“Mom! Mo-om! Grampa! Somebody! Help!” Timmy shouted until he was hoarse. His throat constricted at the thought of another scream. He settled into the muddy bottom of what must be an ancient well, a well hand-dug by the original homesteader of the forty acres Timmy’s and his mother and grandfather owned. Considering whimpering himself into an all-out bawl, Timmy second thought. Instead, he pointed his broken-nailed fingertips into the waning light, a tiny sliver of light that was fast scaling the gravelly, rocky wall that must have stretched at least thirty feet up to the surface.

“Someone should start to miss me, even if they can’t hear me,” Timmy thought, nearly speaking the words aloud. After losing his baseball into the briar patch off to the side of the yard, Timmy worked his way into the mess from several angles. Tossing it up and running to catch it was boring enough, but if he didn’t find it, then Grampa couldn’t play catch with him when he got home from work.

Grampa moved in with them not long after Timmy’s father was overrun by the tractor and disced to pieces. Timmy’s mother first leased the acreage to the neighbor, and then moved Timmy to the attic room, giving Timmy’s room to Grampa.

Once determining that his fingers weren’t broken, merely cut and scraped, with torn cuticles, twelve-year-old Timmy rinsed them as best he could in the water that pooled on one edge of the bottom. He hurt all over, but figured that nothing was broken. He tried screaming again, this time calling his mother’s name in hopes that she would hear it subconsciously, and respond. Nothing.

“GRAMPA!” Still nothing. He tried throwing rocks out the top, but they all banged uselessly on the rotten boards that Timmy had fallen through. A case of shivers told him that he’d already missed supper and wondered why he hadn’t heard anyone call his name.

+++

“Hello, Grampa. You’re late.”

“Overtime. Harvest season. Farmers wait until they need their equipment to find out something’s broke and they need parts yesterday. Happens every year.” Grampa hung his John Deere hat and jacket on a hook and left to wash for supper.

“You tell Timmy to come in?” Ruth asked.

“Didn’t see ‘im,” Grampa answered from the washroom around the corner. “Prob’ly big game huntin’ with his Daisy.”

“I wish he wouldn’t do that. He killed a bird the other day, a pretty robin. His father would have taken his BB gun away.” June fairly slammed the plates onto the kitchen table.

Grampa harumphed. “Serves the boy right, eating cold beans an’ taters. Maybe off ta bed out no supper a’tall.”

Ruth glared at him as she went to the door to yell Timmy’s name. She even rang the triangle dinner bell, albeit without much gusto.

Timmy snapped from his stupor, uncertain what had brought him from his trance-like slump.

“He’ll show up come dark,” Grampa said. “Them pork chops gonna just stay in the skillet?”

Ruth literally ran to the stove, forking two of them onto the man’s plate, leaving one each for her and Timmy.

“I’s you, I’d eat both them chops. Another good lesson fer the boy.”

Ruth nodded agreement.

Supper finished and dished washed, Ruth dismissed the notion of asking her husband’s father to go out and look for her son, not wanting to hear him complain of being awakened and that he was in the middle of his favorite radio show. Ruth grabbed her sweater and a flashlight, venturing out toward the barn and the lane that led toward the back woods beyond their forty-acre cornfield.

The barn was a favorite play area, and Timmy had a path worn through the corn to the woods. Ruth had never told Timmy that his path ran directly through his father’s blood and… She didn’t have the heart to tell him, Neither did she have the fortitude to walk the path. After a dozen shouts she returned to the house.

“Anything?” Grampa asked.

“No, nothing.”

Grampa took the flashlight and after donning his jacket, went to look for himself, first walking around the house before traipsing through the barn and into the cornfield. He knew the stories of small children lost in fields. Wheat fields were the worst for toddlers. Corn, though, you just walked a row. They all came to either a road, or a fence line that you could follow. No one died in a cornfield, especially a twelve-year-old.

Once to the woods, the old man shouted Timmy’s name. He wandered among the maples and chestnuts, knowing that the boy might lay crumpled at the base of any one of them with low enough limbs to have climbed. A broken arm or leg wouldn’t have kept the boy from working his way home, or at least answering a call. But a broken neck would.

“That Timmy’s glove?” Ruth asked as Grampa tossed it onto the table beside Timmy’s plate.

“He left it in the front yard again. Some way to treat a Christmas present.” Grampa harumphed.

Ruthy picked it up, hugging it to her bosom. “Where do you think he is? Should we call the sheriff?”

Grampa frowned toward her. “They cain’t do nuthin’ we ain’t already done. Maybe call the Joneses. He might be with their boy.”

“Timmy wouldn’t go there without telling me, and…”

Grampa shot Ruth a withering look.

“I’ll call.”

Though Grampa could hear the entire conversation, even the Jones woman’s responses, Ruth relayed the entire conversation.

“I’ll stay home tamarra and we’ll look. Get the Joneses ta help. Shouldn’t get that cold tonight. Fifty, maybe high forties.”

Ruth shivered, hugging herself.

+++

Full on dark, Timmy wondered whether the moon would arc across the tiny opening. He had no idea as to the stage of the moon, or if it would even appear at all. It was total darkness in every direction. He’d already tried climbing the walls, ignoring the pain in his fingertips. After the third attempt, he knew that to be impossible. He thought about caving in the sides, building the floor of the well up so that he could eventually just step out. Without some sort of tool. That too was impossible. The scraps of wood that came down with him were too rotten to be of any use.

A well… “What if it was a wishing well? What if a person could make a wishing well of any old well? Why not?

“Well! I wish I was on top of the ground!” Timmy’s authoritative demand went unmet. Timmy felt around just to be sure. Feeling the side of the well convinced him that he remained in it. He hopped up, wondering if freeing himself from contact would trigger his wish. It didn’t. Instead, he slipped upon landing, his legs splaying, unceremoniously tipping him onto his side in the mire. Wiping his muddy hands on his equally muddy britches gained him nothing.

Maybe his wish was granted – exactly literally. He was standing on solid ground, so to speak, on top and not in. Timothy thought hard. What if he wished for a ladder? What if the ladder was too short? What if the ladder was on top of the ground, and not where he could reach it? What if it was a broken ladder? Or one made of the same rotten wood as the well cover?

“Well…” Timmy started to make his wish, but caught himself. “What if there’s a limit to my wishes, like genies in bottles?” Timmy resolved to make perfect his wish, leaving, potentially, one of three wishes as a last resort, like wishing for enough food and water to last until he was found.

He couldn’t make a wish that accounted for every possible twist. What if he wished for Grampa to find him, but Grampa fell over dead from a heart attack? There could be a thousand things he would have to specify. And what if the wishing well took offense at the details Timmy might list?

Timmy thought the harder. “A two-fer! Brilliant! I’m a genius!” Timmy always wanted a dog, a pet of his own. All his friends had dogs. Mom claimed that a dog would kill their chickens, and they depended on the eggs for eating, but mostly for selling. That was Mom’s income. “But this would be different,” Timmy told himself. A dog that saved Timmy’s life wouldn’t be a chicken killer. He would wish for a life-saving dog. That should be clear enough.”

“Well! I wish for a life-saving dog to find me and get help.” Timmy sat in the mud and crossed his arms, waiting.

+++

Ruth came out of her room, tucking her robe about herself. “What on tarnation…? What’s the commotion?” she asked Grampa who was shining the flashlight out the back door.

“Some dog. Barkin’ up a storm, running back and forth.”

“Think it’s rabid?” Ruth asked.

“Can’t rightly tell. It ain’t right. Know that.” Grampa moved away from the window, allowing Ruth to watch, though she couldn’t see the dog, only to hear it since Grampa had taken the light.

“Don’t open the door, Grampa shouted. “Just in case.”

Presently he returned, edging Ruth aside as he opened the door to go out.

“Be careful, Grampa,” Ruth cautioned.

BOOM!