William Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 15 of 20

The morning after they moved the beds, William went to check the trough. Ice sealed the water. Ralph nosed at it and found none. William broke the surface with the axe handle and let the pigs drink. Then he saw Sarah near the old well, close to its open mouth, her boots on frost-slick stone. He had torn the cover apart for wall stone in the fall. He meant to seal the hole and never had. Now ice had glazed the rim, and the vines on the well roof hung stiff and white. The gap looked like solid ground under the frost. It was not. "Sarah," he said. "Away from there." She looked at him and did not move. "There are tracks," she said. "A rabbit crosses here." She pointed at the frost near the well's edge. She read tracks the way he read soil, and she followed them without fear. William crossed the yard fast. He lifted her by the arm and set her back on firm ground. The stone where she had stood was slick as glass. If her foot had slipped, the well would have taken her. "You don't play here again," he said. "Not until it's closed." "It's been open all winter," she said, plain, and went back toward the house. William stood at the black hole and knew she was right. He had traded the cover for walls and left this open for months. His children walked past it every day. He pulled the axe from the stump and found Eddie by the woodshed. "The well," William said. "We close it today." Eddie looked at the open mouth, then at the empty stone yard. "We used the cover stones for the wall," he said. "There's no rock left." It was true. William had cut everything close. He looked at the woodshed and its broad side overhang. The overhang timbers were thick and sound. He set his hand on one. "We take these," he said. "Lay them across the well. Weight them with the split rounds." Eddie did not argue. He fetched Tommy, and the three of them pried the overhang boards loose. William laid them tight across the well's mouth. They cut the light between the boards down to nothing. He stacked green rounds on top until the boards would not shift. He tested it with his boot, then with his whole weight. The wood held. No gap for a foot, no ice to fool a child. The well was shut. Tommy stood by the stripped woodshed. Snow already sat on the exposed woodpile, where the overhang had kept it dry. "The wood's open to the weather now," he said. "Same as before we cut the pine boughs." William looked at the bare frame and the wet snow settling on his last dry rows. He had closed the well and opened the wood again.