The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Well, maybe we could take weekly turns. Stef and this tickle-me-yellow-doodle can go stay at the Drip, and I’ll come down here and appreciate the morning eggs that she won’t even lower herself to eat.”
“I don’t think Stef’ll go for that.”
“Nope. His own fault. Owner finance, he says - Of course the house sells when you pay someone to take it.”
“Not exactly pay them.”
“Sure. You paid my homelessness and your shed life so Emam can live in a mansion.”
“She’s got you there.”
“Yeah? Watch this. You’re right here where you were trying to get in the first place, so maybe that shed life’s paying double bills.”
“Look out, Stef. He’s got the rope-a-dope.”
“He ain’t pretty though. I didn’t want to list the house at all. You’re the one lulled me in with your bits and pieces.”
“Got anything there?”
“Nothing fair.”
“You can fight dirty. You’re still freezing your ass off all night in a shed tonight.”
“Permission and example in one. Is that two turns, Karen? I need a ruling here.”
“I think you should both stay here.”
“Oh thank God, Jen you’re here. I’m outnumbered, and they got me cornered.”
“Hi, Mikey. Looks like you’re in trouble. I’m staying outa this one.”
“Tommy?”
“You’re doing fine without my help.”
“Not freezing. It’s thirty-three tonight.”
“Quit that and come eat. Jen, where’s Ethan and Syd?”
“They’ll be down in a minute. Syd had to take Luna out, and Ethan just got out of the shower.”
“He’s not going to walk down here with his hair wet again.”
“Mama, stop fussin’.”
“Come eat.”
“One sec, that’s Rusty. Hey.”
“Gahhllee, Rusty just shit his pants.”
“Wha – did you…”
“He come down the dam…”
“Give me that phone, Cody. Hey, Michael. Everything’s okay. Nobody hurt. But we just had a major mudslide on the back of the dam.”
“Thanks for – that way. So is the dam okay?”
“Yeah, nothing really changed. Just all that soil we been packing dry been soaking up all that water toppin over the dam, and I was bringing in a load to dump I no sooner lean over the edge, and all the sudden I’m surfing down the back side, confused, I’m pulling back on the joystick, forward picking up speed, and then cushioned slow down, and it sinks right into the slop.”
“First thing. Stay off that dam. Stay out from under it. Go to the shed and relax. You sound like you could use a breath. There’s cokes in the fridge in there. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“It was so cool. I was gliding down the hill, floating on it. It’s actually for the best. The old drain pipe was full of water, and it shot out when the fill slid.”
“I’ll see it when I get there. Guys, the crew had a close call, but I gotta go.”
“Here’s a plate.”
“Karen!”
“There’s goulash and I put five rolls in. Is that enough?”
“No eggs, though?”
“You’ll have to show up in the morning for those.”
“I was going to win that fight.”
“Sure you were, honey.”
“I’ll call you when I get there.”
“Send pics and stuff.”
“Will do, Tommy. Love you guys. I didn’t get to shower, so I’ll probably stop in tomorrow once I get the guys started.”
“That reminds me. Here’s a key in case nobody’s here when you get here sometime.”
“On a string. I love you so much, Karen! Stefanie, take care of these people.”
“Will do. Love you.”
“Love.”
“So, Hasselhoff, you got lucky. We’d still be digging out the front door if it turned around on the wave.”
“Skills.”
“Clearly. It’s like a cave entrance the way the mud sucked it in. The door spotted but not blocked.”
“I thought he’s a goner.”
“Where were you?”
“I’s in the excavator up there tamping in the pipe. Just bout slide down the dino tail, and I hear the engine rev and the tracks just spinnin backwards. I thought he’s a goner.”
“Well, we leave it there for tonight. Let the water settle out. Maybe tomorrow we get a couple sheets of plywood and walk out. See what we see.”
“Ya, that dirt’s soaked through.”
“I let it seep too long. I almost killed you, man.”
“Nah. That was the schedule. Priorities put it off. We were working at it every day.”
“Just didn’t get there in time.”
“So, maybe just in time. If we didn’t spend the last couple weeks fixing this thing, the whole dam might have collapsed.”
“On the positive side, as that dries out this year, it’s gonna set up like concrete.”
“Gahhllee, that’s a fact.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Hey. What happened?”
“Hey. It’s all good.”
“It was all good before you left. What happened?”
“I missed a puzzle piece…”
“Look, no cryptics. Spit it out.”
“I missed it. It’s like I said Sunday. The water poured over too long. The soil we were dumping along the back was filling with water all the while. It filled up, and it collapsed. I should have seen that.”
“You did see it. You saw it Sunday, and you acted on it.”
“I didn’t act. I let the men act, and it almost cost him his life.”
“Don’t be dramatic. He was in an iron box made for that.”
“No, a glass tomb, not made for it.”
“Tombs have bodies, and Rusty is walking around perfectly fine.”
“If it turned, only god knows why it didn’t, the mud would have been past the windshield, over the top. Water leaking in at every seam dark – a race not against oxygen, but the carbon dioxide produced with his every panicked breath until we could get to him, which would have been harrowing because that mud is soup. We’d need the canoe for Christ sake to hold us out of the mud while we dug, every shovel filling back in half as we threw it down the hill, and that same mud resisting the throw so that the shovel pushed back into the suck would be half the man it was before the push.”
“None of that happened, Michael.”
“Oh, it happened, or we wouldn’t know the possibility. It happened somewhere to someone in some time. It happened, and I didn’t learn the lesson when it did.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have no business doing this.”
“Some of that might be true, but look around you…”
“I’m an anecdote. I’m a cautionary tale.”
“Look around you. How many construction sites do you see – every one of them populated by the same people you have at yours.”
“Not the same. Mine’s the dodgeball discards.”
“Those are too. Do you think you have the only four guys in Sevier County that didn’t pay attention in math class?”
“Yeah, and I was the dodgeball captain every Tuesday and Thursday. And I love math class.”
“Tanner. I thought you left with the guys.”
“I did, but then I realized you didn’t have supper. I figured I better come make sure you didn’t need anything.”
“Honey, do you hear that? I gotta go.”
“Hey, Tanner. Thanks for coming back. This dude’s a wreck.”
“I see that.”
“Okay, honey. I’ll call you back.”
“Love.”
“Love.”
“No cute this time, Tanner?”
“Nah, you got enough trouble.”
“All’s I need is a pile of shit to handle and a tape measure to pick the bag size.”
“I’d go extra large on this one. Tarp, maybe.”
“Buddy, we can’t shovel that out, and it’s thirty feet from the edge, so excavator’s out too.”
“You might have to let it dry in and dig it out after.”
“Oh shit.”
“Oh shit – now I gotta carry everything everywhere again.”
“Nope. Let’s go buy a golf cart.”
“Um, okay.”
“I gotta let Kitty out first.”
“I’ll meet you at my truck.”
“Nah, it’ll be ten minutes. You better come up with me. She won’t go if I don’t sit on the steps.”
“Wait. You have a cat that won’t go to the bathroom if you don’t walk her?”
“Sort of. When I put her out, she just stands there looking through the bottom pane of glass whining to be let back in, unless I come out with her.”
“You have to walk your cat.”
“She’s the only smoking fellowship I have now. I freeze under the awning while she lays in the mulch.”
“I’ll smoke with you, buddy.”
“This’ll be interesting.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s a nervous wreck up here.”
“It’s a lot of change.”
“Talking about it was one thing, but I actually live in the woods, in a shed, with a cat that ain’t convinced.”
“I’m not so convinced you should do it.”
“She can’t stay up here alone. Come on, Kitty. Get out here.”
“She’d only be alone at night.”
“That’s probably the worst part. And only one way in, one way out of this shed. Cats don’t like that.”
“Put the cat door in back.”
“Can’t put a cat door yet. She doesn’t know where she is. Look at her. She has her habits already, but she doesn’t know the place yet. Look at that stump. Thet’s her first one. She will settle on that. She sits up there every time she comes out. It’s her anchor, and she’ll spread out from there.”
“Best way to learn.”
“If there weren’t so many Bobcats. I don’t worry about the coyotes, they can’t climb trees.”
“I see prints almost every day.”
“Cub and mama, I think. I watched her just last night with my own eyeballs crossing to the dam, clearly had a big rabbit or something.”
“She’s a big cat – christ, stinks too.”
“Musta been holding that one. Come on, cat, inside. Open one of those food cans, Tanner.”
“Oh, she comes running for that.”
“6:30 days are getting longer.”
“Still, dark. I have goulash Karen gave me. Let’s skip the ride. It’ll be more fun to buy the golf cart in daytime.”
“Probably best with the skid buried. No telling what that’ll cost to fix.”
“I guess it just depends how much mud and water got into the exhaust up there. Light was fading. I couldn’t see.”
“It was under when I saw it.”
“Did you look for the exhaust?”
“No, but the whole back was covered to the roof.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow’s the day. Tonight I just sit lucky it’s a machine and not a man.”
“It was never really that dangerous.”
“Buddy, that thing’s buried.”
“Yeah, but it was slow motion. Like not replayed in my mind slow. It started going. I heard it rev, and I saw the tracks kick backwards, and it was moving forward. I had time to get up from the rack and come to the edge of the dam and watch it for a few seconds as it slid and sunk.”
“Like ten seconds?”
“No. Way more than that. It got slower as it got deeper. It was like totally disappeared, and then it was just mud gliding over it for a second or two, and then just stop.”
“It’s scary stuff. Someone could get hurt. Like for real.”
“I see that now. I think everyone saw it.”
“It’s a real thing, debt to man. When they count on you, it’s not just money, it’s their safety. I couldn’t have designed a lesson better with a textbook.”
“Even Cody got a little serious until we heard that door squeak open, and Rusty stands up in the window frame, and he’s clearly shook. Like, we walked around, like down the road part, and we’re coming up along side him, and Cody rushes in. You can see his foot – holes where he stepped into the mud and instantly up to his knees.”
“Cody went in?”
“He was serious, like a cop. Steady step, just started walking in. Didn’t even think about it. Needed doin, and he went to do, but the mud stopped him in his tracks.”
“Did you have to pull him out?”
“No. He stood there a second. Scoped it out and told Rusty to jump down hill – then he threw him a stick. He was just on top of it. Needed doing. And he was there – on top of it.”
“I told you he’s smart.”
“He can be such a little asshole, though.”
“Nothing personal, but of the three of you, he’s the one I’d want on site in the moment.”
“No offense taken. Me too.”
“I wouldn’t let you drown, buddy.”
“You weren’t in the options. But you’re the guy for the whole thing. Both of you’d get someone out of the burning house, but Cody ain’t much for the space blanket.”
“Image clouds.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Don’t you dance around.”
“Science, outcome. Got it.”
“Let’s see.”
“So, we been pouring truck after truck of loose spoils dirt on that hillside. We plugged the spillway pipe like we intended. We knew it was dangerous, but when it rained, and the water topped over so clean, I rolled the dice. I skipped it. But I don’t think any of that mattered.”
“It clearly mattered.”
“I mean, yeah. The dam drooled for a month. It mattered. And the storms last week really mattered. That’s what got us. Once we couldn’t work on the dam anymore for fear of machine rot across the soil, that was the last straw.”
“So not your fault.”
“No, not like malfeasance or anything. I could have gotten to it sooner, but I don’t think any of that would have mattered. I think that loose fill soil would have slid no matter what with all of that rain on it. The part…”
“You should stop there. That’s the whole truth of it.”
“Not all. Lessons learned are the bill, and this is your land too. When the hotels got me sued a dozen times and the gas station two dozen more, that was me trouble. This is your house too, so we get the lessons together.”
“Together.”
“We delayed. I mis-prioritized. Water got under the soil and on top of it, and it slid. Nobody hurt. Skid steer open for discovery in the morning.”
“But you buy those stupid loans, so it’s insured – see, I listen.”
“Okay. The adrenaline dump is catching up with me. Cold as hell tonight. I’m going to eat some goulash and rest.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more.”