Walter had cleaned the well twice that week and meant to do it again before Sunday. The stones around the mouth were still dark from the last washing, and a grey line of ash had settled between two of them where his brush had missed. Somebody had drawn water in the night and put the cover back crooked. Benjamin, probably. Benjamin always left it crooked.
Walter lifted the cover aside and leaned over the stone rim. There was not much to see. The shaft went dark after a few feet, the rope hanging down until it disappeared with the light. He could smell wet stone, earth, old water. There was something sour too, faint enough that he leaned farther in before deciding it was nothing.
The well had been there longer than anyone in the village knew. His father had reset some of the upper stones when Walter was a boy. Walter remembered being sent for tools and coming back with the wrong ones. Years later he replaced the wooden cover himself, then the rope, and after that people tended to find him when something around the well needed doing. Nobody had given him charge of it. He just knew it better than most.
He had meant to replace one warped board in the cover before summer. Then Fletcher died.
Alice came down the road carrying two buckets, one in each hand. She had to stop once to change her grip before she reached him.
“You’ve done it again.”
Walter was kneeling beside the well with a scraper between the stones. He looked at the tool in his hand. “I’m cleaning it.”
“You cleaned it two days ago.”
“That was two days ago.”
Alice set the buckets down and flexed her fingers. “Can I draw?”
“Not yet. Come back after noon.”
“I came here for water, Walter.”
She looked at the small earthenware jug beside his knee. “What are you using?”
“Vinegar.”
“Again?”
“Not much.”
Alice nudged one of the buckets out of the sun with her foot. “How much is not much?”
Walter went back to scraping at the ash. “Enough.”
“That isn’t an amount.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Alice stood there a moment longer, then picked up the buckets. “I’ll use the spring.”
“There’s nothing keeping animals out of it.”
“There’s nothing keeping animals out of most places.”
“They drink there. They shit there too.”
“I’ll avoid that part.”
Walter almost laughed, but she was already turning away.
“The well is safer.”
“I heard you.”
He watched until the hedge took her from sight, the empty buckets knocking against her legs as she walked.
It had started with the rope, and Walter still thought that had been right. John Fletcher drew water one morning in May. By the next afternoon there was a swelling beneath his jaw. His wife sent for the priest the following day, and by the fourth they were both dead. Walter remembered Fletcher’s hands on the rope, so he cut it down and burned it, then fitted another. Nobody argued. Several people thanked him.
After that he washed the bucket, then the cover, then the upper stones where everyone braced a hand when they leaned over. Widow Atkin told him her mother used vinegar when someone in the house was ill, washing bowls and cloth and whatever else had been handled. Walter bought some from a trader passing through and mixed it with water. That afternoon he scrubbed the stones with it. The smell caught in his throat, and the vinegar found the splits across his knuckles and burned there long after he stopped.
Margaret Hall died next, then her youngest boy, then Thomas Wright, who had been strong enough the previous autumn to lift one end of a cart while Walter changed a wheel beneath it. For a while the church bell rang every day. One morning it stopped. Walter heard later that the bell rope had snapped and remembered thinking somebody ought to fix it.
By June, Benjamin said the water tasted bitter. Walter was rinsing the bucket when Benjamin came up beside him with his own cup.
“Taste this.”
Walter took it. “Why?”
“Taste it.”
Walter drank while Benjamin watched him.
“Tastes like water.”
“Again.”
Walter tried to hand the cup back. Benjamin did not take it, so Walter drank again. There was nothing wrong with it that he could find while Benjamin stood there waiting.
“You’re imagining it.”
Benjamin finally took the cup. “Maybe.”
He walked away without arguing, which Walter took as the end of it.
That evening Walter came back after the road had emptied and drew another cup for himself. He sat on the stone rim and drank more slowly. This time he found the sourness. Not much. Maybe something from the stone. He swallowed, waited, and tried again. It was still there.
The next morning he scrubbed the well, but the taste stayed. Later he found small black flecks at the bottom of a bucket and replaced the rope a second time. When the flecks returned, he scrubbed the bucket with ash and rinsed it until the wood looked pale. They disappeared for two days, then came back.
Walter began adding a little of the vinegar mixture to the water after that. A cup into the whole well was hardly anything. Some days less. He didn’t tell Alice or Benjamin he’d started putting it into the water. They’d only complain. For a few days the water seemed better, and then it didn’t.
By the time Benjamin came down with his daughter that morning, it was nearly noon. She dragged a stick through the dirt and complained about the heat all the way along the road.
“You can’t draw yet,” Walter said.
Benjamin stopped beside the well. “Why not?”
Walter nodded toward the jug.
Benjamin looked at the jug, then at Walter. “You’re cleaning it again?”
“It needs time.”
His daughter sat on the low wall across from them. “I’m thirsty.”
“Wait a minute,” Benjamin said.
His daughter frowned. “You said we were getting water.”
Benjamin looked at Walter. “We were.”
He stepped closer to the well. Walter shifted the jug away from his boot before Benjamin could reach it.
Benjamin nodded at the jug. “What did you put in?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“The vinegar?”
“A little.”
“You put it in the water?”
“I’ve been using it for weeks.”
“On the stones.”
“And the bucket.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Walter wiped his hands on his tunic. The vinegar had opened one of the cracks beside his thumb again. “It’s one cup in a whole well, Benjamin.”
Benjamin leaned over the opening without touching the rim. “It tastes of vinegar.”
“That isn’t what you’re tasting.”
“Then what am I tasting?”
Walter looked down with him. The water still came up clear most days. Once in a while there was a faint skin along the side of the bucket if it sat too long. Then the black flecks. Walter had replaced the rope, cleaned the bucket, scrubbed the stones, stopped people washing cloth nearby and chased two boys away for letting a dog drink from the spill at the base. There were still black flecks.
“I don’t know,” Walter said. “That’s why I’m cleaning it.”
Benjamin’s daughter had come up behind them. She reached for the stone rim with the same hand she had used to drag the stick through the road. Walter caught her wrist.
“Not with that hand.”
She froze.
Benjamin pulled her gently back. “She’s a child.”
“She’s filthy.”
“She was playing.”
“Exactly.”
Benjamin looked at the girl’s hand. Her fingers were grey with dust.
“We’re going.”
His daughter looked up at him. “Without water?”
“We’ll use the spring.”
Walter looked at Benjamin. “The spring isn’t clean.”
Benjamin stopped. “Neither is this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
Walter stood, the scraper still in one hand. “I replaced the rope twice. Fixed the cover. I stopped people washing here. I keep the animals out.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Benjamin glanced at the jug. “Nothing.”
He left with the girl. Walter went back to work harder than he meant to and broke the edge off the scraper.
By afternoon there was not much moving in the village. The Fletcher place had stood open since May. Nobody wanted what remained inside badly enough to go in and close it. One of their hens still wandered between the houses and slept wherever it found somewhere dry. Weeds had come up along the doorway.
Walter sat beside the well and ate bread that had gone hard enough to hurt his gums. He dipped one end into his cup, then stopped. The water smelled sour. He held it under his nose and thought he could pick out vinegar, perhaps, and something underneath it. He tipped the cup onto the dirt and watched the dark patch spread between his boots.
He had used less vinegar that morning than the last time. Maybe the ash was the problem. He should stop using ash. There was rosemary in the shed behind his house. Widow Atkin swore its smell helped clear a room after sickness. Walter had thought about it before and decided against it. Rosemary rotted. Putting something that rotted into drinking water was stupid.
He went as far as the shed, looked at the sack on the shelf and left it there.
Near evening Alice returned from the spring with both buckets full. She lowered both beside the road and rubbed the grooves the handles had left across her fingers.
“You’re still here.”
Walter was rinsing the scraper. “I went home.”
“For long?”
“I ate.”
Alice looked at the half piece of bread beside him. She left it alone.
“Benjamin says you shouted at him.”
“I didn’t shout.”
“He says you did.”
Walter set the scraper down and looked into her bucket. The spring water was not as clear as the well water. A dead leaf floated on top and there was dirt at the bottom.
“Does it taste strange?”
Alice looked at him. “No.”
“Not bitter?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
She plucked the leaf from the water and flicked it onto the road. “It tastes like water.”
Then she picked up the buckets and walked home.
Walter waited until the road was empty before lowering the bucket again. The rope slid through the groove worn into the stone rim, the same groove he remembered from childhood. The bucket struck the stone once, then again, then hit the water below.
He pulled it back up. The water looked good. Clear to the bottom. No black flecks. No skin along the edge. Nothing moving.
Walter filled the cup and drank.
Bitter.
He swallowed and waited.
Maybe worse than yesterday.
He drank again.
Still bitter.
Walter put the cup down and reached for the jug.
Whatever was in the well, he clearly hadn’t got it all.
Ghosts of the Navigator 