Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum Page B

rows.
    “They’re shut off,” Jesse said.
    “Looks like it.” Montoya stared at the beet rows and shook his head.
    The Association didn’t have to come out personally to shut off water. The Corps controlled the meters from The Dalles. All of them. Dan braced himself as the truck bounced through sun-hardened ruts. The hot wind whipped the dust away from the tires, riffled the drying tops of the beets. Once they went down, beets didn’t come back. The dark roots looked too small to be worth much. By tomorrow, the Dorners would lose the crop.
    Montoya pulled the truck up beside a flatbed and a scatter of battered pickups. Tethered to a decrepit wagon, a bony Appaloosa swished its tail at flies. Twenty or thirty men and women milled in front of a sagging wire gate. The wind snatched at their clothes, fluttering shirttails like faded flags.
    “Hey, Sam,” someone called out.
    “Carl’s just finishin’ up the pipe,” a small, round-faced woman said.
    Dan followed the looks. A crooked line of old, galvanized irrigation pipe led from a pile of freshly dug dirt down the slope and out of sight. Someone had the tools and technical skills to cut into one of the Corps’ big feeder lines, then. As he watched, water bubbled out of a joint in the old pipe, darkening the ocher soil like spilled blood. Someone cheered, and, in a moment, everyone was cheering.
    They really didn’t know the Association very well. The pipes belonged to the Corps. They’d just stand back and let the Corps deal with it. Dan leaned against the fender of the flatbed. Jesse stood on the far side of the crowd, arms crossed, watching the celebration. She looked up suddenly and their eyes met. Her lips crooked into a faint smile, sardonic and intimate at the same time.
    Dan looked away, flushing.
    “Here they come.” A lanky kid perched on the flatbed’s cab, pointed.
    “They must’ve been waiting for us to do something,” a woman said.
    Someone had tipped them off about this little demonstration, Dan thought. Men and women sidled together, bunching up as a van growled toward them, raising a flaring tail of dust. Columbia River Association glared from the sides in red letters.
    “Where’s Matt?” someone called out.
    “Safe. Sara’s with him. And Tom.”
    Dan watched the guns come out — old hunting rifles, some shotguns, and a few pistols. The van pulled up in a swirl of dust. Three men got out, wearing the Association’s short-sleeved khaki uniforms. Not one of them carried a weapon.
    Dan watched the crowd notice that. He watched the rifle barrels waver and the pistols disappear into pockets again. Folks thought they were the first ever to stand up to them. The Association would send people who knew how to handle a crowd. They always did.
    “I’d like to talk to Matthew Robert Dorner.” The shortest of the three stepped forward. His tone was friendly, like he’d just dropped by to chat.
    “He’s not here!” someone yelled belligerently, and the crowd murmured, closing in more tightly.
    “Look, folks, I’m not here to pick a fight with you.” The short man sounded tired. “We’re down here to oversee water distribution for the Corps, that’s all. They’ve got enough on their plate keeping the Pipeline in operation.” He took his cap off, wiped his face on his sleeve. “You know how far the water table in the Columbia Aquifer’s dropped in the last twelve months? In about five more years, we won’t be able to pump from it at all. Every drop you use will have to come from the Trench Reservoir and the Pipe. The price of water is going to go up fast, starting now.” He turned slowly, his eyes moving from one dusty face to another. “Most of you are hardworking folk. Don’t cut your own throats for the sake of the ones who aren’t. There’s only so much water, folks. That’s it. Beginning, middle, and end of story.”
    The wind rustled through the wilted beet tops. Men and women traded sidelong looks, shuffled their feet in