The Well

by Jack Cady

  A hand pruner, a nice tool. Tracker picked one from a rack and walked down the line. He scraped bark. Dead. He snipped top branches, went low, scraped low branches. It was all dead, no green in any of the trees, the wood brittle and turning gray. He went to the plant beds on one side. The soil was dry and cold except where moisture came through broken glass. He stirred a little of the soil with the tips of the pruners, and went for a hand rake.

  One thing you learned early in this game was the tenacity of life. Even in the middle of the most arid and terrible desert, seeds lay dormant and waiting. He’d read that wheat seeds had been uncovered in a two-thousand-year-old tomb, and some of them germinated. He didn’t know if that story was true, but he did know that seeds seven hundred years old had sprouted. Life was always just beneath the soil.

  Tracker checked his watch, sure that time was faulting against him in the same way that it had faulted against Theophilus and Vera. He should be about other business, he should be walking, trying to understand.

  He felt for the flashlight in his back pocket. One more minute or maybe two could make no difference. Rake the soil. Root with fingers at the base of plants. His hands felt like dull stumps in the freezing soil. But there was always beginning yellow or green somewhere — beneath frozen tundra, underneath salt water, flowers blooming on the edge of glaciers. Plants were the most tenacious life in the world. They had only one job, and that was to seed.

  The soil was crusted. Where it was dry the loam beneath the soil was loose. A thousand, a million webs of roots from small plants. Dead. But somewhere, surely, he would find green. He raked out ten feet of bed along one side. He checked his watch. Almost half an hour had passed. A couple more pulls with the rake and he must quit. The light was different, or else the darkness was. Was time faulting?

  The best seed, he knew, held weeds. You could never get rid of weed seed, as evidenced by the skeletal remains among the tiny jungle here. Grass, dill, as many uncultivated plants as desirable ones. He’d seen enough varieties: tangles of green and red and purple attacked with hoes, flame throwers, chemicals.

  He tasted the soil. There was no oil or chemical. Besides, no matter what the manufacturers said, the sprays never got full kill. A lot of times they did no better than ten percent.

  The grass was dead, but there was a clump he was saving back. It was gray and dead on top. Grass could survive anywhere, though, in the cracks and crevices of twenty-story buildings, in the back of pickup trucks, even once in the trunk of his car when a coiled hose had drained on seed. He raked now all around the clump, dug with clumsy fingers, reached under the soil and felt crumbling roots, then pulled it free. It came with a puff of dust. No white, no green, no yellow. The roots fell to powder as he looked past lights and through broken glass to the sky that was like ancient night. Break loose frozen soil, pound it apart, crumble it. You could see germination that water started even if it later froze. He spit on it, rolled cold and muddy particles between cold fingers.

  He frantically raked out the rest of the plant bed. He dropped the rake, turned, and thought of one last hope.

  Afternoon sun would have been more on the western bed. As he raked his breath came in an almost animal-like pant. He returned to raked-over areas, crumbled soil, dug deeper, and his breath froze in bursts against the glass panes. The soil humped and hollowed and furrowed. It remained gray, dead. He finished with the bed, wheeled and walked along all the beds, and found no life. Pressure crescendoed, flowed all over him, punished him.

  He was tired. Tired of being strong, of enduring. He wanted to give up. He sat on the edge of the plant bed, shoulders hunched and finally gave way to tears of grief and remorse. Death was failure, and failure was horror. There would be no job for him in Council Bluffs. Some other man would do that job, but it would not be the same. Who else would try the alder? Who would argue with that architect? Or argue for the right trees. He could see them already, the sweep of the dark leaves, the liquid motion and feel of alder; the straight insistence of alder that made order and sense. He was not going to get to do that job.

  He checked his watch and was furious. He was not done yet. Let time whirl, let the sky color or contort. Let the wind suck dust from the terrace to cloud an ancient cathedral sky.

  The dust around the roots had puffed. The roots themselves went up in tiny puffs. Dust. Death. Well, he was not dead, not yet, and he resolved that he would die before he would give up.

  Time to get inside. He could not feel his fingers. He shuddered and crossed the terrace as quickly as he could. Inside it was not much warmer, but at least there was no wind.

  He walked, and as he walked he searched for signs of his father.

  But keep walking. If the evil of this house wanted John Tracker alive then it meant that evil could not exist without him.

  In this house evil could be, but was not yet, John Tracker himself.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A second stream of light appears in Tracker history. Sarah Heidiger was John Tracker’s great grandmother on his father’s father’s side. Tracker legend says she was a saint, but Sarah, who was quiet, had a revolutionary source as did her daughter-in-law Vera.

  Justice, himself quiet, missed the essence of his mother and grandmother. He thought Vera was only in a line of transmission for power in the house, and he was murdered too soon after Vera’s death to rethink that.

  In those old centuries when the shy was low and there were few sounds except for the lowing of cattle and the clank of the church bell, a second revolutionary figure captured the minds of noble and peasant alike. That figure was the Virgin Mary.

  Vera rose from the revolutionary tradition of satanic rebellion. Sara rose from the revolutionary tradition of the Virgin, the last great goddess of the west.

  The patriarchy assigned the best human qualities to women. Where the Virgin was the symbol of love, fireside, hinduess, intelligence, good and the power of compassion; governance by men turned to greed, exploitation and war. Noble and peasant celebrated war, but they loved the Virgin.

  Sarah’s Catholic parents died when she was young, and she became town property in Matamom’s, Ohio. From the age of two she was raised in the kitchens of a dozen wives. In that boisterous town, families sought stability in family activity. Families overlapped. It is easy to see how Sarah thought that all children were her brothers or sisters, and that all adults were in some way her relatives.

  At age twelve she was sent to a city school run by nuns. In Presbyterian Matamom’s, this caused a town feud that lasted two generations, but the dead parents had authority in the sentiments of most people. John and Anna Heidiger had seemed decent in spite of their Pope.

  At sixteen Sarah was teaching in her first one-room schoolhouse near the site of present-day Rome, Indiana.

  At eighteen she met Johan, and did not find him peculiar because in his day he was not.

  Sarah lived as a peacemaker in the house of the Trackers until her death from diabetes at age forty-five. (Insulin would not be developed until after World War I.) Sarah bore two sons — Jude, whom she buried; Theophilus, whom she saw begin to fight for control of the house.

  There is no record of Theophilus’ reaction to Sarah’s death, but local legend says that for more than two years Johan was often found wandering in remote places. Sometimes he was sober. Sometimes he was seen working his place at three a.m. by moon and lantern light.

  Less than six hours now. John Tracker was trying to find an entry to the fourth floor, as he had been trying for nearly an hour. He opened doors and found them leading through walls to empty him back again on the second or third floor. He checked casings on the tower and found no entry. He walked, head tilted backward, trying to find the slightest crack in the ceiling that would show a trap door. He had been to the very heart of this house. Now he felt that there was no chance for him unless he went to its high
est point.

  Time was passing, the minutes jumping away. Think like a Tracker. If there was any good in this house it would be cleverly hidden. It would need to be. If any shred of mercy or rightness remained, he would only find it if he found his father. Justice must be concealed somewhere, among the tricks and the traps.

  You could look at the floors if you had some object in the periphery of your vision, something to keep you in balance so that the sky of off-white did not descend. Maybe you could look at the floors if you crawled along them, cutting down on the patterns and whirling shapes.

  It had to be in the floors. It took him only fifteen minutes more to find the entry.

  He kicked on the floor and a trap door swung open to reveal stairs. The stairs ran down, then moved in a long, gradually rising loop. They brought him to the fourth floor, where, so far as he knew, no man but Theophilus had ever been. The long well of stairs had him breathless. The deep well of his memory would not allow him to be free of his fear. He supposed it never would.

  He stepped through a doorway.

  It took several moments before he comprehended the theme of the fourth floor. He was looking at himself, and, through the shock, he was realizing how badly he looked. Oil from the subcellar was caked on his clothing; his hair was stiff with oil; his face was drawn, wrinkled not with age but anxiety and fear. He turned in a complete circle three times before he accepted where he was, and what it was. And then he froze, could make no movement for minutes. This floor, seemingly stretching beyond limits, was a chorus of mirrors, of crystal and murk. It was clear, shadowed, gray, blue, red and green; it was a symphony of reflecting surfaces where waterfalls ran down sheets of polished metal. Thawing ice floated on some pools, while other pools lay deep and silently reflecting. Cold mist drifted slowly. Ice mounted in crystal spires, dripping, rolling thin layers of water toward drains.

  It was the generators that had supported all this.

  Ceilings were mirrored in the high distance, reflecting, refracting, writing hugely perverse images of the walker below. The walls were mirrors. The floors were overlaid with thin sheets of polished steel, aluminum, bronze, copper. Water and metal, ice and glass. Here was the weight of the house; here was what justified the enormous supporting pillars, the heavy beams, the double walls. In this place steel was a plaything.

  He moved, and movement surrounded him. It danced, jigged, as mirrored surfaces reflected not only his movement but amplified ten thousand pictures of his movement. Behind him was John Tracker, before and over and beneath and beside him was John Tracker. John Tracker was being swallowed into himself.

  Light, reflected, amplified, lay against the towering ceiling. There was a breath as cold as ancient winds. Sound was like the voice of a mirror. Somewhere high and thin it seemed that the wind blew a chant. Tracker, who had never been in a medieval church, believed that he was in one now…a cathedral of glass with steel and aluminum bones. It was new as extruded metal forms, as old as the manifest echoes of lost centuries. A cathedral that held movement even when his stopped. A fleeting something was moving; quick and light, running mirthful, flicked like a shadow in the mirrors, a creature of the mirrors.

  In the center of the room an altar stood. Black reflecting glass, it towered toward other mirrors, cast fragments of black reflected like numberless eyes in the high ceilings. Around the altar the floors were etched and lay slab-like in duplicating polished surfaces, like slates that covered graves in ancient churches, shielding those with wealth who could afford burial in the stronghold against witches and demons.

  It was to the altar that the insubstantial creature fled like a sardonic imp. It was toward the altar that Tracker stumbled, trying to grab the throat of the invisible, clasping in darkness, falling against the altar to see no one but himself. Dazed and disoriented, he was captured by image, by illusion.

  He raised his head and looked at the dark altar, rising all the way to the high arc of ceiling. This had to be a cover, a façade, a shield that concealed one of the towers. Get inside, away from illusion. Enter the safe darkness of towers that hid you from light and its trickery. He searched, keeping his eyes close to the altar so that his impressions would be restricted. He knelt as if in prayer, hands searching. A section of the altar swung aside, a small trickle of water ran onto the reflecting floor and spread like a gloss.

  It was silent and dark in the tower. He stepped inside, rested. His legs were so weak he thought he would fall. He leaned against the cold stone wall and flicked on his flashlight, which threw only a dull, orange beam. He shook it and it brightened, then went to dull orange again. There was supposed to be no influence, but why should he have expected his adversary to be guilty of honor, of holding to a promise? The darkness became luminous, and then faded.

  The low orange beam of the flashlight shone on the wet steps. Tracker turned it off and slowly, reluctantly began to climb into darkness. His watch showed its luminous face, and he thought the time was up. Then he steadied his mind, added, saw that that was not yet so.

  The steps corkscrewed through a midnight dark. His steps were dragging, twice he failed to raise one foot high enough and stumbled on the edge of a step, terrified of tottering backward into the gulf. His hands could barely clasp the handrail.

  A whisper and rustle in the dark. The backs of his legs twitched. Muscular spasms worked his arms. He felt ready to black out, to tumble into the dark, circular well of stairs.

  Take a chance. He eased down, caught a step with his hand, wedged himself against the step and the wall while one hand dangled over and wedged around a bannister.

  He thought dully of Amy. He had to go on. After all, a man did not have to walk, it was not safe to walk. His hand reached the next step, clawing but tentative. Feeling with his knees, he began to crawl upward. The waterslick stairs were a cold treachery under his hands. Before him they wound into darkness. Behind him they wound like a descent into a pit.

  “Help me,” he said, and he did not know whether he was talking to Amy, or to his father. He felt the sharp edges of steps against his knees. It was becoming colder as he ascended. Slivers of ice crackled under his nails, and he reached further back into the sheltered corners of the steps, where the water was not yet frozen. A wind stirred in the stairwell. He remembered the tower. This must be the one that was a turret, and a huge tower rose from it.

  His fingers felt like the near-senseless stubs they’d been in the greenhouse. He moved them carefully, with great concentration, like the last expression of his will. They grasped, slid, clutched and found grips as the breeze changed to wind that diminished to a low howl, washed the sides of the stairwell in a whirlpool of numbing cold. It whirled under his arms to strike his sweat cold. It pressed him down as he pressed forward. Three steps from the top he broke through the vortex and the wind became a lifting force as it plucked at him, made him feel lighter, denied his weight against the now completely iced steps across which water ran in a slow trickle.

  He fought upward, gripped wall and bannister, half-raised his head like a blind and groping creature.

  And then he attained the top, fell forward. Light and wind poured over him. Moonlight, broken by clouds, touched him, departed. His mind searched for sleep, refusing to go further. But this was the turret, and there was still the tower. He struggled to get up, fell, struggled again. He was still on all fours as he crawled toward an open, wind-swept wall and hooked his frozen hands over the rimmed brickwork and pulled himself up.

  He was looking onto the river, which wound far and dark below to the horizon. It elbowed, fishhooked, made black patterns across the land; and on each side of the river were dark forests that in daylight would show the winter green of conifer. He had planted some of those trees when he was fifteen. He remembered the loamy smell of the seedlings as they were unpacked from wet burlap. Perhaps it did not matter, but surely he had planted at least some of tho
se trees. He looked up and down the river, which here and there was lighted under a glimpse of moon. His eyes watered from the wind, but his body was regaining strength and his perceptions seemed cleared by the wind.

  Over the bluff and down, he must be four hundred feet above the river. He had planted on the other side, and guessed at the once burned areas where he’d worked twenty-five years ago. The river ran around a bend. You could get away with pine on the lee side, but he would have been tempted to experiment with cypress, which could take a hell of a lot of wind and some cold.

  Cold. It was so cold. He turned back, slipped on the ice and fell. The door to the tower was straight ahead. It stood slightly open, like an invitation. He crawled to the door, reached to pull it open. He climbed through over a sill of ice, raised himself, knelt back in a squat and looked into moonlight…knelt there looking at the final, terrible human sacrifice that had not been a sufficient offering to save Theophilus Tracker.

  John Tracker looked up into the dead and at last tranquil face of his own father — Justice dead by his own father’s hand.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  John Heideger, John Tracker’s great great grandfather on his father’s father’s mother’s side, died young. Both he and his wife Anna Schmidt are an enigma. Records reveal nothing of when John and Anna appeared in Matamom’s, Ohio, except that it was shortly before the Civil War. Sarah Heideger was their only offspring. Anna died of “milk fever,” infection of the uterus and womb, shortly after giving birth. She was about nineteen.