Timmy sat down slowly on the spot where the pen had been. He scraped the dirt into a heap, then set it to one side and scraped again. Seeing that he was absorbed for a while, I took Merry in to be cleaned up for dinner and came back later to see what Timmy was doing. He was still scraping and had quite a hole by now, but the dirt was stacked too close so that it kept sliding back into the hole. I scraped it all away from the edge, then took his right arm and said, "Time to eat, Timmy. Come on." He ate and went back to the hole he had started. Seeing that he meant to go on digging, I gave him a big old spoon Merry sometimes played with and a knife with a broken blade, to save his hands.
All afternoon he dug with the tools and scooped the dirt out. And dug again. By evening he had enlarged the hole until he was sitting in it, shoulder deep.
Mama stood on the porch, sagging under the weight of Merry who was astride her hip and said, "He's ruining the front lawn." Then she laughed. "Front lawn! Ruining it!" And she laughed again, just this side of tears.
Later that evening, when what cooling-off ever came was coming over the ranch, we heard the jingle of harness and then the creak of the hayrack and the plop of horses' hooves in the dust.
Father was home! We ran to meet him at our gate, suddenly conscious of how out-of-step everything had been without him. I opened the gate and dragged the four strands wide to let the wagon through.
Father's face was dust-coated and the dust did not crease into smiles for us. His hugs were almost desperate. I looked into the back of the wagon, as he and Mama murmured together. Only half the barrels were filled.
"Didn't we have enough money?" I asked, wondering how people could insist on hard metal in exchange for life.
"They didn't have water enough," said Father. "Others were waiting, too. This is the last they can let us have."
We took care of the horses but left the water barrels on the wagon. That was as good a place as any and the shelter of the barn would keep it-well, not cool maybe, but below the boiling point.
It wasn't until we started back to the house that we thought of Timmy. We saw a head rising from the hole Timmy was digging and Father drew back his foot to
keep it from being covered with a handful of dirt.
"What's going on?" he asked, letting his tiredness and discouragement sharpen his voice.
"Timmy's digging," I said, stating the obvious, which was all I could do.
"Can't he find a better place than that?" And Father stomped into the house. I called Timmy and helped him up out of the hole. He was dirt-covered from head to heels and Father was almost through with his supper before I got Timmy cleaned up enough to come inside. We sat around the table, not even reading, and talked. Timmy sat close to me, his fingers on my wrist.
"Maybe the ponds will fill a little while we're using up this water," said Mama, hopelessly.
Father was silent and I stared at the table, seeing the buckets of water Prince and Nig had sucked up so quickly that evening.
"We'd better be deciding where to go," said Father. "When the water's all gone-" His face shut down, bleak and still, and he opened the Bible at random, missing our marker by half the book. He looked down and read, "'For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.'" He clapped the book shut and sat, his elbows on each side of the book, his face buried in his two hands, this last rubbing of salt in the would almost too much to bear.
I touched Timmy and we crept to bed.
I woke in the night, hearing a noise. My hand went up to the cot and I struggled upright. Timmy was gone. I scrambled to the door and looked out. Timmy was in the hole, digging. At least I guess he was. There was a scraping sound for a while then a-a wad of dirt would sail slowly up out of the hole and fall far enough from the edge that it couldn't run down in again. I watched the dirt sail up twice more, then there was a clatter and three big rocks sailed up. They hovered a little above the mound of dirt then thumped down-one of them on my bare foot.
I was hopping around, nursing my foot in my hands, when I looked up and saw Father standing stern and tall on the porch.
"What's going on?" He repeated his earlier question. The sound of digging below stopped. So did my breath for a moment.
"Timmy's digging," I said, as I had before.
"At night? What for?" Father asked.
"He can't see, night or light," I said, "but I don't know why he's digging."
"Get him out of there," said Father. "This is no time for nonsense."
I went to the edge of the hole. Timmy's face was a pale blur below. "He's too far down," I said. "I'll need a ladder."
"He got down there," said Father unreasonably, "let him get out!"
"Timmy!" I called down to him. "Father says come up!"
There was a hesitating scuffle, then Timmy came up! Straight up! As though something were lifting him! He came straight up out of the hole and hovered as the rocks had, then he moved through the air and landed on the porch so close to Father that he stumbled back a couple of steps.
"Father!" My voice shook with terror.
Father turned and went into the house. He lighted the lamp, the upflare of the flame before he put the chimney on showed the deep furrows down his cheeks. I prodded Timmy and we sat on the bench across the table from Father.
"Why is he digging?" Father asked again. "Since he responds to you, ask him."
I reached out, half afraid, and touched Timmy's wrist.
"Why are you digging?" I asked. "Father wants to know."
Timmy's mouth moved and he seemed to be trying different words with his lips. Then he smiled, the first truly smile I'd ever seen on his face. "'Shall waters break out and streams in the desert,'" he said happily.
"That's no answer!" Father exclaimed, stung by having those unfitting words flung back at him. "No more digging. Tell him so."
I felt Timmy's wrist throb protestingly and his face turned to me, troubled.
"Why no digging? What harm's he doing?" My voice sounded strange in my own ears and the pit of my stomach was ice. For the first time in my life I was
standing up to Father! That didn't shake me as much as the fact that for the first time in my life I was seriously questioning his judgment.
"No digging because I said no digging!" said Father, anger whitening his face, his fists clenching on the table.
"Father," I swallowed with difficulty, "I think Timmy's looking for water. He-he touched water before he started digging. He felt it. We-we went all over the place before he settled on where he's digging. Father, what if he's a-a dowser? What if he knows where water is? He's different-"
I was afraid to look at Father. I kept my eyes on my own hand where Timmy's fingers rested on my wrist.
"Maybe if we helped him dig-" I faltered and stopped, seeing the stones come up and hover and fall. "He has only Merry's spoon and an old knife."
"And he dug that deep!" thundered Father.
"Yes," I said. "All by himself."
"Nonsense!" Father's voice was flat. "There's no water anywhere around here. You saw me digging for water for the stock. We're not in Las Lomitas. There will be no more digging."
"Why not!" I was standing now, my own fists on the table as I leaned forward. I could feel my eyes blaze as Father's do sometimes. "What harm is he doing? What's wrong with his keeping busy while we sit around waiting to dry up and blow away? What's wrong with hoping!"
Father and I glared at each other until his eyes dropped. Then mine filled with tears and I dropped back on the bench and buried my face in my arms. I cried as if I were no older than Merry. My chest was heavy with sorrow for this first real anger I had ever felt toward Father, with the shouting and the glaring, and especially for his eyes falling before mine.
Then I felt his hand heavy on my shoulder. He had circled the table to me. "Go to bed now," he said quietly. "Tomorrow is another day."
"Oh, Father!" I turned and clung to his waist, my face tight against him, his hand on my head. Then I got up and took Timmy
back to the cot and we went to bed again.
Next morning, as though it was our usual task, Father got out the shovels and rigged up a bucket on a rope and he and I and Timmy worked in the well. We called it a well now, instead of a hole, maybe to bolster our hopes.
By evening we had it down a good twelve feet, still not finding much except hard, packed-down river silt and an occasional clump of round river rocks. Our ladder was barely long enough to help us scramble up out and the edges of the hole were crumbly and sifted off under the weight of our knees.
I climbed out. Father set the bucket aside and eased his palms against his hips. Timmy was still in the well, kneeling and feeling the bottom.
"Timmy!" I called. "Come on up. Time to quit!" His face turned up to me but still he knelt there and I found myself gingerly groping for the first rung of the ladder below the rim of the well.
"Timmy wants me to look at something," I said up to Father's questioning face. I climbed down and knelt by Timmy. My hands followed his tracing hands and I looked up and said, "Father!" with such desolation in my voice that he edged over the rim and came down, too.
We traced it again and again. There was solid rock, no matter which way we brushed the dirt, no matter how far we poked into the sides of the well. We were down to bedrock. We were stopped.
We climbed soberly up out of the well. Father boosted me up over the rim and I braced myself and gave him a hand up. Timmy came up. There was no jarring of his feet on the ladder, but he came up. I didn't look at him.
The three of us stood there, ankle-deep in dust. Then Timmy put his hands out, one hand to Father's shoulder and one to mine. " 'Shall waters break out and streams in the desert,'" he said carefully and emphatically.
"Parrot!" said Father bitterly, turning away.
"If the water is under the stone!" I cried. "Father, we blasted out the mesquite stumps in the far pasture. Can't we blast the stone-"
Father's steps were long and swinging as he hurried to the barn. "I haven't
ever done this except with stumps," he said. He sent Mama and Merry out behind the barn. He made Timmy and me stay away as he worked in the bottom of the well, then he scrambled up the ladder and I ran out to help pull it up out of the well and we all retreated behind the barn, too.
Timmy clung to my wrist and when the blast came, he cried out something I couldn't understand and wouldn't come with us back to the well. He crouched behind the barn, his face to his knees, his hands clasped over the top of his head.
We looked at the well. It was a dimple in the front yard. The sides had caved in. There was nothing to show for all our labor but the stacked-up dirt beside the dimple, our ladder, and a bucket with a rope tied to the bale. We watched as clod broke loose at the top of the dimple and started a trickle of dirt as it rolled dustily down into the hole.
"'And streams in the desert,'" said Father, turning away.
I picked up the bucket, dumped out a splinter of stone, and put the bucket carefully on the edge of the porch.
"Supper," said Mama quietly, sagging under Merry's weight,
I went and got Timmy. He came willingly enough. He paused by the dimple in the front yard, his hand on my wrist, then went with me into the shadowy cabin.
After supper I brought our evening books to the table, but Timmy put out seeking hands and gathered them to him. He put both hands, lapping over each other, across the top of the stack and leaned his chin on them, his face below the bandage thoughtful and still.
"I have words enough now," he said slowly. "I have been learning them as fast as I could. Maybe I will not have them always right, but I must talk now. You must not go away, because there is water." Father closed his astonished mouth and said wearily, "So you have been making fools of us all this time!"
Timmy's fingers went to my wrist in the pause that followed Father's words. "I have not made fools of you," Timmy went on. "I could not speak to anyone but Barney without words, and I must touch him to tell and to understand. I had to wait to learn your words. It is a new language."
"Where are you from?" I asked eagerly, pulling the patient cork out of my curiosity. "How did you get out there in the pasture? What is in the-" Just in time I remembered that I was the only one who knew about the charred box.
"My cahilla!" cried Timmy-then he shook his head at me and addressed himself to Father. "I'm not sure how to tell you so you will believe. I don't know how far your knowledge-"
"Father's smarter than anyone in the whole Territory!" I cried.
"The Territory-" Timmy paused, measuring Territory. "I was thinking of your world-this world-"
"There are other planets-" I repeated Father's puzzling words.
"Then you do know other planets," said Timmy. "Do you-" he groped for a word. "Do you transport yourself and things in the sky?"
Father stirred. "Do we have flying machines?" he asked.
"No, not yet. We have balloons-"
Timmy's fingers were on my wrist again. He sighed. "Then I must just tell and if you do not know, you must believe only because I tell. I tell only to make you know there is water and you must stay.
"My world is another planet. It was another planet. It is broken in space now, all to pieces, shaking and roaring and fire-and all gone." His blind face looked on desolation and his lips tightened. I felt hairs crisp along my neck. As long as he touched my wrist I could see! I couldn't tell you what all I saw because lots of it had no words I knew to put to it, but I saw!
"We had ships for going in Space," he said. I saw them, needlesharp and shining, pointing at the sky and the heavy red-lit clouds. "We went into space before our Home broke. Our Home! Our-Home." His voice broke and he leaned his cheek on the stack of books. Then he straightened again.
"We came to your world. We did not know of it before. We came far, far. At
the last we came too fast. We are not Space travelers. The big ship that found your world got too hot. We had to leave it in our life-slips, each by himself. The life-slips got hot, too. I was burning! I lost control of my life-slip. I fell-" He put his hands to his bandages. "I think maybe I will never see this new world."
"Then there are others, like you, here on Earth," said Father slowly.
"Unless they all died in the landing," said Timmy. "There were many on the big ship."
"I saw little things shoot off the big thing!" I cried, excited. "I thought they were pieces breaking off only they-they went instead of falling!"
"Praise to the Presence, the Name, and the Power!" said Timmy, his right hand sketching his sign in the air, then dropping to my wrist again.
"Maybe some still live. Maybe my family. Maybe Lytha-"
I stared, fascinated, as I saw Lytha, dark hair swinging, smiling back over her shoulder, her arms full of flowers whose centers glowed like little lights. Daggone, I thought, Daggone! She sure isn't his Merry!
"Your story is most interesting," said Father, "and it opens vistas we haven't begun to explore yet, but what bearing has all this on our water problem?"
"We can do things you seem not able to do," said Timmy
"You must always touch the ground to go, and lift things with tools or hands, and know only because you touch and see. We can know without touching and seeing. We can find people and metals and water-we can find almost anything that we know, if it is near us. I have not been trained to be a finder, but I have studied the feel of water and the-the-what it is made of-"
"The composition," Father supplied the word.
"The composition of water," said Timmy. "And Barney and I explored much of the farm. I found the water here by the house."
"We dug," said Father. "How far down is the water?"
"I am not trained," said Timmy humbly. "I only know it is there. It is water that you think of when you say 'Las Lomitas.' It is not a dipping place or-or a pool. It is going. It is pushing hard. It is cold." He shivered a little.
"It is probably three hundred feet down," said Father. "There has never been an artesian well
this side of the Coronas."
"It is close enough for me to find," said Timmy. "Will you wait?" "Until our water is gone," said Father. "And until we have decided where to go.
"Now it's time for bed." Father took the Bible from the stack of books. He thumbed back from our place to Psalms and read the "When I consider the heavens" one. As I listened, all at once the tight little world I knew, overtopped by the tight little Heaven I wondered about, suddenly split right down the middle and stretched and grew and filled with such a glory that I was scared and grabbed the edge of the table. If Timmy had come from another planet so far away that it wasn't even one we had a name for-! I knew that never again would my mind think it could measure the world-or my imagination, the extent of God's creation!
I was just dropping off the edge of waking after tumbling and tossing for what seemed like hours, when I heard Timmy.
"Barney," he whispered, not being able to reach my wrist.
"My cahilla-You found my cahilla?"
"Your what?" I asked, sitting up in bed and meeting his groping hands. "Oh! That box thing. Yeah, I'll get it for you in the morning."
"Not tonight?" asked Timmy, wistfully. "It is all I have left of the Home. The only personal things we had room for-"
"I can't find it tonight," I said. "I buried it by a rock. I couldn't find it in the dark. Besides, Father’d hear us go, if we tried to leave now. Go to sleep. It must be near morning."
"Oh yes," sighed Timmy, "oh, yes." And he lay back down. "Sleep well."
And I did, going out like a lamp blown out, and dreamed wild, exciting dreams
about riding astride ships that went sailless across waterless oceans of nothingness and burned with white hot fury that woke me up to full morning light and Merry bouncing happily on my stomach.
After breakfast, Mama carefully oiled Timmy's scabs again. "I'm almost out of bandages," she said.
"If you don't mind having to see," said Timmy, "don't bandage me again. Maybe the light will come through."
We went out and looked at the dimple by the porch. It had subsided farther and was a bowl-shaped place now, maybe waist-deep to me.
The People Page 16
