Water, Wasted

Alex Branson

Chapters (4)

this is a genuine rare bird book

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Set in Dante

epub isbn: 9781644281864

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Branson, Alex, author.
Title: Water, wasted / by Alex Branson.
Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition. | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2020.
Identifiers: ISBN: 9781644281697 (pbk.) | 9781644281864 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH Death—Fiction. | Family—Fiction. | Marriage—Fiction. | Divorce—Fiction. | Floods—Fiction. | BISAC FICTION / General
Classification: LCC PS3602.R36498 W38 2020 | DDC 813.6—dc23

To Alana

Contents

2019

There was a dead armadillo covered in yellow paint in the middle of the state highway. It was about seven feet away from an armadillo-sized gap in the otherwise continuous yellow traffic lines. The armadillo was decaying steadily minus its thick, leathery back.

From the bridge leading south over the Missouri River into Armin to the civilization of the interstate a couple dozen miles north, State Highway 333 was dotted with dead armadillos. The soft parts of them inside decayed much quicker than their thick, leathery backs. After a while, their corpses looked like deflated footballs and time burned that armadillo blood black on the road.

The armadillos had come up to Missouri from the south in recent years because that was the weather of the world now.

1

THE ROOM EVERYONE SEES

1984

Barrett called it a building. Not a home, not a house. A building.

His cousin was a fireman. Through him, he enlisted the help of seven other firemen to begin construction on this building. In the county, being a fireman was a volunteer gig, something you got paid miniscule wages for, if any. It was more like a fraternity. It was basically an Elks Lodge type of deal, minus the pool and all the ceremony.

Barrett told them of his vision of a square house full of square rooms, with no hallways, with the kitchen opening up into the living room which led into the bedroom which led into the combined bathroom/laundry room. He told them of simple, white walls, with no shelves or artwork, cleanly designed and without pomp or circumstance. As he told them his imagined blueprint, they all nodded, gathered around beers, and the oldest of the firemen drew out a rough draft on a sheet of graph paper.

Barrett measured the facial expressions of the firemen and could not decipher if they were impressed or not. The firemen seemed legion, singular. They all seemed to laugh at the same time and always innately knew if they should or shouldn’t make eye contact.

The firemen didn’t have any fires to worry about. They built houses.