A Safe Watershed



An old graveyard overlooked the highway that led across the river to the new airport. When it rained, the earth on the hill loosened and bodies rose gradually. So a team of three young men on the graveyard were there for doing the maintenance, keeping the buried down after summer rain.

A plane filled with young women flew over and the sound in the air was scorched for some very long seconds while Freedy let the new boy know what he signed up for: Recently, a filmy waste from bodies in the town’s watershed contaminated the river that divided the city and the airport.

“First things first. I haven’t had sex in three days on account of all this Spirtual Waste in the water,” Freedy said. “The science teachers at the school said it must be coming from this graveyard. It’s the oldest one in town.” As the new boy listened, he unearthed a body that had begun to rise. His hands slipped down his shovel and his head followed down to the body whose head had begun to expose a bit of brain.

“Smell that? That’s what happens when the brains get out,” Freedy said.

The film reeked of spirituality.

“Spirtual Waste?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe in it. It’s been trickling down to the watershed area.”

Freedy and the other worker named Bo came and patched the head using gauze and stitches as the new boy watched, trying not to believe what he saw.
Another plane filled with women took their voices, and they continued the maintenance.

Freedy called the science teachers, and he said that they had found another brain exposed. They still didn’t have a good answer about where it came from. So he hung up quickly.

“It was difficult for them to be accurate on whether it the waste they were finding in the river was the body odor from river bathers, vomit from a post-fasting period feast, or unused semen. But they were sure the brains of the bodies seemed to dam it.”

The three men continued to steadily place old limbs back into the half-rotted coffins. They did not find another loose brain, but Bo called Freedy over to the edge of the hill to witness the damage that had already been done. They sat to watch the girls on the highway to airport.

“Watch them, boy,” Bo said. “Mostly women, flying from the new airport as fast as they could, searching for a cure by starting careers.”

Freedy said the worst was that the waste had given the girls false hopes, that their brains were going to be gouged from their heads when their new lives out their ended. He looked at the new boy.

“What are you going to do with your body when you die?”

“Donate it to science.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Bo, you see all these kids think its smart to donate their bodies to science, not even thinking how that makes the girls do the same thing. You know what that means, boy? All these planes?”

“That means the whole country would be infected.” Bo said.

“I don’t believe it.” The new boy said.

“I just need one of them.” Freedy said.

“For what?” The boy said.

“I’m looking for a girl to offload my complete history in, so I can free myself.”

“Memories.” Freedy’s memories were those of paralysis and vanity.

He said the memories weren’t really real in the first place. But now, Freedy’s fragmented history was now serialized in the ears of the many women he had brought up the hill. The last girl he brought up to the graveyard could not be objective about his history and ended up ejecting Freedy’s memories all over the graves.

“Last girl of yours, she must not have been white,” said Bo.

Freedy said that when he revealed his history as fact, her skin color turned from the glow of ocean froth into an inky red tide, and then she began squeeze and roll Freedy’s life in pictures out of the ear on the other side of her face. Next thing, she was on a flight to California to fulfill her duty as a woman and become a neurosurgeon. Only one explanation for that kind of hope: something spiritual had gotten to her.

He had not even begun to tell her about his method of keeping a whole world of Spiritual Waste from rising out of his mountain. As she ran, he yelled at her that they’d never get his brain from his head, and that he’d have to make his body suffer a very physical lethal blow, so it was obvious how he died. No science needed.

After she left, sprinkled over the loose ground were pieces of pictures, one of which showed a foreign airport and a deplaning girl with a stack of books crushing her head into the ground. But they buried that one.

“Tonight I’m gonna take my new girl up here. And she’s not contaminated. Heads screwed on straight. If she’s says she wants to be an engineer, she’ll be with me till I die. Girls who are engineers know how to lock their minds in their heads. Girls who are engineers don’t like California, anyway.”

He paused.

“Have you been burying those pictures, Bo?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where have your girls been?” Said the new boy.

Bo only pulled a framed picture of his mother out of his coat pocket.
Bo had had a girlfriend and had sex with her. Afterward, he said he loved her, and that he had finally figured out what good sex was. He said:

“It’s the phenomenal meeting of mental, physical, and rhythmic awareness. You have to do that all at the same time. And you can’t even think about it.”

After that, the girl screamed as a framed picture of his mother slid out of the ear on the other side of her face. Bo’s mother had died of the Spritual Waste when Bo was born, but in the picture, she looked like she did in the 60s, pregnant and dancing. She was tall and atmospheric with no signs of damages.

“But that can’t be it. It can’t only be the loose brains that are letting the girls go, can it?” The new boy said.

After he said that, a picture of the three men, each sailing their own Spanish galleon, rolled out of the new boy’s ear and glided into the river at the bottom of the hill. He screamed until he saw what the picture had done.

The three men on the hill watched the cars stop on the highway. Carloads of girls ran down to the bank. Each was very pretty and made each man love the world they watched from the hill. More women from the airport came to the foot and looked at the river. They gazed at the river and talked about memories, throwing water up in the air, and even acting out scenes of their lives: sneaking out of windows past curfew, going to college. A woman with the infant cried and dipped him in the water. Yes, the waste was surely stifled.

More reports of a decrease in Spiritual Waste in surrounding areas filled in on the radio as the men who had very forgiving jobs watched and thought about the many children they would bring into this world with the help of the woman, waiting until the day wives can mutilate their bodies so the cause of death is simple.

The sun was setting and the bodies were all tucked in. It was time to leave work.

“Where are you going now, new boy?” asked Bo.

“I’m going to go masturbate into your mom,” the new boy laughed with the relief of getting off work and then paused, remembering about Bo.

“His mom’s dead,” said Freedy.

“It’s okay,” said Bo. “I’m not emo about it.”

There is now a website you can visit on how to keep your watershed safe from anything that may turn up in the water of some middle america.