Deep Wells

It was a small church.

It was a small church and Father Juan tended it carefully, every single inch. He sanded down the old wooden steps to keep them clean from the tramped-in mud of the parishioners. He washed its whitened walls every week, alone in the biting wind off the plains, with his fingers raw and cold from the frigid water and aching from the harsh soap.

Every morning Father Juan made the walk to the well, along the small pathway bordered with its bedraggled flowers., along the exposed rock face with its nooks and crannies where the wind whistled on winter nights, to the well, where the moss grew thick and sagged under his feet as if ready to fall down a deep dark cavern.

And there he drew water--the crystal waters that sang in the bucket as if the moon had dripped drop by drop into the earth's arms and melted.

It was late fall, and the morning air was chill. Rumors had been spoken in the village of the rise of the armies in Madrid, but Father Juan did not care. He was drawing his water as usual, saying his rosary as he tugged the bucket up with the rope, a prayer for every twinge of muscle. And as usual, when the bucket tilted over the lip of the well, he seized it by the edges and drew it to him, to take the first sip of cold mountain water. But this time, his eyes closed as he let the water slide against his tongue and down his dry throat, he felt something--soft and bobbing.

It bounced against his lips, floating on the surface, and he spat the water out, catching just a glimpse of the two eyes in the water.

But when the bucket fell, there was nothing there.

Ay, Maria y los santos, he said, and crossed himself. An omen, he thought. For omens came often to the villagers, though he had never seen one himself.

And so he walked back to his church, past the nooks and crannies of the rock face, along the edge of the bedraggled flowers, back up the scored and scarred wooden steps.

It was that night that the first of the children came.

He awoke suddenly in the darkness, his heart knocking at his ribs. He stumbled his way to the great wooden doors that creaked upon opening--the doors that swung heavy like stone. And there, where he had expected a messenger with flaming torch and excited eyes come to tell him of the death of old Mother Ana, was a small figure. A little boy. Rags were draped from his shoulders, and the rippling of his ribs at every breath was a sight that moved Father Juan to great pity. But it was the eyes that caught him and held him still--the eyes wide as saucers and rimmed with tears.

They seemed fevered, moving across his face as if they searched for familiar features.

They seemed cold and pallid, as if they were born of a fish that dwells in the cold currents of the faraway sea.

And they seemed to know him, Father Juan.

With a cry, the priest slammed the door, and the echo reverberated through the small vaults of the church. Father Juan spent that night kneeling before his Christ, head bent, but sneaking furtive glances side to side. By morning his knees ached terribly, and he was full of guilt. It was only a poor ragged orphan child, he told himself. A boy run away from his family the next valley over. A refugee from the coming civil wars. I was uncharitable and unChristian, he told himself, and steeled himself to be more generous should the child knock again.

And that morning Father Juan walked to the well.

He trod carefully down the wooden steps and slowly past the near-dead blossoms and then more quickly past the looming rock face. He came to the well, and took hold of the bucket in his hands and dropped it down the rope's length to the shadowy waters below.

As he looked down, he caught just a glimpse of night stars still reflected in the water. As if the sun had forgotten to wash them away. And when he pulled up the bucket, he could not drink, and set the cool waters aside.

That night the second child came.

It came accompanied by the sound of gunfire, the echo of planes zooming overhead like great black bumblebees heavy with pollen. When he opened the door, flames seemed to lick at the wood and at his hands, and the sky outside was a glowing red like the heat of a forge. And the child's eyes looked up at him, red-rimmed and crying--a little girl, her eyebrows singed and her face scarred and torn.

The eyes were flat as if they had seen too much to behold and absorb.

The eyes were deep as if they had been holes bored into a soul.

But most of all, felt Father Juan, the eyes accused him, for they knew him all too well. And Father Juan fled to the back of the church, by the altar, and lay there in the shadow of his cross until dawn stretched its fingers through the humble windows.

Father Juan did not go back to the well that day.

He drank the old water in his cups. He sipped sacriligiously of the holy water. He licked at his sweaty lips, the salt on his face stinging his tongue.

And that night no child came.

The rumors of war were more intense--the word was of shootings. The poet Lorca was gunned down in the street. The soldiers were pacing the village and asking questions no man should have to answer.

Father Juan was very thirsty.

Finally at the twelfth knell of the bells, as the moon was high in the sky and round as a melon, he crept to the great wooden doors. He lifted the wooden bar and set it down by the lintel. He stepped down the old wooden steps, and cringed as they sighed a long whispery sigh that called out to the clouds. He walked past the dead blossoms, fallen like silk rustling, at his feet.

As he walked along the rock face, he trailed his fingers along the dark and cold stone, feeling the slivers of stone try to tear at his fingertips.

The child was waiting at the well.

It was wrapped in its rags, and its eyes hung deep in the dark folds of its robes like small moons.

He approached the well slowly and cautiously, watching the eyes as they twitched when he took every step. He reached for the bucket he had looped by his belt, and walked to the other side of the well from the child.

Father Juan drew the bucket up out of the deep darkness of the well, face averted from its echoing chamber, eyes always on the child, who stood gravely watching him. He strained to bring up the bucket, which to his leaden arms seemed so much heavier than ever. As it crested the lip, he could not help but peer into the water, and drew in a ragged breath of surprise.

There, caught in the water, were the moon and stars, dripping wet and as cool as the dew on a fresh morning. The silver light they carried shone from out the bucket, the glow catching on the rusty iron handle and making it glint like secret gold.

The child looked at Father Juan in mute yet eloquent request, and Father Juan knelt before the ragged robes and handed the thirsty child the bucket.

And the child lifted the heavy bucket, and held it to his mouth, stars washing down past his lips and staining the front of his chest, the moon barely big enough to slide down his starving gullet. And then the child smiled at Father Juan, and held the bucket out to him, and Father Juan took it.

For just an instant their fingers touched, and as long as he lived the priest never forgot. Never forgot the feeling in the fingers of a ghost.

It was mot many months later that the soldiers came for Father Juan. The great doors of the church were axed open. The wooden bar was tossed aside. The refugees Father Juan had come to keep hidden safely in his cellar were taken from there.

Outside the doors the glow of the fires in the village was red and aching. The wind blew in stinking of ash. They took them all outside and there in front of the newly flowered blossoms, past the creaky wooden stairs, they shot the prisoners.

The men died with their eyes turned defiantly down the barrel. The children clung to their parents' skirts. The mothers cursed the names of the women who bore the fascists and nursed them though their first year.

And then they brought out Father Juan.

He stood against the rock face, feeling behind him with his rough fingers. He felt the crannies and crevices in the stone. It felt like stone, nothing more--not like salvation. He scrabbled in panic as the rifles were lifted, and his fingernails skittered across the rock like helpless leaves blown by the wind.

It was a very big moon that night, he thought irrelevantly.

And when they opened fire, his fingers found what he had unknowingly been questing for, as a tiny hand slipped into his, and squeezed it confidently.

He dared not look down, so he looked up at the sky. And as he died, he opened his mouth and with a great cry, let the moon and the stars wash over him and enter him, like cool liquid.

It felt, to him, like a long drink of water from the coolest well, as he lay there, imbibing the heavens, and exhaling his last breath, tinged with the light of the Milky Way.

This all happened in the year of the great Civil War, when they shot the poet Lorca, in a place where the sky is round like a bowl, and the moonlight gathers in the waters of very deep wells.