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True Stories by Steve Keely
Hobo Memoirs
CLOUDBURST!
1 August, ‘05
How hot is it today?
The slanting rays of sunrise amuse. In early morning, I open the refrigerator
and a three-foot Rosey Boa crawls in to wait on the milk shelf for the door. By
noon, chipmunks, lizards, ants and bees compete at the gallon waterer. ‘Sting
me,’ I threaten the bees, ‘And I’ll kick the Queen’s butt!’
It’s not hot for August 1 in Sand Valley, California - about 110 F. I shoulder a
pack and a bee stings me on the penis and flies off. I get tweezers with an
attached magnifying glass, find it, pull the stinger and forget the incident.
You come here to the end of the world to find that’s how simple you think life
can be.
Sand Valley is a desert basin like a round sandbox, crosscut by 10-yard wide dry
washes and ringed by 600-foot mountains. Cumulonimbus clouds occasionally butt
these and dissipate in the hot target uplift. The skies are not cloudy all day.
Rainwater may flow into the Valley, but rarely does a drop fall within the
five-mile radius.
In late afternoon, I step from my trailer to hike the largest wash that’s a
sandwalk edged by Ironwood, Palo Verde and Smoke trees. It narrows in the
mountains to a stubby canyon where thousands of Cicadae buzz. Bees hive up in
small caves in the sidewalls. A tailwind spins me and I peer at angry clouds
rolling west, an anomaly. Soon the wind almost pushes my face in the wash. Sand
pelts the skin like a shotgun and thunder sounds.
In minutes, my world is lightning and water. I veer up a feeder canyon for
safety, and thirty minutes later – lost – halt at a budding trickle. Thousands
of creases in these hills join into hundreds of tiny dry creeks that fasten into
a few major washes into the Valley. The pool in front of my boots becomes a
revelation: The answer to how flashfloods start! Yesterday it rained short but
hard to saturate the ground. Today the water waits under a baked surface. As
rain strikes the shell, it cracks open before my eyes and water oozes to meet
the forming trickles. Today’s rain siphons yesterday’s reservoir.
I quiver in the freezing shower but dip into pools where the defiant, hot ground
heats the water to bathtub temperature.
At sunset, an hour later, the downpour abates but lightning flashes my way. A
bolt hits just behind me. Lost, I take the jungle wisdom of following small
creeks to larger ones to civilization. The basic course is downhill. Brimming
washes block the path every few minutes: Some I wade and others run too deep or
fast.
Out four hours, I drop my shorts to examine the member… It’s swollen triple
distal to the sting. Like the Nutty Professor. In a flash, I recognize a set of
peaks and drop everything to take a bearing for home. Water flows madly.
Yet the sky is clear and stars emerge. The trailer sits a mile off on the shore
of the widest wash in the Valley. I wade through an early desert wash and
discover it’s not like fording a river. The cut is ten-yards wide, two-feet deep
and swift as an Olympic sprinter at 18 mph. I point my toes upriver to watch for
a water surge or floating limbs and start to cross sidestepping. Unforeseen, the
current undermines each boot a half-inch per second. I slowly sink in the wash
center while submerged limbs entwine my legs so I can’t lift them. Suddenly the
tide spins and nearly knocks me downstream where, miles and years ago, a car in
the same general wash was swept off and the driver drowned.
I scramble up the far bank and, a quick learner in that starter river, hang the
pack in a tree. The trailer is silhouetted a quarter-mile away, yet before it
lie three more washes. The first is the size of the last and easily crossed
without the ballast by pointing the heels upstream and stepping quickly. The
second is wider, deeper and the push almost takes me. Exhausted, I sit at the
edge of what’s ahead, the last torrent. And wait.
The moon rises in a star dusted sky with the biggest wash at my toes as a
measuring stick. I pull twine from my pocket for a sling to elevate the member
and throw it over my shoulder like a continental soldier. Damn the Queen! After
thirty minutes, the water ebbs from the toes but is risky. I will discover from
the locals that a funnel cloud kissed the Valley, roofs blew off the three
dwellings, and the washes ran bank-to-bank.
In an hour, the river is safe and I cross to home.
The next day dawns cool in Sand Valley. The washes dry, the member shrinks, and
the Queen’s rage assuredly likewise.
For more of Steve "Bo" Keely's writings
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