Water Rites Read online

  They shared warm, plastic-tasting water with the pony, and Dan produced dried apple slices from the lunch pack. He had stripped off his shirt, and sweat gleamed like oil on his brown shoulders. His eyes were gray, Jeremy noticed. They looked bright in his dark face.

  “Why do you have to do all the stuff?” Awkwardly, Jeremy scooped up a leathery disc of dried apple. The tart sweetness filled his mouth with a rush of saliva. The old tree behind the house didn’t give very many apples, most years.

  “I’m making a map of the ground.” Dan shaded his eyes, squinting in the shimmering heat-haze. “If they’re going to drill a well field, they’ll have to lay pipes, make roads, build buildings. They need to know what the ground looks like.”

  “I was trying to imagine lots of water.” Jremy reached for another apple slice. “It’s hard.”

  “Yeah,” Dan said harshly. “Don’t start counting the days yet.” He shook himself and his expression softened. “Tell me about your fireflies and your fish that jump out of pitchers.”

  “Not much to tell.” Jeremy looked away from Dan’s intent, gray eyes. Was that what he wanted? “If I think of something hard enough, you can see it. It’s not real.” Jeremy drew a zig-zag pattern in the dust with his fingers. “Don’t talk about it, okay? It’s wrong. It’s . . . an abomination. The Devil’s mark. That’s why the rain went away. It was God punishing us . . . for living with abominations. We . . . don’t let . . . abominations . . . live. Like the Pearson’s baby. Like Sally Brandt’s baby, born just this spring.”

  “Who said all that?” Dan asked in a hard, quiet voice.

  “The Reverend.” Jeremy fixed his eyes on the little troughs in the dust.

  Their old nanny goat had a kid with an extra leg last spring. About the time Sally Brandt had her baby. Dad had taken the biggest knife from the kitchen and cut its throat by a bean hill, so that the blood would water the seedlings. The apple slice in Jeremy’s mouth tasted like dust. Feeling stony hard inside, he made the dragonfly appear, sent it darting through the air to land on Dan’s knee with a glitter of wings.

  “Holy shit.” Dan flinched, scattering apple slices. “I can almost believe that I feel it.”

  He didn’t sound angry. Jeremy sighed and vanished it.

  “I heard your Reverend died,” Dan said softly.

  Jeremy nodded.

  “You got to know that he was wrong. He was just a narrow, scared man, who had to blame this crazy drought on something, because none of us really understand why we didn’t stop it from happening, why we can’t fix it now.”

  Jeremy tensed as Dan laid a hand on his shoulder. “In the cities you’d be so hot. What you do is fantastic. It’s wonderful, Jeremy, not something wrong. People would pay you money to see what you could create for them.” He sighed. “Your Dad’s scared of them, isn’t he?”

  Scared? Jeremy shook his head. Rupert was scared of the brown lizards that lived under the rocks out behind the outhouse. He killed them all the time. But Dad wasn’t scared of his makings.

  Dad hated them.

  “Look at this.” Dan yanked a grubby red bandana out of his pocket and shook it. “Watch me make it disappear. Watch carefully now.” He stuffed it into his closed fist. “Are you watching?” He waved his fist around, then snapped open his hand.

  Jeremy stared at his empty palm.

  “Your handkerchief, sir.” He reached behind Jeremy’s ear, snapped the bandana into view.

  “Wow.” Jeremy touched the bandana cautiously. “How did you do that?”

  “It’s pretty easy.” Dan looked sad as he stuffed the bandana back into his pocket. “Card tricks, juggling, oh, you can entertain folks, but they all know it’s fake. What you can do is . . . real.” His pale eyes burned. “I think we’d all give a lot to believe in something real. Like what you do. You should come with me, Jeremy.”

  Dan acted like the making was a wonderful thing. But Dad had had to ask the Brewsters for food. And the Reverend knew more than anyone in town. Suddenly unsure, Jeremy bent to scoop up the apples that Dan had dropped. “You don’t want to waste these.”

  “I wasn’t going to. They’re good apples. I’d give a lot for your talent. It’s real, Jeremy. And it’s wasted here.”

  Talent? Jeremy dumped the withered rings of apple into the pack. “You’re a surveyor,” he said. “You don’t need to do tricks.”

  “I guess I am.” Dan’s laugh sounded bitter. “So I guess we’d better get back to surveying, huh?”

  As they worked through the lengthening shadows of the fading day, strange feelings fluttered in Jeremy’s chest. Could Dan be right? Would people really look at him like Dan had looked at him? All excited?

  He could find out. If he went with Dan.

  Jeremy thought about that for the rest of the day, while he steadied the machine and pushed buttons. He didn’t say anything to Dan. He might not want Jeremy along.

  *

  It seemed like everyone within walking distance was waiting at the house when they plodded back to the farm in the first faint cool of evening. Covered dishes and water jugs cluttered the kitchen table, and Dan was swept into the crowd.

  Dan didn’t belong to him here, in the dusty house. Here, he belonged to the grown-ups and the Army Corps of Engineers. Jeremy led Ezra off to the barn to struggle with the pack straps and give the pony some water. If he left with Dan, if Dan would take him, Dad wouldn’t have to ask the Brewsters for food. He pulled at the pony’s tangled mane until the coarse horsehair cut his fingers.

  *

  After the first three days, the crowd didn’t show up at the farm any more. They’d heard what news Dan had to tell. They’d sold him the food and supplies that he’d asked for, taking his pale-green voucher slips as payment. Now they were waiting for the construction crews to arrive. Even Dad was waiting. He whistled while he carried water to the potato plants, and he smiled at Dan.

  Dan was the water bringer. Everyone smiled at Dan.

  It made Jeremy jealous when they were at home and Rupert, Jonathan, and the twins hung around him all the time, pretending they were grownups, too. But they weren’t home very often. He and Dan trudged all over the scorched hills along the river. Dan talked about cities. He talked about the heart of the drylands, with its ghosts and the bones of dead towns and about the oceans eating the shore. He taught Jeremy how to describe the land in numbers. He asked Jeremy to make things every day, and he laughed when Jeremy made a frog appear on Ezra’s head.

  Dan never asked outright, but he talked as if Jeremy was going to come with him when he left. To the cities. And the sea.

  “Where did you come from?” Jeremy asked on Saturday, just a week after Dan had arrived. They were eating lunch under the same overhang where they’d stopped the first day out.

  “The Corps’ regional office in Bonneville.”

  “No, I don’t mean that.” Jeremy swallowed cold beans. “I mean before that. Before the surveying. Where were you born?”

  “South.” Dan looked out toward the dead river. His gray eyes looked vague, like he was looking past something far away or deep inside his head. “We came up from LA, running from the water wars and the gangs.” His eyelids flickered. “I was pretty little. But the people in the valleys weren’t sharing their water, so we moved on. You leave everything behind you when you’re dying of thirst, one piece at a time. Everything.”

  He was silent for a moment. The wind blew grit across the rocks with a soft hiss and Jeremy didn’t make a sound.

  “I ended up with the Corps,” Dan said abruptly.

  The transition from we to I cut off Jeremy’s questions like a knife. He watched Dan toss a pebble down the slope. It bounced off an old cow skull half-buried in drifted dust.

  “I won’t kid you about things.” Dan tossed another pebble at the bleached skull. “I’m leaving soon . . . maybe tomorrow. And if you come with me, you’re going to find out that things aren’t always what they should be. When you’re on the road, you don’t have
any options. You do what it takes to stay alive. Sometimes you don’t like it much, but you do it.”

  The hard thread of bitterness in Dan’s voice scared Jeremy a little, but it didn’t matter. If you come with me . . .

  “Can you make a face?” Dan asked suddenly.

  “I don’t know.” Jeremy looked into Dan’s bleak, hungry eyes, stifling a pang of fear. He wanted to say no. Get up and go back to surveying. “I . . . can try.” Dan’s eyes pulled the words out of him.

  “She was about sixteen, with brown eyes and black hair. It was straight, like rain falling.” His eyes focused on that invisible something again. “She looked a little like me, but prettier,” he said. “Her nose was thin — I used to kid her about it — an she smiled a lot.”

  He could feel it, almost. Dan’s memory. Scared, now, Jeremy shaped a face in his mind, watched it take shape in the air. Dan shook his head.

  “Stupid of me to play that kind of game.” Dan laid his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying.”

  And just that quickly, he felt the awful shiver that seemed to run through his flesh and the air and the dusty ground.

  She smiled, her face brining with warmth and sadness, standing there, looking down at them. Jeremy stared at her, sweat stinging his eyes. She was right — the way the land had been right that day he had looked at it and it had turned green and lush and he had seen water running through the creekbed at the far edge of the field.

  “Amy.” Dan’s voice broke.

  The sound of Dan’s voice pierced him. The making shivered, dissolved, and vanished. “I’m sorry,” Jeremy whispered, his skin tight with fear. “Dan, I’m sorry.

  Dan buried his face in his hands. Hesitantly, Jeremy reached out and touched him.

  “It’s all right.” Dan raised his head, drew in a long breath. “You did what I asked.” He shook his head slowly, his face full of wonder. “That was her. Not some image. It was like you called her back for a second. I . . . thought for a minute she was going to say something to me. She was so real.”

  Like the green fields full of alfalfa. Jeremy looked away because he could see fear in Dan’s face, too. Not just wonder.

  That was why his dad hated them . . . the makings. Because of the green fields.

  And hated him.

  “Let’s get back.” Dan stood up, looking down the dead valley. “I’m through here.”

  “You mean like you’re leaving?” Jeremy scrambled to his feet, forcing the words through the tightness in his throat. “Because of . . . what I did?”

  “No.” Dan looked down at him, forced a smile. “The job’s finished. I didn’t expect to be here this long. I shouldn’t have stayed this long.” He glanced restlessly down the valley again. “So. Are you coming?”

  “Yes.” Jeremy stood up as straight as he could. “I’m coming.”

  “Good.” Dan boosted Jeremy onto Ezra’s back. “I’m leaving early,” he said. “You better not tell your folks.”

  “I won’t.”

  *

  Nobody was pumping on the bicycle frame as they plodded past. Jeremy looked up at the brown hillside and looked away quickly before they could go green. He had thought that would never happen again. But maybe it could. Anyway, tomorrow he’d be gone.

  Ezra broke into a jouncing trot, and Jeremy had to grab the saddle frame as the pony headed for the barnyard and the water tub there.

  “Mr. Greely,” Dad called from the porch.

  Jeremy stiffened. Dad sounded cold and mad, like the day Jeremy had made the fields go green.

  “We want to talk to you.”

  Mr. Brewster stepped onto the porch behind him. Rupert and Jonathan followed, with Mr. Mendoza, Sally Brandt, and the Deardorf boys.

  Mr. Mendoza had his deer rifle. They all looked angry.

  “My brother got into town last night.” Sally’s voice was shrill. “He told me about this scam he heard about back in Pendleton. Seems this guy goes around to little towns pretending to be a surveyor for the Corps. He buys stuff with Corps vouchers.”

  “We searched your stuff.” Ted Brewster held up a fist full of white. “You carry a few spare letters, don’t you?” He opened his hand. “You’re a fake.”

  The white envelopes fluttered to the dusty ground like dead leaves. Stunned, Jeremy turned to Dan, waiting for him to explain, waiting for Dan to tell them how they were wrong, waiting for him to remind them about the water.

  “Dan?” he whispered.

  Dan looked at him finally, his head moving slowly on his neck, and Jeremy felt his insides going numb and dead.

  “Mother gave you dried apples.” Jeremy swallowed. “Dried apples are for birthdays.”

  For one instant, Dan’s gray eyes filled with pain. Then he looked away, turning a bland smile on the approaching grownups. “I heard about some bastard doing that.” He spread his hands. “But I’m legit.”

  Dad took one long step forward and smashed his fist into Dan’s face. “He described you.” He looked down at Dan sprawled in the dirt. “He described you real well.”

  Dan got up very slowly, wiping dust from his face. Blood smeared his chin. He shrugged. They took him into town, walking around him in a loose ring. Jeremy stood in the road, watching the dust blow away on the hot breeze. When the last trace of dust blew away, he put Ezra into the barn and climbed up onto the rimrock. He didn’t come down until dark.

  “I wondered about that guy,” Rupert sneered as they got ready for bed that night. “Federal survey, huh? They don’t care about us, out here. I don’t know how anybody could believe him.”

  “Hope is a tempting thing.” Jeremy’s mother leaned against the doorway. She hadn’t scolded Jeremy for running off. “If there was any water around here, no matter how deep, someone would have drilled for it a long time ago.” Her voice was tired. “I guess we all just wanted to hope.”

  Jeremy threw himself down on his mattress without looking at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry for us, and I’m sorry for him, too.”

  “They’ll hang him. I heard ’em talking.”

  “Shame on you, Rupert. You don’t gloat about a man dying.”

  Jeremy buried his face in the pillow. I hate him, too, he thought fiercely. Why couldn’t have Dan been what he said?

  “They’re gonna hang him,” Rupert whispered to him after Mother had left. He sounded smug. “No wonder that jerk wanted you to help him. You’re too dumb to figure out he was a fake.”

  Jeremy pressed his face into the pillow until he could barely breathe. If he made a sound, if he moved, he’d kill Rupert. Rupert might be almost sixteen, but he’d kill him. Somehow.

  Rupert was right. They were going to hang Dan. He’d seen it in their faces when they walked up to him. They hated Dan because he made ’em see that the government, the Army Corps of Engineers really didn’t care about them.

  Like Dad hated him for making him see what it used to be like. And would never be again.

  Jeremy breathed slowly, listening to the house tick and creak as it cooled a bit. He kept hearing Dan’s sad-bitter voice. You do what it takes to stay alive. Sometimes you don’t like it much, but you do it.

  Dan hadn’t lied to him.

  Jeremy must have fallen asleep, because he woke up from a dream about the woman with the black hair. Was she part of the we that had turned into I?

  Rupert snored, one arm hanging over the side of his mattress. The sloping roof held the day’s heat in and tonight no breeze stirred the hot, still air. Dan would be in the church. In the empty storage bin in the cellar. The one with the bolt on it. Jeremy sat up, heart pounding. The house creaked softly to itself as he tiptoed down the stairs.

  “Who’s up?” His father’s spoke from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Me.” Jeremy froze, clutching the railing with both hands. “I . . . had to pee,” he stammered. It was a feeble lie. The pot in the bedroom was never full.

  “Jeremy?” His father bulked over hi
m, a tower of shadow. “It’s late. I just got back from town.” He ran a thick hand across his face. “You liked Greely.”

  “I still like him.” Jeremy forced himself to stand straight. “He’s not a bad man.”

  His father grunted, moved down a step. “He’s a parasite,” he said harshly. “His kind live on other peoples’ sweat. There’s no worse crime than that.”

  “Isn’t there?” Jeremy’s voice trembled. “Who’s going to share with him? Who’s going to let him have a piece of their orchard or pump from their well some? He was just trying to live, and he didn’t hurt anybody, not really . . .”

  “He lied to us and he stole from us.” His tone dismissed Dan, judged and sentenced him. “Get back to bed. Now.”

  “No.” Shaking, Jeremy clung to the railing. “If it doesn’t help the crops, it’s bad, isn’t it? Nothing else matters to you. Nothing.”

  His father’s hand caught him hard on the side of the head. Jeremy fell against the railing, hot pain spiking through his knee as he sprawled at his father’s feet.

  All by itself, the firefly popped into the air between them, glowing like a hot coal.

  With a hoarse cry, Dad flinched backward, his hand clenching into a fist. Jeremy stared up at his father through a blur of tears. “It’s not evil. I’m not an abomination. Is it so wrong to know what things looked like?” He cringed away from his father’s fist. “Don’t they count?”

  His father lowered his fist slowly. “No,” he said in a strange, choked voice. “They don’t. It doesn’t count, either, that a man’s just trying to stay alive. I . . . I wish it all did. I sure as hell do.” He stepped past Jeremy and went on up the stairs.

  *

  Jeremy was right. They’d locked Dan up in the church basement. Yellow light glowed dimly from one of the window wells along the concrete foundation, the only light in the dark, dead town. Jeremy lay down on his stomach and peered through the glassless window. Yep. Mr. Brewster sat on an old pew beside the wooden door of the storage unit, flipping through a tattered hunting magazine by the light of a solar lantern.