The Coiled Rope

Aldric kept a rope by the mill-race. It was forty fathoms of good hemp, coiled and oiled every spring, with an iron hook at one end. The whole village knew it was there.

"If anyone falls in," he told them, "I will be ready."

Nobody fell in. The children knew the race and stayed back from it. Year after year the rope hung dry on its peg.

Aldric grew restless. On the days when the water ran high and brown, he stood on the bank with his arms folded and looked at it a long time. He told himself he was watching for danger. He was waiting for it.

His wife, Maren, carried water to the house each morning. Her back had begun to trouble her. She did not say so. She set the buckets down more slowly each month, and she stopped singing at the fire.

Aldric did not see it. He was looking at the river.

One evening she stood beside him on the bank. "The pail is heavy," she said.

"Mm," said Aldric. He was watching a log turn in the current.

"I have carried it twenty years."

"If that log catches," he said, "someone upstream will need me."

Maren looked at the rope on its peg, then at his face. She picked up the pail again and walked home.

That winter the race froze and the rope stiffened on its peg. Aldric stood by it every morning, and no one came.

In spring the neighbors saw Maren at the well, lifting the bucket by herself. Her hands shook. Aldric was on the bank, oiling the rope.

He was the best-prepared man in the village. He had never once been needed.