Water Wars Chapter One

In the dream, I was eating a white bread sandwich with my mama. She made one for her and one for me and we had some bean soup. We were both sitting at that little red and black and chrome table with those back breaking uncomfortable chairs with the old, dry vinyl splitting big cracks down the backrest in the tiny kitchen. It was cold in the house, even in by the stove. Looking out the small windows near the refrigerator, I saw it was snowing hard, and the sky and the trees were gray, and the ground and the air were filled with white, almost like being in a cloud.

Even asleep, I swear I could taste that sandwich she made and smell the soup and I could see mama in her pretty dress. She was wrapped up in an old brown wool sweater against the cold, and the sleeves had holes at the elbows.

White bread always takes me back to her and that cold old house, that bread with all the pretty colored balloons on the bag. Breakfast, lunch, or suppertime was always something made with that bread. Sometimes for dinner, mama would take some leftover meat and gravy and make a hot open sandwich. Sometimes when we had potatoes, we’d eat them with the gravy too. It wasn’t nothing fancy, but it was always good. Her best recipes came from the Betty Crocker cookbook she got from her own mama. If Betty didn’t cook it, mama didn’t cook it and we didn’t eat it.

Then I was awake and realizing it was a dream, laying there sweating and stuck to the sheets. As much as I hate the cold, I hate this heat worse. What would I give to be shivering in that kitchen from so long ago.

The power is off again, and it must be ninety-five in my bedroom. I hear others in this big old Victorian apartment house rustling around. I hear a baby screaming and somebody yelling at someone about the baby’s screaming and I think that made the baby scream louder. Then I hear a gunshot, and it sounds like it was from outside. I hope it was from outside. At this moment, everything is quiet. Too quiet.

Now, it’s about three hours before sunrise, and I’m soaked in this dread that the world we have to come to know and expect as spoiled and entitled Americans is about to be no more.

Twenty years ago, I was in the army. I wasn’t worth a pinch of shit as a soldier. I got out after four years and got a job as a long-haul trucker. I wasn’t worth shit as a trucker, either. I was going to go to college on the army’s dime too, but again, it required more effort than I was willing to invest.  The army taught me the life skills to keep my head down and draw no one’s attention and how to drive a truck.

One night over little Rheingold beer nips and shots this bartender gig materialized and here I am, mid-forties, not quite the roaring success I’d envisioned, on the very edge of a mid-life crisis, feeling like I never got started. It’s been a life spent lighting smokes, and baby-sitting drunks, and pouring drinks. While I was busy with all that the world seems to have frayed around the edges and at the seams and is coming apart.

I have a couple of kids. A boy and girl. The girl lived back east with her mom, somewhere in Connecticut. I got a Christmas card about fifteen years ago with something drawn in crayon. A Christmas tree and a mommy and daddy and a child holding hands. It was never like that for her, her mom or me, but I kept the card. That’s about all I’ve got of her. Not even any actual memories. I was told her life was wasted to the heroin or fentanyl, not sure it makes any difference which one killed her, anyway.

I’ve got a boy too; from another girl I knew. He was in Florida. I’d hear from him time to time. I ain’t heard a fucking thing since that hurricane tore up the gulf coast two years ago. They say that gulf water was damn near one-hundred degrees; it was the biggest goddamn storm anyone had ever seen. Nearly two thousand people died. I’ve been afraid since then that one of them was my boy.

It hit one-hundred-fifteen-degrees in Queenstown, Washington on New Year’s Day. We’ve not had any significant rain since last July, and that was a one-day torrent that dumped twelve inches way too fast. It ran right off the concrete hard dirt and back to the sewers, then into the ocean, I imagine. A farmer friend texted me a photo the next day, his only comment, ‘The ground isn’t even damp.’

Most days, for the past six months at least, the high temperature during the day has been topping out well over one-hundred-ten degrees. Overnight lows are in the upper eighties to ninety.

It hasn’t snowed in the mountains to the north in two years.

That one night, the night it rained, I’d never seen anything like it. Solid sheets, more like a wall of rain, and the temperature dropped from ninety-five degrees to about thirty-five degrees in minutes. It finally ended in snow flurries. I went out to walk in it, like maybe I was thinking it was the last time I’d ever walk in rain or snow again. It felt that way.

I walked about half the block from my apartment front door till I saw my neighbor Jane. She was standing outside her beat-up old car, and I could see she was crying, more than crying, sobbing uncontrollably. She was barefoot and wearing a thin blouse soaked through enough I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra and a wet pair of jeans a few sizes too tight. Her long brown hair was greasy and wet and past her shoulders. She was holding each elbow cupped in her hands tightly with her arms crossed, hugging herself.

I said, “Jane, what’s wrong? This piece of shit car won’t start again. Do you need me to steal you a new battery? It’s not worth crying over. I told you I’d fix it. You never called me.”

She stood there talking to someone, maybe me, maybe a ghost, and she said “No, no, no, no, no.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her empty eyes. “Jane, come on, you need to get inside. You’re soaked to the skin, and you’ve got no shoes on.”

Looking down, I saw her tiny feet turning blue and her toes were curling in.

“Come on, Jane, it’s freezing out here. I’m wearing a coat and I’m cold.”

She reached inside her car and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, taking one, the paper was wet before it made it to her lips, trying to light it with a match in the rain, that too failed and she again broke down in tears.

Looking straight at me and into my eyes, then she put her arms around my waist and buried her wet head in my chest. Even through my coat, her hard embrace made me feel she’d break the ribs of my skinny frame. She said, “Samuel, every fucking thing in my life is broken, my job closed down. That’s happening more and more now, all over the place. My license was suspended because I didn’t have the money to pay some damn fine, a light bulb was out or some such shit. You know that big fat cop, the bald guy, he’s been stalking me. He wants to fuck me. He says he can make my problems go away. I’m so scared. I’m so scared of everything. I’m scared for my kids, I’m scared of that cop. I’m scared of this rain, and this fucked up drought. I’ve got no money for food or to keep the lights on, and it’s getting hard to find stores that have anything to sell, anyway. I’m trying to get unemployment, but you can’t get through on the phones and the internet is down most of the time. I’ve spent the past few days since the factory closed trying to figure if my kids are better off with me here or with me dead. I’m leaning heavily toward dead. It is a terrible way to feel, it’s a terrible thing, my life, my kid’s life. My life is all fucked up. If I kill myself, will you take care of them?”

Shocked and cut by her words I replied, “Janie, I can’t even take care of myself. I hope you don’t choose to kill yourself. That would be even worse for your kids. Worse than even this life now. The way I figure it, something is going to kill us all soon enough, and it doesn’t need a lot of help doing it.”

Grabbing her shoulders from behind, I directed her back to her front porch. Opening the screen door, it came off in my hand. “Fuck that door too,” were her words as she slipped inside.

Walking through the open door, it was dark, but I could see the mess that was her home. I hugged her and turned to leave.

She said, “You could stay the night and fuck me if you want, but I doubt that would help much. It could make it worse; I suppose. That’s the direction everything seems to go these days from bad to worse. You’re probably better off just going. It’s too hot in here to fuck anyway.”

I walked back to my apartment. That was late last summer, and it hasn’t been below eighty-five degrees or rained since that night. The next day it was over one-hundred and ten again. I’ve not seen Jane either. I hope she’s not dead. I kind of wish I’d stayed and fucked her.

Now, a few days into the new year, the power cuts have us in the dark twenty hours a day, of course, that brought with it violence and looting and shootings. In my quiet and comfy neighborhood, I hear gunshots from not far away. It’s hourly, like a clock striking. The streets are angry and on fire. One hundred degrees at 2am, in January, no one can sleep. We lay in our wet beds sweating and listening to sirens, angry and scared.

The brownouts are not localized, but from Texas and Arizona to Nevada all up and down the coast and here into Washington. The consensus and endless conversation is the power grid has failed. The faucet in my apartment yields nothing but a puff of rusty muck. Hospitals are filling up. People are dying like the withered fruit on the vine at my friend’s farm. The stories are confused and confounding. Are we out of water or is the power grid failing from the heat and demand? My gut tells me both. The breathless reporting on the daily TV news has helicopters flying over the dried-up lakes and the Sacramento River, San Joaquin River, and Colorado River and up here, Keechelus Lake at record low levels. The lakes and streams around our town are all dried up.

Businesses are forced to shutter their doors. People living paycheck to paycheck have run out of paychecks. The National Guard is in Texas and to the south in California. The border into Mexico is shut down. Some friends are heading to Canada where it still seems to snow and rain, but I hear the border is closing or closed too. The fragile social safety net, frayed for decades, seems to have completely unraveled.

Out on the street in front of my apartment right now, it’s ninety-five degrees at 7pm and it’s getting dark. I gather with neighbors, and we watch the thick black clouds turn the summer evening to night; big pops of thunder surround and a light show of bolts come screaming from the sky but not a single drop of rain. I sit on the front stoop sweating, looking at the dead straw that was once a small front lawn. That patch is now covered with the dead leaves of the Jacaranda tree, dying right alongside the rest of us. The storm rages, but no rain. I wonder if the sky has forgotten how to rain. It was in that moment I knew I had to leave.

This small Washington town will soon become a dystopian landscape. It comes to different people at different times. Some of us are still working and able to find groceries and bottled water. Most stores the shelves are empty. Some canned stuff still sits there. Fresh meat and produce and dairy are unavailable or priced so high no one can afford it. I saw six oranges in a bag the other day for twenty-five dollars. The situation is bad for some, very expensive. For others with no money or food or water, those with thirsty or hungry kids, we’ve already crossed that line. The nightmare has begun. We all know the system has failed. It fails at different levels and times for each other us. All I know is that the way things were are past us now and they ain’t coming back.

I walk inside to take what must be my hundredth piss in the unflushed toilet, gather what clean clothes I have into a backpack, the best walking shoes I own and decide to head east. My family is in the east and in Florida. I heard Miami was one hundred and twenty-five the other day. I realize those far-fetched novels and movies I used to laugh at were not so far from reality. What holds our civilization together seems to be a few degrees of temperature and a few thousand gallons of water. I figure dying trying to make my way east beats sitting here dying of thirst or by looters trying to get my last bottles of Poland Spring.

A buddy of mine has been making big cash hauling water tankers here from somewhere in the Midwest. Fresh, clean water is selling for about ten bucks a gallon in my neighborhood, that’s a hundred grand for a ten-thousand gallon load. He says he’s made a million for himself this summer, from his cut. I’m wonder at what point does our money become worthless too. As he brags, I’ve hear stories of other truckers ambushed, hijacked and killed. Anybody with a gallon of water is in danger for their life. Ten thousand gallons in a truck, you’re asking to get killed.

He gives me a number and an address to see if I can get a load east or at least deadhead east and come back with a load. This guy is fronting drivers with trucks and tankers and fuel. My friend said the highways are a free for all. He pays a kid to ride shotgun with him—the kid rides in the passenger seat and has shot a few men trying to come for the load.

Gas and fuel are so expensive few people drive and what police are left are more focused on keeping some kind of order in the sweltering neighborhoods like mine than worrying about highway patrol. You can run down the interstates as fast as you can push it, loaded with one-hundred thousand pounds of water behind you and nobody breaks your balls. I guess for someone like me, who has always leans more to the outlaw side of life, this should be my time to shine, but I’m scared. I’m fucking very scared. Not so much of dying. The general consensus is we all don’t have much time left here. The fear, my fear, is an ugly, painful death. For the first time in a long time, I think of Jane. I wonder if she played that option and killed herself. I decide to walk down to her house on my way to see if I can find a truck east. The story is there is a place in Kansas with plenty of water they are selling it in bulk. The guys pulling loads back here are making a fortune. I don’t care about the money; I just want a ride east.

Walking up to her apartment I see the screen door still askew from the frame where I pulled it off the hinges months ago and someone had cut the fabric of screen. The apartment is dark. Knocking on the front door, it opens a crack. It’s darker inside. Peering in, it appears to be abandoned. The stench of garbage rotting in the dry heat is overwhelming. Turning to leave, I hear the floors creak. A voice says, “Samuel is that you?”

I turn to see Jane holding a sawed-off shotgun, wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt. Her hair is still greasy and still barefoot. At least her little feet don’t look as cold as the last time I saw her.

She walked up to me, placing the gun on a coffee table in the darkened room. With her arms out, she embraced me, then pulled back and looked me over. My hair has grown long, shoulder length and the long beard, streaked with some gray, covers my face. She says, “You’re even skinner than last I saw you, Sam. You look a little like Jesus. I always wanted to fuck Jesus. I guess you’ll do.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than she started to sob and grab both my hands and stand back enough so I could see her and what has happened to her in the past few months. She, too, is much thinner. Through sobs and gasps of air, she speaks. “My kids! About three months ago, that son-of-a-bitch ex-husband of mine came through here and took my kids for the day. I haven’t fucking seen them since. He called me here, before my phone service was canceled and said he’d taken them up into Canada and I should come too. But I got no ride, no work, nothing. I decided not to kill myself, so the past few months I’ve been scrounging, I thought about sucking dick for money, but no one seems to have much and I never liked sucking dick all that much, anyway. I know I look worse for the wear, but we all do. Do you have water? To tell you the God’s honest truth, I’m back to thinking about killing myself again. My kids were all I had, and they are gone now. In a fucked up part of my brain, I think I’m just riding this out to see how bad it can get. I hear there’s a bad virus making rounds now. With so many sick and weak people, it’s spreading fast. Remember when we used to shit in pure and clean water? Who were we? What the fuck was that about? We need to be nearly at the end, right Sam? I think about death a lot. Do you think anything comes next or does this shit-show just end?

Letting go of her hands and stepping back I say, “Fuck, Jane, why didn’t you come and find me. I could have helped you. Not sure how, but I could have done something.

Then she sits down on her dirty and ripped couch with the stuffing spilling out and onto the floor, exposing some hard metal springs she sighs, “I always liked you, Sam. I didn’t want you to see how broken I’ve become.”

Walking toward her, I reach down and again take her hand. “Janie, we are all so broken now. There ain’t no shame in being broken. I think we are very close to the end for all of us. Why don’t you get cleaned up and best you can and pack some things? I’m going to get a ride east. I’ve got no good reason to head there, other than it’s not here. We can go to Canada and find your kids.”