When It Rains

by Joel Shaw

  “Why’s that?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Didn’t you get a letter from the water district?”

  “I may have, I haven’t been home yet. Why do you ask?”

  He knew exactly what was contained in the letter. He had personally delivered the Governor’s emergency directive to the Tarrant Regional Water District office a week earlier along with the final draft of the letter ready for publishing.

  “No sir, I wouldn't call it interesting, I would call it criminal. Tarrant County is shutting the water off on Monday. They claim there is a water emergency. They said the governor ordered it.”

  “That ain’t good, friend. You have that letter handy? I'd like to read it."

  Ethan gladly handed him the letter. “I’m thinking we should call a meeting of our neighbors and talk about this. Maybe there is something we can do about it. I’d appreciate it if you would stick around for a while. Let me see if my friend, John is home. He used to be the president of our Home Owner’s Association, I don’t think he would mind if we use his place."

  Ethan called to the house. "Hey Jade, is Johnny home yet?”

  Jade's answer drifted from inside the trailer.“Not yet. I just talked to Katie. She said he was going to stop by Chaps for a beer. That was an hour and a half ago.” Jade appeared at the door with Amber it tow and helped her over the threshold onto the narrow porch.

  “Hey, William, look who's walking,” she exclaimed, steadying Amber as she negotiated the steps.

  William eyed the slender and attractive Native American woman with undisguised lust and turned on his cowboy accent.

  “Howdy Mamm. Your little girl is looking real good. And, if your husband don’t mind my saying so,” he gave Ethan a good natured poke with his elbow, “you are too.”

  Jade accepted the compliment with a blush of disgust that was undoubtedly construed by William as embarrassment. “Oh hush, William you know I'm a married woman. You better save the flirting for your sweetheart.”

  Ethan snickered. ”Sweethearts, is more like it.”

  Jade made no comment. She didn’t share her husband’s respect for the swaggering, womanizing braggart; the sooner he was gone, the better.

  “Hey Ethan, could you do Katie a favor? She’s afraid Johnny is going to get drunk and start some trouble over this water rationing thing. You know how he gets. She would like you to go talk to him...try to persuade him to get on back to the house.”

  William finished reading the letter, feigning alarm and astonishment at the content. “I can see why you are more than a little upset, Ethan, this here is downright un-American...and I imagine all the good ol’ boys around here will be hotter than burnin’ stumps once they get to drinkin’. I think y’all need to keep some cool heads about this round here.” He fanned himself with the letter. “This is only temporary. When it rains, this will all be over.”

  “I hope you’re right about that, sir. I best get on over to Chaps and see what’s up with Johnny.”

  “I’ll tag along if you don’t mind,” he winked at Ethan, “I’m just a little bit thirsty myself.”

  Ethan glanced at Jade. She scowled, he shrugged. “Glad to have your company, sir. We don’t have to meet at Johnny’s, but we damn sure don’t want to try to hold a meeting at Chaps. We’ll be back as soon as we can, babe.”

  Jade offered a resigned nod as the men departed, unsure whether they would succeed at extracting Johnny from the man cave or succumb to the alcoholic fervor themselves. She placed Amber in the third-hand stroller and prepared herself for the walk to Katie and John’s house. She forced the out-of-round wheels east on the weathered, asphalt road, the same road, the same stroller that for a more than a decade or so had been pushed by three other families prior to being donated to her stable of baby-care accoutrements. The persistent pain in her knee and hip joints reminded her daily of her failing health and of the letter tucked in her pocket. She leaned against a stop sign to rest and withdrew the envelope once again, studying its contents, she saw two prescription slips and a short hand-written note from her doctor that she had missed.

  Dearest Jade,

  The results of the most recent primary immunofluorescence confirms my diagnosis for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

  Please fill the two prescriptions as soon as possible and follow the Pharmacists instructions. Make an appointment to see me in two weeks.

  Warm Regards, Dr. Sharon.’

  P.S. I have some free samples for you.

  She glanced again at a particularly troubling portion of the lab results:

  We found no systematic review or RCTs of sunscreens or sunblocks in people with cutaneous manifestations of lupus; it is unlikely that such an RCT would be conducted. However, people with SLE are encouraged to use sunscreens with a sun protection factor of at least 15. Be advised that sunscreens and sunblocks can irritate the skin and cause an allergic contact dermatitis.

  Jade sighed audibly. Buying prescription drugs was out of the question; they didn’t have the money. The drug samples Dr.Sharon had provided would, for the time being have to do. She was currently breaking the pills in half. She now considered splitting them three ways. She knew she was playing a dangerous game with her health by doing so but could think of no options. She had to survive until Amber was able to take care of herself. That was another twenty years or so. She shuddered at the thought of living in pain for such a long time. She didn’t think she would make it. Ethan would have to take over when she was gone. She hadn’t told Ethan about her recent visits to the doctor, nor had she complained about the chronic pains. She was waiting for the right time; today was not the right time.

  The expansive yard at the rear of Katie and John’s house had over the years become the default gathering place for community get-togethers. Jade pushed Amber to the rear of the house and sat down beside Katie in the shade of a faded green canopy which was attached to the house’s sagging gutter with rusted spring clamps and bits of wire. They sat silent and sullen staring for several minutes at the distant, receding pool of water in Cedar Creek Lake Reservoir.

  As she was wont to do, Katie broke the silence with a romanticized anecdote of better days when the reservoir was full and laughter was more common than crying.

  “I remember as kids we would spend hours and hours water skiing on that lake.” She glanced at the bow of the faded, fiberglass ski boat resting, lopsided, on its keel near what was once the shoreline as though waiting for the tide to come in.

  She sighed, looking at Jade. “Did you ever come out here when you were a kid?”

  Jade shook her head. “Not that I remember. My daddy didn’t like to drive, so we usually went to Lake Tyler which was about five miles from home.” She didn’t mention that her dad was such a poor driver that her mother refused to ride in the car with him any further than that lake.

  Katie closed her eyes as she reminisced, “After a heavy rain, the water would come right up to that first Pecan tree. We could almost dive into the water from our back porch. The grass was green and thick... I loved walking barefoot in the grass... Those were good times...”

  Jade’s recollection wasn’t as rosy, “I wish I could have seen that. The first time I saw this lake was with Ethan. He brought me here three or four times to look at the trailer before I finally said OK and we bought it. The drought had started by then. Ethan’s dream was to go fishing every morning before work so we could have fish for supper. The first month we were here, he tried carrying his canoe out to the water, but the clay was too wet to walk on and it swallowed his feet and boots every time he tried. After he got stuck a few times and lost one of his favorite hip boots, he gave up and said we just had to wait for the lake to come up. He kept saying that...we just have to wait for the lake to come up.The water was about fifty yards from shore the day we moved in.” Jade studied the lake for a moment. ”The water hasn’t come up at all; it just keeps getting lower. And then they built the fence...”

  Jade wiped Amber’s nose with
her hand as she surveyed the vast lake bed whose waters continued to be drained through faucets in Fort Worth, ninety-eight miles away. Three hundred yards of sand bars and clay lay between the diminishing pool of water and the nine-foot tall commercial chain-link fence which was designed unashamedly to separate the people from the water.

  “You know, I have never even been swimming in that lake...I wonder if Amber will ever be able to go swimming in it...or any other body of water for that matter.”

  “You moved here in 29, didn’t you?”

  “Uh huh. June 4th, 2029.”

  “That’s when they started building that damn fence, isn’t it.”

  Jade nodded, but said nothing.

  Katie continued. “I remember the day they started pounding those damn metal posts into the ground over by the Gun Barrel City golf course. We could here the echo way down here and none of us could figure out what the noise was all about until my sister called and said they was building a fence around the reservoir. I thought she was kidding but she sounded so serious, that me and John drove over there that night to take a look. Sure enough, they were pounding fence posts into the ground with that big ol’ pile-driver thing. They banged those damn posts in the ground twenty-four hours a day for two and a half years. I got to hating that sound. Especially when they got close to our house.”

  Jade remembered, she could still hear the resounding clang of steel against steel. “That was right after we got married... I don’t know if I told you this, but Ethan was offered a job on the fencing crew and he refused it. He said it was Un-American because they were using Chinese steel and Chinese heavy equipment to build a fence right here on American soil. I thought he was foolish; I wish he had taken it, he would have made good money. I would have applied for a job on the crew if I hadn’t been pregnant.” She ran her fingers through Amber’s fine hair. “We fought a lot that year.” She shook her head vigorously, as if it were an Etch-A-Sketch, trying to erase the memories.

  Katie took a sip of iced tea, rubbing the cold glass across her forehead while taking a long pull on her cigarette. “It got to John worse than most. He growed up on this lake. He didn’t think it was legal, what they was doin’ and all. That’s when he started drinkin’...I mean every day. I remember the night he got so stupid drunk that he grabbed his shotgun and marched out to that pile-driver that was abangin’ away right by our dock and shot its lights out. That ol’ boy operating that thing was scared as a cat in a dog pound.” Katie laughed loudly before continuing.

  “After the guy took off arunnin’, John tried to pull them posts out of the red Texas clay with his bare hands. He like to bust his gut, trying. That cost him a trip to jail and a five-hundred dollar fine to boot. I think that’s how he got his hernia, too.” She let go another disconcerting raspy laugh and lit another cigarette. “It wasn’t very funny at the time, though...I guess it ain’t very funny now, neither. But it’s laugh or cry, am I right? And, from the looks of things, there will be plenty of time for cryin’, darlin.”

  “What do you think will happen, Katie. I mean...with the water ration and all...how are we going to survive?”

  “We’ll get by. We have to stick together, though. By the by, you and Ethan going to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “What funeral?”

  “The funeral for Angie and Lester Chisholm.”

  “I didn’t know...what happened?”

  “Suicide. I can’t believe you ain’t heard about that, honey. Everyone in the neighborhood knows about that.”

  “I’ve had...other things on my mind, Katie.” Jade, too, had entertained thoughts of ending her life when her body hurt so bad. She wished she could turn life off. She knew now that she wasn’t alone.

  “Does anyone know why? Did they leave a note or anything?”

  “They didn’t need to leave a note, honey. Lester had been out of work for eleven years. They was flat broke. They didn’t pay no property taxes for the past five years...their power’s been off for months... Some say they was eating dog food. The other night...Tuesday I think, Angie done shot Lester and then shot herself.”

  “Sounds like The Raven Mocker came,” Jade said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s what my mother would say when someone committed suicide; The Raven Mocker came. It’s Cherokee mythology. When someone was sick or dying the Cherokee believe that a killer witch, the Raven Mocker, would visit the person and scare them or torture them until they died.”

  “Oh my god. What on earth for?”

  “It was believed that they would eat the heart and leave no scar. After that, the Raven Mocker would add as many days or years as they had taken from the one they killed and add it to their own life.”

  “Oh my god, sweetie. Do you believe all that?”

  “ I don’t know. I haven’t thought about the Raven Mocker for years. My mother believed it, and her mother believed it.”

  “No disrespect intended, Jade. It just sounds a little...well you know...weird.”

  “It’s not weird, it’s just different. Never mind...where’s the funeral?”

  “Over to the First Baptist Church. It’s a memorial service, really; they already been cremated. They didn’t have no money for no coffin or gravesite or nothin. Pastor said he’ll sprinkle their ashes over their parents graves ... do you want a ride?”

  “Ask me tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good, let’s not worry about tomorrow till tomorrowcomes. Let’s do what we can today. I expect our men to be coming back soon. I’m going to make some more iced tea. It might be the last iced tea I ever make. Maybe I should make some ice. What good will an ice maker be if we don't have no water? I wonder how long it will be before we lose electricity, too. goddamn it.”

  Jade followed Katie inside. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “Sure. You can call the governor and tell him to kiss my fat, pimpled ass.”

  “I don’t have a phone, sorry.”

  “Come on smart ass, let’s get busy.”

  #

  CHAPTER 2 KINDLING

  Ethan steered toward town, remembering riding to Chaps as a child in the crew cab of his father’s dual-wheeled Dodge Ram 3500. In the early twenty-first century, one-ton and three-quarter ton pickup trucks roared along Farm-to-Market highways as if Texas was an island in a sea of diesel fuel. The big diesel pickups would fill Chap’s parking lot every Friday night after high school football games, like post-race chariots carrying voyeuristic gladiators primed to celebrate victory or excuse defeat with several rounds and a few more for the road.

  Ethan turned his compact, four cylinder Toyota pick-up truck into the unusually crowded, dirt, parking lot. The hodgepodge gathering of weathered, dented vehicles in the lot resembled a salvage yard, a clear testament to economic hardships shared by most residents of East Texas which had become one of the poorest regions in the bankrupt state. The last of the Texas manufacturing jobs had gone overseas in 2020. The once burgeoning service industries of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries now only served those living within the confines of elite urban compounds. Rural residents were, for all practical purposes, left to fend for themselves as gathers, gardeners, scrappers and thieves.

  William did not anticipate a dismal future. This, for him, was the land of opportunity. He dismounted from the truck and stretched before declaring, “Man, theys' busy as a funeral-home fan in July. Let’s go get us a beer and see what all these fellers are up to.”

  William, big as a Brahma bull, swaggered to the door and kicked it open with his black, American Alligator boots. The loose door-knob smashed against the wall enlarging the existing hole in the wall by a strong inch or more. He ducked under the door header and bellowed like a bull elk in rut.

  “Howdy boys, it’s so hot outside the hens is layin’ hard boiled eggs. Who’s gonna buy me and my friend here a beer?”

  Williams’ boisterous entrance briefly interrupted the cacophony of ongoing conversations long enough for him to establ
ish alpha dominance in the herd of losers who soon commenced with increased vigor their postulations regarding water rationing and perfunctory predictions as to how to best deal with it. The lack of cordiality was telling and the volume was deafening, making it impossible to communicate without yelling. Billy Ray, stood behind the bar waving two ice cold, Lone Star long-necks like Semaphore flags, signaling the newcomers to follow him into the kitchen for a little conference.

  “How you fellas doin’ tonight?” Billy Ray said, handing each a beer. Billy, or Buddha as he liked to be called, was the sole proprietor of Chaps. He looked like a red-neck Buddha wearing a cowboy costume, sagging cowboy boots, sweat-stained cowboy hat, and suede chaps that dragged on the floor like detached splash guards. His worn, silver and brass belt buckle was as big as the lid on a number ten can and thick as Texas toast. The four-wheel drive Jeep Wrangler engraved on the buckle was stuck below the fold of his belly, unable to proceed further.

  “We’re doin’ good Billy...Doin’ real good. How about yourself?” William watched the Buddha man pretend to wipe his ass with the water district letter before holding it under his nose and sniffing loudly like a happy hog watching slop drop into the trough.

  “Smells like shit if you ask me?”

  William and Ethan grinned.

  “Gonna turn into shit, too. Johnny is out front gettin’ those ol’ boys riled up. He’s trying to get them Vazquez brothers to bring their front-end loader over to the lake and start tearin’ up that fence so’s they can go fishing. And, them brothers are seriously considering it, I’m tellin ya.”

  “Why,” William asked, “I thought the Vasquez boys was doing better than most.”

  “That’s right..that’s right, they was, “Buddha replied, “they done signed a contract with Gun Barrel City last year to replace three miles of water main on West View Drive. They was fixin’ to start the job the first of next month. After reading this here piece of shit they called the Mayor’s office and the Mayor said the contract ain’t no good. “Null and void” is what he said. Them boys is pissed, I’m tellin’ ya." He paused to spit a stream of tobacco juice into the nearby sink. “They want blood and I don’t blame them, but I won’t have them bustin’ up my place again.” I want to get em’ the hell out of here. Gone! Most everyone out there is already drunk, and them Vazquez boys make a pressure cooker sound like a sea breeze once they get riled up. No tellin’ what they might do if I let em’ keep drinkin’. I’m fixin’ to cut em’ off. That’s what I’m agonna’ do.”