Bottom of the Pond

Clarisse looked out the kitchen window as she washed the dishes. Seth was at work, the kids were in school & she had the day off, just looking for things to keep busy. Across the drive they had a big pond she normally thought was beautiful—a nice island in the middle with an arched, stained wooden bridge crossing over to it, two fountains to keep the water clean, aerated & fresh, a variety of trees shading the banks (including a weeping willow on the island with three sets of alternating picnic tables & benches around its base), and a variety of fish ranging from catfish to perch, sunfish & walleye. There was a rope tied to a tree limb where the kids (&, let’s face it, mom & dad, too) could swing out over the water & either jump or dive in (they kept that part of the pond especially deep & free of rocks & debris with regular dredging).

On the far side of the pond was a nice shady area she maintained as a small park & private campground for guests or workers who planned to stay for a while. She was especially fond of the things she & Seth had built for the playground. There were three treehouses at differing heights with rope bridges connecting them. Each of them included a suspended staircase that wound around the tree trunk, a slide pole & a zip line for quick exits. They had two swing sets sturdy enough to withstand the worst tornados, one that was twelve feet high, the other thirty where you could really get your swing on. There were also canoes, many of them donated by family & friends, for those who wanted to fish, paddle around, or just float on the water.

Her pride & joy, however, was the “teeter totter” they had built for between the two sets of swings. The apparatus consisted of a solid steel bar twelve feet off the ground, anchored by the ends of the two swings, with two more bars reaching down to embrace a freely swinging open cage. The cage itself had a steel mesh floor, an outer frame & three rails on both sides. It was built for either one or two (there was no way she was going to allow it to be anything she couldn’t ride with her husband). You worked it by holding onto a rail on each side & shifting your weight back & forth to get it swinging. If you were brave enough, you could make it swing all the way around, over twenty feet off the ground! You wanted to make sure you’d strapped yourself in with a harness. If you lost your grip, you didn’t want to fall out. But once you got it going, oh, what a ride! There was little she liked better than kissing her husband as they went over the top. It always made her anxious to get the kids to bed.

All five of their kids knew they were allowed to bring friends over anytime, so long as their chores were done. From early spring to late fall their home had long been a major hub of youthful activity. They enjoyed hosting barbecues & picnics at their place & ice cream socials for the church were often held there (though they usually didn’t bring up her youthful indiscretions which still scandalized some of the membership; one of the elders had found the photo shoot; she always wondered how). Everyone was welcome, so long as they behaved themselves & respected the property.

Seth liked to tease her about how she ran the place. He liked to call her Mary Magdalene. Sure, she had a past she didn’t talk about much (except when she was trying to make a point), but she was the living gospel, in the flesh, through & through. When they were kissing up high on the teeter totter, he liked to close his eyes & go, “Mmmmm, Mary!” It always made them laugh & almost but not quite lose their grip. She’d gotten to the point where now she kind of expected it & was a little disappointed when it didn’t happen.

But there hadn’t been much activity for a while. The last church social was over two years ago. The kids’ friends still came to play at the park, but not on the pond. Four years of record drought had taken care of that. The water had dropped so low she hadn’t been able to see it from this window for over a year. They only had a small farm—most of their income came from the shop where he worked as a mechanic & she did the books—but this summer they’d had to sell the last of their livestock. The pond she could no longer see was supposed to be their final reserve & there just wasn’t enough water there. When she finally got tired of picking up dead fish from the banks, she had the kids catch the rest of them, or at least as many as they could. Once the water got so low, she turned the fountains off. Now, the only animals they had left were the ones the kids had for 4-H, the ever-present farm cats, & their old hound dog Rover (who didn’t do much roving anymore; mostly he just slept on the porch or the rug by the fireplace).

Even the long-established trees were suffering. Their foliage was sparse, dusty & gray. It was hard to see where they cast shade anymore. The younger trees hadn’t survived the previous summer. She wondered how many more they would lose this year.

They’d still planted their hundred acres each year. (Seth thought there was something fitting about owning “one hundred acres & a mule”, so that’s what they’d bought, mostly because they wanted to live in the country, but also because it was kind of nostalgic.) Farmers always had to hope. That’s why they bought crop insurance—so they could plant, even when it seemed futile, & not lose everything.

Clarisse missed the cattle & the two llamas they’d always had. But most of all she missed her pond. She missed seeing the ducks, geese & loons who would come to swim & rest each spring on their way north & each fall on their way south. She missed the deer who liked to come in the mornings & evenings for drinks of water. She even missed seeing the skunks, badgers, foxes, occasional bobcats, & once even a mountain lion that just wanted to hang around for a while.

A few days ago, over the weekend, the overnight temperature had dropped to twenty-four degrees. She decided that morning she & the kids would go visit what was left of their pond while dad was at work. When they got there, it looked more like a large puddle, something like fifteen feet below where it normally should be. There was just a thin sheet of ice over the top which they took turns testing, trying to see how much weight it took before it broke. After that they all jumped in to see how big a splash they could make before finally engaging in a muddy water fight.

Once they were all muddy & frozen, they ran back into the house, removed every bit of mud drenched clothing in the back room, then ran through the shower one by one as the rest sat in front of the fireplace warming themselves in their underwear. Mom had cleaned herself as best she could in the kitchen sink so she could get lunch ready, though she’d left a streak of mud on the corner of her mouth to make them laugh. (In truth, it was chocolate frosting she’d smeared on her face after she’d cleaned up. She wanted to get a double reaction from them by trying to lick it off with her tongue. She had to admit, it looked just like mud, perhaps with a little something added which the cows might have left behind. She was the queen of gross in their home.)

Now she looked at the pond bed where the mud had dried & baked for so long that it was cracked into shards, the edges of which curled upward in the heat. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t good about allowing herself tears. She’d had to be tough when she was growing up & had never gotten past it.

She thought about the storm that was hitting the mountains to the west. They’d had a lot of storms over the past four years, storms from which they drained almost all the moisture leaving mostly sunny skies all the way east. They lived far enough east that even the spring runoff didn’t replenish their rivers, streams, lakes & ponds. It didn’t replenish their aquifer upon which they relied, either. Towns were running out of drinking water, so all watering of lawns & crops had been banned. No irrigation, no crops, people were leaving & towns were dying anyway. They had no choice.

In rural areas it had long been deemed that “climate change” was unfit as a topic for any conversation, polite or otherwise. It was just political, a talking point for the other party that wasn’t based on reality. But it was getting hard to deny. The evidence of their folly lay all around them. Historic storms to the west, record drought to the east. They were just lucky they weren’t suffering through the prairie fires they’d had to fight for two solid years.

“Nothin’ left to burn,” Clarisse thought to herself. “Somethin’ catches fire, there’s nothin’ close enough to let it spread.” She gave a single chuckle to herself. You needed a sense of humor to survive times like these. Still, it was hard to laugh. It made her too sad to give more than one little snort.

She looked to the horizon, toward the mountains she could no more see than the water in her pond. She’d heard there were places that had received over eight feet of snow in the first twenty-four hours with snowbanks measuring over forty feet high. People on the news were beginning to wonder how deep the snow would have to be before roofs began collapsing, trapping people inside. Depending on the slope the downward pressure could be displaced some, but even that wouldn’t help much if the entire home got buried. Some were getting close to it already. The walls of buildings were becoming a concern as well. This snow was wet & heavy & a lot of that pressure would be directed laterally once it was on the ground. Where was the breaking point? How much snow was too much?

Newscasters on the ground talked about how people were accustomed to evacuation orders for hurricanes & fires, but very few, other than “snowbirds”, seemed to put blizzards in the same category. Even after the governor began to suggest that it might be a good idea, especially those living right next to or in the mountains, very few left. You dug out from a snowstorm. You didn’t run from it.

She thought about Corbin living out there. He wouldn’t have left. It wasn’t in him. Not the Corbin she knew. She hoped he was safe. Then she prayed.

She thought about the storm itself & why it had to creep its way over the mountains rather than fly, or at least walk. Would something be different this time, allowing “mostly sunny” to become “mostly cloudy” to become “expecting thunderstorms by mid-afternoon” for them?

Probably not. Not according to the weather forecasts. All the models pointed to variations on the same old, same old. And that was sad because it would mean disaster on both sides of the divide.

“Be safe, my friend. Be safe,” she thought as she put the last dish in the strainer.

And still, she couldn’t cry. Not a single tear.