“Yeah, Add, what did you come for, anyway?” Marvin said.
“Wait a minute.” It was my pa, scrambling to his feet. “Ain’t a crime to come here without an opinion one way or other. That’s why we talk.”
Addison gave Pa a polite nod. That was just like Pa; the only time he spoke was to defend silence.
Doc and Rafael ignored Pa and went at it again, getting heated. There were arguments breaking out all over, so they could say angry things without embarrassing the other. “You’re always wanting to play with those guns of yours,” Doc said scornfully. Eyes flashing under his thick black brows, Rafael came back: “When you’re the only medical care in the valley, we ain’t doing so well you must admit.” No one who heard them liked such talk, and I waved a hand between them and said, “Let’s not get personal, eh?”
“Oh we’re just talking about our lives is all,” Rafe snapped sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want to get personal about it. But I tell you, the doctor here is going to kiss snake’s butt if he thinks I mess with guns just for the fun of it.”
“But you guys are friends—”
“Hey!” Tom cried, sounding weary. “We haven’t heard from everyone yet.”
“What about Henry?” Kathryn said. “He went to San Diego too, so he’s seen them. What do you think we should do?” She gave me a look that was asking for something, but I couldn’t tell what it was, so I said what I was thinking and hoped it would do.
“We should join the San Diegans,” I said. “If we feel like they’re trying to make us part of San Diego, we can destroy the tracks and be rid of them. If we don’t, we’ll be part of the country again, and we’ll learn a lot more about what’s going on inland.”
“I learn all I want to know at the swap meet,” Doc said. “And wrecking the tracks isn’t going to stop them coming in boats. If there’s a thousand of them, as they say, and we number, what, sixty?—and most of them kids?—then they can pretty much do what they want with this valley.”
“They can whether we agree or not,” Cov said. “And if we go along with them now, maybe we can get what we want out of it.”
John Nicolin looked especially disgusted at that sentiment, but before he could speak I said, “Doc, I don’t understand you. At the swap meets you’re always grousing for a chance to get back at them for bombing us. Now here we got the chance, and you—”
“We don’t got the chance,” Doc insisted. “Not a thing’s changed—”
“Enough!” Tom said. “We’ve heard all that before. Carmen, it’s your turn.”
In her preaching voice Carmen said, “Nat and I have talked a lot about this one, and we don’t agree, but my thoughts are clear on the matter. This fight the San Diegans want us to join is useless. Killing visitors from Catalina doesn’t do a thing to make us free. I’m not against fighting if it would do some good, but this is just murder. Murder is never the means to any good end, so I’m against joining them.” She nodded emphatically and looked to the old man. “Tom? You haven’t told us your opinion yet.”
“The hell he hasn’t,” I said, annoyed at Carmen for sounding so preacherly and commonsensical, when it was just her opinion. But she gave me a look and I shut up.
Tom roused himself from his fireside torpor. “What I don’t like about this Danforth is that he tried to make us join him whether we want to or not.”
“How?” Rafael challenged.
“He said, we’re either with them or against them. I take that as a threat.”
“But what could they do to us if we didn’t join?” Rafe said. “Bring an army up here and point guns at us?”
“I don’t know. They do have a lot of guns. And the men to point them.”
Rafael snorted. “So you’re against helping them.”
“I guess so,” Tom said slowly, as if uncertain himself what he thought. “I guess I’d like to have the choice of working with them or not, depending on what they had in mind. Case by case, so to speak. So that we’re not just a distant section of San Diego, doing what they tell us to.”
“The point is, they can’t make us do what they say,” Recovery said. “It’s just an alliance, an agreement on common goals.”
“You hope,” said John Nicolin.
Cov started to argue with John, and Rafael was still pressing Tom, so the discussion broke up again, and pretty soon every adult in the room was jawing it, and most of the kids too. “Do you want them in our river?” “Who, the Japs or the San Diegans?” “You’ll risk your life for nothing.” “I’m damned if I want those cruisers setting the border on my whole life.” On it went, arguments busting in on neighboring arguments as the participants heard something they liked or disliked. Fingers were waved under noses, curses flew even around Carmen, Kathryn had Steve by the front of the shirt as she made a point… It sounded like we were evenly split, too, so that neither side could win on the volume of their voices. But I could see that we joiners were in trouble. The old man, John Nicolin, Doc Costa, and Carmen Eggloff—all four of them were against, and that was the story right there. Rafael and Recovery and old Mendez were important in the valley, and they had a strong voice in things, but they didn’t wield the same sort of influence that the others did. John and Doc circulated around the room arguing and conferring on the sly with Pa and Manuel, Kathryn and Mrs. Mariani; and I knew which way things were shifting for the vote.
At the height of the arguing Odd Roger stood and waved his arms with an absurd gleam of comprehension in his eye. He squawked loudly, and Kathryn scowled. “He’s lucky he wasn’t born in this valley,” she muttered; “he’d never have made it to Name Day.” A lot of people were like that, upset that Tom had brought Roger at all. But suddenly Roger broke into English, in a shrill reedy voice:
“Kill every scavenger on the land, kill them! Scavenger poisons the water, breaks the snares, eats the dead. Unless the corruption be cut from the body the body dies! I say kill them all, kill them all, kill them all!”
“All right, Roger,” Tom said, taking his arm and leading him to his corner. When he returned to the hearth Tom shouted the arguments down, vexed at last. “Shut up! Nobody’s saying anything new. I propose we have the vote. Any objections?”
There were plenty of those, but after a lot of bickering over the wording of the proposition we were ready.
“All those in favor of joining San Diego and the American resistance to fight the Japanese, raise their hands.”
Rafael, the Simpsons, the Mendezes, Marvin and Jo Hamish, Steve, Mando, Nat Eggloff, Pa and me: we raised our hands and helped Gabby’s little brothers and sisters to raise theirs. Sixteen of us.
“Now all those against?”
Tom, Doc Costa, Carmen; the Marianis, the Shankses, the Reyes; and John Nicolin went down the line of his family, pulling up the arms of Teddy and Emilia, Virginia and Joe, Carol and Judith, and even Marie, as if she were one of the kids, which in mental power she was. Little Joe stood at attention, hand high, black hair falling over his face, belly and tiny pecker sticking out under a snot-smeared shirt. Mrs. N. sighed to see that shirt. “Oh, man,” Rafael complained; but that was the rule. Everyone voted. So there were twenty-three against. But among the adults it was a lot closer, and in the strained silence after Carmen finished counting there were some hard stares exchanged. It was like nothing I had ever seen in the valley. A coming fight can feel good, say at the swap meet when facing off with a scavenger gang; but in the valley, with no one there but friends and neighbors, it felt bad. Everyone was affected the same way, I think; and no one thought of a way to patch this one up.