by Betty Culley
“I asked him once, and he said it’s not something you can teach.”
Lincoln shakes his head. Words fly out of his mouth.
“It’s a gift. My father and his father were some of the best dowsers around. They could find veins of water so strong a well would never run dry. That gift got passed down to your father and me.”
“But not Braggy?”
Lincoln shakes his head again.
“Braggy could never get the wood to speak. He tried and tried. Tried apple wood, pear wood, even willow. Nothing. When he turned eleven, he gave up trying. It changed his nature.”
“How?” I ask.
“Like he needed to prove himself. That’s when he got the notion of getting his picture in the paper. I think he thought if he did that, folks wouldn’t look down on him. Not that anyone does. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Braggy.”
Now I wish it had been Braggy’s picture and not mine standing by the big rock in the newspaper.
“I remember he told Mom he didn’t want a birthday cake for his eleventh birthday. He was that mad,” Lincoln added.
“What do you think the chances are that I’m a dowser?” I ask Lincoln.
There’s a long pause.
“The same chance as there is for anything. Fifty percent. Either you are or you aren’t.”
I check his face to see if he’s making a joke, but his expression is serious.
An answer that’s not exactly an answer.
“Once, James gave me a stick he was using to try to dowse and I think I felt it go up instead of down. I’m not sure, though. How would I find out for sure if I’m a dowser or not?”
Lincoln picks up the axe and wipes the blade with his shirtsleeve. I wait again.
“The only way to know is to try. If you concentrate on looking for water, the end of the stick will speak to you. It will pull downwards toward the water. The harder it pulls, the more water there is. You’ve seen that before.”
“Yes, I have. How many times did you and Dad try dowsing before the stick spoke to you?”
I hold my breath, waiting for Lincoln’s answer.
“For me, it happened the first time. My father had a dizzy spell and had to sit down. He handed me his stick and asked me to help. I didn’t have time to think.”
“And Dad?” When I let the air out of my lungs, my voice comes out in a squeak.
“The first time, your father was nerved up. He started out, then changed his mind and got back in the rig.”
“And then what happened?”
“Next time was in the middle of a drought. The family had a flock of chickens just pecking around in the dust. And a new baby. Your dad cut his branch from a tree in their yard.”
Lincoln stares ahead like he’s seeing it all happen again. I wait.
“He found a vein so strong the chickens took a bath right there in the yard, and the folks cried themselves dry.”
I tried to imagine the chickens hopping around in the water gushing out of the new well, and the family so happy they cried.
“I want to try, but I don’t want Dad to know in case I can’t do it. I think he’d feel bad. I have an idea and I need your help.”
Lincoln is silent again, studying me closely.
“Let’s hear your idea,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, wondering how it would be if I was like Braggy, the son who’d been skipped over for the gift, and if it would change my nature, too. If I’d be so mad or sad I wouldn’t want Nana’s chocolate cake with vanilla frosting for my eleventh birthday.
It takes me a while to explain. Lincoln is good at listening. It might be his turned-out ears. He doesn’t interrupt to say my idea is impossible or far-fetched. He also doesn’t say it’s sure to work.
“First thing tomorrow, Henry. All you can do is try. I’ll come up and get you and let your dad know you’re working with me.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lincoln,” I say, wondering what Dr. Miles Morgan would think about my plan for the little rock from Nottingham, England, and wishing James, with his optimism, could be there to see what happens.
For the maximum volume of water, you should lay out or dowse as large an area as possible. This is done by making a number of passes first in one direction, and then a number of passes in another direction perpendicular to the first series.
—Joseph Baum, The Beginner’s Handbook of Dowsing
THE DRILLING RIG idles at Bower One the next morning.
“I thought Henry might like coming to work with me,” Lincoln tells Mom and Dad, as if it’s any other drilling day when I’m going along to watch him operate the rig, not the day I’ll find out whether I’m a natural-born dowser. And whether my experiment works.
I follow Lincoln outside and go over to the big apple tree in front of Nana’s porch.
“Can I borrow your pocketknife?” I ask my uncle.
Lincoln gives me the knife he keeps in a pouch on his belt and looks up at the tree with me.
“This is a Baldwin apple your great-grandfather planted. They’re good winter keepers, those Baldwins.”
Some of the unpicked apples in the top branches hang on the leafless tree, frozen a muddy brown color. The bark on the trunk is thick and rough and has rows of small holes from sapsucker birds. The bark around the charred lightning strike is peeling off.
“It really should be pruned. Your grandfather was fussy about cutting out the suckers,” Lincoln adds, looking up at the overgrown tree.
I don’t need to circle the tree, because I picked my dowsing stick the day I turned ten. The branch that points toward the porch is still growing straight. The twigs that make a perfect V at the end are still even. I cut the branch about a foot above the V and show Lincoln.
“This is it. This is my stick.”
Lincoln gives me a thumbs-up.
“I see. You picked it and it picked you.”
I pat my pocket to be sure the stone is there. Then I climb up into the drilling rig next to Lincoln. On the way to town we drive by James’s empty trailer and past fields and farms.
The other equipment is already there—the tanker truck filled with water to lubricate the drill, and the backhoe to dig a runoff ditch. That is, if the drill finds water instead of just dust and we’re lucky enough to have any overflow.
Lincoln parks the drilling rig in the field next to Main Street, near the town’s dry well. I jump down from the rig with my dowsing stick. There are places near us where the soil is roughed up.
“Is this where you tried drilling yesterday?” I ask Lincoln.
“Yup, got dust,” Lincoln answers. “I tried three times. The stick said there was water each time, but maybe it was too deep for the drill to reach.”
The field is a mix of winter and spring. Patches of frozen snow lie here and there like mini-icebergs between yellow-green tufts of grass. The sun is bright but it’s cold out.
I hold the forked stick with the bottom of the Y pointing ahead and start walking, waiting for something to happen but not knowing what that something might be.
I take one small step and then another, walking in different directions the way I’ve seen my father and Lincoln do. I walk toward the places where they drilled and then in the opposite direction.
I walk slowly with my stick out in front of me, even with the ground. My palms hold the ends of the V.
Nothing happens.
“No hurry, take your time.” Lincoln stands next to the rig, watching.
I walk over the chunks of ice frozen on the ground and through small puddles. I see the school and the library in the distance, and the backs of the stores on Main Street. I forgot my hat, and my ears hurt from the cold.
I don’t feel anything. I start wondering how my nature might change if nothing happens. I look over at Lincoln. I wait.
“It’s all right, Henry. You can always try
another time.”
It feels like Lincoln is saying it’s okay to give up, that Braggy would be happy to have company in the gravel pit when I’m older. Someone to work the rock crusher while he delivers gravel.
I turn away and keep walking. I grip the dowsing stick, but it feels like any other stick I’ve ever held.
I look over at Uncle Lincoln again.
“My ears are cold. I left my hat in the rig,” I say to him.
Lincoln doesn’t answer back, Keep trying, I’ll get your hat for you.
Instead, he climbs into the driver’s side of the rig, and while I pull my hat out from under the seat where it fell, he opens his lunch bag and passes me a piece of molasses cake wrapped in wax paper. Uncle Lincoln makes the best molasses cake. It’s sticky on the outside and I lick my fingers when I’m done. He eats a piece himself, then unscrews his thermos stopper, fills the cup with coffee, and offers it to me. I take a sip. It’s hot and sweet. Uncle Lincoln likes condensed milk better than sugar in his coffee, so it’s a different kind of sweet than the cup Dad gave me after James got hurt.
Lincoln takes another piece of molasses cake from his bag, alternating sips of coffee with bites of the cake.
I open my door, step down, and slam it before I can change my mind.
I pick up my dowsing stick where I left it on the ground and head out into the field. I forgot my hat again, but I don’t go back.
The sky is blue with clouds moving across and the wind blows in my face. I remember what Lincoln said.
I think about the water.
Huge pools of fresh water running below layers of rock. Aquifers filled with water thousands of years old.
I walk and I walk. I hear the cawing of crows and see them land in a tree behind the school, black shapes filling the bare branches. I think about what’s under my feet: topsoil, sand, clay, and then the cracks in the bedrock where water flows.
Suddenly, there’s a vibration in my hands. The stick is pulling me ahead, leading me. I feel a warmth in my hands and arms, like the stick is alive. The feeling gets so strong I have to grip hard to keep it between my palms and curled fingers.
I take one more step and the stick moves sharply down toward the ground.
“Stay right there!” Lincoln yells. He’s leaning against the rig watching me. He runs over to where I’m standing and hammers a metal rod into the ground at the spot where the stick pointed down.
“Wow! I felt it. I really did,” I tell him. “It felt like the stick was showing me where to go.”
“Yes, and you paid attention,” Lincoln says.
“I kept thinking about the water like you said and then it pulled right down.”
Lincoln checks that the rod is secure in the ground and hammers it one more time.
“From how hard the stick went down, it could be a good vein of water, if we can reach it,” he says.
There isn’t anything in the book about dowsing or the book about water or the D encyclopedia that tells how it feels for the stick to come alive. I can still feel the sensation of the stick pulling me forward. I know what Lincoln meant when he said he felt like his hands and arms were extensions of the stick.
Now I also understand why Dad couldn’t describe how to do it—because what happened was almost indescribable. I don’t know if there’s a scientific explanation, but my hands were more than hands, the stick was more than a stick. It was the most amazing feeling!
Lincoln sets up the drilling rig next to the metal rod and connects the hose from the tanker truck that lubricates the drill as it rotates and pulverizes its way down. Then he digs a ditch for the runoff. Cars pull over on Main Street, and people get out and watch.
“Okay, Henry, now’s the time to try your idea.” Lincoln points to the metal drill bit at the bottom of the rig.
I take Miles Morgan’s little stone out of my pocket and kneel down next to the drill head. I’m so used to feeling the stone’s hard little shape, I think I could recognize it with my eyes closed. I put my hand under the drill and open my fingers, and the stone flies onto the bottom of the drill the same way it did onto the big rock. Metal to metal.
Lincoln waits until I move back from the drill head before he turns on the rig. I put on the ear protectors he tosses over to me. The rig is very loud, making a constant grinding noise as the drill bores into the ground.
I’ve seen enough wells drilled to know what to look for. Lincoln watches to see what kind of cuttings come up around the drill. First there’s dirt, then clay, the cuttings changing color the deeper the drill goes. Pipe after pipe is attached to the drill and pushed underground.
I watch.
Twenty feet.
Dirt.
Forty feet.
Clay.
Sixty feet.
Granite.
Eighty feet.
I see a small trickle of water. I can’t tell if it comes from the well or from the tanker truck that’s lubricating the drill. Lincoln waves and points to it, so I guess it must be coming from the well.
One hundred feet.
Water shoots out in all directions, immediately overflowing the runoff ditch. I never saw water coming so fast from a drilling site.
“It’s a gusher!” Lincoln yells over the noise of the drill.
He throws his hat in the air and doesn’t bother going after it. The people watching from Main Street are dancing around and shaking their hands over their heads.
“Wow!” is all I can say. “Wow!”
I wish Mom and Dad and Nana were here to see it, and Birdie, and especially James, and even Braggy.
“I’m gonna go down another twenty feet, just to be sure,” Lincoln says. He attaches another pipe, and it spins round and round as it pushes down. Then he goes over to where the water is still gushing, checks his watch, watches the water fill bucket after bucket, checks his watch again, and yells, “Unbelievable! The flow rate is measuring twenty-five gallons a minute!”
“Is that a lot?”
“Most I’ve seen in this area is eight gallons a minute.” Lincoln comes over and pats me on the back. “Looks like we got us another dowsing Bower boy in the family.”
“So this will be enough for the town and the school and the car wash?”
Lincoln doesn’t even pause before he answers, and he speaks as fast as I’ve ever heard him.
“Let’s just say everyone in town can take a bath every hour of every day and there will still be more than enough water. Heck, people could go through the car wash every time they drive through town, and you’d never run dry.” He adds, “While we’re out here, I’m gonna put in the pump and connect it to the old pipe so people can start using it.”
Lincoln attaches the rest of the metal casing and pours bentonite powder around the well to keep groundwater from leaching in. Then he caps the new well and connects it to the old pipes. Finally, he turns off the drill, lowers it to where I can reach it, and waves for me to come over.
I bend down next to the drill bit and feel for the stone the curator gave me. I remember where it attached to the bit, but all I feel now is the smoothness of the metal. I lie on my back under the drill and check all the surfaces. Nothing. The little stone is gone.
I check again and again. The stone Miles Morgan brought all the way across the ocean to New York City is gone. The pain comes in the left side of my chest again, and it’s sharp, like a nail poking into me.
I shake my head at Lincoln.
“Not there?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“It could’ve gotten broken up on the way down. But your idea surely worked.”
“Yes, the water came.”
Lincoln doesn’t know what Dr. Morgan said about the hardness of the water rock. If a diamond can’t scratch it, I don’t think there’s anything underground that could break up the stone. But somehow the stone found the water, or the water found t
he stone.
I push my fist into my chest, but it doesn’t make the pain go away. The little stone that fell in Nottingham was the best gift I ever got. I liked how heavy it felt in my hand. I liked watching it fly to the meteorite. Now the stone is way down in the underground aquifer, with no way for me to ever get it back.
I rub my palms where I held the stick.
I did it, I thought, when I was ten.
I’m a dowser. And I gave back the water.
And then I think, Was it me who found the water or was it the stone? Was having it in my pocket what helped me dowse? Now that the stone is gone, if I try dowsing again, will the stick still point down to the water?
A North American family of four uses about 400 gallons of water in a single day. That’s enough to fill 10 bathtubs!
—Antonia Banyard and Paula Ayer, Water Wow!
WHEN WE GET BACK to Nana’s, the house is full of people. Mrs. Kay; Mr. and Mrs. Gaucher and Fiona; the Stockfords; James’s teacher, Ms. Ouellette; and some of our neighbors from Bog Road and Chicken Street. Braggy and Mom and Dad and Birdie are there, too. I can’t think why everyone came to visit at the same time. It’s not a holiday or anyone’s birthday in the family.
There’s food on the counters and the table: all kinds of casseroles, slow cookers full of beans, part of a cooked ham on a platter, and baskets of rolls. The whole stovetop is covered with pies.
“What’s everyone doing here?” I ask Nana. “And where did all this food come from?”
“It’s the leftovers from the potluck supper they had for your family yesterday evening. Everyone understood that your parents wanted to stay close to home after the attack on the house and James’s injury, but they wanted to bring this over.” Nana points to the can with our name on it in the middle of the table. “They raised four hundred and fifteen dollars!”
I peer into the can. Through the clear plastic cover and the slit on top I can see that it’s filled right to the top with paper money.
Lincoln hasn’t moved from the doorway. He looks as surprised to see the neighbors and food as I am.
“How did the drilling go?” Nana asks Lincoln.
