by Matt Ritter
In this way, Gonzales did not differ from any of the old midvalley pueblos. They were isolated, peaceful, and the day-to-day agrarian lives of the residents, at least those who didn’t disappear in the night, was quiet and easy. It was easy, at least, until the sickening rains became more frequent in the crowded downvalley areas, then life got hard throughout the Valley.
Shortly after the rains worsened, there was more activity on the guarded longvalley ramps as residents of Gonzales and other towns on the Valley floor started being collected for work in the upvalley labor and oil-producing camps. Families were separated as teenage boys were collected for compulsory UP service while their parents made one-way trips up the guarded ramp, never to be seen again.
A school sits on the western edge of Gonzales, two blocks from the Native American path that originally ran through the Valley. For many years that school serviced the children of the families who worked the fields. When the older people of Gonzales began to be collected, the school became a refuge for the orphaned children. The gymnasium filled with cots where the children, ranging in age from five to fourteen, slept. Those same children ate together in the cafeteria. The few parents and grandparents left in the town did what they could to help with the orphaned children, but the responsibility of day-to-day care fell on the schoolteachers when there were any left.
Mary McElroy stayed with the children. She was one of five teachers at the school before the collections began and soon became the only remaining adult at the school. Her husband, who was in charge of loading the ramp trailers, didn’t come back from work one day, only two months after they were married. Mary went looking for him, pounding on the ramp’s guard station door but was given no information. Eventually, the Gonzales town Manager received word that Mary’s husband had died in an escape attempt with several others on the outskirts of the San Ardo labor camp.
All Mary had then were the school children, and she loved them dearly. Each night the children would gather around her in the gymnasium to hear her read aloud and say her soft-spoken words of hope and encouragement, before returning to their beds to silently pine for their parents. Each night Mary would close the book she was reading, look up at the ever-increasing circle of children around her, and say the same words, and some students mouthed the Valley prayer with her.
Let us hope that tomorrow brings sunshine and the rain is light and short.
Let us hope that tomorrow we are rejoined with our families.
Let us hope that Gonzales, and the Valley beyond, stay peaceful and prosperous.
Bring us sunshine, respite from the rain, and our loved ones home safe.
For the Valley.
Mary would finish and all the children, in their tired little voices, would repeat, “For the Valley.”
Before being collected, Will and Hannah Taft arrived at the school each afternoon to retrieve their daughter Helen, always fresh from the fields, smiling and laughing. One afternoon they didn’t arrive. Helen waited and waited. As it got dark, Mary came out to the curb at the front of the school where she sat and put her arm around her. When the rain was threatening, Mary carried her to a cot waiting in the gym, her eleven-year-old, lanky frame sobbing and limp over Mary’s body.
Three days after Will and Hannah Taft disappeared, everything at the school changed. Mary was returning to the gym from the adjacent classroom carrying a jar of Vaseline. It had rained hard the night before, and Mary skipped around several puddles that formed on the sidewalks under the covered walkways.
“Breakfast in fifteen minutes. Make sure you’re ready and your beds are made,” Mary said as she entered the gymnasium through the double doors. The gym hummed with the noise of children milling about and speaking to each other. Some sat on their cots or dressed themselves.
Mary took a seat next to Helen on her cot and said, “Here, pull your hair back away from your ear.” Mary took a small dollop of Vaseline and wiped it gently on the scabs behind Helen’s right ear. Helen winced at the cold jelly.
“You have to stop touching it.”
“I know. It itches so bad though.” Helen looked across the gym. “Do you think my parents are coming back today?”
“I hope so.” Mary could see Helen trying to read her face. “We’ll see. Here, you can keep this Vaseline. I’d like you to put a little behind your ear every couple hours or whenever you feel like you have to itch it. Okay?”
“Okay. Thank you, Miss McElroy.”
“We’ll be fine, Helen. I bet they’ll be back anytime now.”
“Who are they?” Helen asked, pointing to five men in light blue uniforms standing at the gymnasium doorway.
Mary faced the soldiers.
“Ma’am, are you in charge here?” asked one of the men in a booming voice that silenced the children.
“I am.”
“Can we speak with you outside?”
The soft thud of Mary’s footfall on the maple gym floor was audible in the dead silence as she walked between cots toward the door.
“Ma’am, I’m Captain Wilson,” one of the soldiers said when they were out on the sidewalk in front of the gym, the doors closed behind them.
Mary was struck by how wide he seemed. He was wearing some kind of padding under his uniform, his chest curved into his shoulders in one large, amorphous mass. He differed from the other soldiers and stood a few feet from them. He had no helmet nor gloves, while the others, who were clearly younger than he, were heavily armed. He had a freckled face and thick red hair that sat in tight curls against his head.
The other soldiers, all teenagers, seemed almost jolly, clueless, and ready to follow orders. Each proudly held a rifle in a black-gloved hand wore a helmet with goggles strapped to the front, and black flack vests hung with several tools. Mary figured these were soldiers from the border zone, which she had never seen before. This was what some of her previous students had become.
“I’m Mary McElroy. The teacher here,” Mary said, studying them.
None but the green-eyed leader spoke, and he did so sternly, slowly, and with his brow furrowed.
“Miss McElroy, we’re here under orders to watch over these children.”
“Watch over them?”
“Yes,” the captain said, glancing down at his watch. “We’ll be here for the next few days.”
“Why? What’s this about?”
“We have our orders. Is there a dry room we can occupy during the rain? Somewhere away from the children?”
“Yes, you can have a classroom.”
Captain Wilson removed a small note pad and pen from the front pocket of his light blue jacket. Looking down on Mary, he asked, “How many children are here in the school?”
“Twenty-two,” Mary said. “No, twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three,” he said, repeating her answer while writing it down.
“And the oldest child? How old is he or she?”
“Fourteen.” Mary eyed him while he wrote. “What’s this about? What’s going on?”
“Is he the tallest child here at the school?” he asked, ignoring her questions.
“I guess,” Mary responded, confused.
“About how tall is he?”
“About my height.” The captain looked up from his notepad and regarded Mary.
“Okay.”
He put the note pad away and turned to the others. “Follow Miss McElroy to the classroom, collect the gear and set up there. We’ll need to start immediately.” Turning back to Mary, he said, “Ma’am, can you show these men to the room?”
Mary looked at him and didn’t move. Since she'd never seen a soldier as apparently high ranking as Captain Wilson, she took the opportunity to question him. “Do you know the whereabouts of any of these children’s parents? Where have the people of Gonzales been taken?” Mary stood tall and tried to look strong, but fear was burgeoning inside her. Her heart bounced up into her throat.
Captain Wilson stared down on her blankly. He seemed almost incapable of reading any of
her emotions. Mary followed with another question. “Are you planning to reunite any of these children with their parents?”
Apparently realizing he wasn’t going to be able to ignore her, he said, “I don’t know, Ma’am. We’re only here to watch over the children.” Clearly becoming irritated, he continued, “I have no more information for you. We have our orders. Can you please show these men to the room?”
Mary looked all five over, then said, “Come with me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sun was setting on Will and Zach as they moved through the gunpowder fallow fields outside the abandoned town of Soledad. Will stopped several times to scan the horizon behind them.
“What are you looking for?” Zach asked.
“I have a feeling we’re being followed.” Turning to look downvalley, he said, “We’ll need shelter in the next hour or so.”
At dusk, on the edge of a field of lettuce that spread in straight rows that faded into the heavy night sky, they found an old cinderblock pump house with a dilapidated pump in the center of the small room. They sat opposite each other on the concrete floor, legs stretched out in front of them, leaning on their packs as the first raindrops began to fall. Will drifted off to sleep.
Sometime later, the rain intensified, and he awoke. He sat and listened to the distant rumble, the hissing sounds of a running river from all directions, and drips of different sizes pinging off the metal roof. The building whispered all around him. He looked across the tangle of rusted metal pipes to see that Zach was gone. The pump house door was ajar, and Will could smell sulfur and garlic blowing in on the air. Each breath was heavy and uncomfortable to take in.
He rose and looked out into the darkness. Zach’s pack hung from a bolt on the pump head. The rain had brought on colder temperatures, so he pulled the door closed and sat back down. He crossed his arms over his lower chest and drifted off to sleep again. Just before sleep came, Will had a vision of a tall chain-link fence, with the fingers of children gripping tightly to the wire. The chain link expanded and enclosed a complex of low buildings where skulls lined the inside of the fence. It expanded once more and Will saw a fence around the whole Valley, and it was burning. Crimson flames belched out sparks that rose on a plume of black smoke into the night sky. He opened his eyes to the darkness of the pump house and the flames from his vision still streaked his field of view. As his vision faded, he drifted off to sleep once again.
Will had no idea how long he’d been asleep when Zach pulled open the door. He was soaked, and his hair laid in thick blond lines stuck to his forehead. He stood like a statue in the darkness, where Will could hear drips of water falling off him onto the dry concrete. Zach took off his jacket and hung it on the pump.
“I always think the next time I get wet is the time that’s going to kill me, but it never does.”
“Can you smell the sulfur?”
“Sure. It smells like garlic cooking to me. It’s more intense when you get out into it. I don’t mind it. It’s always stunk like that.”
“When was your first time?”
“I was young. Nine. On my way back from the barn and I found a salamander at the creek crossing. Can you imagine? I’d never seen anything like it. Had seen no actual wild animals at all, for that matter. It had a beautiful orange belly. It didn’t move, so I picked it up right out of the creek. I held it and played with it. Amazing. I was distracted, and before I knew it, it was raining on me. I ran in the rain back to the barn, thinking I was going to die, but I didn’t. Didn’t even feel anything. When I got back to the barn I was soaked. I dried off there and told nobody.”
“Your parents never found out?”
“No, not then. A few weeks later my younger brother and I were making hay forts in the barn when a downpour started. I told him I could go out into the rain and it didn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t believe me, so I walked out into it. He was seven at the time.”
Zach sat silently for a long moment. Will waited. His voice was a hollow whisper when it returned. “I didn’t think I was the only one, that I was special. I thought when I survived that first rain that, that, that it was just all stories.” After another long silence, Zach continued, “I wanted to show everyone that it was just stories. I encouraged him to come out and see for himself.”
Will heard the soft thud of Zach’s fist hitting the concrete.
“It was pouring, and he barely made it out to me before he went down. By the time I had drug him back to the barn, he wasn’t breathing.”
“I’m so sorry,” Will said into the darkness across the room. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. He was only four feet away, but Zach was a shapeless figure in the dark, a formless voice drifting toward him.
“I was just a kid. I didn’t know.”
“I understand.”
“When it rains hard like it did tonight, I’ve opened my mouth and let the rainwater fill me up. Nothing. I’ve let it soak me for hours, until my skin is wrinkled, and still nothing. Yet he was gone in seconds.”
Will sat silently and listened to the words, not knowing what to say. He could hear Zach shivering. After a long silence Will said, “We do dumb things when we’re kids.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“She’s eleven.”
“Eleven,” Zach repeated.
“You’ll meet her in three days, maybe two if we get good weather.” As he said it, he hoped what he’d just said was true. Will let his palms rest on the concrete floor below him. It felt cold and damp. “I’ve been gone from her for too many days now. I’m sure she’s so scared without me and Hannah there.”
“Is that your wife?”
“Yeah.” Will was silent for a long time, staring into the darkness. Shapes twirled and morphed on the inside of the dark pump house wall. He continued, “It was just a few days ago, but if I think about her now, I can’t remember her face. I have to hold on to her memory, but the harder I try to think of her, the more she seems to disappear.”
Will stroked the cold concrete with the tips of his fingers. Zach was silent. The rain subsided.
The weak light from a diffuse moon shrouded by dense clouds was completely gone and the darkness in the pump house was now complete. It made him feel hidden and safe. At that moment he felt like he could say all the loving things that were in his heart, something he always had difficulty doing. Now it was all he wanted to do, but she wasn’t there to hear them. His wife was gone, her cold body in the sands above the Salinas.
It was an image he couldn’t exile from his brain, yet as hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember her face. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and how much he appreciated her, that she was his source of purpose. As the thoughts came to him, he realized he may never say them.
They had fought the night before they escaped from the camp, him trying to convince her to stay and let him go alone, her refusing to separate. He went over each word of the conversation, asking himself what he could have said differently.
Will pulled a slow breath into his lungs, and the rank stench of the rain made him cough.
“Did you see anything else out there?” Will finally asked. “An easy way around or through Soledad for us when it stops raining in the morning?”
“I scouted along the edge of the longvalley highway. It was raining hard, and I couldn’t see much. Two cars passed on the highway, going slow. There was one thing at the longvalley ramp. Some kind of truck parked at the top of the ramp. Not a typical loader.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw it in the lights of the passing trucks. I didn’t get a great view of it, but it looked like a modified army vehicle.”
“A jeep with a silver corrugated roof?”
“Maybe. Like I said, it was dark and raining pretty hard.”
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“No. I didn’t want passing cars to see me, so I didn’t go any closer. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Maybe,” Will said
, but he had an idea whose jeep it was. In the complete darkness of the pump house, he no longer felt safe.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Salinas City was unusually cold and bright on the morning that Science Minister Ben Harrison stepped out of a car onto the sidewalk behind the Valley Administration Building. Normally a thick shroud blanketed the city with pestilent low clouds. A smell that fluctuated between burnt gunpowder, sulfur, and cooked garlic had hung in the city air for so long that Ben could no longer smell it, but this morning was different. It was clear and crisp. A smell redolent of exhaust and the rotting sweetness from the overflowing marshes that surrounded the city blew over the skyline through the tall buildings on a cold northerly breeze. All the buildings, sidewalks, and streets seemed washed clean by the previous night’s torrential rain.
The copper morning sun amplified and reflected in a million droplets that shined on the large windows of the Administration building as Ben looked up before entering. While the UP guard waited, Ben turned slowly in a full circle, looking at the other buildings and the low mountains barely visible in the distance. His breath raised a white cloud around him.
As he peered upward, a droplet of water from a ghost cloud landed on the lens of his glasses and ran down his cheek. Ben could feel the skin go briefly numb where the droplet had touched him. He removed his glasses and quickly wiped the water from his cheek. Upon returning his glasses to his head, he felt a brief wave of nausea come over him. He studied the sky, trying to discover the origin of the raindrop, but nothing in the unblemished blue above him remotely resembled a cloud. He breathed deeply and entered the building.
His assistant was waiting for him in the hallway beyond the revolving doors.
“Morning, sir.”
“It’s a beautiful one. I haven’t felt the urge to stay outside in a long time. I’m feeling it this morning, though. Have you been outside?”
“Why?”
“The sun is shining.”
“I’ll have to go out later,” he said skeptically, peering out the glass front of the building. He turned back to Ben and said, “There are more, sir.”
