A dug well is a lot cheaper than a drilled well. All you need is a shovel and plenty of time, or someone with a backhoe. But a backhoe and a shovel can’t dig through ledge because ledge is solid bedrock that’s under the dirt and you don’t know it’s there until you hit it. You could hit it at five feet or fifteen feet and that’s how deep your dug well will be.

An hour later five Bowers pull into Velma’s driveway in three different vehicles—me and Dad in the drilling rig, Lincoln in the tanker truck, and Braggy and Birdie following behind in his pickup. If I can’t find water, there will be six people, including Velma, to see it.

It’s like Lincoln said, it’s fifty percent whether I can or I can’t, but even if I can’t I’ll still be one hundred percent Henry.

Now I also know you can’t explain everything with percents.

You can’t measure the percents for all the great things that happened after the rock from space fell in our hayfield—the sandhill cranes, meeting Miles Morgan, Braggy finding out he’s an artist, bringing back the water. Even getting to know Fiona and Mr. Ronnie and Velma. Then the bad things—losing our house, the town well drying up, James getting hurt, Dwayne going to jail.

The other thing I figured out—good things can make bad things happen, and bad things can cause good things. You can’t calculate percents for how that works, either.

When we pull into the driveway, the black pony with the white half-moon on her forehead gallops over to the pasture fence. Velma waves to us. She’s wearing the same black barn boots, but her brown hair is loose instead of in a braid. A yellow puppy runs next to her.

Where the tilted barn used to be is a pile of crisscrossed boards and beams. I roll down my window and lean my head out. Velma sees where I’m looking.

“Yup. The barn finally collapsed. Half a foot of wet snow did her in.”

“Wow!” I say. I try to imagine the sound the barn made when it fell.

“I’ll rebuild in the spring. Just a small barn with one stall and a feed area.”

Velma taps the dowsing stick I’m holding. I cut another perfect branch from Nana’s tree before we left.

“You’re going to dowse my new well, Henry?” she asks.

“I hope so.”

The dog runs around Velma’s legs.

“I didn’t know you had a puppy,” I say.

“I just got him. He’s good company for Dreamer, and for me, too. Even if he chews everything in sight.”

Velma goes over to Lincoln and Braggy and Birdie. Birdie sits down in the snow and lets the yellow puppy lick her face.

I turn to Dad.