The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (22 page)

When Lee came back, he threw the wood he had gathered on the coals, and cursed at the smoke. “We might as well get going,” he croaked. “Weather isn’t going to get any better for a good while, I don’t believe. And I don’t want to spend another day waiting it out.”

Thompson and the sailors weren’t so sure, I could tell. Jennings said to them, “When we get to Ten Post River there’s a box of food and clothing. We can put up a shelter like this one here if we need to, and we’ll have some food.”

“How far away is that?” Thompson asked.

“Five miles, maybe.”

“Pretty far in this weather.”

“Yeah, but we can do it. And these two can be back up in Onofre by midday.”

Thompson agreed to the plan, and without further ado we got ready to leave. Jennings laughed at my woeful face and gave me his underpants, thick white things that hung past my heels, and were still a trifle damp. “With these and that coat you should be okay.”

“Thanks, Mr. Jennings.”

“Say nothing of it. We’re the ones who got you dumped in the drink. You’ve had a wild one, I’d say.”

“It’s not over yet,” Tom said, looking up at the flying snow.

We hiked up the ravine until it was only a dip in the plain of the forest, and then stopped. Water dripped from the branches around us, and the wind swirled. Fearfully I felt the cold climb past my numb bare feet and up my legs; I’d had enough of that.

We said a hasty farewell to the San Diegans. “We’ll be back to Onofre soon, so I can collect my clothes,” Jennings told me.

“And the Mayor will want to hear from you,” Lee said to Tom.

We promised to be ready for them, and after some awkward shuffling of the feet they were off through the trees. Tom and I turned and walked north. Soon we came upon the torn remains of a narrow asphalt road, and Tom declared we should follow it.

“Shouldn’t we go up to the freeway?”

“Too exposed. The wind will be howling in the open stretches.”

“I know, but there are open stretches here too. And it would be easier walking.”

“Maybe so. Your feet, eh? But it’s too cold up there. Besides, this road has a whole string of little cinderblock restrooms from when it was a beach park. We can stop in them if we have to, and I’ve got a couple of them stocked with wood.”

“Okay.”

The road was just patches of asphalt on the forest floor, broken pretty regularly by little ravines. We made slow going of it, and soon I couldn’t feel my feet at all. Walking seemed exceptionally hard work. Tom kept on my windward side, and occasionally held me up with his right arm. I lost track of our surroundings until we came to a long stretch of treeless land, covered with waist-high brush that flailed in the wind. Here we could see far out to sea, and the wind struck us full force.

“Tom, I’m cold.”

“I know. There’s one of the old restrooms ahead; we’ll stop there. See it?”

But when we got there we found that the opposite side of it was smashed, and the roof was gone. It was filling with slush.

“Damn,” said Tom. “Must be the next one.”

On we went. I couldn’t seem to shiver. “Tengo sueño,” I muttered. “Ten-go suen-yo.” The cold: I know I’ve mentioned it many times. But not enough to indicate its power, its deadly influence—the way it hurts even when you’re numb, and the way that the pain saps your strength, and the way that a part of your mind stays awake, scared to death that other parts are as asleep as your fingers.…

“Henry!”

“… What.”

“Here comes the next one. Put your arm around me. Henry! Put your arm around me. Like so.” He held me up, and we stumbled toward the next little block pile—the only building from the old time I had ever seen that was smaller than my home.

“That’s it,” Tom assured me. “We’ll just pop in there and get warmed up, and then take off again. It can’t blow this hard all day. We’re not more than two miles from home, I’d guess, but this wind is too much. We got to take shelter.”

The shrubs bounced against the ground again and again, and upslope the trees howled. Snow obscured the view to sea, it kept striking me in the eyes. We reached the block building, and Tom looked in the open doorway warily. “Oh good,” he said. “This is the one. And no beasties in it either.”

He pulled me inside, helped me sit down against one block wall. The doorway was on the inland side, so the wind shelter was complete. That in itself was a blessing. But in the corner across from me was a big pile of branches, wood long dead and perfectly dry. Tom leaped to the pile with cries of self-congratulation, and began shifting it into the doorway. When he had it all arranged to his satisfaction he dug around in his shoulder bag and pulled out a lighter. He snapped it; as if he had said a magic spell a tall flame stood off the end of it. Behind the little orange flame his face gleamed, a grin splitting it in two, showing his half-dozen remaining teeth. Water dripped down his pate into the complicated delta system of his wrinkles, his beard and hair were tangled, and his eyes were wide open so that the whites showed over the iris. His hand shook, and he laughed like an animal. He flicked the flame off and on twice, then crouched down and applied it to the smaller branches and twigs at the bottom of his pile. In hardly any time at all the whole pile was blazing. The air in the little room cooked. I held my feet in my hands, and shifted across the floor to put them closer to the flames. Tom saw me move on my own and he hopped around the fire cheerfully.

“Now if we had food we’d be set. A castle wouldn’t beat it. My own
house
wouldn’t beat it. Man, look at that wind. Tearing it up. But the snow seems to be stopping. When we get nice and warm we should probably make a quick run for home and get a meal, eh? Specially if it stops snowing.”

From inside our tiny fortress the waterfall roar of the wind was loud. I got warm enough to start shivering again, and my feet pricked and burned. Tom put more wood on. “Whoo-eee! Look at that wind. Boy, this is it. This is
it,
you understand me?”

“Uh.” I thought I did understand him, but this wasn’t
it
for me.
It
was treading water at night outside a giant swell breaking, not knowing whether there was rocks between me and the shore. I’d had my fill of
it.

We got warm enough to take off our clothes and scorch a little water out of them. Then Tom urged me to get ready to leave. “It ain’t snowing, and the day won’t last forever.” I was ravenous so I agreed with him, though I was unhappy to leave our shelter. In what sounded like a lull in the wind we left our blockhouse and hurried along the asphalt road. The wind instantly cooled our clothes back down, as I knew it would, and I could feel how wet my coat and pants were. The clouds galloped overhead, but for the moment the snow had stopped.

“Snow in July,” Tom muttered with a curse. He took the windward side again and matched me step for step. Both of us had our faces turned away from the wind. “This area never used to get snow. Never. Barely got rain. And the ocean temperature bouncing around like that. Crazy. Something severely screwed up with the world’s weather, Hank, I tell you that with the utmost certainty. I wonder if we’ve kicked off another ice age. Boy, wouldn’t that teach them? Sure would teach them, damn it. If they did it with the war, serves them right and amen to that. If we kicked it off before they got us, then that would be funny. Posthumous revenge, right Henry? Eh?” On and on he puffed with his nonsense, trying to distract me. “You learnt a passage once that fits our situation here, didn’t you Hank? Didn’t I assign you something like this? Tom’s a-cold, boy you said it. Freezing! I never did learn it by memory myself. Blow, winds! Hail, hurricanoes! Something like that. Surely good casting, if I say so myself…” and so on, until the cold got to him too, and he put his head down and his arm around my waist and we trudged it out. It seemed to go on forever. Once I glanced up, and saw the sea as green as the forest, gray clouds massed over it, whitecaps breaking out everywhere on its surface, so that it was almost as white as it was green. Then I put my head down again.

Finally Tom said, “There’s my house ridge up there. We’ve almost made it.”

“Good.”

Then we were back among trees, and crossing that ridge. Past Concrete Bay and up to the freeway. It was snowing again and we could hardly see any distance at all. Trees appeared like ghosts out of the falling slush. I wanted to hurry but my feet were gone again and I kept stumbling on things. If it weren’t for the old man I would have fallen a dozen times.

“Let’s go to my house,” I said. “Can’t climb to yours.”

“Sure. Your pa will want to see you anyway.”

Even the valley seemed to stretch out, and it took hard walking to cross it. We weaved past the big eucalypus at the corner, up to my door. I’ve never been happier to see that shack in my life. White slush slid down the roof as we pounded the door and burst in like long lost voyagers. Pa had been asleep. Looking surprised he gave me a hug, tugged his moustache. “You look terrible,” he said. “What happened to your clothes?” Tom and I laughed. I put my feet right on the stove and felt the skin scorch. Tom was talking fast as Jennings, and laughing every other sentence. I ransacked the shelves and threw Tom a half loaf of bread, saving a chunk for myself. “Got anything else?” Tom inquired, mouth full. Pa got out some jerky for us, and we wolfed it down. We ate every scrap of food in the place, and stoked up the fire in the stove higher than it had been since my ma died. “I didn’t know
what
I was going to tell you,” Tom was saying. “He was gone for good!” Pa’s eyes were wide. I took out the wash bucket and washed myself with a rag, getting all the sand out of my crotch and armpits. My feet burned something fierce. We both kept telling Pa our story, confusing him no end. Finally we both shut up at the same time.

“Sounds like you had a time,” Pa said.

“Yes,” Tom said. He jammed a last chunk of bread in his mouth, nodded, swallowed. “That was something.”

PART THREE

The World

11

After Tom went home I slept like a dead man for the rest of the day and all that night. When I woke up the next morning I was annoyed to see that the storm was over. The sun streamed in the door like it had never left. Why, if we had held on one more day in our shelter, we could have waltzed home easy as you please! Pa heard me moan and he stopped sewing. “Want me to get the water this morning?”

“No, I’ll do it. I’m sore is all.” Actually my arms were blocks of wood, and my legs scissors, and I was unhappy to discover a host of scratches and scrapes and bruises that hurt practically every time I breathed. But I had an urge to get out and look around.

When I got outside and started down the path (buckets jerking my poor arms every step) the sunlight stung my eyes. There were still some clouds but mostly it was sunny, everything steaming. The Costas’ drum house looked like it was on fire it was steaming so. I creaked down the path staring and staring.

Have I described the valley yet? It is in the shape of a cupped hand, and filled with trees. Down in the crease of the palm is the river winding to the sea, and the fields of corn and barley and potatoes. The heel of the hand is Basilone Hill, and up there is the Costas’ place, and Addison’s tower, and Rafael’s rambling house and workshop. Across from that, the spiny forested fingers of Tom’s ridge. All of the oldest houses were eccentric, I noticed; I had never thought of it that way before, but it was so. Rafael kept adding rooms to store machinery and things, and they followed the contour of the hillside, so that in time, if you were to try and draw a plan of it, it would look like an X written on top of a W. Doc Costa had made his house of oil drums, as I’ve said, to hold in the heat in the winter and the cool in the summer. Probably he hadn’t counted on the house whistling like a banshee in the least little breeze; he said it didn’t bother him any, but I thought it might be the reason Mando scared so easily. The Nicolins had their big old time house on the beach cliff, and the Eggloffs had their home burrowed back into the hillside where thumb and finger would meet, if you were still thinking of the valley as a cupped hand; they lived like weasels in there, and by the graveyard too, but they claimed to have Doc all beat as far as warmth in the winter and cool in the summer were concerned. And then there was Tom, up on his ridge where he was bound to get frozen by storms and baked by the sun, but did he care? Not him—he wanted to see. So did Addison Shanks, apparently, set up on Basilone Hill in a house built around an old electric tower; but maybe he was there because it was nice and close to San Clemente, where he could conduct his dealings with no one the wiser. The newer houses, now, were all down in the valley next to the fields, convenient to the river, and everybody had helped build them, so that they looked pretty much the same: square boxes, steel struts at the corners, old wood for walls, wood or sheet metal, maybe tiles, for a roof. The same design twice as long and you had the bathhouse.

When I got to the river I sat gingerly. It all looked so familiar and yet so strange. Before my trip south Onofre was just home, a natural place, and the houses, the bridge and the paths, the fields and the latrines, they were all just as much a part of it as the cliffs and the river and the trees. But now I saw it all in a new way. The path. A broad swath of dusty dirt cutting through the weeds, curving here to get around the corner of the Simpsons’ garden, narrowing there where rocks cramped it on both sides.… It went where it did because there had been agreement, when folks first moved to the valley, that this was the best way to the river from the meadows to the south. People’s thinking made that path. I looked at the bridge—rough planks on steel struts, spanning the gap between the stone bases on each bank. People I knew had thought that bridge, and built it. And the same was true of every structure in the valley. I tried to look at the bridge in the old way, as part of things as they were, but it didn’t work. When you’ve changed you can’t go back. Nothing looks the same ever again.

Walking back from the river, arms aching with the weight of the full buckets, I was grabbed roughly from behind.