The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (31 page)

“Well, I thought about hightailing it down the trail, but at one point when he looked up at me, I saw that he recognized me too, and I realized we would have to say hello. Or something. So I waited.

“It seemed to go on forever, the last part of that climb, and him in mortal danger the whole time. But when he crawled over the top, the sun was still over that distant western horizon, out over the Pacific way out there in the haze. He stood up, and walked toward me. A few feet away he stopped and we stared at each other wordlessly, in an amber glow of light like you only get in the Sierras at dusk. There didn’t seem anything to say, and it was like we were frozen.

“And then it happened.” Here Tom’s voice took on a hoarse, harsh quality, and he leaned forward in his lame chair, stopping its rocking, and stared into the fire refusing to look at any of us. He hacked three or four coughs and spoke rapidly: “The sun was about half an orange ball lying out on the horizon, and—and one bloomed beside it, and then a whole bunch of others, up and down the California coast. Fifty suns all strung out and glowing for sunset. The mushroom balls as tall as us, and then taller. Little haloes of smoke around each column. It was the day, folks. It was the end.

“I saw what it was, and then I knew what it was; I turned to look at my double, and saw he was crying. He moved to my side and we held hands. So simple. We melted together as easy as that—as easy as agreeing to. When we were done, I was up there all alone. I remembered both of my pasts, and felt my brother’s strength. The mushroom clouds blew toward me, coming on a cold wind. Oh I felt all alone, believe me, shivering and watching that horrible sight—but I felt, well … healed somehow, and … Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I got down off of there somehow.”

He leaned back and almost rocked too far in his chair. We all took a deep breath.

Tom stood and prodded the fire with a stick. “You see, you couldn’t live a whole life in the old time,” he said, his voice relaxed again, even peevish. “It’s only now that we’re out by a fire, in the world—”

“No morals if you please,” Rafael said. “You’ve told us enough of those lately, thank you.” John Nicolin nodded at that.

The old man blinked. “Well, okay. Stories shouldn’t have morals anyway. Let’s get some more wood on that fire! This story’s over, and I need something to drink.”

With a cough he went to get the drink himself, and released us. Some stood and threw wood on the fire, others asked Mrs. N. if there was more butter—all a bit subdued, but satisfied. “How the old man talks,” Steve said. Then he took my arm and indicated Melissa, over on the other side of the fire. I shrugged him off, but after a bit I walked around the fire and joined her. She put her arm around me. Feeling that small hand over my hip made the rum in me jump. We wandered out in the junk of the yard, and kissed hungrily. I was always surprised at how easy it was with Melissa. “Welcome home,” she said. “You still haven’t told me about your trip—I’ve heard it all second hand! Will you come over to my house later and tell me about it? Daddy will be there of course, but maybe he’ll go to bed.”

I agreed quickly, thinking more about her kisses than the information I was supposed to get from Add. But when it occurred to me (while nuzzling Melissa’s neck, so beautiful in the firelight), I was pretty pleased with myself. It was going to be easier than I thought. “Let’s see if there’s more rum,” I said.

A while later we had found the rum and downed it, and Addison had found us. “Let’s be off,” he said to Melissa gruffly.

“It’s early yet,” she said. “Can we bring Henry with us? I want to hear about his trip, and show him our house.”

“Sure,” Add said indifferently. I waved goodbye to Steve and Kathryn behind Melissa’s back, and felt pretty slick when I saw Steve’s startled expression. The three of us took off down the ridge trail. Add led Melissa and me across the valley without a word or a look back, so he didn’t see Melissa’s arm around my waist, nor her hand in my pocket. The pocket had a hole convenient to her, but I was none too comfortable with Add right in front of us, and I didn’t respond except with a kiss on the bridge, where I could trust my footing. Stumbling along the path up Basilone I could feel the rum in my blood, and Melissa’s fingers groping in my pants. Whew! But at the same time I was thinking, how am I going to ask Add about the scavengers and the Japanese? The rum sloshed my thoughts when I considered it, but it was more than the drink. There wasn’t a good way, that was all there was to it. I would have to cast without bait and hope for the best.

The Shanks house was one of the old ones, built by Add before hardly anybody lived in Onofre. He had used an electric wire tower as the framework of the place, so it was small but tall, and strong as a tree. The shingled walls sloped inward slightly, and the four metal struts of the tower protruded from the corners of the roof, meeting in a tangle of metal far above it.

“Come on in,” Add said hospitably, and took a key from his pocket to unlock the door. Once inside he struck a match and lit a lantern, and the smell of burnt whale oil filled the room. Boxes and tools were stacked against the walls, but there wasn’t any furniture. “We live upstairs,” Melissa said as Add led us up a steep plank staircase in one corner. She giggled and pushed my butt as she followed me up, and I almost banged into one of the thick metal struts of the old electric tower.

Nobody from Onofre Valley had ever been on the second floor, as far as I knew. But it was nothing special: kitchen in one corner, blond wood tables, an old couch and some chairs. Scavenger stuff all. A stairway leading to a trapdoor indicated another floor above. Add set the lantern on the stove, and commenced opening windows and throwing back the shutters guarding them. There were a lot of shutters. When he was done we had a view in all four directions: dark treetops, every way. “You’ve got a lot of windows,” I said, rum-wise. Add nodded. “Have a seat,” he said.

“I’m going to change clothes,” Melissa said, and went up the stairway to the floor above.

I sat in one of the big upholstered chairs, across from the couch. “Where’d you get all this glass?” I asked, hoping that would be a start on my ultimate subject. But Add knew that I knew where the glass came from, and he gave me a crooked smile.

“Oh, around. Here, have another glass of rum. I’ve got rum better than the Nicolins’.”

I was fine on rum already, as I’ve mentioned, but I took a glass from him.

“Here, sit on the couch,” Add said, and took back the glass while I moved. “It’s got the better view. If the air’s clear you’ll see Catalina. If not, then the great sea. Getting to be your second home, I hear.”

“My last home, almost.”

He laughed long and loud. “So I hear. So I hear. Well.” He sipped from his glass. “Quite a pleasant evening, this. I like Tom’s stories.”

“So do I.” We both drank again, and for a moment it looked like we had run out of things to say. Luckily Melissa came back down the stairs, in a white house dress that pinched her breasts together. Smiling at us, she got a glass of rum for herself, and sat right beside me on the couch, pressing against my arm and leg. It made me nervous, but Add gave us his crooked smile (so different from Tom’s crooked smile, which came of a busted mouth—Add only pulled back one side of his), and nodded, seeming satisfied with how cozy we were. He leaned back and balanced his glass on the worn arm of his chair.

“Good rum, isn’t it?” Melissa said. I agreed that it was.

“We traded two dozen crabs for it. We only trade for the best rum available.”

“I wish we were going to be trading with San Diego,” Add said peevishly. “Was San Diego as big as Tom said it is?”

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe bigger.”

Melissa rested her head on my shoulder. “Did you like it down there?”

“I guess so. It was quite a trip, I’ll say that.”

They began to ask me about the details of it. How many little towns were there? Were there railroad tracks to all of them? Was the Mayor popular? When I told them about the Mayor’s morning target practice they laughed. “And he does that every morning?” Add asked, rising to get us refills.

“So they said.”

“That must mean they have a lot of ammunition,” he said to himself in the kitchen. “Hey, this bottle’s polished.”

“You bet they do,” I said. It seemed like there would be a way to get the conversation over to the scavengers pretty soon, so I relaxed and began to enjoy getting there. “They’ve got all those naval warehouses down there, and the Mayor has had every one of them explored.”

“Uh huh. One moment; I have to go downstairs and get another bottle.”

The second his head disappeared down the stairs Melissa and I kissed. I could taste the rum on her tongue. I put my hand on her knee and she tugged her dress up so I was holding her bare thigh. More kissing, and my breath got short. I kept pushing the dress higher and higher, until I found she wasn’t wearing anything under it. Blood knocked in my ears with the shock of the discovery. Her belly pulsed in and out and she rocked over my hand, pushing down on it. We kissed harder, her hand squeezed my cock through my pants, and my breath left me entirely, whoosh, whoosh!

Thump, thump, answered Add’s boots on the ladder, and Melissa twisted aside and threw her dress down. Fine for her, but I had a hard-on bulging my pants, and Melissa gave it a last malicious squeeze to make it harder still, giggling at my expression of dismay. I drank my rum and scrunched around in the corner of the couch. By the time Add had gotten in the room and broken the seal on the new bottle I was presentable, although my heart was still pounding double time.

We drank some more. Melissa left her hand on my knee. Add got up and wandered the dimly lit room, peering out the windows and opening first one and then another, adjusting the circulation, he said. The rum was clobbering me.

“Doesn’t lightning ever hit your house?” I asked.

“Sure,” they both said, and laughed. Add went on: “Sometimes it’ll hit and a whole wall of shingles will pop off. Later when I check them they look all singed.”

“My hair stands right on end,” said Melissa.

“Aren’t you afraid of being electrocuted?” I asked, patiently rolling out the last word.

“No, no,” Add said. “We’re pretty well grounded here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means the lightning runs down the corner poles into the ground. I had Rafe out to look at the place, and he said we’re in no danger. I like to remember that when the lightning hits and the whole house shakes, and blue sparks are bouncing around like hummingbirds.”

“It’s exciting,” Melissa said. “I like it.”

Add continued to play with the windows. When he was looking away Melissa took my hand and put it in her lap, trapping it between her legs. When he turned our way she released it and I yanked back upright. It was driving me wild. It got to where I didn’t wait for her to take my hand, but plunged for her whenever I could. We drank some more. Finally the windows were adjusted to Add’s satisfaction, and he stood over the side of the couch, looking down at me as if he knew what we had been up to.

“So what do you think that Mayor of San Diego is really after?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said I. I was in a daze—impatient to get back under Melissa’s dress, but very aware of Add standing right over me.

“Does he want to be king of this whole coastline?”

“I don’t
think
so. He wants the Japanese off the mainland, that’s all.”

“Ah. That’s what you said before, in the meeting. I don’t know if I believe it.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no sense to it. How many men does he have working for him, did you say?”

“I don’t think I said. I never really knew, exactly.”

“Do they have any radio gear?”

“Why, how did you guess? They’ve got a big old radio down there, but it doesn’t work yet.”

“No?”

“Not yet, but they said they were planning to get a man over from the Salton Sea to fix it.”

“Who said this, now?”

“The folks in San Diego. The Mayor.”

“Well what do you know.”

With all these questions I judged that it was a perfect time for some questions of my own. “Add, where
did
you get all this glass from?”

“Why, at the swap meets, mostly.” He was looking at Melissa, now—they exchanged a glance I didn’t understand.

“From the scavengers?”

“Sure. They’re the ones selling glass, aren’t they?”

I decided to tack a little closer to the wind. “Do you ever trade directly with the scavengers, Add? I mean, outside the swap meets?”

“Why no. Why do you ask?” He was still grinning his crooked grin, but his eyes got watchful. The grin left.

“No reason,” I said, feeling all of a sudden like he could see through my eyes and read what I was thinking. “I was wondering, that’s all.”

“Nope,” he said decisively. “I never deal with the zopilotes, no matter what you hear. I trap crabs under Trestles, so I’m up there a lot, but that’s the extent of it.”

“They lie about us,” Melissa said tragically.

“No matter,” Add said, the grin back in place. “Everyone collects stories of one sort of another, I reckon.”

“True,” I said. And it was true; everyone who didn’t live right on the valley floor, where their lives were under constant examination, had stories told about them. I could see how rumors would grow especially fast around Addison, him being such a private man. It really wasn’t fair to him. I didn’t know what to say. Obviously Steve was going to have to find some other way to get information for the San Diegans. I blinked and breathed deep and regular, trying to control the effects of the rum. Add had never lit more than the one lantern, and even though the single flame was reflected in five or six windows, the room danced with shadows. There were a couple more swallows of the amber liquor in my glass, but I resolved to pass on them. Addison moved away from the couch, and Melissa sat up. Add went to the kitchen corner and consulted a large sand clock.

“It’s been fun, but it’s getting late. Melissa, you and I ought to be abed. We’ve got lots of work to do in the morning.”

“Okay, Daddy.”