Green Grass, Running Water

by Thomas King

  “Cars?” said Dr. Hovaugh.

  “Don’t ask me how they got there,” said Ralph. “But someone is sure going to catch hell.”

  “Let me see,” said Dr. Hovaugh. “I’m a doctor.” And Dr.Hovaugh snatched the binoculars out of Ralph’s hands.

  The cars sailed past the bus, and Babo could see each one clearly now, and she recognized the red Pinto that her brother-in-law had sold her.

  “So that’s where you’ve gotten to,” she said to herself. And she recognized the car next to it.

  Dr. Hovaugh squeezed the binoculars. He knelt on his seat and rocked back and forth. “That’s my car!” he shouted. “That’s my car!”

  Babo leaned around Dr. Hovaugh and watched the cars sail along. “Well, isn’t that the trick,” she said. “Isn’t that just the trick.”

  Clifford Sifton and Lewis Pick watched as the cars floated into view.

  “Let’s see,” said Lew. “There’s a red Pinto. And. . . a blue Toyota, no, no . . . a Nissan, a blue Nissan. And a . . . hey, that’s nice. Look, it’s a Karmann-Ghia. The white one. A convertible, too.”

  “A Nissan, a Pinto, and a Karmann-Ghia?” said Sifton.“What the hell are cars doing on my lake?”

  “Sailing,” said Lew. “And they’re headed this way.”

  Sifton leaned on the railing and watched the cars bob along on the lake. “Did I ever tell you I could have had the project in Quebec?”

  “They can’t get very far,” said Lew. “If they keep coming, they’ll just run into the dam.”

  “Did I ever tell you that?”

  Eli held the coffee cup in his hands and watched the sun appear. He was sorry he was not at the camp to see the sun come among the lodges, to be among the people as it came, and he wondered if Lionel and Latisha and Norma and Alberta and Harley and Camelot were awake to see it, for it truly was a thing of wonder.

  At his back, he could feel the dam, cold and ponderous, clinging to the geometry of the land. At his front, the sun filled the sky and drove the chill west.

  “Morning, Eli,” said the Lone Ranger.

  Eli looked up and saw the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye standing in front of the porch.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Come on up. You want some coffee?”

  “Oh, boy,” said Ishmael, “that would be good.”

  “Yes,” said Robinson Crusoe. “Hot coffee would be wonderful.”

  “Do you have any sugar?” said Hawkeye.

  “Sure,” said Eli. “Got lots of sugar. You want cream too?”

  “I want cream,” says Coyote. “I want lots of sugar and cream.”

  The old Indians turned to watch the sun rise. It was above the horizon now, too brilliant to look at directly.

  “This is a nice place to live,” said the Lone Ranger.

  “Is that the dam?” said Ishmael.

  Eli turned and nodded. “That’s right. Government built it to help Indians. There’s a lake that goes with it.”

  “Is the lake for Indians, too?” said Robinson Crusoe.

  “So they say,” said Eli, turning away from the dam. “We’re all supposed to be millionaires.”

  “It doesn’t look like an Indian dam,” said Hawkeye. “It doesn’t look like an Indian lake.”

  “Perhaps it’s a Coyote dam,” says Coyote. “Perhaps it’s a Coyote lake.”

  Eli went into the kitchen and brought out more coffee cups.“Here,” he said. “Just brewed.”

  “It’s going to be a good day,” said the Lone Ranger. “I can feel it.”

  “You bet,” said Eli, and he arranged the coffee cups on the porch. But as Eli reached for the coffeepot, it began to rattle and then bounce. Eli grabbed the railing of the porch and tried to stand up. And as he did, the land began to dance.

  “Oh, oh,” said the Lone Ranger. “Things are getting bent again.”

  “You haven’t been dancing again, Coyote?” said Ishmael.

  “Just a little,” says Coyote.

  “You haven’t been singing again, Coyote?” said Robinson Crusoe.

  “Just a little,” says Coyote.

  “Oh, boy,” said Hawkeye. “Here we go again.”

  As Eli steadied himself against the porch post, he felt the wind explode at his back, and he heard the sound of thunder rolling down the valley.

  Above him, the sun continued in a clear sky.

  “Earthquake,” yelled Clifford Sifton.

  “Earthquake,” yelled Bill Bursum.

  “Earthquake,” yelled Dr. Joseph Hovaugh.

  “Earthquake, earthquake!” yells Coyote. “Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.”

  Lionel was wakened by the noise. He sat up and looked around. Norma was feeding wood to the fire and cutting up bacon. Lionel’s back hurt. The mattress was lumpy, and a cold breeze had come in under the flap of the tepee all night. Alberta’s bed was empty.

  “Where’s Alberta?”

  “Outside throwing up,” said Norma.

  “Is she sick?”

  “Nope,” said Norma. “Pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? Ah . . . Did she . . .”

  “Didn’t say. Better ask her yourself.”

  Lionel got his shoes on. The mud had dried, and the leather near the toe was starting to curl. He heard the noise again.

  “Sounds like she’s about done, nephew,” said Norma. “Tell her breakfast will be in about half an hour. If she feels like it.”

  It was the air that caught Lionel, cold and sharp. The horizon floated in soft light and then in fire as the sun rose out of the land.

  Alberta was standing between two lodges bent over, her hands on her knees.

  “Morning, Alberta,” said Lionel, his hands jammed into his pockets for warmth.

  “Morning, Lionel,” said Alberta. “Do you have a tissue?”

  Lionel fished around in his pocket and felt his good linen handkerchief. “No,” he said. “Want me to get you one?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  Lionel turned away as Alberta began spitting and watched the sun rise. “So,” he said. “Norma tells me you’re pregnant.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  Lionel turned back. “You’re not?”

  “I can’t be pregnant.”

  “Charlie?”

  “That’s hardly your business,” said Alberta.

  “I’m just trying to help,” said Lionel. “I guess it’s not mine.”

  Alberta looked at Lionel. Her nose was running and her eyes were wet. “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Norma said that breakfast would be ready in a little while,” said Lionel. “Bacon.”

  “Oh, God,” said Alberta, and she turned back and bent over.

  “If you’re up to it,” said Lionel.

  Alberta put her hands on her knees, braced herself, and rocked back and forth. “It’s getting worse. I feel as if the whole world is moving.”

  Lionel didn’t feel the motion at first. He watched Alberta leaning over and debated how he should try to comfort her. Wondered if he should hold her or talk to her. Tell her a joke. Or just stay out of the way.

  He had decided on a joke when he felt it. A gentle surge, a rolling motion, as if he were on the ocean.

  “Bill told me a pretty funny—”

  Lionel was knocked off his feet with the first shock. The land buckled and snapped and rose around him like waves. The lodges in the circle were shaking and swaying, and there were cries everywhere as the people felt the earth move beneath them.

  Clifford Sifton and Lewis Pick watched the Nissan, the Pinto, and the Karmann-Ghia float into the dam just as the earthquake began. Almost imperceptibly, the waters swelled and the cars were thrown into the dam, hard, insistent. And before either man realized what was happening, a tremor rolled in out of the west, tipping the lake on its end.

  Pick and Sifton were knocked to the ground, and as they tried to stand,
they were knocked down again. It was comical at first, the two men trying to find their footing, the cars smashing into the dam, the lake curling over the top.

  But beneath the power and the motion there was a more ominous sound of things giving way, of things falling apart.

  Sifton felt it first, a sudden shifting, a sideways turning, a flexing, the snapping crack of concrete and steel, and in that instant the water rose out of the lake like a mountain, sucking the cars under and pitching them high in the air, sending them at the dam in an awful rush.

  And the dam gave way, and the water and the cars tumbled over the edge of the world.

  From the tour bus, Dr. Hovaugh and Babo watched the dam burst. Several of the passengers took out their cameras, but as they were at lake level, there was little to see.

  “It must be a spectacular sight from down below,” said a man near the back.

  Dr. Hovaugh sagged against the bus, took out the book, and held it up. “It’s all here,” he said to Babo. “I was right, after all.”

  “Sorry about your car,” said Babo.

  “The dates.”

  “Looks like I lost mine, too.”

  “The places.”

  Babo looked at Dr. Hovaugh, and then she turned and watched the lake race for the breach in the dam.

  From the vantage point of his lot, Bill Bursum watched his shoreline disappear. He stood transfixed for a moment, and then he began walking toward the lake, trotting after the retreating water.

  “Now what’s gone wrong?” he shouted, breaking into a run across the immense mud flat that appeared beneath his feet and slowly curved out in all directions. “What the hell has gone wrong now?”

  Below, in the valley, the water rolled on as it had for eternity.

  “I didn’t do it,” says Coyote.

  The Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye looked at Coyote.

  “It’s a lot of work fixing up this world, you know,” said the Lone Ranger.

  “Yes,” said Ishmael. “And we can use all the help we can get.”

  “The last time you fooled around like this,” said Robinson Crusoe, “the world got very wet.”

  “And we had to start all over again,” said Hawkeye.

  “I didn’t do anything,” says Coyote. “I just sang a little.”

  “Oh, boy,” said the Lone Ranger.

  “I just danced a little, too,” says Coyote.

  “Oh, boy,” said Ishmael.

  “But I was helpful, too,” says Coyote. “That woman who wanted a baby. Now, that was helpful.”

  “Helpful!” said Robinson Crusoe. “You remember the last time you did that?”

  “I’m quite sure I was in Kamloops,” says Coyote.

  “We haven’t straightened out that mess yet,” said Hawkeye.

  “Hee-hee,” says Coyote. “Hee-hee.”

  “Well,” says Coyote, “here we are at Fort Marion again.”

  “That’s right,” I says.

  “And there is the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye,” says Coyote.

  “That’s right again,” I says.

  “Am I missing something?” says Coyote.

  “Think about it, Coyote,” I says. “Just think about it.”

  So those soldiers get to Fort Marion and they throw Old Woman off the tram and they throw her in Fort Marion.

  And they says, Here’s another Indian. How many is that now?

  No limit on Indians, says the Soldier In Charge Of The Fort. Keep them coming.

  So those soldiers keep bringing Indians and stuffing them in the fort. And pretty soon, things get crowded.

  Boy, says Hawkeye, this place is crowded.

  Yes, says Robinson Crusoe. It is getting uncomfortable.

  Perhaps, says Ishmael, we should move.

  Sounds like a good idea to me, says the Lone Ranger.

  So that Lone Ranger puts on the Lone Ranger mask and walks to the front gate.

  It’s the Lone Ranger, the guards shout. It’s the Lone Ranger, they shout again. And they open the gate. So the Lone Ranger walks out of the prison, and the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Hawkeye and Robinson Crusoe head west.

  Have a nice day, the soldiers say. Say hello to Tonto for us. And all those soldiers wave.

  Who’s Tonto? says Ishmael.

  Beats me, says the Lone Ranger. Keep waving.

  So the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye walk west, and pretty soon they come to a river. Big river. Big muddy river.

  Ho, ho, ho, ho, says that Big Muddy River. I suppose you want to get to the other side.

  That would be nice, says the Lone Ranger. We are trying to fix the world.

  Is that what we’re doing? says Ishmael.

  Nobody said anything to me about that, says Robinson Crusoe.

  Well, says Hawkeye, I suppose somebody has to do it.

  Okay, says that Big Muddy River. Hang on.

  And right away the ground starts to shake and the trees start to dance and everything goes up and down and sideways.

  “Earthquake! Earthquake!” yells Coyote.

  “Calm down,” I says.

  “But it’s another earthquake,” says Coyote.

  “Yes,” I says. “These things happen.”

  “But we’ve already had one earthquake in this story,” says Coyote.

  “And you never know when something like this is going to happen again,” I says.

  “Wow!” says Coyote. “Wow!”

  So along comes this earthquake. Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, says that Earthquake. This is fun.

  And the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye and that Big Muddy River get bounced around for a while and when all the bouncing is done, the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye are on the other side of the river.

  Boy, says the Lone Ranger. That was pretty good.

  Yes, says that Big Muddy River. But it’s pretty tiring. Good thing I don’t have to do that every day.

  “So,” I says, “that’s what happens.”

  “What?” says Coyote.

  “The Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye keep walking until they get here,” I says.

  “Oh,” says Coyote. “I can see that.”

  “Good,” I says.

  “But I don’t get it,” says Coyote.

  It was a little over a month before the waters went down. The cabin was gone, the logs scattered along the course of the flood. Norma walked the flat where the cabin had stood and poked her stick at the debris. Latisha and Lionel trailed behind her. Christian and Benjamin and Elizabeth ran up and down the banks, sliding in the mud, running through the water.

  “The cabin used to stand right here,” said Norma.

  Latisha watched her children play. “I’m going to miss Eli.”

  “Going to miss him, too,” said Norma. “But he had a good life, and he lived it right.”

  “He was a nice guy all right,” said Lionel.

  “Hope you took notes, nephew,” said Norma.

  “I did. I liked him.”

  “Good ways to live a life and not so good ways,” said Norma.

  Above the flat, a car came down the road. It was coming fast, dragging a huge plume of dust and dirt behind it.

  “Dam doesn’t look too good,” said Lionel. “Read where they’re going to have to tear the whole thing down.”

  “Never needed a dam,” said Latisha. “And it never worked, anyway.”

  The car stopped on the rise above them. It was a red Porsche, and Lionel knew who it was even before Charlie got out. Alberta was with him.

  “Hey,” shouted Charlie, “what’s happening?”

  “Norma’s just looking around.”

  Charlie and Alberta made their way down the bank, Alberta moving cautiously, Charlie slipping in the soft mud.

  Latisha grabbed Alberta’s ar
m and helped her down the last, steep incline. “How you feeling?”

  “Still yucky in the mornings,” said Alberta.

  “It doesn’t get much better.” Latisha laughed. “And then they turn into that.” She gestured to where the kids were wallowing in the mud.

  “Not much left,” said Charlie.

  “Everything’s still here,” said Norma.

  “Well, the cabin’s not here,” said Charlie. “And neither is Eli.”

  “Charlie!” said Alberta. “God, you can really be sensitive.”

  Norma waved Charlie off. “Eli’s fine. He came home. More than I can say for some people I know.”

  “Yeah,” said Lionel, “but he didn’t come home because of the Sun Dance. And he didn’t come home because Granny died. He told me that.”

  Lionel looked at the dam. It had a long ugly crack running all the way down the face. At the top was a huge hole. Water was running out of the crack and down the face, the river slowly coming back to life.

  “Lost my job yesterday,” said Charlie.

  “Duplessis suddenly discovered that they didn’t need a hot-shot Indian lawyer anymore,” said Alberta.

  “No dam,” said Charlie. “No job.”

  “Can you cook?” said Latisha. “Got an opening for a cook.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Lionel. “What are you going to do?”

  “Actually,” said Charlie, “I’m going to take a vacation.”

  “He’s going to Los Angeles,” said Alberta.

  “Going to see my father,” said Charlie. “Hey, he’s a big star again.”

  “You big, strong men,” Norma shouted, “give me a hand with this.”

  Norma was digging in the ground with her stick, clearing the mud away from a log stuck in the ground.

  “The porch post,” she said. “You see where Eli and me and Camelot carved our names in the wood.”

  “You want that thing?” said Charlie.

  “Use it on the new cabin,” said Norma. “No sense letting it go to waste.”

  “What new cabin?” said Lionel.

  Norma picked up a car antenna and tossed it to one side.“Eli tell you why he came home?”

  “He was going to. But he never did.”

  “Just as well,” said Norma. “Always best to figure those things out for yourself. Come on, give me a hand.”