15 Sep Oxygen Falls
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“Oxygen Falls” was written by Ithaka, and published in Water magazine for his column “Fishdaddy Chronicles”.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I’d been here fourteen days,
ever since they’d
brought him home
from the hospital.
And for fourteen days in a row
Zeus, Athena and I had walked;
across the cotton field,
through the lemon orchard,
into The Reservation
and along the bank of the canal
until we reached
the base of Oxygen Falls.
The air here was thick with humidity,
the roar of the water threatening.
Haunting and intriguing at the same time.
Three years ago,
he’d been transferred here
from his job at a Los Angeles
aerospace corporation
to their production division
in a rural area outside of Phoenix.
Unfortunately, my trip wasn’t
a family social visit,
my Pops was sick.
Terminal they’d called it,
I called it unfair.
KEEP OUT !
SUBMERGED OBSTRUCTIONS!
EXTREME DANGER!
These faded red letters,
on a now rusted-out piece
of white sheet metal,
had been a never ending subject
of controversy and speculation
between Niles, Joe and I
during every holiday
we’d spent together
since Pops and April
had moved here.
The sign was posted
on the first of two parallel,
barbed-wire fences
guarding potential victims
from the hazards
of the falls behind the them.
Oxygen Falls in actuality
was a hundred-foot high
aerator slope
just downstream
from the Red Mountain Dam
on the Saguaro Indian Reservation.
After first corralling
a section of the Salt River
in form of a small lake,
back out through its spillways
and down a descending
eighth-of-a-mile long
boxy, narrowing concrete waterway.
This compressed the river water volume
from an area of about 40-yards wide
into an end width of just twenty-five feet,
quadrupling its velocity.
The water then rocketed
out of its square cement chute
and down the eight-story,
sixty-degree slope
into a churning, chaotic maelstrom
at the bottom.
This process whipped the water
abundantly full of oxygen molecules,
(essential for retarding algae growth
and increasing crop harvests).
Immediately after this frothy,
turbulent area,
the water abruptly tranquilized…
quieting down
into a deeper,
much wider body of water
known as Lower River,
which eventually dissected
itself into several smaller,
slow-flowing canals and ditches,
(providing the
agricultural water supply
of eastern Phoenix).
_________________________________
For fourteen mornings in a row,
I’d stood here with my two friends
and reread the words:
KEEP OUT !
SUBMERGED OBSTRUCTIONS !
EXTREME DANGER ! ,
wondering what exactly it meant.
An old Indian citrus-farmer,
whose land bordered the canal,
had once told my brothers and I
that the submerged obstructions
were in reference to underwater rake-spikes;
sharp, metal, vertical bars
mounted underneath the white water
at the base of the falls
that prevented logs
and other larger debris
that had managed to make its way
through the dam
and down the aerator slope
from continuing any further downstream
(potentially clogging up
the subsequent farming canals
and ditches).
BULLFUCKINGSHIT !!!!!!!!,
that old Red doesn’t know shit,
proclaimed my stepbrother Joe,
an ex-marine,
my elder of two years.
No….I think he may be right,
protested Niles,
my other brother,
also two years older
and the brainiest of us three,
…I think I read something
…about something like that ..somewhere.
For the moment
I’d remained undecided on the subject,
but had later asked Pops about it.
He’d said that the underwater rakes
did exist on some dams and aerators,
but on which ones was impossible to tell,
unless the spillways were closed
and the water level low enough
to expose them.
But here at Oxygen Falls,
the water was kept flowing year round,
quenching the thirst
of the area’s perpetually arid farmlands.
What do you guys think ?
I asked Zeus and Athena.
WWWWWOOOOOOFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,
howled Zeus.
AAAARRRRRRRPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,
echoed Athena in feminine equivalent.
Zeus and Athena,
brother and sister Rhodesian Ridgebacks
agreed on everything.
I sometimes wondered
if they shared the same brain.
We walked back to the house
where April had been waiting for us.
She had some errands to do in town
and Pops couldn’t be left alone
in his condition.
I’ll see you in a couple of hours,ok ?
my stepmother said.
Ok…See you later, I said.
I pulled out an old atlas
from the living room bookshelf
and went up to Pop’s room.
He was asleep so I began reading.
Are you to take the drop?
asked an unexpected voice.
It was my dad sleep talking.
What?! I asked.
Are you ready to take the drop?,
he repeated.
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant,
but even though he was unconscious
somehow knew that the question
had been directed at me.
Um…yeah…I guess so…what about you?
Yes, he whispered with a slight smile
as he drifted into a deeper sleep…
…a sleep he was never woke from.
He died in a peaceful way
which I suppose is better
than getting run over by a UPS truck
or catching a stray bullet
in a neighborhood drive-by,
but when it’s your Pops,
shit like that is of little consolation.
It was about two a.m.
when the last of the neighbors,
the mortician with dad’s body
and the rest of the weepers and mourners
(most of whom I’d never even met)
left.
I walked outside,
got into the family mini-van
and flew out onto the Beeline Highway.
My speed rarely dropping below ninety,
as I talked incessantly
to a silent, invisible father
riding in the passenger seat.
The towns sped by;
Fountain Hills, Apache Junction,
Hobokam, Superstition.
In and out of the Tonto Forest,
through Sunflower
and out past twenty or so
smaller settlements….
until there was nothing
but cactus and stars.
I stopped the van, got out,
laid on my back
across the yellow checkered dividing line
and looked directly up.
The biggest shooting star
I’d ever seen
radiated by overhead,
its trail glowing for a full ten-seconds.
It was one of those infrequent,
self-pitying moments
when I will question the purpose
of all existence;
The Earth, The Stars,
Love, Hate, Life, Death….
….it all seems like such
a cruel, heartless joke sometimes.
Exhausted and fatigued,
I arrived home midmorning.
Niles and Joe
had already arrived in Arizona
and were giving me shit
for staying out all night.
April’s been worried
out of her fucking mind !!!,
I apologized,
instantly morphing
the vibe more positively.
Although we all lived
within an hour’s drive of each other
in California,
we rarely hang out.
But that night we drank beers,
talked about Pops, the old days
back in the South Bay
and about all the trouble
we’d gotten ourselves into.
I was surprised to learn
for the first time that
(on different occasions)
Niles and Joe had both been arrested.
How I’d never found out
remains a mystery.
And my dad, not being one to rat,
had never mentioned anything about it
or the healthy sums of cash
he’d shelled out for their bail bonds.
However, I wasn’t being as open
with my older brothers
as they were being with me.
And hoped Pops had been
as equally discreet
about my own personal fuck ups
and had never told them
of my little run in
with a particular young vixen from Lomita.
An incident far more regrettable
and less heroic than getting your ass thrown
in the slammer for a few hours.
__________________________________________
If it is at all possible for a funeral
to be a good thing, Pops’ was.
The youngish priest, Father Paul,
had been a good friend
of my dad and April
and spoke to us with his eulogy, not at us.
His message was very personal,
almost completely avoiding
any corny, generic post-death sermonology.
He even played
a from-the-heart Bob Dylanish song
on the acoustic
which he’d written
when his own father had died.
Part of which was;
He was more than just a father,
a teacher, my best friend.
he showed me things
not known to kings
like how to fish
and make a wish
beside the Magic Sea…
…I miss him the old man
Toward the end of the service,
Father Paul had said something that stuck
into my head like a nail.
He’d spoken directly to Niles, Joe and I.
Your father,
being the man that he was,
would want you to go on
with your lives
…living them to the fullest.
On the ride back to Dad and April’s crib,
that last part kept playing
and replaying in my head…
…living them to the fullest.
For me, in contrast to the urban hell
I’d inflicted upon myself four years before
(moving from the beach into Hollywood),
living life to the fullest
still meant getting in the ocean regularly,
something I’d been less
than successfully accomplishing lately.
Of my last several attempts;
On one, I’d borrowed
and broken-in-half
a friend’s favorite board.
On another,
I contracted a hideous
bacteria-caused
ear infection.
And on my last try………
at six a.m. speeding west
down the Santa Monica Freeway
(on my to surf what I later heard
was p e r f e c t five-foot Topanga),
I rear-ended a station-wagon
full of Guatemalan cleaning women
on the way to the Beverly Hills mansions
they were to immaculate.
Coincidence maybe,
regardless, I felt that
the almighty Poseidon
had put some kind
of restraining order
on my surfing rights.
I decided to lay low for a while
and had been surviving
strictly on a surf-mag fix.
_____________________________________
When we got back to the house
after the funeral,
I began frantically searching….
the hall closet,
then the garage,
then the tool shed.
And finally found IT
behind the Jacuzzi pump
next to the pool.
I unfolded the yellow, moldy plastic.
A round, inflatable swimming pool raft
about four-feet in diameter
resembling a giant hole less donut
complete with a circle
of bright pink nylon rope
secured around the top of it
(to use as leverage
in case you encountered
any dangerous oceanic conditions
in your chlorinated utopia).
Joe (stoned as usual) came outside.
And after several minutes
of amusedly watching me
trying to inflate the damn thing
with my own breath, offered…
I think there’s a compressor
in the garage, bro.
And soon I was running,
(holding the inflated raft
clumsily on top of my head)……
across the cotton field,
through the lemon orchard,
into The Reservation,
along the bank of the canal.
AND up the the long hill
until I was in front
of the double security fences
at the upper backside
of monstrous cement structure.
I frisbeed the raft over the first fence,
climbed it,
then tossed it gently over the second,
(this time barely clearing
above the sharp barbs).
And seconds later,
I was standing above the rushing,
funneling channel of water
leading to the drop.
I prepared to make my jump,
then hesitated.
I set the raft down,
walked along the ridge of the canal
to the top of the falls
and took a long, last look
down to the the bubbling cauldron
of frothy water at the base….
only imagining what actually lay underneath.
In the far distance,
I saw Niles and Joe charging
up the river bank- yelling as they ran,
both armed with about
a mile of safety rope.
As they got closer,
I realized Niles was shouting something
about the rake-spikes
and the possibility of drowning
in the current.
YOU COULD DIE, ASSHOLE !!!!!!!!!!!,
He shouted, barely audible
above the rumble of water.
THAT’S OK.!!!, I yelled back ,
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK !!!
Frenzied, I ran back to the raft.
And grabbing it,
hurled myself the ten feet
off of the vertical embankment
and into the racing
thirty mile-an-hour current below.
Landing on the raft,
but losing hold of the rope
that circumferenced it,
I was violently swept downstream
spinning like a top.
Dizzy and panicked,
I had only one conscious thought,
going STRAIGHT down
as I went over the top…..
or I’d surely be discovering truth
about the rake-spikes headfirst.
At the last second,
I somehow managed to get it together.
Getting hold of the rope,
I was able to stop the spinning
and was able to lift up the nose
and went straight over…….
SHHHHHHHHITTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I shrieked, flying down
what would be comparable
to dropping in at
100-foot Waimea Bay
(on a giant vinyl apple-fritter).
While my stomach was making
an ambitious attempt of escaping
up through my throat……
FFFFFFUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
my velocity was multiplying all the way down…..
SHHHHHIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!
Below me somewhere through the spray,
I caught a millisecond glimpse
of Niles and Joe near the base
looking like cowboys
preparing to rope cattle.
By the end of the drop,
I had accelerated to the point
that the raft was not
even really connecting
to the water’s surface.
With the point of impact
rapidly approaching,
I strained to make a last effort
to get the front of the raft up
as high as possible and…..
SWWOOOOOSSSSHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like a ski jump
I blasted right up and over the top
of the bubbling aquatic chaos,
air born for at least fifteen feet
(safely above the submerged spikes)
and then sent skipping another 50 feet
like a thin stone on a still puddle
into the calms of the canal.
Several long seconds later,
my heat began beating again,
my emotion confusingly somewhere
between laughing and crying.
I ignored the rope
Niles and Joe
eventually tossed my direction
and the drone of falling water
began dissipating behind me.
I spent the next several hours
slowly drifting westward
underneath the cobalt Arizona sky;
alongside of citrus farms,
and waving Indian children .
And by cookie-cutter,
suburban track-home neighborhoods,
thinking about……
…what life would be like without Pops.
___________________________________________
Several months later,
I went to visit April, Zeus and Athena.
When I drove over the tiny canal bridge,
signifying the neighborhood’s entrance,
I couldn’t see ANY water
flowing down the dirt trenches
into the citrus groves.
I immediately got the dogs
and headed up toward
the cotton field trail
leading to the river.
For the first time
since I’d been coming here
Oxygen Falls was under repair,
the spillways shut, the river bed dry.
There were no rake-spikes.
No Comments