The Day the Water Came Home to Grandma’s Orchard

Lifting the Board

The board was wedged hard. Mud had dried around the edges and the weight of four days of water was leaning on it.

Cash got his fingers under one end and Amos got the other. Ward and I stood on the bank. Amos counted, “One, two,” and on three they heaved.

It did not move. Amos grunted and set his feet. “Again.”

On the second pull, the board came up with a sucking sound, and the whole pond of water behind it let go at once.

It came down the lateral like it was in a hurry to get somewhere. Brown and foaming and full of leaves and twigs. It hit the dry ditch bottom and the dust jumped up ahead of it like smoke.

Ward hollered. I put my hand on his shoulder and he stopped, but he was grinning.

Amos and Cash laid the board flat on the ditch bank above the check. Then Amos took his own shovel and threw three shovels of dirt into the mouth of the new cut, enough to close it. Not to ruin it. Just to close it.

“There,” he said. “Now nobody’s getting anything but what’s theirs. And this morning, what’s theirs is downstream.”

He sat down on the board. Right on it, like it was a park bench, with his shovel across his knees. “What are you doing?” Ward asked him.

“Waiting,” Amos said. “Man’s going to come check his hay. When he does, I want to be sitting right here.”

“You want us to stay?” I asked.

“No. Walk that water down to your grandma. Make sure it gets there. Ditch has been dry four days, it’ll want to soak in. Clear anything that hangs up.”

So we walked the water down.

Walking the Water Down

The front of the water crept along ahead of us, soaking into the cracks, filling them, moving on. Every few yards it stopped against a clump of dead weeds or a pack rat’s sticks, and one of us cleared it with a shovel.

Cash worked the shovel. Ward pulled weeds with his hands. I walked behind them and watched my boys work.

Cash had always been a quiet boy. He didn’t say anything for a quarter mile. Then he said, “Mom, is he going to be mad?”

“Probably.”

“Is he going to call the sheriff?”

“He can if he wants to. Amos is the ditch rider. He has the right. And he wrote it all down.”

Cash thought about that. “Grandpa would’ve done it this way,” he said.

“Grandpa would have,” I said. “Grandpa would have walked up with a loaf of bread first.”

“Grandma already did that.”

“Yes,” I said. “She did.”

When we passed the pasture fence, I saw a woman standing at her mailbox out on the county road, looking at us. It was the woman from two places down, the old man’s wife. She lifted one hand. I lifted mine.

That is how word goes in a valley like ours. Nobody calls anybody. Everybody just sees.