The Wild Shore

  Steve heard that over the crying gulls, and he led me up the cliff path. From the top we looked back at the river flat; Jennings was still talking. John stood there with his arms across his chest. Pretty soon he was going to grab Jennings and throw him in the river.

  “That guy is a fool,” Steve said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The old man is sick, did you know that?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound interested.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I’m going to go see how he’s doing.” He had been coughing a lot when he told his story. And even back at the meeting he had seemed listless and hacky. All I remembered about my mother’s death was that she had coughed a lot.

  “Not yet,” Steve said. “When that guy gives up on Pa we can catch him alone and tell him our plan.”

  “Jennings,” I said sharply. “His name is Jennings. You’d better know that when you talk to him.”

  Steve looked me up and down. “I knew it.”

  I walked down the path a ways, angry. Down by the tables John walked away from the San Diego men, brushing by one of them with his shoulder. He turned to say something, and then the San Diegans were left to look at each other. Jennings spoke and they started up the cliff trail. “Let’s get out of sight,” Steve said.

  We hid in the trees south of Nicolins’ yard. Soon Jennings and his two men appeared over the cliff edge and started our way. “Okay, let’s go,” I said. Steve shook his head. “We’ll follow them,” he said.

  “They might not like that.”

  “We have to talk to them where no one will see us.”

  “Okay, but don’t surprise them.”

  When they were in the trees to the south we took off in pursuit, stopping every few trees to peer ahead, like bandits in a story.

  “There they are,” Steve said, flushed with excitement. Their dark coats flashed through the trees ahead of us, and I could hear snatches of Jennings’ voice, carrying on as usual.

  Steve nodded. “In these woods is as good a place as any.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, let’s stop them.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m not holding you back.”

  Once again he gave me the eye. He stepped out from behind a tree. “Hey, stop! Stop up there!”

  Suddenly the forest was silent, and the San Diegans were nowhere to be seen.

  “Mr. Jennings!” I called. “It’s me, Henry! We need to talk to you.”

  Jennings stepped out from behind a eucalyptus, putting a pistol back in a coat pocket. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he said irritably. “You shouldn’t be surprising people in the woods.”

  “Sorry,” I said, giving Steve a look. He was flushed red.

  “What do you want?” Jennings said impatiently. His two men appeared behind him.

  “We want to talk with you,” Steve said.

  “I heard that. So speak up; what do you want?”

  After a pause Steve said, “We want to join the resistance. Not everyone in the valley is against helping you. In fact, it was a damn close vote. If some of us were to help you, the rest of the valley might come along, eventually.”

  One of Jennings’ men snickered, but Jennings silenced him with a gesture. “That’s a good thought, friend, but what we really need is access through your valley to the north, and I don’t think you can give us that.”

  “No, we can’t. But we can guide you when you’re up in Orange, and that’s more important. If that goes right, like I said, the rest of the valley will probably join in later.”

  I stared at Steve in dismay, but Jennings wasn’t looking at me.

  “We know scavengers who are on our side,” Steve went on. “We can find out from them when the Japanese will be landing, and where.”

  “Who can tell you that?” Jennings asked skeptically.

  “People we know,” Steve replied. Seeing the doubtful look on Jennings’ face he said, “There are scavengers up there who know about the scavengers dealing with the Japanese, and they don’t like it. There’s not much they can do about it, but they can tell us, and then we’ll do something about it, right? We’ve been up there a lot, we know the lay of the land and everything.”

  Jennings said, “We could use information like that.”

  “Well, we can do it.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Slowly he said, “We might make arrangements for getting information from you now and then.”

  “We want to do more than that,” Steve said flatly. “We can guide you up to whatever spot the Japanese are landing at, no matter where it is. There aren’t any of you know the ruins like we do. We’ve been up there at night a whole bunch of times. If you’re going up there on a raid, you’ll need to have someone who knows the land, to get you there and back fast.”

  Jennings’ face wasn’t much at concealing his thoughts, and now he looked interested.

  “We want to go up there with you and fight them,” Steve said more vehemently. “We’re like the Mayor—we want the Japanese too scared to come ashore ever again. You provide the men and guns, and four or five of us will guide you up there and fight with you. And we’ll tell you when the landings are going to happen.”

  “That’s quite a proposal.” Jennings drawled, looking at me.

  “We’re young, but that doesn’t matter,” Steve insisted. “We can fight—we’d ambush them good.”

  “That’s what we do,” Jennings said harshly. “We ambush and kill them. We’re talking about killing men.”

  “I know that.” Steve looked offended. “Those Japanese are invaders. They’re taking advantage of our weakness. Killing them is defending the country.”

  “True enough,” Jennings agreed. “Still … that man down there wouldn’t appreciate us dealing with you behind his back, would he. I don’t know if we should do that.”

  “He’ll never hear of it. Never know of it. There’s just a few of us, and none of us will say a word. We go up into the ruins at night a lot—they’ll think we’re doing that again when we go with you. Besides, if things go well, they’ll have to join us.”

  Jennings shifted his gaze to me. “Is that so, Henry?”

  “Sure is, Mr. Jennings.” I went right along with it. “We could guide you up there and no one would be the wiser.”

  “Maybe,” Jennings said. “Maybe.” He glanced back at his men, then stared at me. “Do you know right now when a landing party is coming in?”

  “Soon,” Steve said. “We know one is coming in soon. We already know where, and we’ll find out exactly when in the next few days, I’d guess.”

  “All right. Tell you what. If you hear of a landing, you come tell us at the weigh station where we stopped working the tracks. We’ll have men there. I’ll go back south and talk to the Mayor, and if he agrees to the idea, which maybe he will, then we’ll bring men up and be ready to move. We got the tracks working again, did I tell you that, Henry? It was tough, but we did it. Anyway, you know where those buildings are, the weigh station.”

  “We all know that,” Nicolin said.

  “Fine, fine. Now listen: when you get word of a Jap landing, hustle to the station and tell us, and we’ll see what we can do about it. We’ll leave it at that for now.”

  “We have to go along on the raid,” Steve insisted.

  “Sure, didn’t I say that? You’ll be our guides. All this depends on the Mayor, you understand, but as I said, I think he’ll want to do it. He wants to hit those Japs any way he can.”

  “So do we,” Steve said, “I swear it.”

  “Oh, I believe you. Now, we’d better be off.”

  “When can we check with you and see what the Mayor said?”

  “Oh—a week, say. But get down there sooner if you hear word.”

  Nicolin nodded, and Jennings pointed his men south.

  “Good talking with you, friends. Good to know that someone in this valley is an American.”

&n
bsp; “That we are. We’ll see you soon.”

  “Goodbye,” I added.

  We watched them slip through the trees in the forest. Then Steve struck me on the arm.

  “We did it! They’re going for it, Henry, they’re going to do it.”

  “Looks like it,” I said. “But what was that you said about how we’ll know when the landing will come in a few days? You lied to them! There’s no way we can be sure when we’ll find that out, if we ever do at all!”

  “Ah come on, Henry. You could see I had to tell them something. You pretend to object to all this, but you like it as much as I do. You’re good at it! You’re the fastest thinking, fastest running resistance man around, and the cleverest in figuring these kinds of things out. You’ll be able to find out that landing date if you want to.”

  “I suppose I can,” I said, pleased despite myself.

  “Sure you can.”

  “Well … let’s get back before anyone notices we’re missing.”

  He laughed. “See? You are good at this, Henry, I swear you are.”

  “Uh huh.”

  And the thing is, I thought he was right. I was the one who had kept Jennings and his men from shooting us by mistake, back there. And every time I was in a spot, the right things seemed to happen to get me out of it. I began to feel that these things didn’t just happen to me, but that I was doing them. I made them turn out right. I could make sure that we joined the resistance, and fought the Japanese, without breaking the vote or getting the rest of the valley angry at us. I really thought I could do it.

  Then I remembered the old man, and all my feeling of power vanished. We were still in the forest between the Nicolins’ and Concrete Bay; if I headed inland I would soon run onto Tom’s ridge.

  “I’m going up to see how the old man is doing,” I said.

  “I’ve got to get back to the pit,” Steve said. “But I’ll—wait a minute!”

  But I was already off, making my way through the trees inland.

  16

  The old man’s yard always looked untended, with weeds growing over the collapsing fence and junk scattered everywhere. But now as I climbed the ridge path apprehension made me see it all again: the small weatherbeaten house with its big front window reflecting the sky; the yard drowning in weeds; the gnarled trees on the ridge tossing in the wind, and snatching at the clouds that were growing with every minute. It all looked abandoned. If the house’s owner had been dead and buried ten years, it would all look as it did now.

  Kathryn appeared in the window, and I tried to change my thoughts. Wind pushed the weeds up and down. Kathryn saw me and waved, and I lifted my head in hello. She opened the door as I walked into the yard, and met me in the doorway.

  Casually I said, “So how’s he doing? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s asleep now. I don’t think he slept much last night, he was coughing so bad.”

  “I remember he coughed some when he told us that story.”

  “It’s worse now. He’s all congested.”

  I studied Kathryn’s face, saw the well-known pattern of freckles shifted by lines of concern. She reached out to hold my arm. I hugged her and she put her head to my shoulder. It scared me. If Kathryn was scared, I was terrified. I tried to reassure her with my hug, but I was trembling.

  “Who’s that out there?” Tom called from the bedroom. “I’m not sleeping, who’s there?”

  Then he coughed. It was a deep, wet, hacking sound, like he was choosing voluntarily to put a lot of force behind it.

  “It’s me, Tom,” I said when he was done. I went to the door of his room. None of us had ever been welcome in there; it was his private place. I looked in. “I heard you were sick.”

  “I am.” He was sitting up in bed, leaning against the wall behind it. He looked sick, there was no doubt about it. Hair and beard were tangled and damp, face sweaty and pale. He eyed me without moving his head. “Come on in.”

  I walked into the room for the first time. It was filled with books, like the storeroom down the hall. There was a table and chair, several books on each; a stack or two of records; and tacked to the wall under the one small window, a collection of curled photographs.

  I said, “I guess you must have caught a cold on our trip back.”

  “Seems to me it should’ve been you who got it. You got the coldest.”

  “We all got cold.” I remembered how he had walked on the seaward side of me to break the wind. The times he had held me up as we walked. I looked at the photographs, heard Kathryn move things around in the big room.

  “What’s she doing out there?” Tom asked. “Hey, girl! Quit that in there!” He stared to cough again.

  When he was done my heart was pounding. “Maybe you shouldn’t shout,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Lamely I added, “It’s rotten to have a cold in the summer.”

  “Yeah. Sure is.”

  Kathryn stood in the doorway.

  “Where’s your sister?” Tom said. “She was just here.”

  “She had to go do some things,” said Kathryn.

  “Anybody home?” came a voice from the door.

  “That must be her now,” Kathryn said. But it had been Doc’s voice.

  “Uh oh,” said Tom. “You didn’t.”

  “I did,” Kathryn said apologetically.

  Doc barged into the room, black bag in hand, Kristen on his heels.

  “What are you doing here?” Tom said. “I don’t want you fussing with me, Ernest. You hear?” He shifted in his bed until he was against the side wall.

  Doc approached him with a fierce grin.

  “Leave me alone, I’m telling you—”

  “Shut up and lie flat,” Doc said. He put his bag on the bed, and pulled his stethoscope from it.

  “Ernest, you don’t need to do this. I’ve just got a cold.”

  “Shut up,” Doc said angrily. “Do as I say, or I’ll make you swallow this.” He held up the stethoscope.

  “You couldn’t make me blink.” But he lay flat, and let Doc take his pulse, and listen to his chest with the stethoscope. He kept complaining, but Doc stuck a thermometer in his mouth, which shut him up, or at least made him incomprehensible. Then Doc went back to listening.

  After a bit he removed the thermometer from Tom’s mouth and examined it. “Breathe deep,” he ordered, listening again to Tom’s chest.

  Tom breathed once or twice, caught—held his breath till he turned pink—then coughed, long and hard.

  “Tom,” Doc said in the following silence (I had been holding my breath), “you’re coming to my house for a visit to the hospital.”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Don’t even try to argue with me,” Doc warned. “It’s the hospital for you, boy.”

  “No way,” Tom said, and cleared his throat. “I’m staying here.”

  “God damn it,” Doc said. He was genuinely angry. “It’s likely you have pneumonia. If you don’t come with me I’m going to have to move over here. Now what’s Mando going to think of that?”

  “Mando would love it.”

  “But I wouldn’t.” And Tom caught the look on Doc’s face. It was probably true that Doc could have moved to Tom’s easier than Tom could move to Doc’s. But Doc’s place was the hospital. Doc didn’t do much serious doctoring any more—I mean he did what he could, but that wasn’t much, sometimes. Breaks, cuts, births—he was good at those. His father, a doctor gone crazy for doctoring, had made sure of that years ago when Doc was young, teaching him everything he knew with a fanatic insistence. But now Doc was responsible for his best friend, who was seriously ill—and maybe moving Tom to the hospital was a way to say to himself that he could do something about it. I could see Tom figuring this out as he looked at Doc’s face—figuring it out more slowly than he usually would have, I thought. “Pneumonia, eh?” he said.

  “That’s right.” Doc turned to us. “You all go outside for a bit.”

  Kathryn and Kristen and
I went out and stood in the yard, amid all the rusty machine parts staining the earth. Kristen told us how she had located Doc. Kathryn and I stared out at the ocean, silently sharing our distress. Clouds were rolling in. It happened so often like that—a sunny day, blanketed by mid-afternoon by clouds. Wind whipped the weeds, and our hair.

  Doc looked out the door. “We need some help in here,” he said. We went inside. “Kathryn, get some of his clothes together, a few shirts he can wear in bed, you know. Henry, he wants to get some books together; go find out which ones he wants.”

  I went back in the bedroom and found Tom standing before the photographs tacked to the wall, holding one flat with a finger. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “Which books do you want to take?”

  He turned and walked slowly to the bed. “I’ll show you.” We went to the storeroom, and he looked around at the books stacked in the gloom. A pile near the door contained every book he wanted. He handed them to me from a crouch. Great Expectations was the only title I noticed. When my arms were full he stopped. He picked up one more.

  “Here. I want you to take this one.”

  He held out the book that Wentworth had given us, the one with blank pages.

  “What am I going to do with this?”

  He tried to put it in my arms with the rest, but there wasn’t room.

  “Wait—I thought you were going to write your stories in that.”

  “I want you to do it.”

  “But I don’t know the stories!”

  “Yes you do.”

  “No I don’t. Besides, I don’t know how to write.”

  “The hell you don’t! I taught you myself, by God.”

  “Yeah, but not for books. I don’t know how to write books.”

  “It’s easy. You just keep going till the pages are full.” He forced the book under my arm.

  “Tom,” I protested, “no. You’re supposed to do it.”

  “I can’t. I’ve tried. You’ll see the pages ripped out of the front. But I can’t.”

  “I don’t believe it. Why, the story you told the other night—”

  “Not the same. Believe me.” He looked desolate. We stood there looking at the blank book in my arms, both of us upset. “The stories I’ve got you wouldn’t want written down.”