100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith Page B

engineer.
    Self-taught civil engineers are probably as trustworthy as self-taught brain surgeons and self-taught airline pilots.
    Like sexual confusion and atom bombs, self-taught civil engineers are causally associated with extinction.
    William Mulholland built a concrete dam in San FrancisquitoCanyon in 1926. The dam was called the St. Francis Dam, and it filled the canyon with a massive reservoir.
    Twelve billion gallons.
    At that time, it was approximately six gallons of water—about fifty pounds’ worth—for every human being alive on the planet.
    In 1928, William Mulholland’s dam collapsed, releasing a one-hundred-forty-foot wall of water and tumbling chunks of concrete as big as locomotives. Twelve billion gallons of water suddenly decided to make a run for the Pacific Ocean, which is about fifty miles from here.
    Nobody knows for certain how many people died in the disaster. Many estimates place the number of dead at around five hundred.
    Bodies washed ashore as far away as coastal Mexico.
    Our homes were built along the same channel where countless corpses were dragged and pummeled by William Mulholland’s self-taught mistake.
    The knackery never shuts down.

ONE ATOM AT A TIME
    Laika found a dead coyote. The thing lay decaying in the knackery of San Francisquito Canyon’s creekbed.
    â€œSomething fucking stinks,” Cade announced.
    Monica Fassbinder pecked at her cell phone. She had a distracted and bored are-we-there-yet look on her face.
    The moon was full and bright enough that I found the mangled coyote between clumps of wild blooming buckwheat, where some other creature had likely dragged it. Its side had been laid wide open, and in the white-hot light from the moon, I could see bones and the fetid yellow coils of rotting innards. The coyote had probably been hit by a car on the highway and then limped out here into the middle of the wash to lie down and die.
    When I found her, Laika was joyously wriggling on the mat of the carcass, all four of her little paws, dancing, pointed up at the moon and stars.
    The atoms that disengaged from the dead coyote smelled worse than anything imaginable. I had to lift the neckline of mytank top to cover my mouth and nose, just to get within ten feet of the thing.
    â€œYou’re so stupid!” I said. “I hate you so much.”
    Which was true. At that moment, I really did hate my dog.
    I have wild mood swings too.
    Laika, busted and guilty, rolled away from the mattress of her newfound, dead friend. She curled her tail between her legs, grinned with toothy contrition, and presented her belly at my feet.
    â€œI’m not touching you! Go away! Get in your cage!” I said.
    Laika knew what to do. She ran for home. I would find her curled up inside her little spaceship when I went back.
    â€œAww . . . poor thing,” Julia said.
    I pulled my shirt down from my face and moved away from the stink of the carcass.
    â€œMy dog is dumb. She rolls in dead things.”
    â€œMaybe it’s easier to catch up to dead things. They don’t go so fast,” Julia said.
    â€œEverything moves at the same speed, living or dead,” I answered. “Twenty miles per second.”
    â€œOh. Sure.”
    â€œIt’s easy to figure out. Pi. The distance to the sun. Three hundred and sixty-five days. It comes out to twenty miles per second, give or take a bit.”
    â€œOh, yeah,” she said, “that sounds real easy.”
    â€œAre you messing with me?”
    â€œI’m not trying to.”
    â€œDude. Julia. How far away is your house?” Cade said.
    Julia pointed to a light on the west side of the canyon.
    â€œIt’s right there,” she said.
    â€œI hope you guys have a four-wheel drive or something,” I said.
    â€œI realized I bought the wrong kind of car for living here,” Julia said.
    There were only a few homes on the west side of the canyon. In winter, when the flooding came,