Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 7 of 16

Morning came hot. Grampy walked out barefoot and felt the difference in the ground already. The path was warm at sunrise. By noon the bed would bake. He stood at the edge of his secret plot and looked at the dark, level soil he had turned and fed. Two nights from planting. Nineteen seeds. If he watered by can, he would either miss a morning or drown the sprouts. He needed a system that ran without him. He went to the shed and pulled down what he had saved: a length of copper pipe, a shorter copper column, a wooden barrel he had lined last summer, and a small windmill his granddaughter had helped him build from bark and leaf shingles. He carried the parts to the bed one by one. Togg watched from the doorsill and said nothing. He set the barrel at the high corner of the bed, where the roof runoff would find it. He fit the tall copper column into the barrel's lid so water could rise and feed out the side. Then he laid the long copper pipe across the length of the bed on two low forks. He had punched a line of pinholes along its underside the winter before. He tipped the pipe until each hole showed a bead of water when he poured a test cup through the column. The first run failed. Water rushed out the near holes and never reached the far end. Grampy sat back on his heels. He walked to the barrel and lifted the near side onto a flat stone. He poured again. This time the beads formed all down the pipe, slow and even, one drop every few seconds. He counted twenty holes. Twenty drops. He grinned into his beard, where his wife's pink and yellow flowers had wilted a little in the heat. He still had the windmill. He mounted it on a post beside the barrel and tied a light cord from its shaft to a small wooden gate he cut for the column's mouth. When the breeze turned the blades, the gate lifted a hair and let water pass. When the wind stopped in the cool of evening, the gate closed. The bed would drink in the day and rest at night. He tested it with a puff of breath. The gate lifted. A drop fell. He covered the wet soil with a knitted moss blanket his granddaughter had brought him last week, tucking the edges in around the frame. The moss would hold the damp and shade the seedlings from the worst sun. He stepped back. The bed was ready. The water was ready. Two nights from planting. Then he saw the puddle. Under the far end of the pipe, water pooled where the ground dipped. The soil there was already soft and dark and swelling. If he planted tomorrow night, half his row would sit in a bog. He would have to level the bed again before the seeds went in.