California: A Novel (27 page)

But, no, Cal thought, he wouldn’t let Frida into his mind. He’d focus on security. It was a welcome distraction.

Cal followed the boys toward the Bath.

“Our job is to watch for anything out of the ordinary,” Sailor said. “It rarely happens—in the whole time I’ve been here, only a few people have ventured into the Forms. And they quickly turn back if we exert enough pressure.”

“What do you mean by ‘pressure’?”

“If you see something,” Dave said, “we want you to blow your whistle. Whoever’s been designated the muscle will go investigate. The rest of us wait as backup.”

Sailor smiled. “I was the muscle the day you and Frida got here.”

“We’ll spend some time in the western Tower,” Dave said, “and then we’ll separate for an hour or two.”

“We need to show you the lay of the land first,” Sailor said.

There were a few people walking the main path and sitting out on porches, bundled in heavy coats and blankets. The Hotel and the Bath anchored each end of this path, and it reminded Cal of a promenade. From across the field, right by the barn, smoke rose from one of the two nightly campfires where people congregated to play music and tell stories. Peter told Cal that he made it a point of attending at least twice a week: “Just because we’re in charge, doesn’t mean we should live separately,” he’d explained.

The houses had all been winterized, their windows giving away nothing. Cal wondered which rooms were filled with people, and which were still empty. Right now somebody must be pulling up the covers and blowing out a candle.

It was cold out tonight. His breath would be visible by midnight, but with a hat on, and his sweatshirt, Cal would be comfortable. The sky was obscene with stars.

Once they’d passed the Bath, Dave said, “Here.” He handed Cal a whistle on a string.

“Put this on,” he said. “We’ll go over the calls in a few minutes.”

Cal nodded. The whistle felt good around his neck.

“Also this,” Dave said. He was giving Cal his gun back.

“I cleaned it,” Sailor said. He grinned as he passed Cal a small box. “More bullets.”

Cal nodded, clutching the gun. He tucked it into the back of his pants and put the bullets in his pocket.

“Ours are in the Tower,” Sailor said. Guns, Cal realized.

Cal had always wondered what it might be like to climb a water tower. The ladder, with those semicircles of metal jutting out every few rungs, as if they might keep anyone safe. Each platform was another dare.
Are you sure you want to climb higher?
As a kid, Cal wondered how scary it might be to reach the top. Did the whole thing rattle in the wind, sing like shaky old bridges did?

This Tower was built of splintery wood, and its sawdust smell made him think of fall carnivals and pumpkin patches. The ladder reminded him not so much of a water tower but of the high dive at the local pool his mom would take him to during the summer. Damp. No frills. Possibly unsafe. But once you were up there, you definitely couldn’t turn back, or you’d run the risk of embarrassing yourself in front of the kids below. He understood why Dave and Sailor had told him to go first.

Up, up, up he went. When Dave started climbing, the whole tower seemed to sag with the added weight. Up, up.

When he got to the top, he didn’t look over the edge. Not yet. The Tower’s room was a small turret, with walls that went chest high. The floor was crowded with a bucket of rifles, a pile of coats, some miners’ helmets with flashlights attached, a megaphone, and a bedpan. Empty, thank God. From a hook hung the binoculars he’d seen Peter and Dave using the first time he’d caught sight of them.

Once Sailor and Dave had reached the top, Cal finally allowed himself to look out. The moon had been full the night before, so there was some light. From here, the Land seemed almost puny. Just that one strip of buildings, and the field with its barn, garden, and showers. Encircling it all were the Forms. From here, Cal could see where they ended.

Beyond all this: trees and more trees. They were tall, and in the dark their greenery turned woolly. To the east, a speck of orange firelight pulsed. Cal blinked and saw, farther out, a second fire.

“There,” Sailor said, pointing north, “the old highway cuts through.”

“Where does it lead?” Cal asked. He suddenly felt vulnerable. He didn’t know what was beyond the Land, and he didn’t know if he could trust the people who did.

Dave smirked and said they better go over the whistle calls.

If Cal saw anything suspicious in the Forms, he was to blow one long whistle. “Do it until you’ve run out of breath. Your job on security is simple: to watch for outsiders and to alert us if anyone tries to enter the Forms. You’re patrolling for anything out of the ordinary. And I mean anything. If we end up going nuts about a rogue raccoon, so be it.”

“We also have arm signals for the daytime,” Sailor said, “but they won’t do you any good while it’s dark.”

“For tonight you only really need that one call,” Dave said. “The others you can learn later.”

As soon as the lesson ended, Dave walked to the other side of the platform, scanning with the binoculars. He pulled a walkie-talkie out of his jacket and began exchanging observations with someone in the Forms. The reception was scratchy, and Cal didn’t recognize the person’s voice. He had only just learned of the walkie-talkies that morning. August was going to lobby for a few more sets from Pines, plus more batteries.

What wouldn’t they ask for?

“No women ever want to come up here, and do this job?” Cal asked. “I mean, come on, everyone digs walkie-talkies.”

Sailor shrugged. “You assume this is a superior occupation.” He nodded at Dave, who was now watching the landscape. He looked like a dog, waiting for its owner to come home.

“Anything withheld long enough does start to seem better, don’t you think?” Cal said.

“You should write fortune cookies,” Sailor said.

Dave hushed them. “Guys. Focus.”

They fell silent and watched for movement as Dave had instructed. Cal kept his eyes roaming as Sailor explained that some of the Forms had been there long before anyone on the Land showed up. Cal held his breath as Sailor talked; he wondered if Frida had heard this before or if she’d learned a different history.

“But we built a whole lot more, and we designed it so that they’d form the maze you walked through,” Sailor explained. From above, they were spirals. “Some of the spirals are square shaped,” Sailor said. “Come up during the day, and you’ll see. There
is
order to it. And the glass in the ground? That was my idea. Saw it in Peru when I was six years old.”

“What were you doing there?” Cal had never met anyone who had been out of the country.

“Guys,” Dave said again, and Sailor didn’t answer.

After what felt like an hour, but could’ve easily been twenty minutes, Sailor said, “Break.”

Dave continued to watch, but Sailor nodded at Cal, and the two men slid to sitting in what little free space there was.

“We take forty-minute shifts,” Sailor explained. “But Dave always starts out crazy.”

Sailor brought out a rag from his coat pocket, and he untied it to reveal a handful of pumpkin seeds. He gestured to Cal to take some.

Cal took a few of the seeds. They weren’t coated in salt, as he’d hoped, but bare, a couple of them still slimy with pumpkin innards. “Can I ask you something?”

Sailor waited.

“How did you end up here? Why did you come to the Land?”

“Why do you want to know?” This was from Dave. He held the binoculars to his face.

“I was just curious,” Cal said. “I mean, why here?”

“We were recruited,” Sailor said. “By Catherine with a
C.
We called her Catie.”

“Catie with a
C,
” Dave said with a little laugh. “She was awesome.”

“Are you sure that was her real name?” Cal asked. “I mean, I’m thinking it could be the same person who recruited Micah. Toni? Short for Antonia.”

“I doubt it,” Dave said. “It was Catie’s first year doing it.”

“They used a different recruiter every year,” Sailor said. “Cleaner that way.”

“‘Cleaner’?”

“As in harder to trace back,” Dave said. “The same woman coming to visit a bunch of boys at a weird school, year after year? That’s bound to draw attention eventually.”

“So Catie with a
C
was part of an ongoing practice, to get Plankers?”

“You bet,” Sailor said.

“What did she tell you?” Cal asked.

“What did Toni-short-for-Antonia tell
you?
” Dave asked.

“Nothing,” Cal replied. “It was Micah she wanted.”

“Then she wasn’t a good recruiter,” Sailor said. “They’re supposed to get at least two or three men interested.”

“Why Plank, though?”

“Why not Plank?” Sailor asked. “We know how to farm and how to cook and how to build shit. You need all that in this world. Plus, we’re intellectually curious.”

Dave laughed. “I guess they tried to get some off-the-land types first, but they weren’t focused enough or smart enough or were just too hard to find. They needed people with skills, and Plankers have them.”

“You’re talking about the Group, right?”

No answer.

He tried again: “Sailor, you said not everyone on the Land participates in the Group’s activities?”

That’s when Dave turned, binoculars falling around his neck. “Jesus, Sail. You’re worse than a teenage girl.”

“He’s at the meetings,” Sailor said. “What difference does it make if he knows?”

“Knows what?” Cal asked.
Find out everything.
“What did the recruiter tell you?”

“It was different for Micah,” Sailor said. “He’d never heard of the Group when he was in school. But by the time we were at Plank, we’d read about the stunts and Micah Ellis, the infamous suicide bomber, and even the encampment. The school was a month from closing when Catie showed up.”

“God, that was depressing,” Dave said. “Remember how classes kept getting canceled?”

“She talked to us about the projects the Group was undertaking to revitalize L.A., and she gave us books to read. She told us what similar organizations were doing in other cities.” Sailor paused. “I seriously had no idea where I was going to go until she came around.”

“But you didn’t go to a city,” Cal said. “This is nowhere.”

“We trained in L.A. first,” Sailor said. “The Group wanted to end senseless violence in areas with minimal population.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Dave raised an eyebrow. “Pirates, Cal. Bands of marauders. Sailor is babbling about how we were trained to protect settlers in this area from Pirates.”

Sailor’s voice pitched a little higher; he was excited. “The argument was, why should those criminals take and take from innocent people? They had no mission beyond greed. In some ways, they were a lot like the people who started the Communities, taking from the less fortunate, hoarding it for themselves. We came with about twenty others to make this area peaceful.”

Cal couldn’t find the words to speak, and Dave smiled. “That’s why you’re still alive, my friend. Because we eradicated the threat.”

“You’re welcome,” Sailor said.

Dave sighed. “Break.”

Sailor rolled his eyes, and stood.

Dave sat across from Cal on the floor. Cal reminded himself to be quiet, let them keep talking, let them lead him to the answers.
The meek will inherit the earth:
wasn’t that the phrase? He wasn’t even sure what that meant, even after the Sociology of Thought seminar at Plank. During that class, he’d almost wished his mother had sent him to Sunday school. The Christians, and the former Christians, they’d had a leg up during the lectures on Jesus.

Dave yawned loudly and Sailor, eyes to the binoculars, said, “The more Dave yawns, the better he is at this job.”

“Good thing yawns are contagious, then,” Cal said.

Dave laughed. “You’re witty, California.”

Cal winced. He’d noticed, over the last week, how every person he got close to on the Land turned into Micah, if only for a second. It could be a small, borrowed gesture or some phrase Micah had used the day before or his method of skating across an insult in such a way that it was barely detectable to the victim. Back at Plank, Cal had done it, too. Once, in a class, he’d found himself drawing goats with human faces in the margins in his notebook, the very same beasts Micah liked to doodle when he was bored. Cal had stopped midscrawl and even gone back to black out the evidence of his mimicry. Was he ashamed that he’d imitated his friend so brazenly? Or was it that he knew, in his heart, that Micah was inimitable?

Fuck it, Cal thought. The meek didn’t inherit a thing. “Why would the Group want boys from Plank?” he asked. “So what if we can grow food and talk about Kant? That’s hardly what makes someone want to join the Group. It doesn’t compute.”

Dave laughed. “Wow, really? That’s like saying you don’t see how so many radicals could come out of Berkeley in the 1960s. These things happen. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the Group was coming to Plank long before you got there, and long after you left.”

Sailor nodded. “Why do you think it was still open when so many other schools were shutting down?”

“But not everyone there was a terrorist,” Cal said.

“Of course not,” Sailor said. “I’m not a terrorist, either.”

“But you’re in the Group,” Cal said.

“It’s not a gym membership,” Dave said. “It’s not like they give you an ID card when you join.”

“Who knows what we are now anyway?” Sailor said.

“What does that mean?” Cal said.

“Back at Plank,” Dave said, “Catie told us about a frontier that needed to be tamed. She said the Pirates were mercenary killers who needed to be stopped.”

“And that appealed to you, even though you’d be connected to the Group? You knew what they’d done, you just said so.”

“Eventually we got to meet Micah, work with him,” Dave said.

Cal said, “I wouldn’t have pinned you for a killer, Sailor.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Sailor said. “I did what was right.”

Cal remembered what Frida had told him. If it had been Pirates that Micah had killed, wasn’t that a good thing? Not killed,
but beheaded.