“I gave her the last drop of water just before bed. And look at her now. She needs more! We’ve got to bring her to the springs.”
He looked from me to Maggie, then back to me. He opened his mouth, then closed it. “I… I—” he stammered. Maggie twisted in my arms, let out a raspy, wheezing breath, and looked at her father with big eyes.
“All right,” he said, kissing her soft dark hair. “Let’s finish packing and get on the road.”
We left home a little after one. I’d made a thermos full of coffee and packed sandwiches, apples, and cookies in the hamper. After a cold, wetspring, the roads taking us to Brandenburg were in a terrible state—nearly impassable in places due to mud. The going was very slow indeed. I held the baby on my lap while Will navigated our Franklin touring car through the ruts and washboards. The closer we got to Brandenburg, the bleaker things became. Everything seemed brown, muddy, and ugly; we passed a field of filthy, skinny cows having a hard time walking, their hooves sinking with each step. The barn they were headed toward was faded gray and listing to one side. I saw patches of snow still clinging under stone walls. Winter did not want to let go in this valley. It was after six by the time we arrived in Brandenburg. We saw the sawmill was shut down with a bigCLOSEDsign painted on it. The old signs for the hotel were gone. “Do you remember which road it was?” Will asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing looks the same.” I pointed to a little side road, hardly wide enough to get a single car down. “Try that way. That might be it.” Will coaxed the car in about two hundred feet, then pronounced the road impassable. “This mud is like goddamn quicksand. We’re nearly up to the axles. If I keep going, we’ll be stuck here all night.” He maneuvered the Franklin’s gear shift into reverse, gripped the wooden wheel tightly, turned, and looked over his shoulder as he backed out to the main road.
We stopped at several houses to ask directions. All the locals we encountered insisted that the road to the springs was closed. One careworn old woman sweeping her porch tried to warn us off when we asked her for directions. “You go there and you’re inviting terrible things to happen.” She peered into the car, saw Margaret on my lap. “If you want to do right by that little baby, you’ll turn your fancy car around. Go back where you came from.” She went back to sweeping frantically, creating a great storm of dust around her.
“Let’s try the store,” I said. “Maybe they can help us.”
Will navigated down Main Street and found a place to park a little ways down from the store, in front of the post office.
We walked up onto the porch of the general store and saw aCLOSEDsign in the window. Will looked at the hours and checked his pocket watch. “They closed over an hour ago.”
I peered in the window. “But the lights are on, Will, and I see someone moving around in there.” I rapped on the glass, gently at first, then louder.
“Easy, you don’t want to break the window,” Will warned.
An old man in a plaid wool shirt shuffled toward the door and unlocked it. It was the same shopkeeper who’d tried to sell us the bottled water last year—the one who’d shown us his hand, which had been healed by the water after he’d burned it.
“We’re closed,” he said, speaking through the crack in the door, which he held only slightly ajar. His face was more gaunt than it had been when we’d seen him last year.
“Please, sir. We just need directions. We can’t find our way to the springs,” Will said. “We keep getting turned around and end up going in circles.”
“Springs are closed up,” the shopkeeper said, starting to shut the door on us.
“Wait!” I called.
Then he noticed little Margaret, who shifted in my arms.
“Please,” I said. “She’s sick. My friend, she was here a month ago, she bought your last jar of water.” I showed him the empty jar we’d brought with us. “This jar!” I waved it at him. “We gave the water to our baby, little droppers of it, and it made her better. But now we’re out and she’s sick again. She needs more. Please.”
He looked at me, eyes icy blue, then held open the door. We stepped inside. The store was uncomfortably hot. The little cast-iron pot-bellied stove was roaring away in the corner. The moose head stared gloomily at us from the wall, its fur and eyes glazed with a thin layer of dust. A train schedule was nailed to the wall, but the Brandenburg stophad been crossed off, a penciled note next to it read:Canceled until further notice. Another sign next to it announced that the Pine Point Inn and Dance Hall on Lake Wilmore were closed for good.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” he asked.
“If she was your child, wouldn’t you do the same?”
He looked at me for a few seconds, then turned and disappeared into the back of the shop. When he returned a few minutes later, he had a boy of about twelve with him. The boy was wearing patched dungarees and an old gray sweater that was far too large for him. “This here’s my grandson, Phillip. For a dollar, he’ll take you to the springs.”
Phillip shifted nervously from foot to foot.
Will looked at the boy, then at me. I nodded at him. Will pulled out his wallet and paid Phillip. We followed him out of the store, but as we were leaving, the shopkeeper said, “Just this once. You get what you need up there, then you go home and don’t come back. And hurry. It’ll be dark soon. You don’t want to be up there after dark.”
The boy got on his bicycle, and we got back in our car and followed him back up the main road to a muddy turnoff; a little ways up, trees were lying across the road. Trees someone had cut down and placed there to block access.
“You gotta walk from here,” the boy said.
Will pulled the car over to the side of the road. We hiked in on foot, Phillip leading the way. He stayed a good ways ahead of us and walked quickly. Will offered to carry Margaret, but I clung tight to her. Our shoes were soon caked with thick black mud, and we were sweating and panting despite the cold air. The walking was difficult and tedious, as if the road itself were trying to stop us, trying to suck us down and hold us. We had a hard time keeping up with Phillip and worried that if we lost sight of him, we’d not only never find our way to the springs, but might not be able to find our way back to town.
Trees and brush had overtaken the road, narrowing until it was onlya wide path. The branches had knit together to make a thick canopy, shading out what little light there was. It was overcast, twilight. The sun would set soon.
I thought of the shopkeeper’s warning:You don’t want to be up there after dark.
We walked without speaking. Margaret grew heavier and heavier, and though Will offered to take her again, I still would not let her go. “Almost there, little sparrow,” I whispered into her hair.
