ALL WET

ALL WET

By Andrew Paul Grell

“We lost another three sheep last night, Jim. Another day, 90s, zero precipitation. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to truck water up this mountain? How’re things going with that divining rod of yours? You made some pretty tall promises to the Town Council.” Ethan Zamisky and James Jarett faced each other off at either end of Dreishpeil, California’s main (and only) drag. Settled in the late 19^th Century by Jacob and Fenia Dreishpeil, immigrants from Russia, to compete with Lancaster to service the railroad. The town was up there on the list of driest places in America, but this was the first year that the town’s name was a truly unfortunate irony.

“It’s not a divining rod, Ethan, and you know it. It’s a frequency detector. When there’s water and minerals, there’s current at specific frequencies. It’s like a metal detector, but for water. Sound scientific principles.”

“And how frequently do you detect those frequencies?”

“We had a hit on Thursday, 62 gallons. It’s a work in progress, matching local mineral abundances to electromagnetic properties. Shouldn’t be more than another week before we’re up and running. So, Ethan, how’s the cloud seeding coming along?”

“You need clouds to do cloud seeding, you know. Just for the record, I returned my retainer to the Council. If a cloud shows up, even as small as somebody’s hand, I’m back on the clock.”

The folks having coffee—demitasse for the time being— at The Roundhouse were watching the “debate” unfold.

“Obie, can’t we do something about these hucksters? The town was sold a bill of goods. Two bills, actually.  You’re the Three-Story High School Science teacher and what passes for a Chaplain around here. Can you knock some sense into those charlatans?” Jessica Friedman was the town’s only paid responder, fire, medical, and stupidity; so far she had been able to hold every emergency together with on-call volunteers until Lancaster or the Staties could send help. Obadiah Joseph and Jessica kept company on and off. They were what passed for society in Dreischpeil. She was the last local descendant of Jacob and Fenia; he was the last native Paiute Indian in a place where the trading post in 1890 did most of their business with the Paiutes. All six-foot four of him arose from his seat on the Roadhouse’s veranda.

“Jessie, can you cover up my coffee so it doesn’t evaporate?” He walked into the middle of Antelope Valley Street, smack in between the two mountebanks.

“You know you two are a caricature of a Mexican joke, don’t you? Flacco the Desperado was retired, and he spent his leisure hours telling his grandchildren about the times of the revolution. Daniella asked the old man if he knew Pancho Villa.

‘Novia, let me tell you a story. One day I came out of the saloon and Pancho Villa was at the other end of the street. A horse had just dropped a big sloppy one in the middle of the road. Villa pulled a gun on me and said he would shoot me if I didn’t take a bite out of the shit. I had to do it; I didn’t have time to draw my pistol. But now I knew he was in town, and I waited for him. I had the saloon landlord walk his dog in the street, and the dog did his duty. Sure enough, Villa came by and this time, it was me who got the drop on him, and I made eat some of the dog poop. So you ask me if I knew Pancho Villa? We would have lunch together!’ So the pair of you, get your shit together and find some water. It’s 97 degrees, no pools, showers limited to three minutes. And no jokes about me doing a rain dance, either. It just may come down to that and you’ll need me in a good mood.” Diners and strollers along Antelope gave Obie a round of applause, and also germinated an idea. A relative visiting one of the town's volunteer firefighters asked about why there was very little air conditioning since it was so hot.

"House air conditioning works by dehumidifying the air. No humidity, no cooling. Commercial AC and desert cooling need water to work. No water, no cooling, " Uncle Charlie informed his nephew.

“Louis, thanks for meeting us on short notice” Obie and Jessica were in the Mayor’s office. They saw that the town’s chief executive was serious about the water shortage; he had replaced his dozens of flowerpots with cactuses.

“I heard about the dressing down you gave our ‘contractors.’ Well done, Professor.”

“Thanks, Lou. Unfortunately, you can shame and embarrass people all you want but it won’t get them to find water that isn’t there.”

“So, you crazy kids, I’m guessing you have a plan?”

Jessica answered for the two of them. “Two plans. Obie has enough lab equipment at the school to run a good-sized still. That means two things: tapping the sewage runoff, and absolutely not telling people where that water is coming from. They’ll never go for it. And that should keep us wet until Phase 2, Obie’s plan.”

“When my ancestors crossed parched deserts, they had ways of making sure they had water. They wove nets out of bowstrings, and every night, they would dig holes in the sand, line the holes with skins, and then put the dew-catcher nets on top. Water vapor condensed on the netting—dew—and dripped down into the skins. We can do this on a much larger scale. We’ll need a few hundred yards of tight fishing net material, some above-ground pools, a thousand feet of PVC piping with straight and angled joins. And plenty of luck.”

“I’m going to make some calls. These other two jokers are all hot air, and God knows we don’t need any more of that. This is the town credit card. Take it and find us some way to get water.”

Jessica took the card and drove into Lancaster for the Home Depot, where she placed the biggest order the salesman ever took. She was sad at the number of gardens she observed that had been nudged lovingly along despite whatever they were hit with, still flowering, still producing, until now. Ray Sullivan’s roses were under wraps. Sadder still were the empty houses, families here for generations, now down in L.A., maybe the Valley, perhaps scattered to the winds There weren’t all that many people in town to begin with. She finally got a smile when she passed Tom Gunn’s wrecker moving above-ground pools to the marshalling area. A rarity to see a tow truck hauling swimming pools. The doors of the truck each just had in image of a big toe with Tom’s phone number across the nail. It would be a busy day for Tom; after pool duty, he was going into Lancaster to haul the dew-catcher supplies back to town. 

“Whaddaya mean, ‘come back’? I’m at the checkout. They’re piling up all the stuff curbside. You’re kidding. One of those idiots found water? Which one? He’s the hi-tech divining rod guy? Seven hundred gallons on a test run? That’s a day for every family in town. I know, yes, it was a test. Alright. Let me see if I can back out of this gracefully.” Jessica turned back to the cashier. “Can you put this order on hold for me? We’re having a transportation issue. If we can’t get it hauled back today, we’ll have to postpone. It’s a time window thing,” Jessica uneasily lied. She hauled ass back to town to get a glimpse of the miracle. Mayor Lou met her at the town line.

“I couldn’t believe it myself. Jim came and pumped all 700 gallons into the water tower.”

“I don’t believe it at all. If I remember from my grandparents’ stories, they paid four different diviners. Three found nothing. The last, a Water Witch woman, tripped over her rod, wound up in a ditch, and came up soaking wet. She accidently found the underground stream we use to this day. Or at least what we used until a few months ago.”

Jessica pinned on her badge and took a walk inspecting the water tower, the pump, the hose, and the test hole. There were truck tire tracks that led to the hose. Three-axle, six-wheeled truck tires. One set going in, deep, and one set going out, not so deep. Deadheading back down. When we needed an emergency water infusion, Stan would haul it up. Five-hundred gallons at a time, carried in a truck with just four wheels. Stan never came at night and he never left without getting a check. Now acting as a sort-of cop, she jogged over to the “Public Safety Shack.” She called CHP and requested traffic came video from the night before, anything coming in from Lancaster. Sure enough, a tanker came through town and presumably delivered water to a spot on or near Jim’s “test hole.” It would be the last water Jim would ‘divine’ from the rocky desert ground. But now Jessica knew, and the California Highway Patrol knew, that a suspicious truck had rolled past the town’s windows last night. As soon as she hung up, little Alison Graves came running to the shack.

“It’s my Mom! She’s fainted! Can you help?” In deep cop mode now, she clicked the “Team assemble at” icon that would get the fire crew and Nurse Jackie to the Graves’ place. Then she called Jack at KDSP, the local 500-watt radio station, to have him announce that anyone with refrigerated yogurt should bring some to the scene. Having set up everything she could do locally, she then contacted her counterpart in Lancaster for professional help.

It was a three-block sprint to Anita’s. She gave the prone woman a wet sponge to suck and had Alison be in command of sponge duty. As soon as the yogurt started to arrive, Jess loosened Anita’s sun dress and started painting her with Phage’s finest full-fat unflavored. Within minutes the poor lady stopped moaning and writhing. By the time Lancaster EMS showed up, Anita was sitting comfortably in the porch rocker, and Jess had Alison start her on sips of water. The EMTs and Jackie gave Jess a questioning look.

“Obie isn’t the only one here with desert roots. I had an international semester in desert field ecology in Israel. The Brits and Swedes couldn’t take it, and the Bedou guide told us about yogurt for heat prostration. Two of them had to be flown back to their cold and misty distant lands. Another day of this, what is it, a cool 92 degrees today, and another, and we may run out of yogurt. And eventually run out of people. What the fuck was that?” There was a roar and a thunder men had never heard, at least not in Dreishpeil. It was the tortured sound of Ethan’s new rocket’s squeal.

There was a cloud. Not a big one. Ethan felt honor-bound to pierce the object of his desire with his rocket and seed it. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more times in test flights, the birds had gone up to a predetermined target point, reached the target, and released the payload, dry ice for the test runs. Somehow, the warhead contained silver iodide, a better seeding agent but too expensive for test runs. The new Mark 2 rocket missed the cloud by what looked from the ground to be inches. It actually rained, and some of the rain was water, but most was gloppy, wet, hideously ugly yellow silver iodide mush. The two contracted water conjurers had either cheated each other or screwed their respective pooches. It was now down to Obie.

The get-it-done Paiute was on the Pioneers team bus with a fair proportion of the engineering and architecture departments of Antelope Valley University. They were joined by the Pioneers basketball team. Obie was not much at public speaking, but he knew it was important to inspire a team and demonstrate leadership. 

“Listen up, you bunch of knuckleheads. You got academic credit for basket weaving courses; now you’re going to be weaving some pretty big baskets. And you double-dome, long-hair eggheads, you’re going to be moving off drawing boards and head out into the real world, where people need real water.” Obie got a few puzzled looks—the jocks’ hair styles were generally longer than their professors’. “The city of Lancaster has pledged to match, two for one, any emergency water purchases Dreishpeil makes for the next six weeks. As long as meteorology, surface tension, and gravity are still operating, no effort you make for this project will be in vain. Are you ladies and gentlemen up to the challenge of saving a town?”

Obie didn’t expect “Let us march against Philip” or even “Clamzo, me boys, Clamzo.” What he got was “Do we get course credit for this?” from the team and questions about patent rights from the educators, but everyone was at least moderately enthused about getting to do something which may generate juice, prestige, mating opportunities, and tenure advancement. Then the team’s point guard stood and gave a speech about a game from two years ago, when midway in the season the Pioneers were one and seven and could barely attract fans. The faculty decided to hold a booster rally with their own homecoming Queen Mum and Prince Consort. Every seat in the gym was occupied and they beat Sacramento 97-89. That memory got people cheering.

Word got out from the Antelope Valley down to Calexico and to every farm county that was being shafted by the various water compacts whose purpose was to avoid people getting shafted. Troops of Boy scouts, Girl Scouts, Eagle Scouts, 4-H, FFA and a dozen other jumbles of initials started showing up. Tim Pratt, the Industrial Engineer from the Antelope Valley faculty, worked with Tom on getting an assembly line operation going, just like Levittown, but with dew catchers instead of post-war houses. Haul a pool, drop it off with the PVC piping, have the smaller people size the pipe pieces and the basketball players, both from AVU and Three-Story High’s basketball Tumbleweeds, weave the “baskets,” raise the “umbrella,” and stretch the nets. The morning after the first three units, christened by Mayor Louis with Napa Valley Champagne, were put into operation, each pool had an average of 90 gallons. The project had enough PVC supplies for 60 netted baskets, but Home Depot had plenty more, as well as all sizes of above-ground pools. Jess came over to inspect her semi-boyfriend’s ancestors’ technology come to life in modern times.

“I’m surprised you didn’t have more confidence in me, Jess.” The statement earned Obie a blank look from his semi-girlfriend. 

“You’re not responsible for the town, Jessica Friedman. That’s Louis’ job, him and the Town Council. You shouldn’t be paying your own money just to try to keep the water tower filled.” The high school teacher looked at the cop like he would at a student who had just launched a spitball. He took out a receipt for a water delivery, signed by Jessica, and showed it to her.

“This wound up in the remote caddy on the lounger.” Jess successfully did her best to avoid crying while wearing her badge.

“It was me. It was all me. With so many scouts in town, it would be impossible for me to be less than truthful. I salted the diviner’s test holes. I altered the rockets’ guidance systems. I tried to mung the supply order for the PVC piping, and I was about to start switching the labels on the angle connectors. But when I saw the first basket christened, I just couldn’t do it. Obadiah Joseph, here is some more truth. If it were going to be yet again another day in hellish Dreishpeil with no chance of relief, I would have jumped down into the valley. You know, like that movie, Midsomer. Or blown town and went somewhere I wasn’t supposedly important.”

“Officer Friedman, I believe there is only one thing we can do to avoid civil or possible criminal charges. But it will have to wait until all baskets are operating and you can reliably get relief from any number of hot days.”

Technically, Obie was a hereditary Shaman of the Paiute and also an “ordained” ($25 and a self-addressed, stamped return envelope) Assemblies of God Minister. But obviously he couldn’t officiate at his own wedding, which was being held at the brand new Fenia Fountain and Public Swimming Pool. He let Louis handle that end of the operation. Obie waited until they finished their ‘I do’s, the exchanging of precious metals, and giving each other their first married kiss. Sadly, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, Obie was unable to deliver even a single horse to a male relative of Jessica’s. But he enthusiastically did a blessing-way dance around his new bride, seven times, and then stomped on a linen-wrapped glass to honor the customs of her people. And $400 worth of Costco party food had to be moved under the tables to avoid the soaking rain that seemingly came out of nowhere.