The man Dodd would have wanted was with Porter, dead.
They returned to the others. Senator Tyler was concluding his film interview.
McCrary was asking, “Have you ever seen anything so horrible as this mud slide?”
“No, and I hope I never do,” the senator replied, aiming sincerity right into the lens. He was campaigning for a second term. Thus the slogan on the bumper stickers: TYLER 2
The senator, his wife, McCrary and the cameramen retreated to the limousines. Everett, Chapin and Dodd remained there with General Schyler and Major Babb.
“The army will do all it can,” Schyler promised.
“How long will it take?”
“I’d say we could have the highway open in three weeks, maybe a month.”
“What about down below, the supermarket?”
“That could take another couple of months, at least. Anyway, there’s no reason to hurry, is there?”
They looked to the slide.
“Not really.”
“We’ll bring in the equipment and get to it soon as the weather clears.” Rain was pouring from the beak of Schyler’s gold-braided cap.
“Nothing you can do now?” Dodd asked.
“Nobody can handle that mud,” Schyler said.
They went their separate ways then, Dodd back to headquarters on East Santa Clara Avenue in Santa Ana. There he drew a mug of coffee, put his feet up, and phoned the two victims’ wives he hadn’t been able to reach earlier. One, the second, was Rita Porter. Dodd knew her well, so breaking the news to her was all the more painful. Rita absorbed the first shock and, still sobbing, asked Dodd how he thought she could best tell her two sons.
“They’re good strong boys. Tell them straight out.” Thirteen and fifteen, they would supply the support she needed, Dodd believed.
When he clicked off he had a bad taste in his mouth. He tried to wash it away with coffee but that made it worse. He sat there staring past a lot of paperwork and decided he needed to go home, to see Helen.
He used his own car rather than an official one, hoping thereby to avoid any chance of being pressed into duty along the way. Heading north on Harbor Boulevard he was passed by two speeding souped-up cars, a young couple in each. For their amusement they were causing splashes left and right, all the way up onto the sidewalk. Dodd’s automatic reaction was to hurry and stop them, but his fatigue let them go. Nothing short of a holdup would get to him, he promised himself.
On 17th Avenue he noticed an outdoor advertising billboard for a suntan lotion that had originally shown a girl displaying most of her skin ideally bronzed, along with the words, “DON’T BURN! NEVER PEEL!” Now the advertisement itself was peeling, panels of it soaked and coming down in places, so that it read “BURN!” and the girl’s good looks were splotched and she was possibly topless.
Further on in a residential district Dodd saw that a house with a large lawn had its sprinkler system on despite the downpour. Perhaps the sprinkler control mechanism was out of order, or, just as likely, the owners had reached the point of denying reality.
When he arrived home, before going in, he took a look around the backyard. All the roses were definitely drowned. And the fruit-bearing lemon tree he’d planted ten years ago was losing its leaves, which had turned pale yellow. He reached up to pick a lemon, disturbed a branch and caused more leaves to fall. Losing his temper, he grabbed the branch, shook it hard. When he let go it was practically bare.
Not feeling any better from that, he turned, saw Helen’s face at a kitchen window. His first sight of her in two days. A smile. He went in to her, to a welcoming kiss and another, and he held her longer than usual.
She was forty-five, a warm, attractive woman of few words. Short-cut salt-and-pepper hair, eyes the color of chestnuts, very little makeup on her exceptionally fine, clear complexion.
“I made soup,” she said.
He sniffed, a wonderful hearty smell. Vegetable soup the way she made it from scratch was one of his all-time favorites, and this was the time for it, she knew.
He had two large helpings that truly helped and nearly a half a loaf of toasted French bread.
“Pretty good one-handed soup,” he said, lightly referring to her right arm in a cast.
“Left-handed soup.” She laughed, and then, after some eyes-to-eyes silence, fondly, “You don’t look tired.”
That was her special way of telling him he did.
He went into the living room, intending to stretch out on the sofa, but Helen wouldn’t have it. She urged and tugged him into the bedroom, insisted that he take off his clothes, take a relaxing shower. By the time he came out, drying, she had the bed turned down. Fresh sheets.
“In with you,” she ordered, contradicting her severity with a kiss.
He grumbled and that was the extent of his resistance, although, really, he didn’t feel the least bit deserving.
18
Brydon’s sense of time was off.
Minutes — five, fifteen, an hour of them — swept swiftly around the face of his watch. But that same time, when he concentrated on it, also seemed compressed in keeping with what his existence had come down to. Each moment exaggerated itself, went inevitably by, but slowly, very slowly, as though somehow restrained.
The rise of the mud was as regular as clockwork. Brydon used a nail to scratch his estimate of inches and feet on the length of a plank that he stuck in and down until it reached bottom. Fixed in place with metal shelf stripping, it could be read like a tide-level marker.
According to the marker, the mud was coming up steadily one-half inch an hour. At that rate there were thirty-six hours left before the mud would reach the tops of the islands.
During the night Brydon at times stretched out on the hard wooden surface, his jacket balled up for a pillow. He didn’t sleep, only napped for a minute or two. He spent most of the time pacing Island Eight, seventy feet from end to end, trying but unable to believe in rescue, so, instead, trying to figure some way out. Anything that came to mind was quickly vetoed as impossible. If only he had the most primitive sort of tools, even an ordinary rock for a hammer, some fibrous vines to bind and tie. But he had nothing. There was no way.
Eventually futility won out so many times that his ideas balked, refused to be presented, and all that got through were the irking messages of hunger and thirst.
He went to Spider Leaks on Island Seven. Spider had been observing Brydon, whose pacing looked familiar to him. He had seen men pace their cells when they were about to flip.
Spider stood as Brydon approached.
Brydon kneeled.
So did Spider.
“Hungry?” Brydon asked.
“My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.”
Brydon remembered the little jars of caviar he had in his pocket. He wasn’t in the mood for anything so delicate and, he decided, neither was Spider.
“Crazy thing, man,” Spider said, “us being in here with nothing to eat.”
The shelves were bare. Everything was under the mud.
“Think we’re being punished?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Peter Javakian overheard and joined them. Amy was extremely hungry and he had been considering ways of getting at the food. His best idea, he thought, was to make a net. “We could weave it with strips of clothing,” he said, and went on to describe something of the sort used to catch butterflies.
“What would you do for a pole?”
“Use a plank.”
Possible but difficult and unwieldy. Another problem would be what to use for a hoop to form the mouth of the net.
Peter suggested metal shelf stripping. Doubled and twisted, it might be sturdy enough.
Brydon doubted that but he respected Peter’s spirit, tactfully told him: “I don’t know about you but I’m too hungry to fool with anything that complicated.”
They crossed over and went to the forward end of Island Five. Judith Ward and Marion Mercer were there. The two wo
men parted quickly and got up. Brydon apologized for the disturbance.
“Going fishing,” he said, “and I seem to remember this was a good spot.”
He took off his clothes, everything. Removed his belt and looped it around his right wrist. “Just in case. It’ll give you something to pull on.”
Peter Javakian took off his belt and tightened it around Brydon’s left wrist.
By then the others had come to Island Three. Brydon felt their attention on him. He stepped to the edge, sat, hesitated a moment to look down at the dark mass. It seemed placid, almost inviting. Putting his weight on his hands he turned and lowered himself, feet first, into the mud.
It was colder than he’d anticipated and had it been water he would have plunged in, taken the shock all at once. But it was necessary that he go in slowly, and as nearly straight as possible. To his knees, to his crotch, to his waist. If he should lose balance he would be in very serious trouble. Like Emory Swanson.
His feet touched bottom.
The mud, its thick, clammy consistency, was up to mid-chest. He experienced the weight of it now, the encompassing pressure. The top surface of the island was just above his eye level. He glanced up. They were all looking down at him — quizzical, dismayed. Phil Kemp’s mouth, his eyes showed a trace of amused contempt. Gloria Rand was offering concern and hopefulness. And there were Spider and Peter directly above, ready to help if he needed them.
He tried to move his feet, to feel and search with them. It took a lot of strength to move them even an inch at a time.
There. His right foot had found something. He couldn’t make out the shape as a clue to what it was. He hoped for a can of beer.
He took three deep, filling breaths and held the third, clenched his eyes and mouth shut just before going under. Rather than bend and reach to one side, he went down in a well-balanced squat, both feet planted evenly. The sensation of being completely submerged in mud was strange, eerie, especially on his face and hands. The mud prevented any normal pace or motion — he had to push to bring his arms down. That alone took so much time he was sure he would run out of breath. He groped on the bottom with his right hand. His fingers went around something cylindrical, slippery. He got as good a grip as he could on it.
How long had he been under? His lungs were already beginning to burn. His throat felt as though it were being inflated. He had the urge to open his eyes. Was that instinctive — the impulse to see death and thereby somehow prevent it?
He concentrated his strength in his legs and shoulders. He pushed upward. The mud resisted, gave but only very gradually. A fact flashed like an alarm from his memory: one cubic yard of ordinary dirt weighs one ton. Mud at least double that.
His lungs were on fire now, worse each second. His throat seemed about to burst. At the deepest his head had been under twelve inches, perhaps sixteen. Where the hell was the surface, air? Under pressure of the mud he lost the ability to determine position, couldn’t make out how much his legs were bent, so he couldn’t tell how much progress he’d made. He had never held his breath this long. His legs were trembling, demanding that he give up.
He opened his eyes.
He was surprised to see the island. But only half his head was above the surface. The mud level was across the bridge of his nose. He still couldn’t breathe. Excruciating, the polarity: life within easy view, death with a heavy hold on him. Both life and death inspired him to keep shoving upward, and when his nose finally emerged, he snorted out loudly and drew in through his nostrils. Revitalized, before long he was standing, handing up what he had found. A can of something.
He felt wonderfully exhilarated, like laughing, a victorious feeling.
Peter shined the light on the can.
Spider wiped the mud from it, exposing some of its metallic red and yellow and the words:
OVEN CLEANER
It seemed to Brydon that everyone moaned at once. He felt the focus of their disappointment; his own was converted into anger. Again he pumped his lungs full and went under.
He had learned from before, knew what to expect, didn’t waste energy. He went under with his arms already down at his sides. That saved time. He grabbled along the bottom, found something. He pushed upward but this time didn’t try so hard, gauged the limit of ascent the mud would permit and kept to it, and although he didn’t have breath to spare when he reached the surface he also didn’t have to endure the agonies of near suffocation.
What he brought up this time was a plastic container of margarine, the newer, more convenient kind of semiliquified margarine that could be squirted. At least it was an improvement, something edible.
Spider Leaks had now taken his clothes off. Some of them tried not to look at him. He was a middleweight with a tight, sinewy body, hard from work. Lean waisted, stomach muscles defined.
Covered with mud, Brydon was darker than Spider. Brydon’s eyes and teeth, set in contrast, now flashed whiter. He told Spider how best to go under, what the dangers were.
Spider nodded. He didn’t appear frightened, although at that moment his pulse rate was up to one hundred twenty from a normal seventy-two. When he lowered himself in he uttered a string of swear words, as though to counter the offensiveness of the mud.
Brydon took hold of the edge of the island, tried to pull himself up and out. He struggled, was stuck. Peter and Dan Mandel grabbed the belts to haul Brydon up. He never would have made it alone.
Sitting on the edge for a breather, Brydon watched Spider sink from sight, and he hoped for the black man. The mud showed no sign where Spider had gone under. Brydon watched the spot. For a moment, in his imagination, the mud was animate, a malicious creature that had swallowed Spider and was now digesting him. It seemed Spider had been under a long time — too long. The worst had happened, Brydon thought, and he wondered if there was something important that he hadn’t told Spider. But then, Spider’s head broke the surface of the mud and slowly became totally visible.
Spider handed up what he’d found. “PUREE DE MARRONS NATURE” the fancy decorated can said. Mashed chestnuts imported from France.
Brydon grimaced inside. Chestnuts in any form were one of the few things he truly disliked. He stood and went down the island a ways, like a trout fisherman hoping a new location would bring better luck.
There, and at other places, he and Spider continued to search for food until they were exhausted. Hauled out, they lay face up on the island. Every inch of their bodies coated with mud, their backs and buttocks and legs slippery against the island’s surface.
After a while, when they were not so exhausted, they wiped off the mud. Brydon tore the tail from his shirt, used that, first on his face. Just then he would have given anything, except a day of his life, for a shower. The mud couldn’t be completely wiped away. It didn’t show as much on Spider’s skin, but he felt it as much, the dirtiness of it. Spider wiped himself off with his socks and a nearly clean handkerchief. Brydon eventually had to use his entire shirt. They waited until the remaining thin coat of mud dried. Then they slapped and rubbed their skin and shook their hair, causing a dusty cloud around them. When they put on their clothes, they felt an all-over uncomfortable grittiness.
Peter and the others cleaned most of the mud from the items that had been salvaged:
2 bottles clam juice
1 can white hulless popcorn
1 bottle Tabasco sauce
1 can vanilla frosting
1 staple gun
1 container plastic toothpicks
2 yellow twelve-inch candles
24 beef bouillon cubes
1 can Irish oatmeal
1 self-applicating shoe polish
1 container flavored bread crumbs
1 can olive oil
1 can frozen lemonade concentrate
1 half-gallon can liquid floor wax
1 gardening claw
1 box wild rice
1 box No-Doz keep-awake tablets
4 cans evaporated milk
2 boxes plastic trash bags
1 container dog food
5 cans 7Up
2 bottles Coca-Cola
9 cans diet soda, cherry, club and creme
Also the oven cleaner, the puréed chestnuts
and the squeeze margarine.
Brydon examined the lot. The dog food appeared to be the most appetizing thing. Of course, the milk, the oatmeal, the frosting and such would do in a hunger pinch — and the soft drinks were good — but he had hoped to do better. Somewhere on the bottom there were thousands of better things to eat. Considering the abundance, it seemed ironic, almost vengeful: toothpicks, trash bags, a gardening claw — and what the hell could be done with a staple gun?
Brydon tossed a can of the milk to Peter, who jabbed it with the beer opener and gave it to Amy.
“Anybody for clam juice?” Brydon asked.
No takers.
He wondered if the time would come when there would be.
He rationed the soft drinks, one for every two persons.
Phil Kemp griped about that. Brydon told him if he was so thirsty he could dive for more. Kemp called Brydon a shithead, but he mumbled it low so Brydon didn’t hear.
“I’d like some of that,” Lois said, indicating the vanilla frosting.
Too sweet for an empty stomach, Brydon thought, but he opened it for her. She took it to Island Five. While she sat gazing at nothing she frequently dipped her fingers into the frosting, childlike.
Back on Island Eight, Brydon lighted one of the candles. Less light than the flashlight but enough. He realized then, as he put the book of matches back in his pocket, that someone had taken the caviar. Both jars. While he was risking his life in the mud, someone had rifled his jacket pocket. What especially bothered Brydon was when the caviar was stolen — when. Anyone could have had it for the asking. Who had taken it? Brydon thought Kemp. That was why Kemp had such a big thirst, from gobbling salty caviar.
To put out some of his anger Brydon gulped on his half of a Coke, trying to pretend it was a Carta Blanca. Even before yesterday, before all this, he had begun to do a lot of pretending.
Marsha Hilbert and Elliot Janick.
Slide Page 12
