The Notch Toward the Fence

Cole holds his palm out to Jonas, wrist turned up, and sets his other hand on the iron wheel. He leans his weight into it. He doesn't turn it yet.

"Key, Jonas. Water's dropping against the sill, and my lower rows are a night dry. You can ring that bell after it's running, not before."

The river sits low on the stone sill of the Lower Headgate, lower than yesterday, and the plank gate is dry on its far face. Overhead the windmill creaks around on wind Cole can't feel. It's dawn and already ninety. Past the gate the lower ditch runs off toward the orchards between banks gone pale and split, and his trees are at the end of it.

Jonas closes his fist on the boot lace at his wrist. Cole's key hangs under it. The old man lifts the hand bell between them and holds it still, then writes on his slate and turns it around.

Not before the bell. All of the lower ditch, gate by gate, and the cut counted with the rest.

Ruth steps in between the wheel and the new Ditch Company stake, the one with the blue rag, driven where the rider starts his walk with his book and his shovel. She has her pencil and a loose page and no keys. Pike has the keys now, and the book. In town they're saying the book matched the river to the gallon for nine years and has now been asked for an estimate.

She writes the time and the sill in the margin. "Approximately a hand and a half low against the sill, Mr. Vance, and I'd like it open for the count too, gate by gate, with me walking beside it down to the cut's mouth. I'm not asking for keys, only for you to tell me which of your gates sticks."

Delia tops the bank and sets her bucket down hard on the sill. She holds the Farrow Row cart slip up between Cole and Jonas, blank line out.

"Two beds spiked overnight, that's a ten, so the gate-by-gate count can walk behind the water, not in front of it. Cole, Jonas, whose hand goes on this slip? Tell me that, or send the cut's warm water to buckets at my fence, and I'm back on the ward by eight."

Cole looks at Jonas's wrist.

Below the stake something cracks like a board split over a knee. Sixty yards down, a baked length of bank lets go and slides into the empty bed, a waist-high heap of clay and dead reed roots across the channel. Where it stood there's a fresh notch, facing downhill at the clinic fence. Dust hangs. The windmill keeps on.

Cole drops off the wheel, grabs the long shovel from the bank, and goes down the dry bed fast. He looks back once.

"Bank's down sixty yards below the stake, Jonas, clay across the bed. Water can't run till that's dug out, so you walk with me and bring the bell. Ruth, count it as I clear it."

The ditch floor is cracked into plates that tip under his boots. Jonas follows with the bell and his fist held to his chest. At the edge of the slide he strikes once and writes.

Dig it out, then ring the shares.

Ruth walks past the heap to the notch and crouches. She writes, then pushes her thumb into the raw clay. "I'll count the clay as you clear it, Mr. Vance, approximately a waist-high heap, but I'm also writing this notch down, because it opened toward the fence and I'd like it on the page before anyone shovels it flat. Please dig from the heap side and leave the notch alone until I've measured it."

Cole looks at the heap.

Delia comes down with her bucket and plants the slip against his shovel hand, pointing past Ruth. "That notch opens toward my fence, so that's a nine, and I'm not waiting on a count to use it. Cole, you dig the heap, and the first warm water that runs goes in my buckets for two spiked beds."

The paper is damp against his knuckles. Ruth's pencil is laid across the notch. Jonas stands an arm's length off, the lace tight around his wrist, the key under his fist, and up the ditch the gate is still shut. Cole lifts the shovel over the clay.