California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  Frida had told him how it felt to see her mother cry when Micah left for Plank. How she knew she’d never be enough for her parents. How neither of them expected much of her, how they believed her baking was silly—a stoner’s hobby—and how, secretly, she agreed with them.

  And Cal had told her how he couldn’t stand to go back to Cleveland, even after they were allowing families of the deceased into the broken city, even though there was land that belonged to him. He didn’t have the guts, he said. There were the Plank Chronicles, too. She could have recited the names of the animals there, the chores he did, the classes he took. He told her of his desire to carry the school’s idealism into a world that maybe didn’t deserve it.

  Even though she knew it was arrogant to think this made them different from any other couple falling in love, Frida had believed that what they’d shared was more than what other couples gave each other.

  But, now, she realized how silly she had been. She understood that these confessions, these stories about the past, were a rite of passage for any couple, clichéd but crucial, necessary to their survival. If she’d been with other men before Cal—not random one-night stands, or ongoing trysts with deli busboys, but real relationships—she might have known this.

  She would have understood, too, that all the talking in the world couldn’t give everything away, that a person was always capable of keeping secrets. It might have saved her from feeling betrayed by her husband here at the end of the world.

  As twilight turned to night they ate beets and the remainder of their jerky in silence, the fire glowing orange between them, popping and hissing in that way that still delighted Frida, even after these two-plus years. She was relieved that she and Cal had been smart enough to travel during a gibbous moon so that it wouldn’t be inky dark once the flames were extinguished.

  Frida remembered how undark it had always been in L.A., the sky the green-gray color of something miasmic until well after midnight. She wanted badly to know what that sky was like now, if there was enough electricity to ensure that the city would remain bright and wasteful. Sometimes she pictured Hilda and Dada venturing out into the night together; in her mind they held hands.

  After dinner, Cal tied the remainder of their food to a tree branch and then wiggled into the sleeping bag. He didn’t ask her to join him; he had stopped requesting things of her since he’d suggested the stupid bulletproof vest. He probably wanted her to feel she was acting of her own volition, making her own choices, sharing in the difficult decisions of life. How thoughtful.

  Frida didn’t even pretend to have other plans: she got into the sleeping bag with him. He was her only shelter, and she wanted to be near him. The sleeping bag reminded her of their days in the shed; its slippery fabric smelled like mildew and dirt. If she let herself relax against him, she could enjoy this, the outdoors, the open space. The moon above them was the white button of a sweater, tucked halfway closed.

  “I can grab the flashlight,” Cal said. “If you want it.”

  She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  “What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

  “I have no idea.” She didn’t tell him that one moment she imagined pilgrim settlements and the next a high-tech world hidden in the brush: computer labs and electric toothbrushes, drivers texting from their hovercrafts. It was all so ridiculous, but in their Murphy bed in Hollywood she would have described each possibility to him in detail. She would have told him her biggest fear: that Bo had been fucking with him, that miles away there was nothing but more miles.

  “They might kill us,” Cal said.

  “If you really think that, why agree to the trip?”

  “Because you’d hate me otherwise.”

  His voice had turned hoarse, and Frida understood he was laying himself bare, making up for lost time, for past lies.

  “I just want you to be prepared,” he said.

  “What? Prepared to die?”

  He grabbed her leg under the covers. “No. But you need to remember that not everyone loves you immediately.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  “They don’t want us there, Frida.”

  “I need to be told that to my face.”

  “I know,” he said. And then, after a moment: “Remember when we would go walking in your parents’ neighborhood?”

  Frida nodded. Cal knew she’d been ruminating on their courtship, on their young love. Either he could read her mind, or she was hopelessly predictable. Or both.

  “Of course I remember,” she said. They would go there to walk, because their own neighborhood was unsafe and ugly.

  “I miss that,” he said.

  Frida nodded. They had only just moved into their apartment, and she’d missed her parents’ house, her parents. It was her first time away from them, as pathetic as that was. It had been Cal who initially suggested they head there for a stroll. They’d ride their bikes over so as not to waste gas and walk along the old familiar streets. “It’ll make you feel better,” Cal had told her, as if he didn’t mind how dramatic she was being; they lived only twenty minutes away from the neighborhood she’d grown up in, and she was acting like they’d moved to the moon.

  “Hard to believe those walks happened,” Frida said to Cal now. “And here we are.”

  “It doesn’t seem all that different.”

  Frida didn’t answer because this was the root of the problem. Cal didn’t feel any different—about her, about life—as he had all those years ago. For him, L.A. was the same as here. He’d been away from home since he was eighteen, and so everything was foreign, everything took some getting used to. She understood. Almost.

  Frida was about to say good night, even though she was far from tired, when she felt Cal move closer to her.

  They kissed, and he pushed himself against her, undoing the button of her jeans. She could feel by how desperately his tongue sought her own that he was afraid. Not of the night nor of the wildlife that probably surrounded them, eyes glowing yellow in the darkness beyond. It was tomorrow that frightened him. If these strange people welcomed them into their world, their lives would change. Again. Cal was trying to hold on to something. He was trying to hold on to her.

  * * *

  The next day was unseasonably warm. Frida could tell it would be hot before the sun had finished rising, and so she hadn’t used any of their drinking water to wash up, even though her crotch smelled like manure. How sexy. She would be prudent with their drinking water, she told herself, she would squelch her vanity and her squeamishness. They would need water for the final leg of their trek, when they were tired and their mouths were sticky-dry, and Frida would be prepared. She could have bathed in a nearby stream if they weren’t so eager to get going. Cal said there’d be more streams and bathing sources along the way, they were in a floodplain, after all, but she knew neither of them would want to stop.

  Five hours into the trek, the dense forest cloaked the sounds of trickling water. The path was difficult and uneven, but Cal kept telling her they would keep east, no matter what. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to cross any dangerous rivers, though here it was dank and still, and Frida wanted badly to dip her toes and dunk her head in water cold enough to turn her numb.

  Finally, the woods gave way to a large field, carpeted with goldenrod and aglow with sunlight. Frida grinned. What a relief to be out of the forest! She could actually breathe.

  “At last,” she said, but Cal was quiet.

  “What is it?” she asked, and he pointed into the distance.

  She followed the line of his finger.

  She’d been so enamored with the change in the landscape that she hadn’t noticed the medium-sized school bus parked at the other end of the field, its yellow face yellower than the goldenrod.

  “Look at that,” Cal said, a smile breaking across his face.

  Yellow. That unmistakable color. You’d think a world that was running out of oil, a land extinct of mountain lions and swordfish, would have a
lso depleted resources of yellow dye. But no.

  As Cal and Frida got closer, they saw that this bus wasn’t like the abandoned bathtub—aside from a cracked taillight, it was in good condition, and it must have been used as a vehicle, as a transporter of people, not too long ago. It bore a fine layer of dirt and grit, and there was no license plate or any other identifying information on it. On the back were printed the familiar instructions: STOP WHEN RED LIGHTS FLASH.

  “Whose is this?” Frida asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Cal said.

  She wanted to get inside it, but the accordion door was locked, and Cal didn’t want to break in. “We don’t want to give anyone a reason to hurt us,” he said.

  It was a good point. Besides, when Cal had given her a boost to peer into its windows, she saw that there was nothing inside: just rows of green-vinyl seats, waiting to be useful.

  “It’s really getting warm now,” Cal said. He put a hand to the bus’s side and removed it quickly. “We’d better keep moving.”

  By the time they saw the first Spike, rising sharp beyond the meadow they were crossing, Frida’s shirt was heavy with sweat, and there wasn’t much water in either canteen. They needed to save whatever little was left, Cal said, in case they were turned away.

  From afar, the Spike was less ominous than Frida had imagined. At this distance, its surface glistened smooth in the sun, inoffensive as a sculpture in front of a bank. She had assumed, when she saw the first one, that she might feel an abrupt shock at its presence. She had pictured herself gasping or perhaps holding a hand over her eyes, her mouth falling open. But there it was, its existence undeniable, and it was immediately old news. She had longed to feel something stronger.

  But then they kept going, up a small hill. Their journey had been on such flat land that it felt strange to be ascending. Exhilarating, even.

  “Holy shit,” Cal said.

  Here, at this slight altitude, they had a better view of what lay beyond. It looked like the first Spike was leading the others. Frida counted twenty, and there were many more. They reminded Frida of the wind turbines east of the Bay Area: nonhuman structures that seemed, nevertheless, to possess consciousness and judgment. As if they were watching you.

  “They’re real,” Frida said.

  “Did you doubt it?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Bo never could tell a good story.”

  That was true. A man with no past has little to narrate.

  “Let’s go see them,” she said, and she broke into a run.

  She felt as she had yesterday: brave and invincible, her body a machine whose only purpose was to follow her commands. The ground was uneven beneath her feet, and she skipped nimbly around rocks, asters, more goldenrod, a brown snake. She was getting closer to the Spikes, to whoever had built them. She kept running.

  Her lungs were all right at first, and then they began to struggle. Stop, stop, they begged. She slowed. The Spikes were still far away.

  She was bent over, gasping for breath, by the time Cal caught up with her.

  “Please,” he said, and put a hand on her back. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  When she was breathing normally, he took her hand, and they walked forward. Cal had once told her that the act that takes longer to achieve is often the more valuable one. The dinner cooked from scratch, the dress stitched by hand. The march into the unknown.

  The closer they got, the more the Spikes resembled what Bo had described: they were at least fifteen feet tall, sometimes twenty or thirty, and each one was unique. They seemed to be made of metal, or at least pieces of them were, because they reflected the sunlight. They glinted in some places, maybe even sparkled. Some curved over like dying flowers, while others shot straight out of the ground—Frida had no idea how they were supported. They weren’t smooth, as she had first thought, but bulky, uneven, and rough. She thought of the word corrugated.

  The first one they saw up close was wrapped in chain-link fence and barbed wire, and it held all kinds of junk: a car bumper; a child’s easel; an old plastic bottle, sinking into itself like a rotted bell pepper; and a walker for the elderly, tennis balls still stuck to its feet, gray instead of Day-Glo. The Spikes weren’t spaced evenly apart as Frida had first assumed, and she thought she could see them inching closer and closer together the farther they walked. Did these beasts form a wall, a maze? How did anyone get out, let alone in?

  “Are you sure you don’t want to turn around?” Cal whispered.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  She knew what August had said, that the people who had built these things weren’t afraid to use violence, but she nonetheless had the urge to keep going. The Spikes were ominous, casting shadows, their tips sharp, their edges serrated, but they were also beautiful. They changed the landscape, rendered it unfamiliar, even as they served their first purpose of protection from outsiders. She and Cal had ventured onto an unfamiliar planet, into an unidentified galaxy. Or they themselves had shrunk; they were ants walking among blades of grass.

  Cal was holding her close, as if she might slide her bare hands across their barbed surfaces and perforate herself.

  “I’m not stupid,” she said. “Or fragile.”

  He smiled. “But you are pregnant.”

  If she was honest with herself, she could admit that Cal’s gesture of protection turned her on a little. She had a passing vision of them getting naked right here, in the shadows of these terrible, stunning things. The Spikes were so breathtaking, somebody should.

  Beneath the rusted wire of the next one, Frida saw junk she hadn’t thought about in years: a lawn mower, a car battery, a stapler, a New Hampshire license plate, LIVE FREE OR DIE crimped and rusted along the last word. Die.

  She wondered most at the stapler. Why that, of all objects? It was so small and ineffectual, but it could have been made into something else. A doorstop even, or a blunt object to throw at enemies. Its placement suggested wealth or profligacy, and, she had to admit, that was turning her on, too. In the last few years she had learned to sew up holes in her socks and underwear—to darn, for God’s sake—and she was itching to waste something. Maybe these people understood that need and celebrated it.

  She squeezed Cal’s hand, and he squeezed back. She could tell he felt the same excitement, because he pulled her forward. “Come on,” he said, his voice louder.

  The Spikes reminded Frida a little of the Watts Towers: the sculptured junk, the imperfections. She had been only once, but Micah had begun going there regularly after he’d graduated from Plank. After some prodding on her part, he’d admitted that he went with friends from the Group. This was early on, before the Group had even hijacked the fund-raiser.

  They stepped around another Spike. This one looked like it had been covered in papier-mâché before being wrapped with wire. It resembled an unfinished and nefarious piñata—instead of candies it would spill empty, yeasty wine bottles, splintering table legs, an old espresso machine. Once, in L.A., Frida had seen a barista apply red lipstick using the reflective surface of her coffee machine as a mirror. It had made Frida’s day, the way objects could be remade, given a new and unexpected purpose.

  “Micah would have loved these,” she said.

  Cal raised an eyebrow, and she knew she couldn’t say what else she was thinking: that the Spikes were magnificent, proof that the people who had built them were magnificent, creative and daring, and threatening, too. But it was only a taste of threat, a dash of it, for flavor. She knew if she told all this to Cal, he’d say she was being naïve again, that she had too much faith in people and in their capacity for joy and art.

  They kept walking. There was no doubt they’d gone farther than Bo and Sandy had dared, for the walk became more mazelike and challenging, nothing like what Bo had described to Cal. A few Spikes had been built so close together, they were impassable, and Frida and Cal had to navigate around them, doubling back until they found a wider path. Frida was thankful each Spike was so s
pecific, each one its own landmark; otherwise, they would have no way of knowing if they were moving forward, backward, or in circles.

  “This is like a video game,” Cal said at one point.

  “Like your mom ever let you play a video game,” Frida said.

  When they hit another wall, six Spikes so close their necks intertwined like swans’, Frida felt her first pang of fear. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t. They might be stuck in here, she thought, panic winching her throat closed. How long did they have to walk? Would they ever get there? She shook the questions away, tried to play it cool as Cal pulled her left, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. She wanted to make him laugh, wanted to maintain a clear mind. There was an end to this maze. The trick was not to freak out. She kept looking to the ground, at the dead grass beneath her. The land was flat here. They could have been on an old soccer field. In the last hour, the entire world had begun to feel man-made, not just the Spikes. This should have made her hyper with expectation, but now she felt as Cal did: hesitant, suspicious.

  She had just asked Cal for a sip of water from his canteen—screw the rationing; why hadn’t they followed that sound of water, a ways back?—when she heard a sound like knuckles cracking, like the twist of an old man’s spine. She stopped.

  “What?” Cal whispered.

  “Listen,” she said, and thought immediately of Micah, of his last word, which she had exiled from her vocabulary after his death. Cal must have noticed the word, too, because he had turned pale.

  The sound again. Frida imagined someone, a man, hiding behind one of these many Spikes. He was cracking the knuckles on his other hand, one by one.