Billy biked across the field, ramping off a couple of the crumbly old furrows. He skidded to a halt near Pops and grinned. Dust. Pops waved his hand in front of his face and coughed. He had a big plastic keg attached to the spigot at the foot of the unit.
“Thing about drought, Bill,” he said, “is the air gets baked.”
Billy had heard this a million times.
“Ain’t just the dirt. The air gets thirsty. Sucks the water out of the dirt, the plants. And then the sun sucks it out of the air. Till there ain’t no water no more.”
Mom would never allow Billy to talk like Pops did. Oh no. Billy had a B+ in English, and Mom wanted him to do even better. She even tried to talk in some kind of made-up elegant way, as if anybody ever really talked like that. Not even his teachers were so phony. They had little bottles of cold water in school. The kids were always thirsty. Higgins and Charlie said it was recycled pee. That grossed him out, but by about 11:00 and 2:00 every day, he didn’t care and drank up.
“Way this here works,” said Pops, patting the sci-fi-looking tower, “is some bunch of chemicals is all stacked up inside, in cakes. This shell is mesh, see.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, just to say something.
Billy looked down Route 120. Big flat sheets of land going on forever. Steel sunflowers, most of them rotating. Marching away, smaller and smaller till they blinked out in the yellow distance. He’d heard about the chemicals, too. He’d been here when the army installed them. He’d even read the manual. The Corps of Engineers guy had made it sound like they were going to have swimming pools soon with all the water from the tanks.
“And,” said Pops, “the chemicals attract water through condensation. Can you spell that, Bill?”
“Sure,” hoping Pops didn’t give him a quiz right there.
“Idea was water in the air, free for the taking. So the chemicals suck that moisture out of the air and pass it down here through the filter and into the jug.”
Billy looked into the jug. Its white plastic showed the waterline as a gray shadow. Only about two inches had accumulated.
“How long?” he asked.
Pops put his hands in his back pockets, kicked a clod. They watched it bounce away, tossing up small explosions of dust.
“A week.”
“Jeez,” Billy said.
“Even the air, Bill. Even the goddamned air.”
Billy rolled the bike back and forth.
“The one crop a drought can’t kill,” Pops said, pointing to his head, “is right here.”
Billy waited for the next part of the liturgy.
Pops pulled his blue bandana out of his back pocket and scrubbed his face and neck.
“Once the bees come back,” he said.
“Then I’ll know,” Billy replied.
“That’s right. That’s right.” Pops got in the truck. “Don’t be late for supper.”
“I’ll know the drought is over,” Billy said as the truck bumped toward home, “when the bees come back.”
The dust cloud made the truck look like it was a burning fighter plane going down.
* * *
Chemicals, Billy thought. They’d pretty much all gone back to using outhouses because there wasn’t water to flush the toilets or to bathe. The house well had long ago gone stinky and sludgy. They used it to wash dishes. The government retrofit had siphoned this “gray water” out to Mom’s vegetable patch. She did all right with crunchy stuff like potatoes and carrots, but the juicy stuff like cantaloupes ended up tasting like soap. So trucks came and filled the water tanks and that was all you got for the month. The waterman always said the same thing: “It’ll break soon!” And more trucks came and dumped chemicals in the outhouse poo-holes—smelled like cherries. Big crazy cherry Life Savers with that dull stink beneath.
One good thing about the drought—the kids got to suck on all the hard candies they wanted. As long as they were sour candies and made their mouths water. It cut their thirst, the grown-ups said. But Billy was pretty sure he’d never eat cherry candies again.
He dropped the bike by the front steps and went in.
Mom was cooking. She mostly did microwave stuff so she wouldn’t have to waste water on boiling. They ate on paper plates. She tried to make it an adventure. “Just like camping!” she liked to announce, though the kids had eaten on paper plates so long they didn’t remember anything else.
She was kind of a dork, but Billy loved her anyway. He noticed how she took a bit of her water dose for the day and shared it with the rugrats—little Mitch and April. Pops liked to call weepy little April “April Showers.” Billy wasn’t able to catch all the yearning nuances in that one. He thought it was all about the tears.
“You crybaby,” Billy’d say to her when she was on a rampage about how unfair his latest Wii or Xbox bullying was.
“It’s not fair!” she’d shout.
“If we bottled up all your stupid crying, we could end the drought right now!”
April would run from the room. This was the small triumph both boys enjoyed every day: making April do The Grand Exit. She had gotten so touchy, they could cause her to freak out over ever more absurd things. If they were watching TV, for example, and a hyena ate a baby zebra, all Billy had to do was say, “April, how come you didn’t warn that zebra? It’s totally your fault it just died!” Or, watching a UFO movie, “April, why did you just blow up the White House with your death ray?”
Her outraged shrieks and stomping journeys upstairs put a saintly smile on Billy’s face.
“Kids, be nice!” Mom would holler.
Billy suspected Mom mostly took sponge baths. Judging from his scent, maybe Pops took dust baths. They kept the fans running all night. Sometimes all the dust in the atmosphere made lightning, but they never smelled rain.
* * *
“Seen a snake today,” said Mitch.
“Saw,” said Mom.
They were working on their chicken parm.
“Didn’t see no saw,” said Mitch, “saw a snake.”
Pops and Billy burst out laughing.
“I swear,” said Pops.
“And I saw a hammer,” Billy offered.
The males all chuckled.
“Where at?” asked Pops. He was piling that cheesy chicken into his cheek like a ground squirrel snarfing up acorns. They still had those. Squirrels, not acorns. Lived under the house.
“He was goin’ under the back porch,” said Mitch. He was a noodle man, mostly. Skipped the chicken. Billy called him a carbo-loader, whatever that was.
“Welp,” said Pops. “There go the squirrels.”
“Isn’t that a shame,” said Mom.
“I think that cottonwood down to the creek finally died,” Pops announced.
“God, Walt,” Mom said. “What next.”
“I know it,” he replied. “Hate to see that. But those are thirsty trees. Nothing in that creek but dirt.”
Billy didn’t tell them, but there were plenty of snakes down in the creek. They lived in the old beater cars and washing machines Pops had buried in the banks when there was water. In case of flash floods. Bummer about the tree, though. Billy always peed on its roots, as if he could keep it alive with his own body.
Changing the subject, Mom turned her eternally hopeful smile to Billy. It made him feel guilty. Like he could only let her down, no matter what he came up with.
“Bill? Have homework?”
“Nah.”
“No, ma’am.”
“…No…ma’am. Not tonight. Got that field trip tomorrow.”
“The school called me about it today.”
Oh, no.
“They asked me to chaperone. Isn’t that wonderful? Cool beans, as you might say.”
Cool beans?
Bad enough they had to go to some crappy museum. But now Mom would be on the bus. So much for all the fun he was planning to have with Higgins and Charlie. So much for flirting with Samantha Rember. He called her “Sammy Remember.” She scrunche
d her nose at him when he did.
“Cool,” he said. He smiled wanly. “Beans.” Thinking: Dang it.
The kids all excused themselves and scattered.
Pops lit his pipe, and Mom took one cold beer from the fridge and poured most of it in his glass and saved a bit for herself. They had stocked up a few cases, and they tended to be parsimonious with it. Coors. She liked the “mountain spring water” part.
She took his fingers in her hand.
“Walt…sometimes…” She shook her head and took a sip. “Lord, Lord.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I know,” he said. “It’ll be over soon. The government’s going to make rain. They do it in China, I heard. You’ll see.”
Mom thought about some silly thing and laughed, and so did Pops, and they went to watch TV.
* * *
Before school, Billy had to help Pops adjust the solar panels. What a major pain. “You like your light and TV and computer,” Pops groused, “you’ll stop bitching and just help me with this goddamned panel!” Good old Pops.
His farming was on hold, but he kept busy. He was on a foundation-reaffirmation crew. Fancy words for guys who went around the state fixing drought creep: the shrinkage from dried-out soil pulling away from house foundations. There was government subsidy money in it. All those houses with cracking foundations and sloping floors from the desiccated earth pulling into itself. They hauled a slurry of cement and soil-expanding chemicals into the gaps around the houses. Everybody had to laugh because the slurry also made the basements waterproof. In his spare time, Pops installed rebuilt air-conditioning units on roofs. Insurance had started to cover that as a necessity, so business was pretty good.
Mom managed to coax enough water out of the windmill to garden an okay corn patch. Nothing like they used to, but enough for the neighbors and themselves.
She helped out at the church, too. Typing up the weekly newsletter. And she did some small jobs at the old folks’ home. “Mad money,” she called it. One of her terms Billy didn’t get. Like when she said things were “boss.” Whatever.
“All aboard!”
“Gotta go,” Billy told Pops. “Mom’s calling.”
Pops muttered something that sounded like Smuffle whazick.
Billy tapped his arm and trotted away.
She drove a Windstar. It was old and nerdy and embarrassed the boys. The radio was crackly with static, and a booming voice was pontificating about how solar desalinization of seawater was a socialist plot by big government. Cheap water was a ploy by Washington to undermine the constitutional…Billy turned it off. Mom glanced at him, but said nothing.
April and Mitch went to Prairie Elementary. Mrs. G had already volunteered to take them home after school. Mom drove into the parking lot of the middle school. The Panthers sign had faded to ochre above the yellow ball field. The VISITORS scoreboard had lost letters: VIS T RS.
Bright school buses stood outside the auditorium. Billy was thinking of trying acting. The drama coach told him he’d be great in If the Boys Wore the Skirts.
He’d said, “You have a flair for the comedic, Billiam.” What a freak! Billiam? WTF. Still…Could be interesting. Sammy Remember was in Drama Club. But Higgins and Charlie would never give up mocking him for wearing a dress onstage.
Mom got busy with all the boring church ladies circling around the lot, more excited than the kids. Billy piled into the back of the bus with the gang. Sammy Remember tried not to look at him. Her red hair was hot in the sun and smelled like coconuts and pineapples. Billy tried to bump into her as he passed her seat. She made him swallow when he saw her. She ignored him and attended to the weird little folding-paper game her friend Peanut was showing her. But the way the girls laughed, he just knew they were talking about him.
Sammy glanced back at him and smiled once. Blushing.
“Oh crap!” Charlie proclaimed, digging in Billy’s ribs with his elbow.
Sammy and Peanut giggled, but never looked back again.
“Second base,” Charlie predicted. “Today in the museum.”
“For sure,” Higgins agreed. “Bra. Boobs.”
They had read Playboy.
“Knock it off,” said Billy, red in the ears. “I mean, jeez.”
“Billy’s got a boner,” Higgins said.
Billy grabbed him and they wrestled until Mom came back and said, “Do I have to separate you gentlemen?” This made Billy feel good. Sammy Remember would not forget that he was, in fact, a badass and had gotten in trouble for being too wild even before the bus pulled out. Though it was, like, a total fail that Mom was the one to scold him.
Charlie pulled a Doctor Who magazine out of his backpack, and the boys bent to it.
Billy popped a lemon drop in his mouth.
The sky was saffron.
* * *
“Museums suck,” said Billy.
The bus rattled along between tan fields.
“Right?” said Charlie.
“History,” said Higgins. “Shit like that.”
“What I’m sayin’,” Billy said, watching the back of Sammy’s head.
“Suckage,” said Charlie.
“Suckola,” Higgins said.
“Sucks the big one,” Billy said.
“That’s what she said,” Charlie said.
They all giggled like Sammy and Peanut.
The outskirts of town. Billy, in spite of himself, crowded the windows. They never saw the city for real, just in movies. Trees. Nice.
There was a car dealership. Empty. Weeds poked up through cracks they had made in the asphalt.
“Dude,” said Billy. “Freakin’ drought, and it’s all freakin’ weeds. Freakin’ weeds, like, never stop growin’. Whyn’t we just farm weeds?”
Higgins was asleep; Charlie was back with Doctor Who.
Billy rested his head against the glass and felt his mind fly out into all the windows and doors. Felt himself move in and out of the alleyways. Like a great sideways yo-yo in a dream. Like he could walk into a thousand life stories. Like he could think up a whole new world. Like he could go out of himself and keep going and find a house on a beach with ten million miles of ocean in front and sweet cold fog and afternoon rainstorms and Sammy there beside him. This thought both comforted and stung him and made him happy and made him want to cry. How did Pops ever tell Mom he wanted to be her boyfriend? How did you do that? And—second base! Bras? How could a guy ever get up the guts to ask? How did a kiss happen, anyway?
The bus pulled into the museum parking lot and farted its air brakes and Mom stood and the doors opened.
WELCOME TO THE WESTERN PLAINS MUSEUM OF WATER.
Another sign said PILGRIM, REFRESH YOURSELF. Some kind of old covered wagon and a plaster ox out in front. Cornball.
The kids disembarked. Grab-ass ensued; impromptu tag, running around like idiots. “I swear,” Mom said, “dealing with you all is like herding chickens.”
The boys feigned disinterest in the hologram of a huge fountain in the entryway. But the girls oohed and ahhed over it—the way the fake water was projected on a cloud of steam and seemed to gush and flow and then change colors.
“Water don’t turn yellow,” Higgins announced.
Then the boys started snickering.
“If it does, don’t drink it,” Charlie said.
As an added feature, each child received a minuscule spritz of cold water in the face, and they shrieked with delight, but were firmly denied a repeat.
They entered through a projected waterfall, a cheesy video loop playing on more steam.
Mom had once seen that effect at Disneyland on the Pirates ride.
They walked on video tiles, and each step made ripples in the fake blue water beneath them. Fat goldfish-looking things swam away from the electric ripples. The boys made big faux splashes by jumping up and down until the digital fish swam out of sight beyond the edges of the floor.
They wandered through the galleries: 3D film loops of Niagara Fall
s. Higgins didn’t believe it.
“That crap’s from the Avatar movies,” he said, tossing his glasses in the big blue box.
But Billy stood as one hypnotized. He was astounded by the sight of that water. Who imagined wild water was white? And so much of it the earth used to simply throw it away. Still, he was more awed by the sound of it than the sight of it. The sheer noise.
Farther in, they witnessed seashore videos: the announcer droned, “Behold the song of the sea.” The sound of crashing waves. Vents pumped saltwater scents at the kids. Gulls cried.
The moms were smiling, but the kids felt creepy, watching all this water. It felt bad. Billy picked up a conch shell and put it to his ear.
“You’ll hear the sea,” Mom promised.
Just sounded like the inside of a shell to him.
A friendly docent appeared in a sky-blue suit.
“You supposed to look like water?” Higgins said.
Kids laughed.
Billy looked for Sammy, caught her eye. She wasn’t smiling either. She stared at him for a long time before they both looked away, blushing.
It got sucky. Charts. Data. Laser pointers.
How the drought came upon the West first, then the South, then the Midwest. Then how the water states started to flood from too much rain. The docent called this “The Cosmic Irony.” And the oceans rose and the coasts were invaded by seawater. Then, how the water states instituted the border system, to keep the drought survivors from overrunning their lands. How they shipped water units to the heartland until the crisis was over. No shortage of sun or wind here, though, right, kids? So the drought states traded wind energy and solar energy to the national grid. Light for water, the government motto said. And: Light—it’s the new harvest.
“How long’s it been?” Billy asked.
“Pert near twenty years now,” the docent said with her weird anesthetized grin.
“Seventeen,” Mom said.
“Pert,” Charlie snickered.
Higgins couldn’t stop laughing.
“What a hick,” he whispered. Then he asked, “Excuse me, miss. Were you born in 1860?” He and Charlie laughed and snorted. Billy moved away from them.