WELL DONE! Fiction - THE CHRISTMAS WELL by J. L. Oakley

The Christmas Well by J. L. Oakley

When the city pipes broke at four above zero, the water spread out across our road like the thick roots of a crystal Banyan tree and froze. We all came out to stare, our boots slipping on the remains of last week's snow.

It was three days before Christmas. Our trees and lights were up, our cookies in the canisters, and stockings on the mantle, but we had no water.

"Not until the twenty-eight," the Forest Hills Water Department said and would have left it at that until someone got the brilliant idea of hauling up a water tank and putting it at the top of the hill.

"At least it's something," a neighbor said and went to organize her pots.

Others weren't so sure and said that the season was ruined.

Our community well arrived that afternoon. An old World War II water tankard bristling with spigots, its camouflage shell looked odd against the neat pre-war brick homes lined with hedges and crusted with old snow. Curious children and their parents watched a brief demonstration, and then were left to their imaginations how they would actually do it.

I heard about the tankard after I came home from junior high school. Mom, Dad, and my brothers, John and Bruce, had already carried enough pots of water into the kitchen to make it look like a battlefield after a major roof leak. (There was a leak of some sort, a family member later recalled. A pipe had snapped from the cold.) We had water in stew pots, canning pots, sauce pans, and even a few tin cans for the powder room. A large boiler was on the stove for doing dishes and washing hands.

In the living room behind the swinging kitchen doors, Handel played on the radio. The windows were painted with angels and snowflakes. The tree was ready to trim. Christmas was not going to be delayed.

Winters are cold and often snowy in Pittsburgh. Except for the hordes of children with whom I sledded in the open field below the alley, neighbors only glimpsed and waved at one another as they communally scrapped ice or snow off windshields on the way to work or to shop. Snowman-worthy snow might bring out a few townspeople for a moment's divertissement, but that was usually reserved for the younger crowd. Most folks kept to their calendar of baking, Christmas card writing, and package sending-off.

Visiting applied only to a few close friends and often it was by telephone to catch up on the day's news. In winter we just stayed inside.

The Christmas well changed that.

From morning to night we bundled up in our bright wool coats and scarves and rubber over-boots and trudged up the hill to the tankard with our pails and pots in hand, like ants making lines to a picnic. Neighbors that we hadn't seen since summer or hardly knew at all tiptoed down their steep stairs or off their brick porches to go to the well. As we gathered at the spigots, conversations blossomed in the frigid air, puffing out like little smoke signals.

"What's news, Mrs. Hanna? Did you get your tree?"

"My car didn't start again."

"My grandkids are coming for Christmas Eve."

The pots and pans were filled, but so were the spaces between neighbors. Older times were recalled and strategies on hauling water offered.

"When I was growing up on the farm we had a pump. Had to prime it every time. Mother always kept a can of water next to it just for that."

"We had a well in Italy. The whole village used it."

We stopped and listened to the stories. We filled and hauled and laughed at our communal inconvenience. Our own village was born right there in our neighborhood.

Anything with a handle was employed. My family preferred our aluminum camping equipment, pots with wire handles that nestled together in the cellar when they weren't in use. But neighbors ran the gambit of tin and copper pails to saucepans. Someone arrived with a wagon full of number five cans.

Techniques on catching water varied. Some hung the handle on the spigot and let the container fill until it looked too heavy to lift. Sometimes it was. Others held the handle of their pots until they began to tilt. All day and night we came, the water spilling on our boots and onto the bare pavement of the road. It was so cold that the water froze, leaving icy blobs around the tankard. At night under the street light, they gleamed like diamond cow pies.

On Christmas Eve day, the morning broke clear and cold, but by noon the sky had begun to grow flat. The wind stung our cheeks like a sharp wet kiss. We scurried for last-minute presents and lingered over the evening meal wondering if it would snow. Would we get to church? Or would we have to stay home? Service at eleven o'clock in the evening was always an adventure.

Dark fell at four o'clock. We turned on the lights on our tree and in the windows. Outside, it began to snow. Invisible first to the eye, the flakes grew from pinpoint to apple blossom size, sashaying down to the frozen ground. Bit by bit, snow crystal by show crystal, the snow covered

the street, the cars, the knobby roots of the oak tree in front of our house with a tenuous mesh of white velvet fuzz.

Then as gently as it started, the snowfall suddenly exploded, throwing out snowflakes like the contents of a huge featherbed. In a silent rush, it covered everything and piled up, mutating the street into a close, distant world. By 5:30, it rose four inches deep with more to come.

"Janie, girl, will you go out and get water for dinner?"

I pulled back from the window and smiled at my mother, who stood at the swinging door leading from the long living room to the kitchen. She wore a Christmas apron with ruffles and her hands were covered in flour. Behind her wafted the smell of cinnamon.

"Sure."

I went into the kitchen and down to the side door landing where coats and boots collected. My mother handed me some pails. I opened the door and stepped out onto virgin snow.

In my life there are scenes that have stayed with me always. They are hallowed memories, forever magical in my mind.

Going to get water from the community well that Christmas Eve is one of them.

The world beyond was still and silent, and a strange pale blue light reflected off hillocks of snow that looked for all their worth like confectioner's sugar.

My neighborhood had undergone a remarkable change. It not longer seemed an average residential street in a big city, but rather, a country lane in a long-ago time. The streets and yards had become one vast empty field, its hedges hidden somewhere under the snow. Candles flickered in windows. The trees overhead formed a tunnel whose roof was made of mist and falling snow. Far off, a street lamp beckoned like a muted star.

I tightened my mittened grip around the handles of the pails, and like a character from "A Christmas Carol," went out to get water from the well.

When I reached the top of the street I stopped. Under a street lamp, the Christmas well stood, its cylinder shape topped off with several inches of snow, its tongue and wheels hidden. The bright yellow light of the lamp played over it and gave it a curious glow-like the manger in the Nativity scene under the star. It was impossible to see into the gloom around it. There was only the well and the snow rushing down from the sky. I felt utterly alone and at peace.

I put down my pails.

"Merry Christmas," a neighbor said as she peered around the other side of the well.

"And a Happy New Year," said another. "What a beautiful night."

From beyond the well, a line of scarves, hats, and coats dusted with downy snowflakes stepped forward with their pots and pails to say hello.

My neighbors' faces were red with cold but each had that particular smile of good will and humor that had brought us to the well.

Christmas had come. A broken water pipe had not delayed it. We would gather our water and carry on with our lives as if nothing had happened. Except that something had. With each pot and pail of water we carried away, we also took a new sense of community and resourcefulness-and perhaps the true meaning of Christmas.

I live in the Northwest now where we rarely get snow at Christmas. But each Christmas Eve, I think of that snowy night when I went to gather water at the Christmas well. As I turn on the lights in my windows and on the Christmas tree, I look outside at my tree-lined street to where a city light stands guard above the hedges. I don't even have to close my eyes to see the Christmas well glowing there under its light, the snow falling down on its cylindrical shape and the neighbors gathered around.

It is etched forever in my mind.

Let us always be neighbors to one another, not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year.

Award-winning author, J.L. Oakley, writes historical fiction that spans the mid-19th century to WW II with characters standing up for something in their own time and place. She also writes the occasional personal essay. Dry Wall in the Time of Grief won the 2016 grand prize at Surrey Writers.Recent awards have been the 2020 Hemingway Grand Prize award for 20th century war

time fiction and an Honorable Mention Writer Digest Self-pubbed Ebooks for The Quisling Factor.