The Dam

“Out of the gloom, there came a sound like cryin’ in the night.

My blue ruined eyes I thought lied.

A woman draggin’ up, out of that squawlin’ tide.”

c.w. stoneking

Friday

Maybe it was the earthquake that caused the damage. The highest intensity event prior to last night was in 1911, a few hundred miles across the state. A 4.5 magnitude in Huron, South Dakota. I think the worst thing that happened was a couple of heirloom dishes rattled their way off the hutch. I don’t know much about earthquakes. I do know quite a bit about bedrock though—you become familiar at the dam.

Our bedrock is black waxy sheets—laminated hard clay squeezed into rock over a few million years. Fine particles from oceans that migrated in and out of the area, they captured fossils and little rodents and maybe dinosaurs. Then pressed into oil. Trapped in the tight clay. I think the only way to release it is if God Himself put the state in a microwave.

The clay is shifty—moody. When wet it swells and then slumps. The shale is notorious for its poor engineering qualities but back in the late 1940s they decided to build the world’s largest earth rolled dam on top of it. The dam generates between 7 and 12 kilowatt hours of electricity per day depending on how much water is let through the turbines. One of the reasons I became a hydraulic engineer, though I never said it in my advisor’s office: the power of water, and my own power when I open and close the gates. I think even the water molecules, the little hydrogens and oxygens bonded together feel a kind of ecstasy when they get stopped up, released, bottled up, spun around, then crushed out below the huge stacks. Sometimes I stop in my own tracks, marveling at this life and my role in it. The turbines would crush me like a cockroach, yet they are machines! Like the earth herself, renewing and destroying over and over again. Hutton stated that if it wasn’t for this process, “we may perceive an end to this beautiful machine.” The dam gave me power too!

“John. John!”

I spun around.

“Has the drone footage synced yet?”

I shook my head, “Uh, no, not yet.” I turned away from the buttons and looked at the District Chief of Engineering. My boss. His little eyes squinted at my blue ones. They were a little brown.

“Get your head out of your ass, John. Why are you at the turbine panel anyway? They’re all off for the next 8 hours. If I get one more call from the Commander I’m going to be fucking pissed.” He slammed his hand on the metal machine and sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just… this earthquake business has really put my own ass under fire. Which I don’t understand, like I caused the tectonic plates to shift around? For Christ’s sake.”

He looked stressed. I felt sorry for him. I leaned back on my cool machine, vibrating and humming. Singing its song to me, all for me. In my mind I press cold beers to my cheeks, and I look at the bright setting sky. I look how big it is and I imagine myself running along the top of my dam, the top of her dam, the dam of the world. It’s all being held back, restrained. Life itself, I mean. There must be a clog somewhere, or else all the particles and all the species would have just fallen off into the expanse of it all. There’s a metaphor here… the world is a dam? Consciousness is a dam? Without a way to hold back our own thoughts, they would simply pass on through. The ability to have retention. The talent of it all! I shivered violently against the metal block.

“Keep an eye out for that footage John, it should be coming through the system in an hour or so. Once it does send it through.” He glanced at the clock. Quarter to six. “I’m going the fuck home- call me as soon as the footage gets in. Thanks, buddy.” He slapped my shoulder and almost sprinted out.

That earthquake wasn’t even bad. Hell, half the town didn’t even know there was an earthquake. But what most people don’t know is that the earth is quaking all the damn time. It’s just too slow for us to care about. Sometimes she sprints, and sometimes she gets mad enough to let everyone else know about it.

Not everything is slow and steady— it’s a myth that our lives are wholly defined by the small habits we do every day. Small changes and a lot of time. Gradually. Almost going unnoticed. “Oh, this whole huge Grand Canyon used to be as small and flat as you and me!” Says the Grand Canyon tour guide. And we all just believe that. I mean sure, things were going steady for a while there between the elements and the rocks, but like any good relationship, things tend to blow up. Maybe the sex was bad, or the wind was seeing someone else on the side, but either way. One day, one moment, something shifted. The grand canyons of the world were formed not only by gradual change but by sudden decisions—conscious decisions. The dramatic ones, the ones where people storm out, or their kid dies suddenly, or there’s a car crash, or the stick turns positive, or you stop on a whim to get coffee and meet your soulmate. Or a fucking earthquake. These are the events that people actually remember. It’s the day-to-day living that we forget! When the earth decided to dance the tango instead of the waltz. She wanted to rev her engine. She got bored of eating peas, so she threw them at the wall.

I circled the powerhouse, into the old, rarely used offices, I spun around in a chair for a while, I ate some pretzels. I wandered over to the empty secretary desk and looked through her drawers. Shit, there was no telling what I might do! I found some tampons and some candy in the bottom drawer. Her stashes.

I walked over to the security room. A huge room lined with hundreds of monitors. There were two guys in there playing a small game of poker. “Not much going on tonight fellas?” I asked brightly, taking an empty seat, throwing a 20 on the table.

Around 10pm there was a small commotion in the control room, some lights were flashing like a circus.

“Gotta go boys. I think that tunnel footage came in.” I walked fast to the huge panel room. The turbines were quiet today. The baby blue walls had no secrets here. The little light was blinking on the panel. I downloaded the new information and went into Operations. The computes were in there. I was going to go over the footage before sending it on.

The drone footage was a little shaky but had great resolution. I felt like a tiny pilot as we veered and flew through the tunnels. Sometimes I have lucid dreams where I can fly… The first six tunnels were normal as always—this was only a preliminary viewing since we can’t send men that deep into the inlet tunnels. If anything abnormal showed on screen we would conduct further investigations. Around the 5th tunnel visit, I was getting a little restless. Each drone flight took about a half-hour to watch, since the tunnels were so large, so long, and the Company was incredibly astute.

Hours later, the drone footage was in the seventh and final tunnel. The turbines were rarely turned on through here except for flooding events. The seventh was the old tunnel assigned to the failed irrigation project years and years ago. There were several branches leading off from the main one for the secondary pump plant. There were some rust stains on the concrete walls, nothing new. Everything looked secure…the drone kept humming along, stopping to take pictures and shine lights at the connections every 10 feet or so. I was watching a little distractedly when I half fell off of my stool. Scrambling back up, I rewinded the tape a few seconds.

There. Movement. I peered close to the screen, pushing my glasses up. On the east side of the seventh tunnel was a tiny spring between the ground and the wall, only a few inches tall. A little spring where water was shooting up. There was no greenery or discoloration around the spout, suggesting it was new. I stared at the brown jet of water. Not running clear but carrying material with it. There was a small piping failure through the dam, and it was coming out from this particular crack. I watched it for what seemed like hours. Something about it fascinated me.

This huge, huge wall. Hundreds of tons of subgrade, layers upon layers, and covered in sharp rip rap, all overlying the impenetrable greasy shale. Still, from hundreds of feet below ground this little jet found its way to air again. Who knew how long it’s been trapped in the matrix of earth. The water must have felt so free. Was a tiny crack in the foundation all I needed to move too? I wanted badly to put my hand in the small geyser, to suck my fingers of it. Was the water warm? What did it taste like? Was there a difference between free water and water that’s been forced into pipes and taken somewhere?

Time ticked by. I could hear the guys laughing in the security room, hundreds of yards away. My butt hurt on the swivel stool I sat on. Looking up at the ceiling, I prayed to God. Then I got up from the stool and quietly shut the Operating room door. I wiped my forehead. In one spontaneous movement, in one tear-jerking, one reluctant movement, I went back to the computer and wrote the special controls to erase the footage of the jet stream. I edited the film so it would move seamlessly from one frame to the next. Then I sent the footage to the Commander, and several others.

I was buzzing with adrenaline. The nervousness was gone—I laughed hysterically with my secret knowledge. I keeled over the table with tears streaming down my face, my knees shaking and heart pounding. It was a slow move—only time would tell what would happen to this aperture. But if it ever erupted, we may finally see an end to this beautiful machine. Would it be like the Grand Canyon? Or would it be like the shale, falling slowly, dramatically, silently fragmented before aging into bedrock?

Finally, it felt like I’d unlocked some secret knowledge of the universe—there is a smile. I was the witness and she was my protector.

John