Salvage
The road began to climb steeply right from the ferry, so the truck couldn't build up any speed. Deaver just kept shifting down, wincing as he listened to the grinding of the gears. Sounded like the transmission was chewing itself to gravel. He'd been nursing it all the way across Nevada, and if the Wendover ferry hadn't carried him these last miles over the Mormon Sea, he would have had a nice long hike. Lucky. It was a good sign. Things were going to go Deaver's way for a while.
The mechanic frowned at him when he rattled in to the loading dock. "You been ridin the clutch, boy?"
Deaver got down from the cab. "Clutch? What's a clutch?"
The mechanic didn't smile. "Couldn't you hear the transmission was shot?"
"I had mechanics all the way across Nevada askin to fix it for me, but I told em I was savin it for you."
The mechanic looked at him like he was crazy. "There ain't no mechanics in Nevada."
If you wasn't dumb as your thumb, thought Deaver, you'd know I was joking. These old Mormons were so straight they couldn't sit down, some of them. But Deaver didn't say anything. Just smiled.
"This truck's gonna stay here a few days," said the mechanic.
Fine with me, thought Deaver. I got plans. "How many days you figure?"
"Take three for now, I'll sign you off."
"My name's Deaver Teague."
"Tell the foreman, he'll write it up." The mechanic lifted the hood to begin the routine checks while the dockboys loaded off the old washing machines and refrigerators and other stuff Deaver had picked up on this trip. Deaver took his mileage reading to the window and the foreman paid him off.
Seven dollars for five days of driving and loading, sleeping in the cab and eating whatever the farmers could spare. It was better than a lot of people lived on, but there wasn't any future in it. Salvage wouldn't go on forever. Someday he'd pick up the last broken-down dishwasher left from the old days, and then he'd be out of a job.
Well, Deaver Teague wasn't going to wait around for that. He knew where the gold was, he'd been planning how to get it for weeks, and if Lehi had got the diving equipment like he promised then tomorrow morning they'd do a little freelance salvage work. If they were lucky they'd come home rich.
Deaver's legs were stiff but he loosened them up pretty quick and broke into an easy, loping run down the corridors of the Salvage Center. He took a flight of stairs two or three steps at a time, bounded down a hall, and when he reached a sign that said SMALL COMPUTER SALVAGE, he pushed off the doorframe and rebounded into the room. "Hey Lehi!" he said. "Hey it's quittin time!"
Lehi McKay paid no attention. He was sitting in front of a TV screen, jerking at a black box he held on his lap.
"You do that and you'll go blind," said Deaver.
"Shut up, carpface." Lehi never took his eyes off the screen. He jabbed at a button on the black box and twisted on the stick that jutted up from it. A colored blob on the screen blew up and split into four smaller blobs.
"I got three days off while they do the transmission on the truck," said Deaver. "So tomorrow's the temple expedition."
Lehi got the last blob off the screen. More blobs appeared.
"That's real fun," said Deaver, "like sweepin the street and then they bring along another troop of horses."
"It's an Atari. From the sixties or seventies or something. Eighties. Old. Can't do much with the pieces, it's only eight-bit stuff. All these years in somebody's attic in Logan, and the sucker still runs."
"Old guys probably didn't even know they had it."
"Probably."
Deaver watched the game. Same thing over and over again. "How much a thing like this use to cost?"
"A lot. Maybe fifteen, twenty bucks."
"Makes you want to barf. And here sits Lehi McKay, toodling his noodle like the old guys use to. All it ever got them was a sore noodle, Lehi. And slag for brains."
"Drown it. I'm trying to concentrate."
The game finally ended. Lehi set the black box up on the workbench, turned off the machine, and stood up.
"You got everything ready to go underwater tomorrow?" asked Deaver.
"That was a good game. Having fun must've took up a lot of their time in the old days. Mom says the kids used to not even be able to get jobs till they was sixteen. It was the law."
"Don't you wish," said Deaver.
"It's true."
"You don't know your tongue from dung, Lehi. You don't know your heart from a fart."
"You want to get us both kicked out of here, talkin like that?"
"I don't have to follow school rules now, I graduated sixth grade, I'm nineteen years old, I been on my own for five years." He pulled his seven dollars out of his pocket, waved them once, stuffed them back in carelessly. "I do OK, and I talk like I want to talk. Think I'm afraid of the Bishop?"
"Bishop don't scare me. I don't even go to church except to make Mom happy. It's a bunch of bunny turds."
Lehi laughed, but Deaver could see that he was a little scared to talk like that. Sixteen years old, thought Deaver, he's big and he's smart but he's such a little kid. He don't understand how it's like to be a man. "Rain's comin."
"Rain's always comin. What the hell do you think filled up the lake?" Lehi smirked as he unplugged everything on the workbench.
"I meant Lorraine Wilson."
"I know what you meant. She's got her boat?"
"And she's got a mean set of fenders." Deaver cupped his hands. "Just need a little polishing."
"Why do you always talk dirty? Ever since you started driving salvage, Deaver, you got a gutter mouth. Besides, she's built like a sack."
"She's near fifty, what do you expect?" It occurred to Deaver that Lehi seemed to be stalling. Which probably meant he botched up again as usual. "Can you get the diving stuff?"
"I already got it. You thought I'd screw up." Lehi smirked again.
"You? Screw up? You can be trusted with anything." Deaver started for the door. He could hear Lehi behind him, still shutting a few things off. They got to use a lot of electricity in here. Of course they had to, because they needed computers all the time, and salvage was the only way to get them. But when Deaver saw all that electricity getting used up at once, to him it looked like his own future. All the machines he could ever want, new ones, and all the power they needed. Clothes that nobody else ever wore, his own horse and wagon or even a car. Maybe he'd be the guy who started making cars again. He didn't need stupid blob-smashing games from the past. "That stuff's dead and gone, duck lips, dead and gone."
"What're you talking about?" asked Lehi.
"Dead and gone. All your computer things."
It was enough to set Lehi off, as it always did. Deaver grinned and felt wicked and strong as Lehi babbled along behind him. About how we use the computers more than they ever did in the old days, the computers kept everything going, on and on and on, it was cute, Deaver liked him, the boy was so intense. Like everything was the end of the world. Deaver knew better. The world was dead, it had already ended, so none of it mattered, you could sink all this stuff in the lake.
They came out of the Center and walked along the retaining wall. Far below them was the harbor, a little circle of water in the bottom of a bowl, with Bingham City perched on the lip. They used to have an open-pit copper mine here, but when the water rose they cut a channel to it and now they had a nice harbor on Oquirrh Island in the middle of the Mormon Sea, where the factories could stink up the whole sky and no neighbors ever complained about it.
A lot of other people joined them on the steep dirt road that led down to the harbor. Nobody lived right in Bingham City itself, because it was just a working place, day and night. Shifts in, shifts out. Lehi was a shift boy, lived with his family across the Jordan Strait on Point-of-the-Mountain, which was as rotten a place to live as anybody ever devised, rode the ferry in every day at five in the morning and rode it back every afternoon at four. He was supposed to go to school after that for a couple
of hours but Deaver thought that was stupid, he told Lehi that all the time, told him again now. School is too much time and too little of everything, a waste of time.
"I gotta go to school," said Lehi.
"Tell me two plus two, you haven't got two plus two yet?"
"You finished, didn't you?"
"Nobody needs anything after fourth grade." He shoved Lehi a little. Usually Lehi shoved back, but this time no.
"Just try getting a real job without a sixth-grade diploma, OK? And I'm pretty close now." They were at the ferry ship. Lehi got out his pass.
"You with me tomorrow or not?"
Lehi made a face. "I don't know, Deaver. You can get arrested for going around there. It's a dumb thing to do. They say there's real weird things in the old skyscrapers."
"We aren't going in the skyscrapers."
"Even worse in there, Deaver. I don't want to go there."
"Yeah, the Angel Moroni's probably waiting to jump out and say booga-booga-booga."
"Don't talk about it, Deaver." Deaver was tickling him; Lehi laughed and tried to shy away. "Cut it out, chiggerhead. Come on. Besides, the Moroni statue was moved to the Salt Lake Monument up on the mountain. And that has a guard all the time."
"The statue's just gold plate anyway. I'm tellin you those old Mormons hid tons of stuff down in the Temple, just waitin for somebody who isn't scared of the ghost of Bigamy Young to—"
"Shut up, snotsucker, OK? People can hear! Look around, we're not alone!"
It was true, of course. Some of the other people were glaring at them. But then, Deaver noticed that older people liked to glare at younger ones. It made the old farts feel better about kicking off. It was like they were saying, OK, I'm dying, but at least you're stupid. So Deaver looked right at a woman who was staring at him and murmured, "OK, I'm stupid, but at least I won't die."
"Deaver, do you always have to say that where they can hear you?"
"It's true."
"In the first place, Deaver, they aren't dying. And in the second place, you're definitely stupid. And in the third place, the ferry's here." Lehi punched Deaver lightly in the stomach.
Deaver bent over in mock agony. "Ay, the laddie's ungrateful, he is, I give him me last croost of bread and this be the thanks I gets."
"Nobody has an accent like that, Deaver!" shouted Lehi. The boat began to pull away.
"Tomorrow at five-thirty!" shouted Deaver.
"You'll never get up at four-thirty, don't give me that, you never get up..." But the ferry and the noise of the factories and machine and trucks swallowed up the rest of his insults. Deaver knew them all, anyway. Lehi might be only sixteen, but he was OK. Someday Deaver'd get married but his wife would like Lehi, too. And Lehi'd even get married, and his wife would like Deaver. She'd better, or she'd have to swim home.
He took the trolley home to Fort Douglas and walked to the ancient barracks building where Rain let him stay. It was supposed to be a storage room, but she kept the mops and soap stuff in her place so that there'd be room for a cot. Not much else, but it was on Oquirrh Island without being right there in the stink and the smoke and the noise. He could sleep and that was enough, since most of the time he was out on the truck.
Truth was, his room wasn't home anyway. Home was pretty much Rain's place, a drafty room at the end of the barracks with a dumpy frowzy lady who served him good food and plenty of it. That's where he went now, walked right in and surprised her in the kitchen. She yelled at him for surprising her, yelled at him for being filthy and tracking all over her floor, and let him get a slice of apple before she yelled at him for snitching before supper.
He went around and changed light bulbs in five rooms before supper. The families there were all crammed into two rooms each at the most, and most of them had to share kitchens and eat in shifts. Some of the rooms were nasty places, family warfare held off only as long as it took him to change the light, and sometimes even that truce wasn't observed. Others were doing fine, the place was small but they liked each other. Deaver was pretty sure his family must have been one of the nice ones, because if there'd been any yelling he would have remembered.
Rain and Deaver ate and then turned off all the lights while she played the old record player Deaver had wangled away from Lehi. They really weren't supposed to have it, but they figured as long as they didn't burn any lights it wasn't wasting electricity, and they'd turn it in as soon as anybody asked for it.
In the meantime, Rain had some of the old records from when she was a girl. The songs had strong rhythms, and tonight, like she sometimes did, Rain got up and moved to the music, strange little dances that Deaver didn't understand unless he imagined her as a lithe young girl, pictured her body as it must have been then. It wasn't hard to imagine, it was there in her eyes and her smile all the time, and her movements gave away secrets that years of starchy eating and lack of exercise had disguised.
Then, as always, his thoughts went off to some of the girls he saw from his truck window, driving by the fields where they bent over, hard at work, until they heard the truck and then they stood and waved. Everybody waved at the salvage truck, sometimes it was the only thing with a motor that ever came by, their only contact with the old machines. All the tractors, all the electricity were reserved for the New Soil Lands; the old places were dying. And they turned and waved at the last memories. It made Deaver sad and he hated to be sad, all these people clinging to a past that never existed.
"It never existed," he said aloud.
"Yes it did," Rain whispered. "Girls just wanna have fu-un," she murmured along with the record. "I hated this song when I was a girl. Or maybe it was my mama who hated it."
"You live here then?"
"Indiana," she said. "One of the states, way east."
"Were you a refugee, too?"
"No. We moved here when I was sixteen, seventeen, can't remember. Whenever things got scary in the world, a lot of Mormons moved home. This was always home, no matter what."
The record ended. She turned it off, turned on the lights.
"Got the boat all gassed up?" asked Deaver.
"You don't want to go there," she said.
"If there's gold down there, I want it."
"If there was gold there, Deaver, they would've taken it out before the water covered it. It's not as if nobody got a warning, you know. The Mormon Sea wasn't a flash flood."
"If it isn't down there, what's all the hush-hush about? How come the Lake Patrol keeps people from going there?"
"I don't know, Deaver. Maybe because a lot of people feel like it's a holy place."
Deaver was used to this. Rain never went to church, but she still talked like a Mormon. Most people did, though, when you scratched them the wrong place. Deaver didn't like it when they got religious. "Angels need police protection, is that it?"
"It used to be real important to the Mormons in the old days, Deaver." She sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall under the window.
"Well it's nothin now. They got their other temples, don't they? And they're building the new one in Zarahemla, right?"
"I don't know, Deaver. The one here, it was always the real one. The center." She bent sideways, leaned on her hand, looked down at the floor. "It still is."
Deaver saw she was getting really somber now, really sad. It happened to a lot of people who remembered the old days. Like a disease that never got cured. But Deaver knew the cure. For Rain, anyway. "Is it true they used to kill people in there?"
It worked. She glared at him and the languor left her body. "Is that what you truckers talk about all day?"
Deaver grinned. "There's stories. Cuttin people up if they told where the gold was hid."
"You know Mormons all over the place, now, Deaver, do you really think we'd go cuttin people up for tellin secrets?"
"I don't know. Depends on the secrets, don't it?" He was sitting on his hands, kind of bouncing a little on the couch.
He could see that she was a little mad for r
eal, but didn't want to be. So she'd pretend to be mad for play. She sat up, reached for a pillow to throw at him.
"No! No!" he cried. "Don't cut me up! Don't feed me to the carp!"
The pillow hit him and he pretended elaborately to die.
"Just don't joke about things like that," she said.
"Things like what? You don't believe in the old stuff anymore. Nobody does."
"Maybe not."
"Jesus was supposed to come again, right? There was atom bombs dropped here and there, and he was supposed to come."
"Prophet said we was too wicked. He wouldn't come cause we loved the things of the world too much."
"Come on, if he was comin he would've come, right?"
"Might still," she said.
"Nobody believes that," said Deaver. "Mormons are just the government, that's all. The Bishop gets elected judge in every town, right? The president of the elders is always mayor, it's just the government, just politics, nobody believes it now. Zarahemla's the capital, not the holy city."
He couldn't see her because he was lying flat on his back on the couch. When she didn't answer, he got up and looked for her. She was over by the sink, leaning on the counter. He snuck up behind her to tickle her, but something in her posture changed his mind. When he got close, he saw tears down her cheeks. It was crazy. All these people from the old days got crazy a lot.
"I was just teasin," he said.
She nodded.
"It's just part of the old days. You know how I am about that. Maybe if I remembered, it'd be different. Sometimes I wish I remembered." But it was a lie. He never wished he remembered. He didn't like remembering. Most stuff he couldn't remember even if he wanted to. The earliest thing he could bring to mind was riding on the back of a horse, behind some man who sweated a lot, just riding and riding and riding. And then it was all recent stuff, going to school, getting passed around in people's homes, finally getting busy one year and finishing school and getting a job. He didn't get misty-eyed thinking about any of it, any of those places. Just passing through, that's all he was ever doing, never belonged anywhere until maybe now. He belonged here. "I'm sorry," he said.