Our Tap Water Usually Tastes like Hedgehog
Our tap water usually tastes like hedgehog, except in the spring when it tastes like snake. Today our neighbor’s Jack Russell jumps into the well, so it tastes like wet dog. I want to get my water tasting normal again, so I do what my dad used to do whenever a dog jumped in our well: I dump a shitload of gin in there to make the wet dog taste disappear.
After I put the gin into the well, I take a nap. When I get up, I find my roommate, William, lying on the kitchen floor. He’s absolutely wasted.
“Did a dog get in the well?” he asks.
William used to be funny, but then he got beat up in a bar fight and now he only talks about God and how grateful he is to be alive and how he’s gonna finish the 1982 Camaro he’s been restoring and donate all the proceeds to his new megachurch.
“I forgot to leave a note,” I tell William. “Let me make you a sober-up smoothie as an apology.”
I get out the blender and the ingredients for the smoothie—the chocolate chips, the yogurt, the bear blood. Instead of using regular bear blood, though, I use hibernating bear blood. After William drinks the smoothie, he falls asleep for two days straight.
“Sorry about the smoothie,” I tell him when he wakes up. “I should’ve been more careful.”
“I must have needed the sleep,” he says, like he’s apologizing to me. “And I mean who hasn’t put hibernating bear blood into a sober-up smoothie by mistake?”
I don’t even know who I am talking to at this point. William is so docile. Nothing is anyone’s fault and everything that happens is “God’s plan.” I know that sometimes I can be an underwhelming friend, someone who might steal one of your wife’s bras or pawn the lawn mower you lent me, but I will always help get you out of a rut. And that’s where William is now. I mean if I would have done these things to him six months ago, he would have punched me in the face.
William heads out to the garage to work on the Camaro. He’s been working on it for the last three months, day and night, almost has it running now.
I decide to cook up some steaks for us. I set the grill right next to the garage, and while I am flipping one of them, a gust of wind flares up the flames, and the garage catches on fire. I go to grab the hose as William runs out of the garage.
“Wait, don’t!” he yells before I start spraying the water at the fire, but it is too late. I shoot the gin onto the flames and watch them explode into the sky. William calls the fire department. They don’t get there until the roof of the garage collapses onto the Camaro. This isn’t the first time I have lit something on fire to get one of my friends back on track, but the flames of this fire definitely have the worst smell and the blackest smoke.
“Wow,” I tell William. “That totally sucks.”
And this is what finally does it. William punches me in the gut, and when I crumple to the ground, he kicks me in the ribs. Which is exactly what the old William would have done, exactly what I deserved.
“You’re back,” I wheeze.
“I guess fucking so,” he says.
He swears at me and calls me some names as I stumble inside the house. I’ve got a splitting headache, so I pour myself a glass of gin-water to help ease the pain. When I bring the water up to my lips, I can tell there’s no gin left in it now; it’s only normal tasting hedgehog water, which is fine with me.
John Jodzio’s (@johnjodzio) work has been featured in a variety of places including This American Life, McSweeney’s, and One Story. He’s the author of the short story collections, Knockout, Get In If You Want To Live and If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home. He lives in Minneapolis.