living water

by Zary Fekete

…at about the sixth hour she came to draw water, because noon is when the shadows are shortest and the neighbors are far away. The sun sorted the colors harshly: white light, red clay, a jar the color of old bone. She carried the jar the way some women carry memory…upright, as if a single tilt might spill everything.

They call her “the woman at the well” as if geography were character, as if thirst were a personality trait. They do not use her name. It is easier to tell a story when a woman is an emblem. It is easier to preach about desire when someone else has to hold the cup.

He asked her for a drink. That is how it starts in most versions: with a small request that sounds like permission.

What happened before that request? A string of men with shared keys and broken promises. A town that decides your biography for you. The afternoon she counted the steps from her door to the well and found a number she could live with. Some sermons say “scandal” in italics. Others say “sin” and underline it twice. Few say the quieter words: hunger, safety, rent, winter.

Observe her this Thursday at noon in a modern place: a café on the far side of a parking lot that used to be a field. The iced water sweats on the table. The barista calls her sweetheart without asking. She is scrolling gently…half prayer, half habit…through a devotional app that tries to be encouraging with notification bubbles. A verse arrives like a nudge: Ask, and it shall be given unto you. She does not swat it. She sips. She listens to the hum of the cooler and the hiss of milk. A man at the next table is explaining cryptocurrency to a woman who is pretending to be fascinated. The world, as usual, believes itself.

Back to the well. He names what she has not named aloud. The houses behind her windows. The strangers behind her doors. Five, and then a man who is not a husband but a circumstance. She does not deny any of it. She is not ashamed of survival. What unsettles her is not that he knows…people always think they know…but that he speaks without the normal additives: no disgust, no angle, no transaction. His voice is a cup with nothing else in it.

He calls the future water alive. She looks down at the rope-burned rim of her jar and thinks, Alive isn’t always the same as easy.

When she was thirteen, body changes arrived like uninvited relatives and decided to stay. Whispering happened at the edges of rooms. She learned the techniques of not being the subject: sit where the wind is loudest; smile carefully; speak last. Later, when the first marriage ran out of air, a neighbor said what neighbors have always said: “Some women are trouble for themselves.” The sentence was shaped like a verdict and offered as friendship.

In the café, her phone rings. It’s her mother. She lets it buzz out. She is tired of being asked if she’s still at that job, with that man, in that town. A message follows: Call me when you can. She texts back a small heart. It means I love you. It also means No more questions today.

At the well he says, You worship what you do not know. She could say this back to him and not be wrong. Instead, she asks about mountains and temples because a theological question can be a shield. He keeps answering like a door that refuses to close. Not here or there, not then or this…spirit and truth. She tastes the phrase. It is neither too hot nor too cold. It is a Goldilocks she did not know she remembered.

She leaves the jar. This is the part that always gets told like a miracle, and maybe it is one, but there’s also a practical note…how light her arms feel without the weight.

Observe her again, evening now, in a grocery store aisle bright enough to magnify everything. She is examining the labels on two jars of olives. The cheap one has more salt. She thinks about Lot’s wife and decides not to think about Lot. In the next aisle a small boy negotiates with his father about cereal. The father says, “We have food at home,” which is one of the oldest sentences. The boy says, “But not the right kind,” which is one of the truest. She puts the cheap olives back and chooses the other jar, not because it is better but because sometimes the kind matters.

The men who like parables will later ask what happened to the jar. They prefer objects that symbolize other objects. They will say the jar stands for shame, or need, or the law, and that she left it. Perhaps. But the truth is that she left it because she did not want to carry it down the hill. The truth is that her hands were full of saying something to anyone who would listen: Come see a man who told me everything I ever did and did not turn away.

What is a testimony, if not a private thing carried into public light and set down? A jar. A sentence. A name used at last.

If this were the tidy ending, we would say she married better, or moved, or started an outreach and learned to bake. We would describe approved outcomes. But tidy endings are less honest than water. Instead, know this: sometimes she goes to the well at noon, still. Sometimes the jar feels heavier than it ought. Sometimes a man asks for a drink, and she decides she does not have to answer. Sometimes she does. On certain days the water tastes like stone and sun, on others like something made new.

They will call her by a story before they call her by a name. They will summarize her. They will underline and italicize. This is how the world behaves: it captions women and then critiques the captions.

Let me say it plainly before the commentators arrive with their equipment: she did not seduce the Messiah; she did not trick him into theology; she did not audition for respectability. She asked good questions. She told the truth when asked for it. She left a jar behind because her arms had better work.

That should be enough to put in a book. That should be enough to pour and drink and pass along.

And if you insist on a moral, let it be small and drinkable: whatever water you carried in here, set it down when someone offers you living.

Photo of Zary Fekete

BIO: Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social