 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
Even as small children, we've always tried to help our parents. On the patio, in the garden, in the house or on the hill, with a flail, a hammer, a broom, a scythe, a pike, a spade, a potato, a tomato, in short, behaving like good kids should.
Even since then, I remember, our parents were preparing us for the difficult days in store for them in their old age, and always told us to be good, and not end up drunkards or convicts, so there will be someone to bring them a dipper of water on their deathbed. Now we're all grown, tall like pines, respectable, strong, accomplished, changed the Taurus for an SUV, with four story houses, with dumb whorish wives, with our own businesses, everything blossoming and as it should be. And behold, the time has finally come to think about the dipper of water. I and my brother Valer have always tried to show our parents how much we love them, but this issue is paramount. Only that son that can deliver a dipper of fresh water to the bedstand is the dearest son to old, sick parents, while the one that doesn't bring a dipper of water, well... any better won't even be expected. Therefore, we have started, gradually as I have said, to prepare for the dipper of water. Our parents were still strong, working around the house, but we started thinking about who is going to be that true son and how to properly deliver the dipper of water. It all started when Valer sneaked by and presented the parents with a china dipper, with red flowers and a blue outline on it. Then in my own mind I understood he is starting to dig me into a hole, that he wants to make me a laughingstock in front of our parents, and thinks only he can bring the dipper of water. When I saw that's how it's going to be, I quickly went and bought an enamelled bucket, beautiful like a flower, green, just perfect for fresh spring water, to make sure that Mother or Father don't get the idea I'm just a freeloader, incapable of bringing them water in their old age. Valer imagined he's so much better, and within the week, he came with a tractor head and delivered a five hundred gallon tanker filled with spring water in the driveway, and told our parents "Father, Mother, have no fear. I will take care of you both, so that you have water and are never thirsty while you're sick, for as long as it takes until you're finally buried." For me it was plain then, as the light of day, that Valer wants war. If he wants war, he will have war. In a few days, I came with some boys from my construction firm and dug a well, right in the driveway, beautiful, deep, filled with cool, fresh water, and I enclosed it with a two ton artistically-forged iron fence, in short, with all that's needed. When Valer saw the well, he became rabid, his eyes reddened and bulged out of his head, and in two weeks he came with a trailer filled with sand, he unloaded it over my well, that I labored to dig with my sweat and tears, and then he ran a steamroller over what used to be my well and placed astro turf on top, the idiot. After he covered my well, he came with his own brigade of workers, and dug five fountains around my one, each with a three ton artistically forged iron fence, roof and lightning rod. To answer in kind, I brought five cyanide boulders and threw one in each of his fountains, poisoning them for at least a hundred years, so he may remember. As to the water, I brought five excavators, and started digging a pond at the edge of the forest next to the township, filled with clean spring water from the forest and drew piping all the way to my parent's house, so that when there's need for a dipper of water, there is a dipper of water. But Valer didn't give up. He brought 20 excavators and started digging a 20 mile canal from the Mississippi all the way to the parent's house, and he added filters to make the water clear as a teardrop. But he wasn't done with this, the animal. As a real brother, he bought twenty truckloads of cane toads and dumped them in my pond, so it was filled with disgusting toads replete with scabies. Then I understood this isn't a matter to be taken lightly. I liquidated all my accounts, sold all my cars, the house and bought ten square miles of the Pacific Ocean. At the bottom of my patch, I reconstructed our parent's house, exactly like it looked originally, with the crooked weathervein,the garage with a missing plank, the weeds in the lawn, absolutely everything and I placed it all under a glass cover five miles deep, so there is water. Right next I built an atomic water filtering plant, and drew one foot diameter piping into the house, so there is water. When he saw that I bought a chunk of the Pacific, Valer went mad. He sold his Mercedeses, his Jeeps and his BMW's, he sent his wife and two daughters to work in Mexico City and rented out the house. With the money, he went to Novosibiirsk, where he bought three nuclear ice breakers, filled them with provisions, hired sailors and set sail for the North Pole. Two of them sank on the way, together with the crew, but the third made it, and Valer set himself to work. He put in a yoke two thousand polar bears and ten thousand seals, and plowed an iceberg from side to side. On top of that he poured concrete, and built a nuclear base for melting glaciers, so he has what with to fill the dipper of old age. There was a nuclear plant used to generate power. Around it, he built twenty million cranks, which each turned twenty pulleys, which in turn each reached one hundred meters bellow ice level, into the ocean, so that around the iceberg there hung from steel cables four hundred million buckets. When he pulled the switch on the reactor, the buckets and everything else glowed red hot, and half the entire North Pole sagged four hundred meters in twenty minutes. I was glad, because the level of the ocean rose, so I got a few million cubic meters of water extra, but half of Europe and America weren't happy at all, God rest them. When I saw how far things have gone, I climbed in a bath tub and rowed back to my parent's house. When I got there, everything was submerged and all I could see were rooftops. Luckily, our parent's house was up on a hill, and sure enough there they were, Mom and Pop, on the roof, each holding a chicken. Soon enough Valer also showed up, in his nuclear ice breaker. As we drew close to the house, Mother, with tears in her eyes, told us both "My boys, what have you done, God help us, what do you think we need all this water for, oh God help us" But Father, upset, said "What have you done you crazed idiots, don't you see it's a deluge all over the world ?" Then I couldn't keep quiet, so I told him to his face "What, dont you want a dipper of water ?" "No, I don't want a dipper of water", he said. "Now you don't want a dipper of water, do you ? But while we were kids, when every day you'd say < Valer agreed with me, and not able to hold it in anymore, yelled at Mother from atop his ship "What, Mother, you don't want a dipper of water either ?" "No I dont want a dipper of water, God help us, don't you see the entire town is under water, God help us, and the entire state, God help us" In short, me and Valer we made up, but we got upset with the parents, so we boarded them on Valer's ship and took them to Sahara, in the desert, where it was still dry. There, we built a beautiful sarai, and locked them in there with just a sack of dry dogfood and a dozen bags of salt, so they understand what it means to be thirsty. When we were back two weeks later, the sun was burning fiercely hot, the sarai was blackened by heat. When we went in, Father and Mother were lieing down, faint and weak, with cracked lips and sunken eyes, and with weak voices blabbering "Waater, water, just one dipper of water". Me and Valer saw then that our labour was not in vain, and that the day of the dipper finally came. We unloaded from the ship twenty tankers of fresh water, ten from Anctartida and ten from the Pacific ocean, we drew pipes, started the pumps and gave them water to drink. The next day, our parents, bloated, closed their eyes for ever. We were saddened and wept for two weeks, but at least we knew that we had accomplished out duty as good sons, and the dipper of water was not late at the bedstand. 1 people ran off to buy their chunk of the Pacific before it's too late. |