Letters in The Sand

Potter County’s last water witch was not what anyone had expected nor wanted. Anna was small, far too small for the Knoblauch’s which boasted tall, willowy women, all of whom possessed an alluring combination of strength and grace. What should have been golden hair that fell gently into waves was instead a shocking white blonde that washed-out Anna’s plain features. Her light brows were always screwed together in exasperation, and her thin mouth rarely produced a smile. Her demeanor was even more inexplicable to her family than her looks.

Never could Anna be found when her father called her to attend church services. She would hide in the barn’s rafters, reading until her grandmother came calling for supper. Anna often fought the neighboring boys and pulled the hair of girls who lambasted her, calling her an ugly “witch.” The occasional “damn” slipped from her mouth when she was a nickel short at the store, and she once told the pastor’s daughter to “get bent” after the girl made fun of her skinny legs. Anna could taste the soap her father stuck in her mouth weeks after.

When Klara Knoblauch, Anna’s grandmother, was called out to find a vein of water or establish a well, Anna showed no interest in the family’s trade. More than once she received a lecture on her apparent lack of interest, but when she heard the word “duty” thrown at her yet again Anna raged and took her grandmother’s cherished dowsing rod, an ancient thing made from the branch of a peach tree, and chucked it onto the roof of the family’s farmhouse.

Klara merely looked down at her willful granddaughter, her brown eyes sunken into slits. She made no mention of the safety of the cherished family heirloom and only commented on her awe at how a small twig of a girl could make such a magnificent throw.

It was the day of Anna’s eleventh birthday that she noticed the wind begin to change. Texas summers, while always fierce, now held air that felt thirsty and filled lungs with an unbearable heat. The rain became sluggish and only half of what farmers expected. Locals knew they had entered a drought, but they shook it off as a temporary spell of bad luck, a small black spot on an otherwise promising horizon.

Nearing the end of the second year, wells all over the panhandle began to dry and farmers started moving north toward Oklahoma and Kansas. It did them little good. The drought crept upward from Texas, burning the Midwest, transforming it into a foreign planet that had long been vacated of life. But Potter County had Klara. The water witch continued to find water, although Anna noticed the creases in her grandmother’s forehead deepen each time she returned from her work. She would whisper worriedly to Rupert Whitlock, Anna’s father, each night before greeting her. A sour smell clung to Klara and she noticed how the dust was slowly turning her golden hair the color of clay. Anna was allowed one glass of water during dinner that night.

Klara woke Anna one Sunday before dawn and took her to the fields, far from the neighboring towns and paved roads. Rows of trees broke up the vacant skyline, and shadows grew long as the sun ascended. A sun-bleached knapsack hung from Anna’s shoulder which held tools and a jug of water to be used sparingly throughout the day.

“Are you ready, love?” Klara asked her granddaughter. Anna spat on the ground, her mouth gritty from the torrid heat.

“I can’t stay out long. School tomorrow.”

“Your mother loved nothing more than to be out here.” That irked Anna. Her mother had passed away when Anna could barely walk.

“Yeah, well she died a long time ago, didn’t she?” A heavy silence fell between them. Anna didn’t mind the silence. In fact, she hoped her grandmother would keep quiet and stop pressing her as she always did.

“Anything else you’d like to say?” Anna grunted in response. “We’ll let’s move on then,” Klara continued, “because I want to teach you a thing or two today.”

“I’m not sure there’s much you can teach me…ma’am,” Anna added in an attempt at politeness.

“You reckon so?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not like I’m going to stay around here and help farmers make wells. I want to go to college,” Anna added hesitantly.

“Nothing wrong with that. There’s also nothing wrong with learning how to dowse.” Klara motioned her head in the direction of the trees and Anna followed. The rod remained firmly in her grandmother’s left hand, pointed sharply toward the earth, but Anna thought she saw it occasionally twitch. When they passed into the shade of the trees, Klara held her arm out. Anna, who barely reached her grandmother’s shoulder, felt a sharp pain as her nose collided with an elbow. She rubbed at it furiously, wondering if she had fractured cartilage.

“We go left.”

“How do you know?” Anna peered around her grandmother’s body. Klara ignored her and instead guided the rod in front of her and began trekking through the sparse woods. It would swerve gently to the side, dip downward before quickly bobbing back into position. It was like some invisible fish had tethered itself to the rod and it was leading them into unknown depths. Anna watched with a critical eye as the peach wood supposedly led them toward deep reserves of drinking water.

“Over here,” Klara’s voice rang out, startling Anna and the surrounding birds.

“What makes you think that?” Klara signaled to her granddaughter, pressing her hand against the smooth grain of the wood. Together, they stretched their arms and held it parallel to their bodies. Anna could only imagine how stupid they must look.

“Do you feel it?”

“What exactly am I supposed to be feeling?”

“The vibrations.” Klara closed her eyes and lowered her head as if in prayer. “The minerals in the water, they’re calling out to us. You need to let your walls down so you can sense their energy.” Anna fidgeted uncomfortably. Her feet and legs ached, and she was impossibly thirsty. She wanted to lie to her grandmother, tell her she did feel something just so she could have a drink.

Anna jumped when her grandmother swooped to the ground. Her old fingers razed the browning grass, tapping patiently against the earth. She watched as Klara took her index finger and drew a series of neat letters in the dried soil where she intended to dig. Anna had seen her do it before—her grandmother always wrote a few lines of reflection when she found water, words meant for herself, for the act of taking water. In one swift motion, Klara exhaled and each word was carried away by soft air as if they never existed.

“Love, hand me my trowel.” Anna did so and helped her grandmother dig until damp soil appeared. After a moment of probing, a small pool of rocky water gathered in the hole. “It’s not a large deposit, but it’s good water. Could make a decent well if dug deep enough.”

“You can’t know that!” Anna’s words, meant as a protest, sounded like a plea.

“I do,” Klara said in a firm voice. Anna bristled, a familiar heat spreading throughout her limbs.

“It seems like dumb luck to me.” Klara’s face softened and she reached out to Anna, taking her hand in her own.

“You don’t need luck to find water. Follow the vibrations. The women in our family have this gift and we need to use it. Our community depends on us.”

“You mean water witching?” Klara chuckled. Anna always marveled how her grandmother’s laugh sounded like running water. It made her feel strange, vulnerable.

“People can call it whatever they want.”

“It bothers me that they call us witches,” Anna mumbled.

“Don’t mind them.” Klara wiped her forehead with the back of her forearm, sweat glistening along her serious brow. “You were fortunate to have been born in this family. Don’t ever forget that.”

Anna scoffed, but she continued to dig. And she continued to help her grandmother until the morning she found her resting in bed, hands clasped and completely at peace in death.

The renowned water diviner’s passing was a terrible blow to the community for the drought continued without delay. It soon entered its fourth year, followed by a fifth, and fields that were once bucolic stretches of deep green dotted with cattle were now seas of scorched earth.

The family’s livestock were long gone. There would be no money for college, no money to relocate, and soon no money to live on. All that was left was a crumbling farmhouse and an old legacy that Anna carried around like a burden.

It was August of that fifth year when a knock came at the door. The sound was mournful, pressing itself firmly against the thin walls of the farmhouse. Anna immediately stopped chopping onions at the kitchen table, exchanging a look with her father before he pushed himself slowly upright and lumbered toward the door. His hand rested against the tarnished doorknob a moment before he twisted it.

A man entered after greetings were exchanged, his hat held against his chest in respect. Anna recognized him as the mayor of the nearest town and he wore an ill-fitting, sweat-stained suit. He did not acknowledge Anna. The fresh onions made her eyes water, but she kept her hawk-eyes open and trained on the strange visitor.

“It’s bad, Rupert,” the mayor said in a rushed voice. “Terrible, terrible business. There’s no end in sight. First, the school closed and now the last stores are getting ready to shutter their doors. There’s nothing left.”

“I don’t see what we can do to help the situation,” Rupert mumbled.

“I think it’s time we have young Anna out there so she can do what needs to be done.” A loud slapping sound echoed throughout the room. The men’s heads turned toward Anna, her hands pressed firmly against the table.

“Why in the hell does everyone still believe in that garbage?”

“Watch your mouth, Anna,” her father reprimanded. She made a derisive sound, the corners of her mouth pulled into a grimace. She’d rather her father yell than use that defeated voice which grew quieter each year. Years of grief and illness had robbed him of any fight, of any hope.

“I’ll return at dawn,” the mayor continued, ignoring Anna’s protest. Make sure she has everything she needs.”

There was no sleep that night. The radio whispered quietly in the corner of Anna’s bedroom, the music attempting to console her. Anna tossed restlessly on her side and stared at the creased edges of books stacked on her night stand. The lyrics, Each time I saw the tide take our love letters from the sand washed over Anna and she imagined her grandmother’s fingers carving letters into the earth before exhaling, secrets carried away by hot winds.

The dowsing rod was propped against the wall under the room’s lone window. It looked small and insignificant, like an abandoned child’s toy. When sleep refused to come Anna crept from bed, careful not to stumble in the dark. The rod felt ice cold in her hands, and she closed her eyes, waiting to feel some sign, a slight shiver or twitch of meaning. Her stomach rumbled, and the familiar dryness in her throat made her arms tremble with fatigue.

Anna’s fingers remained motionless. No vibrations, no electricity surging through her fingertips. Quickly, she returned to bed and tossed the rod into the far corner of the room. It landed with a half-hearted thunk, swallowed by the darkness.

As promised, Anna was escorted to a campsite the next morning. Her father had remained behind, too ill to go, too afraid to look his daughter in her eyes as she was led away from their home.

Erected alongside a dirt road, the camp contained a few dozen men and a handful of women, watching as Anna lowered herself from the truckbed. They whispered and pointed when they saw the wooden rod clutched tightly in her hand.

A lone woman disengaged herself from the gathering and strode solemnly toward her. A passive wave of surprise rippled through Anna when she recognized Sheila Cooper, the woman who ran a local grocery store that was on the verge of closing.

“Are you ready, miss Whitlock?”

“I can’t do this,” Anna said, her teeth grinding in frustration.

“You have to.”

“It. Won’t. Work.” Anna was used to being ignored, but she needed someone, anyone to listen now. Sheila watched Anna, her eyes worn and tired.

“It has to, miss Whitlock.”

By noon, the pain in Anna’s soles elevated to a sharp throbbing which spread like cancer though her legs and into her hips. Each step was agony and her chapped lips burned with thirst.

After the maps had been consulted, it was determined that the best place to search for water was in the woods along the northern part of the county. Klara had found a particularly prosperous string of water deposits there years ago, and much of the territory had remained unexplored.

Anna’s place was at the head of the silent parade marching through the wild. Occasionally she would stop and rest, but a gentle prodding from one of the party would set her on her way again. Twice, Anna had tried to ensure the nearest guardian that she had, magically, stumbled upon water, but either they detected her lie or thought her mistaken as they always told her to continue on her doomed pilgrimage.

Heat and dehydration were poor companions, and Anna found herself grasping at nearby trees for support. Sometimes she thought she heard the distant sound of rushing water, but when she looked around all she saw were dozens of eyes hovering, boring into her.

When twilight drew near, Anna’s numb hands moved the rod lazily from side to side, recalling the movements she had seen Klara perform countless times before. She wasn’t sure if she was even moving the rod. Her body’s exhaustion was at such a point that she felt she might have left it far behind and she was now nothing more than a wandering spirit.

The rod then did an odd thing. It bounced upward three times before performing a final swan dive, its edge pointed directly at Anna’s feet. She stopped. There was no use in going further. Physically she could not, and with no anger to spur her onward she felt the urge to fight leave her.

Anna recalled how her grandmother would lean into the ground, hands snaking through the grass as she sought movements deep beneath her, the back of her hand like a map she used to navigate the underground streams. Anna hit the ground and she felt the skin of her knees split. There was no green grass to explore here, and so Anna let her body lower until her cheek was pressed against hard ground.

Something grabbed hold of Anna and for a moment she felt as if she were being lifted by a wave, quickly swallowed and pushed to the bottom of a black sea. Time felt meaningless in that dark place.

When Anna felt strong enough to open her eyes, she saw only brittle treetops and bits of indigo sky above her. She raised herself on her elbows, unsurprised to see dirt flying through the air as dozens of shovels worked the ground, feverish in their search for water.

Anna watched, detached and separated from their task, wondering if she had died and would now spend an eternity dowsing for water that was nowhere to be found. She would never escape this heat, the thirst that was as familiar to Anna as her own heart beat. Maybe they were digging her grave?

No, growled a voice in Anna’s head. She would not lay there, supine and weak, waiting for death. Not here, not like this. She found the strength to stand and ambled near the edge of the pit. It grew wider and deeper, the tops of the men’s heads bobbing like minnows in an empty pond. Something cold and wet was pressed in her hands. A glass of water appeared between her fingers and without thinking, she raised it to her lips and drained it in two gulps.

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Sheila said, breathless. “This could be it, miss Whitlock. And you found it. I can’t imagine how proud your grandmother would be of you right now.”

Would Klara be proud? It was an odd thought to think anyone could ever be proud of Anna, but the sentiment was not unwelcome. A sudden impulse overcame her. She lowered herself and began scribbling a message to her grandmother. It began as a plea, a cry for guidance, but by the end Anna’s fingers slowly shaped I’m sorry into the earth’s husk. A few drops fell from her cheeks, darkening the dirt’s palette. Anna raised her hand, ready to strike it when a wild cry stopped her short. She reached for the dowsing rod and stood, trembling. The shadows of the Knoblauch women surrounded her, silent witnesses to what unfolded before her.

“Water!” One of the men cried out. He cupped the murky liquid into his hands and splashed it over his face. Others followed suit, and soon more bodies pushed past Anna to get a better look at the discovery. Triumph and elation echoed around them, dizzying and overwhelming. When they saw the water gushing up through soil and rock like a spring, a chorus of songs began and soon everyone joined in.

Anna held the dowsing rod firmly at her side, her palm pressing against it until she felt splinters and the deep groan of wood breaking.