______________________
Harvey Stanbrough
The Well
Robért Devreaux's earliest memory was of his mother teaching him to walk. One step, Robbie m’boy, she'd say. Ca’ful. Take one step at a time.
Shortly before eleven p.m. and in a light rain, Robért Devreaux steered his ’86 Plymouth onto a dirt road off State Highway 98. A weathered, rotting barn loomed dark, forbidding in the mottled moonlight. Just past the barn he parked the car in the overgrown grass alongside the lane, then killed the lights and switched off the engine. After a moment he sighed, opened the car door and walked to the trunk, carefully counting his steps. The air was thick and warm despite the drizzle, and smelled of rotting trees and rocks covered with sour moss. The spongy ground sucked at his boots as if trying to slow his passage. Seven steps. He unlocked the trunk. D’firs’ seven steps is always d’hardes’.
The odor from the trunk washed over him like swamp gas. He gagged, and for a moment he imagined he was looking into the dark throat of a foul-mouthed swamp creature. He took half a step back. The barn door creaked on a rusty hinge as the rain intensified, slanting in on a slight wind. A stream trickled from the oily brim of his ball cap as he rubbed a gnarled hand over the three-day stubble that covered his jaw. He leaned into the trunk, his joints creaking painfully, and carefully retrieved a short, cross-handled shovel with one end of a strap tied to its handle and the other end tied near the blade. This he slung over his left shoulder. He glanced toward the barn and took a deep breath, then leaned into the trunk again, the blade of the shovel riding up his back. He grasped a filthy, rolled-up carpet, heaving it onto his thin frame with a subdued grunt. A decent burial... ‘at's all you need... a good long res’.
Balancing the carpet carefully, he closed the trunk. He stumbled as he turned, then regained his balance, readjusted his load, and regarded his mother—or her image—staring at him, her arms folded decisively across her sagging breast. It ain’t so complicated, Robbie, an’ it's required. Bein’ accurate counts for a lot in ’is ol’ worl’. One step at a time.
Passing the driver's side door on his way to the woods, he counted only six steps and stopped to consider that. ‘At’s a’ight... d’trip back is always shorter sometime’. He tried to shrug, tried to show his mother he was resigned to doing the right thing as a matter of course, but the carpet weighed on his shoulders, heavy as the night. It seemed to force his boots deeper into the mud, seemed bent on pressing him directly into the soggy earth.
He remembered from his childhood that the distance to the woods was forty-two steps.
‘At was from t’other side d’lane, his mother reminded him. ‘At was from d’porch of d’ ol’ house.
He paused and turned to look. Yep. Forty-two steps on d’nose, he thought. But how wide d’car is and d’distance from here to where d’porch was’d take up fifteen of dem step’... mebbe sixteen. The carpet weighed heavily on him. He turned and resumed his trip across the road.
Just as he stepped from the lane into the side ditch, a limb caught the front of the carpet and stopped him awkwardly, one foot in the air, reaching. He wasn't sure—it's difficult to be certain of some things, especially in the dark of night—but for a moment he thought his mother had moved into the woods ahead of him, just beyond the tree line. Perhaps it was she who had stopped him.
A’ight... I un’erstan’. A decent burial gotta be exac’. One step at a time. He backed away respectfully, then turned and made his way back to the car. There he turned around again. This time he crossed in front of the car to the place where the porch had once met the grass. He turned again to face the woods and thought of all the sad processions he'd seen. Long lines of dark, anonymous cars, all driven by anonymous people dressed in black, down an anonymous road lined with brown grass to an anonymous plot of spongy mud. Lines that did not begin at the decedent's home but from an anonymous chapel. And it always seemed to be raining. The dead were loaded into the back of dark cars they couldn't afford and were transported by people they'd never met from a building they’d never willingly entered down a road they'd never traveled to a plot they'd never seen. All anonymous, all thoroughly impersonal, all sterile. Like they was jus’ tossin’ out d’trash, he thought. All very imprecise, from a personal point of view. D’final trip to a decent burial ought’a start at d’house, he thought. ‘Specially when d’house is gone on ahead.
His mother said, ‘At’s right, Robbie. Remember, bein’ accurate counts for a lot in ’is ol’ worl’.
He set out for the woods again. Carefully. Patiently. Pacing. Not wanting to lose count, he assigned two syllables of thought for each eighteen-inch step, allowing one foot to rest alongside the other before taking the next step:
D’dirge... make sure... d’dead... is treat... ed good... an’ wid... res-pec’.
D’fi... nal walk... mus’ be... pre-cise... ‘cause less... would be... ne-glec’.
A de... cent bu... ri-al... re-quire’... a step... ping to... d’res’;
an’ hell... a-wait’... d’lone... ly soul... who fail’... a las’... reques’.
D’fi... nal steps... like d’ese... mus’ be... a’neath... d’sod... den skies,
and hell... await’... d’tor... tured soul... who fail’... d’sod... den eyes.
The rhyme took Robért to the edge of the woods, where he paused. Forty-two steps. Respec’ful, exac’ steps, he thought. But there should’n’a been so many. I was a boy den, an’ I’m a man now. He considered for a moment. Mebbe when I was a chil’, I was runnin’ and made some longer steps wid’ my shorter legs. He glanced up, hoping to avoid the branch that had barred his way earlier, if indeed it had been a branch, but it was no longer there. Even d’trees show respec’ fo’ a decent burial wid’ d’paces well counted, he thought. Sweat mingled with the rain to trickle past the corners of his eyes and down over his nose and cheeks. He stepped into the woods.
His mother reminded him, One step at a time, Robért.
Wid’ respec’, he replied.
The trek into the woods proved no easy matter. The underbrush was much thicker than he remembered, and it tugged at his jeans and his jacket with every step. The trees allowed him to pass relatively unimpeded, but their perennially wet, rot-slick branches, weighted with Spanish moss, hung low over his path. They weighed on his nerves like the drizzly night weighed on his soul, like the carpet weighed on his shoulders. Each step was measured, for he had no choice. But as much as the tree limbs apparently respected his journey, the mud and the slick roots beneath it hindered him. With each step, he strained to pull one foot out of the mire even as the other sank almost up to his ankle. With every second or third step, the roots hidden under the mud attempted to trip him. With every seventh or eighth step, a slick root running along the surface would move beneath his foot, causing him to slip. On these occasions, he always caught himself, somehow balancing the carpet while blinking away the rain and sweat and keeping his feet.
In this manner, he slogged exactly one hundred and three grueling steps into the woods. Dis whatchu always wanted, Mama.... Tomorrow, his eighty-third birthday, would have been her hundred and fourth.
In the almost circular clearing, Robért paused and glanced at the spot where his parents' first home had stood. Then he shifted his gaze, traced through the darkness to the rocky, standing ruins of the well his father and mother had dug by hand a year before his birth. He vaguely remembered sipping water from that well, and he remembered his parents' moving out of the clearing and across the road, although he’d never learned why. But his mother had developed an affinity for the clearing and the well. ‘Specially d’well.
She had visited there often while Robért was growing up. It was the same well into which she had poured her every wish as a young bride, her hopes as a young mother, her hatred at a lynch mob as the widowed mother of a teen-aged boy, and eventually even her life. Just as life had taken everything from her, the well had replenished her strength, provided her with hope. And in the end, when even hope had finally evaporated, the well had been a perfect, secure resting place.
Laboring as he tried to breathe, Robért moved deeper into the clearing, nearer the well, knelt, and gently placed the rolled carpet on a fallen, rotting tree trunk. He removed the shovel from his other shoulder and leaned it against the side of the well. He squatted there for a moment, filling his lungs with the musty air, then stood and wiped the sweat from his face. D’ rain’s good now... cleanin’ me up. Good rain. He nodded. ‘At’s why it’ always rainin’ at times like dis.
Only two fallen trees marred the clearing: the rotting old giant on which he had placed the carpet, and a smaller one, only about two feet in diameter and twenty feet long, that crossed the first about two-thirds of the way up, its weight resting on the well’s crumbling rock wall. D‘grave’ll be right there... right at d’foot o’dat ol’ cross, he decided. ‘Ats’ a good restin’ place, ain’t it Mama? None o’dem peoples I don’know in fancy cars I don’know comin’ from some chapel I ain’t never been in an’ wouldn’ go in nohow.
Weary but ready to finish his task, Robért walked unsteadily along the fallen tree to the carpet. For a final time, he hoisted the carpet onto his shoulders, then turned. He paced back to the gravesite, carefully measuring each step. Seven steps. The final seven steps is d’mos’ import’n’, he thought.
He knelt beside the well and removed his belt. Retrieving the shovel, he removed the strap from the handle and tied it to his belt, then worked the homemade rope in and out through a few holes at the base of the well where decades of rain had washed the dirt from the stones. Seven holes... seven loops... another las’ seven steps to a proper burial.... He tied the loose end of the muddy strap to the belt again, completing the circuit, then began to dig, slopping the thick mud at the base of the well.
When the grave was finished, he laid the shovel alongside it and sank to his knees. “No piney-wood box’d do better, Mamma,” he said softly.
You done good, Son.
I'm tired, Mamma. I’m bone weary.
You’ almos’ done, she said.
He unrolled the carpet into the grave, the nap facing up, then prodded it gently with the shovel so it filled the grave corner to corner, two feet up one side and five feet up the other. Then, his breath shallow, almost gasping, he lowered himself into the hole.
He lay down and pulled the long side of the carpet over himself, happy to be out of the rain. Reaching one arm around the edge of the carpet, he tugged hard on the strap, then closed his eyes as the welcome weight of mud and rock cascaded down.
The rain would continue. It would wash him clean, wash everything clean, eventually settling the grave like it had filled the well.
‘At's what y’need, Robért. A good, long res’.
