by Betty Culley
“Yeah, I’d like to see what the big rock looks like from the sky,” I agree, watching out the window with James until it’s too dark for us to see anything except the glow of the lights and people-shaped shadows passing back and forth in front of them.
I hope the water doesn’t get too high in the basement, since Mom keeps her canning jars on shelves down there, but I’m even more worried that the water will flood the ground around the meteorite and I won’t be able to see it or find it anymore.
The M encyclopedia has stories about meteorites that burned the trees around them as they landed, and meteorites that crashed into people’s cars, but nothing about a rock that caused a flood.
There are billions of galaxies. Did the stone come from a watery galaxy, full of colors, and is it bringing the water to make itself feel at home, the way I brought my pillow with me to Nana’s house? If that’s true, how much water will it take for the rock to feel at home here on Bower Hill Road?
The largest meteorite “in captivity,” Ahnighito, is so heavy that it is supported by six pillars that go down to bedrock.
—Ashton Applewhite, American Museum of Natural History: The Ultimate Guide
THE SUN RISES in the east coming up Bower Hill, and as the sky lightens, Mom and Dad and James and Birdie and I walk down to the house. James’s father called this morning to say school was canceled because of the flooding. Mom said James could stay with us while Wendell was working at the mill. Nana’s knees are aching, so she rests at home. For once, Birdie doesn’t ask anyone to carry her. She walks down the hill by herself, dragging her quilt behind her on the ground. No one reminds her to pick it up.
“Go home,” Birdie tells us. “Get Lilygirl.”
We stop at the concrete barricades the National Guard set up. The house is gone. Where our house once stood is water as far as you can see. In the churning water, boards and shingles and insulation are spinning downstream. A few inches of rust-colored chimney stick out, and more chimney bricks lie along the new muddy banks of the stream. Yellow and green currents shimmer where the sun shines on the fast-moving water. Bower Four and Bower Five, the land for my house when I’m older, are now a cascading stream of color and the wreckage from our house.
“Is the house really gone?” I ask. I know what I’m seeing, but it’s still hard to believe. Mom stands very still beside me.
“Yes.” She puts a hand on my shoulder, and it feels like she’s steadying herself.
“Is the garden gone?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“The blackberry patch?”
“Yes.”
“My stone wall?” We both look in the same direction.
“Yes,” we say at the same time.
“Sing, Mama.” Birdie pulls on Mom’s coat sleeve.
“Sing what?” Mom asks her.
“ ‘Moon River,’ ” Birdie says.
“Oh my. All right, Birdie.” Mom’s true songbird of a voice softly sings one of Birdie’s favorite bedtime songs.
When Mom stops singing, she picks up a small, round stone, reaches her arm over the barricade, and lets the pebble fall into the water. The stone immediately sinks out of sight. Mom sits down on the ground and covers her eyes with her hands. Dad walks back and forth, back and forth, next to the water.
“Part of the house is still there,” I say to Mom. “It’s just underwater.”
“Peekaboo, Mama.” Birdie laughs and covers her own eyes with her hands. “Peekaboo me.”
Mom doesn’t answer.
James gathers pebbles in a pile and tries to hit the sticking-out chimney with them. He makes a pile of stones for Birdie. The first one she throws bounces off the barricade, and the second one hits one of the National Guardsmen on his boot. He jumps to the side.
“Good shot, Birdie,” James cheers, no matter what she hits.
“Henry.” James winds up to throw another pebble. “You get to live on top of the hill now. Even higher than Braggy and Lincoln’s houses. And you’ll have your own stream to swim in. Maybe we could build a raft. See, Birdie”—James points out in front of us—“you have a stream now.”
“Go swim,” Birdie says.
“It’s too cold to swim now, but if I brought my fishing rod, we could fish for treasure from your house! What do you think, Birdie?”
“Get Lilygirl.” Birdie suddenly remembers her duck.
I know I have to think fast before she starts crying again.
“Birdie, maybe Lilygirl is swimming. We can watch the water and see if we see her. Then we can pull her out.”
Birdie stares at me, and her mouth opens. I gesture to James to say something.
“That’s right,” James quickly agrees. “Ducks can swim! I’m gonna keep my eye on the water, and if I see Lilygirl, I’ll lean over and grab her by the beak! What do you think she’d say about that? ‘Quackety quack’?”
James squeezes his lips to make the quacking sound, and Birdie laughs in spite of herself.
I’m grateful to James, but my eyes and mind are divided. Fifty percent thinking about Mom sitting so still on the ground and Lilygirl and our house and fifty percent thinking about the big rock.
“What about the meteorite? Can you still see it?” I ask one of the National Guard officers.
She brings her binoculars up to her eyes.
“I believe it’s still visible. Here, take a look.”
I never looked through binoculars before. They make everything bigger and sharper. The meteorite looks so close in the lens of the binoculars, I feel like I can reach out and touch it. It’s unchanged—sitting shiny and black in its crater. If I turned the binoculars around, would the rock see me as clearly as I see it?
“I’m very sorry,” the woman says to us. “We tried to bulldoze trenches to divert the water away from the house, but they kept overflowing. We also laid sandbags around the house, but the water just surged over them.”
“We thank you for trying, and for all your hard work. This water is not like any I’ve seen before,” Dad says.
I hold the binoculars up to my face again. Something I didn’t see before moves behind the rock. It’s just for a second, and the sun hasn’t completely risen, but I only know one person with a green-and-black-plaid coat like that.
“That’s for sure. We’re also getting reports of water levels dropping in local wells. That’s unusual for this time of year—”
I interrupt her.
“Can you please let me past? I have to go to the rock. I know the way and I promise I’ll be careful.”
“Is that safe?” Dad asks the woman.
“Yes, there’s a solid path uphill from the water. And I’ll keep my eyes on the boy,” she says.
I give the heavy binoculars back to the woman and make my way around the barricades.
I wish I still had the binoculars. It’s amazing how you can see faraway things right in front of you. It’s like having the eyesight of an eagle or a hawk. As I get closer to the rock, I hear a tap-tap-tapping noise. Its rhythm sounds like the big redheaded woodpeckers that peck at tree bark looking for ants. They tap for a while, take a break, then start up again.
Mr. Ronnie, in his green-and-black-plaid coat, is on his knees behind the meteorite. He has a long chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, and he’s striking the top of the chisel with the hammer against the side of the big rock. His eyeglasses are all the way down his nose, and his hat is almost off his head.
“STOP!” I yell. “STOP RIGHT NOW. What are you doing? Leave the stone alone.”
Mr. Ronnie is so startled he drops his tools with a loud clank. He pushes his glasses up and pulls his hat down.
“Calm down, son, no harm done. I’m just trying to get a little piece, a little souvenir. Is that a problem?”
“I said you need to STOP.”
I lean over to check what Mr. Ronnie did to the mete
orite.
“See?” He points to a few silver streaks on the shiny black surface. “I can’t even chip off a rat toenail’s worth. It’s harder than hell. This thing is evil. They should have a reward for getting rid of it.”
“EVIL? The rock isn’t evil. How can a rock be evil?”
“Look, young man, if you haven’t noticed, pieces of your house are floating down to who knows where. What’s left of it is underwater and the road is wrecked. What else but this rock caused the flooding and made the town well go dry? If the water doesn’t come back downtown, all the stores are gonna go out of business. Including my Picker Palace. Do you call that good?”
“No, I don’t think those things are good. But the rock doesn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“You bet it’s not good.” Mr. Ronnie shakes his finger at me. “I hear you Bowers have all the water you need. My son, Dwayne, says it’s not a coincidence the rock is here on this hill full of water witchers. Are you one of those water witchers yourself?”
This is the second time in three days I’ve been asked if I can dowse, and I’m no closer to knowing the answer to the question.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never tried.”
“I thought it was in the blood. How you gonna know if you never try?” Mr. Ronnie gathers up his tools. “I suppose you folks still haven’t put in for the reward? Must be nice to afford to let it rot there. All I’m saying is you and your family better watch out or you’ll be sorry. People are talking.”
This time he doesn’t wait for me to answer. I would have explained that rocks crumble and break or erode but they don’t rot. That Braggy has Bower blood but he can’t dowse. Mr. Ronnie turns and makes his way past the water pulsing out of the ground.
I take a big breath and hold it until Mr. Ronnie is out of sight. I think about our house flooding and the town well going dry, Birdie’s openmouthed crying for Lilygirl, and Mom covering her eyes. And the pieces of our house floating in the water. It makes me mad that the best thing that ever happened, the meteorite landing, also made the worst thing happen.
Then I get an idea.
I run up to Braggy’s shed and find his longest pry bar. The only person who ever tried to move the rock is Birdie with her hands, and she’s two years old. I’ve got a hard metal lever that’s taller than I am, and the ground is soft now.
At the edge of the field I find a rock big enough for a fulcrum to rest the lever on. I’ve seen Dad move big rocks this way, using one rock and a lever to move another rock.
If I can tip the rock forward and set it rolling down the hill, the meteorite might land downhill from Bower Four. It could have Bower Five. Or Bower Six. It could draw up the water from there instead. Then maybe the water over our house would dry up.
If the stone-wall basement is still standing, Dad could build a new house on it, in the same place as the old one.
If the water dried up now, maybe we’d find some of the things that hadn’t gotten washed away yet.
If the bottom surface of the rock is flat and just resting on the ground, and the soil is soft, maybe I can wedge the lever right underneath it.
That’s a lot of ifs.
On the uphill side of the meteorite, at the bottom edge of the rock, I push the heavy pry bar into the ground until it won’t go in any more. I position the fulcrum rock under the bar.
I lean on the top end of the pry bar as hard as I can, hanging my whole weight on it, half on either side. From where I hang, I see the meteorite upside down—the beautiful black shiny crust and the glints of metal. It seems like the rock is waiting to see what I’ll do next. I feel how patient it is.
Will I push it down the hill?
Will I pull the pry bar out and bang it on the meteorite like Mr. Ronnie did with his chisel and hammer?
It might have waited more than a million human lifetimes before it slowed down enough to land.
It was struck before, by whatever made the thumbprint-shaped marks on its surface.
Still hanging there, I think about the night I watched it arc across the field, and how it lay there in the snow the next morning. My anger leaves me, and as it does, I feel the bar loosen. I get off and pull it out of the ground. I don’t know what I was thinking. It would probably take a lever as tall as a pine tree to move the rock.
I need a better plan.
“Sorry,” I say, touching the side of the meteorite, “I know you’re not evil. I know you didn’t mean to flood our house.”
I notice an empty Styrofoam cup Mr. Ronnie must have dropped lying near the rock, and I fill it with water right where it comes out of the ground. Holding the cup of water in one hand and the pry bar in the other, I make my way back up the hill to Braggy’s shed and then toward Nana’s.
James and Birdie are still throwing pebbles into the water where our house was. I hear James’s excited cheers from across the field. I don’t think James gets it from Wendell, his dad, but I wonder if James’s mother was also a one hundred percent kind of person.
Nana is napping in the recliner in the living room, snoring with each in-and-out breath.
I pour the water from the Styrofoam cup into a canning jar and set it on the counter. I want to see what happens if I shine a bright light into the jar of water. Will I be able to see any other colors besides yellow and green? I go looking for a flashlight in the garage, which is attached to the house by a covered walkway.
While I’m searching, the house phone rings once, twice, three times. I wait to see if Nana gets it, but it keeps ringing four, five, six times, so I run back into the house. Nana is slowly pushing herself up out of the recliner.
“Would you get that, dear? My hip bone is sore this morning.”
I run to the phone that hangs from the wall next to the front door.
“Hello?”
“I would like to speak with a Mr. Henry Bower. Is this his home?” It’s a man’s voice that speaks with an accent I’ve never heard before.
“Yes, that’s me. I’m Henry Bower. But this is my nana’s home you called.”
“Ah, quite a few Bowers listed for your town. No one answered at the other residences.”
“My uncles Lincoln and Braggy are outside with the National Guard, and my house is underwater.”
“Well, that illuminates the situation. May I introduce myself? I am Dr. Miles Morgan, curator of the meteorite collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Central Park West at Seventy-Ninth Street, to be exact.”
“Where the Ahnighito meteorite is? The one the Inuit called the Tent?”
“That is correct. You have visited the museum?”
“No, but I saw pictures in the M encyclopedia, and I read about how the Ahnighito is almost as old as the sun, and that it fell in Greenland. Parts of it look like our rock.”
“Your M encyclopedia is quite informative. And that brings me to the purpose of this call. I was made aware of your find by a colleague of mine, who read about it this morning in an article the New York Times reprinted from your local paper.”
“It’s in our paper?”
“Oh yes, the headline says, and I quote, ‘Homeschooled Maine Rock Boy Finds Possible Meteorite in Back Field.’ Fortunately, they provided the name of that Maine rock boy, one Henry Bower. Did you not see this story?”
“No, my uncle Braggy gets the paper and shares it with us when he’s done,” I explain. “Were you there when Admiral Peary brought the Ahnighito to the museum?”
“I am considered elderly by some, but that occurred long before I was born. However, I have been closely acquainted with it for more than half my mortal life.”
It isn’t just the accent. The words the man uses are different from what I’m used to hearing. They remind me of some of the long words I’ve seen in the old red books Birdie takes out of the library.
“Can I ask you a question? And I don’t mean to
sound rude.”
“Certainly. I am not one to be easily offended,” the man answers in his odd way.
“Does everyone in New York City talk like you?”
Dr. Miles Morgan laughs so long and hard that I’m not sure if I said something funny or if I’ve insulted him. Finally, he stops laughing.
“I was born and raised in the United Kingdom, in the town of Nottingham. So no, I am most certainly not a representative of the natural dialect of New York City, if there is one. But I did not call to waste your time, Henry Bower. I rang to communicate that the entire team of the meteoritic collection here at the natural history museum, myself included, naturally, appreciates your apparent consideration for this unique find and will employ all that we have to offer in the way of science and information.”
“You read about the reward?” I ask Miles Morgan.
“Yes, I did. I read that a substantial sum is being offered by a private collector.”
“But you want to take the meteorite for your museum?”
“Not at all. I’m a scientist, not a thief.”
“Would you like to come see it?” I ask, surprising myself.
There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, and while I wait for Dr. Miles Morgan to answer, I turn toward the kitchen just in time to see Nana swallow the last of the water from the canning jar I set by the sink.
Earth is nicknamed the Blue Planet because seventy percent of it is covered in water.
—Kimberly M. Hutmacher, Studying Our Earth, Inside and Out
I DROP THE PHONE and it spins around on the waxed linoleum kitchen floor.
“Nana! That was my rock water. The water coming out of the ground.”
“Oh, gracious, I thought it tasted different. Sweet and salty at the same time. Reminds me of when my father collected sap and we boiled our tea with it. I’m afraid I didn’t leave any for you, Henry. Drank it right down.”
“That’s okay, Nana, I can get more, but I don’t know if it’s good for you to drink.”
