Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘aquifer’

By Request

As I maybe mentioned already, I’d once seen the aquifer, a tiny puddle way down at the bottom of a construction site. That gave me an idea – one of my very best! – and the next thing I knew I was digging. Not that casual sort of front paws digging, but all-out all-paws digging, pedal to the metal. Digging didn’t even describe what I was up to. This was excavating! I was excavating this – flower-bed, was it? – to get down to the aquifer, no matter how deep. Hard work, sure, but all for Charlie, so I loved doing it. Well, I already loved doing it, but because of Charlie I loved it even more! I was so full of love that when I happened to glance over and notice Shooter at my side, excavating away at full blast, enormous clods of earth flying high into the sky – what a fine digger he turned out to be! – I didn’t mind a bit. The truth was at that moment I loved him, too. What a world! We dug and dug, digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the –

Leda has this scream, so piercing it’s hard to believe a human can do it. I hadn’t heard that scream in a nice, long time, but I thought I sort of heard it now.

(from Heart of Barkness, the new Chet and Bernie novel)

Chetspeak on Sunday

Old man Heydrich, our neighbor on the other side, was out watering his lawn. We have a desert-style lawn, me and Bernie, and so do the Parsons, but Heydrich has a golf-course-style lawn, or even greener. Bernie got a real annoyed look on his face. Now that I’d seen the aquifer with my own eyes, almost totally gone already, I was just as annoyed as Bernie. How hard would it be to snatch that hose right out of his hand? A piece of cake. Let’s leave out my thoughts on actual cake for the time being.

Old man Heydrich glanced over at us, through a tiny rainbow that hovered in the spray. “Parsons kick the bucket?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Happened to see the ambulance.” Heydrich turned the hose on a big flowerpot with one small yellow flower growing in the middle, and watered it until it slumped over. “Happen to know he’s been poorly. Added it up.”

“There’s one aquifer,” Bernie said. “One and one only. Do the math on that.”

– from SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY.

Aquifers and Us

We crossed the Arroyo Seco Bridge, not even a trickle of water underneath. “How many aquifers have we got, big guy? One and one alone.” And soon we were in Pottsdale, one of the nicest parts of the Valley, with big houses, fancy stores, and lots of golf courses. “So goddamn green,” Bernie said. “Green comes from blue, and we’re running out of blue. How simple can it be?”

Green comes from blue? That’s what Bernie called simple? Just another example of his amazing brainpower.

– from TAIL OF VENGEANCE, the new Chet & Bernie e-short, available now.

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Chetspeak on Sunday

Bernie had a burger and another bourbon; steak tips and water for me. His face returned to normal. Whew. Bernie worried about the aquifer a lot and sometimes when he got going couldn’t stop. All our water came from the aquifer – I’d heard him say that over and over, although I’d never laid eyes on this aquifer, whatever it was. I didn’t get it at all: there was plenty of water in the Valley – how else to explain all that spraying on the golf courses, morning and evening, and those beautiful little rainbows the sprinklers made? We had water out the yingyang. I got up and pressed my head against Bernie’s leg. He did some light scratching in that space between my eyes, impossible for me to get to. Ah, bliss. I spotted a French fry under the stool next to Bernie’s and snapped it up.

– from Thereby Hangs A Tail. (Number 2 in the series, but they can be read in any order – order them in any order you want!)