The Rest Is Nothing

The Splitting Box was older than the clinic fence above it, black planks gone soft at the corners, and the Row's brimming ditch was emptying into it brown and warm. Two mouths left the box. The narrow one ran to the ward. The wide one ran down Farrow Row. Between them hung the only gate in the valley nobody had bothered to lock, swung halfway over on its worn bar.

Delia stood on the plank across the top. Ruth was still up the bank. Cole dropped the shovel at Delia's feet, went flat on his belly at the gate post and pushed his bare arm into the water to the shoulder.

His cheek lay on the wet plank while his fingers worked the mud. He came up with a knotted strand, black with silt, the key still on it. He tied it back on his wrist with his teeth and put the arm straight back down.

"Water's rising. Gate's half thrown. Got the lace. Jonas, ring it and I'll say the shares."

Jonas knelt beside him and laid his palm on the bar over Cole's hand. The bell went off a foot from Cole's ear. Jonas wrote and held the slate up to the gray. Cole didn't look at it. He felt along the sill for the old stop, got his boot heel on the plank and leaned, and Jonas leaned with him, and the bar went a hand's width past half toward the clinic mouth.

"Clinic ditch gets the Conservatory's draw, eleven fences, Delia's first. Row gets what's left. Bar's moving. Water's climbing the post, Jonas, hold it there."

Delia looked at Cole's shoulder, gray to the neck with silt, and not at the old man beside him.

Upslope the clay above the Ledger Room let go with a long wet crack. They all saw it. The slab rode down over the roof and filled the doorway to the lintel, shelves, desk, the ledger with Ruth's pencil in it. Then the push reached the ditch and brown water slapped over the side of the box.

Delia dropped her keys. She jammed the shovel into the mud choking the clinic mouth, heaved it clear, and put her shoulder on the bar above both men's hands.

"Ledger's gone, so we say it out loud. Clinic ditch, eleven beds, Cole's word and Jonas's bell, and I heard it. Somebody get Ruth over here to hear it too. Now push, this heat is going to kill me before the water does."

The bar met the stop. Cole ran the shovel handle through the bar and the post brace and lifted his face out of the water toward Ruth, who was coming down.

"Ruth, come hear it. Clinic ditch, eleven fences, Delia's first. Row gets the rest. Write it when there's something to write in."

Ruth knelt between them with Jonas's slate and wiped it on her sleeve. "Delia, say it back so it's two of us. And the water is a finger up the second plank, not a hand."

Another crack upslope. Only the lintel showed now. A fresh push bowed the shovel handle, and the water touched the third plank.

Delia said the hour and the shares back while Ruth chalked, then took the chalk and put her own name under the eleven.

"That's four of us, and it's the third plank now, Ruth, not the second. Chalk it before it's the fourth."

The handle split. The bar jumped off the stop and the gate swung toward the Row until Delia's shoulder caught it hard enough to numb her arm. Jonas dropped flat and drove his shoulder and the slate's edge into the gap, shoved the bar home, and struck the bell beside her ear. She felt it in her back teeth. She kept her eyes on the post.

Below the box the Row's channel fell to a trickle over bare stones. The clinic ditch ran loud toward the fence. Up the Row a bucket clanked empty against a post.

Above the clinic roof the well house door stood open, the keeper's lantern at the nailed list. His arm moved. A pale strip came off the bottom and dropped. From the box Delia could not read whose names were on it.

Ruth wedged the slate's cord and her pencil through the split brace and leaned on the bar. "Now the Row is a trickle, so someone has to say that too."

Cole pulled his arm out, worked the broken handle free, and fed his key lace through bar and brace and knotted it with his teeth. The key hung against the post, dripping. He laid his hand over theirs and looked down at the stones.

"Put that down plain, Ruth. Row gets the rest, and the rest is nothing, so we dig the Row's mouth clear next."

Delia looked where he looked. The tops of the stones were already going pale.