Read Online The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry - Free Book Online Page B

fail the preservation of history, she’d be damned if she’d fail the earth, and above all, she’d be damned if she’d fail in front of these damned locals. From the poetry to the professorship, there had been enough failure. Swivel was her fresh start, dammit.
    And now there stood that water tower. Empty. With space for thousands of gallons, she figured. And at its base, the neat little pump house. Having recently viewed a PBS special on the tiny house movement, Carolyn now recognized its potential as a snug, environmentally conscious dwelling that would not only reduce her carbon footprint but would allow her to save the rent money she’d been spending on the apartment above Reverend Gary and his vociferous flock.
    Rushing home, Carolyn did some quick online research on water tower construction, fluid dynamics, and the website of a humanitarian organization (run by an acquaintance from her ill-fated stint in Central America) that built bicycle-powered machines for farmers in Guatemala. Then she called Glen Jacobson. If you help me renovate the pump house, she said, I’ll help you with your limericks.
    Harley Jackson had no inkling of any of this until the day he looked out his kitchen window and saw Glen Jacobson’s panel van parked inside the chain-link fence that surrounded the pump house and base of the tower. While he was puzzling on this, therewas a knock at the door. He opened it to find Carolyn Sawchuck standing on the mat.
    â€œI put a new padlock on the gate up there,” she said, pointing toward the water tower.
    â€œOh?” said Harley.
    â€œThe old one was rusted.” She opened her hand to reveal two shiny keys. “Here’s your copy,” she said, and handed one to Harley.
    â€œMy copy?” said Harley.
    â€œI’ll be keeping the other one,” said Carolyn. “I’m moving in.”
    â€œMoving in?”
    â€œMoving in. I represent the tiny house movement. Shrinking our carbon footprint, leading by example.”
    Harley stared a moment, then nodded. If he lacked the will to fight Klute Sorensen, he certainly didn’t want to tangle with Carolyn Sawchuck.
    Also: The lease. He could keep chipping away at those student loans.
    After Glen completed the renovation, there was much to do. Carolyn spent long hours in the pump house (always behind the locked gate and her “ACCEPTING NO VISITORS” sign) assembling her bicycle-powered pump (so as not to arouse suspicion, she ordered the pump and other parts from the same place she got her Zebra Cakes). (She bought the bike at a pawn shop in Clearwater and snuck it in under cover of darkness.) When it was ready, she made her first Christmas Eve climb, inserting the hose with the PVC “T” (which kept it from slipping down the overflow tube) at one end and plumbing it to the pump at the other.
    By New Year’s, she was astride her bicycle daily, pumping waste oil into the tank high above Swivel. At first she would stagger to herpapasan after only a few minutes, but soon she grew stronger and could pedal for two or three hours straight. She became lean and fit, Zebra Cakes notwithstanding.
    She hung on to her apartment for a few months, giving her time to sneak the pent-up oil out a few buckets at a time until it had all been bicycle-pumped into the sky. As for what she would do with all that oil? And her accumulating Department of Natural Resources violations? Carolyn put these things out of her mind. There was a lot of room in that water tower. She had bought herself plenty of time—years, in fact—to figure it all out. Meanwhile, she was living tiny, getting fit, and keeping all of that evil oil out of the soil and air.
    The ramen helped Carolyn stretch her budget, but over time she had also come to construe it as a form of character-enhancing asceticism. Harder for her to admit was the fact that she actually craved the salty broth; even now she sniffed the steam rising