Nicolin cracked his crazy smile. “Found any good dead bodies to eat lately?” he asked the scavengers innocently. With a rush they were on him, and Gabby and I had to come up on each side of him swinging hard, to keep him from being surrounded, although with his heavy boots he was doing quite well on their kneecaps. As the fight broke out in earnest he started shouting happily “Vultures! Buzzards! Wreckrats! Zopilotes!” and I had to look sharp because there were more of them than there were of us, and they seemed to have rings on every finger—
The sheriffs barged into us bellowing “What’s this? Stop this—HEY!” I found myself on the dirt again, as did most of us. I started the laborious process of standing. “You kids get the fuck out of here,” one of the sheriffs said. He was shaped like a barrel and was a foot taller than Steve, whom he held by the shirt. “We’ll ban you all from swap meets forever if we have to break up these fights again. Now get out of here before we cave your faces in to make you think about it.”
We rejoined the girls—Kristen and Rebel had been in the midst of the tussle, but the rest had stayed back—and trooped down the promenade. Behind us the Clemente gang started up the siren sound, “uhnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeee…”
“Damn!” Nicolin said, wrapping an arm around Kathryn. “We were going to pound those guys, too.”
“They had you two to one,” Kathryn pointed out.
“Oh Katie, don’t you know that’s just the way we wanted it?” We all agreed we had had them in a tight spot, and walked back to camp in a fine humor. Melissa found me and slipped under my arm. As we approached the camp she slowed down and we fell behind the others. Sensing something to this, I steered us off the promenade into the grove. I stopped and leaned back against a laurel.
“You looked good fighting,” she said, and then we were kissing. After some long kisses she sort of let her weight go on me, and I slid down the tree with her, scraping my back good on the bark. Once on the leaves I laid half on top, half beside her, a leg between hers, an awkward position, but it was making my blood pound. We were kissing without pause and I could feel her breathing fast, humming little gasps. I tried to get my hand down her pants but couldn’t get it far enough, so I pushed it up under her shirt and held her breast. She bit my neck and a jolt ran down that whole side of my body. Someone with a lantern walked by on the promenade, and for a second I could see her shoulder: dirty white cotton twisted against pale skin, the swell of her breast pushed up by my hand … back to kissing, with the image clear in my closed eyes.
She pulled back. “Ohh,” she sighed, “Henry. I told my dad I’d be right back. He’ll start looking for me if I don’t get back there pretty soon.” She made a pout that I could just see in the dark, and I laughed and kissed it.
“That’s okay. Some other time.” I was too drunk to feel balked, why five minutes before I hadn’t been expecting anything like this, and it was easy to slip back to that. Anything was easy. I helped her to her feet and took a piece of bark out of my back. And laughed.
I walked Melissa into camp and with a final quick kiss left her near her father’s set-up. I went back out in the grove to take a leak. Off through the treetrunks I could still see the scavengers’ camps, bouncing in the firelight, and faintly I could hear a group of them singing “America the Beautiful.” I sang along under my breath, a perfect harmony part that only I could hear, and the old tune filled my heart.
Back on the promenade in front of our camp I saw the old man, talking with two strangers dressed in dark coats. The old man asked them questions, but I couldn’t make out the words. Wondering who they were I stumbled back to my sleeping spot. I laid down, head spinning, and looked up at the black branches against the sky, every pine needle clear as an ink stroke. I figured I’d be out in a second. But when I settled down there was a noise; someone was crushing leaves over and over again, crick, crick, crick, crick … from where Steve slept. I started listening and before long I heard breathing, and a soft, rhythmic expelling of breath. I knew it was Kathryn’s voice. My hard-on was back; I wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep. After a minute’s listening I felt strange, and making some irritated noises, I got up and went out to the front of the camp, where the fire was a warm mass of coals. I sat watching them shift from gray to orange with every breath of wind, feeling horny and envious and drunk and happy.
All of a sudden the old man crashed into camp, looking drunker than I by a good deal. His scruff of hair flew around his head like smoke. He saw me and squatted by the fire. “Hank,” he said, his voice uncommonly excited. “I’ve just been talking with two men who were looking for me.”
“I saw you out there with them. Who were they?”
He looked at me, his bloodshot eyes gleaming with reflected firelight. “Hank, those men were from San Diego. And they came here—or up to just south of Onofre, actually—they talked to Recovery Simpson and followed us to the meet, to talk with me, ain’t that nice—word gets around, you know, who a village elder is. Anyway…”
“The men.”
“Yes! These men say they got from San Diego to Onofre by train.”
We sat there staring at each other over the fire, and some little flames popped up. Light danced on his wild eyes. “They came by train.”
4
A few days after we got back from the meet, Pa and I woke up to the sound of a hard rain drumming on the roof. We ate a loaf of bread and made a big fire, and sat down to needle clothes, but the rain fisted the roof harder and harder, and when we looked out the door we could scarcely see the big eucalyptus. It looked like the ocean had decided to jump up and wash us down to it, and the young crops would be the first to go. Plants, stakes, the soil itself; they’d all be ripped away.
“Looks like we’ll be putting the tarps down,” Pa said.
“No doubt about it.” We paced around the dark room in the firelight, got out our rain gear and paced some more. In a sheet downpour we heard Rafael’s bugle faintly calling over the roar of the rain, hitting high-low-high-low.
We put on our gear and rushed out, and were drenched in seconds. “Whoo!” Pa cried, and ran for the bridge, splashing through puddles. At the bridge a few people were huddled under ponchos and umbrellas, waiting for the tarps to arrive. Pa and I ran to the bathhouse beside the river path, which was now a little creek bordering the foaming brown river. We had to dodge the occasional group of three or four trundling along awkwardly under the weight of one of the long tarps. At the bathhouse shed the Mendezes, Mando and Doc Costa, and Steve and Kathryn were hauling out tarps and lifting them onto the shoulders of whoever was there. I jumped under the end of a roll and followed it off, spurred by Kathryn’s sharp voice. She had her whole crew jumping, no doubt of that. And it rained down on us like the world was under a waterfall.
I helped run three tarps over the bridge and out to the fields, and then it was time to get them down. Mando and I got on one end of a roll—loosely rolled plastic it was, once clear, now opaque with mud—and leaned over to get our arms around it. Rain poured onto my lower back and down my pants; my poncho was flying around my shoulders. Gabby and Kristen were on the other end of our roll, and the four of us maneuvered it into position at the downhill end of some rows of cabbage. We unrolled it one lift at a time, grunting and shouting directions at each other, walking up the furrows ankle deep in water. The field sloped ahead of us black and lumpy. Gray pools of water bounced under the rain’s onslaught where the grading was not right. When we got to the end of the roll the last cabbages were just covered. Below us small bowed figures were unfurling other tarps: the Hamishes, the Eggloffs, Manuel Reyes and the rest of Kathryn’s farm crew plus Rafael and Steve. Beyond them the river churned, a brown flood studded with tree-trunks and drowned shrubs. A thinner cloud rushed over and for a moment the light changed, so that everything glowed through the streaky veils of rain. Then just as suddenly it was twilight again.
The old man was at the bottom of the field helping to position the rest of the tarps, striding about under
his shoulder umbrella, a plastic thing held over his head by two poles strapped to his back. I laughed and felt the rain in my mouth: “Now why can’t he just wear a hat like everyone else?”
“That’s just it,” Mando said, hands clamped in his armpits for warmth. “He doesn’t want to be like everyone else.”
“He’s already managed that without any such contraption on his head.”
Gabby and Kristen joined us at the bottom. Gabby had fallen and was completely covered with mud. We got another roll and began pulling it uphill. Wind hit the trees on the hill above and their branches bobbed and bent, as if the hillside were a big animal struggling under the storm, going whoooo, whoooo, and making the valley seem vast. Water poured down the tarps that were already laid. The drainage ditch at the bottom of the fields was overflowing, but it all spilled into the river anyway.
Tom came over to greet us. His sheltered face was as wet as anyone’s. “Hello Gabriel, Henry. And Armando, Kristen. Well met. Kathryn says she needs help with the corn.” The four of us hurried up the riverbank to the cornfields. Kathryn was at their foot, running around getting groups together, booting reluctant rolls uphill, pointing out slack in the tarps already tied down. She was as black with mud as Gabby. She shouted instructions at us, and hearing that shrill tone in her voice we ran.
The shoots of corn were about two hands high, and we couldn’t just lay the tarps right on them without breaking them. There were cement blocks every few yards, therefore, and the tarps had to be tied down to these through grommet holes. So the blocks had to be perfectly placed to match the holes. I saw that Steve and John Nicolin were working together, heaving blocks and tying knots. Everyone out there was dripping black. Kathryn had sent us to the upper end of the field, and when we got there we found her two youngest sisters and Doc and Carmen Eggloff, struggling with one of the narrowest tarps. “Hey Dad, let’s get this thing rolling,” Mando said as we approached them.
“Go to it,” Doc replied wearily. We got them to continue unrolling, while we tied the sides of the tarp down to the blocks. It took a lot of slipping around in the mud to get them right. Finally we got that tarp down, and hurried to start on another one.
Gusts of wind grabbed at the plastic and tore it away from my cold fingers. It hurt to hold on as hard as I had to. Tying the knots got almost impossible. Thicker clouds flowed over, and it got darker. The spread tarps shone faintly. Kneeling in the muck and shivering, I looked up from a knot for a moment to see a field dotted with black figures, crouched or crawling or miserably bowed over, backs to the wind. I yanked the knot down grimly.
By the time we got our third tarp down—we were not much of a team for speed—most of the cornfields were covered. We sloshed around our last tarp and down to the riverbank and Kathryn. The river took a torrey pine past us, tumbling in the flood with its needles still green, its roots white and naked.
Almost the whole crew had gathered by the drowned drainage channel: twenty of us or more, watching the Mendezes and Nicolins run around the tarps and crawl under them, tightening and letting slack. A few people made for the bathhouse; the rest of us stood around under umbrellas describing the unrolling to each other. The fields were now glistening, ridged plastic surfaces, and the rain hitting the tarps leaped back into the air, a score of droplets jumping up from each raindrop that fell, so that the plastic itself was almost invisible under a layer of wild droplet mist. Sheets of water poured off the lower ends of the tarps into the drainage ditch, free of mud and our summer crops.
We all trooped over the bridge to the bathhouse. Inside the big main room Rafael had been hard at work; it was already hot, and the baths were steaming. He was congratulated on his fire, “a nice controlled indoor bonfire,” as Steve said. As I stripped my wet clothes off I admired for the hundredth time the complicated system of pipes and holding tanks and pumps that Rafael had constructed to heat the bath water. By the time I got in the dirt bath it was crowded. The dirt bath was the hotter of the two, and the air filled with the delighted moans and groans of scalded bathers. I couldn’t feel my feet, but the rest of me burned. Then the heat penetrated the skin of my feet and they felt like one of Pa’s pin cushions. I hooted loudly. The sheet metal of the bath bottom was hot to the touch, and most of us floated, bumping and splashing and discussing the storm.
The clean bath had wooden seats anchored in it, and soon folks hopped over and gathered around those, talking and relaxing in the warmth. The boom of the rain on the corrugated metal roof washed over the chatter now and then; the pitch of the boom was an exact sign of how hard the rain was falling, and when it deepened enough people stopped talking and listened. Some of the group had gone out to help spread the tarps before their own gardens were covered, and they had to put their clammy clothes back on (unless they kept spares at the boathouse) and leave, promising all the while that they would hurry back. We believed them.
The firelight cast dancing shadows of the pipe system across the roof, and the plank walls glowed the color of the fire. Everyone’s skin was ruddy. The women were beautiful: Carmen Eggloff putting branches on the fire, the ribs of her back sticking out; the girls diving like seals around one of the seats; Kathryn standing before me to talk, thick and rounded, beads of water gleaming on her freckled skin; Mrs. Nicolin twisting around and squealing, as John splashed her in a rare display of playfulness. I sat in my usual corner listening to Kathryn and looking around contentedly: we were a room of fire-skinned animals, wet and steaming, crazy-maned, beautiful as horses.
Most of us were getting out, and Carmen was handing around her collection of towels, when a voice called from outside.
“Hello there! Hello in there!”
Talk stopped. In the silence (roof drumming) we heard it clearer: “Hello in there, I say! Greetings to you! We’re travelers from the south! Americans!”
Automatically the women, and most of the men, went for their towels or clothes. I yanked on my cold muddy pants, and followed Steve to the door. Tom and Nat Eggloff were already there; Rafael joined us still naked, holding a pistol in his hand. John Nicolin bulled his way through us, still pulling up his shorts, and pushed out the door.
“What brings you here?” we heard him ask. The answer was inaudible. A second passed, and Rafael opened the door again. Two men wearing ponchos entered before John; they looked surprised to see Rafael. They were drenched, weary and bedraggled. One was a skinny man with a long nose and a black beard that was no more than a thin strip around his jaw. The other was short and stocky, wearing a soaked floppy hat under his poncho. They took the ponchos off, revealing dark coats and wet pants. The shorter man saw Tom and said “Hello, Barnard. We met at the swap meet, remember?”
Tom said “Yes.” They shook hands with him, and then with Rafael (a funny sight), John, Nat, Steve, and me. Without showing it much they looked around the room. All the women were dressed, or wrapped in towels, leaving a room filled with a fire, and steaming baths, and several naked men gleaming like fish among those of us with some cloth on. The shorter man did a sort of bow. “Thanks for taking us in. We’re from San Diego, as Mr. Barnard here will tell you.”
We stared at them.
“Did you get here by train?” Tom asked.
Both men nodded. The skinny one shivered. “We brought the cars within five miles of here,” he said. “We left our crew there and walked the rest of the way. We didn’t want to work on the tracks closer to you until we talked with you about it.”
“We thought we’d get here sooner,” the shorter one said, “but the storm slowed us.”
“Why’d you hike in a storm in the first place?” John Nicolin asked.
After some hesitation the short one said, “We prefer to hike under cloud cover. Can’t be seen from above, then.”
John tilted his head and squinted, not getting it.
“If you want to jump in that hot water,” Tom said, “go right ahead.”
Shaking his head the taller one said, “Thank you, but…” They loo
ked at each other.
“Looks warm,” the short one observed.
“True,” the other said, nodding a few times. He was still shivering. He looked around at us shyly, then said to Tom, “Perhaps we’ll just warm up by your fire, if that’s all right. It’s been a wet walk, and I’d like to get dry.”
“Sure, sure. Do what you like; the place is yours.”
John didn’t look too happy at Tom’s wording, but he led the two men over to the fire, and Carmen threw on more wood. Steve nudged me. “Did you hear that? A train to San Diego? We can get a ride down there!”
“I guess we might,” I replied. The men were introducing themselves: the taller one was Lee, the short one Jennings. Jennings took off his cap, revealing straggly blond hair, then removed his poncho, coat, shirt, boots, and socks. He laid his clothes over the drying racks and stood with his hands stretched out to the fire.
“We’ve been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now,” he told us. “The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns.”
“Is it true that San Diego has a population of two thousand?” Tom asked. “I heard that at a swap meet.”
“About that.” Jennings nodded. “And since the Mayor began organizing things, we’ve accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There’s a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia—all manner of things there weren’t before. Naturally Lee and I are proudest of the exploration team. Why, we cleared highway eight all the way across the mountains to the Salton Sea, and shifted the train tracks onto it.” Something in the way Lee moved before the fire caused Jennings to stop talking for a moment.
“The Salton Sea must be huge now,” Tom said.