William Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 20

William wanted a stone farmhouse before winter, and he had never once laid a stone. He knelt at the edge of his wife's garden, where a low rock wall held back the wildflowers. He pressed his thumb against the mortar between two stones. It crumbled to gray dust and fell into the dirt. He had built this wall himself last spring. He had built it wrong. He knew soil. Two bad harvests had taught him to turn the earth so it held water. He had learned that alone, on his knees, with his hands. But soil forgave a mistake. Stone did not. A wall built wrong would stand through summer and fall the first hard frost, with his children asleep inside it. He had one summer. He could not waste it laying walls that would crumble. Eddie came up the row with a bucket of pulled weeds. He was William's oldest, blonde like his father, quick to smile, always given the field job no one else wanted. He set the bucket down and looked at the broken mortar. "That one's loose," Eddie said. He pointed to a second stone, then a third. "Those too. You stacked them flat. Rain sits on flat." William looked at his son. He had never asked the boy anything about stone. "The mason at the mill," Eddie said. "I watched him mend the wheel race last winter. He tilts every stone. Water runs off. He picks the stone up first and turns it three ways before it goes down." Eddie shrugged. "I wasn't doing anything. I just watched." William pulled the loose stone free. He turned it in his hands, the way Eddie had said. One face sat flatter than the rest. He set it down on that face and pressed. The stone did not rock. He cleared the crumbled mortar and mixed a new batch wetter. He laid three stones the new way, each one tilted, each one turned first in his hands until it stopped rocking. Eddie handed him the stones and named the flat face on each before William could find it. By dusk the section held firm. William leaned his weight against it. It did not shift. He had his method now. He knew how to lay a wall that would stand. Cecily came out to call them in. She looked at the wall, then at the two of them gray to the elbows. "It'll hold," William said. "Eddie showed you," Cecily said. It was not a question. William looked at his son. The words his own father never gave him sat in his throat. He opened his mouth and found only, "He watched the mason. I didn't know that." Eddie waited one breath for more. None came. He picked up the bucket and went in to wash. William stayed at the wall in the dark. He could build now. But the mill mason knew a hundred things his son had not seen. To raise a whole house, William would have to go and ask the man himself.