The Widow Who Got Thirty Men and a Well

The telephone tree

Del came Monday with a steel probe. He pushed the rod into the ground in four places and put his ear to it like a doctor listening to a chest. Finally he stopped at the corner of the chicken house, where one patch of grass in my yard stays green all September, and laid his palm flat on the ground.

“There it is,” he said. “Curt hit a seam, Ollie. That blast didn’t drain it. It shoved the seam sideways and pinched the old hole shut like a thumb on a straw. The water didn’t go anywhere. It moved. It’s under this green spot, about forty-seven feet down.”

I could not say a word.

“I’ll need seventeen rings of tile, fourteen hundred pounds apiece, and a boom truck to set them. A man in the hole to dig the last stretch by hand. A trench a hundred and forty feet to your kitchen wall.” He counted on his fingers. “It’s a four-day job for four men. Or a one-day job for thirty.”

“Del, I told you. I cannot pay.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “I’m going to make some phone calls.”

That evening Corah’s telephone tree went out. The fourteen telephones that had carried my name to heaven on Sunday were turned around Monday night, and they carried it to fourteen garages.

Corah called Roy, a farmer who owns the only boom truck in four miles. Roy called Cloyd, who runs the concrete plant in the next town, and Cloyd let the tile go at his cost, twenty-three hundred and eighty dollars, and said he would deliver it himself.

At the men’s Wednesday breakfast, Del stood at the end of the table and said it the way Del says everything.

“I need thirty men, Saturday, seven o’clock. Bring shovels and a lunch and gloves you don’t mind losing.”

I am told nobody asked what for. By Friday there were thirty-four names on the list Corah kept on her kitchen table, and she was turning men away.

And the offering plate. The Sunday they prayed over me, it had come to the front with thirty-six hundred and forty dollars in it. A woman put in an envelope of egg money with her name crossed off. A boy of nine put in two dollars and a note that said For the water lady.

Ozzie brought it to my back step on Tuesday in a bank bag. I told him I could not take it. He said it was not mine to take or refuse. It belonged to the well, and I could argue with the Lord about that if I wanted.

All that week I carried water from Corah’s, and I thought about Wade. I tried to hate him on Tuesday. It would not take. By Thursday I was saying his name in my prayers, right after Curt’s and the children’s. Plain, no frills. Lord, be with Wade.

I am no saint. I only know I said it to the dry window over the sink, and that window looks up the ridge.

Saturday

Del did not make a speech. He sprayed an orange circle on the grass at the corner of the chicken house, then stood on his tailgate with his notebook and divided thirty men without raising his voice.

“Roy and Hank, you’re on the boom. Frank, Vester, Carl, you’re on the rings with me. Bill, you’re the bottom man, because you’re small and don’t have a bad back. The rest of you take the ditch, a hundred and forty feet, three feet deep, to Ollie’s kitchen wall.”

The auger bit into my yard at seven thirty-five with a sound like a cow bawling. Cloyd’s truck came up the lane at eight with the first rings stacked on the bed.

At five past eight, a man came across the pasture on foot, from the direction of the ridge. A big young fellow of maybe thirty-five in a work jacket and a ball cap pulled low. His T-shirt was on inside out, with the seams showing and the tag riding up under his chin. I worked out later why. There was a company name on the front of it.

“Ma’am, my name is Lonnie. I run the dozer up on the ridge.”

“I was on the controls Tuesday when they shot the rock. I felt it come up through the seat.” He swallowed. “I told Wade your well was too close. He said the engineer had run the numbers. I heard about this at the feed store. Is there something I can do? It’s my Saturday. I’m not on the clock.”

I looked at Del, who stood by the rig with his arms folded. Del nodded once.