California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  “How can you say that? They think their son is dead.”

  Micah said nothing, only stacked the cups and put the cap back on the bottle of liquor. There were only a few drops left; it would be empty in one tiny sip.

  “You could have gone, too,” he said. “It took Hilda and Dada two years to agree to it. I would’ve thought you’d join them right afterward.”

  God, she wanted to shove him off the tree. “I would never.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You never did live in reality, Frida. Or maybe I’m wrong, and that’s more Cal’s problem.”

  “Leave him out of this.”

  “Frida.”

  “What?” She hated him saying her name.

  He was looking right at her.

  “What I did, my disappearing, it wasn’t selfish.”

  “Sure, it wasn’t. You had a cause, you said that already.”

  “No,” he said. “Well, yes, but also Hilda and Dada are comfortable now.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She couldn’t describe to him how it felt to have first her brother taken, and then her parents.

  “What else can I tell you?” Micah said after a moment.

  “Can you guys procreate?” she asked. “Are the women infertile?”

  “That’s what you want to know?” He laughed. “Wow, Frida. I never knew you were such a geek. You like zombie movies, too?”

  “It’s a good question, and you know it.” This was the moment to tell him she was pregnant. Do it, she thought. But she couldn’t even open her mouth.

  “We can procreate, yes. But that doesn’t mean we do.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You believe in containment.”

  “Don’t make fun of our brand.”

  This time, they both laughed.

  “The containment stuff…does it have anything to do with blood?” she asked. “Like, you know…rejecting it?”

  “Why?” But then he held up his hand to keep her from answering. “It’s not blood that’s the problem.” He paused. “It’s the color.”

  “Red?”

  Frida remembered Sandy. That first time, meeting by the creek. How Sandy had snatched Cal’s red bandanna from Jane. And, later, how Sandy had turned away from Frida in the shed so as not to see the red sleeping bag.

  Like Sandy, Anika was afraid of a color. How had Frida not put that together?

  Frida looked at Micah. “Why is she afraid of it?”

  Micah smiled. “It’s a thing. She has negative associations.”

  “What does she associate it with?”

  “Pirates,” Micah said, and Frida reared back.

  “What?” she said. “What do you mean? They’re real?”

  “They’re nothing to worry about,” he said. “They were only a problem for the original settlers.”

  So Sandy had to be an original settler. Bo, too.

  Frida held her voice steady. “Tell me about Bo and Sandy.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “So you don’t deny knowing them.”

  “I don’t want to scare you away.” He smiled. “Not yet, at least.”

  “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “For now.”

  Her brother stood and held out his hand to help her up. His hand, she noticed, was unscathed, uncalloused, unworked.

  “You’re the boss here,” she said.

  “Somebody’s gotta be,” he said, and shrugged.

  Once she and Micah were halfway across the field, Frida said, “I have a present for you.” She wanted him to wait while she ran up to her room. “I want you to unwrap it outdoors.”

  “You mean the baster?” he said.

  “You already know about it?”

  “Nothing gets by me, Frida. That much should be clear by now.”

  The look on his face. Years ago, when he announced to their family that he’d applied to Plank, he’d had a similar expression. There was a deliberateness to the look, a purposeful arrangement of his features, an anagram of emotions. If Frida stared at him hard enough, might something entirely different be revealed? She thought she had uncovered the old Micah when they were in the tree, talking freely, but she’d been wrong. He had himself under control. Frida couldn’t get to him.

  12

  Cal hadn’t taken a shower this good in years. He and Frida had never been able to get this much warm water on their own, and he’d never considered how comforting even a rudimentary wooden stall could be. He could’ve been in Cleveland again, showering in their cold moldy bathroom while his mother cooked breakfast in the kitchen. She’d be frying up the eggs his father had dropped off the night before. Cal leaned his head back, and the water fell across his face.

  The reverie didn’t last. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Frida had talked to Micah the day before. She’d told Cal very little about it, just that it felt weird, hearing Micah talk so openly about the man who had died instead of him. “What happened to my brother?” she asked as they fell asleep, and then, “Why is he like that?” They weren’t questions anyone had answers to.

  He thought it would make him happy that Frida was finally seeing the truth about Micah, but he was surprised by how much it unsettled him. Her optimism was fraying. She had always believed people, especially her family, were good, that the world would only allow so much suffering. In the past, some of that delusion (because wasn’t it delusional, to carry on with such thoughts, after all they’d seen?) must have rubbed off on him. He hadn’t realized how much more palatable she’d made their days. If she suspected something of Micah, Cal could barely stomach the thought of him.

  Cal wanted to know what Micah thought about her pregnancy. Did the prospect of new life, of a new family member, soften him? Probably not. Did it do just the opposite? Cal waited for Frida to tell him, but to these questions all she’d said was “August will be coming back soon.” As if this were news, as if she’d done useful detective work. She wouldn’t be giving Micah the baster, she said. “He doesn’t need it,” she said. When Cal asked her when she’d told August about her brother, she said she couldn’t remember. “I guess it just slipped.” So much for their agreement to keep the past a secret.

  From the shower, Cal heard someone squawking like a rooster at dawn, and then the crunch of dirt traversed by wheels. If he didn’t know any better, he would have imagined a truck passing just out of sight, imagined the weight of its body and the heave of its motor as it pulled up to the barn. Because it was just lame nostalgia, he would never admit it to Frida, or to anyone, really, but sometimes he missed the sounds of large, gas-guzzling engines: idling and accelerating, their gruffness and soot. Childhood sounds.

  He didn’t go to investigate the sound because the water from the old plastic jug was almost out, and he wanted all of it. It felt great. They’d been on the Land for almost a week now, and he deserved this shower: Morning Labor had been kicking his ass. They had finally started on the outdoor oven. He and the others had carried the bricks to the lot behind the Hotel and then dug out the area where the oven would be built. His neck and arms were sunburned, and his hands were chapped as badly as they’d been when he and Frida had first found the shed, when there’d been so much to build and do outdoors. At least back then, she’d kiss his hands every night before bed, blow her cool breath on his open cuts. Now she didn’t offer, and it felt pathetic to ask.

  Morning Labor wasn’t as trying as the discussion of it; there was a strict protocol to follow with any new project, and the members on his team were nervous about taking a wrong step. He didn’t want to use that word, team, but everyone else did, and it had seeped into his vocabulary when he wasn’t looking. A woman named Sheryl had forced them to measure and remeasure the spot planned for the oven, to ensure it was the one decreed. Decreed was Cal’s word—his team had assured him it’d been a group decision, but he didn’t believe them. Cal had seen Micah and Peter talking in front of the Church. It was a me
eting, Cal realized, by the way their voices dropped low, their faces no longer playful. They were the ones making the decisions.

  Cal could ask August about it himself. That sound must be him arriving, wasn’t it? Cal realized it as soon as the water trickled to a drop, and another drop, then nothing. He hurried out of the stall and shook himself dry before throwing on his pants and Sailor’s T-shirt. Cal had been told he could grab anything from the line that fit, but he refused. He knew he was being petulant—even Fatima had used that word to describe him to his face, smiling as she did so—but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to leave his own pants for a stranger. The longer he stayed on the Land, the more possessive he became.

  By the time he reached the barn, his still-wet skin had stained his clothing dark, and his pants were making his legs itch. He should have used one of the drying rags, old tablecloths and bolts of linen that the Land used as towels, but he’d refused that as well. He was petulant, wasn’t he? He was stubborn as a two-year-old. If Frida saw him, she’d laugh, ask him if he’d peed his pants. But she’d gone foraging and wouldn’t return for a while.

  She was out making friends, volunteering for extra work. Tomorrow morning, an hour before Labor began, she was meeting Anika, her team leader, to discuss bread making. If she was suspicious about Micah, she didn’t seem to carry those feelings to the people she cooked with, at least not outwardly. Cal tried to be happy about this; his wife hadn’t become someone else entirely.

  August’s mare, Sue, had already been led into the barn, but otherwise, everything else was as Cal expected it. August looked as he always did, standing there next to his buggy: same gray sweatsuit and combat boots, same wraparound sunglasses, same beanie covering his head. Cal held up his hand as a greeting, and August simply nodded, as if this were an everyday occurrence. This, too, Cal had expected: August’s capacity to remain unfazed, no matter what.

  People were gathered around him like eager children, and Sailor had climbed onto the edge of the buggy, leaning in to get a better look at what had been collected. This did surprise Cal: someone else besides August was allowed to touch the cart.

  Micah stood off to the side, and Cal saw that he was watching him. Had he taken note of Cal’s brief moment of shock? Cal hoped not. He pulled at his wet T-shirt, fiddled with the scratchy waist of his pants, and kept walking.

  “So he’s back,” he said as he reached Micah. “It’s quite a welcome.”

  Micah nodded. “Always is. August comes bearing news and gifts. And Sue’s our mascot, if not one or two men’s soul mate.”

  Micah held up a hand, gesturing for August to join them. “Plus, he’s got your stuff.”

  “Ha,” Cal said, but as he did, Sailor lifted a large duffel bag out of the cart. It was the purple bag with the teal straps, the one Cal and Frida kept on the highest kitchen shelf. It was now stuffed as full as it had been when they’d left L.A., long and heavy as a dead body, a mafioso joke too obvious to make.

  August yelled at Sailor to put the bag down, and Sailor complied immediately. Dave pulled him off the buggy, yelling, “Come on, you nosy motherfucker!” They were laughing.

  Pulling off his hat, August jogged over to Cal and Micah. His head was bald and shiny with sweat, but Cal thought he could make out a vague shadow of hair growth—a receding hairline. August would probably go to the Bath soon, take care of that right quick. Someone would probably volunteer to shave it for him.

  “Cal,” August said, and shook his hand.

  “You broke into my house.”

  “This guy,” Micah said, looking at Cal, “has no time for niceties.” He put a hand on Cal’s shoulder and gave it a friendly shake.

  “Let’s go talk,” Micah said. “I’ll get Peter.”

  “Sounds like a fine idea,” August said, and put his cap back on.

  “Which one of you okayed the theft of my property?” Cal asked.

  “Your property?” Micah said.

  August shook his head and pulled off his sunglasses. Cal sucked in his breath.

  But they were just eyes. Dark brown eyes. August looked less intimidating without the sunglasses. He must have known it, and that was why he had removed them.

  “Come on, Cal,” he said, blinking in the sunlight. “Give us a break. You gotta know, we’re not out to get you.”

  “You need clothes, don’t you?” Micah asked.

  “I had an extra shirt and a pair of jeans when I arrived,” Cal said. “Sailor returned my flashlight and sleeping bag, but he didn’t know what happened to the clothes. Said I should holler if I see someone wearing my stuff.” It was almost too absurd to make Cal angry anymore.

  August took in Cal’s too-small, soaked shirt. “Cal. You’re a man.” He paused. “Sailor, he’s…I don’t know. A boy? A kid. You can’t be wearing that, it doesn’t fit.”

  August started to laugh, and so did Micah. Cal waited.

  “Sailor, get the bag!” Micah yelled, once he’d caught his breath. To August and Cal he said, “Follow me.”

  They did as he asked.

  They walked to the Church. On the way, August asked Sailor to go find Peter as soon as he’d dropped off the bag. Sailor nodded urgently and said the bag wasn’t that heavy, that he could do both in one trip.

  “He loves to take orders,” Micah said once Sailor had taken off, duffel slapping at his side. “He’s the only one who actually likes Morning Labor.”

  Cal had been about to make his own snide remark. He wanted to ask Micah why he didn’t participate in Morning Labor, but he didn’t because Micah would most likely reply with something cutesy, something like, We work, too, just with our heads. A sad disregard for manual labor, though that would be strange, considering what they’d learned at Plank: the field and the book, a symbiotic relationship. Perhaps Micah, in his grab for power, had disregarded half the skills that had led him here.

  Cal told himself he wouldn’t give his brother-in-law the satisfaction of clever answers. He would withhold all questions. Perhaps if he seemed uninterested, they’d be more willing to explain how everything worked.

  Wasn’t that, in the end, what he wanted? To discover how this place worked—not just its outward system of organization but its inward, private one as well? Its secret machinations, the strings that gestured the puppet. Who was the puppet, though? Maybe it wasn’t all that sinister. Frida was probably right; he was descending into paranoia. Maybe it was more like a car: just lift the hood, and you’ll see how everything works.

  The Church was cool inside, the empty pews gathering dust in the sunlight. The studio lights, tall and spindly as prehistoric insects, waited nearby, disturbing but, for the time being, powerless.

  Cal wanted to go to the second floor. He didn’t realize this until Micah hoisted himself to the edge of the stage, and August slid into the first row of pews. There was no way this was where they conducted their meetings each morning. There was a war room upstairs; there had to be.

  A few moments later, Peter and Sailor walked in. Peter was holding the bag now, and when he caught Cal’s eyes, he lifted his chin, beckoning him to come retrieve his possessions. Instead, Cal sat down next to August in the pew.

  “I’m working on the goddamned traps,” Peter said. “I was about to tell poor Sail to fuck off, when he said Gus was back. He was dragging this along the ground.” Peter hefted the bag onto the second-row pew.

  “I think I hurt my back,” Sailor said.

  “Too much pussy inspecting,” Micah replied, and August laughed.

  “I wish,” Sailor said.

  Cal laughed, but no one else did.

  “I guess I’ll see you guys later,” Sailor said then.

  “You’re not allowed to stay?” Cal said. Damn, a question. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Sure he is,” Micah replied. “Have a seat, Popeye.”

  Sailor hesitated, but when August and Peter said nothing, he sat in the pew behind Cal.

  “So, California,” Micah began. He was s
winging his legs, hitting the side of the stage with the backs of his heels. The wood was scuffed there; maybe this was where they conducted their morning meetings.

  “So.”

  Micah stopped swinging his legs, as if this were a habit he were trying to break himself of. “August only let himself in.”

  “Theft,” August said. “He used the word theft. He thinks I stole from him.”

  “Ah yes, he only stole your property because we knew you’d need more stuff. August returned from his original route only hours after you arrived. I told him to turn around and get things he thought you might want. Otherwise, I’m sure you’d convince Frida to go back home with you, if only temporarily.”

  “Why would that be a problem?”

  “Because this isn’t a place you can just visit,” Sailor said.

  “Sailor…,” Peter said.

  “It isn’t?” Cal said. “Frida and I are stuck here?”

  “Of course not,” Micah said. “But it’s dangerous to have you coming back and forth. Not many know I’m alive, and it has to stay that way. We can’t attract attention with people waltzing in and out as they please and giving away our location. If you want to leave, it would be for good.”

  “I see.” Cal imagined telling this to Frida; she would not take it well. “But August is always traveling the route, isn’t he?”

  “August isn’t you,” Peter said.

  “What he means,” Micah said, “is that August is the best candidate to trade with the few settlers nearby and to perform a regular security sweep.”

  “I don’t know about ‘the best,’” August said, “but when I tell people I’m a loner, they believe me. Or they assume it right off. I get special treatment.” He brought an index finger to his cheek and tapped twice.

  “Wait—why?” Cal said. “Because you’re black? That’s ridiculous.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I only meant—”

  August winked. “I’m just messing with you. Come on, Calvin—that’s your full name, isn’t it? I know you thought I was some kind of recovered addict. I put you on edge.”