The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (6 page)

A plume of smoke rose from the Trabuco camp, floating through wedged sunbeams that turned the smoke seashell pink.

We smelled meat; they were roasting a steer half by half. A good crowd had gathered in their camp to join the feast. Melissa and I traded one of the crabs for a pair of ribs, and ate them standing, observing the antics of a slick trio of scavengers, who wanted six ribs for a box of safety pins. I was about to make a joke about them when I remembered Melissa’s father. Addison did a lot of trading by night, to the north, and no one was sure how much he traded with scavengers, how much he stole from them, how much he worked for them.… He was sort of a scavenger himself, who preferred to live outside of the ruins. I chewed the beef in silence, aware all of a sudden that I didn’t know the girl at my side very well. She gnawed her rib clean as a dog’s bone, looking at the sizzling meat over the fire. She sighed. “That was good, but I don’t see any barrels. I guess we should look in the scavenger camps.”

I agreed, although that would mean a tougher trade. We walked over to the north half of the park, where the scavengers stayed—keeping a clear route back home, perhaps. The camps and goods for trade were much different here: no food, except for several women guarding trays of spices and canned delicacies. We passed a man dressed in a shiny blue suit, trading tools that were spread out over a blanket on the grass. Some of the tools were rusty, others brighter than silver, each a different shape and size. We tried to guess what this or that tool had been for. One that gave us the giggles was two pairs of greenish metal clamps at each end of a wire in a tube of orange plastic. “That was to hold together husbands and wives who didn’t get along,” Melissa said.

“Nah, they’d need something stronger than those. They’re probably a doorstop.”

She crowed. “A
what?
” But she wouldn’t let me explain—she started to double over every time I tried, until I couldn’t talk myself. We walked on, past large displays of bright clothing and shiny shoes, and big rusty machines that were no use without electricity, and gun men with their crowd of spectators, on hand to watch the occasional big trade or demonstration shot. The seed exchange, on the border between the scavengers’ camps and ours, was hopping as usual. I wanted to go over and see if Kathryn was trading, because the way she traded for seeds was an art; but in the crowd of traders I couldn’t see if she was there, and suddenly Melissa tugged on my arm. “There!” she said. Beyond the seed exchange was a woman in a scarlet dress, selling chairs, tables, and barrels.

“There you are,” I said. I caught sight of Tom Barnard across the promenade. “I’m going to see what Tom’s up to while you start your dealing.”

“Good. I’ll try the poor and innocent routine until you get there.”

“Good luck.” She didn’t look all that innocent, and that was the truth. I walked over to Tom, who was deep in discussion with another tool trader. When I stopped at his side he clapped a hand on my shoulder and went on talking.

“—industrial wastes, rotting wood, animal bodies, sometimes—”

“Bullshit,” said the tool trader. (“That too,” the old man got in.) “They made it from sugar cane and sugar beets; it says so right on the boxes. And sugar stays good forever, and it tastes just as good as your honey.”

“There are no such things as sugar cane and sugar beets,” Tom said scornfully. “You ever seen one of either? There are no such plants. Sugar companies made them up. Meanwhile they made their sugar out of sludge, and you’ll pay for it with no end of dreadful diseases and deformities. But honey! Honey’ll keep away colds and all ailments of the lungs, it’ll get rid of gout and bad breath, it tastes ten times better than sugar, it’ll help you live as long as me, and it’s new and natural, not some sixty-year-old synthetic junk. Here, taste some of this, take a fingerful, I’ve been turning the whole meet on to it, no obligation in a fingerful.”

The tool man dipped two fingers in the jar the old man held before him, and licked the honey off them.

“Yeah, it tastes good—”

“You bet it does! Now one God damned little lighter, of which you’ve got thousands up in O.C., is surely not much for two, twooooo jars of this delicious honey. Especially…” Tom cracked his palm against the side of his head to loosen the hinges of his memory. “Especially when you get the jars, too.”

“The jars too, you say.”

“Yes, I know it’s generous of me, but you know how we Onofreans are, we’d give our pants away if people didn’t mind our bare asses hanging out, besides I’m senile almost—”

“Okay, okay! You can shut up now, it’s a deal. Give them over.”

“All
right,
here they are young man,” handing the jars to him. “You’ll live to be as old as me eating this magic elixir, I swear.”

“I’ll pass on that if you don’t mind,” the scavenger said with a laugh. “But it’ll taste good.” He took the lighter, clear plastic with a metal cap, and gave it to the old man.

“See you again, now,” Tom said, pocketing the lighter eagerly and pulling me away with him. Under the next tree he stopped. “See that, Henry? See that? A lighter for two little jars of honey? Was that a trade? Here, watch this. Could you believe my dealing? Watch this.” He pulled out the lighter and held it before my face, pulled his thumb down the side. He let the flame stand for a second, then shut it off.

“That’s nice,” I said. “But you’ve already got a lighter.”

He put his wrinkled face close to mine. “
Always
get these things when you see them, Henry. Always. They’re about the most valuable thing the scavengers have to trade. They are the greatest invention of American technology, no question about it.” He reached over his shoulder and rooted in his pack. “Here, have a drink.” He offered me a small bottle of amber liquid.

“You’ve been to the liquor traders already?”

He grinned his gap-toothed grin. “First place I went to, of course. Have a drink of that. Hundred-year-old Scotch. Really fine.”

I took a swallow, gasped.

“Take another, now, that first one just opens the gates. Feel that warmth down there?”

I traded swallows with him and pointed out Melissa, who looked like she wasn’t making much headway with the barrel woman. “Ahh,” said Tom, leering significantly. “Too bad she ain’t dealing with a man.”

I agreed. “Say, can I borrow a jar of honey from you? I’ll work it off in the hives.”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Ah come on, what else are you going to trade for today?”

“Lots of stuff,” he protested.

“You already have the most important thing the scavengers own, right?”

“Oh, all right. I’ll give you the little one. Have another drink before you go.”

I got back to Melissa with my stomach burning and my head spinning. Melissa was saying slowly, like for the fourth time, “We just pulled them out of the live pen this morning. That’s the way we always do it, everyone knows that. They all eat our crab and no one’s got sick yet. The meat’s good for a week if you keep it cool. It’s the tastiest meat there is, as you know if you’ve ever eaten any.”

“I’ve eaten it,” the woman snapped. “But I’m sorry. Crab is good all right, but there’s never enough of it to make a difference. These barrel halves are hard to find. You’d have it forever, and I’d get a few tastes of crab for a week.”

“But if you don’t sell them you’re going to have to cart them back north,” I interrupted in a friendly way. “Pushing them up all those hills and then making sure they don’t roll down the other side … why we’d be doing you a favor to take one of them off your hands for free!—not that we want to do that, of course. Here—we’ll throw in a jar of Barnard honey with these delicious pinchers, and really make it a steal for you.” Melissa had been glaring at me for butting in on her deal, but now she smiled hopefully at the woman. The woman stared at the honey jar, but looked unconvinced.

“Blue Book says a barrel half is worth ten dollars,” I said. “And these sidewalks are worth two dollars apiece. We’ve got seven of them, so you’re already out-trading us four dollars’ worth, not counting the honey.”

“Everyone knows the Blue Book is full of shit,” the woman said.

“Since when? It was scavengers made it up.”

“Was not—it was you grubs did.”

“Well, whoever made it up, everyone uses it, and they only call it shit when they’re trying to deal someone dirty.”

The woman hesitated. “Blue Book really says crabs are two dollars each?”

“You bet,” I said, hoping there wasn’t a copy nearby.

“Well,” said the woman, “I do like the way that meat tastes.”

Rolling the barrel half back to our camp, Melissa forgot about my rudeness. “Oh Henry,” she sang, “how can I thank you?”

“Ah,” I said, “no need, yuk yuk.” I stopped the barrel to let pass a crowd of shepherds with a giant table upside-down on their heads. Melissa wrapped her arms around me and gave me a good kiss. We stood there looking at each other before starting up again; her cheeks were flushed, her body warm against mine. As we started walking again she smacked her lips. “You been drinking, Henry?”

“Ah—old Barnard gave me a few sips back there.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t mind some of that myself.”

Back at camp Melissa went off to meet Kristen and I helped the end of the fish trading. Nicolin came by with a cigarette and under the sunbeams sparking the dust in the afternoon air we smoked it. Soon after that a fight started between a Pendleton cowboy and a scavenger, and it was broken up by a crowd of big angry men whose job was keeping things peaceful. These meet sheriffs didn’t like their authority ignored, and people fighting were always going to lose, slapped around hard by this gang. After that I nodded off for an hour or two, back with the sleeping dogs.

Rafael woke me when he came back to feed scraps to the perros. Only the western sky was still blue; high clouds overhead still glowed with a bit of sunset light. I walked over to our fire, where a few people were still eating. I crouched beside Kathryn and ate some of the stew she offered me. “Where’s Steve?”

“He’s already in the scavenger camps. He said he’d be in the Mission Viejo one for the next hour or two.”

“Ah,” I said, wolfing down stew. “How come you aren’t with him?”

“Well, Hanker, you know how it is. First of all, I had to stay here and help cook. But even if I could’ve gone, I can’t keep up with Steve for an entire night. You know what that’s like. I mean I could do it, but I wouldn’t have any fun at it. Besides, I think he likes being away from me at these things.”

“Nah.”

She shrugged. “I’m going to go hunt him down in a bit.”

“How’d it go at the seed exchange?”

“Pretty good. Not like in the spring, but I did get a good packet of barley seed. That was a coup—everyone’s interested in this barley ’cause it’s doing so well in Talega, so the trading was hot, but our good elote did the trick. I’m going to plant that whole upper field with this stuff next week, and see how it does. I hope it’s not too late.”

“Your crew’ll be busy.”

“They’re always busy.”

“True.” I finished the stew. “I guess I’ll go look for Steve.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to find him.” She laughed. “Just go for the biggest noise. I’ll see you over there.”

Among the new town camps on the south side of the park it was dark and quiet, except for the eerie, piercing cries of the Trabuco peacocks, protesting their cages. Small fires here and there made the trees above them flicker and dance with reflected light, and voices floated from the dark shapes blocking off the tiny flames.

In the northern half of the park it was different. Bonfires roared in three clearings, making the colored awnings flap in the branches. Lanterns casting a mean white glare hung from the trees. I stepped onto the promenade and was shoved in the back by a large woman in an orange dress. “Sorry, boy.” I walked over to the Mission Viejo camp. A jar flew past me, spilling liquid and smashing against a tree. The bright plastic colors of scavenged clothing wavered in the firelight, and every scavenger, man, woman and child, had gotten out their full collection of jewelry; they wore gold and silver necklaces, earrings, nose rings, ankle, belly, and wrist bracelets, and all of it studded with gems winking red and blue and green. They were beautiful.

The Viejo camp had tables set end to end in long rows. The benches lining them were jammed with people drinking and talking and listening to the jazz band at one end of the camp. I stood and looked for a while, not seeing anyone I knew. Then Nicolin deliberately struck me in the arm, and with a grin said, “Let’s go hassle the old man, see he’s over with Doc and the rest of the antiques.”

Tom was set up at the end table with a few other survivors from the old time: Doc Costa, Leonard Sarowitz from Hemet, and George something from Cristianitos. The four of them were a familiar sight at swap meets, and were often joined by Odd Roger and other survivors old enough to remember what the old time was like. Tom was the senior member of this group by a long shot. He saw us and made a spot on the bench beside him. We had a drink from Leonard’s jar; I gagged and sent half my swallow down my shirt. This put the four ancients in hysterics. Old Leonard’s gums were as clear of teeth as a babe’s.

“Is Fergie here?” Doc asked George, getting back to their conversation.

George shook his head. “He went west.”

“Ah. Too bad.”

“You know how fast this boy is?” Tom said, slapping me on the shoulder. Leonard shook his head, frowning. “Once I threw him a pitch and he hit a line drive past my ear—I turned around and saw the ball hit him in the ass as he slid into second.”

The others laughed, but Leonard shook his head again. “Don’t you distract me! You’re trying to distract me!”

“What do you mean?”

“The point is—I was just telling him this, boys, and you should hear it too—the point is, if Eliot had fought back like an
American,
we wouldn’t be in this fix right now.”

“What fix is that?” Tom asked. “I’m doing okay as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t be facetious,” Doc put in.

“Back at it again, I see,” Steve observed, rolling his eyes and going for the jar.