The Water Museum Read Online Free PDF Page B

reluctance. They portaged it around the hill to the busted end of Half-Hill Road. The water there was almost four feet deep. They put in again and found themselves floating.
    “Holy shit!” cried Shadow.
    It took them a few minutes to coordinate their oarsmanship, but they finally made forward motion after a little floundering. Junior was in front and Shadow squatted in back. They moved down one of the braided waterways, scraping between crumbling humps of weeds and mud. A green crab threatened Shadow from one black bank. Junior looked down into the water. He could see rainbows of pollution and oil on the surface, and weird billows of yellow and green filth that rose from the gray bottom like small poisoned geysers.
    They maneuvered around a slime-covered shopping cart. Junior pointed out a washing machine in the water. Corduroy pants on a hillock, brittle after years in the sun. They squeezed through a narrow passage and were startled to find themselves in a bigger stream. A heron raised its head and regarded them with disdain.
    “Big fuckin’ bird!” Shadow shouted.
    The heron raised its wings and left the earth in slow motion and hove upstream.
    “What’s that?” Junior said, leaning over.
    “That’s like,” Shadow said, “that’s like freakin’ shrimps down there!”
    They watched evil-looking white crustaceans scuttle out from under the shadow of their boat.
    “Dude,” said Junior. “That’s totally awesome.”
    “No disrespect or nothin’,” Shadow replied, “but you’re talkin’ like a white boy. You a vato or a gabacho?”
    They paddled down to the railroad bridge, ducked their heads, and made their way under it, horrified by the vast networks of spiderwebs under there. A baseball cap floated in an eddy. “Because,” Shadow said, “you got to be something. If you ain’t something, you’re nothing. That’s a fact.”
    They kept cutting south as they paddled west. They went into the darkness under I-5, where they could hear the whoosh of the cars overhead, the thrum when trucks went by. The whole bridge clanged and clicked. When they busted out of the shadows, close to the southern bank, they could see broken old buildings. White birds standing in the water. Bright yellow flowers formed a fluorescent haze on the bank.
    “That’s mustard,” Shadow said.
    “No way.”
    “Yes sir! Mustards come from, like, flowers. You didn’t know that?”
    Shadow Boone, Barrio Naturalist.
    Junior looked down.
    “Fish!” he cried.
    “Oh shit!”
    Under the boat there was a little swirl of curious sunfish.
    “Check it out,” Shadow said. He dangled a finger in the water and wiggled it. Several of the fish rushed over and tried to nibble it. This delighted Shadow, and he insisted on playing this game with the fish, even though his antics threatened to capsize the canoe. Junior waited him out, and after a while they resumed paddling. “I’ma come back as a fish when I die,” Shadow said. “I’ma be a big fat catfish. How about you, peewee?”
    “I’m not coming back,” said Junior.
    Shadow paddled.
    “That’s deep,” he finally said.
    They were going far now. They couldn’t even see the hill anymore. Total silence. Junior looked up on the bank. Bushes and planks and boxes and a lean-to.
    “Shadow,” he said. “Check it out.”
    As they floated by, carried now by the current, they saw faces staring out at them from the bushes. Gaunt, haunted faces. Silent Mexican men hiding from the Border Patrol. Waiting for night. One raised his hand in a silent greeting.
    Shadow and Junior dug in with their paddles and moved downstream.
    They paddled past a wrecked car sitting beneath a bare tree. Chickens scratched around the chassis. Suddenly, they broke out into an even bigger body of water. To the south, they saw the skeletal towers of the power station.
    “The sea!” shouted Shadow.
    “That’s not the sea,” said Junior. “This is the cooling pond. Big Ángel used to go fishing