The Dowsing
March 16th, 2007[-short fiction-]
The Dowsing
by Julie A. Serroul
Mindy blinked tears from her wincing eyes.
She trudged behind Tony, trying to focus on his boots instead of the snow which glinted the bright sunlight back at her in a thousand blinding crystals. The snow wouldn’t last long in this sun anyway, it was March and there were patches of shriveled, brown grass and crusty clumps of earth showing in the field behind them.
When they entered the musty blackness of the old barn, she paused until her watery eyes adjusted. After a moment she could see clearly. It wasn’t that dark. Numerous cracks and gaping holes in the walls and roof let in a fair amount of dust-laden sunlight. The ceiling sagged under a blanket of snow, shedding melting droplets that rained down upon them through the rotting boards.
“You grab the shovels, picks and stuff over in that corner, and I’ll start with the buckets of nails and things,” Tony ordered, poking a gloved finger toward the corner he meant.
Mindy grit her teeth, moving toward the rusting equipment. This was Tony’s uncle’s farm, so he had the right to boss her around. Trouble was, lately he’d started bossing her around at school as well.
They moved back out into the sunshine and toward the cart attached to their four-wheeler. Mindy could see her boss, Mr. McInnes, dismounting his own four-wheeler. Shading his eyes, he stared back toward the distant orchard’s treeline. His wife, Freda, remained on the rig, arms crossed.
Their son, Thomas, squirmed on her lap. The four year old wasted no time climbing down from his mother’s legs onto the hardened mud. He ran to the nearest pile of snow, digging in with eager mittens. Mindy dumped her armload into the cart, arranging the contents for space efficiency as Tony returned for another load. Before joining him, she mimicked Mr. McInnes’ pose.
Emerging from the orchard was a horse and rider. No? two riders. Mindy picked out a tiny, wriggling figure in front of the larger one.
By the time she was dumping and arranging her second armload, she could see the rider was Jim MacLeod, his wrinkled, light-brown face and sharp nose showing beneath his decrepit cowboy hat.
She raised a hand into the air and he nodded in her direction. The little wriggling figure was Brittany McInnes. Mindy smirked. Brittany was the McInnes’ other child and the little scamp never missed an opportunity to con easy-going, old Jim for a ride on his horse, Salty.
Mindy noticed Freda lean toward her husband for a brief exchange in a lowered tone. When he didn’t respond to something she said, Freda raised her voice just enough for Mindy to make out the angry hiss. “My own feelings on the matter, don’t count one bit, I guess!”
Mindy’s eavesdropping talents couldn’t overcome the racket of Tony dumping an armload of junk into the cart, so she missed Mr. McInnes’ reply. He strode toward the approaching horse and away from his wife, who stood, fists clenched at her sides.
“Do ya think you could hurry it up there, speedy,” Tony drawled down at her, “we’ve got to get this rathole emptied by tonight if you remember, so they can tear it down in the morning.” He winked as he strode toward the barn. “Unless you’re trying to keep me out here alone with you after dark.”
That sent her scurrying after him, cheeks pinker than the crisp March air could explain.
By the time they’d finished digging out everything worth salvaging, Freda was approaching with a length of rope and Thomas in her arms.
Brittany skipped along behind them. She screamed in delight when she saw her cousin, Tony. She pushed past her mother’s legs and barreled into him to bear hug his thighs. “Tony!”
“Oof!” Tony wind-milled his arms to keep his balance. “Hey there, little cuz!”
Mindy smiled at the usually affable Freda, but the woman’s expression was cool as she handed Mindy the rope.
Thomas wrestled to escape his mother’s grasp reaching for Tony as well.
“Tie down that stuff securely before you head out, please.”
“Uh, sure Freda, no problem.”
Tony gave Mindy a knowing look as she handed him one end of the rope. Together they worked to lash down the contents of the cart, grateful for Brittany’s babbling stories which erased the uncomfortable silence.
Freda shifted from foot to foot, eyebrows knotted as she watched her husband deep in conversation with Jim, as they walked the perimeter of the field.
Sighing, she interrupted Brittany’s chatter, “Brittany, honey, leave the kids alone to do their work. Why don’t you take Thomas and play in the snow for a minute, then you and Mommy can go back to the house and make our cookies, okay?”
“Cookies! Yeah, okay Mommy!” Brittany ran off to the large pile of snow lying in the cool shadow cast by the barn.
Thomas pumped his little legs to keep up. “I wanna cookie too, Brittany, ‘kay?”
As Tony worked on tightening the knots, Mindy saw Jim approach his horse, pulling a large, rectangular box from the saddlebag.
This drew an angry huff from Freda.
Curiosity overpowered Mindy’s common sense and she asked, “What are they doing, Freda?”
“The devil’s work,” she whispered harshly, her eyes boring into Jim’s narrow back as he returned to the field’s edge. Shaking her head, one hand over her mouth, she marched back toward her own four-wheeler. Mindy turned wide eyes to Tony. “What’s going on?”
Tony’s expression was serious, for once. “Uncle Phil wants to work this end of the farm, but he needs a good water source way out here.” He lowered his head as he flipped open his knife, leaning to cut the excess rope.
“So? I still don’t get it.”
“Drilling for wells blindly can cost a lot of money … maybe all for nothing. He doesn’t want to take on the expense unless he knows there’s a good water source.”
Mindy watched as Jim withdrew two L-shaped lengths of what looked like wire, held them at a squared angle to his body a couple of feet ahead of himself, then moved in slow deliberate steps.
“What’s he doing?”
“Water witching.” Mindy turned to see if Tony was teasing her, but he stood coiling up the unused rope, looking perfectly serious.
Tony met her incredulous look with a shrug. “Father McDonnell talks about how water witching, or dowsing, is based on witch craft. That it’s unnatural, against God. You know Aunt Freda’s a religious woman.”
“I see your uncle in church every week with her… maybe it‘s just a talent, a gift from God, instead of the work of the devil. What do you think?â€
He shrugged. “I guess it comes from whoever has domain over bull-shit and fools.” He chuckled at his own comment as Mindy rolled her eyes. Why she even asked his opinion she couldn’t guess.
Tony was starting up the four-wheeler. “Well, we’re done. We can head back.”
Mindy looked on in amazement at Jim pacing the field, the wire ends wiggling slightly back and forth as he moved.
When Mindy didn’t join him Tony sighed and climbed out of the rig, leaving it running. He returned to her side.
They stared as Jim worked the field, Phil McInnes hovering behind him, a couple of painted stakes clutched in his big fist.
Suddenly, the wire tips jerked toward each other, bobbed apart, then thrust back to touch once again. Jim stopped and pointed to the exposed earth in front of him. Phil nodded and stepped forward to stake off the area he indicated. Jim continued in a straight line from the spot being staked. Mindy raised her eyebrows at Tony, but he looked unimpressed. “How’s it suppose to work?”
Tony smirked at her, “I don’t know, smarty. You’re the one headed to college for a science degree, you figure it out.”
Brittany’s scream froze Mindy’s heart in her chest. It pounded back to life as she and Tony turned horrified eyes to see the little girl in the driver’s seat of their four-wheeler as it rumbled backward toward the dilapidated barn.
Tony bolted after it, managing to clutch Brittany by the front of her jacket and haul her off the rig just before the cart slammed into the front of the barn. Debris spurted from the upper level of the barn to shower down on the cart and four-wheeler. Tony covered Brittany with his body. They all heard a rumbling roar as a mini-avalanche slid from the peaked barn roof to pound onto the ground below. It landed right on the spot where the kids had been playing in the snow.
Mindy moaned in fear. Where was Thomas? Running toward the side of the barn, Freda came screaming behind her, “Thomas! Thomas!”
They reached the side of the structure together to see nothing but huge mounds of snow.
“Where is he? Where is he? Thomas!” Freda clawed at the snow, screaming for her son.
Tony came around the corner carrying a sobbing Brittany.
Phil and Jim were sprinting toward them. “What happened?” But Phil said nothing further when he saw his wife raking at the mound of snow. He fell to his own knees to help her.
They all dug, calling the boy’s name.
Phil grabbed Tony’s arm. “Take my rig and go back to the house for Ruff! He’ll find the baby if we don’t.” Their farm dog, Ruff, was a bloodhound.
Tony ran to do as he was asked, but Jim yelled, “Take Salty!”
Tony changed course, mounting the gray and white mare. He galloped off in the direction of the homestead.
Mindy eyes filled as she dug. Tony would never make it in time.
“Move!”
All digging stopped. Jim stood, wires in his hands, at one end of the snowfall. Mounting cautiously, he moved across the mound, dowsing as he went.
Mindy and Phil rose, but Freda stayed on her knees, hands clasped in front of her, praying fervently.
Little Brittany, sitting forgotten in a nearby pile of snow, stopped crying and stared at Jim. All was silent, save the crunch of Jim’s boots on the snow and the hushed whisper of Freda’s prayer.
Four feet from where they had been digging the wire’s bobbed slightly toward each other, the movement barely perceptible.
Jim froze. “Here!”
He tossed his wires aside, scooping arm-loads of snow away from the spot.
They all burrowed desperately for a minute or so, until two little, brown boots were revealed.
Phil grabbed his son’s ankles, yanking him from the loosely packed snow. A large, red welt lined his forehead and his eyes were closed, but Thomas was breathing.
“Thank you God, thank you God!” Freda rocked her son against her chest as her husband ran for the four-wheeler.
Phil stopped the rig and Jim slid a quietly sobbing Brittany inside.
As Freda clambered to get on, she paused to look into Jim MacLeod’s eyes for the first time that day. “Thank you,” she whispered as her husband roared them away.
When they approached the treeline, Tony emerged, Ruff bolting along behind him. He pulled the reins to make the horse follow the four-wheeler, Ruff twisting to follow as if tethered. All members of the McInnes family disappeared into the orchard.
Mindy began to cry with relief, staring at her reddened, swollen finger tips. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
Jim nodded as he bent to pick up his dowsing wires. “Little ones are tougher than they look.”
Mindy followed him as he walked back over to his gear, crouching to place the wires back inside the case.
Mindy crouched with him. “How does it work?”
Jim shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“Don’t much care to know. All I know is it works.” His dark brown eyes met her own, “Don’t think it’s devil’s work, like some.” His smile stopped short of his eyes.
Mindy squirmed. “It can’t be evil,” she said, grabbing his coat, “look what you did.”
He nodded, looking back toward the ravaged snow pile. When he turned his smile did warm his eyes.
They walked back toward the remaining rig, Mindy deep in thought.
“Electromagnetic fields, maybe.”
Jim just smiled.
“It could be that. Really.” she said.
Jim’s smile faded and he halted abruptly. “Doesn’t matter to me. I can do it, so I do. Just like the minister can reach people, so he does. Mrs. Johnstone can paint beautiful portraits, so she does. Jenny Fisher can sing like the angels, so she’s gone off to the big city to do just that.”
Jim started walking again. “I’ll leave figuring out why to you scientific types.”
Mindy rolled her eyes. Small towns.
She hollered at Jim’s back, “Will you show me how?”
“Yeah, I’ll show you,” he hesitated, “but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it.”
Mindy grinned. There was a scientific explanation for it, she was sure. It was more logical than someone as kind-natured as old Jim doing anything evil.
She jogged to join him at the four-wheeler.
THE END
© 2003- 2007 by Julie A. Serroul, all rights reserved
about the author:
Julie is an associate editor at The Scriptorium Webzine for Writers. She writes speculative fiction and is currently at work on her first novel-length fiction. Look for her articles in The Scriptorium.
Orginally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration
