Dry Fields

You can tell when the ground you're standing on is unhealthy. There's dryness that still contains life, and then there's the kind that feels like it's made of dust and little else. I stand at the edge of the plastered road, overlooking what used to be forest. It hadn't been a particularly healthy or thick forest, not as diverse as it could be, considering where it was, but it had been more or less self-sustaining. During the time I had seen it last, and now, it had been removed, to make space for agriculture. I didn't ask what they wanted to grow here. Maize, perhaps. It barely lasted a generation. Now we're here to sell them an automatic irrigation system that's meant to fix their problem, though, at a glance, nothing can fix this. Especially not anything that we brought. If it were up to me, we'd just pack up and leave. Tell the guy whose arguing with the lorry driver about where we get to drive our parts up to that he needn't bother and that we're not the right people for the job and that he might try one of those new-age prophets type to try their hand at a miracle or two here. I can feel the ground crack as I make my way over. I feel a little silly in the safety clothing and the hardhat, especially when the only reason I'm here is to check off boxes on a clipboard. I can tell the guy doesn't want to talk to another one by the way he glares past the lorry driver at me all the way there. I want to tell him that there's nothing to save here and ask him what difference he thinks it's going to make. After some back and forth, I think he'd probably say that it's his call either way, so we get to carry the parts out into the field. I'd tell him that we get paid per hour, but since it's his call. Then I'd tell my people to take their time, which - in fairness - would be redundant, because they always take their time. We don't get too much work in the warmer seasons, so when we do, we take our time. Instead I tell him "There's just four of here. It'll take hours to carry the parts."

I was right about the rest.

It almost feels like the earth is struggling to hold itself together as I head back to the lorry. It could be a brief workday to me. I don't need to help the guys carry any of the material. It's not what I'm there for. Instead I watch from inside the passenger's side seat of the lorry as two people start digging a small hole in the dry floor. Every stab of the shovel throws up light-brown sand into an ever-thickening cloud. I wonder briefly how deep they can go before I lose sight of them. Me, and the owner, whose glaring daggers at me from inside the little plastic box, probably wondering why I'm not helping. I take a sip of my coffee and pretend I don't notice him. I just came to tick boxes, and we only brought that one car.

It's usually like this for jobs we get in the warmer seasons. Normal fields grow their crops during this time. There's a reason the clients we get around these months try to get in touch as quickly as they do. Desperation. It mars their expression just as it does the ground they stand on. It's almost like it seeps from their feet and into the earth through the cracks, where it grows into pessimism and engenders inaction. The irrigation system is a bandaid fix, if anything. The ground looks dry, and dead, so perhaps water might fix it. Technically, it makes things worse. It's like letting the faucet run through a series of sieves. They'll catch some of it, and they might even be wet for a while afterwards, but it doesn't fix any of their problems. Perhaps it'll compact some of the earth, which might make it look nice, but what's dead is dead. Apparently some companies can work to restore the nutrients that all the organisms would need to survive, but that is still the expensive solution to a problem that - in the end - probably didn't net anyone much money. Us, perhaps. The cheapest solution that still feels like doing anything. An accidental benefactor of the misery that is monoculture farming. Sometimes it feels like we're one of the four apocalyptic horsemen, setting foot onto land that is pleading to be left alone and recover, and instead of heeding its call we put down a series of pipes and drown it, flushing out whatever minerals are still left in the struggling layers, and killing what few organisms could still live in the dismal ensemble of cracked, oversalted soil. I just can never place a finger on which one we'd be. Probably pestilence, for lack of a more fitting one.

We don't really think things like these can come back to bite us when we decide to do them. It's such a minor thing to sollicit help in the attempt to subsist. It's not actually, of course. People are regularly surprised at instances in which animals - alone or in collaboration with others - can change the landscape, yet somehow whenever they themselves do the same it's "barely anything". I'm back at the patch of dust, a week and a half later after we finished connecting our system to the water main. Puddles have formed in scattered patches on the ground. It's probably been running non-stop. It feels like I'm watching someone perform CPR on a decomposing body. I'm not here to judge their chances though. I tap the patch of land with my foot. Sometimes the ground turns to mush - when it's really bad. In this case, I feel firm resistance. I don't need to change into rubber boots. Good. Perhaps the owner might find something that can live mostly off water. There's also chemical fertilizers, I suppose. Just in case they want to poison their water as well as their land. It's either way for me, I'm not in the business of selling either. I walk along the narrow pipes, looking for leaks or dead spots. I don't find anything, regrettably. Ours is a system meant to grow crops, not revive land. As it is, without crops, it'll drown the ground it's planted on, and it in turn will promptly drown the plants trying to settle on it. It's not the current owner's fault, really. At least I don't think it is. He just won the cosmic lottery and was the last one to treat it before it died. It's like a generational game of hot potato, and he's lost. No idea whether he knows yet.

I get back and tell him it works. I get his signature that I was here and checked it, so the warranty starts running. He won't need it.

I consider deleting the files on that job. Likely he won't get to really test our work. If I delete them now, I'd give him something to do. In the spring he'll try to sow some seeds, weeks later the only things he'll find sprouting are weeds. Then perhaps he'll call. We'd look for the files, not find them, and then at first deny that he was a customer. He'd send in the payment form, signed both ways, and we'd check it against our own finances, probably find the record. By then another week would probably have passed. Then we'd make an appointment for one of our people to check the system again. But it's late spring or summer by this point. There's no gaps in the schedule for at least another two months, and when eventually one of us does show up, we check the lines and it probably still works, and we tell him that our system isn't the problem. We'd refer him to an expert on these issues, because whoever comes by will have the same idea as I do. There's nothing to save here, but we're just the water guys, so we need someone to confirm our suspicions. That also takes a while - at least until late fall, early winter perhaps. Sometimes the tests also take a while. It'll keep him busy until next year. I leave the file where it is. If I were in his shoes, I would want to know as soon as possible.