“Look,” I said, holding it out to Father. “This is broken! All the other rocks we found were round river rocks. Our blasting broke something!”
“Yes.” Father took the splinter from me. “But where’s the water?”
Timmy and I left Father looking at the well and went out to the foot of the field where the fire had been. I located the rock where I had buried the box. It was only a couple of inches down—barely covered. I scratched it out for him. “Wait,” I said, “it’s all black. Let me wipe it off first.” I rubbed it in a sand patch and the black all rubbed off except in the deep lines of the design that covered all sides of it. I put it in his eager hands.
He flipped it around until it fitted his two hands with his thumbs touching in front. Then I guess he must have thought at it, because he didn’t do anything else but all at once it opened, cleanly, from his thumbs up.
He sat there on a rock in the sun and felt the things that were in the box. I couldn’t tell you what any of them were except what looked like a piece of ribbon, and a withered flower. He finally closed the box. He slid to his knees beside the rock and hid his face on his arms. He sat there a long time. When he finally lifted his face, it was dry, but his sleeves were wet. I’ve seen Mama’s sleeves like that after she has looked at things in the little black trunk of hers.
“Will you put it back in the ground?” he asked. “There is no place for it in the house. It will be safe here.”
So I buried the box again and we went back to the house.
Father had dug a little, but he said, “It’s no use. The blast loosened the ground all around and it won’t even hold the shape of a well any more.”
We talked off and on all day about where to go from here, moneyless and perilously short of provisions. Mama wanted so much to go back to our old home that she couldn’t talk about it, but Father wanted to go on, pushing West again, I wanted to stay where we were—with plenty of water. I wanted to see that tide of Time sweep one century away and start another across Desolation Valley! There would be a sight for you!
We began to pack that afternoon because the barrels were emptying fast and the pools were damp, curling cakes of mud in the hot sun. All we could take was what we could load on the hayrack. Father had traded the wagon we came West in for farm machinery and a set of washtubs. We’d have to leave the machinery either to rust there or for us to come back for.
Mama took Merry that evening and climbed the hill to the little grave under the scrub oak. She sat there a long time with her back to the sun, her wistful face in the shadow. She came back in silence, Merry heavily sleepy in her arms.
After we had gone to bed, Timmy groped for my wrist. “You do have a satellite to your earth, don’t you?” he asked. His question was without words.
“A satellite?” Someone turned restlessly on the big bed when I hissed my question.
“Yes,” he answered. “A smaller world that goes around and is bright at night.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “You mean the moon. Yes, we have a moon but it’s not very bright now. There was only a sliver showing just after sunset.” I felt Timmy sag. “Why?”
“We can do large things with sunlight and moonlight together,” came his answer. “I hoped that at sunrise tomorrow—”
“At sunrise tomorrow, we’ll be finishing our packing,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
“Then I must do without,” he went on, not hearing me. “Barney, if I am Called, will you keep my cahilla until someone asks for it? If they ask, it is my People. Then they will know I am gone.”
“Called?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“As the baby was,” he said softly. “Called back into the Presence from which we came. If I must lift with my own strength alone, I may not have enough, so will you keep my cahilla?’
“Yes,” I promised, not knowing what he was talking about. “I’ll keep it.”
“Good. Sleep well,” he said, and again waking went out of me like a lamp blown out.
All night long I dreamed of storms and earthquakes and floods and tornadoes all going past me—fast! Then I was lying half awake, afraid to open my eyes for fear some of my dreaming might be true. And suddenly, it was!
I clutched my pallet as the floor humped, snapping and groaning, and flopped flat again. I heard our breakfast pots and pans banging on the shelf and then falling with a clatter. Mama called, her voice heavy with sleep and fear, “James! James!”
I reached for Timmy, but the floor humped again and dust rolled in through the pale squares of the windows and I coughed as I came to my knees. There was a crash of something heavy falling on the roof and rolling off. And a sharp hissing sound. Timmy wasn’t in bed. Father was trying to find his shoes. The hissing noise got louder and louder until it was a burbling roar. Then there was a rumble and something banged the front of the house so hard I heard the porch splinter. Then there was a lot of silence.
I crept on all fours across the floor. Where was Timmy? I could see the front door hanging at a crazy angle on one hinge. I crept toward it.
My hands splashed! I paused, confused, and started on again. I was crawling in water! “Father!” My voice was a croak from the dust and shock. “Father! It’s water!”
And Father was suddenly there, lifting me to my feet. We stumbled together to the front door. There was a huge slab of rock poking a hole in the siding of the house, crushing the broken porch under its weight. We edged around it, ankle-deep in water, and saw in the gray light of early dawn our whole front yard awash from hill to porch. Where the well had been was a moving hump of water that worked away busily, becoming larger and larger as we watched.
“Water!” said Father. “The water has broken through!”
“Where’s Timmy?” I said. “Where’s Timmy?” I yelled and started to splash out into the yard.
“Watch out!” warned Father. “It’s dangerous! All this rock came out of there!” We skirted the front yard searching the surface of the rising water, thinking every shadow might be Timmy.
We found him on the far side of the house, floating quietly, face up in a rising pool of water, his face a bleeding mass of mud and raw flesh.
I reached him first, floundering through the water to him. I lifted his shoulders and tried to see in the dawn light if he was still breathing. Father reached us and we lifted Timmy to dry land.
“He’s alive!” said Father. “His face—it’s just the scabs scraped off.”
“Help me get him in the house,” I said, beginning to lift him.
“Better be the barn,” said Father. “The water’s still rising.” It had crept up to us already and seeped under Timmy again. We carried him to the barn and I stayed with him while Father went back for Merry and Mama.
It was lucky that most of our things had been packed on the hayrack the night before. After Mama, a shawl thrown over her nightgown and all our day clothes grabbed up in her arms, came wading out with Father, who was carrying Merry and our lamp, I gave Timmy into her care and went back with Father again and again to finish emptying the cabin of our possessions.
Already the huge rock had gone on down through the porch and disappeared into the growing pond of water in the front yard. The house was dipping to the weight of our steps as though it might float off the minute we left. Father got a rope from the wagon and tied it through the broken corner of the house and tethered it to the barn. “No use losing the lumber if we don’t have to,” he said.
By the time the sun was fully up, the house was floating off its foundation rocks. There was a pond filling all the house yard, back and front, extending along the hill, up to the dipping place, and turning into a narrow stream going the other way, following the hill for a while, then dividing our dying orchard and flowing down toward the dry river bed. Father and I pulled the house slowly over toward the barn until it grated solid ground again.
Mama had cleaned Timmy up. He didn’t seem to be hurt except for his face and shoulder being peeled raw. She put olive oil on him
again and used one of Merry’s petticoats to bandage his face. He lay deeply unconscious all of that day while we watched the miracle of water growing in a dry land. The pond finally didn’t grow any wider, but the stream widened and deepened, taking three of our dead trees down to the river. The water was clearing now and was deep enough over the spring that it didn’t bubble any more that we could see. There was only a shivering of the surface so that circles ran out to the edge of the pond, one after another.
Father went down with a bucket and brought it back brimming over. We drank the cold, cold water and Mama made a pack to put on Timmy’s head.
Timmy stirred but he didn’t waken. It wasn’t until evening, when we were settling down to a scratch-meal in the barn, that we began to realize what had happened.
“We have water!” Father cried suddenly. “Streams in the desert!”
“It’s an artesian well, isn’t it!” I asked. “Like at Las Lomitas? It’ll go on flowing from here on out, won’t it?”
“That remains to be seen,” Father said. “But it looks like a good one. Tomorrow I must ride to Tolliver’s Wells and tell them we have water. They must be almost out by now!”
“Then we don’t have to move?” I asked.
“Not as long as we have water,” said Father. “I wonder if we have growing time enough to put in a kitchen garden—”
I turned quickly. Timmy was moving. His hands were on the bandage, exploring it cautiously.
“Timmy.” I reached for his wrist. “It’s all right, Timmy. You just got peeled raw. We had to bandage you again.”
“The—the water—” His voice was barely audible.
“It’s all over the place!” I said. “It’s floated the house off the foundations and you should see the pond! And the stream! And it’s cold!”
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “I want a drink, please.”
He drained the cup of cold water and his lips turned upward in a ghost of a smile. “Shall waters break out!”
“Plenty of water,” I laughed. Then I sobered. “What were you doing out in it, anyway?”
Mama and Father were sitting on the floor beside us now.
“I had to lift the dirt out,” he said, touching my wrist. “All night I lifted. It was hard to hold back the loose dirt so it wouldn’t slide back into the hole. I sat on the porch and lifted the dirt until the rock was there.” He sighed and was silent for a minute. “I was not sure I had strength enough. The rock was cracked and I could feel the water pushing, hard, hard, under. I had to break the rock enough to let the water start through. It wouldn’t break! I called on the Power again and tried and tried. Finally a piece came loose and flew up. The force of the water—it was like— like—blasting. I had no strength left. I went unconscious.”
“You dug all that out alone!” Father took one of Timmy’s hands and looked at the smooth palm.
“We do not always have to touch to lift and break,” said Timmy. “But to do it for long and heavy takes much strength.” His head rolled weakly.
“Thank you, Timothy,” said Father. “Thank you for the well.”
~ * ~
So that’s why we didn’t move. That’s why Promise Pond is here to keep the ranch green. That’s why this isn’t Fool’s Acres any more but Full Acres. That’s why Cahilla Creek puzzles people who try to make it Spanish. Even Father doesn’t know why Timmy and I named the stream Cahilla. The pond had almost swallowed up the little box before we remembered it.
That’s why the main road across Desolation Valley goes through our ranch now for the sweetest, coldest water in the Territory. That’s why our big new house is built among the young black walnut and weeping willow trees that surround the pond. That’s why it has geraniums windowsill high along one wall. That’s why our orchard has begun to bear enough to start being a cash crop.
And that’s why, too, that one day a wagon coming from the far side of Desolation Valley made camp on the camping grounds below the pond.
We went down to see the people after supper to exchange news. Timmy’s eyes were open now, but only light came into them, not enough to see by.
The lady of the wagon tried not to look at the deep scars on the side of Timmy’s face as her man and we men talked together. She listened a little too openly to Timmy’s part of the conversation and said softly to Mama, her whisper spraying juicily, “He your boy?”
“Yes, our boy,” said Mama, “but not born to us.”
“Oh,” said the woman. “I thought he talked kinda foreign.” Her voice was critical. “Seems like we’re gettin’ overrun with foreigners. Like that sassy girl in Margin.”
“Oh?” Mama fished Merry out from under the wagon by her dress tail.
“Yes,” said the woman. “She talks foreign too, though they say not as much as she used to. Oh, them foreigners are smart enough! Her aunt says she was sick and had to learn to talk all over again, that’s why she sounds like that.” The woman leaned confidingly toward Mama, lowering her voice. “But I heard in a roundabout way that there’s something queer about that girl. I don’t think she’s really their niece. I think she came from somewhere else. I think she’s really a foreigner!”
“Oh?” said Mama, quite unimpressed and a little bored.
“They say she does funny things and Heaven knows her name’s funny enough. I ask you! Doesn’t the way these foreigners push themselves in—”
“Where did your folks come from?” asked Mama, vexed by the voice the lady used for “foreigner.”
The lady reddened. “I’m native born!” she said, tossing her head. “Just because my parents— It isn’t as though England was—” She pinched her lips together. “Abigail Johnson for a name is a far cry from Marnie Lytha Something-or-other!”
“Lytha!” I heard Timmy’s cry without words. Lytha? He stumbled toward the woman, for once his feet unsure. She put out a hasty hand to fend him off and her face drew up with distaste.
“Watch out!” she cried sharply. “Watch where you’re going!”
“He’s blind,” Mama said softly.
“Oh,” the woman reddened again. “Oh, well—”
“Did you say you knew a girl named Lytha?” asked Timmy faintly.
“Well, I never did have much to do with her,” said the woman, unsure of herself. “I saw her a time or two—”
Timmy’s fingers went out to touch her wrist and she jerked back as though burned. “I’m sorry,” said Timmy. “Where are you coming from?”
“Margin,” said the woman. “We been there a couple of months shoeing the horses and blacksmithing some.”
“Margin,” said Timmy, his hands shaking a little as he turned away. “Thanks.”
“Well, you’re welcome, I guess,” snapped the woman. She turned back to Mama, who was looking after us, puzzled. “Now all the new dresses have—”
“I couldn’t see,” whispered Timmy to me as we moved off through the green grass and willows to the orchard. “She wouldn’t let me touch her. How far is Margin?”
“Two days across Desolation Valley,” I said, bubbling with excitement. “It’s a mining town in the hills over there. Their main road comes from the other side.”
“Two days!” Timmy stopped and clung to a small tree. “Only two days away all this time!”
“It might not be your Lytha,” I warned. “It could be one of us. I’ve heard some of the wildest names! Pioneering seems to addle people’s naming sense.”
“I’ll call,” said Timmy, his face rapt. “I’ll call and when she answers—!”
“If she hears you,” I said, knowing his calling wouldn’t be aloud and would take little notice of the distance to Margin. “Maybe she thinks everyone is dead like you did. Maybe she won’t think of listening.”
“She will think often of the Home,” said Timmy firmly, “and when she does, she will hear me. I will start now.” And he threaded his way expertly through the walnuts and willows by the pond.
I looked after him and sighed. I wanted him happ
y and if it was his Lytha, I wanted them together again. But, if he called and called again and got no answer—
I slid to a seat on a rock by the pond, thinking again of the little lake we were planning where we would have fish and maybe a boat— I dabbled my hand in the cold water and thought, this was dust before Timmy came. He was stubborn enough to make the stream break through.
“If Timmy calls,” I told a little bird balancing suddenly on a twig, bobbing over the water, “someone will answer!”
<
~ * ~
Interlude: Mark & Meris 4
Meris leaned back with a sigh. “Well!” she said, “thank goodness! I never would have rested easy again if I hadn’t found out! But after Timmy found The People, surely his eyes—”
Ingathering - The Complete People Stories Page 50