Graphic the Valley (14 page)

“While you were sleeping?”

“Yes. I woke up and my eyelid was cut. Bleeding. He hit me with
For Whom the Bell Tolls
. Something symbolic in that.”

I looked at my father who would never hit me. I said, “How bad was the cut?”

“Just bleeding a little. And I kept the book. I hid it underneath my pillow right then and there. Read it every day after that until I finished. It took a month to get through.”

I began to read the book. I read it while I sat against a tree on a downhill slope, my favorite reading spot in the afternoon, when the sun came in from my right, and I could see all the way to the river.

The book didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand who the fascists were. I asked my father. “Who are they fighting?”

“The fascists.”

“Yes, but who are those people?”

He was splitting kindling off larger rounds. Fingers spread, he stroked with the hatchet through the gap between his middle finger and thumb. This was his kindling technique. He said, “They are the people who do not believe that humans are equal. They want a hierarchy.”

I was thinking about the scene that Pilar described, when the fascists were thrown into the gorge at Ronda. “Why do they want the fascists to die though?”

“The republicans?” My father chipped off a wedge of pine. “They want the fascists to die because the fascists want the republicans to die.”

“So they both want the other ones to die?”

He scraped the pile of kindling to the side and looked at me. “Exactly.”

I still held the book. I was about to go back up to my tree to keep reading. “Wait,” I said, “would we be the fascists or would we be the republicans?”

My father held up a sliver of wood, pinching it between his middle finger and his thumb. He wiggled the wood. He said, “Tenaya, we would be neither. We would be the peasants. In the middle. Always.”

• • •

The next day, my father told me the story of my birth. We were collecting crawdads at the mouth of the creek. My father chummed the shallows with mouse entrails. He held a crawdad out to me, its red pinchers flailing. He said, “I waved to your mother from the rail of El Capitan Bridge.”

“When? The other day?”

“No, no,” he said. “This is the story of your birth. Just listen.”

“Okay.”

“I waved and she waved back. She was sitting with her arms behind her, her large pregnant belly in front of her, and her black hair hanging long. She was wearing the tortoiseshell sunglasses that she found earlier that day on the sidewalk in front of the Village store. I remember all the little things. Those glasses were too big for her, and they made her look like a child wearing her mother’s glasses. It didn’t seem possible that she was already forty years old.

“The drought had shrunk the river. I jumped off the bridge into one of the only remaining holes, maybe seven feet of water. I let myself drift in the wind current. Felt the sun and the cold water, holding my breath. Then I swam up.

“I looked over but your mother wasn’t on the beach anymore. I couldn’t see her. I looked back and forth from the beach to the bridge, and still nothing.

“I put my head down and swam. Forty feet around a dried snag, crawling to the shore and standing up, jogging to the top of the bank. She was there, leaning against a road sign at the north end of the bridge, clutching the post. Her sunglasses had slipped down.

“I said, ‘Let’s get to the car.’ We hurried to the south side of the bridge, to the car, and I popped the backseat forward and helped her slide in. She scooched against the far side, her legs open, her right knee up and her left foot down in the scoop behind the seat.

“I could smell the vinyl, the rubber, and your mother’s forehead sweat like old sugar and wet clothes. And there was the copper scent of the blood too, the baby coming. That was you.

“I didn’t close the passenger door and we did not drive. I helped her get her underwear off and then I held her hand.

“No one stopped to help. No one called a doctor. People left us alone. The Valley left us alone.

“Maybe an hour later, you were coming, and your mother’s back was against the inside of the car and I was still crouching in the bucket behind the seat, and your mother screamed as your head pushed through. Your head stopped then, face-down. You were black-haired like a wire-covered grapefruit. Your shoulders would not go through and your mother screamed more and more.

“I tried to pull a little, and I told her to push. I said, ‘Push, just push,’ over and over, but you were stuck and your mother was screaming.

“This went on for maybe two or three minutes. Then a new contraction came and I did pull. I pulled and turned, and my thumb hit your collarbone, and your collarbone broke underneath my thumb. Your mother pushed one final time and you slid out blue and strong and slick, followed by a short gush of watery blood.

“That’s how it was,” my father said. He was still holding the crawdad.

I held the bag with the rest of the crawdads squirming on top of each other, ripping each other’s pincher-arms off. I felt the little knot on my collarbone.

My father dropped his crawdad into the bag and it went to war with the ones underneath. My father said, “A boy with a collarbone already beginning to mend. So fast. I cut your umbilical cord with a pair of sewing shears I found wedged in the middle of a flattened roll of duct tape underneath the front seat. Your mother pulled her legs up, curling around you. I slid in and closed the car door behind me, and we fell asleep like that, for an hour, then I drove us back to camp. When I stopped the car at our tent, I realized what I needed to name you. I looked at your mother and said, ‘Tenaya. You know? We’ll name him Tenaya.’”

First snow too early. She looks at the sky as if betrayed
.

The people have moved to the far end of the Valley, near Mirror Lake. They constructed new lodges in the trees, more camouflaged than the ones that came before. There are rumors of what is to happen, blue men with guns, pale, unlike any animal they’ve seen. Not like the brown bears or the lions. Not like the Miwoks to the south
.

She catches a squirrel raiding the acorn stores. Bludgeons it with a six-inch shard of granite. She hangs the squirrel from a low branch by its tail, an upside-down warning to the others
.

Later, while cooking dinner, she notices a spot of blood on the back of her hand, but does not wipe it off. Behind her, they are coming up the river. Coming in their dark boots. Marching. Camping wherever night catches them
.

My childhood and Lucy’s mixed. I didn’t want to sleep because of the nightmares. Sometimes I was at the river again, five years old, looking into my sister’s eyes. Only Lucy now, her face whitened by smoke. I kissed her cheek but there was no smell of her.

I lay back on top of Greazy’s sleeping bag. Closed my eyes. Lucy wrestled with me in the water. Sucked her teeth at the cold. Pursed wind-chapped lips. Arched her back against me. Nothing but skin.

I opened my eyes and saw a dimple in the rock. Two lines lateral from the roof crack. Where the lichen touched at the lip.

Greazy gave me a pint of Southern Comfort. He was working Cocaine Corner, a boulder in the middle of Camp 4, by himself. Shirtless, he had a fist-size bruise above his left kidney. He said, “You want that bottle?” He pointed to his open backpack. “Dude gave it to me but I can’t drink SC. Too damn sweet.”

“Thanks,” I said. I uncapped it. Drank. A small sip at first. Then a couple bigger swigs.

Greazy said, “Like it, huh? Shit makes me puke every time.”

“No,” I said, “it’s fine.”

Greazy climbed the opening moves on the corner and slipped. Fell back and missed hitting his head on a rock by six inches. He looked at the rock and laughed. Rubbed his head.

I said, “Hey, Greazy. How many people got in on that weed score?”

Greazy stood and brushed the dirt off his butt, then the bottoms of his shoes. “You mean up at the lake, the one I told you about?”

“Yeah, the Lower Merced crash. The Lodestar.”

“Fuck. Let me see. How many people…let me think about it…” Greazy put his hands on the corner of the boulder again. He rolled forward onto his feet and started climbing. He exhaled. “Fifteen or twenty?” he said. “All dirtbags pretty much.” He moved higher on the arête, and I set down my bottle to spot him.

He fell from halfway up the boulder and I checked him, keeping him from landing on the big, triangular rock below the crux.

“Thanks,” Greazy said. “I never get this shit. Never. And I’ve fucked myself up on that big rock too, a few times.”

“Sure,” I said. I picked up the Southern Comfort. Each swallow was a sugar-dipped ember. I’d drunk so fast that it rushed. I said, “After this spot, I’m going to go walk around. I’ll catch you later, okay, Greazy?”

“Cool, man, cool. Take care of yourself.” Greazy slapped my shoulder.

I walked south into the boulderless gap. I kept sipping on the bottle, going for drunk. At Site 37, I stopped when I saw Carlos. He wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing a flannel shirt, standing ten feet away.

Someone behind me said, “Stay where you are.”

I turned around and saw a man with a pistol.

“Just relax,” he said.

Carlos said, “I’m not with another officer right now. Understand?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, you will,” he said. “I’m not arresting you.”

I looked at the other man. The gun he was holding was one of those porcelain ones, not metal.

Carlos said, “We’re not riding in the patrol vehicle and I’m not in uniform. Right?”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will,” Carlos said. “Let’s walk down here.” He led the way along the path to the parking lot. I followed with the other man behind me. We passed the culvert and the ranger’s kiosk.

“Here’s our vehicle,” Carlos said. He pointed to an old Buick, blue and dented. “Get in.”

He opened the driver’s door and popped the seat forward. I ducked and got in back. The other man walked around the truck and got in the passenger side. He didn’t turn around and point the gun at me. He held the gun in his lap and sat, facing forward.

Carlos settled into his seat and started the car. Then he drove up the north side of the loop, heading east. He stopped the car in front of the Delaware North Company’s offices near the store.

Carlos pointed. “Watch.”

I watched as men moved a couch out of the first office and walked it down the road to a truck. Then a woman followed with a big box.

I said, “Are they moving offices?”

“No.” Carlos pointed each time someone came out or returned from the moving truck. We watched the people go back and forth.

I swigged on the bottle. There wasn’t much left. My tongue felt thick and I needed water. The liquor was like silt in my brain. I said, “Is the Park Service giving them a new office?”

“No,” Carlos said. “DNC’s leaving for good.”

I felt too relaxed to understand. I said, “So what?” but that wasn’t the question I was trying to ask.

Carlos laughed. He said, “So you’ll see.” He turned the key and drove us back to Camp 4.

The other man got out. Then Carlos opened his door, stood, and popped the seat forward. I hunched to slide through the space, turning my head, and didn’t see Carlos jab. He punched me with his right hand, and I fell back into the bucket, my face split next to my eye. Squinting, then opening my eyes again, I saw the ring-knife, the one-inch-serrated mini as it flashed between Carlos’s index and middle fingers.

Blood ran down to my jaw. I wiped my face and smeared it to the corner of my mouth. I said, “What the fuck?” The liquor was waving. I touched my face and closed my eye.

Carlos laughed. He said, “What the fuck, or why?” He reached into the cab and grabbed my face, stuck his thumb in the split and pulled it sideways.

I screamed and punched, hit his hands and the back of the seat. Then his forearm. I was punching from a seated position. Carlos dug his thumb in and pulled the slit sideways until it tore. Then he stepped back.

I pressed the zigzag closed with my palm. Sat and watched him with one eye.

Carlos said, “That’s for even. Nothing more, nothing less. Just let that be.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

He said. “It’s not as bad as mine. Not nearly.” He fingered the long, pink line down his face.

Blood seeped past my pressed palm, dripping onto my shirt.

Carlos said, “You better get that stitched.”

The other man walked around the car and stood next to Carlos. He’d put the pistol in his pocket, the handle sticking out. He tapped his thumb on the butt.

Carlos stepped back and made a motion for me to get out.

I was still looking out of one eye.

“Go ahead and get out,” he said. “We’ll let you leave now. Let you think.”

My palm was starting to slide around on the blood.

Carlos took another step back. “Come on,” he said.

I ducked my head and got out of the back of the car. Stood up full, still holding my face.

Carlos said, “There’s a lot more going on than you think. So I’ll let you know.”

“Let me know?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll let you know.”

I pulled my hand away and the blood drizzled down my face.

“Then you’ll see,” he said. “And you’ll trust me then.”

“Trust you?”

“Like I said, there’s a lot going on.” Carlos folded the blade of the mini-knife, and slid the ring back onto his key chain. “See you soon.”

• • •

I walked to the caves by the Ahwahnee and got Super Glue and duct tape from Greazy’s stash. Greazy wasn’t there, but I knew he wouldn’t mind. Then I went to patch myself in the Curry shower building where the mirrors are clean.

The cut went down an inch next to my left eye then turned at the bottom toward my ear. I filled the torn run with glue first, then up, sealing and pressing as I went.

I hit the hand dryers with my elbows over and over as I used both hands to press the edges closed in the warm air. Then I duct-taped a thin crisscross, laid a wide strip over, to the corner of my eye. The smell of Super Glue reminded me of my mother.