THE CLOUD SEEDERS

by James Zerndt

  “D, just pick somebody else. What about Luke Skywalker?”

  “Luke’s a fag.”

  Jerusha can’t help but laugh, and I can see Dustin start to come out of it. “Well, he is.”

  “Fine, Luke’s a fag. Whatever. Pick somebody else then. We have to get going or we’ll be camping in the dark.”

  “We’re going camping?”

  “You even get your own tent.”

  Jerusha puts her hands on her hips, all innocent 1950’s housewife. “And where exactly am I supposed to sleep?”

  “You can sleep in my tent,” I say. “I don’t mind.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead.”

  Dustin rolls his eyes at us. “I want Chewbacca,” he says and tugs on Jerusha’s sleeve like a toddler.

  “C’mon, honey. I’ll help you look. Thomas here has some more packing to do.”

  They disappear into the basement and I start loading our cache of water into the trunk. Jerusha’s already packed an extra car battery and her homemade water-brewing kit. Her suitcase is here, too, a pair of pink panties spilling from one side.

  Jerusha never wears panties.

  Says they’re unnecessary.

  Reason 4,364 I’m in love with her.

  I go back inside, the wheels already turning.

  By the time I finish loading up, Jerusha and Dustin are sitting on the living-room couch with the map.

  “Guess where we’re going first, Thomas.”

  Prison?

  “I give up. Where?”

  “To a lake.”

  Jerusha shows me the map, her finger pointing to a place up in the mountains a few hours south of here.

  “It’s hard to get to. Which is why the government doesn’t know about it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “C’mon,” Jerusha says. “The sooner we leave, the better chance we have of finding it.”

  “You haven’t been there before?”

  “That’s part of the fun, dummy.”

  I hadn’t noticed before, but Dustin has one of my action figures in his lap. His fingers are wrapped around Billy Dee William’s waist.

  “I see you found somebody to take Chewbacca’s place.”

  “Nobody can take Chewbacca’s place. But who’s this?”

  “Lando Calrissian.”

  “Is he cool?”

  “Hella cool.”

  I take one last look around, wonder what it’ll be like having to come back once Dustin knows the truth.

  I close the basement door, whisper a quick goodbye.

  I don’t notice Dustin standing behind me.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “The force,” I say. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Bacon

  You cure of hangover,

  friend of the simple hash brown

  that i am.

  Cover your tender pink ears

  when the miserable healthy

  speak to you of carcinogens

  and cholesterol.

  They can no longer smell

  your muggy cologne,

  nor taste

  your sometimes brittle beauty.

  i alone will be faithful to you,

  my sizzling little gigolo,

  my porcine God.

  i alone

  am willing to die for you.

  3 H20: Priceless

  I take the highway out toward the coast. The mountains are mostly bare, the trees all felled long ago.

  “It looks like a sick dog,” Dustin says from the back seat.

  “What does, honey?” Jerusha says.

  “The mountains. Like our dog did after surgery, after they shaved his butt.”

  It’s exactly what it looks like. The back-side of one very large, very sick animal. I try to change the subject using Mom’s old fail-safe.

  “D, would you rather be an eagle or a salmon?”

  “There are no salmon.”

  “Pick one.”

  “A tiger.”

  “Dustin. Eagle or salmon?”

  “Fine. Eagle. My turn.” Dustin puts on his serious face. “Jerusha, would you rather be a fart coming out of my butt or Thomas’s butt?”

  Jerusha turns around in her seat, completely un-ruffled. “Definitely your butt, Dustin. No contest.”

  “Gross!” he says and rolls over on the back seat, his hands covering his face.

  “My turn,” Jerusha says. “Dustin, would you rather be a Water-cop or a Leftover?”

  I can hear a hum in the back seat that’s threatening to spill over into laughter.

  “Mmmm...a Rain Maker!”

  Jerusha reaches over the back seat, starts tickling him. At this rate, he’s never going to want to go back to work.

  Not that I can blame him.

  I pull the car over, more for some air than the pee break I claim to need.

  “What, no Recycler? Isn’t that illegal or something?”

  Jerusha rolls up her window before I can answer.

  I walk along the roadside, go against one of the few remaining Alaskan blue cedars. Beyond that there’s what’s left of a river: a sluice of dried mud. The bright green moss on the cedar branches is now brown and dried out, the limbs of the tree like the hairy legs of an old tarantula.

  When I get back into the car, the laughter’s long gone.

  “What?” I say.

  “Look.”

  Jerusha nods at the windshield and, at first, all I can see are the naked tree stumps along the highway.

  Then I spot it.

  A solitary drop of water on the windshield.

  I’m about to ask Jerusha if she’s up to something, but the look on her face tells me she’s beyond serious. She cranes her neck under the glass, says, “You see it?”

  “Maybe it’s bird shit.”

  “Clear bird shit?”

  “It’s rain!” Dustin says.

  “No, Dustin,” I say. “It’s a drop of water. That’s all.” I put the key in the ignition. “How much further to this lake?”

  “What. Is. Your. Problem?” Jerusha reaches over, takes the keys out, and dangles them in front of my face. “Dustin and I are going to investigate. Aren’t we, Dustin?”

  Dustin, instead of answering, bolts from the car and crawls onto the hood.

  “You’re probably right that it’s nothing, but what’s the harm in--”

  “Dustin’s the harm,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to get his hopes up.”

  “Since when is hope such a bad thing?”

  “Depends on who’s doing the hoping.” The words are barely out of my mouth when Dustin decides it’s a good idea to lick the windshield.

  “No harm, huh.”

  Through the glass we hear a muffled “Sure tastes like rain.”

  Jerusha rolls her eyes at me, gets out of the car, and starts spinning around with her arms raised to the sky like she’s Gene Kelly in Singing In the Rain.

  “Rain, rain, rain!” Dustin starts to chant and hops down from the car so he can shadow behind Jerusha.

  Suddenly I’m witnessing an ancient culture, a shaman and her acolyte possessed by the Gods of rain as Jerusha goes into a sort of impromptu prayer...

  “Oh, Mother of Water, we thank you for this sign of your glory. We know you are up there. We know you are watching. We are good, humble people deserving your sweet nourishment. We beg of you, let your bounty fall and cleanse our parched souls!”

  When I look up into the blank face of the sky, I almost expect to feel something on my cheeks, but, like always, there’s nothing.

  “Bravo,” I say and Dustin and Jerusha look confused, like maybe they actually thought it would work. “Can we go now?”

  They both give one last disappointed look up into the sky, then get back into the car. We continue our drive in silence, all of us watching the colossal wind-turbines spinning away indifferently along the mountain ridges.

  Would you rather hope or pray?

  It seems like ages before
Jerusha speaks again.

  “Turn right after the guard rail.”

  I slow down, turn down the dirt road. We make it maybe a hundred yards before coming to a large gate.

  “What now?”

  Dustin and I watch Jerusha get out of the car and scratch around in the dirt at the base of a nearby stump until she finds a key.

  “I told you Leftovers weren’t all bad,” she says after unlocking the gate and getting back into the car. “You ever been skinny-dipping before, Dustin?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The closer we get, the more excited Dustin becomes. He’s like a dog who knows it’s going to the park. This lake better exist or he’s going to tear up the interior of the car.

  We make it up one last incline and park the now-wheezing car under a massive, dead cedar. With all these giant specters grave-yarding the land, it’s hard not to feel like a ghost.

  “We just follow this trail here, and bang, there’s our lake,” Jerusha says.

  Dustin, wasting no time, darts off ahead of us.

  “No running!” I call after him.

  “I’m not,” he yells back, slowing to a trot for about half a second before going full-gallop again.

  Me and Jerusha take our time and as we pass the first bend, she turns to me, says, “Have you told him yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “He still thinks they’re away doing research?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  I say nothing and we walk on, every now and then catching glimpses of Dustin up ahead. I haven’t seen him this happy in a long time.

  “The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be.”

  “And what, exactly, am I supposed to tell him?”

  “I want you to tell him what love means,” she says and stops me in the middle of the road. “I want you to tell him how you found them holding each other.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  “No. You won’t,” I say and start walking again.

  “He trusts me, Thomas. It’ll be like removing a band-aid.”

  “No,” I say and this time it’s me who stops. “It’ll be like removing a heart.”

  Jerusha loops her arm through mine like we’re just on some Sunday stroll through the park, like we’re not searching for a forbidden lake, not about to change a kid’s life.

  “I’m sorry. I just want to help,” she says in this beautifully small voice and I’m thinking how there isn’t anything small about Jerusha --how even her silences are big-- when I hear Dustin yelling.

  “I found it! I found it!”

  He’s leaping up and down, pointing at something. I have to admit that I didn’t expect to find it, and, now that we have, I get instant goose-bumps.

  When we catch up to him, there is a moment of silence as the three of us stand on top of a ridge staring down into of the paltriest looking lakes I’ve ever seen.

  Still, it’s a real lake.

  “Last one in is a rotten egg,” Jerusha says and starts crabbing her way down the slope.

  Dustin doesn’t move.

  “C’mon, D,” I say. “I’ll help you down.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he says and to prove it, climbs past me, slips, and ends up going down on his butt. For a second my heart stops, but he’s fine, pops right up when he reaches the bottom.

  “Rotten egg! Rotten egg!” he yells, pointing up at me.

  I would be a million rotten eggs for the view I’m getting of Jerusha stripping along the edge of the water. Dustin, too, stops his yelling when he sees the miracle happening only feet away.

  The tan lines.

  Good God.

  I hadn’t noticed them last night, but now, in the light of day, they stand out. Jerusha hesitates for a second, then puts her feet together along the edge and dives in, taking it all away from us. It reminds me of high school, before I knew her and would steal glances of her during gym class. I slide down, almost knocking an oblivious Dustin into the water.

  “C’mon, you two! I won’t look if you’re shy!” Jerusha calls out, turning her back to us.

  “Can Thomas go skinny-dipping, too?” Dustin says.

  “Of course he can. Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Because he’s not skinny!”

  I have my pants off just as he’s saying this.

  “Nice, Dustin. Thanks,” I say and jump into the water before Jerusha has a chance to turn back around. It doesn’t occur to me that Dustin has no idea how to swim until I notice him sitting on the bank, underwear still on, his legs dangling in the water.

  Jerusha, realizing the problem, coaxes Dustin into the water by placing his lucky arms around her neck. He hesitates for all of half a second before cramming his face into her chest, then kicking his legs behind him.

  I can’t help but think he’s faking the entire thing.

  *

  I’m not asleep, but not exactly awake either, when I hear the sound of an animal whimpering.

  Like something small caught in a trap.

  It’s Dustin.

  My first thought is that Jerusha’s told him.

  Not good.

  I go over to investigate and find Dustin cradled in her arms.

  “He went under, swallowed a mouthful. He’s just a little freaked.”

  “A little?”

  Dustin won’t look at me, just keeps sniffling.

  “He’s never been swimming, Thomas. It can be pretty scary, right?”

  She gives me the play-along look and I throw it into reverse, say, “Yeah. I totally cried my first time, too, buddy.”

  When Dustin doesn’t say anything, I try another approach.

  “Mom used to say there was a fish in the lake we used to go swimming at that liked to go peopleing.”

  Dustin dries up a little, says, “Peopleing?”

  “You know how people used to go fishing? Well, sort of like that, only sometimes fish like to catch people.”

  “Bullshit,” Dustin says, and, just like that, he’s back.

  “Okay, fine. It’s bullshit. Now c’mon. We need to get on the road, or we’ll never find a place to camp before curfew.”

  Dustin wipes his eyes, climbs out of Jerusha’s arms like maybe she kidnapped him. Like everything’s been some big misunderstanding. But once we’re on the road, he’s snoring after only a few minutes.

  I turn the radio on low.

  They’re reading off a list of recent Violators.

  I turn it back off.

  “So?” Jerusha says.

  “So what?”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “You know how he is. He’ll want to know exactly how they did it,” I say and the images start flooding in. I get shivers, this metallic taste in my mouth every time it happens. “And he’s going to want to see the basement.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Jerusha says.

  The sincerity in her voice is almost enough to make me believe it.

  Peopleing

  I told you that sometimes fish go peopleing.

  You looked up at me,

  then at the little mouths

  poking holes in the algae.

  Your smile began to quiver

  and slowly-

  you stepped away from the bank.

  4 Smells Like Green Spirit

  Southern Oregon is worse than I thought.

  The hills look like shriveled up nut-sacks, and I can barely see what’s left of the beach with all the dust tornadoeing around. I know there’s part of an ocean out there somewhere, something left glimmering on the horizon, but with all the barbed wire decorating the coast line, it doesn’t much matter.

  Dustin’s asleep, a healthy pancake of drool down the front of his shirt. He used to do it as a kid, a younger kid, but I thought he’d grown out of it.

  It’s nice to know he hasn’t.

  Jerusha’s
out cold, too, her head on my lap. It’s amazing how innocent she can look when asleep. I stroke her hair every now and then, but carefully, like you would a lion that’s been shot with tranquilizers.

  There’s hardly any traffic since there really isn’t anywhere for people to go nowadays. It’s all pretty much the same: either dead or dying.

  I turn the radio on again.

  There’s a commercial playing.

  Stop by the Bottle Store where everything in the entire store costs just one bottle of water! That’s right, everything for only one bottle of water!

  Jerusha stirs, lifts her head just long enough to rasp, “Turn that...shit...off,” before plopping her head down again.

  I turn it off.

  Dustin, too, wakes up and the first thing he does is bury his nose in Mom’s book. I don’t bother him since we’ll have to stop soon anyway and set up camp before we hit a charging station. I know we’ll be fine, but I’d like to keep things vacation-like for as long as possible. Besides, I’m doing the guards a favor, postponing the inevitable headache in store for them when they meet Jerusha.

  “What’s humping mean?” Dustin asks out of nowhere.

  “Humping is what people used to call screwing,” I say in what I’m hoping is a whisper, but Jerusha overhears.

  “Thomas,” she says, sitting up, eyes narrowing.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Sex, Dustin. Making the coitus.”

  “Okay. Got it. Like yesterday.”

  Would you rather hump or screw?

  Jerusha leans against her window, stares out.

  “How long was I out for?”

  “An hour, maybe more.”

  Dustin, wide awake now, pokes his head over the front seat. “Then what’s a zoot suit?”

  “Mom’s poetry,” I say when Jerusha looks at me for clarification. She nods, turns around to face Dustin.

  “A zoot suit is a funny type of suit people used to wear.”

  “Why was it funny?”

  “Because the colors were really loud.”

  “How can colors be loud?”

  “It means the colors were super bright.”

  “Then why did you say they were loud?”

  “Because sometimes people say a color is loud if it’s really bright. Like you can almost hear it.”