The Wild Shore

  “What you doing today?” he asked.

  “Checking snares. That’s what old Mendez told me, anyway.”

  “That should make a good break from the fishing.”

  “Yeah.”

  Pa looked at me and wrinkled his nose. “You sure aren’t one for talking much these days.”

  I nodded, too distracted to pay much attention to him.

  “You don’t want to get so’s people can’t talk to you,” he went on.

  “I’m not. I’d better be off, though.”

  I went to the river again, thinking to get up to the snares eventually. Sat down on one of the tiny bluffs that overhang the bank. Downriver the women appeared one by one, the Mariani clan and the rest of them, out while the Santa Ana was blowing to bathe and wash clothes and sheets and blankets and towels and anything else they could haul to the water. The air was a bit hotter every minute, and dry so you could feel it in your nostrils. The women got out the soap and stripped down, moved into the shallows at the bend with washboards and baskets of clothes and linens, and went to work, chattering and laughing, diving out into the mainstream to paddle around a bit and get the soap off them. The morning sun gleamed on their wet bodies and slicked-down hair, and I could have stayed longer to watch them, such sleek white creatures they were; like a pod of dolphins, I thought, splashing water at each other, tits swinging together as clothes were scrubbed over washboards, mouths open to laugh and grin at the sky. But they had seen me sitting upriver, and pretty soon if I stayed they would be throwing rocks, and lifting their legs to embarrass me, and calling out jokes like: Do you need some help with that? or Careful it’ll wash away like this here bar of soap.… And besides I had other things on my mind anyway, so with a last glance I turned and walked upriver, forgot about the women and began to worry again. (But what would they think of all this?)

  See, I could have not told him. I could have said, Steve, I didn’t find anything out and I don’t know how I could, and left it at that. And Friday night would have come and gone and we would never have known the difference. They wouldn’t have, anyway. And everything would have gone on as before. Walking the river path it occurred to me I could do this, and as I hiked from snare to snare I considered it. In some ways it appealed to me.

  But I remembered my fight with Add; how I’d knocked him against a tree when he held the knife and I didn’t. And after clearing a rabbit out of a snare and resetting it, I remembered my escape from the Japanese, my swim to shore, my struggle up that ravine. It seemed like great adventure to me now. I remembered climbing up the side of the Shankses’ house to hear the conversation with the scavengers, and my silent bat-runs after Addison through the woods. I had enjoyed that more than anything that had ever happened in Onofre. I’d never felt such power. It seemed to me more than ever that these things were not just happening to me, but that I was doing them, that I was choosing to do certain things and then I was going out and doing them. And now I had the chance to do something better than anything else had been so far, to fight for my lost country. This land I walked over was ours, it was all we had left. They had to stay off it or suffer for it. We weren’t a freak show, a bigger version of those little ones that visited the swap meets sometimes, exhibiting pathetic radiation cripples, both animal and human.… We were a country, a living country, living communities on living land, and they had to leave us alone.

  So when I returned to the valley through the neck, I dropped off three rabbits and a smelly skunk, and continued downriver to the Nicolins’ house. Steve was out front, shouting furiously at his mother in the doorway. Something about John again, I gathered, something he had said or done to enrage Steve.… I winced and waited until Steve was done shouting. As he stalked away toward the cliffs I approached him.

  “What’s up?” he said as he saw me.

  “I know the date!” I cried. His face lit up. I told him all about it. When I was done I felt a certain chill, and I thought, well, you’ve told him. I had never really decided to; the act itself was the decision.

  “That’s great,” he kept saying, “that’s great. Now we’ve got them! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did,” I said, annoyed. “I just found out yesterday.”

  He slapped me on the back. “Let’s go tell the San Diegans. We don’t have much time—a day, whoo! They might need to get more men from south or something.”

  But now that I had told him, I was more uncertain than before that it was the right thing to do. I shrugged and said, “You go on down and tell them, and I’ll tell Gabby and Del and Mando if I see them.”

  “Well”—he cocked his head at me curiously—“sure. If that’s what you want.”

  “I’ve done my share,” I said defensively. “We shouldn’t both go down there; it might draw attention to us.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Come by tonight and tell me what they said.”

  “I will.”

  When he came by that night the wind was blowing harder than ever. The big eucalyptus’s branches creaked against each other, and its leaves clicked and spinnerdrifted down on us. The pines hummed their deepest chord, and tossed up and down across the bright stars.

  “Guess who was at their camp?” Steve demanded, all charged up and even bouncing on his feet. “Guess!”

  “I don’t know. Lee?”

  “No, the Mayor! The Mayor of San Diego.”

  “Is that right? What’s he doing up here?”

  “He’s here to fight the Japs, of course. He was really happy when I told him we could lead them to a landing. He shook my hand and we drank some whisky and everything.”

  “I bet. Did you tell him where it was?”

  “Course not! Do you take me for a fool? I said we weren’t getting the final word till tomorrow, and that we’d tell them when we were up there ourselves with them. That way they’ll have to take us, see? In fact—I told them that only you know where they’re landing, and that you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, fine. Now why should I do that?”

  “Because you’re a suspicious kind of guy, naturally, and you don’t want the Japanese to find out somehow that we know. That’s what I told them.”

  That suggested something to me that I hadn’t thought of before, believe it or not: the Japanese could find out we knew from Add. The landing might not take place after all. Another possibility occurred to me: Add could have lied to me about the date. But I didn’t say anything about that. I didn’t want to bring up any problems. All I said was, “They must think we’re crazy.”

  “Not at all, why should they? The Mayor was real pleased with us.”

  “I bet he was. How many men were with him?”

  “Fifteen, maybe twenty.”

  “Was Jennings one of them?”

  “Sure. Listen, did you tell Del and Gabby and Mando?”

  “What about Lee? Was Lee with them?”

  “I didn’t see him. What about our gang?”

  I was worried about Lee. I didn’t understand or like the way he had disappeared from the group. “I told Gabby and Del,” I said after a while. “Del’s going over to Talega Canyon with his pa Friday to trade for some calves, so he can’t come.”

  “And Gabby?”

  “He’s coming.”

  “Good. Henry, this is it! We’re part of the resistance!”

  The hot push of the Santa Ana burned in my nose, and I felt the static electricity all through me. Stars danced in the leaves. “True,” I said, “true.”

  Steve stared at me through the darkness. “You aren’t scared, are you?”

  “No! I am a bit tired, I think. I’d better get some sleep.”

  “Good idea. You’re going to need it tomorrow.” With a slap to the arm he was off into the trees. A powerful blast of wind carried a soaring branch over my head. I waved at it and went back inside, where Pa was sewing.

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. And the next day was the longest one I could remember. The
Santa Ana blew strong all day; the land was drying out and heating up, and it got so hot that just to move was enough to break into a sweat. I checked snares in the back country all day—not an animal in any of them. After I forced down the usual fish and bread I got so fidgety that I just had to do something. I said to Pa, “I’m going up to see the old man, and then we’re going to work on the treehouse, so I’ll be home late.”

  “Okay.”

  Outside it was twilight. The river was a silvery sheen much lighter than the trees on the other bank. The western sky was the same silvery blue, and the whole arch of the sky seemed lighter than usual—the land was dark, but the sky still glowed. I crossed the bridge and went up to the Costas’. From their vantage I could see the whole valley forest bouncing in the gloom.

  Mando met me outside the door. “Gabby told me about it and I’m going, you hear?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “If you try to go without me, I’ll tell everyone about it.”

  “Whoah, now. No need for threats, Armando, you’re going with us.”

  “Oh.” He looked down. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought Steve might not want me to go.”

  “Well … why don’t you go down and talk to him. I bet he’s still at his house.”

  “I don’t know if I should. Pa’s asleep, and I’m supposed to keep an eye on Tom.”

  “I’ll do that, that’s what I came here for. You go tell Steve you’re coming along. Tell him I’ll be up here till we leave.”

  “Okay.” Off he went, running down the path.

  “Don’t threaten him!” I shouted at his back, but the wind tore my words off toward Catalina, and he didn’t hear me. I went inside. The Santa Ana was catching around the sides of the house, whistling in all the oil drums, so that the house said Whoooo, whoooo, whooooo. I looked in the hospital, where a lamp burned. Tom was flat on his back, head propped up on a pillow. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Henry,” he said. “Good.”

  It was warm and stuffy in the room; Doc’s sun heating was working too well during these hot days, and if the vents were to be opened completely the wind would have torn through and made a shambles. I walked to the bedside and sat in the chair left there.

  Tom’s beard and hair were tangled together, and all the gray and white curls looked waxy. They framed his face, which was smaller and whiter than I had ever seen it. I stared at it like I’d never seen it before. Time puts so many marks on a face: wrinkles, blotches, sags and folds; the bend in his nose, the scar breaking up one eyebrow, the caved-in cheek where those teeth were missing.… He looked old and sick, and I thought, He’s going to die. Maybe I was really looking at him for once. We assume that we know what our familiars look like, so that when we see them we’re not really looking, but just glancing and remembering. Now I was looking newly, really observing him. Old man. He pushed up onto his elbows. “Put the pillow so I can sit up against it.” His voice was only half as loud as it usually was. I moved the pillow and held him up while he pulled himself back to it. When we were done he was sitting upright, his back against the pillow, his head against the concave end of an oil drum. He pulled his shirt around so it was straight on his chest.

  The one lamp that was lit flickered as a draft plunged down one of the partially opened roof vents. The yellow glow that filled the room dimmed. I stood and leaned over to give the flame a little more wick. The wind bent at an especially noisy angle around the corner of the house.

  “Santa Ana blowing, eh?” Tom said.

  “Yeah. A strong one, too. And hot.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I bet. This place is like an oven. I’m sure glad I don’t live in the desert if it’s like this all the time.”

  “Used to be. But the wind isn’t hot because of the desert. It gets compressed coming over the mountains, and that heats it up. Compression heats things.”

  “Ah.” I started to describe the effect of the Santa Ana on the trees, that were so used to the onshore wind; but he knew about Santa Anas. I fell silent. We sat there a while. There was no rush to fill silences between us. All the hours we’d spent sitting together, talking or not talking, it didn’t matter. Thinking about all those hours made me sad. I thought, You can’t die yet, I’m not done learning from you. Who’s gonna tell me what to read?

  This time Tom made an effort to rouse things. “Have you gotten started on filling that book I gave you?”

  “Oh, Tom, I don’t know how to do such a thing. I haven’t even opened it.”

  “I was serious about that,” he said, giving me the eye. Even in that wasted visage the eye had its old severity.

  “I know you were. But what am I going to write? And I don’t even barely know how to spell.”

  “Spelling,” he said scornfully. “Spelling doesn’t matter. The six signatures of Shakespeare we have are spelled four different ways. You remember that when you worry about spelling. And grammar doesn’t matter either. You just write it down like you would talk it. Understand?”

  “But Tom—”

  “Don’t but me, boy. I didn’t spend all that time teaching you to read and write for nothing.”

  “I know. But I don’t have any stories to write, Tom. You’re the one with the stories. Like that one when you met yourself, remember?”

  He looked confused.

  “The one where you picked yourself up hitchhiking,” I prompted him.

  “Oh yeah,” he said slowly, looking off through the wall.

  “Did that really happen to you, Tom?”

  The wind. Only his eyes moved, sliding over to look at me. “Yes.”

  Again the wind, whistling its amazement, whoooooo! Tom was quiet for a long time; he started and blinked and I realized he had lost track of what we were saying.

  “That was an awful long time ago for you to remember it all so clearly,” I said. “What you said and all. There’s no way I could do that. I can’t even remember what I said last week. That’s another reason I couldn’t write that book.”

  “You write it,” he commanded me. “Everything comes back when you write it down. Press the memory.”

  He fell silent, and we listened to the wind’s howls. A branch thumped the wall. He clutched at the sheet covering his legs, clutched and twisted it. It had a frayed edge.

  “You hurting?” I asked.

  “No.” Still he kneaded it, and looked at the wall across from me. He sighed a few times. “You think I’m pretty old, don’t you boy.” His voice was weak.

  I stared at him. “You are pretty old.”

  “Yes. Lived a full life in the old time, was forty-five on the day—that makes me a hundred and eight years old now, is that right?”

  “Sure, that’s right. You know it best.”

  “And I look that old too, God knows.” He took a deep breath, held it, let it go. I noticed that he hadn’t coughed since I had arrived, and thought that the dry wind might be a help to him. I was about to remark on that when he said,

  “But what if I wasn’t?”

  “What?”

  “What if I wasn’t that old?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He sighed, shifted around under the sheet. Closed his eyes for a time, so that I thought he might have fallen asleep. Opened them again.

  “What I mean is … is that I’ve been stretching my age a bit.”

  “But—how can that be?”

  He shifted his gaze and stared at me, his brown eyes shiny and pleading. “I was eighteen when the bombs went off, Henry. I tell you true for the very first time. Got to while I have the chance. I was going to go to that ruined school on the cliffs that we saw down south. I went for a trip in the Sierra the summer before and that’s when it happened. When I was eighteen. So now I’m … now I’m…” He blinked several times in succession, shook his head.

  “Eighty-one,” I said in a voice dry as the wind.

  “Eighty-one,” h
e repeated dreamily. “Old enough, and that’s the truth! But I only grew up in the old time. None of that other stuff. I wanted to tell you that before I go.”

  I stared at him, got up and walked around the room, and ended up at the foot of the bed where I stared at him some more. I couldn’t seem to get him in focus. He stopped meeting my eye and looked uncomfortably at his mottled hands.

  “I just thought you should know what I’ve been doing,” he said apologetically.

  “Which is what?” I asked, stupefied.

  “You don’t know? No. Well … having someone around who lived in the old time, who knew it well, too—it’s important.”

  “But if you weren’t really there!”

  “Make it up. Oh, I was there. I lived in the old time. Not for long, and without understanding it at the time, but I was there. I’ve not been lying outright. Just stretching.”

  I didn’t believe it. “But why?” I cried.

  For the longest time he was silent, and the wind howled my distress for me.

  “I don’t know how to put it,” he said wearily. “To hold on to the part of our past that’s of value, maybe? To keep our spirits up. Like that book does. Can’t be sure if he did it or not. Could be a Glen Baum that did go around the world. Could be Wentworth wrote it right there in his workshop. Doesn’t matter—it’s happened now because of the book. An American around the world. We needed it even if it was a lie, understand?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak. He sighed, looked away, bonged his head lightly on the oil drum. A million thoughts jammed in my mind, and yet I said something I hadn’t thought, in a voice thick with disappointment. “So you didn’t meet your double after all.”

  “No. Made it up. Made a lot of things up.”

  “But why, Tom? Why?” I started walking around the room again so he wouldn’t see me cry.