Desert Rat

Comps: The Good Dinosaur, in theme, and Rango in settings, though not a typical western.

Why this story now: The once great Colorado River is nearly dead. In 1905 land speculators built a make-shift canal to siphon water to make worthless desert land bloom. The river had other ideas. A 1000-year flood destroyed the canal and used its channel to flood the Salton Sink creating the Salton Sea. Newspapers said it was the fault of greedy speculators, but the real story is only known by desert rats and by some, like me, who have traveled, walked, rafted, and flown the canyons of the Colorado. The story is steeped in my own travels and my hopes for the future of the river.
Desert Rat is about Duster, an orphaned desert rat, who misses his old life of family and friends and plentiful food, made possible by the rains that fell on the day of his birth. Missing his family, longing for friends and tired of cactus juice, he invents a sail-craft from a rusty roller skate, and pink bloomers, and sets ‘sail’ across a dry lakebed chasing a mirage. Caught in a dust-devil, he and his tortoise friend, Puck, are dropped at the base of a black pipeline they believe to be the snake that drank the water in his world. Duster is inadvertently abducted by two human ‘giants’ tending the pipeline.
Duster arrives in a new world. He escapes his captors and falls off a cliff into the Colorado River. Lily, a river rat on her invention, the Raft, fishes him out of the’ kiddie stream’. Duster explains he’s from a white desert, where the water was drunk up by a great black snake. Alarmed that this might happen to her world, Lily takes Duster to meet her huge family and grandfather, Chief of the Clan of the Turquoise Pools.
Duster tries to escape, but inadvertently passes the “Trial of Fire and Water.” The Chief pulls Lily and Duster aside to share a dire prophecy from his spirit guide, a duck. A great black snake, tended by giants, will drink the river leaving it baren and lifeless. Duster shares It’s already happened in his world. The Chief tasks Duster with the quest to destroy the great snake. Duster wants no part of this. Lily, angry at the lack of faith in her, insists on going. Duster grapples with fear and pride, but then remembers his lost family and agrees to go.
After a hero’s send-off for Duster, Lily, resentful at not being acknowledged, begins the trip by shoving Duster over a waterfall and into the Colorado river below. On the river Duster learns the sometimes fun, and sometimes dangerous life of a river rat. A near miss of a rifle shot reveals that the water thieves, the ‘giants,’ are also on the river.
Duster and Lily camp where petroglyphs radiate from the cave of the Spider Woman, weaver of clouds and prophecy. Duster is bitten. His vision-quest shows the destruction of stone pillars down river. The next day, while trying to stop a mining operation they cause an explosion toppling the pillars and flinging Duster and Lily into the main river, their raft destroyed.
There’s no way back or forward. They find, and try to steal, the boat of the water thieves. The men return. Lily and Duster hide. When the boat hits rapids, they are discovered. They escape by making a “flying saucer” from a pie tin but are shot down. As they fall into the river a duck in flight saves them. This spirit guide shows Lily that her family is about to drown in an epic flood. It shows Duster that his tortoise friend may soon die. Duster must save his friend, and Lily must warn her family, but there’s only one Duck. Duster takes the duck and leaves the angry Lily alone. He reconsiders and turns around, but detours to see the Great Snake drinking the river. It’s only a canal.
Duster flies back for Lily but is shot down. He crashes at Lily’s feet. Duster is forgiven. They climb out of the canyon to where they can see the canal draining the river. Meanwhile Duster’s old nemesis, the rattle snake that ate his family catches his scent and pursues them down slope toward the canal.
Duster and Lily stop at a round boulder perched atop a narrow neck of rock. If they dislodge the rock, it will roll and block the canal. Just as the two leap onto a lever to dislodge the boulder the snake arrives, strikes and misses. The boulder rolls and its capstone lands on the up end of the lever launching the two out of harm’s way. The boulder stops shy of falling into the canal as Duster and Lily land near a wagon carrying two sticks of dynamite. Duster tries to trick the snake into being blown up along with the boulder but fails. Duster grabs the other dynamite and lures the snake into a rat hole in the river’s earth-berm. Boom! A crater remains and Duster is gone.
The explosion echoes up the canyon to Lily’s family, on rafts, on their way toward Lily. Lily stands defeated as Duster emerges from the water, now a full-fledged river rat. They failed. The canal remains. Lily sings “The River Free,” and her family sing back from up-river. Lily’s family arrives, praising Lily’s spirit. The ‘giants’, arrive shooting at them.
Duster leaps into action. As clouds gather Duster uses the Chief’s metal-tipped staff to draw lightning, knocking out one of the men. Duster is triumphant until he sees a cataclysmic flash flood bursting out of the canyon. Lily and her family board their rafts. Duster runs to join but is caught up in the deluge. He survives and joins them as they are swept into Duster’s White Desert, transforming it into a water world where Duster, his friend Puck, and his enormous new family enjoy days at the beach. – End.