And then, right before my eyes, the three men got back in the boat. Add untied the line and threw it to them, pushed off, and watched as they drifted downstream. They were out of my sight immediately, but I heard the motor start again. And that was it. I hadn’t learned a thing I didn’t know before.
Add watched them for only a moment or two, and then hiked right past me. I lay without moving for a bit, got up and headed after him. I actually pounded some of the trees I passed with my clenched fist. And Add was nowhere to be seen. I slowed down, so angry and frustrated that I didn’t know if I wanted to hunt him down. What was the point? But the alternative—hiking back to Onofre alone—was somehow even worse. I started ranging forward in big diagonals, dancing between the trees again in my silent run.
I never even saw him until he had slammed into me with his shoulder and knocked me to the ground. He pulled a knife from his belt and came after me, nearly falling on me. I rolled and kicked the forearm above the knife, twisted and kicked his knee, scrambled to my feet, dodged and struck my clasped hands into his neck, as fast as I could move. He crashed into a tree, lay stunned against it; I quick snatched the bag from his left hand, leaping back to avoid a swing of the knife. I held the heavy little bag up like a club and retreated rapidly.
“Stay right there or I’ll run and you’ll never see this bag again,” I rattled off. Thinking just ahead of my words, I said “I’m faster than you, and you won’t catch me. Nobody catches me in the woods.” And I laughed triumphantly at the look on his face, because it was true and he knew it. Nobody’s quicker than I am, and beating Add and his knife around in the trees, faster than I could think, faster than I could plan my moves, made me feel it. Add knew it too. Finally, finally, I had Addison Shanks where I wanted him.
With his free hand he rubbed his neck, glaring at me with the same hateful expression I had seen in the eyes of that snared weasel. “What do you want?” he said.
“I don’t want much. I don’t want this here bag, though it feels like quite a bit of silver, and maybe stuff more important than that, eh?” I might not have guessed the contents right, but one thing was sure—he wanted the bag. He looked at it, shifted forward, and I took three steps back and to the right, along an opening in the trees. “I reckon Tom and John and Rafael and the others would be mighty interested to see this bag, and hear what I have to tell about it.”
“What do you want?” he grated.
I stared back into his hating gaze, unafraid of him. “I don’t like how you’ve been using me,” I said. The knife in his hand jerked, and I thought, don’t tell him how much you know. “I want to see one of those Japanese landings in Orange County. I know they’re doing it, and I know that you’re in on them. I want to know when and where the next one lands.”
He looked puzzled, and let the knife drop a hand’s breadth. Then he grinned, his eyes still hating me, and I flinched. “You’re with the other kids, aren’t you. Young Nicolin and Mendez and the rest.”
“Just me.”
“Been spying on me, have you? And John Nicolin doesn’t know about it, I bet. No.”
I raised the bag. “Tell me when and where, Add, or I’m back to the valley with this, and you’ll never be able to set foot there again.”
“The hell I won’t.”
“Want to try it?”
A snarl curled his lips. I stood my ground. I watched him think it over. Then he grinned again, in a way I didn’t understand. At the time I thought he was like that weasel, giving one last fierce grin of rage as it was killed.
“They’re landing at Dana Point, this Friday night. Midnight.”
I threw the bag at him and ran.
At first I ran like a hunted deer, leaping big falls of wood and crashing through smaller ones in my new luxury of sound, scared that I might have thrown Add a gun, or that he would turn out to be a knife thrower, and put that thick blade in my back. But after crossing most of San Mateo Valley I knew I was safe, and I ran for joy. Triumphantly I danced between trees, leaped over bushes where I could have run around them, tore small branches out of my path. I ran up to the freeway, and sprinted down it at full speed. I don’t think I’ve ever run faster in my life, or enjoyed it more. “Friday night!” I crowed at the sky, and flew down that road like a car, the knot in my stomach gone at last.
18
But the knot didn’t stay away for long. I ran into the valley straight to the Nicolins’, only to be told by Mrs. N. that Steve was out somewhere with Kathryn. I thanked her and left, uneasy already. Were they arguing again? Making up? Was Kathryn talking him out of all this? (That didn’t seem likely.) I checked a few of our regular hangouts, none too anxious to find Kathryn, but compelled by a desire to see Steve immediately. No sign of them anywhere. No way of guessing where they were or what they were doing. Climbing back down Swing Canyon I realized I didn’t understand the two of them anymore, if I ever had. Where do you go after a fight like the one I had overheard? The private lives of other couples—there’s few things more private than that. Nobody but the two know what’s going on between them, even if they talk about it with others. And if they don’t then it’s a complete mystery, hidden from the world.
So that was Wednesday evening. I went back to the Nicolins’ twice that night, but no one showed up. And the longer I waited to tell Steve, the more uneasy I got about it. What would Kathryn say when she learned my part in this? She would think I had lied to her, betrayed her trust. On the other hand, if I didn’t tell Steve about the landing, and let it pass—and if he ever found out what I had done—well, that didn’t bear thinking about. I’d lose my best friend at that very moment.
After my second visit to the Nicolins’ I went home and went to bed. It had been such a day I thought I would have trouble falling asleep, but a few minutes after I lay down I was out. A couple of hours later I woke up, though, and for the rest of the night I tossed and turned, listened to the wind, considered what I should do.
Just after dawn I woke up with the knot in my stomach, and trying to get back to sleep only made it worse. I faintly remembered a dream that was so awful I made no attempt to recall it more clearly—something about being chased—but a few moments later I wasn’t even sure of that. Stepping outside for my morning pee I discovered a Santa Ana wind—the desert wind that pours over from the hills to the east and pushes all the clouds out to sea, and heats up the land, and makes everything dry for a time. Santa Anas strike three or four times a year, and change our weather completely. This one was picking up even as I watched, twisting the trees all backward to their natural onshore bent. Soon pine branches would be snapping off and gliding seaward.
The empty water bucket gave me a shock when I picked it up. Static electricity, Tom called it, but try as he would he couldn’t make me understand it. Something about millions of tiny fires rushing around (of course you remember how well he explained fire to me)… and all the wires strung between towers like the Shankses’ place had carried this electricity around, and it had powered all the automatic machines of the old time. All that power from little snaps like the one I had felt.