In her preaching voice Carmen said, “Nat and I have talked a lot about this one, and we don’t agree, but my thoughts are clear on the matter. This fight the San Diegans want us to join is useless. Killing visitors from Catalina doesn’t do a thing to make us free. I’m not against fighting if it would do some good, but this is just murder. Murder is never the means to any good end, so I’m against joining them.” She nodded emphatically and looked to the old man. “Tom? You haven’t told us your opinion yet.”
“The hell he hasn’t,” I said, annoyed at Carmen for sounding so preacherly and commonsensical, when it was just her opinion. But she gave me a look and I shut up.
Tom roused himself from his fireside torpor. “What I don’t like about this Danforth is that he tried to make us join him whether we want to or not.”
“How?” Rafael challenged.
“He said, we’re either with them or against them. I take that as a threat.”
“But what could they do to us if we didn’t join?” Rafe said. “Bring an army up here and point guns at us?”
“I don’t know. They do have a lot of guns. And the men to point them.”
Rafael snorted. “So you’re against helping them.”
“I guess so,” Tom said slowly, as if uncertain himself what he thought. “I guess I’d like to have the choice of working with them or not, depending on what they had in mind. Case by case, so to speak. So that we’re not just a distant section of San Diego, doing what they tell us to.”
“The point is, they can’t make us do what they say,” Recovery said. “It’s just an alliance, an agreement on common goals.”
“You hope,” said John Nicolin.
Cov started to argue with John, and Rafael was still pressing Tom, so the discussion broke up again, and pretty soon every adult in the room was jawing it, and most of the kids too. “Do you want them in our river?” “Who, the Japs or the San Diegans?” “You’ll risk your life for nothing.” “I’m damned if I want those cruisers setting the border on my whole life.” On it went, arguments busting in on neighboring arguments as the participants heard something they liked or disliked. Fingers were waved under noses, curses flew even around Carmen, Kathryn had Steve by the front of the shirt as she made a point.… It sounded like we were evenly split, too, so that neither side could win on the volume of their voices. But I could see that we joiners were in trouble. The old man, John Nicolin, Doc Costa, and Carmen Eggloff—all four of them were against, and that was the story right there. Rafael and Recovery and old Mendez were important in the valley, and they had a strong voice in things, but they didn’t wield the same sort of influence that the others did. John and Doc circulated around the room arguing and conferring on the sly with Pa and Manuel, Kathryn and Mrs. Mariani; and I knew which way things were shifting for the vote.
At the height of the arguing Odd Roger stood and waved his arms with an absurd gleam of comprehension in his eye. He squawked loudly, and Kathryn scowled. “He’s lucky he wasn’t born in this valley,” she muttered; “he’d never have made it to Name Day.” A lot of people were like that, upset that Tom had brought Roger at all. But suddenly Roger broke into English, in a shrill reedy voice:
“Kill every scavenger on the land, kill them! Scavenger poisons the water, breaks the snares, eats the dead. Unless the corruption be cut from the body the body dies! I say kill them all, kill them all, kill them all!”
“All right, Roger,” Tom said, taking his arm and leading him to his corner. When he returned to the hearth Tom shouted the arguments down, vexed at last. “Shut up! Nobody’s saying anything new. I propose we have the vote. Any objections?”
There were plenty of those, but after a lot of bickering over the wording of the proposition we were ready.
“All those in favor of joining San Diego and the American resistance to fight the Japanese, raise their hands.”
Rafael, the Simpsons, the Mendezes, Marvin and Jo Hamish, Steve, Mando, Nat Eggloff, Pa and me: we raised our hands and helped Gabby’s little brothers and sisters to raise theirs. Sixteen of us.
“Now all those against?”
Tom, Doc Costa, Carmen; the Marianis, the Shankses, the Reyes; and John Nicolin went down the line of his family, pulling up the arms of Teddy and Emilia, Virginia and Joe, Carol and Judith, and even Marie, as if she were one of the kids, which in mental power she was. Little Joe stood at attention, hand high, black hair falling over his face, belly and tiny pecker sticking out under a snot-smeared shirt. Mrs. N. sighed to see that shirt. “Oh, man,” Rafael complained; but that was the rule. Everyone voted. So there were twenty-three against. But among the adults it was a lot closer, and in the strained silence after Carmen finished counting there were some hard stares exchanged. It was like nothing I had ever seen in the valley. A coming fight can feel good, say at the swap meet when facing off with a scavenger gang; but in the valley, with no one there but friends and neighbors, it felt bad. Everyone was affected the same way, I think; and no one thought of a way to patch this one up.
“Okay,” Tom said. “When they show up again I’ll tell Lee and Jennings we aren’t going to help them.”
“Individuals are free to do what they want,” Addison Shanks said out of the blue, as if he were stating a general principle.
“Sure,” Tom said, looking at Add curiously. “As always. We aren’t making any alliance with them, that’s all.”
“That’s fine,” Add said, and left, leading Melissa out.
“It’s not fine by me,” Rafael declared, looking around at us, but especially at John. “It’s wrong. They’re holding us down, do you understand? The rest of the world is getting along, making good progress with the help of machines, and medicines for the sick, and all of that. They blasted that away from us, and now they’re keeping it away from us. It isn’t right.” His voice was as bitter as I’d ever heard it; not really Rafael’s voice at all. “We should be fighting them.”
“Are you saying you aren’t going to go along with the rest of us?” John asked.
Rafael gave him an angry look. “You know me better than that, John. I go with the vote. Not that I could do much by myself anyway. But I think it’s wrong. We can’t hide in this valley like weasels forever, not sitting right across from Catalina like we do.” He took in a big breath and let it out. “Well, shit. I don’t guess we can vote it away anyway.” He threaded his way through the folks still sitting, and left the bathhouse.
The meeting was done. I crossed the bathhouse with Steve and Gabby. Steve was doing his best to avoid his pa. In all the milling around we saw Del gesture at us, and with a nod to Mando and Kathryn we followed them out.
Without a word we trailed up the river path, following someone else’s lanterns. Then over the bridge, to the big boulders at the bottom of the barley field. In the blustery dark my companions were no more than shapes. Across the river lanterns blinked through the trees, stitching the trails that our neighbors were taking home.
“Could you believe all that talk?” Gabby said scornfully.
“Rafael was right,” Nicolin said bitterly. “What will they think of us in San Diego, and across the country, when they hear about this?”
“It’s over now,” said Kathryn, trying to soothe him.
“Over for you,” Steve said. “It turned out the way you wanted. But for us—”
“For everyone,” Kathryn insisted. “It’s over for everyone.”
But Steve wouldn’t have it. “You’d like that to be true, but it isn’t. It won’t ever be over.”
“What do you mean?” Kathryn said. “The vote was taken.”
“And you were mighty happy with the results, weren’t you,” Steve accused her.
“I’ve had enough of this for one night,” Kathryn said. “I’m going home.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and do that,” Nicolin said angrily. Kathryn glared at him. I was glad I wasn’t Steve at that moment. Without a word she was off toward the bridge. “You don’t run this valley!” Steve shouted afte
r her, his voice hoarse with tension. “Nor me neither! You never will!” He paced into the barley field. I could just make out Kathryn as she crossed the bridge.
“I don’t know why she was being such a bitch tonight,” Steve whined.
After a long silence, Mando said, “We should have voted yes.”
Del ha-ha’d. “We did. There weren’t enough of us.”
“I meant everybody.”
“We should have joined,” Nicolin shouted from the barley.
“So?” Gabby said—ready as always to egg Steve on. “What are you going to do about it?”
Across the river dogs yapped. I saw the moon for a wisp of time, above the scudding clouds. Behind me barely rustled, and I shivered in the cold wind. Something in the shifting shadows made me remember my miserable, desperate hike up the ravine to find Tom and the San Diegans, and the fear came on me again, rustling through me like the wind. It’s so easy to forget what fear feels like. Steve was pacing around the boulders like a wolf caught in a snare. He said,
“We could join them ourselves.”
“What?” Gab said eagerly.
“Just us. You heard what Add said at the end there. Individuals are free to do as they like. And Tom agreed. We could approach them after Tom tells them no, and tell them we’d be willing to work with them. Just us.”
“But how?” Mando asked.
“What kind of help do they want from us, hey? No one in there could say, but I know. Guides into Orange County, that’s what. We can do better at that than anyone else in Onofre.”
“I don’t know about that,” Del said.
“We can do it as well as anybody!” Steve revised, for it was true that his pa and some others had spent a good bit of time up north in years past. “So why shouldn’t we if we want to?”
Fearfully I said, “Maybe we should just go along with the vote.”
“Fuck that!” Steve cried furiously. “What’s with you, Henry? Afraid to fight the Japanese, now? Shit, you go off to San Diego and now you tell us what to do, is that it?”
“No!” I protested.
“You scared of them now, now that you’ve had your great voyage and seen them up close?”
“No.” I was shocked by Nicolin’s anger, too confused to think how to defend myself. “I want to fight,” I said weakly. “That’s what I said in the meeting.”
“The meeting doesn’t mean shit. Are you with us or not?”
“I’m with you,” I said. “I didn’t say I wasn’t!”
“Well?”
“Well … we could ask Jennings if he wants some guides, I guess. I never thought of it.”
“I thought of it,” Steve said. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“After they talk to Tom,” Gabby said, clearing things up, pushing Steve on.
“Right. After. Henry and I will do it. Right, Henry?”
“Sure,” I said, jumping at his voice’s prod. “Sure.”
“I’m for it,” Del said.
“Me too,” cried Mando. “I want to too. I’ve been in Orange County as much as any of you.”
“You’re in it too,” Steve assured him.
“And me,” Gabby said.
“And you, Henry?” Steve pressed. “You’re with us too?”
Around us nothing but shadows, windblown in the darkness. The moon slid into a cloud crease and I could see the pale blobs of my friends’ faces, like clumps of dough, watching me. We put our right hands together above the central boulder, and I could feel their calloused fingers tangle with mine.
“I’m with you,” I said.
13
The next time I saw the old man I gave him hell, because it was very possible that if he had come out on the side of the resistance the vote would have been different. And if the valley had voted to join the resistance, then Steve wouldn’t have come up with his plan to join the San Diegans secretly, and I wouldn’t have caved in and gone along with it. To avoid admitting to myself that I had caved in to Steve, I decided his plan was a good one. So in a way it was all the old man’s fault. It was too bad we had to sneak off to help the San Diegans, but we had to be part of the resistance. I remembered vividly how it felt to be staring at the metal deck of the Japanese ship, crying because I thought Tom and the others were dead, and vowing to fight the Japanese forever. And it was no thanks to them that Tom had survived, either. He just as well could have died, and so could have I. I told Tom as much as I stood berating him for his vote in the meeting. “And any time we go out there, the same thing could happen,” I concluded, shaking a finger under his nose.
“Any time we sail out on a foggy night and shoot guns at them, you mean,” he said, through a mouth jammed with honeycomb. We were out in his yard, sweltering under high filmy clouds, and he was scorching the slats of several boxlike supers from an unsuccessful hive. Hive stands and smokers and supers lay strewn about us on the weeds. “It may be that the jays ate every bee in this hive,” he mumbled. “This one scrub jay was popping down ten at a meal. I set one of Rafael’s mousetraps on top of the post he was landing on, and when he landed the trap knocked him about fifteen feet. Was he mad! He cursed me in every language known to jays.”
“Ah, shit,” I said, yanking some of his long white hair out of the corner of his mouth before he chewed it down. “All our lives you’ve been telling us about America. How great it was. Now we’ve got a chance to fight for it, and you vote against the idea. I don’t get it. It’s contrary to everything you’ve taught us.”
“Is not. America was great in the way that whales are great, see what I mean?”
“No.”
“You’ve gotten remarkably dense lately, you know that? I mean, America was huge, it was a giant. It swam through the seas eating up all the littler countries—drinking them up as it went along. We were eating up the world, boy, and that’s why the world rose up and put an end to us. So I’m not contradicting myself. America was great like a whale—it was giant and majestic, but it stank and was a killer. Lots of fish died to make it so big. Now haven’t I always taught you that?”
“No.”
“The hell I haven’t! What about all those arguments at the swap meet with Doc and Leonard and George?”
“There you’re different, but just to rile Doc and Leonard. Here at home you always make America sound like God’s own country. Besides, right in the here and now there’s no doubt we’re being held down, just like Rafe said. We have to fight them, Tom, you know that.”
He shook his head, and sucked in his cheek on the caved-in side of his mouth, so that from my angle it looked like he only had half a face. “Carmen hit the nail hardest, as usual. Did you listen to her? I didn’t think so. Her point was, murdering those dumb tourists doesn’t do a thing to change the structure of the situation. Catalina will still be Japanese, satellites will still be watching us, we’ll still be inside a quarantine. Even the tourists won’t stop coming. They’ll just be better armed, and more likely to hurt us.”
“If the Japanese are really trying to keep people away, we could kill all the visitors who sneak in.”
“Maybe so, but the structure remains.”
“But it’s a start. Anything as big as this can’t be done all at once, and the start will always look small. Why, if you’d been around during the Revolution, you’d have been against ever starting it. ‘Killing a few redcoats won’t change the structure,’ you’d have said.”
“No I wouldn’t, because it wasn’t the same structure. We aren’t being occupied, we’re being quarantined. If we joined San Diego in this fight the only result would be that we’d be part of San Diego. Doc was right just like Carmen was.”
I thought I had him on the run, and I said, “The same objection could have been made in the Revolution. People from Pennsylvania or wherever could have said, if we join the fight we’ll become part of New York. But since they were part of the same country, they worked together.”
“Boy, it’s a false analogy, like historical
analogies always are. Just ’cause I taught you your history don’t mean you understand it. In the Revolution the British had men and guns, and we had men and guns. Now we still have men and guns like in 1776, but the enemy has satellites, intercontinental missiles, ships that could shell us from Hawaii, laser beams and atom bombs and who knows what all. Think about it logically for a bit. A tiger and a titmouse would make a better fight.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I grumbled, feeling the weight of his argument. I wandered through the dismantled hives, the sundials and rain barrels and junk, to regroup. Below us the valley was a patchwork, the fields like gold handkerchiefs dropped on the forest, with gliding patches of sunlight making even larger fields of brilliant green. “I still say that every revolution starts small. If you had voted for the resistance, we could have thought of something. As it is, you’ve put me in a tough spot.”
“How so?” he asked, looking up from the supers.
I realized I’d said too much. “Oh, in talk, you know,” I floundered. Then I hit on something: “Since we aren’t going to help the resistance, I’ll be the only one of the gang who got to go to San Diego. Steve and Gabby and Del don’t like that much.”
“They’ll get there some day,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief to have him off the track. But I felt bad to keep something from him; I saw that I would be lying to him regularly, from then on. His arguments had a sense that couldn’t be denied, even though I was sure his conclusions were wrong. Because I wanted his conclusions to be wrong.
“You got your lesson ready?” he asked. “Other than the history of the United States?”
“Some of it.”
“You’re getting to be as bad as Nicolin.”
“I am not.”
“Let’s hear it then. ‘I know you. Where’s the king?’”
I called the page up before my mind’s eye, and against a fuzzy gray mental field appeared the yellow crumbly page, with the rounded black marks that meant so much. I spoke the lines as I saw them.
“‘Contending with the fretful elements;
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,