Death and Life

Published  in slightly edited form Feb. 5, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Thursday, on our first day of January rain, I stood on the concrete banks of the San Joaquin River flowing opposite God's initial direction and watched.  The water was not muddy, but a deep blue-green, penetrable by eye only a foot or so, mysterious below that.  Long, delicate strings of some water plant were being carried in the current like floats in an underwater parade, the roots radiating out like fingers waving or searching for a hold.


     It terrifies me to look into the canal.  As a child, I would have imagined floating dreamily along the surface, feeling the water benign.  As I've grown older, being above water has become more frightening.  Since moving into the valley, however, the canal's power to end life abruptly has become a fact of life I don't love but recognize.


    They pulled her car out of the canal on Monday, my friend Tammy's car, just upstream from where I was standing on the bridge where Tulare Road butts into the left flank of Elephant Back.  It's the section of the canal I know best, so it grieved me to think her body might have flowed through it, down in those invisible depths.  It grieved me to think her body might be stuck in the siphon below Lewis Creek, or caught on some other car body stuck in last year's mud.  It grieved me to think she was dead, period.  Friday they pulled her body out near the siphon.


     At the market, as we waited for news, we cashiers wondered out loud with our customers "Who would want to hurt Tammy?"  Few of us sensed the forgetfulness her family mentioned as the search began, much less the onset of dementia.  Most of us feared the worst as the days wore on.


     To soothe ourselves, we made up stories.  "I think she find some rich man and run off with him," groused one of our senior Chinese cashiers, hurting like the rest of us but making me laugh.  "Oh, I think she's in Hawaii," said another, a little ticked that she left without her.  Tammy was one of our regulars, and we each had a bond all our own from years of brief, but intimate contact with this woman through her gift of gab, her gift of friendship.  With one, she exchanged secret dreams of finding some rich man whose money would fly them to that Pacific paradise.  Tammy and I were more down to earth:  we traded stories about kittens and dogs, shared appreciation for our beloved vet, and laughed together about the lunacies of getting old.


     One day we cried.  She was pushing her cart through the door when I saw her burst into tears.  As I hugged her she said "I miss my husband so much.  He was such a good man."  Some music on the radio had reminded her.  But mostly we laughed - for therapy.  One day as she walked in when I hadn't seen her for two weeks, I shouted "Where the HELL have you BEEN?"  She doubled up.  These last two weeks I waited, hoping to say it again.


     Whether she drowned in that water accidentally or some way less innocent, we may never know.  Before they started searching it, many of us sensed she was in the canal, this death ditch that carries our lifeblood.  If it keeps raining, and snows enough in the mountains, it may yet carry some water for us to drink come summer, maybe enough to keep the groves alive that give us our jobs.  Though the canal giveth, it also taketh away.  Right now the life of a friend seems a high price to pay for the right to stay here in this semi-desert we call home.
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Trudy Wischemann is a wary water freak who is aging not too gracefully.  You can send her your stories about Tammy McCall % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a message below.