By Amy Barnes
I have NOT been writing. I have managed to dig myself a well in my sleep. There’s dirt under my dream fingernails. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. My thoughts feel dry. My nightly goal is to find a well of creativity I’ve been told exists somewhere, but I’ve only managed to locate a dry, empty one. I don’t know how or when or why my creativity dried up. I think it was a slow build-up of many smaller things – a thousand tiny cuts, not one big slash. A too-harsh editor. Home disasters. My mother *discovering* my writing.
I’ve tried to figure out how to fix myself. I’m taking writing classes. Reading. Listening. I have a wonderful network of fellow writers. I’ve thrown myself into reading and editing other people’s work. Nothing has worked.
So, I peek into my imaginary (empty) well in the daylight. Suddenly the ground shifts, and I tumble like Alice into a wondering land, a wondering well. Once I’ve fallen onto dry well dirt, someone puts a cutesy wishing well atop the hole like a silly hat. I hear and feel the coins of small children pelting me.
There is little solace in my self-dug well, and even less words. Bored and uninspired, I order books. They’re lowered in the well’s wicker basket. It squeaks on the way down, protesting under the weight of paper instead of light wishes and pennies. There’s books on wells and water tables, of course. One on how-to-put-baby-on-a-sleep-schedule that I thought I’d burned years ago. Classic novels. Contemporary literature. Graphic novels. Banned books. Poetry collections. Magazines and zines. Books written by friends. I read them all, squinting in the well’s darkness.
There are inexplicably words from other writers who’ve sat in my well before I dug it into existence. Their words are scratched on the curved walls. Some are in beautiful cursive. Others, block letters. There are tick marks that encircle me.
I stack all the books I’ve had delivered. They make for a rickety damp platform to climb on. I can almost reach my fingers to the well’s edge, but I slip back onto piles of slightly-wet paper and wet words.
***
Can we get a well in our backyard? I’ve heard in Florida you can dig one with your bare hands because they have sandy soil. We could save thousands of dollars on our water bill. My husband sends me on a research quest (a willing one I label as writing research because it counts) to see if we can have a well in our suburban yard. I find out Tennessee limestone makes it nearly impossible and there’s also a 2-year waiting list for the two companies that dig wells, with no guarantee for water, only a high price.
Consequently, we do not have a real backyard well (only my imaginary one) and are at the mercy of our water company that charges random fees and dictates we water on odd days based on our address.
***
Because I’m a writer fascinated with words, I examine the word “well” and its many meanings. I’m still not writing, but it feels closer. There are tiny damp spots in the well’s bottom. I think about wells as water sources and also dried up and left behind. Wells of creativity. Finding a well of inspiration and creativity. Writing “get well soon” in greeting cards, glibly or sincerely. People go back to the well for more information, money, or ideas. Wishing people well. Wishing wells. Saying well … with an pause and inflection that can mean judgment follows or that you’re Bewitched’s Samantha. Empty wells. Dawn Wells. Wellies to stand in a well. Inkwells. It’s a weighty word. A waiting word. A dry word. A wet one – at its best.
***
I had a metal wishing well as a kid. It was a bank too, a bank of bribes. I earned it – and a line-up of old-timey bronze banks and pencil sharpeners shaped like sewing machines, cars, clothes irons – by reciting Bible memory verses. The wishing well basket swung back and forth, and if you put a penny in it, the coin fell into the well/bank. Every time I dropped change into the bank, I made a wish or a prayer.
I’m also old enough to remember Baby Jessica stuck in a well, and Lassie’s ongoing missions to get someone out of a well, all in a television hour. Both made for sensational viewing. From the news stories on the progress of getting Jessica out of the well to Lassie running to rescue a fallen well person, there’s a visceral response to the idea of falling in a well and getting stuck. A larger fascination with quicksand and hidden wells were popular pitfalls for much of my teen years.
When my kids were little and we went hiking, I was always on the lookout for forgotten wells in the ground. I knew about a little girl who fell in a well and had to be dug out and almost died. I say in my forceful mommy voice because I have nightmares about one of them needing rescuing on the evening news. They obediently step more carefully. I hold my arms to catch them if I see a big hole in the ground, just in case.
***
It’s been months and I’ve failed to exit my self-imposed well, again and again. There’s water up to my chin – water to drink and drown in but not write in. I often think I hear the rustle of a friendly border collie at the well’s entrance. I hold up a hand and a book gift, while calling for Lassie or the Baby Jessica rescuers. My husband asks if I’m okay and did you find out if we can get a well yet?
***
As I continue sitting in my self-imposed well, I cultivate a growing (and ironic) obsession with water that extends beyond my well-digging, well-wishing. I try to draft my always-in-progress novel as a tribute to my grandfather, a dowser that never said well in a Bewitched twang. The sparse outline focuses on a dry town with holes for miles, but no water. I write my own dry life into the lives of my characters, keeping them from water like a mean puppetmaster. I make them dig wells. I make them dehydrated. I turn their town into a dusty, dirty place with no hint of an oasis or impending rescue. I make them wish for a working well, dug by their hands with a bronze basket for lowering books and coins and bottles of fresh water from another town, a wet one with many working wells.
***
Ironic water arrives when our house’s sewer line springs multiple large leaks in the basement. The front yard is muddy and slashed with a 130-foot trench. I stand in the soggy grass with wet feet. I don’t tell the plumbers that I’ve dug a bigger, well – hole in my sleep. I do tell my novel characters. They beg to visit my well, and I almost relent. They sing songs about dipping their fingers in the water to cool their souls. I can’t find the creativity to write them out, and instead leave them tormented in their dry hell, even as my own life is flooding.
One of our neighbors anonymously reports us to the homeowner’s association for the mess. I want her to call the local news or Lassie for help, but she only calls the HOA out of some not-neighborly misguided spite.
I write another character into a dry well in their dry town. By the time spring grass grows over the long trench, my wet well books have dried out too. And yet, no one has come to rescue me. I realize I’m the only one who can do that. I finally manage to white knuckle over the well’s edge with pocketfuls of coins for my bronze well bank and handfuls of words for my bronze word book (and this essay.)
I hum it is well with my soul as the words finally flow. 1250 of them.
Read Amy’s other work here at Reckon.
Amy Barnes is the author of three short fiction collections: AMBROTYPES published by word west, Mother Figures at ELJ, Editions and CHILD CRAFT from Belle Point Press. Her words have appeared in a wide range of publications including: The Citron Review, JMWW Journal, Janus Lit, Flash Frog, Nurture Lit, Complete Sentence, Gone Lawn, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, McSweeney’s, SmokeLong Quarterly, Apartment Therapy, Southern Living, Motherly, Romper, Allrecipes and many others. She’s been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, long-listed for Wigleaf50 in 2021 and 2022, and included in Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor and reads for Retreat West, The MacGuffin, and Narratively.