by David Downie
“What are you talking about?” Taz blurted out.
“What I’m saying is clear. Harvey could not possibly be your grandfather. Harvey is short and fat and mean and vicious, and there’s nothing of him in you, and man are you lucky there isn’t. Besides, your grandma always knew your grandad would show up one day, sooner or later, or am I mistaken?”
Maggie swung her head and swallowed her coffee, almost gagging on it. “She’s right,” she said a moment later to Taz. “I don’t know how she figured it out, but she’s right.”
“It had to happen,” Beverley said, smiling her crocodile smile and pointing to Taz. “He’s seventeen, it’s the seventeenth day since I figured out who the mystery man really is, and when I put all the elements together yesterday afternoon the clock had just struck five P.M.—seventeen hundred hours, ROTC time.”
“We were going to tell you, but now she’s done it for us,” said Maggie, watching Taz.
“I am stunned,” James spluttered, sucking down his coffee like a man dying of thirst on the edge of a watering hole. “This isn’t going to change our relationship, Taz,” he added hastily, “I won’t even stop calling you Taz, unless you want me to be like Grandma and call you Alex.”
With kaleidoscope eyes the size of LPs, now it was Taz’s turn to play ping-pong. Glancing back and forth from Maggie to James to Beverley, he nodded and swung his head in his trademark meaningless way, and smiled his goofy smile, turning his attention simultaneously to the waffles, eggs, and bacon, and fiddling with his smartphone. “It’s, like, whatever you want,” he said softly, “but I don’t think I can start calling you Grandpa or anything.”
“God forbid,” James said, his face flushing and twitching at the word.
“God’s got nothing to do with it,” Maggie quipped, stifling a laugh.
“You three can work all of this family stuff out later,” Beverley interrupted with mirth, her teeth and pearls shining, “in the privacy of your RV, or wherever you wind up living. In the meanwhile, what’s the plan, Sherlock?” She turned to face James, raising her fork and digging back into her breakfast, then striking her patented reptilian smile. “You heard those first responders who died last night were Gus and Pete?” James grimaced and nodded. “Swept away by the Yono, serves them right.”
Thinking of Gus’s young son, James was about to object out of a sense of judicial propriety and former friendship when he decided against it. “If they did what we think they did,” he started to say.
“They did,” Maggie added.
“They sure did,” Beverley echoed her, “and worse. Remember the hogs! And what about that cage at the hatchery?”
Maggie nodded. “I told him everything.”
“Everything?” Beverley sounded skeptical. She snorted while she ate. “Well, you told him enough for the time being, I’m sure. No one knows everything about The Seventeen Club.” She finished her waffle in two heroic bites, downed half a cup of coffee in one swallow, and drummed her fingers on the table. Then she served herself another egg and two slices of bacon. “So, I repeat my question, what’s the plan?”
The four of them ate in silence for a full minute, and when the eggs and bacon and waffles had disappeared into their mouths, and the coffeepot was empty, James leaned on his elbows, propped up his aching head, and said he proposed to do the following, though if anyone had a better idea he was all ears.
What if, he asked, they were to hike along the beach to the mansion, get two or three backpacks and warm winter gear and a tent if there was one, grab as much lightweight packaged food as they could, remove any important documents and precious objects they could find, then hike back to the resort and hide the precious items here. Provided, he added, that the house hasn’t already collapsed into the waves.
“The next step,” he said, “is, I drive the RV as far south on the highway as I can get and leave it on the shoulder of the road. I walk back up the highway on the asphalt, then I get down to the beach, probably on the Yono embankment, and walk back up here on the tide line.”
“No footprints.” Beverley nodded, raising a finger for emphasis. “That’s good, Your Honor, that’s clever. But so far you haven’t gotten very far, as far as I can see,” she added.
“Let me finish,” James protested. “Meanwhile, you three have packed the food and filled some plastic bottles with water, as much as we can carry. Taz should print out maps of the hiking trails and back roads, from Carverville to the north and east. The RV is a decoy so they think we went south.”
“We get that.”
“Once I’m back up here, we put on the packs and head north, or we go east first then north till we hit a town where I can rent a car.”
Maggie and Taz eyed each other skeptically. “How far do we have to hike?” he asked. James shook his head and said he didn’t know.
“What happens when it starts to rain again?” Beverley asked.
“We get wet,” said Maggie. She paused. “Where will we go afterward?”
James opened his hands wide, studying his palms and fingers. “I have cousins in British Columbia,” he said. “I’m sure they’d welcome us as refugees, they’ve taken in thousands. We say Taz’s papers were lost in the flash floods, and we hope for the best.”
The seriousness of the proposition seemed to hit home with the mention of the “r” word. Maggie swung her head and nodded and wondered out loud what Beverley would do and added that they couldn’t abandon her. But Beverley waved Maggie’s words away with a broad gesture. “I’ll take care of myself.” She snorted. “I’d rather die than hike in the rain, and I’ve got more guns and ammo than the whole county sheriff’s department.” No one laughed, so she added gingerly, “Jokes aside, you three should get while the getting’s good. Harvey and the Tom Cat aren’t going to mess with me, and if they do, I’ll go down biting and scratching. You’ll hear about it in the land of maple leaves, or is it maple syrup? Speaking of which, does anyone want another waffle?”
Taz raised his eyes from his smartphone and grinned. “I can, like, run interference with the drones while you drive the RV south,” he said. “Then we could rig up a stretcher and carry Beverley with us.”
Before Maggie or James could speak, Beverley broke out in uncontrollable laughter, got up and embraced the boy for the first time. Mopping tears of hilarity from her eyes, she coughed out the words, “Do you have any idea what the Tater weighs?” She slapped her thighs and laughed until she was purple in the face. “You’d need a packhorse.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
This time the RV started up right away. I backed out carefully, the three of them watching me. Then I swung south and drove through mud and ankle-deep water at the proverbial snail’s pace. For some reason, until that moment, I hadn’t thought of the RV as a snail, but now as I crossed Greenwood Gulch and bumped through sludgy potholes toward the Yono River, I realized it had been my mobile shell for the better part of a year. I would be naked without it, naked and defenseless.
My plan had been adopted as tabled, though we had decided unanimously to delay our departure until the following morning. That was because of the complications we encountered walking to and from Eden to Five Mile Creek after our breakfast. It took us the rest of that morning and most of the afternoon. For one thing, we hadn’t counted on the continuing violence of the surf. It forced us up the beach onto loose sand. The number of obstacles was daunting, and the filth and stench nauseating. How had a small, isolated community faced by a seemingly boundless ocean managed to befoul the waters to this extent? I couldn’t help wondering what the coastline must look like down south, closer to the city. The fumes had a corrosive effect on my eyes and lungs. Though it was no longer raining, the sky was still dark and the breakers so high we could not see the offshore rigs. Had they been destroyed by the storm? If so, that might explain the oily quality of the noxious stench.
The second problem arose in the form of another beached hog trap, then another, and a third. The first was empty, thank go
d. The second contained green and black lumps of matter covered with seaweed. In the third were the largely decomposed remains of two or more human beings and a large feral hog. I will not describe the horror of the scene—the hair-matted skulls and broken bones jutting from shredded heavy-duty garbage bags, the rotting tatters of clothing and sacking, the jutting pig tusks trailing kelp, and the miasmic, revolting stench. In the state we were in, it seemed miraculous that we managed to continue walking north. A troubling thought resurfaced and swam to mind. I could not help wondering again if the missing Paul had fallen afoul of Harvey and Tom without Maggie knowing it and wound up in one of those cages.
Yet the sudden apparition of the wrecked old mansion hanging off the cliff welling up through the river mist, held aloft by the cables run through the foundations and balanced precariously on the concrete buttresses, filled me with even greater dread than the battered cages. The creek was still raging, the waters so high above the level of the beach that it was impossible to contemplate crossing. Reconnoitering, we decided Taz and I would have to backtrack and scramble up the bluffs to the highway—no easy task. Maggie would remain on the beach where she could see the house. The bluffs were covered with poison oak, and the last thing anyone wanted was for her to have an allergic reaction just as we were setting out to trek across country.
The suddenness of the change in the weather also threw us off balance. Just as we made it through the dense vegetation and up onto the paved road, the wind dropped and the clouds seemed to tear asunder, revealing a milky blue sky. This was great on the one hand—we could now see clearly, and the sunshine improved our mood. On the other hand, we all must have realized simultaneously that the drones and helicopters would soon be out again, patrolling. Part of that would be legitimate: The search-and-rescue missions would be checking the beaches and outlying areas for victims, and probably also checking the offshore facilities.
The other part of their mission might be more sinister. They would be on the lookout for cages, and fishing for them with cable and hook, trying to drag and dump them back out to sea before anyone could report them. This made me worry about Maggie, standing alone on the beach near the last cage and the mouth of Five Mile Creek. I hoped she would have similar thoughts and find shelter behind the driftwood, if an airborne vehicle approached. With the Internet still down, there was no way to reach her by cellphone, and in any case, it was legitimate to assume our calls and texts were being intercepted.
The anxiety increased as Taz and I neared the house and heard the heavy thrumming beat of rotors. Diving behind shrubbery along the highway, we watched the helicopter streak by above us, circle the house several times, reverse direction, then prowl slowly south over the beach from the direction it had come.
Once it had flown south a quarter mile, Taz ran in a stoop to the far edge of the highway and began filming the scene with his phone. I couldn’t help remembering those funfair arcade games of decades past where you used a tethered helicopter to fish for prizes in a big Plexiglas tank. Here the helicopter swung around chasing its tail slowly as it dropped the familiar cable and hook and grappled with one of the cages, the one full of decomposing body parts. After several minutes of trying unsuccessfully to hook the cage, the ’copter slowly sank and hovered ten feet or so above the level of the beach. Seconds later, a small man in blue overalls wearing a harness and yellow reflective vest lowered himself from the cockpit, ran to the cage and looped the cable and hook through it. Then he ran back and was pulled up, clambering into the hovering machine.
From where we stood, I could see Maggie behind a tree trunk only twenty or thirty feet from the cage. In her right hand she held her tiny pistol. Would they spot her as the helicopter rose? We held our breath and watched. The rotors and engine roared, the cage was yanked up and swung around like a yo-yo out of control, then disappeared into the blinding glare on the western horizon. Maggie looked up at us and waved. I cupped my hands and shouted, but there was no way she could hear me saying, “Stay down, stay there!” The roar of the creek and the pounding of the waves were deafening. We would soon see if the ’copter circled back to get her. If she moved they would spot her. I waved madly, trying to get her to sit and hide, and then I thought how stupid and arrogant and male could I be? Maggie was at least as smart as I am. She had hidden in time just minutes before. If we stood here waving and jumping up and down, we would be spotted and probably be shot and killed like feral hogs.
With the terrible deafening eggbeater sound of the helicopter already coming at us again, we dove into the luxuriant, glossy tangle of poison oak and coyote bush and waited for the infernal thrumming to let up. As I lay there, my heart beating in time with the rotors, I wondered if they were hunting Maggie, if they would land and scoop her up, or shoot her from above. Judging by the size of his eyes and the terror-stricken look on his face, Taz was thinking similar thoughts.
So, it was with more than mere relief that we emerged from cover a few minutes later and, glancing down, saw Maggie wedged under the tree trunk, only her head and shoulders emerging and visible from our cliff-top angle.
Sprinting to the teetering house, we didn’t bother to test if our weight and movements were likely to break the camel’s back and send the slumping mansion sliding onto the beach. Another, wider crevice had opened between the grassy area and the porch. I nosed the air and smelled decomposition and a smoldering fire. Two twin-faced images sprang to mind: rotting road-killed feral hog and gas leak, plus fireplace and wood-burning stove. A curl of smoke rose from the collapsed chimney corresponding to the stove, and I knew then what I’d feared all along, that I’d failed to extinguish the fire. The stove was an airtight model, and Maggie had loaded it to the gills. Did it matter now? As these thoughts raced through my head, I could see the house shake and slip an inch or more. It was insanity to go inside. We should leave or it would be too late. Then before I knew it, both of us had jumped over the crevice and were standing in the entrance by the broken bow window.
We had talked through our plan beforehand, dividing up the tasks. Taz was to get the hiking and camping gear from the closet in the rumpus room, then go into the kitchen and start stuffing lightweight dried food into the backpacks. Meantime, I rushed into the master bedroom, grabbed a handbag full of documents Maggie had forgotten, then took two stairs at a time until I was on the second floor in Taz’s room. The walk-in closet ladder had fallen over and jammed against the wall. I wrestled it up, feeling the house shudder. Climbing at an angle, I pushed upward on the trapdoor above, but it would not budge. Cursing and pounding at it, I finally forced the door to give, and I scrambled on hands and knees into the attic. The dormer window had blown open. I smelled sulfur and burning wood in the air. Tearing up the floorboards, I grabbed the scrapbook and my Kropotkin, the piece of bone and snippet of razor wire and the burned-out end of a welding rod, and started climbing down the ladder, when suddenly everything went black.
When I opened my eyes, Taz was standing over me, shaking me and shouting. I’d never seen him so scared or so scary looking. Looming above my face, the curl seemed to have gone out of his green hair, and the stud in his tongue flashed in the sunlight streaming down from above. His totem pole head seemed twice its normal size. The trapdoor had fallen and knocked me out, he shouted.
As we picked up the scattered scrapbook, bones, razor wire, and welding rod, the house lurched westward. We froze. The air was filled with smoke. Then we both leaped to our feet and tore downstairs. Taz had found the tent and clothing and packs. We rushed past the wood-burning stove into the kitchen, flung open the cupboards and began stuffing crackers and packages of instant soup and roasted cashews and bags of raisins into our packs and pockets, when the west side of the house buckled and the porch broke free and slid. Through the kitchen’s broken windowpanes, we could see splintered glass and wood raining from the upper stories, and we snatched up what we could and ran out onto the highway. This time the mansion was going down, I knew it.
“The
door of the stove was open,” Taz said, his teeth chattering with fear. “I should go back. . . .” Shaking my head in answer, I grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him along. We backed away and started running down the highway. That’s when I spotted Maggie on the beach below and heard the helicopter again. We dove to the side of the road and turned in time to see the house implode, catch fire, and slide toward Five Mile Creek, the ’copter chasing its tail directly above the burning roof.
Then the real spectacle began. With sparks flying from the roof, the propane gas tank next to the house was dragged by its pipes into the flaming wreckage and exploded with such force it knocked me on my back into the bushes. Bursting flames shot into the sky, the blaze scorching the low-flying helicopter, setting its tail and engine on fire. Roaring westward out to sea with tongues of fire pouring out of its back, the helicopter went orange and black as if struck by lightning, and a thunderous blast followed as a thousand jagged pieces of Plexiglas and twisted steel spun and sizzled through the air. I watched, fascinated, while the shredded blue overalls and smoking, mangled bodies of the two-man crew drifted like parachute troopers down and around and around again, splashing into the raging creek.
His mouth gaping and lungs gasping for air, Taz had been filming the scene and only now seemed to realize what he had witnessed. Waving wildly at Maggie emerging from her hiding place on the beach, we tore down the bluff and stood side by side, staring dumbly at the smoldering wreckage of the helicopter and the house. With a creaking, bellowing animal wail, the remnants of the old mansion subsided into Five Mile Creek and were ripped apart and carried board by board across the beach and into the ocean waves.