Water Rites Read Online Free

to go with him.” She bent over Jeremy’s mattress. Her hand trembled just a little as she brushed the hair back from his forehead.
    “I’ll be okay.” He wondered if she was worried that he wouldn’t do a good job. He almost told her that Dan knew about the makings and wouldn’t tell Dad, but Rupert was listening. “I’ll do good,” he said, and wished he believed it.
    It took Jeremy a long time to fall asleep, but when he did, it seemed as if only moments had passed before he woke up again. At first, he thought Mother was calling him to breakfast. It was still dark, but the east window showed faint gray.
    There it was again. Mother’s voice. Too wide awake to fall back to sleep, Jeremy slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the top of the steep stairs, just this side of their bedroom door.
    “Stop worrying,” Dad’s low growl drifted through the half-closed door. “What do you think he’s gonna do?”
    “I don’t know. He said he needed a helper, but what . . .”
    “What can Jeremy do? He can’t do shit, but Greely’s going to pay wages, and we can use anything we can get. Do you understand me?” Dad’s voice sounded like the dry, scouring winds. “How do you think I felt when I had to go crawling to the Brewsters and the Pearsons for food last winter?”
    “It wasn’t Jeremy’s fault, Everett, the north well giving out.”
    “No one else has an extra mouth to feed. And I had to go begging.”
    “I lost three babies after Rupert.” Mother’s voice sounded high and tight.
    “Whatever he wants from the boy, he’s paying for it.”
    Jeremy tiptoed down the stairs, his teeth clenched so hard they felt as if they were going to break.
    A light glowed in the barn’s darkness. “Hi.” Dan pulled a strap tight on the pony’s packsaddle. “I was going to come wake you. Ezra and I are used to starting as soon as it gets light. It gets too hot to work before noon.” He tugged on the pack, nodded to himself. “Did you get something to eat?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dan gave him a searching look, then shrugged. “Okay, let’s go.”
    It was just light enough to see as they started down the track. The pony stepped over the thin white pipe that carried water from the well to the field. The old bicycle frame of the pump looked like a skeleton sticking up out of the gray dirt. In an hour, Jonathan would be pedaling hard to get his gallons pumped. Then Rupert would take over. The twins would be hauling the buckets, dipping out water to each plant in the bean rows.
    “Did your dad build that?” Dan nodded at the metal frame.
    “Uh huh.” Jeremy walked a little faster, trying not to limp.
    He had had a thousand questions about the outside world to ask, but the sharp whispers in the upstairs bedroom had dried them up like the wind dried up a puddle. He watched Ezra’s big feet kick up the brown dust, feeling dry and empty inside.
    “We’ll start here.” The surveyor pulled Ezra to a halt. They were looking down on the dry riverbed and the narrow, rusty bridge. The road went across the riverbed now. It was safer.
    The pony waited patiently, head drooping, while Dan unloaded it. “This machine measures distance by bouncing a beam of laser light off a mirror.” Dan set the cracked plastic case down on the ground. “It sits on this tripod and the reflector goes on the other one.” He unloaded a water jug, lunch, an axe, a steel tape measure, and other odds and ends. “Now, we get to work,” he said when he was done.
    Sweat stuck Jeremy’s hair to his face as he struggled across the sunbaked clay after Dan. They set up the machine and reflector, took them down, and set them up somewhere else. Sometimes Dan hacked a path through the dry underbrush. It was hard going. In spite of all he could do, Jeremy was limping badly by mid-morning.
    “I’m sorry.” Dan stopped abruptly. “You keep up so well, it’s easy to forget that you hurt.”
    His tone was matter of fact, without a trace of pity. A knot clogged