Luis Alberto Urrea - The Water Museum

“The one crop a drought can’t kill,” Pops said, pointing to his head, “is right here.”

Billy waited for the next part of the liturgy.

Pops pulled his blue bandana out of his back pocket and scrubbed his face and neck.

“Once the bees come back,” he said.

“Then I’ll know,” Billy replied.

“That’s right. That’s right.” Pops got in the truck. “Don’t be late for supper.”

“I’ll know the drought is over,” Billy said as the truck bumped toward home, “when the bees come back.”

The dust cloud made the truck look like it was a burning fighter plane going down.

* * *

Chemicals, Billy thought. They’d pretty much all gone back to using outhouses because there wasn’t water to flush the toilets or to bathe. The house well had long ago gone stinky and sludgy. They used it to wash dishes. The government retrofit had siphoned this “gray water” out to Mom’s vegetable patch. She did all right with crunchy stuff like potatoes and carrots, but the juicy stuff like cantaloupes ended up tasting like soap. So trucks came and filled the water tanks and that was all you got for the month. The waterman always said the same thing: “It’ll break soon!” And more trucks came and dumped chemicals in the outhouse poo-holes — smelled like cherries. Big crazy cherry Life Savers with that dull stink beneath.

One good thing about the drought — the kids got to suck on all the hard candies they wanted. As long as they were sour candies and made their mouths water. It cut their thirst, the grown-ups said. But Billy was pretty sure he’d never eat cherry candies again.

He dropped the bike by the front steps and went in.

Mom was cooking. She mostly did microwave stuff so she wouldn’t have to waste water on boiling. They ate on paper plates. She tried to make it an adventure. “Just like camping!” she liked to announce, though the kids had eaten on paper plates so long they didn’t remember anything else.

She was kind of a dork, but Billy loved her anyway. He noticed how she took a bit of her water dose for the day and shared it with the rugrats — little Mitch and April. Pops liked to call weepy little April “April Showers.” Billy wasn’t able to catch all the yearning nuances in that one. He thought it was all about the tears.

“You crybaby,” Billy’d say to her when she was on a rampage about how unfair his latest Wii or Xbox bullying was.

“It’s not fair!” she’d shout.

“If we bottled up all your stupid crying, we could end the drought right now!”

April would run from the room. This was the small triumph both boys enjoyed every day: making April do The Grand Exit. She had gotten so touchy, they could cause her to freak out over ever more absurd things. If they were watching TV, for example, and a hyena ate a baby zebra, all Billy had to do was say, “April, how come you didn’t warn that zebra? It’s totally your fault it just died!” Or, watching a UFO movie, “April, why did you just blow up the White House with your death ray?”

Her outraged shrieks and stomping journeys upstairs put a saintly smile on Billy’s face.

“Kids, be nice!” Mom would holler.

Billy suspected Mom mostly took sponge baths. Judging from his scent, maybe Pops took dust baths. They kept the fans running all night. Sometimes all the dust in the atmosphere made lightning, but they never smelled rain.

* * *

“Seen a snake today,” said Mitch.

“Saw,” said Mom.

They were working on their chicken parm.

“Didn’t see no saw,” said Mitch, “saw a snake.”

Pops and Billy burst out laughing.

“I swear,” said Pops.

“And I saw a hammer,” Billy offered.

The males all chuckled.

“Where at?” asked Pops. He was piling that cheesy chicken into his cheek like a ground squirrel snarfing up acorns. They still had those. Squirrels, not acorns. Lived under the house.

“He was goin’ under the back porch,” said Mitch. He was a noodle man, mostly. Skipped the chicken. Billy called him a carbo-loader, whatever that was.

“Welp,” said Pops. “There go the squirrels.”

“Isn’t that a shame,” said Mom.

“I think that cottonwood down to the creek finally died,” Pops announced.

“God, Walt,” Mom said. “What next.”

“I know it,” he replied. “Hate to see that. But those are thirsty trees. Nothing in that creek but dirt.”

Billy didn’t tell them, but there were plenty of snakes down in the creek. They lived in the old beater cars and washing machines Pops had buried in the banks when there was water. In case of flash floods. Bummer about the tree, though. Billy always peed on its roots, as if he could keep it alive with his own body.

Changing the subject, Mom turned her eternally hopeful smile to Billy. It made him feel guilty. Like he could only let her down, no matter what he came up with.

“Bill? Have homework?”

“Nah.”

“No, ma’am.”

“…No…ma’am. Not tonight. Got that field trip tomorrow.”

“The school called me about it today.”

Oh, no.

“They asked me to chaperone. Isn’t that wonderful? Cool beans, as you might say.”

Cool beans?

Bad enough they had to go to some crappy museum. But now Mom would be on the bus. So much for all the fun he was planning to have with Higgins and Charlie. So much for flirting with Samantha Rember. He called her “Sammy Remember.” She scrunched her nose at him when he did.

“Cool,” he said. He smiled wanly. “Beans.” Thinking: Dang it.

The kids all excused themselves and scattered.

Pops lit his pipe, and Mom took one cold beer from the fridge and poured most of it in his glass and saved a bit for herself. They had stocked up a few cases, and they tended to be parsimonious with it. Coors. She liked the “mountain spring water” part.

She took his fingers in her hand.

“Walt…sometimes…” She shook her head and took a sip. “Lord, Lord.”

He squeezed her hand.

“I know,” he said. “It’ll be over soon. The government’s going to make rain. They do it in China, I heard. You’ll see.”

Mom thought about some silly thing and laughed, and so did Pops, and they went to watch TV.

* * *

Before school, Billy had to help Pops adjust the solar panels. What a major pain. “You like your light and TV and computer,” Pops groused, “you’ll stop bitching and just help me with this goddamned panel!” Good old Pops.

His farming was on hold, but he kept busy. He was on a foundation-reaffirmation crew. Fancy words for guys who went around the state fixing drought creep: the shrinkage from dried-out soil pulling away from house foundations. There was government subsidy money in it. All those houses with cracking foundations and sloping floors from the desiccated earth pulling into itself. They hauled a slurry of cement and soil-expanding chemicals into the gaps around the houses. Everybody had to laugh because the slurry also made the basements waterproof. In his spare time, Pops installed rebuilt air-conditioning units on roofs. Insurance had started to cover that as a necessity, so business was pretty good.

Mom managed to coax enough water out of the windmill to garden an okay corn patch. Nothing like they used to, but enough for the neighbors and themselves.

She helped out at the church, too. Typing up the weekly newsletter. And she did some small jobs at the old folks’ home. “Mad money,” she called it. One of her terms Billy didn’t get. Like when she said things were “boss.” Whatever.

“All aboard!”

“Gotta go,” Billy told Pops. “Mom’s calling.”

Pops muttered something that sounded like Smuffle whazick.