer is. Did Braggy get asked that, too, when he was my age?

  “I don’t know. I’d like to be a dowser,” I find myself saying.

  This is the first time I’ve said this to anyone. I’m surprised it makes me feel good instead of bad to say it.

  “People are always going to need water,” Mr. Stockford says, as if my answer was just what he wanted to hear.

  “Speaking of water, do you folks have a boat?” Mrs. Stockford asks me.

  “No, we don’t,” I say. “A boat? Why would we need a boat?”

  “You’re gonna need one if you intend to go down that way.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Come take a look. We saw it when we came over the hill.” Mrs. Stockford shakes her head. “It’s that bad.”

  I follow her onto the road. I hear the water before I see it. It isn’t the rapids of the Saint John River or ocean waves crashing on the rocky coast. This is a quieter, steadier noise that sounds like rain.

  Down from Bower Four, past where the people are standing, is the land for my house when I’m older, the field below the field where the big rock sits. Bower Five, which I will now need a boat to reach.

  When we get closer, I see that the road past our house is gone. Churning water courses down our sliding hill and across the road in a stream so wide I can’t even see where it ends. It’s water unlike any I’ve seen before. Not muddy at all, it runs a clear blue, but there are also swirling currents of green and yellow.

  “Stand back, kids,” a woman who lives across from James warns some small children who walk toward the water.

  “We don’t know how deep it is.”

  “Or how fast it’s running.”

  “Weird color.”

  “Is it blue or green? Or maybe yellow?”

  “Strange.”

  “Isn’t this all Bower land out here?” Mr. Ronnie’s son, Dwayne, points up the hill, then down the hill, saying the two words together. Bowerland. The way he says it makes Bowerland sound like a bad thing. He wears wire-rimmed glasses like Mr. Ronnie, and a big dog with short black-and-white hair sits by his side. When he waves his hand in the air, the dog looks up.

  “Always has been,” Mrs. Stockford says.

  “Shouldn’t we call someone?”

  “The sheriff should set up a barricade.”

  “It’s going to break up the road,” Perley Gaucher warns the crowd. He owns the town store on Main Street, and his daughter, Fiona, is in James’s class. She once bought a heart-shaped rose quartz rock from the yard sale table, and I noticed that in the sun the freckles on her face looked like constellations.

  “HAHA.” I hear Uncle Braggy’s voice. “And then the town will be buying my gravel and sand to fix it.”

  “Not exactly,” Mr. Gaucher says. “The town will be after your baby brother for diverting his runoff onto a town road.”

  “Runoff! Something more than runoff is going on here.”

  “Where’s it coming from?” a little girl asks, but no one seems to hear her.

  If you knew where to look, you could see the hatlike shape of the meteorite up on the hill. Everyone is talking or pointing or shouting, but all I hear is the unstoppable movement of water coming from the place I saw the big rock land. I need to see it up close and put my hand in it, and I walk past the grown-ups to the edge of the water.

  I kneel down and dip the tips of my fingers into the water and swish them around like I do in the bathtub. I put my fingers in my mouth. The water tastes like the big rock. Everything becomes quiet when my fingers are in the water, but when I take them out, the voices start up again behind me.

  Mom walks down the road toward the crowd, and Dad and Nana come down the hill from Bower One. Dad carries Birdie in his arms.

  All around me, the crowd talks.

  “We should call someone.”

  “Who? The game warden?”

  “Yes, it could be beavers. Maybe they flooded a stream uphill. They can do some real damage.”

  “Beavers the size of COWS.” Braggy’s voice is louder than everyone else’s. “You can look for them from the roof of my house. It’s the tallest house on the hill.”

  “Call the fire department,” Mrs. Stockford suggests.

  “The state police. They need to be informed.”

  “Yes, and maybe the department of transportation.”

  “How about the town manager?”

  “Hahaha.” Braggy snickers. “Call the coast guard. Call the US Navy. Call a lifeguard.”

  “That’s enough, Braggy.” My uncle Lincoln stands next to his younger brother. “These people have reason for concern. And so do we.”

  All of a sudden, Mom is there with me at the water. She lays her hands on top of my head. She takes a piece of my damp hair and moves it between her fingers, like she’s trying to figure something out. I stand still, at the edge of the water. When I look away from the water up Bower Hill, I see the last curve of the sun lighting up the earth. It’s only five-thirty but the sun goes down early in February. As it gets darker, I can’t see the colors in the water anymore, but I hear it rushing past at my feet.

  By the time it’s completely dark, the state police have set up floodlights and blocked off the road in both directions. Two police cars are parked at the bottom of our driveway. It’s never been this bright outside at night since the fireball flashed across the field.

  Birdie falls asleep in Dad’s arms, and he lays her down on her mattress in his and Mom’s room.

  I pour myself a glass of water and drink it down. Then I pour another glass and set it on my nightstand. The blue lights on the police cars make strange, shifting patterns across my bedroom walls.

  I’m fifty percent worrying and fifty percent excited about what it’s going to look like out there when morning comes.

  I open my window a hand’s width so I can hear the sound of the rain that’s not really rain. No one is saying what will happen if the blue moving water streaming over Bower Hill Road can’t be stopped. When he drills a well, Dad always tells people you can never have too much water, but this water can’t be controlled with a shutoff valve. So I worry that once the sun is up, we might see what too much water really looks like.

  The larger the meteoroid, the brighter the meteor. The brightest ones are known as fireballs.

  —Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest, Space Encyclopedia

  “HENRY, WAKE UP.” James is standing by my bed. “It’s crazy out there. There’s a helicopter in Nana’s yard. And it looks like a town meeting in your house. Here, your mom said to give you these.”

  He hands me a pile of folded clothes that are still warm from being next to the wood stove.

  “The newspaper people are outside ready to interview your family, but your mom said they needed to wait for you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty. Our neighbors across the road told us about the flood this morning, and Dad let me ride my bike over. I can’t believe how much water there is down there.”

  I put on the warm pants, socks, and flannel shirt. I’m still thirsty, but it’s the first time in days I’ve felt dry.

  “What’s it doing?” I ask James.

  “Still flooding the road. It’s moving really fast.”

  All I remember hearing when I woke up during the night was the sound of the water through my window. I didn’t even hear the helicopter land on top of Bower Hill.

  It does look like a town meeting in the house. There are maps spread open on th
e kitchen table. The people crowded in the kitchen have shirts and jackets that say emergency management and forest service and maine state police. The town manager is there, too, and some of our neighbors. I smell coffee and something sweet.

  “You slept well, Henry, even with all this commotion?” Mr. Emery, the town manager, asks me.

  “Yes, I think the water put me to sleep,” I say.

  I look for my coat and hat. They’re hanging by the wood stove, so they’re warm, too. Before we go outside, I pull off one of the two round magnets holding Birdie’s cloud drawing on the refrigerator. I center the remaining magnet so the picture hangs straight and put the other magnet in my front coat pocket.

  Dad says news travels fast in a small town. The gathering outside is even bigger than yesterday. Big wet flakes of snow are coming down and sticking to people’s coats and hats.

  “This is my nephew, Henry,” Braggy’s booming voice says, announcing us, “and the blond boy behind him is James LaPlante. I taught both those boys how to throw the fastest fastball you ever saw.”

  The Channel 6 Northern Maine news crew has a camera set up on the dry part of the road uphill from the flood.

  “Let’s get started now that all the Bowers are here.” A young woman directs me to where she’s lined up my father, holding Birdie, and my mother in front of the camera. The woman guides me so I’m standing next to my father.

  James goes and stands next to Mom. She’s the only mother he remembers.

  “I’m almost a Bower,” James tells the newswoman. “My father says I’m here more than I’m home. Birdie probably thinks I’m her brother, too. Right, Birdie?”

  Birdie has a doughnut in each hand. Sprinkles in one hand, chocolate frosted in the other.

  “Find ant,” Birdie says, pointing to James with the hand holding the sprinkle doughnut.

  “That’s right, Birdie. I found the antler,” James says.

  Mom puts an arm around James’s shoulders, bringing him closer to her, and the newswoman doesn’t make him move.

  I can hear the rushing of the water behind me, and all I want to do is go down there with James and look at the swirling colors.

  “It’s February seventh,” the woman says into a microphone, “and we are here with the Bower family. They live on the land where there is an unexplained flood happening here in Lowington. In fact, a road is now a stream. Let me ask you, Mr. and Mrs. Bower, how shocked are you by this flooding on your land?”

  “Shocked,” Birdie says, starting in on her sprinkle doughnut.

  “Can I say something?” I ask, and reach for the newswoman’s microphone.

  “All right.” The woman looks surprised, but she gives me the microphone. “Sure, let’s hear what young Henry Bower has to say about all of this.”

  I’ve never spoken to so many people at once or talked into a microphone before. When I start to speak, my voice is louder than I’ve ever heard it, echoing around my head. It almost seems like my voice is coming out of the microphone instead of my mouth, the microphone saying the words I hope will explain the secret.

  “Every year thousands of meteorites land on Earth. Some come from the asteroid belt, some from Mars and the moon, and some, a very rare type, from comets. I’m not sure, but I think it’s possible that a rock could come from a place no one knows about and have special powers. When a person actually sees a meteorite land, it’s called a fall. And meteorites are finders keepers. If you find one on your land, it belongs to you.”

  “Hey there, can someone tell Rock Boy we have work to do here on Earth?” a man grumbles.

  “ROCK BOY IS RIGHT!” Uncle Braggy shouts to the crowd. He is louder without a microphone than I am with one. “This boy knows more about building a stone wall than me, and that’s saying a LOT. And he’s been breaking rocks open with a sledgehammer since he was old enough to stand,” Braggy adds, exaggerating the truth more than a little.

  “I can verify that fact!” Mrs. Kay shouts from the back of the crowd. “Henry Bower is quite an expert when it comes to the identification of rocks and minerals. If he says it’s a meteorite, I believe him.”

  “Very interesting facts, Henry.” The newswoman looks annoyed and reaches for her microphone. “But maybe we can ask your parents about the flood now.”

  I gently pull the microphone back to my mouth.

  “We HAD a fall. You know the article that was in the paper? About the reward for a piece of the meteor that was seen over Northern Maine? I saw the fireball from my bedroom window three nights ago. It fell right in our field and I think it’s what’s causing the flood.”

  I hand the microphone back to the newswoman.

  The newswoman looks interested now instead of annoyed. She directs the camerawoman to start recording.

  It’s still snowing and cold enough that white puffs come out of people’s mouths when they talk. Birdie gives me the chocolate-frosted doughnut, her second favorite, with a big smile. My parents stare at me, and Mom leans toward Dad and whispers in his ear. Mr. Ronnie edges closer to the front of the crowd. His green hat, which says picker palace in black letters, is speckled with big flakes of snow, and they stick to his green-and-black-plaid wool coat. Snowflakes land on his wire-rimmed glasses and fog up the lenses.

  “How big is this rock of yours?” he asks me.

  I stretch my arms out wide.

  “Big,” I say.

  “Big hat,” Birdie says, and my father’s eyebrows go up.

  “You don’t say, Boss?” my father says.

  “It doesn’t surprise me that my nephew found one of those glow-in-the-dark rocks. He’s always got his eye out for things. But if you want to see a BIG rock”—Braggy tries to get Mr. Ronnie’s attention—“I’ve got a rock as big as a TRACTOR in my woods. Probably been there since cavemen lived here.”

  “So where’s this big rock of yours, son?” Mr. Ronnie ignores Braggy and comes right up to me.

  “I can tell you that.” Braggy is laughing before he even finishes his sentence. “Only a stone’s throw away. HAHAHA.”

  James laughs loudly at Braggy’s joke, and Mr. Ronnie cracks a tiny smile. The snow comes down harder from a white sky. Behind us, the snow falls into the moving water and disappears.

  “Henry.” James comes over to me. “Charge admission to see the rock. Just like in a museum. There’s a lot of people here. I could collect the money for you. Like you said, you found it on your land. Finders keepers.”

  Instead of answering Mr. Ronnie or James, I do something I haven’t done since I was Birdie’s age. I close my eyes and hold my breath.

  When I was little, I thought it would stop time.

  I didn’t know then that my heart kept beating and that the world outside my closed eyes continued moving.

  I held my breath on the morning of my third birthday.

  I held my breath the first time I saw the ocean.

  Now I know that as I scrunch my eyes shut and hold the air in my throat, my feet are touching an Earth that turns on its axis at more than eight hundred miles an hour. That’s faster than a 747 jet.

  There’s no on/off switch on the world like there is on my father’s drilling rig.

  If I close my eyes, the world doesn’t disappear.

  It’s impossible to stop suns and planets that have been set in motion billions of years ago.

  I can’t turn back time and unsay what I said.

  I can’t pick up the secret I put down.

  I’m getting dizzy. I can hold my breath much longer than when I was three.

  I hear people talking.

  “That child doesn’t look well.”

  “He’s the boy they keep at home.”

  “I heard he was a strange child.”

  “He’s polite, but very quiet. Not like his uncle Braggy.”

  AR-OMPHH

  All of a sudden the air is knocked out of my
lungs, and I’m lying on the ground. My eyes blink open. Birdie is sitting on my back. She must have launched herself out of Dad’s arms straight at me. She looks happy that for the first time no one pretended to fall over for her.

  Birdie’s leap also knocks the doubt from my mind.

  In its place is a new feeling. A deep pride in the meteorite.

  For coming from so far away.

  For melting the snow.

  For bringing the water.

  For showing the colors.

  For gathering the crowd.

  For making so much happen without moving an inch.

  I get to my feet with Birdie on my back.

  “I’ll show you where it fell the night it lit up the sky,” I tell the crowd.

  Meteoritic metal responds to a magnet. If much metal is present, the magnet will cling to the rock.

  —John T. Wasson, Meteorites: Their Record of Early Solar-System History

  MY USUAL PATH to the big rock is more than muddy now. My footprints fill up with water that’s clear blue with flashes of green and yellow. The soggy terrain throws me off-balance. I expect it to be firm and yet it shifts under me, as if there’s an undertow moving below. Birdie bounces herself on my back to match my lopsided steps.

  Mr. Ronnie comes up beside me and James and Birdie.

  “I gotta see this rock for myself,” he says. “Have you folks put in for that reward yet?”

  “No, we haven’t. I’m not sure we will.”

  Mr. Ronnie says something, but I don’t hear it because just then the helicopter circles over us, round and round and round. Its blades make more noise than my father’s drilling rig in full throttle.

  “WAVING ME,” Birdie shouts, pointing up at the helicopter. “WAVING ME.”

  Birdie is right. One person in the helicopter shakes both hands back and forth in front of himself down toward the crowd. He doesn’t look happy.

  Birdie holds on to my neck with one arm and waves back up at the helicopter.

  The helicopter circles a few more times and flies off downhill, following the direction of the flooded road.