William Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 20

William could lay a wall now. But a house needed more than his son had seen at the mill. So he walked to the mill at dawn, past the cottage with wisteria on its porch, and stood at the edge of the wheel race where the mason worked. The man was setting stones into a new wall, quick and sure. William watched his hands. He did not know how to begin. The mason looked up. "You want something." "I want to learn to build," William said. "A house. Before winter." The mason wiped his hands and looked William over. He saw the soil under the nails, the patched shirt, the plain boots. "I've no time to teach farmers. I've a mill to keep and no coin from you at the end of it. Go home." He turned back to his stones. William stood there. The words his father used sat in his chest. A hard-working man can be trusted. But hard work meant nothing to a man who did not know him. He had nothing to trade. He had come with empty hands. He did not go home. He watched. The mason laid three more stones. William saw the man reach for one that would not sit right, then set it aside, frowning. It rocked on its base. The mason tried another. That one rocked too. "Your bed's wrong," William said. The mason stopped. "The ground under it." William crouched and pressed his palm flat on the wet earth below the wall. "It holds water here. It'll shift come frost. You need it drained, or the whole course drops in spring." He dug two fingers into the soil and turned it up. "See the color. That's water that never leaves." The mason knelt beside him. He pressed the ground where William showed him. He was quiet a long moment. "How do you know that," he said. "Two bad harvests taught me. I read soil." The mason sat back on his heels. He looked at the wall, then at William. "I've lost stone to spring heave for years. Never knew the ground was the cause." He stood. "You show me how to read this. I'll show you how to raise a house. Fair trade." William nodded once. "Fair." He walked home in the afternoon light. A small rabbit sat still in the grass at the roadside, ears up, and did not run as he passed. Cecily was in the garden, cutting a cabbage from the row. She straightened when she saw his face. "He'll teach me," William said. "I trade him soil for stone." Cecily set the cabbage in her apron. "Then you'll be gone from the field." She said it plain. "Eddie can't weed and mend fence and mind the pigs alone." William had not thought of that. The mason wanted days. The farm wanted him too. He had won his teacher and lost his own two hands from the work that fed them all.