Water Rites

WATER BRINGER

S
itting with his back against the sun-scorched rimrock, Jeremy made the dragonfly appear in the air in front of him. It hovered on the hot breeze, wings shimmering with bluegreen glints. Pretty. He looked automatically over his shoulder. But Dad was down in the dusty fields. With everyone else.

It was safe.

Jeremy hunched farther into his sliver of shade, frowning at his making. It was a little too blue — that was it — and the eyes were too small. He frowned, trying to remember the picture in the insect book. The dragonfly’s bright body darkened as its eye swelled.

Got it. Jeremy smiled and sat up straight. The dragonfly hovered above a withered bush, wings glittering in the sunlight. He sent it darting out over the canyon, leaned over the ledge to watch it.

Far below, a man led a packhorse up the main road from the old riverbed. A stranger. Jeremy let the dragonfly vanish as he squinted against the glare. Man and horse walked with their heads down, like they were both tired. Their feet raised brown puffs of dust that hung in the windless air down there like smoke.

Jeremy held his breath as the stranger stopped at their road. “Come on,” Jeremy breathed. “There’s nowhere else for ten miles.”

As if they’d heard him, the pair turned up the rutted track. The man didn’t pull on the horse’s lead rope. They moved together, like they’d both decided to stop at the farm.

Jeremy scrambled up over the rimrock and lurched into a run. You didn’t see strangers out here very often. Mostly, they stopped at La Grande. The convoys stuck to the interstate, and nobody else went anywhere. Dead grass stems left from the brief spring crackled and snapped under Jeremy’s feet, and the hard ground jolted him, stabbing his twisted knees with bright slivers of pain.

At the top of the steep trail that led down to the farm, Jeremy had to slow up. He limped down the slope, licking dust from his lips, breathing quick and hard. They’d hear it all first — all the news — before he even got there. The sparse needles on the dying pines held the heat close to the ground. Dry branches clawed at him, trying to slow him down even more. They wouldn’t wait for him. They never did. Suddenly furious, Jeremy swung at the branches with his thickened hands, but they only slapped back at him, scratching his face and arms.

Sure enough, by the time he reached the barnyard, the brown-and-white horse was tethered in the dim heat of the sagging barn, unsaddled and drowsing. Everyone would be in the kitchen with the stranger. Jeremy licked his lips again. At least there’d be a pitcher of water out. Even though it wasn’t dinner time. He crossed the sunburned yard and limped up the warped porch steps.

“. . . desertification has finally reached its limit, so the government is putting all its resources into reclamation.”

Desertification? Jeremy paused at the door. The word didn’t have a clear meaning in his head, but it felt dusty and dry as the fields. He peeked inside. The stranger sat in Dad’s place at the big table, surrounded by everyone. He wore a stained tan shirt with a picture of a castle tower embroidered on the pocket. He had dark, curly hair and a long face with a jutting nose. Jeremy pushed the screen door slowly open. The stranger’s face reminded him of the canyon wall, all crags and peaks and sharp shadows.

The door slipped through his fingers and banged closed behind him.

“Jeremy?” His mother threw a quick glance at Dad as she turned around. “Where have you been? I was worried.”

“He snuck up to the rimrock again,” Rupert muttered, just loud enough.

Jeremy flinched, but Dad wasn’t looking at him at all. He’d heard, though. His jaw had gotten tight, but he didn’t even turn his head. Jeremy felt his face getting hot, and edged toward the door.

“Hi.” The stranger’s smile pinned him in place. It crinkled the sun-browned skin around his eyes. “I’m Dan Greely,” he said.

“From the Army Corps of Engineers,” ten-year-old David announced.

“To bring
water
,” Paulie interrupted his twin.

“You’re not supposed to go up there, Jeremy.” Mother gave Dad an uneasy, sideways glance. “You could fall.”

“So, just how does the Corps of Engineers plan to irrigate the valley when the river’s as dry as a bone?” Jeremy’s father spoke as if no one else had said a word. “God knows, you can’t find water when it ain’t there to be found.”

“Don’t be so hard on him, Everett.” Mother turned back to Dad.

“I ain’t even heard any solid reasons for why the damn country’s dried up,” Dad growled. “Desertification.” He snorted. “Fancy word for no damn rain. Tell me why, surveyor.”

“At least someone’s trying to do something about it.” Mother was using her soothing voice.

They weren’t paying any attention to him any more, not even tattletale Rupert. Jeremy slipped into his favorite place, the crevice between the wood-box and the cold kitchen cookstove.

“We’ll be glad to put you up while you’re about your business,” Mother went on. “It would be like a dream come true for us, if you folks can give us water again. We’ve all wondered sometimes if we did right to stay here and try to hang on.”

“What else could we do?” Dad pushed his chair back a mere inch. “Quit and go work in the bush fields in the Willamette Valley? Go be camp labor?”

“I can’t promise you water,” the stranger said gravely. “I’m just the surveyor. I hear that some of these deep-aquifer projects have been pretty successful, though.”

“It’s enough to know that there’s hope.” Mother’s voice had gone rough, like she wanted to cry.

Jeremy started to peek around the stove, because Mother never cried. He froze as Dad’s hand smacked the tabletop.

“He ain’t dug any wells yet. You kids get back to work. Those beans gotta be weeded by supper, ’cause we’re not wasting water on weeds. Jonathan, I know you and Rupert ain’t finished your pumping yet.”

“Awe, come on,” Rupert whined. “We want to hear about the cities. Are people really eating each other there?”

“You heard your father,” Mother said sharply. “The wash-bucket’s too dirty for supper washup. Rupert, you take it out to the squash — the last two hills in the end row — and bring me a fresh bucket.”

“Aww, Mom!” Rupert shoved his chair back.

Jeremy scrunched down, listening to the scuffle of his brothers’ bare feet as they filed out of the kitchen.

“We don’t have much in the way of hay for your pony.” Dad sounded angry. “How long are you planning on staying, anyway?”

“Not long. I can give you a voucher for food and shelter. When they set up the construction camp, you just take it to the comptroller for payment.”

“Lot of good money’ll do me. There wasn’t enough rain to make hay worth crap anywhere in the county this year. Where’m I gonna buy hay?”

The screen door banged. Jeremy frowned and wiggled into a more comfortable position. Why was Dad angry? The stranger talked about water. Everybody needed water.

“Never mind him.” From the clatter, Mother was dishing up bean-and-squash stew left over from lunch. “You have to understand, it’s hard for him to hope after all these years.” A plate clunked on the table. “You keep pumping water, trying to grow enough to live on, praying the well holds out another year and watching your kids go to bed hungry. You don’t have a lot left for hope. When you’re done, I’ll show you your room. The twins can sleep with Jeremy and Rupert.”

She sounded like she was going to cry again. Jeremy looked down at his loosely curled fists. The thick joints made his fingers look like knobby tree roots. The stranger said something, but Jeremy didn’t catch it. He’d only heard Mother cry once before — when the doctor over in La Grande had told her that there wasn’t anything he could do about Jeremy’s hands or his knees.

This stranger made Dad angry and Mother sad. Jeremy thought about that while he waited, but he couldn’t make any sense of it at all. As soon as the stranger and Mother left the kitchen, Jeremy slipped out of his hiding place. Sure enough, the big plastic pitcher stood on the table, surrounded by empty glasses. You didn’t ask for water between meals. Jeremy listened to the quiet. He lifted the pitcher, clutching it tightly in his thick, awkward grip.

The water was almost as warm as the air by now, but it tasted sweet on his dusty throat. Jeremy swirled the pitcher, watching the last bit of water climb the sides in a miniature whirlpool.

Absently, he made it fill clear to the brim. What would it be like to live in the old days, when it rained all the time and the riverbed was full of water and fish? He imagined a fish, made it appear in the water. He’d seen it in another book, all speckled green with a soft shading of pink on its belly. He made the fish leap out of the pitcher and dive back in, splashing tiny droplets of water that vanished as they fell. Jeremy tilted his head, pleased with himself. Trout. He remembered the fish’s name, now.

“Jeremy!”

Jeremy started at his mother’s cry and dropped the pitcher. Water and fish vanished as the plastic clattered on the linoleum. Throat tight, he stared at the small puddle of real water. The stranger stood behind Mother in the doorway.

“Go see if the hens have laid any eggs.” His mother’s voice quivered. “Do it right now.”

Jeremy limped out the door without looking at either of them.

“Don’t mind him,” he heard his mother say. “He’s clumsy, is all.”

She was afraid that the stranger had seen the fish. Jeremy hurried across the oven glare of the barnyard. What if he had? What if he said something to Dad? His skin twitched with the memory of the last beating, when he’d gotten to daydreaming and made the dragonfly appear in the church. He shivered.

The stranger’s horse snorted at him, pulling back against its halter with a muffled thudding of hooves. “Easy, boy, easy.” Jeremy stumbled to a halt, stretched out his hand. The pinto shook its thick mane and stretched his neck to sniff. Jeremy smiled as the velvety lips brushed his palm. “You’re pretty,” he said, but it wasn’t true. It wasn’t even a horse, really — just a scruffy pony with a thick neck and feet big as dinner plates.

Jeremy sat down stiffly, leaning his back against the old, smooth boards of the barn. “Hey.” He wiggled his toes as the pony sniffed at his bare feet. “It’s not your fault you’re ugly.” He stroked the pony’s nose. “I bet you can run like the wind.”

The pony’s rasping breathing sounded friendly, comforting. Eyes half closed, Jeremy imagined himself galloping over the sunburned meadows. His knees wouldn’t matter at all. He drifted into a dream of wind and galloping hooves.

*

“Jeremy? It’s supper time. You don’t want to eat, it’s not my loss.”

Rupert’s voice. Jeremy blinked awake, swallowing a yawn. It was almost dark. Straw tickled his cheek, and he remembered.

The stranger had seen him make something.

“I know you’re in here.” Rupert’s voice sounded close.

By now, Dad probably knew about the trout. Jeremy rolled onto his stomach and wriggled under the main beam beneath the wall. He could just fit. Something with tiny feet scuttled across his cheek.

“I hear you, brat.” Rupert’s silhouette loomed against the gray rectangle of the doorway. “You think I want to play hide and seek after I work all day? If I get in trouble, I’ll fix you later.”

The pony laid back its ears and whinnied shrilly.

“Jesus!” Rupert jumped back. “I hope you get your head kicked off,” he yelled.

Jeremy listened to Rupert stomp out of the barn. “Thanks, pony,” he whispered as he scrambled out of his hiding place. He shook powdery dust out of his clothes, listening for the slam of the screen door.

Better to face Rupert later than Dad right now. He’d said never again, after that Sunday. The pony nudged him, and Jeremy scratched absently at its ear. A bat twittered in the darkness over his head. Jeremy looked up, barely able to make out the flittering shadows coming and going through the gray arch of the doorway. His stomach growled as he curled up against the wall of the barn. The pony snuffled softly and moved closer, as if it was glad he was there.

The barn was full of dry creaks and whispers. Something rustled loudly in the loft above Jeremy’s head and he started. Funny how darkness changed the friendly barn, stretched it out so big. Too big and too dark. “What to see a firefly?” Jeremy asked the pony. The darkness seemed to swallow his words. It pressed in around him, as if he had made it angry by talking.

He hadn’t been able to find a picture . . . The firefly appeared, bright as a candle flame in the darkness. It looked sort of like a glowing moth. That didn’t seem quite right, but its warm glow drove back the darkness. Jeremy examined it thoughtfully. Maybe he should make the wings bigger.

“So I wasn’t seeing things,” a voice said.

The pony whinnied and Jeremy snuffed out the firefly. Before he could hide, a dazzling beam of light flashed in his eyes. He raised a hand against the hurting glare.

“Sorry.” The light dipped, illuminating a circular patch of dust and Jeremy’s dirty legs. “So this is where you’ve been. Your brother said he couldn’t find you.” The beam hesitated on Jeremy’s lumpy knees.

The surveyor patted the pony and bent to prop the solar flashlight on the floor. Its powerful beam splashed back from the wall, streaking the straw with shadows. “Can you do it again?” he asked. “Make that insect appear, I mean?”

Jeremy licked his dry lips. “I’m not supposed to . . . make things.”

“I sort of got that impression.” The man gave him a slow, thoughtful smile. “I pretended I didn’t notice. I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

Jeremy blinked. A grownup worried about getting him in trouble? The bright, comforting light and the surveyor’s amazing claim shut the two of them into a kind of private, magical circle. The firefly glowed to life in the air between them. “What does a real firefly look like?”

“I don’t know.” The surveyor reached out to touch the making, snatched his hand away as his finger passed through the delicate wings.

“It isn’t real. It doesn’t look right.” Disappointed, Jeremy let it fade and vanish.

“Wow.” The surveyor whistled softly. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

He made it sound like Jeremy was doing something wonderful. “Don’t tell I showed you, okay?” He picked at a thread in his cut-off jeans.