Jennings said, “Talk to you later, friend.”
I carried the bass up to the cleaning tables and said hello to the girls. Walking back to the boat I passed Steve, then heard John say, “You got no call to be pressing on this, Mister. We don’t want any part of it.”
“All well and good,” Jennings said, “but we need to use the tracks, and they run right across your valley.”
“There are tracks back in the hills. Use those.”
“Mayor doesn’t want that.”
And then I was out of earshot. It was tough hearing their voices with the gulls stooping us and screeching over the offal. I picked up a bonita and another bass and hurried back. Steve was just past them.
“Barnard wouldn’t talk to me,” Jennings said. “Is that because he wants us to work together?”
“Tom voted against helping you along with the majority of the people here, so that’s that.”
Over at the cleaning tables Mrs. Nicolin said, “Why is that man arguing with John?”
“He wants us to let them use the train tracks in the valley, and all that.”
“But they’re ruined, especially at the river.”
“Yeah. Say, is the old man sick?”
“So I hear. You should go up and see.”
“Is he bad?”
“I don’t know. But when the old get sick…”
Steve nudged me from behind, and I turned to walk back.
“The Mayor ain’t going to like this,” Jennings was saying. “No one down our way is. Americans got to stick together in these times, don’t you understand that? Henry! Did you know your trip to San Diego has gone to naught?”
“Um—”
“You know what’s going on here?”
John waved a hand at me angrily. “You kids clear out,” he ordered.
Steve heard that over the crying gulls, and he led me up the cliff path. From the top we looked back at the river flat; Jennings was still talking. John stood there with his arms across his chest. Pretty soon he was going to grab Jennings and throw him in the river.
“That guy is a fool,” Steve said.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The old man is sick, did you know that?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound interested.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t reply.
“I’m going to go see how he’s doing.” He had been coughing a lot when he told his story. And even back at the meeting he had seemed listless and hacky. All I remembered about my mother’s death was that she had coughed a lot.
“Not yet,” Steve said. “When that guy gives up on Pa we can catch him alone and tell him our plan.”
“Jennings,” I said sharply. “His name is Jennings. You’d better know that when you talk to him.”
Steve looked me up and down. “I knew it.”
I walked down the path a ways, angry. Down by the tables John walked away from the San Diego men, brushing by one of them with his shoulder. He turned to say something, and then the San Diegans were left to look at each other. Jennings spoke and they started up the cliff trail. “Let’s get out of sight,” Steve said.
We hid in the trees south of Nicolins’ yard. Soon Jennings and his two men appeared over the cliff edge and started our way. “Okay, let’s go,” I said. Steve shook his head. “We’ll follow them,” he said.
“They might not like that.”
“We have to talk to them where no one will see us.”
“Okay, but don’t surprise them.”
When they were in the trees to the south we took off in pursuit, stopping every few trees to peer ahead, like bandits in a story.
“There they are,” Steve said, flushed with excitement. Their dark coats flashed through the trees ahead of us, and I could hear snatches of Jennings’ voice, carrying on as usual.
Steve nodded. “In these woods is as good a place as any.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, let’s stop them.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m not holding you back.”
Once again he gave me the eye. He stepped out from behind a tree. “Hey, stop! Stop up there!”
Suddenly the forest was silent, and the San Diegans were nowhere to be seen.
“Mr. Jennings!” I called. “It’s me, Henry! We need to talk to you.”
Jennings stepped out from behind a eucalyptus, putting a pistol back in a coat pocket. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he said irritably. “You shouldn’t be surprising people in the woods.”
“Sorry,” I said, giving Steve a look. He was flushed red.
“What do you want?” Jennings said impatiently. His two men appeared behind him.
“We want to talk with you,” Steve said.
“I heard that. So speak up; what do you want?”
After a pause Steve said, “We want to join the resistance. Not everyone in the valley is against helping you. In fact, it was a damn close vote. If some of us were to help you, the rest of the valley might come along, eventually.”
One of Jennings’ men snickered, but Jennings silenced him with a gesture. “That’s a good thought, friend, but what we really need is access through your valley to the north, and I don’t think you can give us that.”
“No, we can’t. But we can guide you when you’re up in Orange, and that’s more important. If that goes right, like I said, the rest of the valley will probably join in later.”
I stared at Steve in dismay, but Jennings wasn’t looking at me.
“We know scavengers who are on our side,” Steve went on. “We can find out from them when the Japanese will be landing, and where.”
“Who can tell you that?” Jennings asked skeptically.
“People we know,” Steve replied. Seeing the doubtful look on Jennings’ face he said, “There are scavengers up there who know about the scavengers dealing with the Japanese, and they don’t like it. There’s not much they can do about it, but they can tell us, and then we’ll do something about it, right? We’ve been up there a lot, we know the lay of the land and everything.”
Jennings said, “We could use information like that.”
“Well, we can do it.”
“Good. That’s good.” Slowly he said, “We might make arrangements for getting information from you now and then.”
“We want to do more than that,” Steve said flatly. “We can guide you up to whatever spot the Japanese are landing at, no matter where it is. There aren’t any of you know the ruins like we do. We’ve been up there at night a whole bunch of times. If you’re going up there on a raid, you’ll need to have someone who knows the land, to get you there and back fast.”
Jennings’ face wasn’t much at concealing his thoughts, and now he looked interested.
“We want to go up there with you and fight them,” Steve said more vehemently. “We’re like the Mayor—we want the Japanese too scared to come ashore ever again. You provide the men and guns, and four or five of us will guide you up there and fight with you. And we’ll tell you when the landings are going to happen.”
“That’s quite a proposal.” Jennings drawled, looking at me.
“We’re young, but that doesn’t matter,” Steve insisted. “We can fight—we’d ambush them good.”
“That’s what we do,” Jennings said harshly. “We ambush and kill them. We’re talking about killing men.”
“I know that.” Steve looked offended. “Those Japanese are invaders. They’re taking advantage of our weakness. Killing them is defending the country.”
“True enough,” Jennings agreed. “Still… that man down there wouldn’t appreciate us dealing with you behind his back, would he. I don’t know if we should do that.”
“He’ll never hear of it. Never know of it. There’s just a few of us, and none of us will say a word. We go up into the ruins at night a lot—they’ll think we’re doing that again when we go with you. Besides, if things go well, they’ll have to join us.”