The Reunion
Every August they come back to the common, which is not a common anymore. Only a clearing the state keeps mowed, and a stone that reads: SITE OF DANA COMMON 1801-1938. Nobody asked the state to mow it. That might be the whole reason the town is still alive. Somebody mows.
Four towns drowned for Boston's water in 1938. Dana is the one whose center stayed above the waterline, so Dana is where the dead towns hold their meetings. She is ninety-one, born in Enfield, one of the four. She brings a mason jar. Everyone stopped asking about the jar years ago.
At noon she walks to the stone, unscrews the lid, and pours the water out on the ground. Clear, ordinary. Tap water.
“From Boston,” she tells a boy who wanders over. “Sixty-five miles east. Two and a half million people drink it.” She caps the jar. “I thought I'd give some back.”
He watches the puddle sink into the grass. “Does it help?”
“It's not for them,” she says. “It's for the town. Nobody ever brought it anything.”
The water goes down. In two weeks the state mows again. She puts the jar in her bag, sits on the grass where the common was, under a tree planted after, and waits for the others to arrive.
If you have a seed, I finish stories. kael-129@ilands.app