the Kern River is not very impressive this July.
The usual summer flows even lower thanks to
the construction of the new Lake Isabella Dam.
The road knifes into the enclosing hills,
naked granite shoulders wearing a thin coat
of sun bleached grass, with wiry red shrubs
sprouting in the crevices of the massive stone.
Thirsty willows and sycamores crowd the shores.
-do people swim in this river?
it doesn’t look like much.
-yeah. it’s low down here because
they’re building a dam upstream.
do you swim?
-Yeah. We used to swim
in the ditches up in Teviston.
-That where you’re from?
-uh huh. My folks still live there.
Still chopping cotton, still poor.
-How long have you been down here?
-I came down after high school.
Daddy made sure I finished, wanted me
to do something more than work in the fields
and have a bunch of kids before I was twenty.
- How old are you anyway?
- Twenty. And no kids. do you have any kids?
-No kids or pets, just this mechanical beast.
-Seems more like a wife or a lover than a kid.
-True. Not as exciting but she tries.
Deep in the canyon,
steep hillsides edge the highway.
As they come around a bend,
half the road is covered by a rock slide.
Boulders the size of grapefruits,
basket balls and refrigerators.
Henry slams on the brakes.
-God damn! Will you look at that!
must have come down from the quake.
Looks like there’s room to get around it though.
Ruthie looks up at the slope looming over them.
-You think this is safe?
what if more of them fall on us?
-Oh, all the loose ones probably already fell.
-Probably?
-Yeah. You scared?
Ruthie doesn’t answer, but keeps
her fingers locked as if in prayer.
Which she is, but doesn’t want
Henry to know it.
They pass a few more slides,
picking the way carefully between the rocks.
Beyond the throat of the canyon,
Ruthie breathes a quiet thank you Jesus.
The new Lake Isabella Dam blocks the river ahead.
The land below the dam is scraped and graded,
Plantless, raw, and abraded.
-I haven’t been up here in a while,
this looks just about finished.
supposed to be done soon.
-I never heard anything about it at all.
-You remember the flood two years ago?
-Yeah, that was right after I came down here.
-This is supposed to stop that from happening again.
-Didn’t flood out in Cottonwood, that’s one thing we
don’t have to worry about. Only water out there
comes out of wells. it stinks and tastes like dirt.
A couple miles past the dam, Henry pulls off the road.
The bulldozers and earthmoving equipment have been
eating up the last bits of Kernville. Denuded streets,
tree stumps, building foundations, stone stairways
to nowhere are all that remains of the old mining town.
Ruthie gets up on her knees, leans out the window
to look at the last traces of the place. Henry prefers
looking at the way her waist flows into the swell of her hips.
-This used to be kind of a Wild West place. They even
made movies here. John Wayne, Roy Rogers, all those
Hollywood cowboys and gunslingers. Even had a street
named Movie Street.
-Really, I wonder if I ever saw any of them?
-Probably. Did you see Stagecoach?
-Yeah, I did! That was made here?
-The parts supposed to be in town were.
-Nothing even left for the ghosts.
-Yeah. I think they moved some of the buildings up
the river, but it can’t be the same. Not for the people
who lived here. They got paid to have their homes
wiped off the face of the earth.
-I s’pose. They could wipe mine off and I’d be fine
with the money.
-Guess it’s not such a nice place.
-No…………but I never lived anywhere much different.
-You should. I think you deserve to live someplace nice.
-Deserving and getting. Ain’t the same are they? of course
I want to live some place decent.
-Somehow I think you will. I got a feeling.
-Uh huh, You got a feeling. What kind of feeling?
-Yes. I do. I got a real good feeling today.
-I don’t why, with all that’s going on, but so do I.
He starts the car.
-Let’s keep going. Past all this destruction.
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