Vandalizing the springs was the "cool" thing to do, of course, and Will himself had thrown many dead cats into the waters of Diamond Springs. He had spray-painted bridges, broken tree branches, and shot glass bottles to prove that he was braver or more creative or at least cooler than the other boys. Once he had chopped down an entire willow tree and blocked up a spring with it. And then he got caught.

That time was the craziest; he'd found a ratted-up armchair next to somebody's dumpster and dragged it all the way up to the biggest pool in the area. Shoving from a rock above the pool, he'd sent the chair right into the center, as half the boys in town cheered from the nearby bushes. It was just too bad he'd been seen carrying the thing out of town. There was no use denying that he'd done it, anyway, but he was rather proud of the prank and even of being the first boy in town to actually get taken to court for throwing something into the water.

Certainly Will was glad enough to be sentenced to community service and not juvenile detention, but helping old Grant Phillips, whose job was to keep the springs clear, was turning out to be harder than he'd expected. Certainly getting that dead, soggy cat out of the pool was not as easy as throwing one in. He set the hooked end of his stick on the ground and leaned on it.

"I can't get it," he said. "It keeps slipping."

"Try again," said Old Grant. "Be glad it's a cat and not a chair. It took three men and a pickup truck to get that out of the water."

"Remind me to throw in a sofa next time," said Will, reaching the stick out toward the cat again. Once again, it slipped from his hook and back down to the bottom of the pool.

"Damn," said Will.

The old man winced, then gave Will a half-smile. "Try again," he repeated. "Pull it toward you slow and easy, but don't hesitate. This time you'll get it." He spread a sheet of plastic on the bank, ready to receive the small, soggy body.

"Got it!" said Will, finally dragging the cat onto the plastic. "That was the most disgusting thing I've done in my life."

"Maybe so," said the old man, letting the water drain from the body before wrapping it in the plastic and placing it in a wheelbarrow, "maybe so. But some would say it's a sight more disgusting to have dirtied a place than to have cleaned it up."

"There's nothing more disgusting than a wet cat," said Will.

"Maybe so, maybe so," said Old Grant. "Let's check the next pool."

After a few weekends spent patrolling the springs, Will started to wish the boys would find something to do besides fouling them up. There was a certain amount of natural debris to clean out of them, of course, and leaves and branches were bad enough. There was no need to add the dead animals, foam cups, and odd tokens of passage that continually showed up in and around the water. After climbing a tree to retrieve a pair of ragged, sweat-smelling tennis shoes, the boy began to wonder how Old Grant could ever take care of the place alone. Will himself was certainly not going to throw anything in on Friday night that he knew he would have to pull out on Saturday morning. Even so, the glistening water was forever being invaded by garbage.

"What's the point of cleaning this stuff up if it will be messy again tomorrow?" asked Will one day, while picking broken glass off a bridge railing. "And what's the point of messing it up if it will be cleaned again tomorrow? Why does anybody bother?"

"Anything really beautiful will be attacked," said Old Grant. "You could say why better than I could; you've been on that end of it. And as long as it's attacked, it must be protected. That's our part. We keep the beauty."

"Whatever," said Will. "It's all a waste of time."

"Maybe so," said the old man, "maybe so." They spent the next hour and a half trimming branches around a series of glittering miniature waterfalls, both unusually silent.

The longer Will helped Grant clean the springs, the more he talked to him. He told him about not liking his dad, about wanting to change the world somehow, about failing his English class. He told him, once, that he didn't want to go to college.

"Why not, son?" said Grant. "I wish I'd gone."

"What's the point?" said Will. "I'd probably drop out. I'm not smart enough. College is stupid, anyway."

"Maybe so," said Grant, "maybe so. But maybe the real trouble is that you don't care enough about anything in particular to see the point. You can't make a difference if you don't care. College might help you find out what it is that you can care about."

"I don't know," said Will. "I'll think about that."

When the time came, Will went to college. He returned to Diamond Springs the next summer to find the springs themselves running an ugly shade of brown and smelling vaguely like a gas station men's room. Grant Phillips was nowhere to be found.

"What do you mean, they fired Old Grant?" he asked his best friend, Joe, who had failed tenth grade and been a year behind ever since.

"Well, Mayor Thomas decided that hiring someone just to take care of the springs was a waste of money," said Joe. "So Old Grant had to go work at the post office. But now he's in the hospital, of course."

"What do you mean, Old Grant's in the hospital?" said Will.

"Oh, well, he had a heart attack Tuesday," said Joe. "He's going to be all right, I guess. My mom says it's because he's so upset about the springs."

"I would guess he is," said Will indignantly. "Can't anybody do anything?"

"Nobody's tried," said Joe. "People have been complaining about the water for months, but nobody's actually tried to fix it."

"You and me, Joe, Saturday morning, okay?" said Will.

"You haven't seen it up there, Will," said Joe. "It's really nasty. Nobody even bothers vandalizing it anymore."

"Be there, Joe," said Will.

Saturday morning, Joe was there. Several other boys were also there, but they did not seem inclined to clean out the springs. Most of them were the same boys that had watched Will throw the armchair in the pool so long ago.

"What's the matter with you, Will?" said Tom. "The springs are ruined. It's not like you never messed with them. Don't be an idiot."

"Come on, Joe," said Will, ignoring the others, "I need you to hold this sheet of plastic."

They had to break into Old Grant's supply shed to get the plastic and hooked stick, but Will had seen a cat floating in the water and decided to take care of that first. The other boys stood around watching, making obscene comments and really stupid jokes, as Will and Joe got to work.

This cat had been in the pool for some time, and that made everything twice as bad. Will had never seen a green cat before, so he assumed this one was covered in algae, but he reached out with the stick and caught hold of it. It was heavy as a cement tombstone and smelled, as Joe said later, "worse than death." Joe actually vomited, into the water, too, but he spread out the plastic when Will asked him.

"Wow," said Joe, when Will lifted the body up to drain, "I hope that's just water." Thick, yellowish green liquid splashed back into the pool.

Will was feeling nauseous enough himself, but when he looked up from the task he saw three or four boys grabbing gloves and rakes out of the wheelbarrow.

"What do we do first?" said Tom. "That really took guts, Will. Count me in."