The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (21 page)

I pushed at the side of the dinghy. It might as well have been set in stone. I groaned. Pushing on the gunwale I could rock it a bit. “Turn over, boat.” I was amazed and frightened by my lack of strength; normally I could have flipped that dinghy with one hand. Now it became the great struggle of my life to overturn the damn thing. I got out the oars, slid one under the keel, lifted the wide end, and balanced it on the handle end of the other one, which had its wide end jammed in the sand. That tilted the boat, and on the other side I stepped on the low gunwale and pulled at the high one, all at once and with all my might. The boat flipped and I had to fall away from it flat on my face to avoid being crushed.

I spit out sand and regained my feet. Carried a sandstone clod to the bow. Lifting the bow was not that hard, and I rolled the clod under it to keep it up. If I had had the sense to put the seaweed in the boat I would have been set, but at this point I wasn’t thinking that far in advance. The seaweed just fit under the gap, and I stuffed it under, strand after strand, until all that I had dragged over with me was under the boat. Getting myself under was more difficult—I scraped my back, and finally pushed up with my head until the bow was lifted far enough to get my butt in.

Once under the boat I was tempted to just lie there, because I was beat. But I was still shivering like a dog, so I felt around in the blackness and pulled all the seaweed together. It made a pretty thick mat, and when I had crawled on it there was still a lot of weed left to pull over me, in a sort of blanket. I pulled the sandstone clod under the boat with me and was out of the wind, in a dry bed.

I started to shiver in a serious way. I shivered so hard my jaw hurt, and the seaweed around me cracked and rustled. Yet I didn’t feel any warmer for it. Flurries of rain or slushy snow hit the bottom of the boat, and I was pleased with myself for being sheltered. But I couldn’t stop shivering. I twisted around, put my hands in my armpits, gathered seaweed closer to me—anything to get warmer. It was a fight.

There passed one of those long hours that you seldom hear about when people are telling their tales—a cold, fearful time, spent entirely in the effort to warm up. It went on and on and on, and eventually I did warm a little. I was not toasty, you understand, but after the cold sea and the open windy beach my bed of dry seaweed under the boat felt pretty good. I wanted to stay there forever, just huddle up and fall asleep and never have to move again.

But another part of me knew I should locate Tom and the San Diegans before they got out of my reach. I figured they would be waiting out the night in some sort of shelter, like I was, and that they would take off in the morning. Pushing up the bow of the dinghy I saw a thin slice of the dawn: sand, broken cliff bottom, dark cloud. The darkest and most miserable day ever. The wind whistled over the boat, but I decided it was time to find them, before they took off and left me.

Getting out from under the boat was easier than slipping beneath it had been; I lifted the bow, setting the sandstone block under it, and slithered through the gap. Returning to the wind was a shock. All my precious warmth was blown away in an instant. In the dawn I could see down the beach much farther than before. It was bare and empty, a desolate gray reach. Moving the boat to one side exposed the seaweed, and I tied strands of it around me and looped them over my shoulders until I was fairly well covered by the crackly black leaves. It was better wind protection than I would have guessed, and far better than nothing at all.

The ravine had cut a V in the cliff almost to the level of the beach, so that I could walk right up it, in the streambed to avoid brush. I was beyond caring what might happen to my feet in the creekbed, and luckily the bottom was rounded stones.

After climbing a short waterfall I found myself among trees, and the brush became less dense. The ravine took a sharp bend to the right, then bent back again; after that the air was almost still. Overhead the treetops swayed and their needles whistled. Flurries of snow drifted among them, blurring their sharp black lines. I groaned at the sight and hiked on.

Taller waterfalls fell when the ravine got steeper, and to ascend them I had to climb through mesquite, ignoring my skin’s suffering and losing my seaweed coat strand by strand. I was so weak that when I came to the third of these tiny cliffs I didn’t think I could make it. I climbed on hands and knees, crawling right up the creek itself to avoid the brush to either side. That was stupid, maybe, because I started shivering again, but at that point I wasn’t going to win any prizes for thinking. I’m not sure there was any other way to get up the cliff anyway. Near the top I slipped and fell right under the water—I almost drowned in a knee-deep creek, after surviving the deep sea. But I managed to pull my head out, and to make it up the cliff. Once on top I was almost too tired to walk. If only I had Tom’s fins, I thought. When I realized what I had thought I choked out a laugh, and then started to cry. I waded the pool at the top of the little falls and continued on beside the stream, hunched over and trailing seaweed behind me, snuffling and crying, sure I was about to die of the cold.

That was the state I was in when I stumbled into their camp. I rounded a thicket and almost walked into the fire, blink-brilliant yellow among all the grays and blacks.

“Hey!” someone cried, and suddenly several men were on their feet. Lee had a hatchet cocked at his ear.

“Here you are,” I said.

“Henry!”

“Jesus—”

“What the hell—”

“
Henry!
Henry Fletcher, by God!” That was Tom’s voice. I located him. Right in front of me.

“Tom,” I said. Arms held me. “Glad to see you.”

“You’re glad to see
me?
” He was hugging me. Lee pulled him away to get a wool coat around me. Tom laughed, a cracked joyous laugh. “Henry, Henry! Hank, boy, are you okay?”

“Cold.”

Jennings was throwing wood on the fire, grinning and talking to me or someone else, I couldn’t tell. Lee pulled Tom off me and adjusted the coat. The fire began to smoke, and I coughed and almost fell.

Lee took me under the arms and put me by the fire. The others stared at me. They had a little lean-to made of cut branches, floored with firewood. In front of it the fire blazed, big enough to burn damp wood.

“Henry—did you
swim
to shore?”

I nodded.

“Jesus, Henry, we rowed around out there for the longest time, but we never saw you! You must have swum right by us somehow.”

I shook my head, but Lee said, “Shut up, now, and start rubbing his legs. This boy could die right here if we don’t get him warm, can’t you see how blue he is? And he can’t talk. Lay him down here by the fire. He can tell us what happened later.”

They laid me down at the open edge of the shelter, next to the fire. Pulled my seaweed from me and dried me with shirts. I was all sandy and I could tell the drying was scraping me, but I didn’t feel it much. I was relieved, very relieved. I could relax at last. The fire felt like an opened oven. The heat struck me in pulses, wave after wave of it washing over me, slowly penetrating me. I’d never felt anything so wonderful. I held my hand just over some side flames, and Tom pulled it up a bit and held it there for me. Lee wrapped a thick wool blanket around my legs when they were fully dry.

“W-where’d you get all the c-clothes?” I managed to say.

“We had quite a bit of stuff in the dinghy,” Jennings replied.

Tom put my arm back at my side and lifted the other one. “Boy, you don’t know how happy I am to see you. Whoo!”

“No lie,” Jennings said. “You should have seen him moaning. He sounded terrible.”

“I felt terrible, I mean to tell you. But now I feel just fine. You have no
idea
how glad I am to see you, boy! I haven’t been this happy in as long as I can remember.”

“Too bad we missed you in the dark,” Jennings said. “You could have rowed in with the rest of us and saved a lot of trouble, I bet. We had lots of room.” Thompson and the rest laughed hard at that.

“I got picked up by the Japanese,” I said.

“What’s this?” cried Jennings.

I told them as best I could about the captain and his questioning. “Then he said we were going to Catalina, so I jumped over the side.”

“You jumped over the side?”

“Yes.”

“And swam in?”

“Yes.”

“Whoah! Did you see the dinghy on the beach?” “How did you get in with the swell breaking so high?”

I sorted the questions with difficulty. “Swam in. Saw the boat on the beach, and rested under it. I figured you must be up here.” I looked at the men curiously. “How’d you get the boat in?”

Jennings took over, naturally. “When the sloop went down we all stepped in the dinghy, all except Lee who fell overboard. So we didn’t even get wet. We rowed off a ways and pulled Lee out of the drink and waited for you. But we couldn’t find you, and Thompson said he saw you go down under the mast. So we figured you’d drowned, and rowed ashore.”

“How’d you get the boat in?” I asked again.

“Well, that was Thompson’s doing. With all of us in that little boat we had about an inch clearance, so when he found where that little creek was pouring out and breaking the swell a bit, he booted Lee and me overboard, and we had to swim in. That was something, I tell you—although I guess you’d know. Anyway they caught one of the smaller waves and rode it right onto the beach. A nicer piece of seamanship you’ll never see.”

Thompson grinned. “Lucky we caught that wave right, actually.”

“So except for Lee, and me at the end there, we didn’t even get wet! But you, boy. That must have been one hell of a swim.”

“Long way,” I agreed. I lay on my side, curled so that all of me was equally close to the fire. I could feel the wool gathering all the heat and holding it around me, and I was happy—content to listen to the men’s voices, without bothering any longer to decipher what they were saying.

*   *   *

Several times through that day Tom roused me to see if I was doing all right, and when I mumbled something he would let me go to sleep again. The first time I woke on my own, my right arm had gone to sleep, and I needed to shift on my bed of boughs. Shaking my arm awake I felt twinges all up and down it. Both arms were sore. I shifted onto an elbow and looked around. It was near dark. Wet snow was gusting down, filtering through the branches around us. The men were under the lean-to behind me, lying down or sitting on branches Lee had cut for the night’s fire. Lee was scraping his hatchet’s edge with a whetstone; he saw I was awake, and tossed another branch on the blaze. Thompson and his men were asleep. My back was cold. I rolled so it faced the fire, and felt the heat finger me. Tom and Jennings stared into the flames, looking morose.

Our camp was in a little bend in the creek, in a hollow created where a big tree had fallen and torn out its roots. Beside our lean-to the roots still poked at the sky, adding to our shelter. The trees around the fallen one were tall enough to stick above the ravine, and their tops bobbed and swayed. I turned to the fire and nestled down again. The stream gurgled, the fire snapped and hissed, the treetops hooted as loudly as their broken voices would let them. I fell asleep.

The next time I woke it was night. The snow appeared to have stopped. We got the fire roaring, and stood and stretched around it. The last loaf of bread was pulled out of Thompson’s pack, and divided among the seven of us. Kathryn’s bread never tasted any better than this damp stale stuff. Tom pulled some sticks of dried fish from his shoulder bag and passed them around, and Lee handed us each his cup after he had heated some water in it. Noticing Tom’s bag when he reached in it I said, “Did you save those books Wentworth gave you?”

“Yes. They never even got wet.”

“Good.”

Over the ravine the wind was strengthening, and I could make out low clouds racing overhead. The San Diegans discussed their plans, dragging it out to pass the time. They got me to tell the story of my swim in detail. After that they went back to their considerations, and decided that unless the storm got worse or went away altogether, they would abandon the dinghy and hike down the rail line. They had food cached along the way, and seemed to feel there would be no trouble returning overland. Tom and I could come with them, or head north; Onofre, Lee assured us, was just a few miles away. Tom nodded at that. “We’ll head home.” Silence fell. Jennings asked me to describe the Japanese captain again, and I told them everything I could remember. When I mentioned the captain’s ring the San Diegans were disgusted, and in a way pleased. It was another sign of corruption. Tom frowned, as if he didn’t like me giving them any more signs like that. The San Diegans began to tell us tales of the life on Catalina. I was interested, but couldn’t keep awake. I sat down and nodded off.

Despite the cold and wet, I slept for several hours. I came to about midnight, however, and quickly found I had slept my fill. I took a branch from beneath me and laid it on the fire. We had a good bed of coals by that time, and the branch caught fire almost immediately. By its light I could see the other men, lying back in the lean-to or on their sides across the fire from me. To my surprise, firelight glinted off their eyes. Every one of them was awake, waiting for day to arrive. My feet were cold, I was stiff and sore all over, and there wasn’t a chance I was going to fall asleep again. The hours passed ever so slowly—cramped, stiff, hungry, boring, miserable hours—another of those stretches that are skipped over when tales are told, although if mine is any example, a good part of every adventure is spent in just such a way, waiting in great discomfort to be able to do something else. Lee tossed another branch on the fire beside mine, and we watched it give off steam until flames appeared and got a purchase on it.

A lot of branches turned to ash before the ghostly light of a storm dawn slowly created distances between all the black shapes in the ravine. It was snowing again, fitfully. I could see, looking at the whiskery lined faces of the men, that they were as stiff and cold and hungry as I was. Lee rose and went to cut some more firewood. The rest of the men stood up as well, and walked away to take a leak or stretch out sore muscles.