Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

he said, pointing at the invader. "Another feeble attempt by man to control nature. We always muck it up!"

Tiger let the engine idle, and Baker looked toward the horizon. "Give me a weather report, Jake."

I followed his gaze. A thick thunderhead was boiling up in the west. "It's going to rain," I said.

"Damn right!" Baker replied, laughing. "The rainy season is starting. That's the delicious irony. Two hundred years ago, pirates didn't even come ashore to get fresh water. It bubbled up in the middle of Biscayne Bay—that's how high the water table was. So what's the problem now? It doesn't rain any less. Hell, we had ninety inches in 1994! We get sixty to seventy inches most years, and we're running out of water. Why?"

"The canals," I said, having been a good student earlier in the day.

"Right. We shoot most of the water to the ocean. Whoosh!" He made a flowing motion with a hand. "We get too much in the summer and not enough in the winter, and once they chopped up the Glades, which was a natural storage area, the aquifer couldn't get enough. We don't have melting snows or giant mountain lakes. Our rain barrel is a limestone-and-sand sponge underground which stores water for us. But statewide, we've lost half the wetlands, over three million acres, and every year they lay more asphalt and build more malls, and every year the water level drops and the saltwater intrusion moves in farther from the sea."

We passed a nearly dry mangrove creek, where wading birds stomped through the shallow water looking for tiny fish. Above us the sky was darkening, and in the distance lightning flashed.

"So why not just knock down the damn things and go back to the way it was?" I asked.

That brought another laugh. "I'd love it!" Baker turned around to face Jimmy Tiger. "How 'bout you, Jimmy?"

"Sure. Drown all the white men."

"It surely would," Baker said, "at least the short ones. On Jake, here, the water would only be up to his chin." He turned back to me. "They could restore the Glades by letting the natural ebb and flow of the water take over. Of course, everything west of I-95 would be flooded up and down the coast. The sad truth is, man wasn't intended to live in South Florida, at least not in the millions. Maybe a few thousand of Jimmy Tiger's people could do it, living in the slough with the natural floods and droughts. But not the rest of us."

"So what's the solution?" I said.

"We could start with conservation. We use about two hundred gallons of water per person per day. In Europe, the average is closer to sixty gallons."

"But we like big cars and long showers and green grass."

"Sure, it's our God-given right," he said with a rueful smile. "Well, God's got a surprise for us. One day we'll run out of water."

"What can be done?"

"The federal government has promised to restore some of the Glades. The Army Corps of Engineers is going to divert water back into the Shark River Slough, which will flow into the national park."

"That's good," I said. "You should be happy about it."

"I am, but you city folk shouldn't be. Farmers, either. It means less water for you. There won't be enough to go around. We could be like some of the Caribbean islands—just turn off the water until it rains. Can you imagine that? Folks come down to their three-hundred-dollar-a-day hotels and can't take a shower or brush their teeth. No new sewer hookups, no lawn watering, rationing of water to maybe one fourth of what each family uses now. Most farmers will lose everything, though it's their own damn fault. Jake, have you ever seen one of those irrigation guns up on a tower, shooting water in a big circle like some kind of fountain?"

"Yeah. Guy Bernhardt's farm must have dozens of them."

"Bernhardt! That son of a bitch is worse than his father. He's the biggest water abuser in South Dade. Each of those guns shoots a thousand gallons of water a minute, and they lose half to evaporation and just plain misplacement. We try to get them to use the new drip technology and retain moisture with mulch, but water's been cheap and plentiful so long, they won't do it. They get permits from the Water Management District to pump a certain amount, but it's all free. 'It's my land, and it's my water.' That's what Bernhardt and his kind say. And the district is powerless to stop them. There are no meters, no inspectors to prevent overpumping. It's all an honor system, but men like Guy Bernhardt have no honor. He's a pig who's . . ." He searched for a phrase.

"Bleeding us dry," I said.

"Exactly. But the day of reckoning is coming. Jake, I'll bet you that before the millennium, we'll have full-fledged water wars down here."

"Water wars? That sounds like something from a B-western."

"Nope. It's already happened over in Tampa-St. Pete. Some law-abiding folks from Hillsborough and Pasco counties were tired of having their lakes and wetlands sucked dry just so the people of St. Petersburg could grow impatiens in the winter."

"What happened?" I asked.

"They became vigilantes, blew up a pipeline running from a well field down to Pinellas County."

That reminded me of Guy Bernhardt's story about his neighbors. "I don't get it," I said, and not for the first time in my life. "If there's a war, where are the battle lines drawn?"

"Simple, Jake. It's between those who control water and those who don't. In the past, land was money and power. Today, or in the very near future, it'll be water. Damn few people realize it, but our whole world has changed. Everything is water, and water is everything."

14

Road Kill

I was gnawing my third ear of corn when Roberto Condom showed up and sat down across from me at the picnic table outside the ribs joint on South Dixie Highway. It was