I’d speak secret fears into their mouths and listen to the clack of pebbles I’d toss down. And my whispers and laughs and sobbing would return, always return, back the way they came. Down and back. That was the way the words usually went with wells, down and back the way they came.
There was the Red Rock Well near the west slope. The Broken Lip by the steep shoulder. Double-Bucket and Tumbledowner, almost near Dead Man’s Peak. I must have come across over sixty wells in my summertime searches. So many wells, for some reason built and abandoned. Little circles of sky, with an outline of a boy in them.
Raise your right hand, I would holler.
Raise your right hand, the boy would grin.
• • •
I know now, but didn’t know then, how wells would sometimes talk first that way. Call out. Say hello. Ask all sorts of questions, like, what are you doing? Are you hungry? Anyone following you? Are you nine years old? What color is your mother’s hair?
And sometimes I got tired of talking to myself, so I’d answer them in turn.
I’m hunting wells. I am hungry, very hungry. No one ever follows me. I am nine years old. My mother’s hair used to be black like the night in deep winter when there are no stars you can see, just the smothering clouds.
Do you still have a house?
Yes. I do still have a house. It is not a nice house. But it is a house.
Is it your dad’s house?
Well, yes. I guess it is his house.
Is he mean to you too?
I’d look at the boy in the circle of sky looking at me and my circle of sky.
Why would a dad ever be mean?
I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? Why would a dad ever be mean?
Raise your left hand.
Raise your left hand.
Raise your right hand.
Raise your right hand.
• • •
We’re not all equal, the well called Black Brick liked to say. You should be careful.
I am always careful, I’d like to say back.
Why are you always out here talking?
Why are you?
Nothing else to do.
Exactly. Nothing else to do.
You can do what I do, but you don’t have to, you know.
I know I don’t have to, but sometimes I just do. Like now.
Nod your head.
Nod your head.
We have wells here too, talking wells, over here. There’s a scary one though. I call it Scary One. Asks a lot of questions. Not ordinary questions. Questions like it wants to learn what I’m doing and why and how. Like it wants things.
That does sound scary, I agreed with Black Brick. I might have known some wells like that. I did know wells like the Scary One, when I gave it some thought. But I also knew of other scarier things. Scarier things than silly old wells. Scarier things I didn’t like much to think about, when I’d much rather think about wells.
Anyway, I wouldn’t talk to any wells like the Scary One if I were you. Nod your head.
Nod your head.
Isn’t it time for you to go home now?
No. I don’t need to go home right now, I probably said. I don’t need to, I’m almost certain I probably said.
I don’t need to either.
I don’t need to either.
I don’t need to either.
I don’t need to either.
• • •
Not there today?
Not there today?
It was just my voice echoing and clacking and dripping into the throat of that well. I returned another day, and another, for almost a week, and was no more sound in it like there had been earlier. Nothing else came out of that one, and I thought to myself, this one might be done. That could sometimes happen with wells, that they would just be done.
So I wandered this way and that way, talking to other wells, throwing rocks at other shadowy circles of sky. Wending old hiking paths and trails my mother used to show me on that mountain. I stopped at a wildgrass spot that used to be her favorite because it overlooked our little house. I could see the crooked shingles at the base of the mountain, even some of the scratched glass of our windows.
From there I could see very well everything about that old house.
I preferred to see it from that spot and not others.
• • •
Got busy.
Got busy.
Yeah. I got busy.
Black Brick sounded different. The voice was not exactly what I expected, unless my memory was playing tricks. And Black Brick got a lot more curious. Asking questions like, what are the shape of the clouds right now? Do you always carry an umbrella? Does the wind burn and bite?
The wind? No, the wind does not burn and bite.
Oh. The wind does not burn and bite. I see.
Days started to come and go, and I don’t know why, but I decided to keep coming back to Black Brick for a while after that. I didn’t always talk, though. Some days I’d just stand at the edge and listen to it call to me. Over and over, echo and echo, like a little animal.
Are you there?
Are you there?
Are you there?
I was there, but for some reason I didn’t really feel like telling it I was there. Instead, I built a little fort just over a crest between the trunks of some twin-twisted pines, using discarded sheet metal from the Tumbledowner well. Some wood boards that used to cover part of Broken Lip made a good back wall between the trunks. Blankets, even some canned beans, from the shed behind our little house that no one would notice me taking. From up in the fort I could watch the Black Brick well, and I could even see in the distance, the broken shingles and glass of our little house like I could from the wildgrass spot. So I’d just sit there and watch and listen to the well talk to itself. Sometimes it would go silent, but when it didn’t, I’d just sit and listen to it talk.
Eventually, after days of sitting and marking wells in my mind and walking the mountain, I made my way back to Black Brick to get to talking again. The forest would sometimes be too much quiet for me in the summer. This time, though, I decided to ask questions too. Even things out between us, so it wasn’t just me giving everything all the time.
What makes you laugh? What are your favorite bugs? Who do you like spending time with, when you’re not talking like this? Questions like that.
I laugh at all sorts of things, like mushroom-chewed trees and fish that flop on rocks because they can’t breathe. My favorite bugs are the curly ones with millions of little legs, because I like the feeling of all their legs on my legs. And I like spending time with—with my mother. I had… I have so much fun spending time with my mother.
Oh.
Yeah. You got a mother?
Yes.
She’s alive and happy?
The way the question hung over me made the skin on my neck prickle, like I’d gotten out of the bath and walked into a cold hallway. Even as a child, I didn’t like the idea of being a liar. Because there’s only lying and not lying, and no in between. But part of me understood what the question was really getting at, and I didn’t want to give the whole truth. She might have been happy, wherever she was now, I thought.
Yes, I finally answered.
Oh. That’s good. Me too.
Me too.
Me too.
Me too.
The voice sounded lower than before, deeper, farther inside the mountain. And there was something in the sound that couldn’t be hidden. That sound of wanting. I could hear that sound, and I already knew what was coming.
I looked straight down into that circle of sky and that outline of the boy. I let the boy in the wet circle of sky watch me, my every move and gesture. I turned my head. I closed and opened my eyes. Raised my right hand. Raised my left hand.
The boy did the same, like a careful student. Like a nine-year-old boy. A good student and a good nine-year-old boy.
It’s going to rain tonight, very heavy.
It’s going to rain tonight, very heavy. He cleared his throat and slid his pitch to reach the shelf of my voice.
I’m going to go back to my little house, down at the end of this path.
I’m going to go back to my little house, down at the end of this path.
Through the front door, up the stairs, and to the room at the end of the hall.
Through the front door, up the stairs, and to the room at the end of the hall.
Get in my comfy bed, settle under the covers, and I’m going to sleep, so deep, so safe.
Get in my comfy bed, settle under the covers, and I’m going to sleep, so deep, so safe.
Then I’ll dream something nice, and I won’t be scared.
Then I’ll dream something nice, and I won’t be scared.
• • •
Until two hands made their way to the edge of the well, barely visible when the sky brightened and darkened for a second. Then a small head floated up on a string-neck that curled, then the rest slinked itself up and over onto the moss and sopping leaf patches, a thing pressing like a slug against the rocks, compacting, shoulders sloped under the weight of the rain.
From the fort I couldn’t see the face, but from the back I knew it was mine. Those hands, raised, lowered, raised. Those were my hands. And those legs, walking down the path and over to the little house in the distance, my legs. That thing going down and into that house, my house.
Go on.
Go on.
Down and into that house I hadn’t been inside in months, where there were things that frightened me more than dark forests and silly old wells, things under those broken shingles and behind that scratched glass. Scarier things in there than anything in the bellies of the mountains, I knew it for sure, oh yes. You go on and try to take it over, what I have. It’s all yours, if you want. Go on.
The door closed, and I could see things moving inside.
Go on.
Let’s see if you get everything you were hoping to get.
Go on, I thought.
Go on, I thought, then fell asleep.
• • •
I whistled and marched out onto the paths. I plucked a sturdy fallen branch that was a good size for a walking stick. I was ready to spend the coming hot days wandering the mountains. Ready to find more old wells and discover other sorts of gifts they might provide. Childhood treasures waiting to be uncovered and brought up from inside. Those hidden little lovelies for me, their king.
