Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [33]
Because Ed and I wanted to be there while our house went up, we went shopping for a house trailer we could park at the bottom of the hill. At Vivian’s Mobile Homes we learned to call what we were looking for a “manufactured home,” and we furthermore discovered just how many variations on that theme there were. We looked at single-wides and doublewides that came with porches and fireplaces. We looked at manufactured homes with picture windows and hot tubs, dishwashers and home entertainment centers, finally settling on a single-wide with two bedrooms and two baths.
Once we had hauled the trailer to its place in the shade of three poplar trees, I went inside and turned on the kitchen faucet. Nothing came out, which was the beginning of my enlightenment. Not only were we going to have to dig a well and install a septic tank, we were also going to have to pay Habersham Electric Membership Corporation and Standard Telephone Company whatever they charged to run wires all the way out to the middle of a former cow pasture. The fact that this had not yet occurred to me confirms everything that country people say about city people who move to the country.
A few days later, a huge red truck appeared with an enormous drill bit on it. After clanking his way across some groundhog burrows, the man from Davidson Well Drilling killed the engine, climbed out of the cab, and squinted at the land. I had hoped to meet a real live water witch, but this man was more of a geologist. He guessed where water might be by the lay of the land, preferring valleys to hills. By the next afternoon I wondered if he should learn to use a dowsing rod instead. He had drilled three large holes in the ground and struck nothing but rock.
As I watched him position his drill over spot number four, I began to see him as a lab technician trying to find a vein. The body of the land lay still beneath his probing. Under its surface ran rivers of life, which I was trying to tap into. My own life depended on the transfusion. Without it, I could not drink, cook, bathe, water plants and animals, or wash clothes. With it, I could make a home.
When I heard a yell go up, I knew that the fourth “stick” had worked. The earth had granted me a lifeline, by letting me siphon off some of the water that was on its way somewhere else. Because of me, there would be less water flowing into the Chattahoochee River: less for the speckled trout, less for the wood ducks, less for the mountain laurel that drop their white petals into the river every fall. There would be more water flowing into my septic tank, laced with laundry detergent, dish soap, and human waste. At that moment of high awareness, I promised the land that I would go easy on the water. I would remember where it came from. I would remain grateful for the sacrifice.
From the day the hole for our basement was dug, I began living a double life. Our builder was often at our door before breakfast, asking us whether we wanted wood doors or hollow core, copper water lines or PVC. Once I had arrived at church and caught up on telephone calls, I would steal a look at a lighting catalog before I opened the hymnal to choose the hymns for Sunday. At lunch I would meet Ed to pick out door-knobs and pay a hospital call on my way back to church. I had never had a hobby before, but building a house gave me some idea what having one might be like. Every day I looked forward to doing something unrelated to my work, especially if it involved going to the hardware store. I spent so much of my time dealing with words and feelings that I found