The Watermen, first chunk

Jenkins is nuts

Reader,

You may recall that Happy Julius Pipe will expire on November 11, 2035. You may also recall that I am the interdimensional being (some say “alien”) imprisoned in his mind. The calculation is straightforward. He goes, I go. The sitch is a bitch, no?

This is why I drink. Drinking in a person’s mind is easier than it sounds. Happy has a wine cellar. I see it, open a bottle, and… I drink it. Anyway, while rummaging through the racks, I found a story that Happy wrote in the throes of middle age.

I don’t hate it. The story pokes at Happy’s fascination with subterranean, those unseen realities deep below the surface that challenge his understanding of the world.

If you ask me, he spends way too much time thinking about “what lives beneath”. Mysterious underworlds haunt his imagination. Still, I find his interest in the subterranean amusing, especially when considering his superficial mind.

For Happy, the most interesting spaces are those that have unknown dimensionality and depth. He believes that what we observe on the surface is only the smallest part of reality.

For once, I agree with him.

I invite you to read Happy’s story and discover what lives beneath the clean, well-lighted streets of Suburbian America.

I plan to break this piece into five distinct story chunks. Call them scenes or parts, sequential things that graph like a plot diagram. I don’t know. I have been drinking…

Until I come up with a better name for it, let’s call this one The Watermen. Scroll down an inch for the opening scene. Happy Julius Pipe is the writer, narrator, and principal protagonist. It’s his story. I just happened to find it.

-Kuf

Now, the story…

The Watermen, first chunk: Jenkins is nuts

My driveway starts leaking. It’s slow at first, and then water gushes from deep below the earth. Then, the tremors nearly undo me, although the origins of these could be internal. Whatever the cause, it feels like the world is ending. I panic, which makes sense under the circumstances.

I call Renetta from the driveway. Water parts around my sneakers. “It’s happening,” I say without considering our neighbors. “The end.” She steps onto the porch to validate my hysteria.

“Why are you screaming?” She asks. “Should I call 911?”

“No time,” I say.

I grab a bucket and do my best. It’s raining and impossible to tell where the water is coming from.

Renetta is on the phone. When there is trouble, she is the one who calls people. A few buckets later, she tells me they are on their way.

“Who?”

“The water company,” she says. She is calm now, like she knows they will save us. I heard stories of the water company. Everyone has. They perform miracles in inclement weather for a few well-run municipalities.

Hours later, the watermen show up in an aerodynamic truck. They look more like spacemen than watermen in their white suits and slick helmets, and I ask them:

“You come in peace?”

“You got a water problem?” Asks the tall one, the leader. He has confident eyes like an alien.

I point to the calamity bubbling from the top of our driveway and pooling around a wall of sandbags at the bottom. I got the idea from a neighbor who highlighted the flaws in my bucket method. “The sandbags should hold it back for hours,” I say.

“You built that?” The leader asks me.

“Adrenaline”, I say. It is an impressive structure, probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done.

The leader pulls out a card from his space suit. “Call me if you‘re interested,” he says.

I thank him. He slides a large rod from his truck and leads the other watermen to my front yard. It’s really coming down now. The waterman looks up and stretches his arms wide, holding the thing like a prophet. He lifts his rod and strikes down, chanting primordial notes.

I pull one of the short watermen aside. “Is that procedure?”

“Naw,” he says. “Jenkins is nuts.”

Still, his confidence is reassuring. After an hour of what appears to be a comprehensive diagnosis, Jenkins removes his space helmet and nudges me awake on the porch.

“Sandman,” he says. I like the nickname and wonder if he can spread it throughout the neighborhood.

“Did you stop it?”

Jenkins shakes his head. “We gotta dig,” he says. I nod, although the prospect of digging frightens me. Who knows what they’ll find down there?

“I got a wife and kids,” I say, pointing to the house.

“You have my word,” Jenkins says.

He takes two orange flags from his utility belt and lands an oversized trailer in front of my house. The other watermen emerge with two gleaming “road closed” signs. Then, waving the orange flags like a drum major, Jenkins guides the machine off the trailer onto the front lawn. The fence goes down, but the tree holds.

“Careful, shit,” I say. They can’t hear me.

The machine roars off the truck and plants into the lawn with intention. Jenkins sits cross-legged in front of the hole, directing the shovel with his palm. It looks more like he is summoning than leading a team of engineers. In minutes, large buckets of earth pile around the hole. The size and shape of the mound appear disproportionate to the diameter of the hole, suggesting that whatever lives down there goes much deeper than the water main. My yard resembles an oversized papier mache volcano, and I wonder what will happen if I pour vinegar down the hole. Jenkins raises his palm, and the machine stops.

He goes inside the bullet-shaped truck and changes out of his space suit. When he reemerges, he looks more like a mountain climber than a waterman. Unknown technical instruments dangle from carabiners on every part of his body. He holds a machete in his left hand. Over his shoulder is about 200 feet of rope. He ties the rope to the machine and climbs up the volcanic mound in my front yard. I would say it goes up at least 20 feet. The top of his head looks over my roof line.

“If I don’t come out,” Jenkins says, “call HQ”.

“What’s down there?” I ask, pointing to the machete.

“We gonna find out,” he says. He lights a flare and drops it down the hole. Before I can ask him what that means, he jumps in. “Geronimo!” The rope unspools rapidly until it’s completely taut. I don’t hear Jenkins or any indication that he reached bottom. I call his name, but I’m not in a position where he can hear me.

“Like I said,” one of the other watermen says, chewing a cigar. “Jenkins is nuts.”

Stay tuned for the second chuck of The Watermen by Happy Julius Pipe. I’ll post it when I sober up - Kuf