A coal-black Cessna 182 awaits us. Maggie and her boy start a flight check, walking around the plane, moving creaky flaps and rattling what seem to be loose propeller blades. Or maybe they're supposed to be that way.
"You guys ready? We want to get moving in case the competition informs on us. This is a cutthroat business." She smiles. "You got ID cards?"
We don't, of course, or we wouldn't be here. I get set to spend some more money.
"You got to be able to show IDs, or you'll be in the pen inside of twenty-four hours. All California citizens have them." I remember 120 WARDAY
as much from the train. "We can give you fakes. They won't work in a computer, but they'll pass an eyeballing."
"Is this part of the service?"
"No way. It's another sawbuck apiece. We had to pay fifteen hundred for the Polaroid machine. Them things are hard to get. Go in there without cards and you're wasting your plane fare. You don't want to have that happen."
We pay our money and get our cards.
The plane bounces along the "runway," at last shuddering into the air with a horrible popping from the engine. I almost wish it aloft, but it continues to stagger along at an altitude that could not be more than fifty feet. My heart begins to pound. The plane can't be working. It's going to crash.
Suddenly the kid starts counting backwards from ten. He has a stopwatch in his hand, just visible in the dim light from the dashboard. At the count of one, Maggie guns the motor and pulls her stick into her belly. We shoot upward, all except my stomach, which remains hanging, sickeningly, at our previous altitude.
"Power lines," Maggie comments as we dive back to the altitude of my guts. I look at Jim. His eyes are wide.
"They're flying low," he mutters, "to avoid radar. Since they can't see, they're measuring ground speed against the stopwatch so they can tell when to climb over obstacles."
"More or less."
"If that's a question, the answer is less."
We fly like this for what seems like hours. In fact, we go through the mountains literally at treetop level, with the boy counting and making check marks on a yellow pad, and the plane popping up and down almost continuously.
When I get airsick, the boy hands back a bag without ever missing his count.
Suddenly, just when it seems that the worst will never end, we are droning along straight and level, approaching the Los Angeles basin. "Palm Springs off to the left," Maggie comments. The lights of the town are beside us rather than below us. I decide to close my eyes until we land.
But there is no chance. I see L.A. then, and I almost burst into tears. Ahead and a little below are beads, strings, fountains of C A L I F O R N I A D A N G E R S 121
light It is a vision from the past, wealthy and mysterious and wonderful.
"I'm gonna leave you near Colton Airport. You know L.A., either of you?"
"I don't," I say, "but I don't think we want to be left at an airport. We'll have to deal with customs, won't we?"
"I didn't say at Colton airport. Near it. We drop people various places. We ain't used this particular spot in a month. I'm gonna land on Interstate 10, just west of the airport. I'm not even gonna turn off the engine. You just pile out and I'll give 'er the gun and that's it. You're on your own. There's an interurban station right near the airport. Go there. There won't be anybody around this time of night. Last trolley comes through at midnight. It's a dime."
Ten minutes later we are sitting in the brightly lit trolley stop.
There is an ad on the back wall for Yamaha bicycles and a placard announcing, M A R T I A L L A W A R E A , O B E Y L O C A L R E G U L A T I O N S , I F Y O U
V I O L A T E A C U R F E W , R E M E M B E R : S O L D I E R S A R E REQUIRED T O
S H O O T ! Penciled in below this are Colton's local laws: curfew is midnight or last trolley. The area commandant is Colonel William Piper, U.S.A., address GPO Colton, phone number 213-880-1098.
Suspicious persons should be reported at once.
Hello, sunshine.
Poll
Opinions from the Two Americas
There really are two Americas now, the first nation being California and its satellite Western states, the second being the rest of us folks—dirty, tired, and radioactive.
Out West, the public impression of the state of the rest of the country is very much worse than actual conditions would warrant.
"Outsiders" are looked upon as contagious at best, and probably downright lethal.
The West believes that
• America is recovering from the war.
• The West is helping the East as much as it can.
• The War Zones ought to be abandoned.
Naturally the East thinks otherwise, and though the War Zones are not broken out separately, they presumably feel that they should be rehabilitated.
Surprisingly, neither East nor West feels that long-term martial law in the War Zones is a threat to the Constitution, though the East has a stronger opinion in this matter than the W e s t 122
CALIFORNIA DANGERS 123
Do you believe that the United States is continuing to make a recovery from the 1988 war?
1993 1992 1991
A G R E E 49% 41% 30%
D I S A G R E E 46 57 67
NO O P I N I O N 5 2 3
A significant East-West split is reflected in the response to this question. As first noted three years ago, marked differences appear between the states of the so-called War Zone and the remaining states. When asked this question in 1993, these two regions responded:
East/War
Zone West
A G R E E 3 0 % 4 2 %
D I S A G R E E 69 55
NO O P I N I O N 1 3
In terms of assistance for recovery, do you believe that the federal government should abandon the War Zones permanently in order to concentrate resources on those marginally affected areas that could more fully benefit from the assistance?
1993 1992
A G R E E 4 7 % 4 9 %
D I S A G R E E 50 47
NO O P I N I O N 3 4
As in last year's survey, there were sharp regional differences: East/War
Zone
West
A G R E E
2 5 %
6 1 %
D I S A G R E E
73
36
N O O P I N I O N
2
3
124 WARDAY
Do you believe that the regions of the United States unaffected directly by the war are doing everything they can to assist in the full recovery of the War Zones?
1993 1992 1991
AGREE
3 1 % 2 7 % 2 9 %
DISAGREE
62 66 6 3
NO OPINION
7 7 8
Again, there were substantial differences between East and West: East/War
Zones West
AGREE 2 3 % 5 1 %
DISAGREE 71 47
NO OPINION 6 2
When asked what more the Western region could do to assist in recovery, or in what different ways it could do so, the responses were as follows:
East/War
Zones
West
DO THE SAME
13%
4 1 %
DO LESS
2
2 2
PROVIDE GREATER CAPITAL
ASSISTANCE 31 13
PROVIDE WORK TEAMS 12
10
ACCELERATE/INCREASE
SUPPLIES AND MATERIEL 42
14
Are America's allies doing all they can to assist this nation to recover?
1993
1992
AGREE
39%
3 4 %
DISAGREE
57
61
NO OPINION
4
5
CALIFORNIA DANGERS 125
As in 1992, there were significant regional differences in response
to this question:
East/War
Zone West
A G R E E 1 7 % 3 9 %
D I S A G R E E 79 57
NO O P I N I O N 4 4
Does the continued use of the U.S. Armed Forces to control the War Zones (approximately .7 million servicemen) pose a long-term threat to the return of constitutional authority to state and local governments in these areas?
1993 1992 1991
A G R E E 2 3 % 2 1 % 2 6 %
D I S A G R E E 68 69 67
NO O P I N I O N 9 10 7
Significant differences again appeared between regions: East/War
Zones West
A G R E E 2 2 % 3 5 %
D I S A G R E E 71 55
NO O P I N I O N 7 10
Should the center of the national government once again be reestablished on the East Coast, that is, moved from Los Angeles?
£ & . 1993 1992
A G R E E 3 8 % 3 9 %
D I S A G R E E 45 42
N O O P I N I O N 1 7 1 9
126 WARDAY
Do you support the recent demands made by some groups for dividing the United States into two permanent regions, e.g., West and East?
1993 1992
AGREE 47% 47%
DISAGREE 50 48
NO OPINION 3 5
Los Angeles
It is the greatest city in the United States. In size, San Francisco isn't even close.
Jim and I found it nostalgically complex, a vast mechanical toy full of buses and clanging trolleys and more cars than either of us have seen in one place in years.
It looks like fun, and the tension in the air reminds me a little of New York.
As much as there are things that are here from the past, there is something from the present that is missing. It is the sense of having suffered—the subtle tension that hangs between friends and strangers alike, everywhere else we have been so far. California didn't suffer too much from the famine, and few people here were weak enough to be killed by the Cincinnati Flu. Radiation sickness is almost unknown, except among refugees.
On our first night in the bright streets of Los Angeles, I found myself returning to my old metropolitan habits, moving with quick anonymity and never meeting anybody else's eyes.
There is a much stronger Japanese influence than ever before.
The streets are packed not only with Japanese businessmen but also with clerks and factory workers and children with American nannies. And there are cars: new Nissans that whistle when they accelerate and get 130 miles to a gallon of gas, sporty Toyota Z-
128 WARDAY
90s, Isuzus and Mitsubishis and the occasional Mercedes-Benz.
There are also a few Fords, big and beautifully made at the new plant in Fullerton, and a great improvement over the notorious Consensus with the plastic windows. Despite its size, the new Thunderbird gets sixty miles per gallon. It also has a sensor that sounds an alarm if any radioactive particles should be taken into the air-conditioning system.
More, though, than its prosperity, L.A. has the feeling of prewar America, the cheer, the confidence, the cheek that one associates with former days.
I indulged myself shamelessly. In Little Tokyo there are dozens of open-air fruit and vegetable stands where melons and tomatoes and lettuce and carrots and squash and dozens of other things are stacked in abundance. Little Tokyo, by the way, now extends all the way to Sixth Street. It must be four times its prewar size. In Little Tokyo I bought an enormous vine-ripened tomato for two cents and ate it like an apple. I have not eaten such a thing in years. It was rich beyond belief, dense with a flavor that swept through my nostrils, heavy with juice. If I could design hydroponics that would grow tomatoes that flavorful, I'd get rich.
For fifteen cents we spent half an hour at an open-air sushi bar, sampling the catch and burning our nostrils with Japanese horse-radish. Then we strolled on, satiated, only to be tempted a few minutes later into a beautiful ice cream store, which sold a new brand called Sweet Sue. I had a double-dip cone of cherry vanilla and, in honor of my son, pistachio.
I wish that my family could enjoy the life here. No wonder the P.O.E. is so strict. If immigration was free, California would be drowned in people.
As illegals, we were faced with a number of very serious problems. The first was transportation. There are ten long-distance trolley lines and many more buses than there were before the war, but a car is still a terrific convenience in L.A. We did not have one and couldn't rent one without revealing that our IDs were bogus.
So we were condemned to trying to figure out the intricate system of buses, minibuses, trolleys, and Aztlan-like pesetas.
Beyond transportation, we had the difficulty of finding a place CALIFORNIA DANGERS 129
to stay. I have enjoyed some extraordinary hotels in Los Angeles: the Beverly Hills, the Chateau Marmont, the Bonaventure.
But you can't register in a hotel without an ID that will pass the computer. In every bus and trolley, posted in stores and in post offices and pasted on every available public bulletin board, of which there must be thousands, is the following sign: MARTIAL LAW ORDER 106: IMMIGRATION ORDER
PENALTIES
Illegal immigrants are liable to arrest and imprisonment for up to three years for the first offense, imprisonment for no less than ten years, without possibility of parole, for the second.
WARNING! There are severe penalties for failing to report an illegal! You may be imprisoned for no less than twenty years for this offense. So don't take chances, report!
REWARD
California will pay you for information leading to the capture of an illegal immigrant! You can make five gold dollars just for picking up the phone and dialing the Illegals Hot Line, 900-404-9999. So, if you get a bad ID or just see somebody who looks road-weary, give us a call. You never know when your suspicions might be worth their weight in gold!
We decided to assume a hostile population and made a few basic rules. First, we had to keep moving. Second, we had to sleep under the stars. We couldn't even risk a rooming house—assuming we could find one with a room to rent. Housing is a nightmare in L.A. I saw ads in the Times offering small homes in the Valley for eight hundred in gold, no paper accepted and no mortgages given.
Dallas has whole neighborhoods where all you have to do is move in, bring your new house up to code, and it's yours.
Our third rule was that we had to look as happy and well fed as the rest of the Angelinos. Considering our other rules, this one was damned hard to keep. But we dared not look "road-weary." Angelinos know that overpopulation will strangle their prosperity, and they are generally avid to turn in illegals. We couldn't risk arous-
130 WARDAY
ing suspicion, especially not among our interviewees and in the offices Jim was visiting to get government documents.
We spent our first night in a carport at the La Mirada apartments. Immediately after dawn the next day, we had our second taste of conflict between government and members of the Destrue-turalist movement. Shouting began echoing up and down La Mirada Avenue from the direction of El Centro. Then there were people running frantically through the carport, breathing hard, followed by battle-dressed officers on black mopeds.
One of the escapees dove under a car just beside us. Her gasping was so loud that we could hear it over the buzz of the passing mopeds.
One of the cops waved his pistol at us. "You don't see this," he called. Then he sped off.
"Halt," echoed an amplified voice from the far end of the alley,
"you're all under arrest!"
Then there came the dismal mutter of capture, the gear-grinding approach of a small black schoolbus with bars welded across the windows, the quick disappearance of the little band of the desperate.
Then silence. Not a window opened in any of the houses that lined the alley, not a curious face appeared. We kept to the dim interior of the carport, listening to the breathing of the person under the car. We stayed like that for some little time
. Once somebody came out of the La Mirada, got into a gleaming blue Consensus, and drove away.
"It's quiet," Jim said at last. "You can come out now."
We then had our only contact with the Conspiracy of Angels, and learned a little more about the nature of Destructuralism.
A Statement by an Anonymous Member of
the Conspiracy of Angels
People cannot continue to hide from the fact that this civilization is totally bankrupt. Society needs a whole new way of doing and being if we are not going to build up all over again and wind up with an even worse war.
That is where the Destructuralist Movement comes in, and the Angels are militant Destructuralists.
What is Destructuralism, you might ask, and what's in it for me and my family? First off, Destructuralism says that your person and those you make your family are the only valid social unit, and the maintenance of that family is the only valid economic activity.
We say that the whole social edifice, from the Boy Scouts right up to the Army, is essentially an addiction, that it is more than unnecessary, it is dangerous. Social structures are the breeding ground of ideology, greed, and territorialism. Agricultural communities are peaceful communities, and families bound together by need and love do not go to war.
No matter how benign a given structure seems, it will inevitably lead to the same consequences all social structures lead to, namely, war and death. Real social harmony comes not from law-books but from the human heart.
If that is too high an ideal, then it is perfectly obvious that we 131
132 WARDAY
are eternally condemned to the slavery of warfare, and probably also to extinction.
Government is institutionalized dehumanization. People who deal with paper instead of other people lose the all-important thread of contact from heart to heart. Here's a story about a social structure that all of America loves, the British Relief. A man who joined our movement got eye cancer and the Relief did triage on him and sent him home. People wait in line for days, only to be told by some English nanny that they can't even get an aspirin. And if you go black market for medicine and get caught, it is not a jury of your peers that tries you, it is the Relief. And they forced you onto the black market in the first place. This man with eye cancer bought black-market chemotherapy, got caught, and had to pay a fine, even though he was dying.
War Day Page 13
