The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (24 page)

Reluctantly I clambered over the gunwales, pack in hand. My father’s boat bucked emptily. Before we cast off from it, I took a hatchet from the bottom of the girl’s boat, reached over and knocked a hole in the bottom of mine. Surreptitiously I wiped a tear from my eye as I watched it founder.

When we rounded the southern point and approached Avalon the girl—her name was Hadaka—instructed me to get under the fish in the bottom of her boat. She had been night fishing, and had a collection on her keel that I was unhappy to associate with—eels, squid, sand sharks, rockfish, octopus, all thrown together. But I did as she said. I lay smothering, still as the dead fish over me, as she stopped to be questioned in Japanese at the entrance to Avalon harbor; and I sailed into Avalon with an octopus on my face.

When Hadaka had docked the boat I quickly jumped up and acted as her assistant. “Leave the fish,” she said when they were covered. “Quick, up to my house.” We walked up a steep street past markets just opening. I felt conspicuous, for my smell if for no other reason, but no one paid any untoward attention to us, and high on the hill surrounding the town we slipped through a gate and were in her family’s little yard garden. To the east the sun cracked the floor of America and shone on us. I had left my country behind; I was on foreign soil for the first time in my life.

“Well, that’s Chapter One,” Steve said. “He’s on Catalina!”

“Read some more!” Mando cried. “Keep going!”

“No more,” Tom said from the door. “It’s late, and I need some peace and quiet.” He coughed, and put his bee gear down in a corner. He waved us out: “Nicolin, you can keep the book for as long as it takes you to read it—”

“Yow!”

“Wait a minute! For as long as it takes you to read it aloud to the others here.”

“Yeah!” said Mando as he hungrily eyed the book.

“That would be fun,” Kristen said, glancing at Mando.

“Okay,” Steve agreed. “I like it that way anyway.”

“Well then, get home to supper. All of you!” Tom shooed us out the door with some dire warnings to Steve about what would happen if the book should come to harm. Steve laughed and led us down the ridge path, holding the book up triumphantly. I looked out in the direction of Catalina with whetted curiosity, but clouds obscured it from view. Americans were on that island! How I longed to travel there myself. My battered toe thumped a rock and with a howl I returned my attention to the ground beneath me. Down where the trail divided we stopped and agreed to meet the following afternoon to read some more.

“Let’s meet at the ovens,” Kristen said. “Kathryn wants to do a full batch tomorrow.”

“After the fishing.” Steve nodded, and skipped down the beach path, swinging the book overhead.

*   *   *

But the next day after fishing he wasn’t so cheerful. John was on him for something or other, and when we got the boats pulled out of the river Steve was ordered to help sort and clean the fish. He stood still as a rock staring at his pa, until I sort of nudged him and got him to walk away. “I’ll tell them you’ll be late,” I said, and beat it up the cliff before he took his frustration out on me with more than a glare.

Up at the ovens Kathryn had the girls at work: Kristen and Rebel were pumping the bellows, all flushed with the effort, their hair streaked with flour. Kathryn and Carmen Eggloff were shaping the tortillas and loaves and arranging them on the trays. The air above the brick ovens shimmered with heat. Around behind the corner of the Marianis’ house Mrs. M. was helping some of the other girls knead barley dough. Kathryn stopped bossing Kristen and Rebel long enough to greet me. “Go ahead and sit down,” she said when I told them Steve would be late. “Mando and Del aren’t here yet anyway.”

“Men are always late,” Mrs. M. said around the corner. It was her great pleasure to hang out with the girls and gossip. “Henry, where’s your friend Melissa?” she asked, hoping to embarrass me.

“Haven’t seen her since I got back,” I replied easily.

Rebel and Carmen were arguing. “I can’t believe Jo would be so stupid as to get pregnant again,” Carmen said. “It’s a shame.”

“Not if she has a good one,” said Rebel.

“She’s had four bad ones in a row. I think that’s a sign she should heed.”

Rebel said, “But it’s hard to be pregnant all that time and nothing to show for it.”

“They were bad ones,” Carmen said. “Real bad.”

“God made the bad ones too,” Rebel said, pursing her lips.

“He didn’t make them bad,” Carmen countered. “It was radiation that did that, and I’m sure God doesn’t approve. Those that are born bad, it’s a blessing to them to send them back to God and let Him try with them again. If we let them live they’d be a burden on themselves as much as on us. I can’t see how you don’t see that, Reb.”

Rebel shook her head stubbornly. “They’re all God’s children.”

“But they would be a burden,” Kathryn put in practically. “You have to figure you’re not about to have a kid until after its Name Day.”

“We don’t have the right,” Rebel said. “What if you had been born with only one arm, Kate? You’d still have had the brains and drive to bring bread back to this valley. Your gift isn’t in your body.”

“It was yeast brought bread back, not me,” Kathryn said, trying to lighten things.

“But if we let them live,” Carmen said, “half the valley would be crippled. And the generation after that might not survive.”

“I don’t believe that,” Rebel said. Her mom had had three bad ones after Del and her, and she was pretty touchy about it. I think she missed those little tykes. But Carmen was just as firm the other way. She and Doc made the decisions, and I don’t think she liked the matter discussed at all. Kathryn saw they were getting wrought up, and noticed my interest, and I don’t think she wanted it happening with me around. She said, “Maybe Jo didn’t plan to get pregnant.”

“I bet she didn’t,” Mrs. M. said with a smirk. “Marvin Hamish is not one to watch the moon too close.” They laughed, even Rebel and Carmen. Then Mando and Del arrived, and the conversation shifted to the quality of the grain this season. Kathryn was depressed about it; the storm that had almost killed me had succeeded with a good portion of her crop.

Then Steve arrived. He swung Kathryn off the ground with a hug, and dusted the flour off his hands.

“Katie, you’re a mess!” he cried.

“And you smell like fish!” she cried back.

“Do not. All right, it’s time for Chapter Two of this fine book.”

“Not until we get these trays into the ovens,” Kathryn said. “You can help.”

“Hey, I finished my day’s work.”

“Get over there and help,” Kathryn commanded. Steve shambled over, and we all got up to get the trays in.

“Pretty tough boss,” Steve scoffed.

“You shut up and watch what you’re doing,” Kathryn said.

When we got the trays in we all sat, and Steve pulled the book from his coat pocket, and started the story again.

Chapter II. The International Island.

Between two rosebushes thick with yellow blooms stood a tall white woman holding a pair of garden shears. Though they did not look much alike, she was Hadaka’s mother. When she saw me she snapped the shears angrily.

“Who is this?” she cried, and Hadaka hung her head. “Have you brought home another one, foolish girl?”

“So that’s how she gets her boyfriends,” Rebel interjected, to hoots from the girls. “Not a bad method!”

“That’s what you call fishing for men all right,” Carmen said.

“Quiet!” Steve ordered, and went on.

“I saw him sailing to the forbidden shore, mother, and I knew he came from the mainland—”

“Quiet! I’ve heard it all before.”

I put in, “I am deeply grateful to your daughter and yourself for saving my life.”

“This only encourages your father,” Hadaka’s mother fumed. Then to me: “They wouldn’t have killed you unless you tried to escape.”

“See,” Kathryn said to me, “they might have killed you when you jumped off their ship. You were in a more dangerous position than you’ve let on.”

I began “Umm, well—”

“Stow it,” said Steve. He was tired of hearing about my adventure, that was sure. Mando added,
“Please.”
Mando was desperate to hear the story; he really loved it. Steve nodded approvingly and started again.

Her shears snipped the air. “Come in and get yourself cleaned up.” She wrinkled her nose as I passed her, and beslimed and bewhiskered as I was I could hardly blame her; I felt like a barbarian. Inside their tile-walled bathing room I washed under a shower that provided water from freezing to boiling, depending on the bather’s desire. Mrs. Nisha (for such, I found, was their family name) brought me some clothes and showed me how to use a buzzing shaver. When all was done I stood before a perfect mirror in gray pants and a bright blue shirt, a cosmopolitan.

When he arrived home Hadaka’s father was less upset by my presence than his wife had been. Mr. Nisha looked me up and down and shook my hand, invited me in harsh English to sit with the family. He was Japanese, as I may not have said, and he looked much like Hadaka, although his skin was dark. He was a good deal shorter than Mrs. Nisha.

“Must procure you papers,” he said after Hadaka told him the story of my arrival. “I get you papers, you work for me a little while. Is it a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

He asked a hundred questions, and after that a hundred more. I told him everything about me, including my plans. It seemed I had been even luckier than I yet knew, having Hadaka intercept me, for Mr. Nisha was a worker in the Japanese government of the Channel Islands, in the department supervising the Americans living there. In this work he had met Mrs. Nisha, who had crossed the channel as I had some twenty years before. Mr. Nisha also had a hand in a dozen other activities at least, and most of them were illegal, although it took me a week or two to realize this fully. But from that very night I saw that he was quite an entrepreneur, and I took pains to let him know I would serve him in any way I could. When he was done questioning me all three of them showed me to a cot in their garden shed, and I retired in good spirits.

Within the week I had papers proving I had been born on Catalina and had spent my life there, serving the Japanese. After that I could leave the Nishas’ house freely, and Mr. Nisha put me to work fishing with Hadaka and weeding their garden. Later, after this trial period was done, he had me exchange heavy brown packages with strangers on the streets of Avalon, or escort Japanese from the airport on the backside of the island into town, without of course subjecting them to the inconveniences of the various checkpoints.

It should not be imagined that these and the other clandestine activities Mr. Nisha assigned to me were at all unusual in Avalon. It was a town teeming with representatives of every race and creed and nation, and as the United Nations had declared that the island was to be used by the Japanese only, and only for the purpose of quarantining the American coast, it was obvious that many visitors were there illegally. But officials like Mr. Nisha existed in great numbers, at all levels, both on Catalina and in the Hawaiian Islands, which served as the entry point to western America. Almost everyone in town had papers authorizing their presence, and it was impossible to tell whose were forged or bought; but wandering the streets I saw people dressed in all manner of clothing, with features Oriental, or Mexican, or with skin as black as the night sky; and I knew something was amiss in the Japanese administration.

I was happy to try conversing with any or all of these foreigners, employing my few words of Japanese, and listening to some peculiar versions of English. The only persons I was wary of talking to were those who looked American, and I noticed that they were not anxious to talk with me either. Chances were too good that they were refugees as I was, employed in some desperate enterprise to stay in Avalon; it was rumored that quite a few worked for the police. In the face of such dangers it seemed best to ignore any fellow feeling.

The old part of Avalon stood much as it had in the old time, I was told: small whitewashed houses covering the hillsides that fell into the little bay that served as the harbor. Jetties had been built to enlarge the harbor, and new construction spilled over the hills to the north and west, hundreds of buildings in the Japanese style, with thick beams and thin walls, and peaky tile roofs. The whole of the island had new concrete roads, lined with low stone walls that divided the grounds of parklike estates, on which were giant mansions that the Japanese called
dachas.
Here officials of the U.N. and the Japanese administration made their homes. The dachas on the west side of the island were smaller; the really big ones faced the mainland, as the view of America was greatly prized. The biggest dachas of all, I heard, were on the east side of San Clemente Island; it was their lights I had seen on the night I decided to circumnavigate the globe.

A few weeks passed. I travelled in a car over the white roads, drove once and nearly crashed into a wall; when one drives there is a gale created merely by one’s passage over the road, and everything moves a bit too fast for the reflexes.

“Isn’t that what you said you felt when you were on the trains?” Rebel interrupted to ask me.

“That’s true,” I said. “You go so fast that you’re ripping through the air. I’m glad we didn’t have to drive that train; we would’ve crashed a hundred times.”

“Quiet!” Mando exclaimed, and Steve nodded and went on, too absorbed in the story to even look up from the page.

I saw the giant flying machines,
jets,
land at the airport like pelicans, and take off with roars that almost burst the ears. And all the while I pursued various tasks for the gain of Mr. Nisha. When I had fully obtained his trust, he asked me if I would guide a night expedition to San Diego, consisting of five Japanese businessmen who were visiting Catalina expressly for that purpose. I was extremely reluctant to return to the mainland, but Mr. Nisha proposed to split the fee he charged for such a trip with me, and it was enormous. I weighed the advantages, and agreed to it.