Rio de Dios

The Price of Dogs

132 The Price of Dogs Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God. —Deuteronomy 23:18 Water in the desert, hoo-rah. It is a miracle, wine and loaves, loaves and fish heads: not Cana but a river & not a river but a system: open channels, 470 miles; covered storm drains, 2,400 miles; curbside openings, 98,000; debris basins, 123; reservoirs, 3; 133 dams, 3; crib dams 87; check basins, even more; bridges, more than that. Except not so much a system as a conduit, a conduit for water to be shoved away, get yer hands offa me— the straight man rejecting the drag queen. Except not so much boas and has-beens as the exoskeleton of a once-wet floodplain. But not so much a floodplain as a flood, waiting to happen, again. Not a flood but the threat of a flood and not a threat, but a symphony.The duck and the duck hawk each have a part.The Tillman Wastewater Treatment Plant conducts. Was that a cuckoo? Japanese poets heard the cuckoo’s autumn coo-cooing and thought of cold nights, 134 exiled lovers, dead children. We could too except cuckoos nest in river corridors not conduits.The name sounds like a strain of flu: Coccyzus americanus and this one’s call was more staccato and hollow than Japan’s cuckoo so make of that what you may. Gone from Los Angeles County, Yellow-billed Cuckoo only lives in checklists of extirpated ornitholgies and the dreams of a lonely Issei farmer, 1938, as the winter fog settles in around his AtwaterVillage bungalow bringing the smell of fennel and damp smoke, and, faintly, something being baked atVan de Kamp’s. The radishes are good this year. He gets mail from Okahama, gives a little money to the Association for Orphans, is terrible at origami. Normandy two seven zero seven one: over on Casitas in a palm tree white bungalo frame house the painter Don Bachardy is growing up, noticing rivers of colors and not knowing yet what to do with them. Not so much the river as the memory of a river, and not so much that as noir movies and a boy from another planet playing La Migra on the guitar 135 while his girlfriend drinks Colt 45. Not music but shaved heads and a thin brown dog. Not dogs but coyotes and not coyotes but mountain lions, at night, following the pet food from the Santa Monicas to theVerdugos. President Ford, campaigning in Glendale, called them the Vertigos and was not far wrong. Not vertigo but terror and not terror but slimes of kelp backwashing upstream somewhere near Wilmington and not Wilmington but miles of refineries at sunset looking like a scale model of Kirkuk being readied for a remake of Blade Runner. Not a river but a sequel to a river and a big production at that— more water, at high flood, than the Mississippi at St. Louis and not oil refineries but miles of ships at anchor, GNP bathtub, IMF regatta. But not Marx and trade deficits, harmless nostalgia when replica schooners dock next to a red fire boat, a green kayak, and twenty thousand cubic feet of air conditioning ducts. From Canoga Park to the harbor, 51 miles of river, waiting. The volunteer crews coil hemp rope imported from Taipei. SingleWhite Schooner looking for a Sugar Daddy. Is it you? The future can always be different. If you want something, say so. Lost dog sign:Water looking for Compton Creek, 136 last seen in 1948. No tags, no collar. Compton Creek is looking pretty good, all things considered, let’s do lunch some day. Not Compton but thinking you see somebody you know then saying their name aloud, but you are wrong. Not wrong, just mistaken. Not mistaken, just misguided.Well-intentioned but misguided.William Mulholland said, there it is, it is yours, take it.And so we did, we took it, not misguided so much as obedient.Yet rivers can be rebuilt, the radishes replanted, the muskrats seen again, in the dim Atwater dawn.Trees are not impossible. Stickleback linger, waiting. It is the future, there it is, it is yours, take it. 137 This page intentionally left blank. [18.222.125.171] Project...