The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (39 page)

After my second visit to the Nicolins’ I went home and went to bed. It had been such a day I thought I would have trouble falling asleep, but a few minutes after I lay down I was out. A couple of hours later I woke up, though, and for the rest of the night I tossed and turned, listened to the wind, considered what I should do.

Just after dawn I woke up with the knot in my stomach, and trying to get back to sleep only made it worse. I faintly remembered a dream that was so awful I made no attempt to recall it more clearly—something about being chased—but a few moments later I wasn’t even sure of that. Stepping outside for my morning pee I discovered a Santa Ana wind—the desert wind that pours over from the hills to the east and pushes all the clouds out to sea, and heats up the land, and makes everything dry for a time. Santa Anas strike three or four times a year, and change our weather completely. This one was picking up even as I watched, twisting the trees all backward to their natural onshore bent. Soon pine branches would be snapping off and gliding seaward.

The empty water bucket gave me a shock when I picked it up. Static electricity, Tom called it, but try as he would he couldn’t make me understand it. Something about millions of tiny fires rushing around (of course you remember how well he explained fire to me) … and all the wires strung between towers like the Shankses’ place had carried this electricity around, and it had powered all the automatic machines of the old time. All that power from little snaps like the one I had felt.

Walking to the river in the raw morning sun it seemed that everything was packed with color, as if static electricity might be something that filled things and made them brighter. The hair on my arms stood away from my skin, and I could feel the roots in my scalp as the wind pulled my hair this way and that. Static electricity … maybe it gathered in humans over the stomach. At the river I stepped in to my knees, ducked my head under, sloshed water down my throat and back up, hoping the electricity might catch to the water and leave with it. It didn’t work.

Wide awake now. Cat’s paws fanned across the river’s surface, one after another, helping it down to sea. Already the air was warm and dry; it felt like it would be burning soon. The sky was a bright pale blue. I drank half a bucket of water, threw rocks at a fallen tree stuck against the other bank. What to do? Gulls wheeled and flapped overhead, complaining at how hard they had to work in this backwards wind. I walked back to my house and ate a loaf of bread with Pa.

“What you doing today?” he asked.

“Checking snares. That’s what old Mendez told me, anyway.”

“That should make a good break from the fishing.”

“Yeah.”

Pa looked at me and wrinkled his nose. “You sure aren’t one for talking much these days.”

I nodded, too distracted to pay much attention to him.

“You don’t want to get so’s people can’t talk to you,” he went on.

“I’m not. I’d better be off, though.”

I went to the river again, thinking to get up to the snares eventually. Sat down on one of the tiny bluffs that overhang the bank. Downriver the women appeared one by one, the Mariani clan and the rest of them, out while the Santa Ana was blowing to bathe and wash clothes and sheets and blankets and towels and anything else they could haul to the water. The air was a bit hotter every minute, and dry so you could feel it in your nostrils. The women got out the soap and stripped down, moved into the shallows at the bend with washboards and baskets of clothes and linens, and went to work, chattering and laughing, diving out into the mainstream to paddle around a bit and get the soap off them. The morning sun gleamed on their wet bodies and slicked-down hair, and I could have stayed longer to watch them, such sleek white creatures they were; like a pod of dolphins, I thought, splashing water at each other, tits swinging together as clothes were scrubbed over washboards, mouths open to laugh and grin at the sky. But they had seen me sitting upriver, and pretty soon if I stayed they would be throwing rocks, and lifting their legs to embarrass me, and calling out jokes like: Do you need some help with that? or Careful it’ll wash away like this here bar of soap.… And besides I had other things on my mind anyway, so with a last glance I turned and walked upriver, forgot about the women and began to worry again. (But what would they think of all this?)

See, I could have not told him. I could have said, Steve, I didn’t find anything out and I don’t know how I could, and left it at that. And Friday night would have come and gone and we would never have known the difference. They wouldn’t have, anyway. And everything would have gone on as before. Walking the river path it occurred to me I could do this, and as I hiked from snare to snare I considered it. In some ways it appealed to me.

But I remembered my fight with Add; how I’d knocked him against a tree when he held the knife and I didn’t. And after clearing a rabbit out of a snare and resetting it, I remembered my escape from the Japanese, my swim to shore, my struggle up that ravine. It seemed like great adventure to me now. I remembered climbing up the side of the Shankses’ house to hear the conversation with the scavengers, and my silent bat-runs after Addison through the woods. I had enjoyed that more than anything that had ever happened in Onofre. I’d never felt such power. It seemed to me more than ever that these things were not just happening to me, but that I was
doing
them, that I was choosing to do certain things and then I was going out and doing them. And now I had the chance to do something better than anything else had been so far, to fight for my lost country. This land I walked over was ours, it was all we had left. They had to stay off it or suffer for it. We weren’t a freak show, a bigger version of those little ones that visited the swap meets sometimes, exhibiting pathetic radiation cripples, both animal and human.… We were a country, a living country, living communities on living land, and they had to leave us alone.

So when I returned to the valley through the neck, I dropped off three rabbits and a smelly skunk, and continued downriver to the Nicolins’ house. Steve was out front, shouting furiously at his mother in the doorway. Something about John again, I gathered, something he had said or done to enrage Steve.… I winced and waited until Steve was done shouting. As he stalked away toward the cliffs I approached him.

“What’s up?” he said as he saw me.

“I know the date!” I cried. His face lit up. I told him all about it. When I was done I felt a certain chill, and I thought, well, you’ve told him. I had never really decided to; the act itself was the decision.

“That’s great,” he kept saying, “that’s great. Now we’ve got them! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did,” I said, annoyed. “I just found out yesterday.”

He slapped me on the back. “Let’s go tell the San Diegans. We don’t have much time—a day, whoo! They might need to get more men from south or something.”

But now that I had told him, I was more uncertain than before that it was the right thing to do. I shrugged and said, “You go on down and tell them, and I’ll tell Gabby and Del and Mando if I see them.”

“Well”—he cocked his head at me curiously—“sure. If that’s what you want.”

“I’ve done my share,” I said defensively. “We shouldn’t both go down there; it might draw attention to us.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Come by tonight and tell me what they said.”

“I will.”

When he came by that night the wind was blowing harder than ever. The big eucalyptus’s branches creaked against each other, and its leaves clicked and spinnerdrifted down on us. The pines hummed their deepest chord, and tossed up and down across the bright stars.

“Guess who was at their camp?” Steve demanded, all charged up and even bouncing on his feet. “Guess!”

“I don’t know. Lee?”

“No, the Mayor! The Mayor of San Diego.”

“Is that right? What’s he doing up here?”

“He’s here to fight the Japs, of course. He was really happy when I told him we could lead them to a landing. He shook my hand and we drank some whisky and everything.”

“I bet. Did you tell him where it was?”

“Course not! Do you take me for a fool? I said we weren’t getting the final word till tomorrow, and that we’d tell them when we were up there ourselves with them. That way they’ll have to take us, see? In fact—I told them that only you know where they’re landing, and that you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, fine. Now why should I do that?”

“Because you’re a suspicious kind of guy, naturally, and you don’t want the Japanese to find out somehow that we know. That’s what I told them.”

That suggested something to me that I hadn’t thought of before, believe it or not: the Japanese could find out we knew from Add. The landing might not take place after all. Another possibility occurred to me: Add could have lied to me about the date. But I didn’t say anything about that. I didn’t want to bring up any problems. All I said was, “They must think we’re crazy.”

“Not at all, why should they? The Mayor was real pleased with us.”

“I bet he was. How many men were with him?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty.”

“Was Jennings one of them?”

“Sure. Listen, did you tell Del and Gabby and Mando?”

“What about Lee? Was Lee with them?”

“I didn’t see him. What about our gang?”

I was worried about Lee. I didn’t understand or like the way he had disappeared from the group. “I told Gabby and Del,” I said after a while. “Del’s going over to Talega Canyon with his pa Friday to trade for some calves, so he can’t come.”

“And Gabby?”

“He’s coming.”

“Good. Henry, this is it! We’re part of the resistance!”

The hot push of the Santa Ana burned in my nose, and I felt the static electricity all through me. Stars danced in the leaves. “True,” I said, “true.”

Steve stared at me through the darkness. “You aren’t scared, are you?”

“No! I am a bit tired, I think. I’d better get some sleep.”

“Good idea. You’re going to need it tomorrow.” With a slap to the arm he was off into the trees. A powerful blast of wind carried a soaring branch over my head. I waved at it and went back inside, where Pa was sewing.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. And the next day was the longest one I could remember. The Santa Ana blew strong all day; the land was drying out and heating up, and it got so hot that just to move was enough to break into a sweat. I checked snares in the back country all day—not an animal in any of them. After I forced down the usual fish and bread I got so fidgety that I just had to do something. I said to Pa, “I’m going up to see the old man, and then we’re going to work on the treehouse, so I’ll be home late.”

“Okay.”

Outside it was twilight. The river was a silvery sheen much lighter than the trees on the other bank. The western sky was the same silvery blue, and the whole arch of the sky seemed lighter than usual—the land was dark, but the sky still glowed. I crossed the bridge and went up to the Costas’. From their vantage I could see the whole valley forest bouncing in the gloom.

Mando met me outside the door. “Gabby told me about it and I’m going, you hear?”

“Sure,” I said.

“If you try to go without me, I’ll tell everyone about it.”

“Whoah, now. No need for threats, Armando, you’re going with us.”

“Oh.” He looked down. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure.”

“Why?”

“I thought Steve might not want me to go.”

“Well … why don’t you go down and talk to him. I bet he’s still at his house.”

“I don’t know if I should. Pa’s asleep, and I’m supposed to keep an eye on Tom.”

“I’ll do that, that’s what I came here for. You go tell Steve you’re coming along. Tell him I’ll be up here till we leave.”

“Okay.” Off he went, running down the path.

“Don’t threaten him!” I shouted at his back, but the wind tore my words off toward Catalina, and he didn’t hear me. I went inside. The Santa Ana was catching around the sides of the house, whistling in all the oil drums, so that the house said
Whoooo, whoooo, whooooo.
I looked in the hospital, where a lamp burned. Tom was flat on his back, head propped up on a pillow. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Henry,” he said. “Good.”

It was warm and stuffy in the room; Doc’s sun heating was working too well during these hot days, and if the vents were to be opened completely the wind would have torn through and made a shambles. I walked to the bedside and sat in the chair left there.

Tom’s beard and hair were tangled together, and all the gray and white curls looked waxy. They framed his face, which was smaller and whiter than I had ever seen it. I stared at it like I’d never seen it before. Time puts so many marks on a face: wrinkles, blotches, sags and folds; the bend in his nose, the scar breaking up one eyebrow, the caved-in cheek where those teeth were missing.… He looked old and sick, and I thought, He’s going to die. Maybe I was really looking at him for once. We assume that we know what our familiars look like, so that when we see them we’re not really looking, but just glancing and remembering. Now I was looking newly, really observing him. Old man. He pushed up onto his elbows. “Put the pillow so I can sit up against it.” His voice was only half as loud as it usually was. I moved the pillow and held him up while he pulled himself back to it. When we were done he was sitting upright, his back against the pillow, his head against the concave end of an oil drum. He pulled his shirt around so it was straight on his chest.

The one lamp that was lit flickered as a draft plunged down one of the partially opened roof vents. The yellow glow that filled the room dimmed. I stood and leaned over to give the flame a little more wick. The wind bent at an especially noisy angle around the corner of the house.

“Santa Ana blowing, eh?” Tom said.

“Yeah. A strong one, too. And hot.”

“I noticed.”

“I bet. This place is like an oven. I’m sure glad I don’t live in the desert if it’s like this all the time.”

“Used to be. But the wind isn’t hot because of the desert. It gets compressed coming over the mountains, and that heats it up. Compression heats things.”