THE CLOUD SEEDERS

by James Zerndt

  “You’ll be fine, honey. Just don’t go doodie anywhere, okay?”

  I pictured hot tubs, naked people drinking illegal beer, multiple Unforgivables, Dustin having a heart attack trying to hand out all the tickets. But when we get on the roof, we find only a small swarm of dancing teenagers.

  Dustin leans into Jerusha, whispers, “These aren’t Leftovers, are they?”

  “Leftovers? This isn’t the day after Thanksgiving, honey. These are your neighbors.”

  A soft mist falls over the crowd and people start twirling, rubbing the falling water into their clothes. Behind the crowd I see a guy holding a sprinkler. I nudge Dustin, point to the rain-maker, and Dustin’s jaw drops.

  I start to say something, but Jerusha grabs his hand before I can get a word out.

  “It’s supposed to encourage the real thing!” Jerusha shouts, spinning Dustin around under the fake rain. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  I nod but can’t help wondering if they’re using Recycled water, drenching everybody in what isn’t even fit to drink. I lean against a railing, watch as some of the dancers run their fingers blissfully through their urine-soaked hair.

  “Wasn’t that amazing?” Jerusha asks when the rain ends. “Cleansing, don’t you think?”

  “Do you know what the punishment is for--”

  Again, Jerusha doesn’t let me finish. She picks Dustin up, his fur all matted down. “Who cares what sour puss thinks. What does Tony the Tiger think? Fun stuff?”

  “Awesome stuff! What was that thing making all the water come out?”

  If I don’t step in, I can see Dustin bringing this up at headquarters and getting us all in trouble.

  “That, Dustin, was an antique. Something from the old days. Something that’s obsolete now.”

  Jerusha squats down beside him as the others make their way back down the ladder. “It’s called a sprinkler, Dustin. People used to place them on their lawns and children would run through them in the summer. Someday, with the help of people like this, we might have them again. Would you like that?”

  Dustin turns to me, says, “Can we get a sprinkler?”

  “No, we cannot. For one, they’re illegal. For two, they’re nearly impossible to find. Besides, what are we going to sprinkle? We don’t have a lawn.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  By the time we get to Jerusha’s house, it’s dark, her parents long asleep. Her parents think Jerusha’s an angel, living out in the garage so she can remain close to them. The fact that they’re being used as a cover has, I’m sure, never occurred to them.

  They’re the opposite of Jerusha: good, obedient, scared citizens.

  “Home illegal home,” she says, waiting for us by the garage.

  “You live out here?” Dustin asks.

  She doesn’t answer, just unlocks the padlock and clean-and-jerks the garage door open. With a flip of a switch, we’re doused in red light. A king-size bed with satin sheets sits in the middle of the garage.

  “Whaddya think?”

  Dustin immediately goes for the bed.

  “What’s up there?” He points to a second story loft with bed sheets hanging from the ceiling. It must be where she hides her paraphernalia, her water-making lab. “Can we go up?”

  “That’s my special place, Dustin. Sorry. Off limits for now.”

  I haven’t turned her in.

  There’s my being head-over- heels in love with her, but also the fact that she knows where my mom and dad are. It works out well, a blackmail made in heaven since I can’t imagine being chained to anything sexier than Jerusha.

  Would you rather get laid or...

  “Mind your own business, D,” I say. “Or you won’t get to see the surprise.”

  “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” he yells, jumping up and down on the bed.

  “First you have to keep a secret,” Jerusha tells him. “Can you do that, Dustin?”

  “I can do that.”

  “I thought so. How about you, Thomas?”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  “No, I suppose you don’t,” Jerusha says and climbs the ladder to the loft.

  “Do you think she has a sprinkler? Maybe some water pistols?” Dustin asks.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “That would be so awesome.”

  “No, it would not,” I say. Water-pistols are a major Unforgivable. “You know we can’t tell anybody about this, right? We’d both get in big, big trouble.”

  Dustin plops down on the bed, says, “Don’t be such a wet rag, Thomas.”

  “You don’t even know what that means.”

  “Do too!”

  Jerusha is standing at the top of the ladder, her black dress replaced by a pair of bulky flannel pajamas.

  “Thomas, would you give me a hand with this?”

  She’s holding something wrapped in a white bed sheet. I climb half-way up, help her walk it down.

  “Ready?” she says once we set it on a table, but instead of waiting for an answer, Jerusha whips the sheet off. “Ta-da!”

  “A TV!” Dustin says, standing on the bed again. “Does it work?”

  Major, major Unforgivable.

  Anyone caught possessing movies of any kind will automatically be placed in Rehabilitation.

  I remember the DVD burnings held on weekends, the bonus water-points handed out for every ten movies burned. No longer would we gorge ourselves on distraction, no longer would we amuse ourselves into submission.

  “Where did you get that thing?” I say, not quite wanting to hear the answer.

  “Here,” she says and hands me an old VCR tape. “Make yourself useful.”

  Jerusha drags an old car battery out from under the table, goes about threading the modified chord onto the terminals. It’s one of those old combo TV/VCR deals. As I slide the tape in, Dustin puts his hands on his lap, morphs into good-little-boy. When the images from Star Wars start to fill the 12” screen, Dustin’s mouth doesn’t seem able to close.

  Once Jerusha is satisfied that Dustin is sufficiently hooked, she fluffs a few pillows, gives me a nod toward the loft.

  “Dustin, honey, I need to go upstairs with your brother for awhile. Will you be okay down here?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

  “Give me two minutes,” Jerusha says and cranks the volume before disappearing up the ladder.

  I count out two long minutes in my head, then follow after. When I part the bed sheets at the top of the ladder, Jerusha is standing next to a claw-foot bathtub filled with soapy water, the steam slowly rising, a blue towel wrapped around her.

  “You can’t just--”

  “I can, Thomas. You should know that by now.” She lifts her leg up, the towel opening up along her thighs in a V as she dips her toes in. “When’s the last time you had a real bath?”

  Number One on the list of Unforgivables.

  I can’t speak.

  Would you rather watch R2D2 or take a bath with Jerusha?

  “High school,” she says. “Am I right?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “Where’d you get all the water?”

  “Take your clothes off.” Jerusha drops the towel to the floor, starts coming toward me and I back away, worried about Dustin. “We’re just taking a bath, Thomas. What do you think is going to happen?” Her smile widens. “He can’t hear us anyway.”

  I undress, sit down in the tub, barricade my knees against my chest as the water envelopes me like smoke. An entire tub full, hot enough to turn my legs a deep pink. It feels pornographic.

  So pure, it’s dirty.

  “Now relax.” Jerusha takes her hand, tugs at one of my feet so that my leg slides down along her thighs. “That’s better.” Her hair is spread out against the back of the tub like a shiny black fan. I can’t stop staring. “Feels good, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice quivering like the surface of the water
.

  Jerusha leans forward, places her mouth against my knee, gives it a soft bite. The world pulses and pounds in my ears as she lies back with this pleased look on her face. I close my eyes, listening to the sounds of light sabers and blasters filtering up from below. I stay that way for I don’t know how long, but by the time I open my eyes again, the water’s almost cool.

  Jerusha, smiling that illegal smile of hers, says, “I guess that makes you a Violator now, too.”

  “If Dustin wasn’t here,” I start to say. “I’d violate more than--”

  “Oh God, I forgot about him,” she says and pulls herself out of the water, starts drying herself with one foot on the tub, giving me an eye-full.

  “You like that?” she says and drapes the towel over my head. “Be a good boy and maybe you’ll get some tomorrow.”

  With that she climbs back into her pajamas and heads back down to Dustin. I dry myself with Jerusha’s towel, rub her smell as deeply as I can into my own skin before putting my clothes back on.

  I’ve been so preoccupied that I haven’t had time to really look at her water-brewing system. I’ve seen them before, but this one is especially tricked out. There’s a car battery on the floor, jumper cables hooked up to an iron rod that leads to a small skylight in the roof. Aluminum foil covers the bottom of the skylight while plastic tubing drips down like an IV into a barrel. It must have taken her a month to get enough water for just the one bath.

  I feel honored almost to the point of tears.

  By the time I make it downstairs, the tape’s sticking out of the VCR and Dustin’s fast asleep on the end of the bed. Jerusha’s already turned the TV off, covered Dustin with a blanket.

  That night I fall asleep with my arm around Jerusha, her back arched into my chest as I dream of flash floods, thunder and lightning, showers, tsunamis.

  Oregon Mourning

  The lake’s been electrocuted again,

  the mist sizzling

  from its bald surface,

  the fish all capsizing

  while the loons keen.

  Soon the cicadas, too,

  will throw their voices

  across the water

  in protest.

  i can almost remember how all this used to look,

  back before they passed sentence

  on all the good things.

  2 Operation Green: What’s In Us, Sustains Us

  “Let’s go,” I say, but Dustin just pulls the covers up over his nose. “C’mon, we’re going to be late.”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  “Bullshit. Get up.”

  “No,” he says, his voice all pouty. I put a hand to his forehead, give a feel like Mom used to.

  He’s hot. Clammy.

  “I told you this would happen, didn’t I?”

  “No.”

  “I told you you’d catch your death at that stupid party. I bet she’s sick now, too. Couple of morons.”

  “You’re the morons.”

  “You can have that. Since you’re sick.”

  He rolls over on his side. On Jerusha’s nightstand there’s a photo of her with a decapitated Mt. St. Helens in the background. I remember Dad telling us about the ash, how it reached all the way to Portland, covered entire neighborhoods like black snow. Both his parents died in the eruption. From asphyxiation. It’s the reason my dad became a scientist. So he could learn how to harness nature’s power, prevent more catastrophes like the one that took his mom and dad from him.

  Seems more than just a little ironic now.

  I let Jerusha sleep. Not that there’d be much hope of waking her anyway. I call work, tell them I’ll be working solo today, then set out some ibuprofens for Dustin along with an extra liter of water.

  “Easy on the water, okay? I think she’s got some leftovers in the fridge.”

  Dustin smiles. “Really? How’d they get in there?”

  “Not those kind of leftovers, smartass. Just don’t O.D. on the water.”

  The air is moister today, so I forgo the dust mask. The ground almost feels soft, like it was when I was a kid. I can remember Mom telling me to walk carefully in the mornings, that nature liked to sleep in. She was goofy like that. I can remember the grass back then, too, how it felt like your feet were sinking into somebody’s stomach.

  But even with the slight change in atmosphere today, it still feels like the earth is trying to suck every last drop of moisture from the sky.

  It still beats dust though.

  Today’s a Code Blue day. Which means a double-fine for anybody I catch being “environmentally negligent.”

  Or, in layman’s terms, wasting water.

  Like the water slogan says: It Pays To Be Green.

  Or, put more directly: Be Green or Pay Out The Butt.

  Friendly or not, I have a quota to reach, and I end up handing out three tickets over the course of my day. Two for Water Siphoning. One for Electricity Pirating.

  Minor Unforgivables.

  When I get back to the precinct, they have a Leftover in custody. He’s about my age but looks to be about a hundred. The way homeless people sometimes can. The door to the interrogation room is open. I can smell him from the time clock. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, but today I linger longer than I need to.

  Sergeant Lundy has one foot on a metal chair, is leaning over the guy. “Thirsty?” he says, dangling a bottle of water in the Leftover’s face. “The sooner you give us the dealer, the sooner you drink.”

  “I’m good,” the Leftover says, picking white crust from the corners of his mouth.

  Most of them break after an hour or two. We call it Drying. There’s a whole section on it in the Employee Handbook. Sergeant Lundy unscrews the cap, pours a little into his hand the way you might for a dog. The Leftover’s hands are cuffed to the chair and he has to lean forward if he wants to drink.

  As soon as he moves his head forward just the slightest bit, my boss slowly turns his hand over, lets the water spill to the floor.

  “Uh-uh. First I want names.”

  When Sarge wipes his hand on his shirt, the Leftover eyes the floor, smacks his lips.

  “I told you. I dug the well myself. Nobody even lives on that old farm anymore.”

  “Okay, so let’s pretend that pile of turtle shit doesn’t stink. A good citizen, a citizen who wasn’t so selfish, wouldn’t have dug that well in the first place. You are aware that well-digging is a major Unforgivable, correct?”

  The Leftover straightens up in his chair, his body trembling with malnourishment, thirst, anger.

  “If I did share that water, I would have shared it with real human beings,” he says. “You, on the other hand, wouldn’t have gotten a drop.”

  Sarge snorts, walks over to a small fridge we keep in the corner. He pulls out a paper plate with a fat piece of chocolate cake on it, slides it in front of the Leftover.

  No fork. No spoon.

  “You’re a stubborn one. I like that, makes for more of a challenge. When you’re finished with your dessert, I think we might have a jar of peanut butter around here somewhere.”

  Sergeant Lundy shuts the door quietly, like he’s left a sleeping baby in there. Once we’re alone, he grips my shoulder, gives it a squeeze.

  “Officer. What can I do for you?”

  Over a year now and he still doesn’t remember my name.

  “My brother, Dustin, is sick and I was--”

  “Oh yes, Dustin. An H2O cadet, isn’t he? Have to keep my eye on that one. He’ll be gunning for my job in no time.”

  “Yes, sir. He’s, um, enthusiastic about the work.”

  “We need more people like that. And less like this piece of trash.”

  I look over my shoulder, see the Leftover leaning forward, his face smeared with frosting. He stares at me, eyes brimming with hate, tears.

  “I was wondering,” I say, turning away from the window. “I mean, seeing as Dustin is sick, maybe now would be a good time for us to use up some vacatio
n time.”

  Sarge steps back, looks at me as if I’ve just committed an Unforgivable. “You do realize that right now isn’t the ideal time. What with the heat and all. You know how people get during the summer.”

  “I realize that, sir. But the truth is Dustin’s been showing signs of weakness lately.”

  “Weakness?”

  “Nothing serious, but these things can snowball. First it’s craving television, next it’s dreaming of bubble baths.”

  “Well,” Sergeant Lundy says and rubs his mouth like he’s checking for drool. “There’s always Rehabilitation.”

  When I don’t respond, he nudges me with an elbow. “I’m kidding, Officer.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Good one, sir.”

  We watch the Leftover through the interrogation window, his head bent over the remains of cake. He’s crying, his head angled so that the tears pool up on the table.

  So he can lap them up later.

  Sergeant Lundy shakes his head in disgust. “Two weeks be enough?”

  *

  When I get home, Jerusha and Dustin are in the basement sorting laundry. Not exactly my favorite place in the world to be.

  “You’re late,” Jerusha says and tosses a pair of boxers at me. “We missed you. Didn’t we, Dustin?”

  Dustin balls up a pair of socks, dumps them into a basket at his feet. “Sure.”

  As far as I know, the only laundry Dustin’s ever helped out with is the getting things dirty part.

  “You feeling okay, D?”

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “Okay, what’d you do with my little brother?”

  “What?” Jerusha couldn’t look any guiltier. “Fine, so I promised him Empire Strikes Back if he helped out a little.”

  “Jerusha.”

  “He’s a good kid. He deserves it.”

  “Yeah,” Dustin says. “I’m a good kid.”

  “Whatever. Just don’t get used to it.”

  Jerusha smiles triumphantly. “See, I told you he’d be cool with it.”

  Dustin shrugs, goes back to matching socks, eternally unimpressed. I’d like to stuff him in the washing machine.

  “Jerusha, could I talk to you for a minute?”