7:32 a.m. - 2023-08-09
rain rustler
Stepped outside to take a leak, around 4 AM maybe? Not an odd hour for me (no hour is when you have a 54 yr-old prostate). Nor is it odd to step out the front door to relieve oneself here in the countryside. Not when you live alone on 200 acres and appreciate the absurdity of wasting 2 gallons of water to flush 10 oz. of piss. What was odd though, were the rustling noises I heard.
I've lived out here long enough to recognize my nocturnal neighbors by ear, even the stealthy ones (what's up my foxes and ringtail cats?). Deer hooves on driveway asphalt are an easy tell, of course. As are the sounds of a raccoon picking through empty beer cans in search of a yummy old tuna tin, or the crunch-scrape of another goddamn porcupine eating the bark off my plum trees. Other animals just kinda crash about all night, oblivious. Possums shuffle and bump like Mr. Magoo through the undergrowth, and armadillos rustle furiously as they scurry hither and yon, digging for grubs...which is exactly what this sounded like. Only the rustling was louder, and I swore I could hear water splashing on the ground?
So what else could my groggy brain assume then, but that a giant monster-armadillo was foraging in the yard? And that it had somehow ruptured the water pipe between my place and the well-pump? Therefore, if I wasn't dreaming, I should probably fetch a flashlight and sort it out...
My light revealed a middle-aged white man, rail-thin, shirtless and bespectacled, in cargo shorts and tennis shoes. He was dragging a running water hose through the yard.
“Oh hey sorry! I didn't mean to wake you up!”
“No worries, I get up early anyway. It's just, you know...we don't get a lot of foot traffic out here, at this hour.” (Texas translation: are you trying to get yourself shot, son?)
“I know, I know...I'm really sorry.”
“S'all good bud, you just took me by surprise” I said, walking back into the cabin.
I should mention that I recognized the dude.
He'd been out on the property for about a month. Watering trees, it looked like. He had a 275 gal. water tank in the bed of his pickup, along with a few 50 gal. drums and several empty buckets. I would have assumed he was a seasonal hire but...the dude was white. And all of our other hands are Mexican immigrants (most of 'em from the same small town in Guanajuato, and from the same family). But hey, he was always friendly and I'm sure the trees appreciated it, so I didn't give it much thought. Until I ran into my uncle the other day...
“So you're paying someone to water trees this summer?”
“Oh no, he's doing it for free.”
“Come again?”
“Yeah he's got some wild theory where, if he waters tree bark at specific times and locations, it'll stimulate the leaf canopy...which stirs and creates an updraft; precipitating rain.”
“That's a new one on me. How'd you find this guy?”
“He was parked on the side of the highway with a sign.”
Of course he was.
“Well, whatever he's doing, maybe have him try the opposite”, I joked bitterly, as we both cursed this relentless drought.
Anyway, I haven't seen tree-theory guy for a week now. But the day after he disappeared, honest-to-god rain clouds hung over the ranch. Not a big front or thunderstorms or anything dramatic, just heavy little cotton balls dipped in ink-wash...and though they didn't rain, they held promise.
So hey--weird, skinny, rustling-shirtless-in-the-dark guy, come on back and keep trying maybe.
