The Water Knife

“‘If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely fucked ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around.’” 

Jamie is disgusted with people’s refusal to accept facts as the truth. He blames their reluctance to accept data about the water crisis in the west as the cause of the situation they find themselves in now. 

“In Papa’s head, things looked one way, but in Maria’s experience they were nothing the same. He kept saying that this was America and America was all about freedom and doing what you wanted, but the crumbling America that they drove across, where Texans were strung up on New Mexico fences as warnings, most definitely wasn’t the America he kept inside his head.” 

Maria doesn’t see the same America her father saw. The America that she exists in is one where each state is fighting one another for the few precious resources left. Maria blames her father for being naïve and idealistic. She wants to avoid her father’s mistakes and see things for what they really are.

“‘There’s a theory that if we don’t have the right words in our vocabularies, we can’t even see the things that are right in front of our faces. If we can’t describe our reality accurately, we can’t see it. Not the other way around. So someone says a word like Mexico or the United States, and maybe that word keeps us from even seeing what’s right in front of us. Our own words make us blind.’” 

Case shares a similar sentiment with Maria. In her view, the United States is no more. It exists in name only and keeps people from realizing the truth: that the world they once knew has changed forever. They no longer live in something called the United States.

“So why run? If the whole world was burning, why not face it with a beer in your hand, unafraid?” 

Lucy has reached a breaking point where she doesn’t care if publishing writing critical of Las Vegas or California puts her in danger. She’s decided to do it anyway, and it helps to do something brave when she’s been drinking.

“‘You get worked up about what’s right and wrong, but that shit’s only in your head. Rules are what the big dogs say they are.’” 

Maria has been clinging to old-fashioned ideas of what’s right or wrong or what’s just or unjust. Toomie tries to tell her that she’s living in the old world, and those ideas don’t apply anymore. The only thing that matters now is survival, which depends on making the Vet happy.

“Everyone knew the place was dying, but slow death didn’t attract attention. A record mass murder, on the other hand, that got American bureau chiefs salivating and news teams on the next plane out.” 

Lucy knows that the discovery of hundreds of dead Texans buried in a mass grave is going to garner media attention. However, she’s bitter that she’s been living in a city that’s been dying for a long time now, and nobody seemed to care. 

“Maybe tomorrow they couldn’t pay rent and they were dead. Maybe this was the last good thing that would ever happen to her. Tomorrow would be dust and want and asking Toomie for pity and a loan that he probably couldn’t give, but tonight she was dancing dirty with a man, and then a woman, and then by herself, letting her hands run up and down her hips, feeling the beat as she moved.” 

While under the influence of a drug called bubble, Maria doesn’t care about what the immediate future might have in store for her. She’s concerned about the present, about feeling good in a club with Sarah. Maria understands that she’s merely putting off all the unpleasantness, but she’s happy in the present moment.

“‘It’s not the lies. It’s the silence. Silence is what gets me. All the things you don’t say. All the words you don’t write. That gets to you. After a while it just kills you.’” 

Lucy is frustrated with Angel when he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he’s a water knife working for Case. For Lucy, it would be easier to expose a lie. Silence, however, is just a confirmation that no one really cares enough to lie because there won’t be any consequences.

“Mosaics made you hope that you could push pieces around to create a picture that didn’t exist, instead of letting all those little pieces click click click right into place. Instead of letting them tell you what was right in front of your face.” 

Angel and Case have two different ways of seeing the world. Case collects data and information and finds patterns to form a larger picture to inform her decisions. Angel is much more literal, needing to see the thing itself.

“Angel couldn’t help liking her. Something about her efficiency, no bullshit. Most people would have been losing their shit right now, after going through what she’d gone through, but she’d just gotten up from being tortured and gotten back in the game.” 

Lucy’s character shows that she’s come a long way from an outsider journalist to someone who lives and breathes Phoenix. The experience of tracking down Jamie’s story toughened her. Angel believes he and Lucy see the world the same way.

“For the last ten years she’d documented people like this, and now she was one of them. Part of the story, just as she’d always known she would be.” 

Lucy has always had a complicated relationship with becoming “part of the story.” On the one hand, it made her feel like less of an outsider where she lived and legitimized what she was doing in Phoenix. On the other hand, it put her in greater personal danger.

“‘I used to know this Indian guy. Skinny dude, came over from India. Didn’t have a wife or family anymore. Maybe they were back there in India, I can’t remember. Anyway, the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are alone here in America. They’re all alone. And they don’t trust anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn’t. Because here, no one knew their neighbors.’” 

Not only are people divided and fighting amongst themselves over resources, but the country is divided as well. America is no longer the United States. Instead, individual states have closed their borders and militias kill people to stop them from entering illegally.

“‘You give people something to do, and that’s what they are. People.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the job that pulls people’s strings, not the other way around.’” 

While Lucy talks to Angel, he reveals his cynical side about human nature. Angel believes people aren’t really in charge of their own fates. They are products of the job they’re meant to do.

“Lucy felt sick, listening to him. It was a view of the world that anticipated evil from people because people always delivered. And the worst part was that she couldn’t really argue.” 

Lucy’s frustration might also come from her desire to see Angel as a good person himself. When Angel anticipates evil from everyone, it makes Lucy consider whether to expect evil from Angel as well. Additionally, she must reconcile her desire to see Angel as a good person with the evil things he has already done.

“She’d lied to herself all along, pretending she could wade among the refugees and swimmers and dealers and narcos and not have any of it rub off on her—as if because she refused to look directly at the beast, the beast would agree not to look at her as well.” 

Lucy expresses a sentiment that other characters throughout the novel have also expressed: that they (or someone else) aren’t seeing the world accurately. For Lucy, she believed that if she refused to let Phoenix change her at her core, then she wouldn’t change. However, Lucy does change, despite her resolve.

“The maelstrom turned people into animals. Had almost turned her into the same. But now, finally, she thought she understood. The maelstrom of fear could drive almost anyone to become less than they were. To tear apart your neighbors, to string them up on fences.” 

Lucy is literally in a maelstrom of fire while she considers this. She almost resigns herself to her fate in this moment as the flames close in on her.

“This was the Hell that she’d been warned about when she used to go to church. This is where sinners went. Except it seemed to be swallowing everyone up, not caring that people like her and Toomie were caught up in it, just as much as monsters like the Vet.” 

Once again, Maria is confronted by the obsolescence of right or wrong, just or unjust. When Maria used to go to church, those ideas were clear and differentiated: Sinners went to Hell and the saved went to Heaven. In this new landscape, those rules don’t apply anymore.

“And now, as Toomie promised safety and protection, Maria found herself wanting to believe in him, too. To believe that somehow she could count on the older, more experienced man to take care of her. To provide for her. To solve her problems for her. Just the way she’d pinned her hopes on Papa, and Sarah had pinned her hopes on Mike Ratan.” 

Maria wants to believe something that she knows isn’t true but is convenient and comfortable. The idea of staying with Toomie is a comfortable idea for Maria. However, Maria knows that her greatest chance at survival is to get out of Arizona completely.

“‘It is better to live in a wasteland, than with an angry woman.’” 

Angel listens to the sicario in his dream. Lucy did betray Angel, and she is the reason for why he was shot. However, Lucy didn’t set up Angel out of anger, but to protect her own family. The sicario may be projecting onto Angel. 

“Lucy had saved him when she could have walked away. If she still felt guilt for her betrayals, well, that was her code. Angel had his own, and his code said that betrayals happened all the time, for small reasons and large.” 

Angel can easily forgive Lucy for betraying him. In Angel’s line of work, betrayals happen all the time. Case had said that Angel was flexible and good at adapting to new situations. It would seem that in his line of work, being quick to forgive a betrayal like Lucy’s would be beneficial to him.

“‘You would have let her walk out with the book, too,’ he said. ‘It’s wallpaper. Every water manager, every bureaucrat—even you got that damn book. All of you with your nice hard-copy first editions, all of you pretending you know shit.’ He opened his eyes blearily. ‘Acting like you all saw this shit coming.’” 

Angel fires back at Lucy when she mocks him for letting Maria walk away with the copy of Cadillac Desert. The book contained the senior water rights that they had been searching for all along. Angel tells Lucy that while he may have overlooked the book itself, Lucy and others like her completely overlooked the book’s message until it was too late.

“‘I think the world is big, and we broke it.’” 

Angel and Lucy discuss the possibility of humanity adapting and overcoming the climate crisis. The world is a big place and takes time to break. Lucy seems to be suggesting that the world might be too big to fix again.

“‘It makes you wonder what people will call us when archaeologists dig us up in another couple thousand years,’ Lucy said. ‘Will they have some word for us? For this time period? Will we be Federalists, because the country was still working? Or is this the Decline of the Americans?’” 

Angel and Lucy float the idea that no one will be around thousands of years later to dig them up. Angel, while cynical about human nature, is more optimistic than Lucy on this front. He believes that people will adapt and survive somehow.