The Drinking Fountain

If you have a tremendously good imagination, or perhaps a tinge of insanity, you can almost glimpse the scenes this fountain must have reflected in its prime—sometime back in the Vietnam era, probably—when its surface was still shiny, constantly ringing with the silver patter of water droplets. Now it is a yellowish brown, somewhat reminiscent of dried urine. The once mirror-like spigot is so covered with rust that it wouldn’t reflect a supernova were one to explode conveniently nearby. And yet—beneath that grimy film I sometimes imagine is a world hidden, as a stage behind a curtain. And sometimes that curtain flutters, speaking of someone walking by.
Such as about a week ago: I was pushing the small, no-longer-silver button that causes the water to come arcing out of the plaque-covered spigot. In the stream of liquid, I saw a small tadpole. It was only vaguely formed and it quickly washed away, but the reason I am sure that it was not just a trick of shadow is that I saw a tiny eye on the side of its head. I am not even sure if tadpoles have eyes, but this one did and it was staring right at me. By some small indication, I was aware that it was glaring at me—perhaps it was the way the light glinted off the eye—and that it was also scared. It had the look of a child who knows he is about to be sent away, but not where or why. It scared me.
My friends say I am obsessed with the water fountains at our school. Last year I did a paper in English class on the glory of drinking fountains. I got a C+. My teacher said I needed to incorporate issues of cultural or historical significance into my essay, such as the way drinking fountains were segregated in the South until the Civil Rights movement. But she didn’t understand; that wasn’t the purpose of my paper! I wasn’t trying to say that drinking fountains were important, I wanted her to understand that I admire them simply because they are.
I am interested in the things nobody notices. I don’t mean the leaves falling or the flowers blossoming—these are sappy and cliché, and there are plenty of poetic-type people out there who notice them. I’m talking about the different sounds of heaters and air-conditioners, and the titles of the books the teachers keep on their classroom shelves. I’m talking about the notes left scribbled on the chalkboard from the previous period’s class, the smell of new or ancient paper. I notice every time someone scratches a new piece of graffiti on the bathroom walls, and whenever anyone mentions the number forty-two. I like to look at people in other cars on the highway and wonder where they are going. I’m interested in the things nobody notices, the things they have no reason to notice.
For some reason, however, drinking fountains have always fascinated me more than most things. If I were an artist, I would probably have several portfolios full of drawings of various water fountains. Even terrible drawer that I am, I have attempted a few sketches. I can never quite capture the way the water droplets splatter as they hit the metal. It’s the beautiful clarity of an icicle combined with the vivid motion of a—I don’t know—a galloping horse in some idyllic wilderness setting. It’s so easy to observe, yet so hard to capture in pictures or in words.
And then there are the shapes. Wherever I go, the creatures in the fountain come out to greet me. There are many people and faces, some animals, and a few creatures that may once have walked the earth freely, but now exist nowhere outside the closed world of the drinking fountain. In older fountains they move more slowly, and occasionally stay around in the basin to greet me. In the modern ones, however, they are always in a hurry: out the spigot, in the drain, rushing to get back to whatever goes on inside that metal box where we cannot see.
However, I have never seen anything in a drinking fountain convey as much clarity of emotion as the tadpole in the oldest fountain at my school. I saw it again the other day, and this time it had grown legs. Its eyes had also grown, and these were once again what I noticed, for they were enlarged greatly out of proportion to the rest of it. They were beginning to show streaks of color as well, and although I am not sure, they seemed to be a deep purple, with rings of orange flames around the edges. And I thought, it is only a tadpole, but it has a dragon’s eyes. Yet still it was afraid.
I am beginning to become more afraid, too. Some of the students have been complaining that the drain of that fountain is always clogged, the water always pools up. I’ve noticed that the fountain leaks, too; the janitors, if no one else, will surely have reported the small puddle of water underneath the drinking fountain by the end of each day. I overheard one of the teachers mention that the pipes might be getting rusty, that the water isn’t safe. I’m worried that someone will finally find a little extra money in the budget, and get rid of the fountain before I have a chance to find out what the tadpole has to say.
I don’t know what to do. Every day, the tadpole comes out to glare at me before being sucked back into the tubing. Its eyes get bigger every day, and it looks less and less like a tadpole. The legs are getting longer and larger, and growing feet, human feet. And the eyes are now so big, I don’t see how other people could not notice them. But maybe it only shows itself for me.
It’s true; it’s not a rumor anymore. They’re going to get rid of the old drinking fountain and put in a new one. The creature knows this—that’s why it’s so frightened. It has shown itself to me more than any of its brethren before, and there can only be one reason: I am meant to save it. Tomorrow I will bring a container to school and transfer it to another fountain. It has grown quite horrible by now: in addition to feet, it now has hands, only the hands are holding its globular eyes and its fingers extend out beyond them, waving like tentacles. I don’t know how it ever could have looked like a tadpole. It now looks more like a monster from a very disturbed child’s imagination, but I know that it’s not evil. I can tell by its eyes, its sad eyes. It is impossible to feel anything but compassion for those eyes.
The out of order sign was like a jolt of electricity through my heart. I ran towards the fountain, but the button had no effect. There was not a drop of water, no tadpole, no creature. I sank to my knees, but quickly rose and pretended to look at a nearby bulletin when I heard footsteps approaching in the hallway. I glared at the teacher as she passed by, as if she were somehow responsible for the foiling of my plan.
How could it have come to this? The creature was going to die now, because I had been too late. No, I couldn’t let it happen. There had to be some way to get inside that fountain!
I looked carefully. The portion on top of the fountain seemed to be held on by a series of tiny screws. If I could unscrew them with, say, my scissors, I could find the creature inside the machinery! Quickly I set to work. I nervously looked over my shoulder as I was destroying the fountain, but no one appeared in the hallway. In surprisingly little time, I had removed the now slightly battered cover and exposed the dreaded interior. There were pipes everywhere; some were metal, some were plastic. I looked around and found a likely looking spot where two pipes were screwed together, and twisted them apart. A small deluge of murky water gushed out over my hands and onto my shoes.
And there it lay: limp, but not dead, certainly not dead. I picked it up between two fingers and rushed up a floor to the nearest fountain. I laid it down in the basin, and covered the drain as well as I could with my finger before starting the water flow. Soon there was a shallow puddle, but the fiery dolphin was still a limpid slug. Its flowing limbs were pressed together, like the fragile wings of a dead butterfly.
I was about to give up, when suddenly it twitched. It didn’t move for several moments, but then it began to get up, and then to swim around. At first it seemed confused, but when it realized what I had done, I was rewarded by seeing those fearful eyes turn to joy. It waved its eyes at me, and radiated a happiness that would have been a grin if it had had a mouth.
I released the drain and the water flowed out, taking the creature with it. Just before it disappeared into the machinery, it gave me one final look of thanks. Deeply satisfied I walked into the bathroom next door. I would never be able to tell anyone, but I had saved an endangered creature’s life. That had probably been the only one like it in the world! So what that I had neglected to study for a history test to do so?
When I came out, I decided to check on the creature one last time. I wondered if it might speak to me, as some creatures had, though I was not sure that this one even could. There were now more people wandering the halls; school would start in about twenty minutes. I pretended to drink from the fountain as I let the water slide by. Fifteen seconds is a very long time at a drinking fountain, and before I saw anything someone else was standing behind me, waiting for a turn.
In just a few more seconds I would have had to give up, but then the flow ceased for an instant, as if the spigot were clogged. The mangled body of the creature spewed out, torn and certainly dead this time. I gasped and caught it with my hand before it flowed out again. It was covered in a sticky greenish substance, and its eyes had crusted over with a sooty black sort of scale. It’s ugliness, now magnified by death, made it look even more pitiful than it had in life.
I didn’t notice that my hand was still pressing the spigot until something else flowed out of it. I think the person behind me had told me to move several times, and finally given up in disgust and left. Anyway, something else came out of the fountain then, something with long hair and long nails, more human-looking than my creature, but smirking, gloating in a way that made me sick. The tips of its nails were covered in green.
I’m about to have a meeting with the principle. I’m in terrible trouble: destruction of school property. No one saw me, but they asked me if I did it and I confessed. I don’t understand why they even care; they were about to get rid of the fountain anyway. I will show them the creature’s body for evidence of why I did it. They won’t believe me though; I don’t think they will even be able to see it.