My daddy was a witch. Not an eye of newt kind of witch but a water witch. Now, he didn’t call himself that but I heard other people say it. He said he could feel vibrations in his body coming from the ground that told him there was water down there and how deep it was. Digging a well is serious business and more work than most people are prepared to do, so if there was a way to be certain there was water down there, why I don’t see why not give ‘er a try. A lot of people thought it was just a bunch of superstition but I saw him do it once over at the neighbors and Mrs. Tews from in town still brought us a pie some Sundays for helping her son with his well.
Reverend Alkhars had been our neighbor for as long as I could remember. On summer days, I’d follow him around and watch him weed his garden or check for eggs. His banty hens were hatching more chicks than he knew what to do with and he’d just hauled his ewe back from Jack Spogan’s place where his ram got her pregnant. His garden seemed to have twice as many potato hills and rows of corn marked out with lines of fibrous twine. I could smell that twine from our house when the wind was right. When you add that to the ducks and geese that swam around the warm, muddy water of the pond that didn’t last past June, he decided he thought it would be a good idea to dig a well out behind his barn.
You’d think being a reverend and all, he wouldn’t go in for witchin’ but on the contrary, Reverend Alkhars welcomed any advantage he could get as long as it favored his farm and all its creatures. Mrs. Alkhars just stood quietly by his side with her mouth screwed up and eyes a squint like she was thinkin’ real hard. I won’t make fun on account of they’d lost their only son in a threshing accident last fall and she wasn’t the same since.
One Sunday morning after church, Daddy told me to come out to the woods with him and find just the right willow switch. We cracked some slender willow twigs off and peeled the bark to reveal their white skin underneath. It reminded me of what I imagined a woman’s skin to look like under her dress. I imagined a lot of things and I guess imagining ran in our family. Momma wrote poems about the woods and birds and deer and would look out through the kitchen window while she did supper dishes like she forgot where she was. Then she’d look back down at the suds and finish scrubbing the grease from a pan or a dry ring from the inside of a coffee cup.
“Why does it have to be willow?”
“Because that’s what my daddy, your grandpa, used.”
That was the way with so much of what Daddy taught me. It always came from something someone had shown him rather than an explanation. At twelve years old, I wasn’t ready to question my daddy, yet.
“Do you suppose there’s water under there?’
“Inshallah,” the reverend would say, “Inshallah.”
I spent a lot of time at the Alkhars through the summer. Daddy had a crew and built barns and would be on stay-away for a whole week sometimes, so I was on my own.
Lately though, Daddy was home more and we spent time together. I sometimes wondered if he would rather have a son, like the Alkhars. Some mornings, we’d walk over to the pond between our places and catch frogs or find the right size willow limb to make a bow and then try to hit fence posts with a homemade arrow. Daddy showed me how to make an arrow by sharpening the end of a stick and pushing a half a corn cob onto it for the point. It got to where I could hit a fence post forty feet away. I even knocked a chipmunk off its feet one day. He got up and, chittered excitedly, and ran under the shed.
“Well, I suppose we ought to go help John look for that water.”
Only Daddy called Reverend Alkhars, John. I always thought it nice that he felt that comfortable to call him by his Christian name and it seemed like Reverend Alkhars appreciated it, too.
“Come over here now and pay attention.”
The willow was a forked wishbone shape and Daddy held a fork in each hand, with his palms up like he was giving of himself.
“Now, we walk slowly and wait for the ground to talk to us. John, why don’t you stand off to the side a bit while we walk the area.”
“Of course, I apologize.”
“No need to apologize.”
We were on the shadow side of the barn and it was cool. The ewe was lying in the shade of a tree near the fenceline and I could hear the buzzing of flies in the dirt. Daddy held the willow branch and dragged his feet slow over the ground, then stopped.
“Honey, do you see that?”
“See what?”
“The willow. It’s saggin’ here.” He directed me to see with a nod of his head.
I walked closer to him.
“It’s not strong but I can feel it.”
Daddy’s shirt sleeves were rolled up and blue veins lined the underside of his arms. He moved slowly forward. The ground was powdery dry here and little clouds of dust hung around our feet.
“Is it still saggin’?” It felt like something was about to happen. Daddy didn’t reply and kept the slow step forward, his hat pulled low over his eyes. He always wore a hat low. Then, just when we were about to leave the shadow of the barn, I saw it plain. The single limb of the willow was bending down, even bouncing a little bit. I looked at the ground but it didn’t look any different than any other spot. We stood there for a minute before I even realized we had stopped.
“Is there water there?” I whispered slowly, my voice rising at the end, not sure if I’d get an answer. I could hear Reverend Alkhars’ boot step lightly off to the side.
“What ya think, Tom? Did ya hit on something over there?” The hesitation in his voice almost sounded afraid.
Daddy didn’t answer, not right away.
“I’m not sure. It’s real strong here.” He looked at the ground in front of his feet.
His voice was louder than I expected now. “How long you lived here, John? You were here when we bought our place,” he kept looking at the ground, “what, maybe thirteen years ago now?” Daddy’s face was a mask of something that the brim of his hat half hid in a shadow.
I looked over at Reverend Alkhars who was looking at Daddy but looked to be figuring. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck. “I suppose it’s coming on twenty years now.” He looked down at the ground. “We came just after the influenza outbreak.”
Now, Daddy walked with his arms in a V out in front like he was afraid the ground might swallow him up; he moved past the corner of the barn into the bright sunshine. I could see the shine from sweat running down his face. “Why, my dousing stick is on a beeline.” He said excitedly and moved swiftly and then, just as quickly, he stopped and stared at his feet.
The willow switch hung like a lead weight swung from its tip.
“Are we gettin’ close?” I asked. Then he shuffled a few steps to the side and turned his eyes up to the big white clouds drifting through the blue sky.
“Here.”
Reverend Alkhars held his hands clasped in front of him and bunched his lips together, his forehead creased. I’d seen him stop and figure lots of times, thinkin’ of how many potato plants in a fifty foot row or how long his bantys had been sittin’ on the nest. He looked like he was doing that now but harder.
“What ya think?” I asked, looking forward to the prospect of digging a well.
Daddy scuffed the dirt with his boot, thinkin’.
There was a long quiet.
“Tom.” He waited for Daddy to look over at him. Then the Reverend hesitated and looked as if he forgot what he was going to say.
He must have seen the look pass between Daddy and me.
“Our little girl Sara is buried there.”
“Your little girl?” Daddy seemed confused.
“Flu took her just after we came here. We’d come from Chicago and she took sick on the way.” He seemed to be having some second thoughts about telling us more. “We thought we could nurse her through, but she just got worse. She died five days after we arrived.”
All I could think was how Daddy found where that little girl was buried with a willow branch.
“That’s a powerful instrument you have there, Tom.”
“I apologize, John. I didn’t mean to, do this, I mean, this is none of our business and I didn't mean to be disrespectful.” He stopped, unsure how to continue.
“It’s fine, Tom.” It’s time someone knew. It has weighed heavy on us. At that time we had our boy a month later and I guess that kind of changed our focus. But when we lost him last summer, Eileen took it especially hard. We are still working our way through the loss. Sometimes it feels like more than we can handle.”
Just then from inside the barn came the muffled crow of a rooster.
“Do you want me to try someplace else?” Daddy asked, softly.
“No, Tom. That’s probably enough for now.”
“But Reverend, don’t you want to find water by the barn?” I was incredulous.
Reverend Alkhars decided to keep bringing water from the house. Later, I figured maybe he wanted us to find his little girl. He couldn’t carry the secret any longer. He couldn’t stand to see his wife suffer under the grief she bore without someone knowing of the thread that connected one child to another. Knowing is a powerful salve.
That night, Daddy told me Reverend Alkhars’s story. He wasn’t really a Reverend, at least not the kind of Reverend I knew about. When he first arrived, he wore a white collar like other church men and told people he had been the leader of a small congregation back near Chicago but he decided to give it up. The collar kept people from asking questions. The reverend didn’t call God, God. He called him Allah, but he prayed to him the same as we do. There was a time of the year where the Reverend and his wife fasted from sunrise ‘til sunset for a whole month. But when it was over, they feasted on the goat which he slaughtered that one time a year for his God and they prayed over it. Even so, he lost both his children and it seems to me that any God that will do that may not be deserving of the name.
After we witched the Alkhars’ little girl, I felt real bad for them but I was kind of curious, too. The idea of losing the only children you ever had made me want to get to know more about them and to help them, even though their little girl died so long ago and their boy was almost a man.
“Can I help you Mrs. Alkhars?”
“Yes, dear. Will you go out to the garden and cut a fistful of chives for our salad?”
Nearly as tall as me, two tomato plants created a lane into the garden and the tomatoes hung in pale green clumps, their odor was strong in my nose. There were two chive plants and I could see they were cut from here and there and kept growing back. I snipped off a chunk and brought it back to Mrs. Alkhars. She wasn’t in the kitchen anymore and I looked out the back door and the fragrant smell of a cigarette drifted in through the screen.
“I didn’t know you could smoke, Mrs. Alkhars.”
“Oh yes, dear. Mr. Alkhars says it’s haram, but it helps me think of my son and baby Yara.”
“What does haram mean?” Mrs. Alkhars stared out at the clothesline hung heavy with bed sheets and shirts before turning to me.
“It means it’s not allowed. Our religion forbids it, especially for women. Religions forbid many things. We’d better go in and make dinner for Mr. Alkhars.”
Their house was decorated kind of funny with shiny silver and gold bowls and rugs draped over the bannister. There was a funny looking footstool that looked like a saddle with leather straps and wooden legs and puffy leather cushion. A large window looked toward the morning sun and there was a small rug on the floor in front of it. I could see dust motes floating in the still noon light.
Mrs. Alkhars rolled four pieces of chicken in a bowl of flour and set them gently in the angry hot oil of the fry pan. “I don’t pray anymore. Not since Jad is gone, maybe before that.” She screwed up her mouth and squinted her eyes, but then said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say these things to you.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Alkhars.” She was so sad and maybe angry, but that wasn’t all. There was a well of something else that I had never noticed before, probably no one did, as Mrs. Alkhars was never seen in town or at church. Reverend Alkhars had his garden and his chickens but Mrs. Alkhars only had her life out here and her thinking.
“I bet your baby was real beautiful. I’m glad I know about her, even if it was by witchin’.”
“Thank you, honey. You’re sweet to say it.” Then she stopped turning the chicken for a moment and turned to me. “I’m glad I got to know you, too, honey.”
“Mrs. Alkhars, would it be alright if I came to visit sometimes?”
“Of course. I would like that.”
Daddy always said that maybe Mrs. Alkhars was kind of broken, like a lame animal that gets left behind and comes last to the trough to eat, but he was wrong about that. I came to see Mrs. Alkhars often that summer. Mostly I would just watch her keep house and we’d talk about things. She’d smoke a cigarette on the back step and Mr. Alkhars would come in at noon for a sandwich and coffee and tell us about whatever he was mending or building or planting, then he’d go back out and I’d watch her make bread dough or use the Singer to mend hems on Mr. Alkhars’ shirts or make curtains out of cast offs. Her fingers moved strong and swift in the bread dough or feeling the edge of a hem for flaws.
One warm late fall day, there was a knock on our door, and it was the Reverend and Mrs. Alkhars standing out on our steps.
“We just wanted to stop and say goodbye.” The reverend stood next to Mrs. Alkhars who looked at me and smiled reassuringly.
“Well, I guess today is the day, huh, John?” Daddy looked behind them and saw their car trunk was filled up so full that it was tied down to the bumper.
“We’ll help my brother get settled in Chicago and hope to be back in the spring. Thank you for looking after things while we are gone.”
I looked at Mrs. Alkhars and she stepped forward and gave me a hug. “Goodbye, Honey.” My face got warm and tears welled and ran down my cheeks. “Oh, don’t be sad now. I look forward to our next visit.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and stepped back next to Daddy and watched them go. I’d never noticed before but Mrs. Alkhars was taller than the reverend.
We never saw them again after that but I still remember the set of her shoulders and the wild strands of hair blowing around the corner of her scarf as they walked back to their car.
