Drought

The Earth was visibly barren, its skin cracked and burnt by the unyielding sun. The vast inland river, that brought life and prosperity to the valley, was powdery and crumbling. It’s throat was parched, its banks collapsing without the grass to hold it tight. A rustle and occasional scurried sound betrayed the assumption that the land was dead, but Her womb had certainly run dry. In the distance, a broken figure, bowed not just by the years but also by despair. A memory glints in his eye when viewing the river bank, a memory of yestermonth followed by yesteryear – of the sound and smell of running water, of a full belly, and a life without fear.

The drought had been with them for his grandchildren’s entire life, and for most of his children’s too. They had never known the luxury he had been raised with, the world of technology, and fuel, and ease. Of machine, of decadence, of greed. It had become a little more than a fairy tale to them, a little less believable than the great wars they read about in their history books. A punishment inflicted on them for the sins of their fathers. Perhaps the world was different, they reasoned, but baths and swimming pools were surely the fictions of storytellers, and the waterfall the creation of some wonderful poets imagination.

The last time it had rained, when his hairs had just begun to grey, their joy had been short lived. A tear had opened in the sky, bringing about devastation that made them long for the dry. For seven straight days the heavens unleashed a burning tempest, each droplet wasting away whatever it landed on. First the paint, then the metal, then the wood underneath. Whole buildings washed away in the acid, and the sky devoured the vegetation more completelly than any locust. The Earth had stopped producing since then, even when watered with the lifeblood resting beneath the soil.

The figure knew the punishment was well earned for him, and it was only right he bear it. But God has always punished in generations, and it was this that wounded him deepest. No matter how much he fought to provide, the actions of his youth had already doomed those who would inherit his empty estate. He had squandered the bounty his paradise had given him – gargantuan trucks squeezing through the narrow city, air conditioning in winter and wasted food – fleeting enjoyments hardly worth the subsequent sacrifice. God had commanded of man to keep His Creation, the simplest of all requests not met, and although His punishment for this trespass had been slow, it had been furious. The first time He had wiped the wickedness of man with a flood, the second was with drought. An evil poetry fitting for an evil race.

First God’s fury came from the sea. It washed away the symbols of wealth, and the meaningless recreations of man. And when the nomads moved to the deserts, where from the prophets had once come, they would find no enlightenment. More fossils of creation were burned, more of the Earth devastated, so they could rebuild what was lost in a place that did not want them. And so the rains stopped. The water was hoarded, was controlled, and then was destroyed by those who gave an ultimatum and were not heeded. 

The figure stood for a time, as if to allow the dying light to etch his silhouette, while he surveyed the remnants of his once-thriving home. In his gnarled hand, hardened by labour, a tattered photograph fluttered – it’s subject bleached by the sun so that only the few who remembered it could make out its features. The image it held — a laughing child beneath a gushing sprinkler — was now akin to an artifact of mythology, and it was right that it should be forgotten.

Ahead lay the remnants of the farm he once worked with pride. Its dirt was like orange death, unyielding to the plough and seed. Yet stubborn as the arid earth, the figure walked the familiar path down to the cracked and empty dam, where sheep once crowded, bleating for their drink. Now silence reigned as heavy as the dust he kicked with each step.

His wrinkled hands worked on the damaged soil, an act more ritual than hope. With the narrow shovel he carried strapped across his cracked leather back, he dug into the ground, kneeling as if in prayer to a God he no longer believed was listening. One might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps he sought the moisture hidden deep beneath the surface, for often he had done just that. Fooling himself that he could dig deep enough, reach down to where the Earth still cradled some semblance of life. But for some time he had begun digging not for any reward, but just to refuse to acknowledge that he had given up. Perhaps this project would become a grave, not for himself exactly, but for his memories and a faded photo few would even believe existed.

As night descended, the vast sky revealed a canvas of stars, a Cross its centrepiece.

He remembered a poem once read, underlining words that seemed so poignant, that spoke of a nation at the edge of the world, land of the “waratah and wattle.” Now the waratah withered in the heat, the wattle keeled under the dust storms that strangled their land. The poetry of the past could not water crops.

By the light of a flickering fire, under makeshift shelter, he unrolled now ancient irrigation plans. Useless designs of his wasted former vocation, an engineer for a resource that no longer existed. He poured over them anyway, as if by sheer will he could bring forth water from the dense, dry diagrams. 

A memory returned, as if to defiantly replace the earlier that had been buried, from the last time he poured over these designs.

“Grandpa,” a thin face whispered, tiptoeing closer to the fire’s comforting warmth, “will you tell me again about the rain?”

Her voice, like the brush of a moth’s wing against his ear, was soft but filled with a yearning that wrenched at what remained of his spirit. So he had spoken, weaving tales of drenched mornings and storms, cyclones and floods, trying to douse the barren fire in her eyes with stories from before. They both clung to the words, futile lifelines thrown across the widening chasm of their reality.

The night grew colder, a mockery of the day’s inferno. The smouldering logs collapsed, a cascade of sparks fleeing upwards—their short-lived brightness a rebellion against the gathering gloom. He wrapped himself in a rough blanket, and alone, he faced the bone-chilling night, another day complete in quiet defiance.

His mind drifted to a future he would not see, one where green shoots might rise from the parched soil, where the legacy of his generation’s sins might be forgiven—perhaps due to a wiser, kinder mankind or perhaps the Earth might calm herself, once it had rid itself of their scourge. His last thought before succumbing to a restless slumber was a wish, a hope that from their ashes, a new beginning might somehow sprout.

Who knows what creature shall come to rule this barren rock when the last of men, whose boast is not “we live!” but “we survive” fade from the Earth. Shall they know our ruin, our errors? Or will those records too be erased, a clean slate so our corruption cannot mislead the next.