Water Rites

by Mary Rosenblum

  A house! She hadn’t noticed the shack tucked into the shade between the old, weary trees. Sagging and weathered, tethered to the black wings of solar panels, it would belong to the beet farmer. It night save her. If he was afraid of witnesses. Yes. The Winnebago roared on up the road, raising a choking cloud of dust that stung her eyes and coated her throat. Panting, she staggered to a halt.

  “Are you all right?” A figure limped out of the deepening dusk, an old man with wispy white hair. “That was Andy Belden’s rig, wasn’t it? The trader?” He stopped in front of her, weathered and stooped, only worry clouding the deepening darkness. “He’s a slimy bastard. Gonna get himself hung one of these days. Or shot. Did he . . . did he hurt you?”

  “No. No, he didn’t.” Nita tried to laugh, but it wanted to come out a sob. “I just decided to walk.”

  “It’s too dark for walkin’. You come inside now. My name’s Seth.” His smile seemed to lighten the darkness. “I got an extra bed for you and the baby, and I’d love the company.”

  His worry was soft against her mind, like gentle winter sun. “Thank you.” Nita let her knees begin to tremble. “I would be very pleased to stay.”

  The house was pleasant inside. The front room held a table and cupboards, besides the old sink with faucets that probably didn’t work, a propane stove, and painted cupboards that shone white and spotlessly clean in the light of the small battery lantern he turned on. A shirt hung from the back of a chair and a Bible lay on the scrubbed table top. He ushered her into a small, adjoining living room. A sofa, upholstered chairs, and a woodstove and a china cupboard crowded the small space. Curtains hung at the windows, striped with darker fabric at the edges where the sun hadn’t bleached out the blue-flowered print.

  “You sit,” Seth told her. “Stew’s almost done. I’ll bring you a glass of water.”

  Nita sank into one of the oversized chairs. Rachel was hungry, groping at her shirt. She looked around the small room as she lifted her shirt and tucked her daughter’s small warmth against her. A woman had done this, Nita thought. Her absence ached in the dustless surfaces and unused feel of this room. The glass shelves in the china cupboard were filled with small, china animals; dogs, horses, ducks, even a white goat with curly horns and a golden bell around its neck. Hers she thought. Her picture stood on the shelf. It had to be her — a respectful space around it made it the centerpiece of this unused room. Nita studied her as Rachel nursed. She had a wide smile, but a subtle sadness clouded her eyes. In the picture she was young, with only a few gray hairs in her dark curls.

  “Here we are.” Seth appeared in the doorway, a tray in his hands. A blue ceramic pitcher stood on the tray, flanked by two matched glasses. “I thought we’d do it formal. I never use these.” He set the tray down on the table. “How’s the young one?”

  “She’s fine.” Nita watched him pour a silver stream of water into the glass, her throat tightening. You were always thirsty out here in the drylands. You put it away in the back of your mind, ignored it, until someone offered you a glass of water. And then, suddenly, you were dying of thirst. She picked up the glass, forcing herself to drink it slowly. It tasted so sweet, water. No, not really sweet — honey was sweet. It tasted of life. “Thank you.” Nita set the empty glass down. “For the water. For letting us stay.”

  “Like I said, I get lonely. Leah was always proud of this room.” He gave the picture a quick smile, as if she was listening to him. “I don’t use it much, and that would make her sad. She’d be pleased to see me use the pitcher, too. I gave that to her for our twentieth wedding anniversary. Bought it in Portland.”

  “It’s lovely,” Nita said. His grief was new and sharp, but the love beneath it had an old, weathered feel to it. The last of her tension drained away, leaving her tired. Secure.

  Seth was watching her over the rim of his glass, legs crossed, eyes sharp and dry as the land outside. “You on your way somewhere?” He leaned forward to tickle Rachel’s belly. “Or on your way from somewhere?”

  “To somewhere.” It wasn’t quite a lie. “We’re on our way to The Dalles.” She settled the sleepy Rachel more comfortably on her lap. “David — my husband — heard of a job there.”

  “The Dalles, huh? What kind of a job?” Seth leaned forward to refill their glasses.

  “Working for the Corps. Pipeline work.”

  “Yeah?” His sparse eyebrows rose. “I heard there’s trouble up that way. Trouble about the Pipe. Hope he got his job. Where you from, anyway?”

  “The Willamette Valley, west of Salem.” Nita stirred uneasily. She knew the questions that were coming, knew them too well. She didn’t want to hear them from this man’s lips, but Rachel had fallen asleep, and her sleeping weight pinned Nita to the chair.

  “All the way from the Valley? That’s some hike.” Seth whistled. “How come you got stuck on your own? Seems like this David of yours’d be worried about his wife and kid on the road alone. There’s not a whole lot o’ law outside the big towns like The Dalles, Bend, LaGrande. Lot can happen out here.”

  Nita’s lips tightened. “I . . . haven’t heard from David.” She said the words because they had to be said, had to be faced every morning with the silent, rising sun. “I couldn’t go when he got the word about the job. Rachel was too little and it was honey flow season. We were bee hunters. We’d have missed the harvest if we both left. So I stayed on until it was over.”

  He was supposed to have sent word when he got settled. He had planned to come back for her, if he could. For four months she had waited. Nita stroked Rachel’s sleeping face, listening to the murmur of her daughter’s small dreams. “We hunted bees way up in the coast range,” she said and heard the defensiveness in her tone. “It wasn’t like we had a cell phone or anything. Messages get lost all the time.”

  He heard it, too, and his sympathy was like the soft hum of bees on the still air. “Yeah, messages get lost.” He picked up the tray and got stiffly to his feet. He didn’t tell her that people get lost, too. He didn’t have to.

  “I’ll go dish up the stew,” he said and put out a hand as she started to rise. “You stay put. When I got the table ready, you can put her down on the bed.”

  Nita blinked back teas as he shuffled out of the room. A lot of dusty miles lay between their tent in the mountains and The Dalles. Andy and his stormy violence wasn’t the worst she could meet out here. It was easy to die in this dry land. But it wasn’t his death that haunted her dreams. Nita stroked a wisp of hair back from Rachel’s face. She looks like you, David had said, and he had been afraid. He had always been afraid of her deep down inside. Ever since he had understood what she was — that she would know how he felt. Always. It’s all right, he had told her. I don’t mind. And part of him didn’t. Part of him was happy when she translated the bees’ soft song for him, told him how the hive was content or nervous or happy. Part of him liked it that she knew when he needed a touch, or love, or a little private space.

  And part of him feared her.

  He wouldn’t look into that shadow, wouldn’t face it. But it had always been there. After Rachel’s birth, it had grown darker. He had been full of a nervous restlessness, like the bees before they swarmed.

  She looks like you.

  It was easy to die here. It was easy to walk away, too. The drylands ate yesterday. They buried it in dust, dried it up, and blew it away.

  “Think you can put the little one down?” Seth stuck his head through the door.

  “I think so.” Nita scooped Rachel gently into her arms and carried her into the tiny back bedroom. Seth didn’t seem to have noticed her tears. Nita laid her sleeping daughter on the bed and wiped her face on her sleeve. “You’re not like me,” she murmured. “You’re normal.” Normal. The word hurt her.

  Rachel whimpered softly in her sleep — she would look like Nita, yes, and like David, too. “I love you,” Nita whispered. She tucked the spread around her daughter and tiptoed out of the room.

  Seth had cleared
off the table and spread a flowered tablecloth across it. He had set out thick, white china and a cut-glass bud vase full of golden grass stems. “You get sloppy, living alone.” He ladled bean and vegetable stew into a bowl. “I’m glad I got an excuse to set a proper table.”

  Nita took the filled bowl with a smile at the spotless room, but something was wrong. A stiff uncomfortableness had replaced his peace.

  “This is great.” She spooned up stew and smiled. “You’re a wonderful cook.”

  “Thanks. It’s garlic does it. You can’t never get too much garlic in a dish.” He put the pot back on the small propane burner and sat down. “You know, if you want to hang around until tomorrow afternoon, I can give you a ride on into Tygh Valley. You could likely find someone heading north on 197, who could get you closer to The Dalles.”

  He was lying to her. Why? Nita’s earlier sense of safety began to leak away. “We’re close to 197, then.” She made her voice light. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Yeah, you’re close.” Seth put his spoon down, eyes fixed on his stew, as if a fish had suddenly jumped in the middle of his bowl. “We got a good weekly market there. Folk come in from all around. Few weeks back we had some excitement.” He poked his fork tines into a thick cube of squash. “Some guy come through doing magic tricks. Cards and stuff, but more than that.” He looked up suddenly, frowning. “He made stuff . . . appear. Frogs and butterflies and such. Out of the air, like. It was a gadget, he said. Little black box.” He reached for his water glass, took a long swallow. “Good thing for him. Couple of us kind of got him aside, eased him on out of town. He got the message real quick, and beat it.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “That folk around here don’t have no sense of humor when it comes to that kind of thing. You know, a lot of weird stuff happens in the Dry.” He held his glass up, stared into its crystal depths. “Kids get born strange. Some folks say it’s the water or the dust.” He shrugged. “The Reverend, he says it’s the devil. Rev says we’ve killed the land with our wickedness and now its ghost is rising up, looking for vengeance. It’s taking over our children, right in the womb, turning ’em evil. You got to stop it ’fore it gets out of hand.”

  There was something hot and hard running through the softness that she had felt before — a shining thread, like a thin stream of molten metal. It frightened her, that hot thinness. It was aimed at Rachel. He had overheard her in the bedroom. Nita put down her spoon. “You’re wrong,” she whispered.

  For a moment, he looked her in the face, his eyes dry and pitiless as the sky. The hot-metal feel of him burned her so that she clutched the tabletop to keep herself from leaping to her feet. The knife felt heavy in her pocket but it didn’t reassure her. Not this time.

  Seth looked down suddenly, and the hot glare faded. “I don’t know.” His voice was unsteady. “Leah and I, we had three kids. They all died. She said it was the will of the Lord, Leah did. That it was God’s choice. Maybe, but a little bit of her died with each of ’em.” He looked at her, looked away. “I believe in the Rev,” he said slowly. “He’s a pure man. I believe God speaks through him. When he holds out his hand, the dust storm ceases. But . . . I don’t know. The Robinson boy was a good kid — but when he touched someone, they . . . glowed. Like colors in the air, all around. He said you could see sickness that way. Leah tried to stop ’em when they started to throw stones. He got away. The Rev said she was a weak vessel, that God would punish her. She died a month later.” He picked up his fork again and ate a cube of squash. “It was my fault,” he said and guilt beat in him like a second heart. “I should have taken her home. I knew they were gonna do it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nita whispered. The stew tasted like dust, but she ate it, spoonful at a time, afraid to reject his food, afraid, period.

  She helped Seth with the dishes, hiding her fear. He told her that he got up early to soak the beets before it got hot. The scary part of him was watching her, waiting for her to go to bed first. Nita smiled for him and shut the bedroom door tightly behind her. No lock, but she jammed the back of the single chair beneath the doorknob. Don’t tell people what you can feel. David had told her that years ago, when he had first understood. “Different” scares people, he had said. Scared people can hurt you.

  Rachel’s diaper was wet and Nita changed it, wrapping the wet one up in the plastic bag from her pack. No time to let it dry and air out now. She sat down on the edge of the bed with the switchblade in her hand. Listening.

  Part of Seth grieved for that boy, and for his own dead children. But another part of him was forged from that hot, molten ugliness. She heard his footsteps in the hall, soft and careful. Nita held onto her knife, fear a stone in her chest. The doorknob turned gently. The chair creaked a little and skidded an inch or two across the wood floor. Silence. Nita held her breath, heard only the rush of blood in her ears. She watched the single window, waiting for a face to appear, for the glass to smash in.

  Silence.

  Perhaps . . . just perhaps, the grieving part of him had coaxed his body to sleep. She didn’t dare hope, but . . . perhaps.

  Silence.

  After a long time, when the house had creaked and groaned itself to sleep, she gathered up her daughter, her pack, and her water jugs. Heart pounding, she climbed through the window. No Seth. The moon was up high enough that she could see to walk along the cracked asphalt of the county road at the edge of the fields. She fished the map from her pocket and spread its creased folds out on the moonlit asphalt. Yes. If she took this road, it would bring her to 197 well north of Tygh Valley. Nita refolded the map, slid her arms through the pack straps, and tucked Rachel into her sling. An owl screeched thinly as she started walking, and fear lurked in the darkness behind her, nipping at her heels.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Carter fought the wheel of the little car he’d drawn from the Corps’ Portland motor pool. It was a new electric model, and light enough that the wind kept pushing it off the highway. The Columbia Gorge would make a great wind tunnel, he thought sourly. Sheer vertical walls of black rock rose on his right. The dry Columbia bed yawned on his left, like an ugly wound in the Earth’s crust. Wind towers stood in silver ranks, their long blades turning briskly, scouring energy from the wind. Those were the Corps’ towers. They powered the pumps that pushed water through the Pipeline. You couldn’t see the Pipeline itself — the six immense pipes lay buried like veins beneath the riverbed. Another truck convoy thundered past him on the left — triple trailer rigs doing about eighty — and the car tried once more for the ditch.

  A ramp was coming up. Arms aching, sweating in spite of the laboring air-conditioning, Carter fought the car off the highway. Rest Area, a blue highway sign proclaimed. The ramp curved gently toward the towering cliff wall, ending in a small roadside parking lot. It wasn’t much of a rest area, but at least the wind wasn’t so bad down here. Carter slammed the car door, his sweat springing out in earnest in the dry heat. The asphalt lot was empty except for a big semi rig parked at the far end and a lanky man with a tail of blond hair sitting in the narrow strip of shade cast by a bank of vending machines. Carter headed for one of the three pay-toilet units beside the machines, very conscious of his uniform.

  He had a new CO to meet and no time to change, or he would have been in civies. You didn’t wear a uniform off base, not if you were traveling alone. The blond guy didn’t seem to notice, or he didn’t care, anway. Carter pulled the door shut after himself, baking in the plastic oven despite its reflective coating. He held his breath as he unzipped. These new composters were supposed to be odorless, but something was sure wrong with this one.

  The week was not going well. He’d come in three days ago, expecting to meet up with Johnny. But Johnny wasn’t in Portland. He had been called back down to the regional office in San Francisco for some kind of emergency meeting. So Carter had kicked around Portland on his own, seeing what sights the city had to offer. The refugee camps in the old suburbs didn’t do m
uch for the atmosphere. They reminded him too much of Chicago.

  He glowered at the heavily caged vending machine. It offered water, pop, and a few snack items. Carter stuck his debit card into the slot and a plastic pack of water thunked into the tray. Sun-hot. Grimacing, Carter poked the attached straw through the plastic and took a swallow.

  Beyond the parking lot, the sheer cliff wall of the Gorge towered over the ruins of a stone building. The stone was grooved with the traces of a long dead waterfall. This must have been a park once. Someone had tacked a laminated postcard to the splintered remains of an old signpost. The colors had bleached to yellows and greens in the sun, but you could just make out a waterfall, yeah. Carter squinted at it, then lifted the card carefully. Multnomah Falls. The brittle cardboard cracked as he read the caption on the back, and the card came away in his hand. Carter stared at it, not sure what to do with it. He finally managed to wedge it under a thick splinter of wood. Johnny would laugh at him, but someone had put it there.

  He had looked forward to a few days with Johnny. Golden-boy Johnny. Carter shook his head, smiling, remembering. Johnny had been king of the private school they’d both attended, and Carter — forever on the outside — had watched him operate with a resigned envy. It had turned his universe upside down when this star picked him to hang out with. At eleven, he already knew how the world worked. It didn’t work like this, except in fairy tales. His mother was the live-in housekeeper for old man Warrington and everybody knew why the old man paid his tuition to the school. He’d figured Johnny needed backup and so he’d made a wary trade — friendship for his fists when needed.

  Johnny had dragged Carter with him into every inside clique and hadn’t asked for anything . . . anything . . . in return. That had turned the school’s little universe upside down. Which was probably the joke that Johnny had intended in the first place.