The Wild Shore Read online

  Just after sunset my question was answered. Clouds streamed in like broken waves, and the sky was blue-gray and starless when it got dark. I took my coat off its hook and got a thick sweater from our clothes bag, chattering with Pa. Late that night Tom rapped at the door. I was off to San Diego.

  PART TWO

  San Diego

  6

  Out by the big eucalyptus Jennings and Lee stood waiting. “Let’s be off,” Lee said roughly.

  We went to the freeway and headed south. Soon we passed the steep bank at the back of Concrete Bay, and were out of the valley and onto the Pendleton shore. The freeway was in pretty good shape; though the surface was cracked a bit, it was clear of trees and shrubs, except for an occasional line of them filling a big crack like a fence. But most of the way the road was a light slash through dark, overhanging forest. The level country it crossed was a narrow strip between steep hills and the sea cliff, cut often by deep ravines. Usually the freeway spanned these ravines, but twice it fell into them, and we were forced to descend their sides and cross the gurgling black creeks at their bottoms, on big blocks of concrete. Lee led the way over these breaks without a word. He was anxious to be in San Diego, it seemed.

  A short distance beyond the second break in the freeway Lee stopped. I looked past him and saw a cluster of ruined buildings in the trees. Lee raised his hands to his mouth and made a passable imitation of a gull cry three times in a row, then three again, and from the buildings a shrill whistle replied. We approached the largest of the buildings, and were met halfway there by a group of men who greeted us loudly. They led us into the building, where a small fire gave off little light and lots of smoke. The men from San Diego—seven of them—surveyed Tom and me.

  “You sure took a piece of time to get two specimens no better than these,” a short man with a large belly said. He pulled on his beard and barked a laugh, but his little reddened eyes didn’t look amused.

  “Ain’t San Onofre serious about talking to the Mayor?” the man next to him said. It was the first time I had ever heard San put in front of Onofre.

  “Now enough of that,” Jennings said. “This here is Tom Barnard, one of the oldest living Americans—”

  “Granted,” said the short man.

  “And one of Onofre’s leaders. And this boy here is his most able assistant.”

  Tom didn’t even flinch during all this; he stared calmly at the short man, head tilted to the side like he was contemplating a new sort of bug. Lee hadn’t stopped to listen. He was gathering rope under one arm, and he only paused to look up and say, “Get that fire out and get on the cars. I want to be in San Diego by sunup.”

  The men got their gear together and doused the fire, and we left the building and the freeway, striking out into the forest behind Lee, in the direction of the ocean. We had only walked twenty or thirty paces when Lee stopped and lit a lantern.

  In the gleam of light I saw their train: a platform on metal wheels, with a long bar set on a block in the middle of it. The men started throwing their stuff on the train, and behind the first I saw a second one. Approaching it I stepped over the rails. They were just like the rails that crossed our valley—bumpy and corroded, with spongy beams set every few feet under them. Tom and I stood watching as sledgehammers and axes, bundles of rope and bags of clanking metal stakes were stowed on the two platforms.

  Quickly everything was aboard, and we climbed on the front train behind Lee and Jennings. Two of the men stood at the ends of the crossbar; one pulled on the high end, assisted by Lee, and with a crunch we were rolling over the rusty rails. When that end of the crossbar was low, the short man with the belly hauled down with all his weight on the other end. The two men traded pulls, and away we went, followed by the other car.

  We rolled out of the copse of trees that had hidden the trains, onto a brush-covered plain. Here the hills lifted a few miles inland, rather than directly from the coast, and what trees there were grew mostly in the ravines. The rails ran just to the sea side of the freeway, and I could see the ocean from time to time when we topped a rise, silvered gray under low clouds. We passed a headland that had taken Nicolin and me half a day to walk to; it was as far south as I had ever been. From there on I was in new territory.

  The car’s wheels ground over the tracks with a sound like a rasp cutting metal, and we picked up speed until we were going faster than a man could run. Rolling down a slope we moved even faster, and a cold wind struck me; the rotten ties flashed under the car so fast I couldn’t make out any individual ties! Tom’s beard was blowing back over his shoulders like a flag, and he grinned at me. “The only way to travel, eh?” I nodded vigorously, too excited to speak. It felt like we were flying, no matter the crunch and rattle from below. “How f-fast are we going?” I stammered out.

  Tom looked over the side, put his hand up to the wind. “About thirty miles an hour,” he said. “Maybe thirty-five. It’s been a good long while since I’ve gone this fast, I’ll tell you.”

  “Thirty miles an hour!” I cried. “Yeee-ow!”

  The men laughed at me, but I didn’t care. So far as I was concerned, they were the fools; we were going thirty miles an hour, and they sat there trying to avoid the wind!

  “Want to pull?” Jennings said from the back end of the crossbar. At that the men laughed again.

  “Do I!” I said. Jennings stepped aside and I took the T at the end of the pole on its upswing. When I pulled down on it I could feel the car surge forward, all out of proportion to the force I had exerted, and I whooped again. I pulled hard, and saw the white grin of the man pulling across from me. He pulled just as hard, and we made that car fly down Pendleton like we were in a dream. All of a sudden I knew what it had been like to live in the old time, I knew that power they had wielded. All Tom’s stories and all his books had told me of it, but now I felt it in my muscles and my skin, I could see it flying all by me, and it was exhilarating. We pumped that car down those tracks. Behind us the men on the following car hooted and hollered: “Hey up there! Who you got on the bar?” “We know it ain’t Jennings doing that!” The men on both cars laughed at that. “It is Jennings,” one of them said. “I didn’t know you missed your wife that much!” “What are you worried she’s up to?” “Better not waste all your pumping up here!” “Throw us a tow rope if you feel that good!”

  “Slow it down some,” Lee said after a while. “We got a ways to go, don’t want to tire out those poor men back there.”

  So we slowed a bit. Still, when one of the men took my place, I was sweating from the effort, and standing there I chilled fast. I sat down and huddled in my coat. The land got hillier. On the up slopes we all had to get up and help pump the bar; on the downs we rolled so fast I wouldn’t have stood up for silver.

  We passed a bit of white cloth, hanging from a pole. Lee stood and pulled the brake lever, and we came to a halt blasting red sparks over the trackbed, with a screech that made me shudder, it hurt my ears so.

  “Now comes the complicated part,” Jennings said, and jumped off the car. In the sudden silence I could hear running water ahead of us. Tom and I got off the train and followed the rest of the men down the tracks. There in a dip lay a considerable stream, about half the width of our valley’s river. Black posts stuck out of the surface in a double line, all the way across. Beams and planks connected some of the posts, and extended to the banks on either side, but there were big gaps as well, and all in all it was a wreck. Each post knocked up a little circle of foam from the river, showing it was a fast stream.

  “That’s our bridge foundation,” Jennings said to Tom and me, while Lee directed the men on the bank. “The pilings are in pretty good shape. We leveled them, and brought up some beams that sit over the pilings sideways, like lintels. Then we set rail over the beams at the right gauge, and roll the cars over, and haul all the beams and rail to the other bank after us. It’s a lot of work, but with the material hidden no one can tell we’re crossing this bridge.”

 
; “Very ingenious,” Tom said.

  Three or four more lanterns had been lit, and their light was directed at the pilings by metal reflectors. The men hustled about in the dark, cursing at manzanita and brambleberry, and pulling the beams out of the brush down to the bank. They hooked these beams onto a thick length of rope that they had fished out of the shallows. This rope extended across the river under the water, was threaded through a large pulley, and came back under the stream to our side. The ten crossbeams, or ties, were hauled out into the river upstream from the pilings, and then the rope was slackened till the ties floated between the pilings. Men balancing on the pilings—they got out to them on narrow planks—would then fish the ties up and secure them atop the pilings.

  A chorus of cursing came from the men on the bank. The rope was stuck, and wouldn’t move through the pulley. They argued over what to do, but Lee cut it short:

  “Someone’s going to have to swim over and clear that pulley. We can’t mess with carrying the beams out; they’re too heavy to carry.”

  The men were not cheered by this pronouncement. One of them, a man from the second car, kind of snickered and yanked a thumb in my direction. “Why not let young power-pull do it?”

  There were snorts of amusement from the short fat guy, and Tom began to protest in my behalf, but I interrupted him. “Sure I’ll do it,” I said. “I’m probably the best swimmer here, anyway.”

  “He’s right about that,” Tom admitted. “He and his friends go out swimming in surf higher than your head.”

  “Good man,” Jennings said heartily. “You see, Henry, we’ve swum this river many times, but it’s not easy. You’re best off pulling yourself over with the rope; that way you won’t be carried downstream. Just get over there and clear that pulley, and we’ll have this bridge up in no time.”

  So I stripped and plunged into the river. Holding on to the rope meant I couldn’t really swim, and the rope was so slick that I had to be very careful pulling myself hand over hand. And the swift current pulled my feet downstream so that kicking wasn’t very effective either. It took a lot longer than I would have guessed to cross, but eventually my knees rammed into soft mud, and I walked out onto the other bank. When I stood on firm mud I shouted back to the men that the swim had been no trouble, and followed the rope to the pulley.

  A mass of water weed had grown on the rope, and when I pulled it free the rope ran cleanly and the system was working again. I was pleased with that, and the men on the other bank called out their congratulations. But watching their silhouetted forms walk delicately over bending planks to the pilings, I realized it would be a while before they were finished. Meanwhile I was standing wet and cold, with the river between me and a stitch of clothing. Jennings had probably known I would have to swim back across, but he kindly hadn’t made that clear. There was nothing for it but to get back in the water and pull to the other side. I cursed Jennings briefly, yelled my intentions to the men, squished through the mud until the water was up to my chest, and started pulling again.

  What I hadn’t counted on were the ten ties, now pulled out into the river and floating downstream from the rope, exactly in my way. Around each beam I had to kick myself upstream, or dive under, all the while keeping a hold on the wet rope. Still, I would have been okay; but out of the gloom upstream rolled a full torrey pine tree, floating low in the water. It barged right over me, and then got hung up in the rope, and all of the sudden I was thrust well under the surface, caught in a thicket of twisted branches and poking needles. I was barely able to hold on to the rope, and I hadn’t had time to get a good breath; chill water shoved at my mouth and nose. The tree wouldn’t let me up. The rope bowed under the new pressure. Desperately I shoved my face up between two branches and got a quick mouthful of air. I shifted hands on the rope and seized the trunk of the tree in my left hand, pulled it over and the rope under. The tree flipped over; it was still caught on the rope, but now I could tread water beside it, still holding the rope. “Chinga!” I gasped. “Shit! Pinché buey!”

  “Hey!” they were calling from the bank. “Anything wrong out there?” “Henry!” Tom was yelling.

  “Nothing!” I yelled back. “I’m okay!” But now they were hauling the rope back in, pulling me across. That was fine by me. I realized why none of the men had been anxious to swim across. I took a couple hand-over-hand grabs, but they were pulling faster and soon I squished into mud. Two of the men waded knee deep to pull me out. On shore they wrapped me in a wool blanket, and after I had dried off with it they gave me another to sit in. I huddled over the lanterns and told them it had been no problem. They didn’t have much to say to that, and Tom gave me his suspicious eye.

  While I warmed up they got the bridge assembled. The ties were placed on the pilings, the rails were slid over the ties, and spikes were driven through gaps in the rail flange, into already existing holes in the ties. The rails were closer together than the two rows of pilings, but not by much. Black figures crawled back and forth over the structure, silhouetted by the lantern light in a variety of precarious positions; once I saw a standing figure drop a plank he had been lowering onto an isolated beam, and fall to his hands and knees to avoid falling in. The plank swirled away. Shouts from Lee punctuated the sounds of hammering.

  “The first time they did this it must have been a lot of trouble,” Tom said to me, crouched by my side with his hands around the lantern glass. “I guess it must hold those cars, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be the first to take one across.”

  “They look like they know what they’re doing,” I said.

  “Yeah. Tough work in the dark. Too bad they can’t just build a bridge and leave it there.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I can’t believe the…” I didn’t know what to call them. “That they’d actually bomb a little bridge like this one.”

  “I know.” In the dim glow Tom’s expression was somber. “But I don’t think these folks are lying, or going to all this trouble for nothing. I guess whoever’s up there is keeping the existing communities separated, like Jennings said. But I wasn’t aware of it. It’s a bad sign.”

  Jennings walked nonchalantly along one rail and jumped onto the bank to approach us. “Just about done,” he announced. “You men should walk across now. We take the cars over as empty as we can get them, although it’s just a precaution, you understand.”

  “That we do,” said Tom. He helped me to my feet, and I put on my clothes. I wrapped the blankets around my shoulders, for I was still cold. We crossed the downstream rail very carefully. The ties felt solid when I walked on them, but they were a touch warped, and the rail didn’t lay directly on a few of them. I pointed this out to Jennings, who seemed very much at ease on the rail.

  “It’s true. We can’t keep those ties perfectly flat. It makes for a little yaw when you cross, but nothing worse than that. At least not so far. We’ll see if Lee has to go for a swim like you did when he brings the first car over. I hope not—it’s still a fair walk to San Diego.”

  On the south bank we gathered by the lanterns and the men holding them directed their light at the first car. Lee and another man cranked it slowly across. The rails squeaked and squealed as the car went over a tie; the rest of the time they were ominously silent. The car was an odd sight in the middle of the stream, hanging over both sides of the rails, a big black mass on two spindly strips, like a spider walking across its web strands. When they pumped it up the other bank the men said “All right,” and “That was a good one.”

  They walked the equipment over, and pumped the second car across, and then pulled up the spikes and hauled the rails to the south side. Lee was a terror for keeping them arranged in order, so that it would be easy to set up the next time they came north. “Very ingenious,” said Tom. “Very clever, very dangerous, very well done.” “Looked simple enough to me,” I replied. Soon the rope was rigged through a pulley on the other shore, and the platforms of the two cars were stacked with equipment again. We got o
n the front one with the other men, and were off rolling. “The next one’s a lot easier,” Jennings told us as we pumped up the slope and away.

  I volunteered to pump, because I was still cold. This time I pulled at the front end, and watched the hills course away from us with the wind at my back. Once again I felt exuberant at the speed of our grinding flight over the land, and I laughed aloud.

  “This kid swims and pumps like a good resistance man,” Jennings said. I didn’t know what he meant, but the other men on the car agreed with him, those who bothered to speak, anyway.

  But when I warmed up I was tired. I was quickly relieved by the short man with the belly, who gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder and sent me to the rear of the platform. I sat down under my blanket, and after a while I drowsed off, still half aware of the train, the wind, the men’s low voices.

  I woke when the car stopped. “We at the next river?”

  “No,” Tom said quietly. “Look there.” He pointed out to sea.

  A completely hidden moon was making the clouds glow a little, and under them the ocean’s surface was a patchy gray. I saw immediately what Tom was pointing at: a dim red light in the middle of a black lump. A ship. A big ship—a huge ship, so big that for a second I thought it was just offshore, when actually it was halfway between the cliffs and the cloud-fuzzed horizon. It was so difficult to reconcile its distance from us and its immense size that I felt I could be dreaming.

  “Kill the lanterns,” Lee said.

  The lanterns were put out. No one spoke. The giant ship ghosted north and its movement was as wrong as its size and position. It was fast, very fast, and soon it slipped below a hill we had come over, and out of sight.

  “They don’t come so close to the land in inhabited areas,” Jennings told us in a voice filled with bravado. “That was a rare sighting.”