“The Salton Sea must be huge now,” Tom said.
Jennings let Lee answer. Lee nodded. “It’s fresh water now, too, and filled with fish. People out there were doing pretty good, considering how few of them there were.”
“What brings you up here?” John Nicolin asked bluntly.
While Lee stared at John, Jennings looked around at his audience. Every face in the room was watching him closely, listening to what he had to tell. He appeared to like that. “Well, we had the rails going up to Oceanside,” he explained, “and the ruined tracks extended north of that, so we decided to repair them.”
“Why?” John persisted.
Jennings cocked his head to match the angle of John’s. “Why? I guess you’d have to ask the Mayor that one. It was his idea. You see”—he glanced at Lee, as if getting permission to speak further—“you’re all aware that the Japanese are guarding us on the west coast here?”
“Of course,” John said.
“You could hardly miss that,” Rafael added. He had put his pistol away, and was sitting on the edge of the bath.
“But I don’t mean from just the ships offshore,” Jennings said. “I mean from the sky. From satellites.”
“You mean cameras?” Tom said.
“Sure. You’ve all seen the satellites?”
We had. Tom had pointed them out, swiftly moving points of light that were like stars, cut loose and falling away as the universe moved on. And he had told us that there were cameras in them, too. But—
“Those satellites carry cameras that can see things no bigger than a rat,” said Jennings. “They really got the eye on us.”
“You could look up and say ‘go to hell!’ and they’d read your lips,” Lee added with a humorless laugh.
“That’s right,” Jennings said. “And at night they have heat sensitive cameras that could pick up something as small as this roof, if you had the fire in here lit on a rainless night.”
People were shaking their heads in disbelief, but Tom and Rafael looked as if they believed it, and as people noticed this there were some angry comments made. “I told you,” Doc said to Tom. Nat and Gabby and a couple others stared at the roof in dismay. To think we were being watched that closely … it was terrible, somehow.
Strangers are good for news, they say, but these two were really something. I wondered if Tom had known about this all along, and had never bothered to tell us, or if he had been ignorant of it too. From his look I guessed he might have known. I wasn’t sure that such surveillance made any difference in a practical way, but it sure felt awful, like a permanent trespass. At the same time it was fascinating. John looked to Tom for confirmation, and after a slight nod from him John said, “Just how do you know that? And what does that have to do with your coming this way, again?”
“We’ve learned some things from Catalina,” Jennings said vaguely. “But that’s not the end of it. Apparently the Japs’ policy includes keeping our communities isolated. They don’t want reunification on any scale whatsoever. Why, when we built the tracks on highway eight east”—he swelled indignantly at the memory—“we built some bridges big and strong as you please. One night around sunset, wham. They blew them up.”
“What?” Tom cried.
“They don’t do it in any big way,” Jennings said. Lee snorted to hear this. “It’s true. Always at dusk—a red streak out of the sky, and thunk, it’s gone. No explosions.”
“Burnt up?” Tom asked.
Lee nodded. “Tremendous heat. The tracks melt, the wood incinerates instantly. Sometimes things around will catch fire, but usually not.”
“We don’t camp near our bridges much.” Jennings cackled, but no one laughed with him. “Anyway, when the Mayor found out about this, he got mad. He wanted to complete the tracks, no matter the bombings. Communications with other Americans is a God-given right! he said. Since they got the upper hand for the time being, and will bomb us when they see us, we’ll just have to see to it that they don’t see us. That’s what he said.”
“We work real light,” Lee said with sudden enthusiasm. “Most of the old pilings are still there for river bridges, and we just put beams across those and lay the rails across the beams. The handcars are light and don’t need much support. After we’ve crossed we take the rails and beams across with us and hide them under trees, and there’s no sign we’ve crossed. A few times for practice and we get so we can cross the easier rivers in a couple of hours.”
“Of course sometimes it doesn’t work,” Jennings added. “Once out near Julian we had bridge pilings burnt right to the water by those red streaks.”
“Once they know we’re at it, they may keep a closer watch,” Lee said. “We don’t know. They’re not consistent. Mayor says there may be disagreements on how to deal with us. Or spotty surveillance. So we can’t predict very well. But we don’t camp near bridges.”
The fact that these two men were struggling with the Japanese, even indirectly, silenced everyone in the room. They had a lot of eyes on them, and Jennings basked in it. Lee didn’t notice. After a bit John pursued his question: “And now that you’ve managed to get up here, what might your mayor want with us?”
Lee was eyeing John sharper and sharper, but Jennings replied in a perfectly friendly way: “Why, to say hello, I reckon. To show that we can get to each other quick if we need to. And he was hoping we could convince you to send one of your valley’s officials to come down and talk about trade agreements and such. And then there’s the matter of extending the tracks farther north—we’d need your permission and cooperation to do that, of course. The Mayor is mighty anxious to establish tracks up to the Los Angeles basin.”
“The scavengers in Orange County would be a problem there,” Rafael said.
“Our valley doesn’t have officials,” John said belligerently.
“Someone to speak for the rest of you, then,” Jennings said mildly.
“The Mayor wants to talk about these scavengers, too,” said Lee. “I take it you folks don’t have much use for them?” No one answered. “We don’t fancy them either. Appears they are helping the Japs.”
Steve had been nudging me so often that my ribs were sore; now he almost busted them. “Did you hear that?” he said in a fierce whisper. “I knew those zopilotes were up to no good. So that’s where they get their silver!” Kathryn and I shushed him so we could hear the rest of the discussion.
Then there was an absence: the roof was silent. Those who wanted to go home dry inquired, and found that Lee and Jennings planned to stay for a day or two. So several people gathered their ponchos and boots and left. Tom invited the San Diegans to stay up at his place, and they accepted. Pa came over to me.
“Is it okay with you if we go home and eat now?”
It looked like the talking was over, so I said, “Let’s do it.”
There was a sense of slowness and confusion to our departures. The strangers had told us so much we had never learned even at the swap meets that it filled our minds, and even finding dry clothes became difficult. After all the projects Lee and Jennings had listed the bathhouse didn’t seem like much anymore. Pa and I got back into our wet clothes, as we had none to spare for the bathhouse, and we hurried home along the hissing brown river. By the time we got home it was drizzling again. We got the fire going good and sat in our beds as we ate our dried fish and tortillas, gabbing about the San Diegans and their train. I fell asleep thinking of bridges made of nothing but train tracks.
The next morning I was fishing drowned greens out of our garden when I caught sight of Kathryn walking down the path, muddy once again, holding a bunch of scraggly young corn stalks in her hand. She’d been rolling up the tarps, and if they were up already, then she and her farm crew must have been at it since before first light, because they could never get as many people to help roll the tarps up as they could to put them down. Getting them back up was more or less their problem. And so of course Kathryn had just had a look at the damages. I could tell she was
mad by the way she walked. The Mendezes’ dog ran out barking playfully at her and she swung a foot at it with a curse. The dog slipped avoiding her boot and yelped, then ran back to its garden. Kathryn stood in the path cursing, and then kicked the base of the big eucalyptus with her heavy boot, thump. I decided to pass on saying good morning to her.
Tom appeared from the other direction. “Henry!” he called. I waved to him as he approached.
He stood looking down at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Henry, what would you say to a trip to San Diego?”
“What?” I cried. “Sure, you bet! What?”
He laughed and sat down on the barrel half in our yard. “I was talking with John and Rafe and Carmen and the San Diegans last night, and we decided I’d go down there and talk with this Mayor of theirs. I want to take someone along, and the older men will all be working. So I thought you might not mind.”
“Wouldn’t mind!” I stalked around him. “Wouldn’t mind!”
“I figured not. And we can make some sort of deal with your pa.”
“Oh yeah?” Pa said, looking around the corner of the house. He grinned, came around the corner carrying two buckets of water. “What’s this all about?”
“Well, Sky,” Tom said, “I want to hire out your boy for a trip.”
Pa put down the buckets and pulled his moustache while Tom told him about it. They wrangled over the value of a week of my work, both agreeing it wasn’t much, but differing over just how little it was, until they’d worked out an agreement whereby Tom rented my services for whatever it took him to get a sewing machine that Pa had seen at the swap meet. “Even if the machine doesn’t work, right?”
“Right,” Pa said. “I want Rafe to strip it for parts, mostly.”
And Tom was to deal with John Nicolin concerning my absence from the fishing.
“Hey!” I said. “You got to ask Steve to come too.”
Tom looked at me. Fingering his beard, he said, “Yes … I suppose I do, really.”
“Ha,” said Pa.
“Aye. I don’t know what John will say, but you’re right, if I ask you I have to ask Steve. We’ll see what happens. When you’re done fishing, ask John when I can come by to talk about the San Diegans. And don’t say anything about this to Steve yet, else it will be him asking John and not me. And that might not be so good.”
I agreed, and soon I was off running to the cliffs, singing San Diego, Sandy Dandy-ay-go. On the beach I shut up, and spent the afternoon fishing as usual. When we were back ashore I said to John, “Tom would like to talk with you about the train men, sir. He was wondering when it would be convenient for us to drop by and talk.”
“Any time I’m not down here,” John said in his abrupt way. “Tell him to come by tonight,” he added. “Come eat a meal with us. You come too.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. With a mysterious wink at Steve I was off up the cliff. I ran the river path home, splashing every puddle. To San Diego! To San Diego by train!
5
Late that afternoon the old man and I walked down the river path to the Nicolins’. The valley cupped us like a green bowl, tilted to spill us into the sea. The air smelled of wet earth and wet trees. Overhead crows cawed and dipped and lazily flapped their ways home. Above them there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; nothing but that pure dome of early evening blue. Naturally we were in high spirits. We skipped over puddles, cracked jokes, and described to each other the dinner we were headed for. “I’m starved,” the old man declared. “Starved! I haven’t eaten a thing since you told me we were invited.”
“But that was only a couple hours ago!”
“Sure, but I passed on tea.”
We turned off the river path and climbed the trail leading to the Nicolins’ house. Once over the freeway we could see it through the trees.
It was the biggest house in the valley, set on a fine patch of cleared land just behind the highest part of the beach cliff. The yard around the house had been planted with canyon grass, and the two-story, tile-roofed building stood on its green lawn like something left over from the old time. There were shutters bracketing glass windows, big eaves over the doors, and a brick chimney. Smoke lofted from this chimney into the river-blue sky, and lamps glowed in the windows. Tom and I gave each other a look, and went to the door.
Before we got there Mrs. Nicolin threw it open, crying, “It’s a mess in here but you’ll just have to ignore it, come in, come in.”
“Thanks, Christy,” Tom said. “The house may be a mess, but you’re looking fine as always.”
“Oh you liar,” Mrs. Nicolin said, pulling back a loose strand of her thick black hair. But Tom was telling the truth; Christy Nicolin had a beautiful face, strong and kind, and she was tall and rangy, even after bearing seven kids. Steve took a lot of his features from her rather than from John: his height, his sharp-edged nose and jaw, his mouth. Now she waved us in the door past her, shaking her head at the ceiling to show us, as she always did, that her day had been too harried to be described or imagined. “They’re cleaning up, they say. They’ve been building a butterchurn all afternoon, and right in my dining room.”
Their house had a dozen or more rooms, but only the dining room had a giant set of windows facing west, so despite Mrs. Nicolin’s protests it got used for everything that needed good light, especially when the yard was wet. All of the rooms we passed had fine furniture in them, beds and tables and chairs that John and Teddy, Steve’s twelve-year-old brother, had built in imitation of old time stuff. To me the whole house looked like something right out of books, and when I had said that to Tom he had agreed, saying it was more like houses used to be than any he’d ever seen: “Except they didn’t have fireplaces in the kitchen, nor rain barrels in the halls, nor wooden walls and floors and ceilings in every single room.”
When we got to the dining room the kids ran out of it yelling. Mrs. Nicolin sighed and led us in. John and Teddy were sweeping up splinters and chunks of wood. Tom and John shook hands, something they wouldn’t do unless one was visiting the other in his home. Through the big west windows we had a good view out to sea. Sunlight slanted in and lit the bottom of the east wall, and the wood dust in the air. “Get this room clean,” Mrs. Nicolin ordered. She pulled a hand through her hair, as if just standing in the room was making her dirty. John lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise, and tossed a scrap of wood in her direction. I left and went through the kitchen, which was stuffy with good smells, to find Steve. He was out back, cleaning the inside of the new churn.
“What’s up?” he asked.
I decided to tell him, as I couldn’t think of any way to avoid it. “Jennings and Lee asked Tom if he wanted to go back down with them to talk to that mayor. Tom’s going to go, and he wants to take us along!”
Steve let the churn fall to the grass. “Take us along? You and me?” I nodded. “Wow! Why off we go!” He leaped over the churn, wiggled his arms in his victory shimmy dance. Suddenly he stopped and turned to examine me. “How long will we be gone?”
“About a week, Tom says.”
His eyes narrowed, and his wide mobile mouth became straight and tight.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just hope he’ll let me go, that’s all. Damn it! I’ll just go anyway, no matter what he says.” He picked up the churn again, and thumped the last chips out of it.
Soon Mrs. Nicolin called us all into the dining room, and got us seated around the big oak table: John and her at the head, her grandmother Marie, who was ninety-five and simple-minded, Tom, Steve and Teddy and Emilia, who was thirteen, and very quiet and shy; then me, and then the kids, Virginia and Joe the twins, and Carol and Judith, the babies of the family, back around the table next to Mrs. N. John lit the lamps, and faint reflections of us all sprang to in the big west window.
Emilia and Mrs. N. brought out plate after plate, until the tabletop was nearly invisible under them. Tom and I kicked each other under the table. Several of the plates were covered, and when John t
ook off their tops steam puffed out, fragrant with the smell of chicken bubbling in a red sauce. There was a cabbage salad in a large wooden bowl, and soup in a porcelain tureen. There were plates of bread and tortillas, and plates covered with sliced tomatoes and eggs. There were jugs of goat’s milk and water.
All of the smells made me drunk, and I said, “Mrs. N., this here’s a feast, a banquet.”
The Nicolins laughed at me, and Tom said, “He’s right, Christy. The Irish would sing songs about this one.” We passed the plates around following Mrs. Nicolin’s orders, and when our plates were piled high we started eating, and it was quiet for a time, except for the clink of cutlery on plates and bowls. Soon enough Marie wanted to talk to Tom, for she just picked at her chicken and greens. Tom bolted his food so quickly—never stopping to chew, it seemed—that he had time to talk between bites. Marie was pleased to see Tom, who was one of the few people outside the family she regularly recognized. “Thomas,” she piped loudly, “seen any good movies lately?”
Virginia and Joe giggled. Tom snapped down a chunk of chicken like it was bread, leaned over and spoke directly into Marie’s nearly deaf ear: “Not lately, Marie.” Marie blinked wisely and nodded.
“But Tom, Gran’s wrong, Gran’s wrong, there aren’t no movies—”
“Aren’t any movies,” Mrs. N. said automatically.
“Aren’t any movies.”
“Well, Virginia—” Tom gobbled down some of the fish soup. “Here, try this.”
“Yooks, no!”
“Marie was talking about the old time.”
“She gets the old time mixed up with now.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“What?” Marie cried, sensing the talk concerned her.
“Nothing, Marie,” Tom said in her ear.
“Why does she do that, Tom?”
“Virginia,” Mrs. N. warned.
“It’s okay, Christy. You see, Virginia, that’s an easy thing for us old folks to do, mixing things up like that. I do it all the time.”
The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) Page 7
