My room is right across from the kitchen. I hear the thuds of my father stoking the stove with heavy chunks of firewood. The bang of the damper when he closes down the stove. The running of water in the kitchen. This last sound gets me out of bed.

I realize every night my father pours himself a glass of water, drinks it, then pours another and carries it down to his and Mom’s bedroom. A grown man’s body is sixty percent water. I wonder, if you drink more water, does the percent increase? If you have more water in your body, does it help you dowse?

When the kitchen is empty, I go in and run myself a glass of water and drink it. Then I pour myself another glass of water and set it on my nightstand next to my pillow. I bring my nose right to the edge of the glass and sniff, but I don’t smell anything.

I fall asleep thinking about the water that feeds our wells on the hill. The top of Bower Hill Road is the highest point in town, and the house at the top is Nana’s.

The next house down from Nana’s is Uncle Lincoln’s, my father’s older brother. Lincoln has never wanted to live anywhere but here on the hill where he was born. He’s pretty quiet, but if a neighbor has trouble, Lincoln is the first person they go to for help. The tall house down from that is Uncle Braggy’s, the middle brother.

After Braggy’s house there’s a hedgerow of trees and then our big field. The fourth and last Bower house is ours. If you drive back up to the top of the hill and go down the other side, you pass the Bower gravel pit, granite quarry, and cemetery. Braggy’s wife is buried in the family cemetery. Braggy’s stone is next to hers, with his name and birth date already carved on it. If you keep going, you get to Bog Road. James and his father, Wendell, live on Bog Road.

Bower One, Bower Two, Bower Three, and Bower Four, I think of them, with our house and land being Bower Four. Past our house, at the bottom of the hill, where the road takes a curve toward town, are Bower Five and Bower Six, the land and fields for my house and Birdie’s when we grow up.

And under all of them, enough water that none of our wells have ever gone dry.

Suddenly, as if a voice is calling to me, I’m woken by a rustling and hissing noise.

Hizzz. Hizzzz.

It’s like the sound Birdie made when she pointed toward the sky outside the library, and I remember the way the dowsing stick pointed upward instead of down.

I open my bedroom window, which faces the field.

HIZZZ. HIZZZZ.