by Matt Ritter
The trees shuddered around them in the wind of the swelling storm, and the smell of garlic was overwhelming. Moments after they made it under the covering of Will’s porch, the sky opened above them and heavy drops clobbered the roof. In seconds it was pouring, and Will could feel a burning in his throat. He instinctively moved away from the edge of the porch where water splattered on the painted boards. Mary held her shoulder and looked winded and dazed, her blackened eyes red and watery.
“The front door’s still locked,” Will yelled at Zach over the roar of the rain. “Can you go around back? We can’t be out here much longer; there’s too much water in the air.” Will held his throat and felt light-headed.
Zach nodded, then looked at Mary, then back at Will.
“It’s fine. Go,” Will yelled.
Zach stepped out from under the porch covering and into the rain. Water instantly darkened his shirt. Mary let out a scream and raised her hand in Zach’s direction, but Will held her back.
“He’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt him.”
Moments later Zach opened the front door from the inside, and Mary and Will rushed in.
“How are you feeling?” Will asked Mary
“I’m fine. I just need to sit down.”
“What happened to your shoulder?”
“Nothing. I’ll be fine,” Mary replied.
“Here,” Will said, pointing to the couch. “I’ll bring you a glass of water.”
Will stood at the kitchen sink rubbing his eyes. He turned the water on and drank from the faucet, then poured a glass for Mary. After handing her the glass he sat opposite her on a chair in the living room.
“Should we build a fire?” Zach asked, nodding to the fireplace.
“That may be a bad idea since we seem to be the only ones in town. It may draw attention.”
“But the rain. Nobody would be out, even if they were here,” Zach said.
“Okay. There’s wood on the back porch to the left of the door. If you’ll go out and get some, I’ll start the fire,” Will said.
As Zach left to collect wood, Will watched Mary as she stared into the distance. He’d known Mary for many years, through the death of her husband and the collection of her students for UP service, and always considered her to be one of the most resilient people he’d ever met, but now she seemed changed.
Her eyes met his. Her broken face was pale and tired, and she stared at him, unblinking, for a long moment.
“Had you not shown up, I would have walked out into the rain tonight.” Her cracked lip began to quiver, and she lifted a hand to steady it. “I was all alone, the only person left in Gonzales. I have nothing anymore. My children.” She couldn’t go on and covered both her watery eyes with her hands.
Will moved next to her on the couch, putting his arm around her. “Mary, I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It’s coming down pretty hard out there,” Zach said as he returned with an armload of wood.
“It never used to be this bad when it rained. It seems like even the air is poisonous now,” Will said.
Mary looked up. “I’ve noticed that, too. It’s gotten worse, just in the last month.”
The kindling smoked and crackled as it was engulfed in thin blue flames. Will felt himself breathe deeply for the first time in several hours. The warmth and dryness of the flames reminded him of the few nights without rain or clouds when his father lit large fires in their back yard. He sat for hours in his mother’s lap, staring at the flames as they died down to coals. Even then he knew it was a rare and special thing to sit with his relatives around a fire under the stars of the Valley sky. It was an event that humans had shared in that same spot for millennia, yet in his lifetime he’d experienced fewer than ten cloudless nights.
Mary and Zach pulled up chairs behind Will and raised their hands toward the warmth of the fire as it jumped against the sooty surface of the firebricks. For a long time, nobody spoke. Their faces glowed, and the warm reflection of the flame danced in their watery eyes. The fire heated the skin of Will’s face, and he scratched carefully around the dried wound under his beard.
Zach rose and removed his wet shirt to hang it near the fire. Mary eyed him closely.
“How many of you are there?” Mary asked. She couldn’t hide the suspicion in her voice.
Zach looked at her, confused at first, then replied, “There’s just one of me.”
“You know what I mean,” Mary said.
“I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone else like me, at least that I knew about.” Zach turned to Will and asked, “Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“About your daughter?”
Will looked at Mary, who had turned to see his response. “No. I never suspected it. She always seemed afraid of the rain.”
“Maybe she didn’t even know,” Mary said.
“I doubt that,” Zach said. “I knew since I was a boy. It’s a feeling you get when it rains, or maybe a feeling you don’t get.”
“Do you have any idea where they may have been taking her?” Will asked Mary.
“No. I was so upset. I can’t even remember what was said. I know that the lead soldier, a redheaded captain, drove away with her, Jimmy, and another soldier in a transport jeep. I watched them go.”
“What was his name?”
“I only got his last name, Wilson,” Mary answered.
Captain Wilson. Will mouthed the words but barely any sound left him.
“The three other soldiers who stayed wouldn’t say anything to me. They just worked away digging their holes while I screamed at them.” Mary faced the fire in silence.
“Now that I think of it,” she continued, “they had a truck in front of the school. It wasn’t there when we left the school. They must have gone once they finished burying the—” Mary’s voice trailed off and she began to cry. Will put his hand on her back.
Will’s living room was dark except for the slow dancing of orange light on the plaster walls. He looked around at his meager possessions, a simple history told in objects, mostly accumulated by his wife and daughter. All else was lost, and now, none of it mattered.
Mary looked up at Will and asked the question he knew she’d been waiting to ask. All it took was one word.
“Hannah?”
Will shook his head and choked out the truth. “She didn’t make it. During the escape from the camp.”
Mary’s face stiffened, and her body swayed ever so slightly in reaction to his words. “I’m so sorry, Will,” she said in a shaky whisper.
He stared at the floor and didn’t speak.
“We’ll find Helen,” Mary said, trying to be reassuring.
Still looking down, Will said, “I know we will. Thank you.”
Turning to Zach, he said, “Tomorrow my plan is to head toward UP headquarters.”
“You think that’s where they’ve taken her?”
“We have nothing else to go on. I’ll find this Captain Wilson.” Will paused and stared at the flames. “I should go on by myself and you and Mary head back toward the prison.”
“It’s up to her, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather continue downvalley. We’ve come this far. I’ll see this through with you.”
Mary sat up and looked at them both. She nodded and said, “I’m staying with you, Will.”
Will looked at them both. “The farther downvalley we go, the more dangerous it gets. More rain, more UP, more war. You both realize that?”
Mary and Zach both nodded.
“Alright.” Will continued, “We’ll leave as soon as the rain stops. Meanwhile, we should get some rest. You two lie down and I’ll stay up for a bit and keep watch. Mary, you can use the bedroom, Zach the couch.”
“Let me take the first watch,” Zach said. “I’d like to go for a little walk.”
Will looked at him carefully, wondering where his loyalty came from and how far he would test it.
“Just make sure you aren’t seen, if there is anyone l
eft out there. Give me a couple hours of sleep, then wake me so you can rest.”
“Okay.”
“Would you mind if I slept out here by the fire, on the couch next to you?” Mary asked Will.
“No problem. I’ll sleep on the rug,” Will replied.
Early the next morning, the rain stopped, and Will was sitting on the front porch. A great reef of light was yawning across the eastern Valley, the sun hadn’t yet risen, and the Valley was still blanketed in clouds.
Will knew the time to leave his house and Gonzales, likely for the last time, was drawing near. For years his heart was tethered to this home. This town had been his redemption, his chance at another life. He thought of Hannah and how she'd loved this house. All the upkeep was work done out of love. He sat on the porch, whose boards they had sanded on their hands and knees each night for a week after returning from the fields.
He thought of Helen and how much she looked like her mother. His heart came up into his throat. This house was the location of all her first times. The day she was born, right there in that bedroom. How nervous he'd been, worried about Hannah, then after Helen came screaming into the world, everything seemed right. The worries that plagued Will about his past, about the future of the Valley, melted away on the day Hannah gave birth. That baby girl was his antidote for the world that had shown him so much darkness and pain.
Her first word was formed right there on the front porch. Heywilly. Something she'd picked up from her mother, a quickly slurred version of “Hey, Willie.” Heywilly. Heywilly. She said it over and over as she crawled from her mother in the kitchen to where he worked on the front porch railing. The first time she took any steps in his direction was in the living room, stumbling like a drunken sailor into his open arms. He thought of the first time she called him Daddy. There was also the night not so long ago when they had to explain to her about the collections, how it may happen to him and Hannah. How adult she was, taking it all in stride, saying, “It’s okay, Daddy. For the Valley.”
He felt like so much of the good fortune he received after returning from the war wasn’t meant for him. A wife, a child, a comfortable house; these were all things never meant for him, but there he was, being comforted by his daughter as he explained the cruelties of the world to her. He had done such terrible things and was good at doing them, like a tool being used for its right purpose. In a strange way, the soldier and ruthless killer version of himself were truer than the husband and father.
This house meant nothing without them. Neither did Gonzales nor the great Valley that cradled them. His love of the Valley, which at one time he was willing to carry out the unthinkable for, was only love for the Valley’s people, and now that was gone, too.
Will’s chest felt tight. He rose and focused on the parting clouds in the sky above Gonzales. Captain Wilson. He mouthed the vile name. He turned to go inside and wake Zach when a massive explosion shook the entire house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Will saw the shock wave as it moved from the house out into the trees. Their leaves all fluttered at once from the intense wind blowing over them.
Within seconds Zach was on the porch with Mary following him. “What was that?” he yelled.
“I don’t know,” Will replied, coming down off the front steps into the humid morning air.
All three were standing on the sidewalk in front of Will’s house when the second explosion hit. A flash of white light sparked across the pewter dawn sky. Milliseconds after the light had passed, a concussion wave hit, followed by the sound. The second eruption was much larger than the first, and all three ducked and cowered involuntarily where they stood on the sidewalk.
“Look,” Will yelled, pointing in the distance, beyond the water tank, toward the longvalley highway. He ran down the street for a better look. Zach and Mary followed. The highway was backlit by the weak light of the not yet risen sun, and they could see a pillar of smoke rising from a section of the longvalley freeway.
“Quickly, back to the house,” Will said, looking around.
They ran back to the front porch and into the living room, where Will gathered up necessary possessions into his backpack.
“Mary, on the floor in the closet in the bedroom there’s another pack. Look through Hannah’s clothes for something warm.” Will turned to Zach. “Was there any food left in the kitchen?”
“I have it all.”
“Get everything packed up then. We need to leave here immediately. This place will be crawling with UP in no time.”
“What’s going on out there?” Zach asked.
Will just shook his head and shrugged.
While packing his jacket into the backpack, Will saw Helen’s doll in the bottom. He pulled it out and studied it. A bit of mud was smeared on the felt material on the doll’s back. Will took a moment to clean the soil from the material and carefully placed the doll back into the bag.
When they made it back out onto the street, the sun was closer to rising, and mercury light had overtaken the entire sky from the east. Will turned to look at his house one last time. Black tree canopies were outlined in the sky beyond. A soft breeze was blowing, and the smell of sulfur was dissipating. A cloud of thick white smoke was forming over the longvalley freeway.
They moved quickly under the trees on the neighborhood streets and up onto the trackless railroad levee. From there they had a clear view of the longvalley highway. The clean unbroken line of concrete pillars was destroyed in a wide section, and the tarmac had crumbled and fallen to the Valley floor.
Within a half hour, they were down among the willows on the banks of the Salinas. The river ran silently downvalley through the black stems. All the water from the previous night’s rain ran its cyclic course, oozing in the dark silence from the depths of the mud.
It was only there, hidden in the river’s path along the Valley floor, that Will felt safe enough to take a moment to rest and think. The three of them sat, breathing hard, on a downed log in the sand.
Mary watched Zach rub his thigh and asked, “Are you okay? You’re limping.”
“I’m fine. It’s an old injury.”
Since the previous night, when she’d seen him step carelessly out into the rain, Mary watched Zach intently. Zach scanned the river basin. “I need to pee. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Will, who nodded his response.
After Zach had walked away, Mary turned to Will. “What happened back there?” she asked.
Will shook his head. “The resistance, I think.”
“Who is this boy with you?”
“I met him upvalley, after escaping from the camp. He was injured and his parents were gone. I agreed to let him travel with me. He saved my life. Kept me dry when I was sick in the rain.”
“But, Will, he—” Mary said, pausing halfway through her statement.
“I know. The rumors were true.” Will looked down and toed the sand with his boot, shaking his head. “And Helen’s one, too. Unbelievable. Either way, he’s a good kid.”
“How far are we from Salinas City?” Zach asked loudly, coming out from behind the willows down river.
“Not far off. We can stay along the river almost all the way into Spreckels. If it’s clear, we’re less than a day’s walk from Salinas,” Will said while standing.
“Have either of you been to Salinas City before?” Zach asked.
“When I was a girl my dad took me there once.” As they started walking again, Mary pulled on her hair and tied it into a loop at the back of her head. “He was a teacher in Gonzales for many years, and we rode on the produce truck into the city for him to get a shipment of textbooks. It only took about forty minutes on the back of that truck, but it seemed like a completely different world. I can still remember it. The buildings were so tall, crowded with people. On the way to the book repository, my dad stopped at a small shop where they had coffee. It was the first time I’d seen it, and I haven’t since, but I can still remember the smell of that shop, like burnt pap
er and spices.”
Mary paused, and they walked in silence. She finished by saying, “After that one trip, we never had the opportunity to return.”
“How about you, Will?” Zach asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been there.” Will hated the idea of returning to that revolting city, which he’d hoped to never see again. “It’s not as impressive as you think. Mostly crowded and dirty.”
“Well, I’ve heard it’s huge,” Zach said.
“Yes, it’s huge,” Will responded, following Mary. “I served with a guy who lives in Salinas City and works for the Administration. I’ve been to his apartment before, and I think I can still find it. Hopefully, he still lives there.”
Will followed Mary and Zach along the river, watching it flow over its sandy banks. The Salinas had run by him all his life, and memories floated past on the cold muddy waters. He looked down at the dark sand and thought of Hannah’s body buried just upstream.
He thought of that first perfect afternoon nearly fifteen years ago. They were only a short distance from where they now walked. It was an autumn afternoon, and the sun was mellow and warm. No breeze moved the leaves. Everything save the river was still, and they were alone at last.
The river ran near the tomato field where the late season plants were tall enough to hide their brief escape. Their hands were stained green from pruning and staking. He was recently back from the border, clumsy and slow in the work, whereas she was skilled and dexterous. She led him to a hidden spot where the willows bent and formed a tunnel. Freed from their boots, straw hats laying on the sand, they dipped their feet into the cold water. Hannah’s legs, tan to the ankles, braced against the black trunks that crisscrossed the bank. Inside their tunnel, they were hidden beneath the tangle of wild cucumber vines in a riprap of twisted branches and downed leaves, softened with time and rot. His rough hand met her stomach. She smiled, and the vegetation muffled their laughter.
Will studied the chocolate water as it slithered across his frame of view and disappeared in front of them. Without realizing it, his cheeks were hot with tears, and he wiped them while following Zach and Mary along the river’s edge. Those misshapen trees, this discolored sand, and that predictable river was braided through his entire life. He wondered if their tree tunnel bed was still there. Maybe the scent of her skin still hung in the air, the sound of her laughter in the leaves. He raised his nose, but nothing came to him but the astringent smells of willow and mud on the cold breeze.
