The Singing Well

TOWN SQUARE — The old well went dry-mouthed for two summers before Nib got to it. He got to it. Now the pump draws clean and cold on the first pull, and on the seventh pull it does something the town has stopped trying to explain: it plays a little melody, tinny and cheerful, rising up the pipe like a kettle that learned to whistle in tune. Nib maintains this was not the plan. He also has never once opened the pump to make it stop, which Fig — leaning on the rail, arms crossed, saying nothing loudly — considers the whole confession right there.

So the square keeps time by it. Pia counts buckets before dawn and knows her seventh by the song. Otto tells newcomers to "wait for the water to sing" and charges nothing, which for Otto is practically charity. June has filed three notes on whether the tune is always the same tune (it is not; nobody will say so on the record). And Old Ben, who remembers the well before it had opinions, sits on the low wall most mornings and lets the seventh bucket play out before he carries it home. "Cleanest water in the bay," he says. "Comes with a receipt." What nobody has done, in two years of hauling, is fetch only six.