“Thanks, Uncle Lincoln,” I say, wondering what Dr. Miles Morgan would think about my plan for the little rock from Nottingham, England, and wishing James, with his optimism, could be there to see what happens.

Chapter 20

For the maximum volume of water, you should lay out or dowse as large an area as possible. This is done by making a number of passes first in one direction, and then a number of passes in another direction perpendicular to the first series.

—Joseph Baum, The Beginner’s Handbook of Dowsing

THE DRILLING RIG idles at Bower One the next morning.

“I thought Henry might like coming to work with me,” Lincoln tells Mom and Dad, as if it’s any other drilling day when I’m going along to watch him operate the rig, not the day I’ll find out whether I’m a natural-born dowser. And whether my experiment works.

I follow Lincoln outside and go over to the big apple tree in front of Nana’s porch.

“Can I borrow your pocketknife?” I ask my uncle.

Lincoln gives me the knife he keeps in a pouch on his belt and looks up at the tree with me.

“This is a Baldwin apple your great-grandfather planted. They’re good winter keepers, those Baldwins.”

Some of the unpicked apples in the top branches hang on the leafless tree, frozen a muddy brown color. The bark on the trunk is thick and rough and has rows of small holes from sapsucker birds. The bark around the charred lightning strike is peeling off.

“It really should be pruned. Your grandfather was fussy about cutting out the suckers,” Lincoln adds, looking up at the overgrown tree.

I don’t need to circle the tree, because I picked my dowsing stick the day I turned ten. The branch that points toward the porch is still growing straight. The twigs that make a perfect V at the end are still even. I cut the branch about a foot above the V and show Lincoln.

“This is it. This is my stick.”

Lincoln gives me a thumbs-up.

“I see. You picked it and it picked you.”

I pat my pocket to be sure the stone is there. Then I climb up into the drilling rig next to Lincoln. On the way to town we drive by James’s empty trailer and past fields and farms.

The other equipment is already there—the tanker truck filled with water to lubricate the drill, and the backhoe to dig a runoff ditch. That is, if the drill finds water instead of just dust and we’re lucky enough to have any overflow.

Lincoln parks the drilling rig in the field next to Main Street, near the town’s dry well. I jump down from the rig with my dowsing stick. There are places near us where the soil is roughed up.

“Is this where you tried drilling yesterday?” I ask Lincoln.