“Yooks, no.”
“Virginia.”
“Maw-ummmmmmm.”
“Eat your food,” John growled, looking up from his plate. I saw Steve wince a little. He hadn’t said a word since we came inside, even when his mother talked directly at him. It made me a little apprehensive, but to tell the truth I was distracted by the food. There were so many different flavors, aromas, textures; each forkful of food had a different taste to it. I was getting full, but I couldn’t stop. John began to slow down, and talked to no one in particular about the warm current that had hit the coast with the previous day’s rain. Tom was still tossing it down, and Virginia said “No one’s going to steal your plate, Tom.” He heard that one a lot, but he smiled at Virginia all the same, and the kids laughed. “Have some more chicken,” Mrs. N. urged me, “have more milk.” “Twist my arm,” I replied. Little Carol started to cry, and Emilia got up to sit by her and spoon some soup into her mouth, or try to. It was getting pretty noisy, and Marie noticed and cried, “Turn on the tee vee!” which she knew would get her a laugh. Meanwhile Steve continued to eat silently, and I saw John notice it. I took another swallow of milk to reassure myself that everything would go all right.
Over the remains of the meal we talked and nibbled equally. When Carol was calmed Emilia got up and started taking out dishes to the kitchen. “It’s your night too,” Mrs. N. reminded Steve. Without a word he got up and carried plates away. When the table was almost cleared they brought out berries and cream, and another jug of milk. Tom kicked me, and flapped his eyebrows like wings. “Looks wonderful, Christy,” he said piously.
After we had feasted on berries and cream the kids were allowed to take Gran and scamper off, and John and Mrs. N., Steve and Emilia and Tom and I sat back in our chairs, shifting them around to face the window. John got a bottle of brandy from a cabinet, and we contemplated our reflections as we sipped. We made a funny picture. Steve wasn’t talking tonight, and Emilia never talked, so the conversation was left to Tom and John, mostly, with an occasional word from Mrs. N. or me. John speculated some more about the current. “Seems the warm currents bring the coldest cloud. Cold rain, and sometimes snow, when the water is forty degrees warmer than that. Now why should that be?”
None of us ventured a theory. Mrs. N. began to knit, and Emilia wordlessly moved over to hold the yarn. Suddenly John knocked back the rest of his brandy.
“So what do you think these southerners want?” he asked Tom.
The old man sipped his brandy. “I don’t know, John. I guess I’ll find out when I go down there.”
“Maybe they just want to see something new,” Steve said darkly.
“Maybe,” Tom replied. “Or it could be they want to see what they can do, test their power. Or trade with us, or go farther north. I don’t know. They’re not saying, at least not up here they’re not saying. That’s why I want to go down there and talk to this mayor of theirs.”
John shook his head. “I’m still not sure you should go.”
The corners of Steve’s mouth went white. Tom said casually, “Can’t do any harm, and in fact we need to do it, to know what’s going on. Speaking of that, I’ll need to take a couple people along with me, and I figure the young ones are easiest spared, so I wondered if Steve could be one of them. He’s the kind I need along—”
“Steve?” John glared at the old man. “No.” He glanced at Steve, looked back at Tom. “No, he’s needed here, you know that.”
“You could spare me for a week,” Steve burst out. “I’m not needed here all that much. I’d work double time when I got back, please—”
“No,” John said in his on-the-water voice. In the next room the sounds of the kids playing abruptly died. Steve had stood up, and now he jerked toward his father, who was still leaning back in his chair; Steve’s hands were balled into fists, and his face was twisted up. “Steve,” Mrs. Nicolin said quietly. John shifted in his chair to better stare up at Steve.
“By the time you get back the warm current will be gone. I need you here now. Fishing is your job, and it’s the most important job in this valley. You can go south some other time, in the winter maybe when we aren’t going out.”
“I can pay someone to fill in for me,” Steve said desperately. But John just shook his head, the grim set of his mouth shifting to an angry down-curve. I shrank in my chair, frightened. So often it came to this between them; they got right to the breaking point so fast that it seemed certain they would snap through one day. For a moment I was sure of it; Steve’s hands clenched, John was ready to launch himself.… But once again Steve deferred. He turned on his heel and ran out the dining room. We heard the kitchen door slam open and shut.
Mrs. Nicolin got up and refilled John’s glass. “Are you sure we couldn’t get Addison Shanks to fill in for the week?”
“No, Christy. His work is here, he’s got to learn that. People depend on that.” He glanced at Tom, drank deeply, said in an annoyed voice, “You know I need him here, Tom. What are you doing coming down here and giving him ideas like that?”
Tom said mildly, “I thought you might be able to spare him.”
“No,” John said for the last time, putting his bulk into it. “I’m not gaming out there, Tom—”
“I know that. I know it.” Tom sipped his brandy and gave me an uncomfortable look. I imitated Emilia and pretended I wasn’t there, staring at the portrait of us all on the black glass of the window. We were a pretty unhappy looking group. Steve was long gone, on the beach, I figured. I thought about how he felt at that moment, and the fine meal in my stomach turned lumpy. Mrs. Nicolin, face tight with distress, tried to refill our glasses. I shook my head, and Tom covered his glass with his hand. He cleared his throat.
“Well, I guess Hank and I’ll get going, then.” We stood. “Wonderful meal, Christy,” Tom muttered to Mrs. N. She began to say goodbye as if nothing had happened; Tom cut her off with a pained expression and said, “Thanks for the meal, John. I’m sorry I brought all that up.”
John grunted and waved a hand, lost in his thoughts. We all stood looking at him, a big man brooding in his chair, staring at his own colorless image, surrounded by all his goods and possessions.… “No matter,” he said, as if releasing us. “I can see what caused you to do it. Come tell me what it’s like down there when you get back.”
“We will.” Tom thanked Mrs. N. again and we backed out the door. She followed us out. On the doorstep she said, “You should have known, Tom.”
“I know. Good night, Christy.”
We walked up the river path full of food, but glum and heavy-footed. Tom muttered under his breath and took swings at branches near the path. “Should’ve known … nothing else possible … impossible to change … set like a wedge.…” He raised his voice. “History is a wedge in a crack, boy, and we’re the wood. We’re the wood right under the wedge, you understand, boy?”
“No.”
“Ah…” He started muttering again, sounding disgusted.
“I do understand that John Nicolin is a mean old son of a bitch—”
“Shut up,” Tom snapped. I did. “A wedge in a crack,” he went on. Suddenly he stopped and grabbed my arm, swung me around violently. “See over there?” he cried, pointing across the river at the other bank.
“Yeah,” I protested, peering into the dark.
“Right there. The Nicolins had just moved here, just John and Christy and John Junior and Steve. Steve was just a babe, John Junior about six. They came in from the back country. One day John was helping with the first bridge, in the start of winter. John Junior was playing on the bank, on an overhang, and the overhang fell in the river.” His voice was harsh. “Fell plop right in the river, you understand? River full of the night’s rain. Right in front of John. He dove in and swam downstream all the way out into the sea. Swam nearly an hour, and never saw the kid at all. Never saw him again. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I said, uneasy at the strain in his voice. We started walking ag
ain. “That still doesn’t mean he needs Steve for fishing, because he surely doesn’t—”
“Shut up,” he said again, not as sharp as the first time. After a few steps he said quietly, as if talking to himself, “And then we went through that winter like rats. We ate anything we could find.”
“I’ve heard about those times,” I said, irritated that he kept going back to the past. That was all we heard about: the past, the past, the God-damned past. The explanation for everything that happened was contained in our past. A man could behave like a tyrant to his son, and what was his excuse? History.
“That don’t mean you know what it was like,” he told me, irritated himself. Watching him in the dark I saw marks of the past on him: the scars, the caved-in side of his face where he had no teeth left, his bent back. He reminded me of one of the trees high on the hills above us, gnarled by the constant onshore winds, riven by lightning. “Boy, we were hungry. People died because we didn’t have food enough in the winters. Here was this valley soaked with rain and growing trees like weeds, and we couldn’t grow food from it to stay alive. All we could do was hunker down in the snow—snow here, damn it—and eat every little hibernating creature we could find. We were just like wolves, no better. You won’t know times like those. We didn’t even know what day of the year it was! It took Rafe and me four years to figure out what the date was.” He paused to collect himself and remember his point. “Anyway, we could see the fish in the river, and we did our best to get them into the fire. Got some rods and lines and hooks out of Orange County, tackle from fishing stores that should have been good stuff.” He snorted, spat at the river. “Fishing with that stupid sport gear that broke every third fish, broke every time you used it … it was a damned shame. John Nicolin saw that and he started asking questions. Why weren’t we using nets? No nets, we said. Why weren’t we fishing the ocean? No boats, we said. He looked at us like we were fools. Some of us got mad and said how are we going to find nets? Where?
“Well, Nicolin had the answer. He went up into Clemente and looked in a telephone book, for God’s sake. Looked in the Goddamned yellow pages.” He laughed, a quick shout of delight. “He found the listing for commercial fishing warehouses, took some men up there to look for them. First one we found was empty. Second one had been blown flat on the day. The third one we walked into was a warehouse full of nets. Steel cables, heavy nylon—it was great. And that was just the start. We used the phone book and map to find the boatyards in Orange County, because all of the harbors were clean empty, and we hauled some boats right down the freeway.”
“What about the scavengers?”
“That was when there weren’t too many scavengers, and there wasn’t any fight in the ones that were there.”
Now there I knew he was lying. He was leaving himself out of the story, as he always did. Almost everything I knew of Tom’s history I had heard from someone else. And I had a lot of stories about him; as the oldest man in the valley legends naturally collected around him. I had heard how he had led those foraging raids into Orange County, guiding John Nicolin and the others through his old neighborhoods and beyond. He had been death on scavengers in those days, they said. If ever they were hard pressed by scavengers Tom had disappeared into the ruins, and pretty soon there weren’t any scavengers around to bother them anymore. It was Tom, in fact, who introduced Rafael to guns. And the tales of Tom’s endurance—why, they were so numerous and outlandish that I didn’t know what to think. He must have done some of those things to get such a reputation, but which ones? Had he gone for a week without sleep during the forced march from Riverside, or eaten the bark from trees when they were holed up in Tustin, surrounded? Or walked through fire and held his breath under water for a half hour, to escape? Whatever he had done, I was sure he had run ragged every man in the valley, and him over seventy-five years old at the time. I had heard Rafael declare that the old man must have been radiated on the day, and mutated so that he was destined never to die, like the wandering Jew. “One thing’s for sure,” Rafe said, “I walked with him by one of the scavengers’ geiger counters at a swap meet once, and that machine almost busted its bell. Scavengers took off.…”
“Anyway,” Tom was saying to me now, “John Nicolin did or directed everything that had to do with fishing, and doing it was what brought the people in this valley together, and made us a town. The second winter after he arrived was the first one no one died from hunger. Boy, you don’t know what that means. There’s been hard times since, but none to match those before Nicolin arrived. I admire him. So if he’s got fish on the brain, if he won’t let his son leave it for a week or even a day, then that’s too bad. That’s the way he is now, and you’ve got to understand it.”
“But it doesn’t matter how well fed he is, if he makes his son hate him.”
“Aye. But that’s not his intention. I know he doesn’t intend that. Remember John Junior. Could be, even if John himself doesn’t know it, he just wants to keep Steve where he can see him. To try and keep him safe. So that even the fishing is just a cover. I don’t know.”
I shook my head. It still wasn’t fair, keeping Steve at home. A wedge in a crack. I understood a little better what Tom had meant, but it seemed to me then that we were the wedges, stuck so far in history that we couldn’t move but one way when we were struck by events. How I wished we could be clear and free to move where we would!
We had walked to my home. Firelight shone through the cracks around the door. “Steve’ll make it another time,” said Tom. “But us—we’ll be off to San Diego on the next cloudy night.”
“Yeah.” Right then I couldn’t rouse much enthusiasm for it. Tom hit my shoulder and was off through the trees.
“Be ready!” he called as he disappeared in the forest gloom.
* * *
The next cloudy night didn’t come for a while. For once the warm current brought clear skies with it, and I spent my evenings impatiently cursing the stars. During the days I kept fishing. Steve was ordered by John to stay on the net boats, so off in my rowboat I wasn’t faced with him hour after hour, but I did feel lonesome, and odd—as if I was betraying him somehow. When we did work together, unloading fish or rolling nets, he just talked fishing, not meeting my eye, and I couldn’t find anything to say. I felt tremendously relieved when three days after the dinner he laughed and said, “Just when you don’t want clear days they come blaring down. Come on, let’s use this one for what it was meant to be used for.” Fishing was done, and with the hours of day left we walked out the wide beach to the rivermouth, where waves were slowly changing from blue lines to white lines. Gabby and Mando and Del joined us with the fins, and we waded out over the coarse tan sand of the shallows into the break. The water was as warm as it ever got. We took a fin each and swam out through the soup to the clear water outside the waves’ breaking point. Out there the water was like blue glass; I could see the smooth sheet of sand on the bottom perfectly. It was a pleasure just to tread water out there, to let the swells wash over my head and to look back at the tan cliffs and the green forest, edged by the sky and the eye-blue ocean under my chin. I drifted back in and rode the waves with the others, happy they didn’t resent me, too much, for getting the chance to go to San Diego.
When we got back on the beach, the others said goodbye to me, and left in a group. I sat in the sand, feeling strange.
A figure appeared walking down the riverside, in the narrow gap in the cliffs where the river rolled through to the sea. When it got closer I saw that it was Melissa Shanks. I stood and waved; she saw me and made her way around the pools on the beach to me.
“Hello, Henry,” she said. “Have you been out body surfing?”
“Yeah. What brings you down here?”
“Oh, I was looking for clams up on the flats.” It never occurred to me that she didn’t have any rake or bucket with her. “Henry, I hear you’re going down to San Diego with Tom?”
I nodded. Her eyes got wide with excitement.
“Why, you must be thrilled,” she said. “When are you going?”
“The next cloudy night. Seems like the weather doesn’t want me to go.”
She laughed, and leaned over to kiss my cheek. When I raised my eyebrows she kissed me again, and I turned and kissed back.
“I can’t believe you’re going,” she said dreamily, between kisses. “It’s just so—well, you’re the best man to do it.”
I began to feel better about going on this trip of mine.
“How many of you are going?”
“Just me and Tom.”
“But what about those San Diegans?”
“Oh they’re going too. They’re taking us down.”
“Just those two who came up here?”
“No, they have a whole crew of men waiting down the freeway where they stopped fixing up the tracks.” I explained to her how the San Diegans ran their operation. “So we have to go on a cloudy night, so the Japs won’t see us.”
“My God.” She shivered. “It sounds dangerous.”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.” I kissed her again, rolling her back onto the sand, and we kissed for so long that I had her half out of her clothes. Suddenly she looked around and laughed.
“Not here on the beach,” she said. “Why, anyone on the cliff could see us.”
“No they couldn’t.”
“Oh yes they could, you know they could. Tell you what.” She sat up and rearranged her blue cotton shirt. I looked through her black hair to the late afternoon sun, and felt a surge of happiness pulse through me. “When you get back from San Diego, maybe we could go up Swing Canyon and take some swings.”
Swing Canyon was a place where lovers went; I nodded eagerly, and reached for her, but she stood up.
“I have to be off now, really, my pa is going to be wondering where I got to.” She kissed her forefinger and put it to my lips, skipped off with a laugh. I watched her cross the wide beach, then stood up myself. I shook myself, laughed out loud. I looked out to sea; were those clouds, out there?
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