Toby showed him.
Walter read.
“You marked weather?”
“I thought it might matter.”
“It might.”
Walter handed it back.
For the first time, he seemed interested.
The pond remained dangerously low.
Nothing magical happened.
The shoreline did not suddenly recover.
But it stopped falling.
Then began rising slowly.
That alone would have mattered.
What Toby noticed next mattered more.
Most of the exposed basin was hardening.
The clay turned pale.
Cracked.
Warm beneath the sun.
The area around the rope remained dark.
One afternoon Toby crouched beside it.
He pushed the edge of his boot into the mud.
Cold water slowly appeared around the sole.
Not from the pond.
Upward.
Through the clay.
He lifted his foot.
The small depression filled.
Then gradually disappeared.
He did it again.
Same result.
“Toby.”
Walter’s voice came from behind him.
“I didn’t pull it.”
“I didn't say you did.”
Walter crouched.
Touched the mud.
His face changed.
“That’s cold.”
Toby nodded.
“Everything else is warm.”
Walter scraped the surface with one finger.
Water beaded.
He looked toward the pond.
Then uphill.
Then back at the rope.
“I’ve seen this ground wet before.”
“When?”
Walter did not answer immediately.
He looked older when he was trying to remember.
“When I was little.”
Toby stared.
“The pond?”
“No.”
“Before the pond.”
That was new.
Toby had never imagined the pond not existing.
“How old is it?”
Walter scratched his jaw.
“Early forties, maybe.”
“Built before your dad was born.”
“What was here?”
“Hollow.”
“Trees.”
“Wet ground.”
He paused.
“And something else.”
“What?”
Walter looked frustrated.
“Small building.”
“Springhouse, maybe.”
Toby stared at the mud.
“You had a spring?”
“I think.”
“You think?”
“I was six or seven.”
“I remember milk cans.”
“Cold water.”
“My mother sending me down here.”
“But memories get mixed up.”
Walter stood.
“I haven't thought about it in forty years.”
That evening, Helen listened while Walter tried to reconstruct it.
They sat around the kitchen table.
A box fan pushed warm air from one side of the room to the other.
“There was definitely a spring.”
Walter said.
“Your grandfather used it?”
“My father.”
“And his father before him, I suppose.”
“Before refrigeration, they had a springhouse.”
“Set milk cans in cold water.”
“Kept butter.”
“Maybe vegetables.”
Helen asked:
“What happened to it?”
Walter shook his head.
“Pond came later.”
“They cleared the hollow.”
“I remember men working with a dozer.”
“Could have buried part of it.”
Toby asked:
“Why would anybody bury a water source?”
“Maybe they didn't.”
Walter said.
“Maybe they built the pond around it.”
“That would make sense.”
Helen looked toward the dark window.
“If there is still a spring under there, that could save us.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
There it was.
The thought all three had been avoiding.