The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (32 page)

“You walk Henry down and say goodnight to him real quick. Henry, come back and give us a visit sometime soon.” I got to my feet, unsteady but eager, and Add shook my hand, squeezing hard and grinning at me. “Careful walking home.”

“Sure. Thanks for the rum, Add.” I followed Melissa down the ladder to the ground floor, and then out the door into the night. We kissed. I leaned back against the sloping wall of their house to keep myself upright, one leg thrust between Melissa’s as she pressed against me. It reminded me of the first time we fooled around at the swap meet, only this time I was drunker. Melissa rubbed up and down my thigh, and let me feel her some more as she kissed my neck and breathed
umm, umm,
very softly. Then:

“He’s waiting. I’d better go upstairs.”

“Oh.”

“Good night, Henry.”

A peck on the nose and she was gone. I shoved off from the wall and staggered across the little clearing into the woods. There were foundations out there from the old time, the remnants of houses it looked like. Everything was gone except the concrete slabs, cracking under the weeds. I stumbled onto one of these and sat down for a bit, looking back through the trees at the Shankses’ tower. There was a silhouette in front of the lights in the living room. I tasted the finger that had been feeling Melissa. The blood rushed to my head. It seemed a terrible amount of trouble to stand again, so I sat awhile and recalled the feel of her. I could see her, too—the silhouette was her—moving about the kitchen part of the upper room. Cleaning, I guessed. I don’t know how much time passed, but suddenly their kitchen lantern went dark, then reappeared—once, twice, three and then four times. That seemed a little odd.

Off to my right I heard a twig snap. I knew instantly it was people, walking over another foundation. I crawled silently between two large trees and listened. Around to the north of the house there were people, at least two of them, not doing a very good job of moving through the woods quietly. Valley people would never have made such noise. And there was no reason for any of them to be up there anyway. All this occurred to me rapidly, no matter that I was drunk. Without thinking about it I found myself flat on my stomach behind a tree, where I could see the Shankses’ door. Sure enough, shadows on the other side of the little clearing resolved into moving shapes, then into people, three of them. They walked right up to the door, said something up at the second story.

It was Melissa who let them in. While they were still on the first floor I slipped through the trees quiet as owlflight, and hauled butt over to the wall of their house. I blessed my speed (fastest in Onofre by far) and held my breath. Only then did I wonder if I really wanted to be there. That’s drunkenness for you—sometimes it can speed action by cutting out the thought.

From the ground I could hear their voices, but I couldn’t make out enough of what they were saying to make sense of it. I remembered seeing blocks of wood nailed to the side of the house next to the door, making a ladder to the roof. I shifted along the wall to them, and step by step I ascended the blocks, taking a minute for each block so they wouldn’t creak. When my head was under one of the windows I stopped and listened.

“They’ve got a radio,” Addison said. “He says it isn’t working yet, but they have someone from the Salton Sea coming out to try and fix it.”

“That’s probably Gonzalez,” said a nasal, high voice.

A deeper voice added: “Danforth is always bragging he’s got equipment right on the edge of working, but it doesn’t always happen. Did he describe the radio’s condition?”

“No,” Add said. “He doesn’t know enough to judge it, anyway.”

They had been pumping me! Here I had gone up there thinking to pump them for information, and they had been pumping me instead. My face burned. And what was worse, Melissa had probably arranged with Add to come on to me after I had gotten good and drunk, to distract my attention from the questions! Now that was ugly.

And then Melissa said scornfully, “He doesn’t know any more than the rest of those farmers.”

“He knows books,” Add corrected her. “And he was digging around trying to find out something, I don’t know what. Glass? Or Orange, more likely. He may have just been curious. Anyway, he’s not as ignorant as most of them.”

“Oh, he’s all right,” Melissa said. “Can’t hold his liquor, though.”

One of the scavengers was moving about the room, and I could make out the bulk of him as he passed above me. I pressed into the wall and tried to look like a shingle. If they caught me … well, I could beat any of them through the woods at night. Unless I fell. I was in no shape for running, and suddenly I was scared, like I should have been all along.

They continued to discuss the San Diegans, and Addison and Melissa told them everything I had said. I was surprised at how much I had told them; I didn’t even remember some of it. They had pumped me good, that was sure. And I hadn’t learned a thing from them. I felt like a fool, and gritted my teeth with dislike for those two.

But now I was getting back at them. And despite what she had done and what she was saying, part of me wanted to get Melissa’s dress up again.

“Our island friends were planning to bring over people and goods soon,” the nasal one said. “We need to know how much Danforth knows, and what he could do about it if he did know anything. Maybe we should move the landing.”

“They don’t know anything,” Add said. “And Danforth is nothing but talk. If they could touch Dana Point they wouldn’t be asking the Onofre folks for help.”

“They may just want a good harbor up the coast here,” the man above me said. He was facing my way. “Las Pulgas has got too many sandbars, and it’s too far away.”

“Maybe. But from the sound of it they’re nothing to worry about.”

The nasal one seemed to agree: “Danforth doesn’t abide his best man, from what I hear—he can’t be much of a leader.”

They discussed Danforth and his men in some detail, and on my wooden step I trembled. To know so much they must have spies everywhere! We were ignorant simpletons, compared to such a network.

“We should be off,” said the nasal guy. “I want to be in Dana Point at three.” He went on, but the moment he mentioned leaving I started inching down the blocks, shifting my weight ever so slowly, and praying that the man above me was looking into the room. I was stuck against the house; no matter which way I left, there was a good chance someone would see me. The shortest gap was to the west, so I went to that side of the building and waited. Had they started downstairs? I guessed that they had, and stole off into the trees. Foxes couldn’t have crossed that ground as fast as I did.

Sure enough, the scavengers quickly appeared at the front door, and I saw Melissa in the doorway waving goodbye, still in her white dress. I was tempted to approach the house again and spy on the two of them, but I didn’t want to press my luck. As long as they didn’t know I had overheard their meeting with the scavengers, I had turned the tables on them. That felt good. I started off for the river, walking slowly and quietly. In the end I had gotten more information than they had, and they still thought I was a dimwit; that might give me an advantage later. I wanted fiercely to get back at them. If only the scavengers had said exactly
when
the Japanese landing was going to be.… But I knew it was to be soon, and at Dana Point, and that was something substantial to tell Steve. Would I have a story for him. He would be envious again, I judged with drunken clarity. But I didn’t care. I would get the Shankses—show Steve what I could do—whip the Japanese—get Melissa’s dress off—triumph every which way—

A tree creaked and I jumped out of my shoes, practically. I started paying attention to my progress through the forest. It took a long time to get home, and then a long time to get to sleep. Such a night! I recalled hanging on the wall of the Shankses’ house. Why, I had done it again. That Melissa, though—she had hurt my feelings. But all in all I felt good. Escaping the Japanese ship, foxing scavengers and their spies … smart work all round.… After some more of this drunken fuddle I fell asleep. That night I dreamt there were two of me, chased by two of the Japanese captain, and in a house over the river that didn’t exist two Kathryns rescued us.

15

“Well, Henry,” Steve said when I told him about my night (juicing it up a little, and leaving out the part where Add and Melissa had pumped me for everything I knew), “we’re going to have to know
when
they’re going to land at Dana Point, or we don’t have anything. Think you can find out?”

“Now how am I going to do that?” I demanded. “Add isn’t going to tell me a thing. Why don’t you find that out?”

He looked offended. “You’re the one who knows Melissa and Add.”

“Like I said, that’s no help.”

“Well—maybe we could spy on them again,” he suggested dubiously.

“Maybe we could.”

We went back to fishing in silence. Sun smashing down on the water and breaking bright white over every swell. Hot days like this were my special joy—the hillsides steamed, the water and sky were two shades of the same rich blue—but on this day I wasn’t paying much attention to it. Steve was speculating about how we might spy on Add, and planning what he would say to Lee and Jennings. He had worked out everything he was going to say to them to convince them to let us guide them into Orange. As we rowed back to the rivermouth I spoke for the first time since telling him my story: “You can put all that good planning to work—that’s Jennings on the beach talking to your pa.”

“It is?”

“Yep. Don’t you recognize him?” Even with his face smaller than my little fingernail I knew him. At the sight of him all my San Diego trip came back to me at once, as something that had really happened to me. It made me shiver. There was no sight of Lee. Jennings was talking as usual. Now that I could see him in the flesh our whole plan seemed foolish. “Steve, I still don’t think dealing with the San Diegans on our own is a good idea. What’ll the rest of the valley say when they find out?”

“They won’t find out. Come on, Henry, don’t fade on me now. You’re my best friend, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. But that don’t mean—”

“It means you’ve got to help me with this. If you don’t help I can’t do it.”

“Well … shit.”

“We’ve got to hear what they’re saying there.” He rowed like he was in a race to the flats. As we grounded over the sand I said,

“How will we get close enough to hear?”

We jumped out and lifted the boat forward on the next spent swell. “Walk the fish past them and listen while you’re near. I’ll follow you, and we’ll piece together what we heard.”

“That won’t be easy.”

“Shit, we know what Pa is saying. Just do it!”

I picked up a pair of rock bass by the gills and trundled slowly across the rimpled sand to the cleaning tables, walking right behind Jennings. He turned and said, “Why hello, Henry! Looks like you made it home safe enough.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Jennings. Where’s Mr. Lee?”

“Well, now.…” His eyes narrowed. “He’s not with us this time. He sends his regards.” The two men with Jennings (one had been on my train, I thought) smirked.

“I see.” That was too bad, I thought.

“We went up to see your friend Tom, but he was in bed sick. He told us to come and talk to Mr. Nicolin here.”

“Which is what we’re doing now,” John said, “so clear out, Hank.”

“Sick?” I said.

“Get going!” John said.

Jennings said, “Talk to you later, friend.”

I carried the bass up to the cleaning tables and said hello to the girls. Walking back to the boat I passed Steve, then heard John say, “You got no call to be pressing on this, Mister. We don’t want any part of it.”

“All well and good,” Jennings said, “but we need to use the tracks, and they run right across your valley.”

“There are tracks back in the hills. Use those.”

“Mayor doesn’t want that.”

And then I was out of earshot. It was tough hearing their voices with the gulls stooping us and screeching over the offal. I picked up a bonita and another bass and hurried back. Steve was just past them.

“Barnard wouldn’t talk to me,” Jennings said. “Is that because he wants us to work together?”

“Tom voted against helping you along with the majority of the people here, so that’s that.”

Over at the cleaning tables Mrs. Nicolin said, “Why is that man arguing with John?”

“He wants us to let them use the train tracks in the valley, and all that.”

“But they’re ruined, especially at the river.”

“Yeah. Say, is the old man sick?”

“So I hear. You should go up and see.”

“Is he bad?”

“I don’t know. But when the old get sick…”

Steve nudged me from behind, and I turned to walk back.

“The Mayor ain’t going to like this,” Jennings was saying. “No one down our way is. Americans got to stick together in these times, don’t you understand that? Henry! Did you know your trip to San Diego has gone to naught?”

“Um—”

“You know what’s going on here?”

John waved a hand at me angrily. “You kids clear out,” he ordered.

Steve heard that over the crying gulls, and he led me up the cliff path. From the top we looked back at the river flat; Jennings was still talking. John stood there with his arms across his chest. Pretty soon he was going to grab Jennings and throw him in the river.

“That guy is a fool,” Steve said.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The old man is sick, did you know that?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound interested.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t reply.

“I’m going to go see how he’s doing.” He had been coughing a lot when he told his story. And even back at the meeting he had seemed listless and hacky. All I remembered about my mother’s death was that she had coughed a lot.

“Not yet,” Steve said. “When that guy gives up on Pa we can catch him alone and tell him our plan.”

“Jennings,” I said sharply. “His name is Jennings. You’d better know that when you talk to him.”

Steve looked me up and down. “I knew it.”