The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (25 page)

So one night I found myself motorboating back to San Diego, giving instructions to the pilot, Ao, the only other person aboard who spoke English. Ao knew where the coast patrol ships were to be that night, and assured me there would be no interference from them. I directed him to a landing site on the inside of Point Loma, took them up to the ruins of the little lighthouse, and walked them through the lined-up white crosses of the naval cemetery—a cemetery so vast it might have been thought to hold all of the dead from the great devastation. At dawn we hid in one of the abandoned houses, and all that day the five businessmen clicked their huge cameras at the spiky downtown skyline, and the blasted harbor. That night we returned to Avalon, and I felt reasonably happy about it all.

I led four more expeditions to San Diego after that, and they were all simple and lucrative but for the last, in which I was convinced against my better judgement to lead the boat up the mouth of the Mission River at night. My readers in San Diego will know that the mouth of the Mission is congested with debris, runs over an old pair of jetties and a road or two, changes every spring, and is in general one of the most turbulent, weird, and dangerous rivermouths anywhere. Now on this night the ocean was as flat as a table, but it had rained hard the day before, and the runoff swirled over the concrete blocks in the rivermouth as over waterfalls. One of our customers fell overboard under the weight of his camera (they have cameras that photograph at night), and I dove in after him. It took a lot of effort from myself and Ao to reunite us all, and escape to sea. In a sailboat we would have drowned, and I was used to sailboats.

After that I was not so pleased with the notion of guiding further expeditions. And I had accumulated, through Mr. Nisha’s generosity, a good quantity of money. Two nights after the disaster trip, there was a big party at one of the plush dachas high on the east flank of the island, and the man whose life I had saved offered, in his dozen words of English, to hire me as a servant and take me with him to Japan. Apparently Ao had told him of my aspiration to travel, and he hoped to repay me for saving his life.

I took Hadaka out into the shaped shrubbery of the garden, and we sat over a lighted fountain that gurgled onto the terrace below. We looked at the dark bulk of the continent, and I told her of my opportunity. With a sisterly kiss (we had shared kisses of a different nature once or twice

“I’ll bet they had!” Rebel crowed, and the girls laughed. Kathryn imitated Steve’s reading voice:

“And I prepared to tell my dear mother back home that her grandchildren would be one-quarter Japanese.…”

“No interruptions!” Steve shouted, but we were in stitches now. “I’m going to go right on!” He read,

(we had shared kisses of a different nature once or twice, but I did not feel an attraction strong enough to risk Mr. Nisha’s anger)

“Oooh, coward!” Kristen cried. “What a chicken!”

“Now wait a minute,” said Steve. “This guy has a goal in mind; he wants to get around the world. He can’t just stop on Catalina. You gals never think of anything but the romance part of the story. Quiet up now or I’ll stop reading.”

“Pleeeeeeease,” Mando begged them. “I want to know what happens.”

Hadaka informed me that it would be best for all if I took the chance and departed; though the Nishas had not made me aware of it, my staying with them was not entirely safe, as my papers could be proved counterfeit, which would immerse Mr. Nisha in all kinds of trouble. It occurred to me that this was why he had shared so much of the profit of our mainland trips with me—so I could eventually leave. I decided that they were a most generous family, and that I had been exceedingly lucky to fall in with them.

I went back inside the dacha, therefore, and avoiding the naked American girls who pressed drinks and cigarettes on everybody, I told my benefactor Mr. Tasumi that I would take up his offer. Soon afterward I bade a sad farewell to my Catalina family. When I had left my mother and friends in San Diego, I could truthfully say to them that I would try to return; but what could I say to the Nishas? I kissed mother and daughter, hugged Mr. Nisha, and in a genuine conflict of feelings was driven to the airport, there to embark on a seven thousand mile flight over the great Pacific Ocean.

“That’s Chapter Two,” Steve said, closing the book. “He’s on his way.”

“Oh read some more,” Mando said.

“Not now.” He gave a sour glance at the women, who were getting the trays out of the ovens. “It’s about time for supper, I guess.” Standing up, he shook his head at me and Mando. “These gals sure are hard on a story,” he complained.

“Oh come on,” Kathryn said. “What’s the fun of reading it together if we can’t talk about it?”

“You don’t take it seriously.”

“What does that mean? Maybe we don’t take it
too
seriously.”

“I’m off home,” Steve said, sulking. “You coming, Hank?”

“I’m going back to my place. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Tom wants a town meeting at the church tomorrow night,” Carmen told us. “Did you know?”

None of us did, and we agreed to try to get together before the meeting, and read another chapter.

“What’s the meeting about?” Steve asked.

“San Diego,” said Carmen.

Steve stopped walking away.

“Tom’ll bring up the question of helping the San Diegans fight the Japanese,” I said. “I told you about that.”

“I’ll be there,” Steve assured us sternly, and with that he was off. I helped Kathryn scrape the new loaves off the trays, and took one home to Pa, gnawing at one end of it and wondering how many days it would take to fly across the sea.

12

Usually our big meetings were held in Carmen’s church, but this time she and Tom had been nagging every person in the valley to come—Tom had even gone into the back country to roust Odd Roger—so the church, which was a narrow barnlike building in the Eggloffs’ pasture, wasn’t going to be quite big enough, and we were meeting at the bathhouse. Pa and I got there early and helped Tom start the fire. As I carried in wood I had to dodge Odd Roger, who was inspecting the floor and walls for grubs, one of his favorite foods. Tom shook his head as he eyed Roger. “I don’t know if it was worth the trouble dragging him here.” Tom seemed less excited about the meeting than I’d expected him to be, and unusually quiet. I myself was really hopping around; tonight we were going to join the resistance, and become part of America again, at long last.

Outside the evening sky was streaked with mare’s tail clouds still catching some light, and a stiff wind blew onshore. People talked and laughed as they approached the bathhouse, and I saw lanterns sparking here and there through the trees. Across the Simpsons’ potato patch their dogs were begging with pathetic howls to join us. Steve and all his brothers and sisters arrived, and we sat down on the tarps. “So I saw that the shark had his big mouth open and was about to swallow me,” Steve was telling them, “and I stuck my oar between his jaws so he couldn’t bite me. But I had to hang on to the oar to keep from being sucked down whole, and I was running out of air too. I had to figure something out.”

Then John and Mrs. Nicolin rounded the bend in the river path, and their kids got inside quick. Marvin and Jo Hamish ambled across the bridge, Jo in a white shift that billowed away from her quickening belly. I remembered the conversation at the ovens, and wondered what she had growing in her this time. And then people were coming from everywhere, descending on the bathhouse from every direction. A gaggle of Simpson and Mendez kids appeared around the side of the grain barrows, leading their fathers, who conferred heads together as they walked. Rafael and Mando and Doc came down the hill across the river, and behind them were Add and Melissa Shanks. I waved at Melissa and she waved back, her black hair flying downwind. A bit later Carmen and Nat Eggloff trooped out of the woods, carrying a heavy lantern between them and arguing, while Manuel Reyes and his family hurried behind them to stay in the lantern light. It sounded like a swap meet was crammed into the bathhouse, and when the Marianis arrived I thought we might have more than a capacity crowd. But it was cold outside, so Rafael took over and sat everyone down: the men against the walls, the little kids in their mothers’ laps, our gang in one of the empty bathing tubs. When we were done the whole population of the valley was packed in like fish in a box, ready to go to market. Lanterns were hung on the walls and some big logs in the fire caught, and the room blazed like it never did during baths. The chattering was so loud off the sheet metal roof that the babies started to shriek and cry, and the rest of us were nearly as excited, because we never got together in such a way except for Christmas and the rare valley meeting.

Tom moved about the room slowly, talking with folks he hadn’t seen in a while. He called the meeting to order as he went, but the visiting continued despite his announcements, and others had begun to circulate and argue behind him. Lots of people had nothing but questions, however, and when Marvin said to Tom, “So what’s this all about?” the question was repeated, and the room grew quieter.

“All right,” Tom said hoarsely. He started to tell them about our trip to San Diego. Sitting on the tub edge I looked around at all the faces. It seemed like an awful long time since Lee and Jennings had walked into this same room out of the rain, to tell us of their new train line. So much had happened to me since then that it didn’t seem possible a few weeks could hold it all. I felt like a different person than the one who had listened to Lee and Jennings tell their tales; but I didn’t know exactly how. It was just a feeling, a discomfort, or an ignorance—as if I had to learn everything over again.

The way Tom told it, the San Diegans kept looking to be fools or wastrels, no better than scavengers. So I had to interrupt him from time to time and add my opinion of it—tell them all about the electric batteries and generators, and the broken radio, and the bookmaker, and Mayor Danforth. We were arguing in front of everybody, but I thought they needed to know my side, because Tom was against the southerners. He disagreed with me sharply when I went on about the Mayor. “He lives in style, Henry, because he’s got a gang of men doing nothing but help him run things, that’s all. That’s what gives him the power to send men off east to contact other towns.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But tell them what they found out east.”

Tom nodded and addressed the others. “He claims that his men have been as far as Utah, and that all the inland towns are banded together in a thing called the American resistance. The resistance, they say, wants to unify America again.”

That hushed everyone. From the wall near the door John Nicolin broke the silence. “So?”

“So,” Tom continued, “he wants us to do our part in this great plan, by helping the San Diegans fight the Japanese on Catalina.” He told them about our conference with the Mayor. “Now we know why dead Orientals have been washing onto our beach. But apparently they haven’t stopped trying to land, and now the San Diegans want our help getting rid of them for good.”

“What exactly do they mean by help?” asked Mrs. Mariani.

“Well…” Tom hesitated, and Doc cut in:

“It means they’d want our rivermouth as an anchorage to base attacks from.”

At the same time Recovery Simpson, Del and Rebel’s pa, said, “It means we’d finally have the guns and manpower to do something about being guarded like we are.”

Both of these opinions got a response from others, and the discussion split into a lot of little arguments. I kept my mouth shut, and tried to listen and find out who was thinking what. I could see that even a group as small as ours could be divided into even smaller groups. Recovery Simpson and old man Mendez led the families who did the bulk of their work in the back country, hunting or trapping or sheep herding; Nat and Manuel and the shepherds were quick to follow Simpson’s lead, usually. Then there were the farmers; everyone did a little of that, but Kathryn directed all the women who grew the big crops. Nicolin’s fishing operation was the third big group, including all the Nicolins, the Hamishes, Rafael and me; and lastly there were the folks who didn’t fit into any one group, like Tom, and Doc, and my pa, and Addison, and Odd Roger. These groupings were false in a way, in that everyone did a bit of everything. But for a while I thought I noticed something; I thought that the hunters, whose work was already like fighting, were going for the resistance, while the farmers, who needed things to be the same from year to year (and who were mostly women anyway), were going against it. That made sense to me, and I bet to myself that the way Nicolin went would decide the issue; but then all around me I saw that there were as many exceptions to my pattern as there were examples of it, and I lost the momentary feeling that I understood what was happening.

Doc was one of the first to defy my expectations. Here he was as old as Tom, almost, and always arguing at the ancients’ table at the swap meet that America had been betrayed by those who wouldn’t fight. It had seemed obvious to me that he would be disagreeing with Tom again, and arguing for joining the San Diegans in their fight. But here he stood saying, “I remember once when Gabino Canyon folks were asked by the Cristianitos Canyon people to join them when they were fighting with Talega Canyon over the wells at the Four Canyon Flat. They did it; but when the fight was over there wasn’t any Gabino Canyon at the swap meet anymore. It was just Cristianitos. The thing is, bigger towns tend to eat up the littler ones around them. Henry will tell you there’s hundreds of people down there—”

“But we’re not just the next canyon over from them,” Steve objected. “There’s miles and miles between us and them. And we
should
be fighting the Japanese. Every town should be part of the resistance, otherwise it’s hopeless.” He was vehement, and several people nodded, ignoring the talk around them. Steve had a presence, all right. His voice turned people’s ears.

“Miles aren’t going to matter if the train works,” Doc answered. So he was against joining. Shaken, I was about to ask him how he could drop all his swap meet talk just when the chance for action had arrived, when Tom said real loudly, “Hey? Let’s go it one at a time now.”