Water Rites Read online

  He looked wide awake.

  Jeremy looked at the sky. Was it getting light? How long until dawn? He leaned over the rim of the well. Mr. Brewster wasn’t going to fall asleep in time.

  Mr. Brewster didn’t know about the makings. Probably didn’t anyway. Cold balled in Jeremy belly, so bad that he almost threw up. Bigger, he thought. Bigger would be scarier.

  The firefly popped into the air two feet from Mr. Brewster’s magazine, big as a chicken.

  “Holy shit!” The pew rocked and nearly went over as Mr. Brewster scrambled to his feet.

  Nails biting his palms, Jeremy made the firefly dart at Mr. Brewster’s face. It moved sluggishly, dimming to a dull orange. Oh, God, don’t let it fade. Sweat stung Jeremy’s eyes.

  Mr. Brewster yelled and threw his magazine at it. His footsteps pounded up the wooden stairs, and a moment later, the church door thudded open. Jeremy lay flat in the dust as Mr. Brewster ran past him. The ground felt warm, as if the earth had a fever. Shaking all over, Jeremy listened to the footsteps fade.

  Now!

  He scrambled down through the window. A fragment of glass still stuck in the old frame grazed his arm, and he landed on a chair. It collapsed under his weight with a terrible crash. Panting, Jeremy scrambled to his feet. He struggled with the bolt on the storeroom door, bruising his palm. It slid back, and he pushed the heavy door open.

  Dan sat on the floor between shelves of musty hymnals and folded choir robes. The yellow light from the lantern made his skin look tawny brown, like the dust. Dried blood streaked his swollen and bruised face.

  “Jeremy?” Hope flared in Dan’s eyes.

  “Hurry.” Jeremy grabbed his arm.

  Dan staggered to his feet and followed Jeremy up the steps, treading on his heels. Someone shouted as they leaped from the porch and Jeremy’s heart lurched. “That way.” He pointed.

  Dan threw an arm around him and ran, half-carrying Jeremy as they ducked behind the dark Exxon station. They scrambled under the board fence in the back, lay flat while someone ran and panted past. Mr. Brewster? Gray banded the eastern horizon as Jeremy led Dan across the dusty main street, listening for footsteps, stumbling on the rough pavement. They turned left by the boarded up restaurant, cut through a yard full of drifted dust, dead weeds, and a rusting car.

  Jeremy had left Ezra tethered behind the last house on the street. The pony gave a low, growling whinny as they hurried up. Dan stroked his nose to quiet him, his eyes running over the lumpy bulges of the pack.

  “It’s all there, food, water, and everything,” Jeremy panted. “Even the machine. It’s not a very good job. I don’t know how to fix a pack. The ground’s pretty hard along the river, so you won’t leave many tracks. Willow creekbed’ll take you way south. It’s the first creekbed past the old feed mill. You can’t miss it. Nobody lives out that way. No water.”

  “I thought you were coming with me.” Dan looked down at him.

  “I was.” Jeremy looked at the old nylon daypack he’d left on the ground beside Ezra. “I changed my mind.”

  “You can’t stay now.” Dan grabbed his shoulders, hard enough to hurt. “They’ll know you let me out. Jeremy, what will they do to you?”

  “I don’t know.” Jeremy swallowed, remembering his father’s voice on the stairs. “I just got to stay,” he whispered.

  “You’re crazy. You think you’ll make peace with your father?” Dan gave him one short, sharp shake that made Jeremy’s teeth snap together. “You have real magic in your hands. You think that’s ever going to matter to him?”

  Jeremy couldn’t speak, could only shake his head.

  “Hell, my own choices haven’t turned out too good. Who am I to tell you what you have to do?” Dan wiped Jeremy’s tears away, his fingers rough and dry on Jeremy’s face. “Just don’t let them kill your magic.” He shook Jeremy again, gently this time. “He needs it. They all need it.” He sighed. “I’m outta here. Keep making, Jeremy.” Dan squeezed Jeremy’s shoulder hard, grabbed Ezra’s lead rope, and walked away down the creekbed in the fading night.

  Jeremy stood still, the tears drying on his face, listening to Ezra’s muffled hoofbeats fade into the distance. He listened until he could hear nothing but the dry whisper of the morning breeze, then he started back. He thought about cutting across the dun hills and down through the riverbed to get home. Instead, he walked straight back to town.

  They might have been waiting for him in front of the church — Mr. Brewster, Sally Brandt, Mr. Mendoza and . . . Dad. Jeremy faltered as they all turned to look at him, wishing in that terrible, frightened instant, that he had gone with Dan after all. They looked at him like they had looked at Dan yesterday, hard and cold. Mr. Brewster walked to meet him, slow and stifflegged, and Jeremy wondered suddenly if they’d hang him in Dan’s place.

  “You little, crippled snot.” Mr. Brewster’s hand closed on Jeremy’s shirt, balling up the fabric, lifting him a little off his feet. “You let Greely out. I saw you. Where’s he headed?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeremy said.

  Mr. Brewster hit him.

  Red-and-black light exploded behind Jeremy’s eyelids, and his mouth filled with a harsh, metallic taste. He fell hard and hurting onto his knees, dizzy, eyes blurred with tears, belly full of sickness. Mr. Brewster grabbed him and hauled him to his feet again and Jeremy cringed.

  “Knock it off, Ted.”

  Dad yanked him away from Mr. Brewster. “I lay hands on my kids. Nobody else.”

  “He knows where that bastard’s headed.” Mr. Brewster breathed heavy and fast. “You beat it out of him or I do.”

  “He said he doesn’t know. That’s the end of it, you hear me?”

  “You talk pretty high and mighty,” Mr. Brewster said softly. “Considering you had to beg for help last winter. Seems like you ought to shut up.”

  Jeremy felt his father jerk, as if Mr. Brewter had punched him. He felt his father’s arms quiver and wondered if he would let go, walk away.

  “Seems like we all pitched in, when mice got into your seed stock a few years back,” Dad said quietly.

  Mr. Brewster made a small, harsh sound.

  “Come on, Ted. Let it go.” Sally’s shrill exasperation shattered the tension. “While you’re standing there arguing, Greely’s making tracks for Boardman.”

  “We got to split up,” Mr. Mendoza chimed in.

  “Let’s spread.” Mr. Brewster glowered at Jeremy. Abruptly he spun on his heel. “I bet the bastard headed west,” he snarled. “We’ll go down the riverbed, cut his tracks.” He stalked off down the street with Mr. Mendoza.

  Sally Brandt pushed tousled hair out of her face, sighed. “I’ll go wake up the Deardorfs,” she said. “We’ll spread north and east. You take the south.”

  He felt his father’s body move, as if he had nodded. Jeremy stared down at the dust between his feet, tasting blood on his swelling lip, heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst through his ribs. He felt Dad’s hands lift from his shoulders, tensed as his father moved around in front of him, blocking the rising sun. But all he did was to lift Jeremy’s chin, until he had to meet his father’s eyes.

  “I thought you’d go with him.”

  Jeremy looked at his father’s weathered face. It looked like the hills, all folded into dun gullies. Not angry. Not sad. Just old and dry.

  “If we find Greely, we got to hang him,” Dad said. “Right or wrong, we voted, Jeremy.”

  “I was going to go.” Jeremy swallowed, tasting dust. “You had to ask for food. Because of me.”

  His father’s face twitched.

  Without warning, the firefly popped into the air between them again, pale this time, a flickering shadow in the harsh morning light. Jeremy sucked in his breath, snuffed it out as his father flinched away from it. “I’m sorry,” he cried. “I didn’t mean to make it. It just . . . happened. It makes Rita Menendez laugh. I won’t do it again ever.”

  “Do it again.” His father’s hand cla
mped down on Jeremy’s arm. “Right now.”

  Trembling, afraid to look at his father’s face, he made the firefly appear again.

  His father stared at it for a moment. With a shudder, he thrust his fingers through the firefly, yanked them back and stared at them. “It scares me,” he whispered. “I don’t understand it any more than I understand this damn, never-ending drought.” He looked at Jeremy suddenly. “You scared the pants off Ted. He’s not going to forgive you for that. I don’t think everybody believed what the Reverend had to say, but enough did, son.” He sighed. “I don’t have any good answers. Maybe there aren’t any — not good ones.” He met Jeremy’s eyes. “I’ve got to look south for Greely,” he said. “Which way do you think he’d head? Down Willow creekbed — or by the main road to La Grande?”

  Jeremy hesitated for a moment, then straightened his shoulders with a jerk. “I think he went down the main road,” he said and held his breath.

  His father shaded his eyes, stared at the dun fold of Willow creekbed in the distance. “There aren’t any good answers.” He sighed. “I’ll look for Greely on the main road,” he said.

  * * *

  CELILO

  Dan Greely limped slowly eastward, along the old highway. The empty bed of the Columbia River dropped away on his right, a huge gash of cracked clay and weathered gray rock. The Pipeline gleamed dull silver, half buried in the middle of the riverbed in this stretch. The Drylands lay at his back, The Dalles ahead, down the riverbed, hidden by the high walls of the Columbia Gorge. A semi roared past, a single rig, maybe a local making up with a convoy. Not much traffic. Dan wiped sweat and grit from his face, shaded his eyes against the glare of the setting sun. Those were the old falls, up ahead. Already. He lowered his head and limped on. It had been a long time since he had been back here.

  Those ledges of stone looked the same, as if the heat had dried up time in this place, preserved it, like the shriveled carcass of a coyote he’d found out in the Dry once, a year old or a dozen years. He sneaked a glance at the dusty ledges of the long-dead falls.

  Someone stood on the edge, where the rocks jutted out over the deepest part of the riverbed. Dan caught his breath, thought he saw the flutter of black hair on the hot wind.

  Amy was dead. Long dead. The figure was gone, had been nothing but a shimmer of heat, he told himself, a trick of mind and memory and heat. He wrenched his eyes away from the falls and his foot turned as a rock rolled beneath it. His pack pulled him off balance and he hissed through his teeth as his weight came down on his bad knee. The sudden searing pain caught him by surprise, kicked his feet out from under him. Tires blurred by in a rush of motion, inches from his face as he sprawled onto the crumbling asphalt.

  Brakes screeched and doors slammed. “Hey, you all right?” Footsteps scraped on sandy asphalt. “I damn near ran over you.”

  “My knee.” Dan breathed shallowly, sweating.

  “Let’s see.” A man squatted beside him, lean and weathered brown. “Jesse, come take a look, will you? You got the touch for this sort of thing.”

  A woman joined him, older, with a lined, sun-dried face and a thick braid of gray hair.

  “I twisted it some days back. Just now . . . stepped wrong. Or something.” He sucked in a breath as the woman squatted beside him and began to prod and twist his knee gently. “That hurts.”

  “Might be just a sprain.” She didn’t relent with her probing. “Might be you finally tore something. Can’t tell with joints.” Her faded shirt flapped in the wind as she shrugged and rocked back on her heels. “A splint’s the best you can do. Get off it and give it some rest. It’ll get better or it won’t.” She said it resentfully, as if Dan had asked her for a handout.

  Well, he hadn’t asked her for anything. “Could you folks give me a ride into town?” he said through clenched teeth. Although what he’d do there if he couldn’t stand or walk, he didn’t have a clue.

  “You heard Jesse.” The man shook his head, slapped dust from his faded jeans as he stood. “You can’t walk around like that. You stay a couple of days with us, rest that knee up, and I’ll give you a ride into town come market day. Maria won’t mind.”

  “Hell she won’t, Sam.” The woman tossed her braid back over her shoulder. “Maria has enough trouble feeding you all as it is. He can stay with me, since you’re going to be stubborn. Renny just left with a convoy and won’t be back ’till next weekend. I’ve got space.”

  She was speaking over Dan’s head as if he was deaf or a car-hit dog. “Thanks, Ma’am,” Dan said and he made his voice humble and polite. He didn’t feel polite. The weight of that pain scared him. What if he had torn something? What then? “I appreciate it,” he said, and he did, never mind her attitude. You took what was offered and said thank you. Or you died.

  He took the man’s offered hand, and he needed it to get up, even without his pack. As soon as he started to put weight on his knee it buckled. His belly sour with fear, he leaned on the man, made it to the cab of the truck and onto the patched seat. They squeezed in beside him, smelling of sweat and dust. He didn’t want to be stuck here, so close to the falls and the past.

  “I’m Sam Montoya,” the man said. “This here is Jesse Warren.” He chuckled. “She barks but she don’t bite.”

  “I’m Dan Greely. From La Grande.” Not recently, but it was a name to give.

  Dan braced himself against the dash, trying to spare his knee, as the truck lurched down off the highway, onto a dirt track. He clenched his teeth against the pain as they bounced and jolted up out of the Gorge. Vertical ridges of gray rock rose on their left. On their right, the Columbia bed looked like a dry wound in the earth’s crust. With a groan of gears, the truck heaved itself over the rim and out onto rolling land.

  “Darn ethanol don’t got no oomph,” Montoya grumbled.

  Jesse didn’t say anything.

  Dan stared out at dusty soaker-hose fields, recognizing the leaves of the ultra-engineered soybeans pretty much everyone was growing now. If they weren’t growing biomass bushes. Dead, dun land separated the rows of beans, dotted with sparse clumps of tough grass. A dustdevil twisted across a rocky draw, stirring the tumbleweed skeletons. Water for crops meant you had something. If you didn’t have it, you found something that the people with water wanted.

  No one gave anything away. Not anymore.

  So what did this man want? He would want something. Dizzy and a little sick from the truck’s jolting, Dan closed his eyes. He didn’t like not knowing the price in advance.

  The truck turned off on a narrow track that led back toward the riverbed, stopped finally in front of a small, weathered house at the very edge of the Gorge. Rows of soybeans surrounded it, and a gray barn sagged behind a tumble-down pole corral. Dan slid cautiously down from the truck cab. The steel cube of a Corps water meter jutted up beside the porch.

  The Corps of Engineers controlled all the water now. There were no more private wells, not since the Groundwater Mining Act had passed. Here, it came from the enormous, buried Pipeline that protected all that was left of the Columbia River. Dan let Montoya help him up the sagging steps. It felt almost cool inside the house. The main room was small — a table, a few wooden chairs, and a wood stove made up the furniture.

  Montoya pulled out a chair. “Sit down and I’ll bring your pack in.”

  It felt really good to sit still. Dan looked around. This was an old house — almost a shack — cobbled together out of dried-out, gray wood and warped, ancient sheets of plasterboard. Two lean-to bedrooms opened into the main room. That was it. Dan eased his leg up onto a second chair.

  “This’ll help with the swelling. I’ll wrap it later.” Jesse draped a wet cloth across his knee.

  Dan’s skin twitched at the cold wetness soaked through his jeans. He leaned forward to fold it across his kneecap. It had been some time since he’d been in a house with water from a tap. Out in the Dry, in a land without water meters, they cleaned dishes with sand, watered plants one at a t
ime, with a bucket and dipper. The magic tricks and stories he had to offer, the gossip from the last settlement, earned him a mug of water, some food if there was any to spare, and a bed.

  It was a risk to come back here, but he’d run out of choices. It was getting worse out there. He touched the sodden cloth on his knee, watched a crystal drop fall to the wood floor. He’d make out all right here, he told himself fiercely. His knee would get better.

  “Water?” Jesse plunked an orange plastic pitcher and three glasses down on the table.

  You got used to being thirsty, didn’t think about it. Until someone offered you water. “Thanks.” Dan took the glass she handed him, made himself drink it slowly. Politely.

  “You headed for The Dalles?” Montoya thumped his pack down on the floor, and picked up a glass.

  “I don’t think the Corps is hiring.” Jesse refilled his glass. “No other jobs.”

  “I’m not looking for a job.” Not with the Corps, that was for sure. This time, it was easier to drink slowly. Pipeline water. He drank it anyway. “I’m a magician. And a storyteller. I was on my way into town to try a show.”

  Screened by the table top, he’d pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket, folded into a tiny, tight roll, and had tucked it between his palm and thumb while they were looking at the water being poured. Time to start paying for his stay here. He let them notice his empty palms as he gestured, waved his hand over the pitcher, and shook out the handkerchief with a flourish, as if he’d just pulled it from the spout.

  It was smooth. Montoya whistled.

  Jesse grunted. “You had that rag in your hand.”

  “You ought to do pretty good in town. Not too many can afford wireless service. Costs too much.” Montoya set his glass down, winked at Dan. “I’d part with some dried pears or a bag of beans for a show like that. A lot of folks would.”

  “If you’ve got any pears to part with.” Jesse scowled at him, tugged on her braid. “Water bill’s due this week, remember? You got to pay that, first.”