Chapter 12: The Wall

The Yard gate swung open for us at noon.

I rode in on the back of a flatbed with the old man, my mother, and two hundred people from the Narrows and the laundry.

Four hundred more stood waiting inside the wall.

They were dirty and silent and thin, men and women with empty buckets in their hands.

They watched me come.

Nobody cheered.

The gate captain walked ahead of the truck with his tin badge pinned to his chest.

"The well house is at the back," he said. "It's been dry since last night."

The well house was a low brick building beside the rail tracks.

A tall iron pump head stood over a cracked pipe that ran into the earth.

Haskell's men had torn out the pump itself.

All that remained was a hole in the floor where the machinery had been, and a cold black tube going down into the dark.

"What do you need?" Hallie asked quietly.

"A pump."

"We don't have a pump."

"I know what a pump is made of," I said. "I was a lineman. I know pipe, and I know motors."

I walked to the edge of the hole and looked down.

The crowd had followed me in, packing the doorway.

I felt Tova step up on my left and Bria on my right.

Hallie stood behind me with a hand on my back.

"Everyone's here," Bria murmured. "Do it."

"I'll need scrap."

They brought it.

Truck axles, bike frames, a hand-cranked drill, copper pipe, gears from a dead transmission, the blades of an old fan.

It piled up in the center of the floor.

The people of the Yard watched, saying nothing, with their buckets in their hands.

I stood in front of it and held out my arm.

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