“Okay,” Tom said. “When they show up again I’ll tell Lee and Jennings we aren’t going to help them.”
“Individuals are free to do what they want,” Addison Shanks said out of the blue, as if he were stating a general principle.
“Sure,” Tom said, looking at Add curiously. “As always. We aren’t making any alliance with them, that’s all.”
“That’s fine,” Add said, and left, leading Melissa out.
“It’s not fine by me,” Rafael declared, looking around at us, but especially at John. “It’s wrong. They’re holding us down, do you understand? The rest of the world is getting along, making good progress with the help of machines, and medicines for the sick, and all of that. They blasted that away from us, and now they’re keeping it away from us. It isn’t right.” His voice was as bitter as I’d ever heard it; not really Rafael’s voice at all. “We should be fighting them.”
“Are you saying you aren’t going to go along with the rest of us?” John asked.
Rafael gave him an angry look. “You know me better than that, John. I go with the vote. Not that I could do much by myself anyway. But I think it’s wrong. We can’t hide in this valley like weasels forever, not sitting right across from Catalina like we do.” He took in a big breath and let it out. “Well, shit. I don’t guess we can vote it away anyway.” He threaded his way through the folks still sitting, and left the bathhouse.
The meeting was done. I crossed the bathhouse with Steve and Gabby. Steve was doing his best to avoid his pa. In all the milling around we saw Del gesture at us, and with a nod to Mando and Kathryn we followed them out.
Without a word we trailed up the river path, following someone else’s lanterns. Then over the bridge, to the big boulders at the bottom of the barley field. In the blustery dark my companions were no more than shapes. Across the river lanterns blinked through the trees, stitching the trails that our neighbors were taking home.
“Could you believe all that talk?” Gabby said scornfully.
“Rafael was right,” Nicolin said bitterly. “What will they think of us in San Diego, and across the country, when they hear about this?”
“It’s over now,” said Kathryn, trying to soothe him.
“Over for you,” Steve said. “It turned out the way you wanted. But for us—”
“For everyone,” Kathryn insisted. “It’s over for everyone.”
But Steve wouldn’t have it. “You’d like that to be true, but it isn’t. It won’t ever be over.”
“What do you mean?” Kathryn said. “The vote was taken.”
“And you were mighty happy with the results, weren’t you,” Steve accused her.
“I’ve had enough of this for one night,” Kathryn said. “I’m going home.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and do that,” Nicolin said angrily. Kathryn glared at him. I was glad I wasn’t Steve at that moment. Without a word she was off toward the bridge. “You don’t run this valley!” Steve shouted after her, his voice hoarse with tension. “Nor me neither! You never will!” He paced into the barley field. I could just make out Kathryn as she crossed the bridge.
“I don’t know why she was being such a bitch tonight,” Steve whined.
After a long silence, Mando said, “We should have voted yes.”
Del ha-ha’d. “We did. There weren’t enough of us.”
“I meant everybody.”
“We should have joined,” Nicolin shouted from the barley.
“So?” Gabby said—ready as always to egg Steve on. “What are you going to do about it?”
Across the river dogs yapped. I saw the moon for a wisp of time, above the scudding clouds. Behind me barely rustled, and I shivered in the cold wind. Something in the shifting shadows made me remember my miserable, desperate hike up the ravine to find Tom and the San Diegans, and the fear came on me again, rustling through me like the wind. It’s so easy to forget what fear feels like. Steve was pacing around the boulders like a wolf caught in a snare. He said,
“We could join them ourselves.”
“What?” Gab said eagerly.
“Just us. You heard what Add said at the end there. Individuals are free to do as they like. And Tom agreed. We could approach them after Tom tells them no, and tell them we’d be willing to work with them. Just us.”
“But how?” Mando asked.
“What kind of help do they want from us, hey? No one in there could say, but I know. Guides into Orange County, that’s what. We can do better at that than anyone else in Onofre.”
“I don’t know about that,” Del said.
“We can do it as well as anybody!” Steve revised, for it was true that his pa and some others had spent a good bit of time up north in years past. “So why shouldn’t we if we want to?”
Fearfully I said, “Maybe we should just go along with the vote.”
“Fuck that!” Steve cried furiously. “What’s with you, Henry? Afraid to fight the Japanese, now? Shit, you go off to San Diego and now you tell us what to do, is that it?”
“No!” I protested.
“You scared of them now, now that you’ve had your great voyage and seen them up close?”
“No.” I was shocked by Nicolin’s anger, too confused to think how to defend myself. “I want to fight,” I said weakly. “That’s what I said in the meeting.”
“The meeting doesn’t mean shit. Are you with us or not?”
“I’m with you,” I said. “I didn’t say I wasn’t!”
“Well?”
“Well… we could ask Jennings if he wants some guides, I guess. I never thought of it.”
“I thought of it,” Steve said. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“After they talk to Tom,” Gabby said, clearing things up, pushing Steve on.
“Right. After. Henry and I will do it. Right, Henry?”
“Sure,” I said, jumping at his voice’s prod. “Sure.”
“I’m for it,” Del said.
“Me too,” cried Mando. “I want to too. I’ve been in Orange County as much as any of you.”
“You’re in it too,” Steve assured him.
“And me,” Gabby said.
“And you, Henry?” Steve pressed. “You’re with us too?”
Around us nothing but shadows, windblown in the darkness. The moon slid into a cloud crease and I could see the pale blobs of my friends’ faces, like clumps of dough, watching me. We put our right hands together above the central boulder, and I could feel their calloused fingers tangle with mine.
“I’m with you,” I said.
13
The next time I saw the old man I gave him hell, because it was very possible that if he had come out on the side of the resistance the vote would have been different. And if the valley had voted to join the resistance, then Steve wouldn’t have come up with his plan to join the San Diegans secretly, and I wouldn’t have caved in and gone along with it. To avoid admitting to myself that I had caved in to Steve, I decided his plan was a good one. So in a way it was all the old man’s fault. It was too bad we had to sneak off to help the San Diegans, but we had to be part of the resistance. I remembered vividly how it felt to be staring at the metal deck of the Japanese ship, crying because I thought Tom and the others were dead, and vowing to fight the Japanese forever. And it was no thanks to them that Tom had survived, either. He just as well could have died, and so could have I. I told Tom as much as I stood berating him for his vote in the meeting. “And any time we go out there, the same thing could happen,” I concluded, shaking a finger under his nose.
“Any time we sail out on a foggy night and shoot guns at them, you mean,” he said, through a mouth jammed with honeycomb. We were out in his yard, sweltering under high filmy clouds, and he was scorching the slats of several boxlike supers from an unsuccessful hive. Hive stands and smokers and supers lay strewn about us on the weeds. “It may be that the jays ate every bee in this hive,” he mumbled. “This one scrub jay was popping down ten at a meal. I set one of Rafael’s mousetraps on top of the post he was landing on, and when he landed the trap knocked him about fifteen feet. Was he mad! He cursed me in every language known to jays.”