Josephine, 1931

Some fiction for your Wednesday afternoon

Josephine

I was born on the dawn of a flood. Our land had gone through periods of drought, but 1915 hit my parents like the dry-dust of a cough, like the unforgiving chokehold of lungs burning for air, of being underwater with no reprieve from the wetness all around you. We lived next to the life source of the entire valley: runoff from the pine-studded forests of the Cuyamaca Mountains that rushed and twisted and spilled into the San Diego River that ran directly through our seven-mile-long reservation, Capitan Grande. If there was ever a big captain, it was the river that allowed us to live in the valley. 

Most families on the reservation had been there for hundreds of years and before it was ever designated as a reservation, for thousands. My parents married the summer I was born, joined at the reservation chapel with the full reservation as witness, at the time a stouter number than today. My mother wanted roses in her wedding bouquet, but the rose bushes had dried up. Even the wild ones with fragrant pink blossoms went straight to rosehip, the petals turning brown and crisp. No one could afford to water plants that didn’t produce anything but beauty. 

Even in San Diego, where the ocean stretched for miles along tight shoreline framed by crumbling cliffs, people lacked water. Real water. The reservoirs around San Diego—Morena, Sweetwater, Otay Lake—were so severely depleted that San Diego officials called the Rainmaker. The villagers at Capitan Grande laughed; we all knew that water didn’t fall because someone wanted it to fall. There were other things to consider, too—like if it was a dry year or a wet year—and then, even then, sometimes there was just bad luck. We had plenty of that, beginning with the moment we landed on the reservation.

By the time the Rainmaker got to work and San Diego had agreed to pay the man for his results, my mother was swollen ripe like a watermelon, her skin stretched taut with the imprint of my body within hers. As dawn lifted our home from the night’s dark, the clear sky became clouded, heavy and pregnant with rain. That’s when I kicked and my mother knew that I was coming, her water breaking with the sky. The rain had started and I was born.

Rainmaker, 1915

Charles brewed his coffee so weak it looked like it’d been rinsed with water and set to soak. He liked the watery taste, the way the liquid filled the cavity of his mouth and then slid down his throat, more water than coffee. The aftertaste wasn’t strong—enough to take a breath and taste the remaining acidity of the coffee, but that was all. Charles flexed his fingers, cracking his bony knuckles one by one. He had always been thin, but since approaching his forties, the weight seemed to fall off of him, no matter how many slices of cake his mother forced on him nor much he had cut back on his walks where he went door to door selling sewing machines. He knew, like he understood the weather, that this was fate.

“You read the paper?” Paul asked. He had come from town, where the roads were so dry and parched that the city itself looked dehydrated, tongue lolling like an overheated dog. Paul slapped the paper down on the makeshift table Charles had set up in the tent.

“Not yet,” Charles said, “but there’ll be more news on its way.” He sipped his coffee, relieved as it slipped down his throat.

“They called you a Moisture Accelerator.” Paul waited for Charles’ response, probably expecting a sour reply, but Charles remained composed, his slender shoulders set. His skin was unwrinkled, his forehead smooth.

“You’re not a moisture accelerator. You should correct ’em, Charles. Set ’em straight,” Paul pointed at the headline of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “This ain’t right.”

Charles glanced at the newspaper. Someone had taken a photo several days before. He had been setting up the pipe, positioning it for show. Charles knew the reporters were there and he was careful not to give away his methods. There was a specific formula that needed to be followed, especially to call upon enough water to fill a dam. Charles looked at the photo, the way the angle highlighted his sharp cheekbones. He had always had a nice side profile, one of the few traits he actually liked about himself. Overall, he was impressed with the photograph that the newspaper displayed: he wore his hat, a Stetson so worn there was a hole on the side and a tear at the rim, and between his lips he puffed on a thin cigar. He looked thoughtful, precise, as he tilted a black canister and poured liquid into a metal barrel. It was just water—he refused to let anyone, reporter or public, know just how he made the sky rain. Still, the photo looked better than he thought. He couldn’t help but grin.

“Ten big ones, Charlie. Ten thousand dollars,” Paul said. He slapped the thick front of his thigh and leaned against the back of the chair that Charles sat on. Charles felt the weight of the chair shift back.

“Only if it’s done,” Charles clarified as he scanned the article. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen printed before. San Diego City Officials had made it clear that they weren’t going to stand by while lettuce dried like sheets of paper and watermelons lay rotten in fields, cleaned hollow by crows. The citizens needed water, and Charles had chased people for so long that he was ready to present something that people actually wanted. They had never wanted sewing machines, so he had been more than happy to quit as a salesman. He needed certainty, something that he knew people needed. If they wanted water, he was going to give it to them. 

Paul stepped outside, tilted his face to the sky. “It’s raining.” He pointed to his shirt, a cream-colored Henley. Splotches of water seeped into the cotton of the cloth, speckled like pebbles on a white sand beach. 

Charles didn’t meet Paul’s gaze, but looked past him, out toward the opening of the green tent flap to where the rain had begun to trickle down. He heard it fall in soft patters as the scent of damp sage, pungent and moist, filled the tent. 

“This isn’t rain. Not yet,” he replied, then set back to work. 

Josephine, 1931

I wouldn’t learn of the Rainmaker’s role until years later, when Ma and Pa and everyone I knew on the reservation was complaining of drought. For all I knew, our land had always been dry. 

Now, on the far end of El Cajon Valley, beyond where El Capitan rises square from the San Diego chaparral and drops sharp, like a nose, into the land, its ridge line a scramble for even the most nimble of our men, I shucked corn in the kitchen. Each ear had been picked earlier that day, the only way my mother would ever serve corn. “Make it sweet, or leave it on the stalk,” she’d say and Pa would pretend to hold his tongue, as if he would want to eat it any other way. I laughed, too, my smile scattered with flecks of creamy yellow, stuck like wedges between my teeth. As soon as you picked corn, the soft kernels started to turn starchy, like over-boiled potatoes, so you needed to pick it and eat it fast. I shucked six ears, but the seventh had bugs infesting the smallest kernels: small and black, like clumps of mold. I knew better than to dump it. Everything and anything—the greasy lard we fried our meats and eggs in, the bitter stems of lettuce, the curled ends of string beans—was kept and fed to our animals. I left the fresh corn on the counter then fished the bucket we used to keep vegetable scraps and tossed in the wormy ear of corn. The chickens would want first dibs, and it was a delight to watch their heads hammer at the ends of carrots as though they were gold.

Despite the chore of the bucket carry, often overflowing with leftovers—wilted wildflowers I picked from the wayward side of the river; leftover chicken bones I couldn’t bear to suck on the way my parents tongued each piece of dark meat left on the wing; crumbs of cornbread and fry bread and sometimes even the white bread we ate on special occasions—I enjoyed the task. The rim of the bucket etched deep lines into my calloused palms, but the animal shed was just out the back door, the chicken pen off to the right and, farther past that, the lean-to where a few old mares stood apathetically, kicking up dust as they shifted from hoof to hoof. The rest of the horses were kept in corrals around the property.

Past all of this were the mountains I both despised and adored. Towering far above our valley’s floor, crumbled the way wet sand can be dripped off your fingers until you’ve built a castle, the mountains surrounded the village as a fort of armed guards. Pa told me over and over how they nurtured us, that we owed our thanks to them: for our produce, the health of our livestock, the longevity of our people. But I grew bored of hearing this and instead felt the intrinsic thrum of freedom beating inside my chest by the time I turned fourteen. Three years later, all I felt was trapped, defined by this unshapely valley that held me on the reservation.

I dropped the bucket at the opening to the pen as the chickens peered around the wires of their cage, their eyes beady and unblinking, clucking at the bucket. “Hold on, birds,” I said. I bent down to unlock the cage door. Most days they clucked until I fed them, and even then they didn’t stop, pausing between their search for the refuse that I littered the floor of their cage with. I opened the door, picked up the bucket and stepped inside. They were silent, moving less openly, shuffling towards the opposite end of the cage. I scattered the scraps along the ground, littering their pen with our food. 

Feeding the chickens was my chore, one of many on the farm. As an only child—a rarity for the time and even more so for the reservation, a day’s drive if you were lucky enough to have a car from the glowing City of San Diego—I felt the burden of more responsibility. I often lamented this fact to Maria, the closest of my school friends. But she’d scowl and tell me I didn’t know what it was like to have to fight for space in the bed. Or the last piece of bread. Sometimes she’d pull back the sleeves of her dress to show me her bruises, deep purple marks that looked like watercolor on her pale brown skin. “You’re lucky you don’t have a brother or sister.” I’d nod along, but I never actually agreed. Being the only child meant that everything I did mattered more, whether that was pitching in on the farm or making good grades in school. 

“Ow!” I yelped when a chicken pecked the toe of my boot, my voice the only sound besides the soft cluck of the birds. Pa was over with the horses and Ma was off to see Maggie-Ann. No one else ventured onto the farm.

Then, a cough. I looked up. A man, white and tall and thin with dark cropped hair stood a few strides away from me. If he had driven here, I hadn’t heard the rumble of a car. But certainly a man like this wouldn’t have rode a horse onto our reservation, nor walked our dusty roads. I could see that he was freshly shaved with smooth, clean skin. He wasn’t from around here; the dust got to you before you even woke up in the morning and painted your skin a ruddy color all day long.

“Is your father around, girl?” The man said, approaching me. 

His hands were stuffed into his pockets so that he looked sly as though he’d been slouching around our farm a while. 

“Sure,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “He’s always around.”

The man kicked one of his black shiny shoes into the dirt, punting the toe sharply into the ground. Dust kicked up in a cloud then settled back onto the hard-packed ground like snow. I’d seen it a handful of times when winter storms brought frigid cold and blanketed the tops of the mountains around us.

“Can you tell me where? It’s important that I speak with him. I’ve come a long way.” 

I dumped the rest of the scraps from the bucket onto the floor of the coop, never letting my eyes stray from the man’s eyes.

“He’s out in the pasture,” I said, “with a horse.” The chickens seemed to be relaxing. I could hear their soft clucks as they pecked at the shredded vegetable scraps, suddenly consuming the food as though they were ravenous, unfed. 

“All right,” he said. “Thanks.” He turned around and began walking away. 

“Wait,” I called. I left the bucket outside the pen and hurried after him, unsure of my impulse to run after him. “I’ll show you where.”

Our farm was tucked at the backend of the valley, the far edges of our fields kissing the mountains. Along the edge of our property, oak trees lined themselves like rows of corn. Before the years of drought, they stood like shimmering golden flower heads, their dark green leaves shimmering when the wind whipped through the valley. Most of the time they stood still with twisting branches that reminded me of the cruel apple trees in Wizard of Oz. When I was ten, our school teacher had passed around a copy, yellow and dog-eared, for all of us to read. She’d told us that the author spent time right here in San Diego, but she pointed to the dusty floor of the school house as though Capitan Grande was San Diego. In reality, San Diego lay fifty miles to the west. I had been a handful of times, but I bet that most of my classmates had never been at all. I didn’t get past the part to where Dorothy is re-united with her family before I handed it back to the teacher. I’d received a poor grade in reading that year. 

Now, searching for Pa, I noticed that the trees looked particularly dry. If we’d received a fresh rain, the horse pastures that sat at the back of the property would turn green overnight, but this afternoon they looked sunburnt and bare. The only fertile part of our farm was the garden, sprawling and wide just off to the front of our wood house. Untamed tomatoes, ripe with August’s sun, wound their green stems around the trellises Ma had staked, while bright sunflowers bloomed like smiling faces behind, welcoming visitors to our door. At least, that’s what Ma had told me. I once asked whether she was worried that someone might come along and steal vegetables from us and pick flowers to fill their own vases. “What if someone has never tasted tomatoes as sweet as ours? Or seen dahlias as pink as the ones in the garden?”

I shrugged. Why did we have to worry about anyone else?

Ma had washed my mouth out with soap when I said that. She didn’t like me to be selfish, but all I had known was drought. With the taste of soap bitter in my mouth, I didn’t question her decision to plant even the sweetest melons at the front edge of the bed after that, but I also never told her I counted our produce—checking the greening cucumbers and the reddening tomatoes every morning when I woke up, just to be sure. 

Now at the fence, I stopped. I could see Pa straddling a horse, the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat hiding his mustache. People used to think he was a vaquero, a Mexican cowboy that left his hometown to ride all of the West’s wild horses one at a time. I liked that image, Pa running a horse through desert thick with cactus and sagebrush, the sky awash with pink and red and purple hues. It wasn’t true, though. He grew up here, on this reservation. I don’t know if he had ever made it past the California border into Arizona even. 

“Pa!” I yelled, cupping my hands so that the sound would travel. Pa looked over at us then slowed the horse to a trot, pulling back on the leather reins so that her head only slightly reared up as she resisted. The stranger stood next to me, leaning on the angular fence posts we built last summer. 

“Be there in a minute,” Pa said. The horse he rode looked good, I thought, its dark coat shining in the sun. My eyes hurt if I looked too long, the sun reflecting back, so I glanced down at the fence and watched a lizard scurry up one of the posts. 

“He knows English,” remarked the stranger. Why wouldn’t he, I thought to myself, angry at this stranger for assuming otherwise. But then, watching my father dismount from the thin metal stirrups, so delicate compared to the thick leather of his Western saddle, I realized he wasn’t talking about language but riding style. It wasn’t entirely uncommon for people in our village to ride English; the missionaries had brought more than just disease and religion.

“Yes,” I said. “He knows it all.” 

“Figured he'd be riding bareback,” said the stranger. I held my tongue, only because I didn’t know this man or what he wanted with Pa. 

Pa approached the fence, leading the horse by the reins. He was half the stranger’s size, small and lean despite the soft flesh of his belly. He called it Stress Stomach. Ma and I knew it as the extra helping. “Your food is too good to turn down, Therese,” he’d say, patting his belly. Ma wouldn’t say anything but I watched her face flush. I knew she took pride in her cooking.

Now Pa glanced at the stranger, as though sizing him up.

“Black horses are the toughest to tame,” said the stranger.

“Only poor trainers seem to feel that way,” Pa replied. He swung the corral’s fence open and stepped out. His boots kicked up the dusty ground, tickling my nose and reminding me of the parched earth. I was thirsty in the hot sun. 

The stranger laughed, not entirely out of humor. 

Pa stuck out his hand. “Ventura,” he said. 

The stranger grasped Pa’s hands.

“Turner. I’m with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I’ve been assigned to your case.” He glanced at me then ran his fingers around the collar of his starched shirt, his neck damp with sweat. “Could we speak in private?”

Pa passed me the reins. “Take him back to the corral, Josie.” 

I grabbed the reins even though I wanted to be privy to the conversation that Pa would have with this man. What did he want? And who did he think he was, coming onto our farm, onto the reservation, uninvited?

It wasn’t until I had led the black horse back into his paddock and saw his bucket of water near empty that I remembered: Turner was here for water.

This work is part of a longer piece. Thanks for reading!