I would have to say it was lovely how the town composed itself to welcome us. They had set banners all along their little street and they lit lanterns they had made from old packing paper, the candles burning in them like souls. The padre made a huge prayer out in the open and the whole town went down on its knees, right there, and praised the Lord. This was the section of humanity favoured in that place, the Indians had no place no more there. Their tickets of passage were rescinded and the bailiffs of God had took back the papers for their souls. I did feel a seeping tincture of sadness for them. I did feel some strange toiling seeping sadness for them. Seven hours off buried in their pits, the redwoods towering, the silence pitted by birds and passing creatures. The solemn awfulness of it maybe. There weren’t no padre praying in exultation for them. They were the boys with the losing hand. Then niceties all done, the town rose and cheered wildly, and then it was a maelstrom of meat eating and keg broaching, and all the usual mayhem. We were dancing, we were clapping backs, we were telling old stories. Men were listening with their ears cocked, till they judged when they could let loose the laughter. Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now. I am wondering what words we said so carelessly that night, what vigorous nonsense we spoke, what drunken shouts we shouted, what stupid joy there was in that, and how John Cole was only young then and as handsome as any person that has ever lived. Young, and there would never be a change for that. The heart rising, and the soul singing. Fully alive in life and content as the house-martins under the eaves of the house.
The army had in mind for us to brave out the winter in the fort and then come spring be seeing what else could be done for to pacify the country. Although I have given the impression that them Yuroks were small and ineffectual people nevertheless listening to the townspeople did put us in suspicion that the Indians were not always so tolerable. There were stories everywhere of rapes and robberies and sudden and vicious visits on out-of-the-way premises. Unless you were a witness how could you say what was true. Anyhows in due course a herd of some hundreds of cattle arrived, driven up from southern California on an army requisition docket. That was for our sustenance. On the saint’s day of St John I get a letter from Mr Noone just as he promised. All his news. There was good water under the thickening ice. All the stores would keep fresh in those low temperatures. There was a forest of wood to burn. We washed our shirts and trews and when we went out to get them off the bushes, they were as stiff as corpses in the cold. Some poor cows froze where they were standing like they had peered into the face of old Medusa. Men lost the wages of three years hence at cards. They bet their boots and then pled for the pity of the winner. The piss froze as it left our peckers and woe betide the man with an obstruction or hesitation to their shit, because soon they had a brown icicle on their arse. The whisky continued its work of eating our livers. It was as good a life as most of us had ever knowed. Watchorn and Pearl mingled with the rest, as if the major had forgotten their offence. The Missouri men sang their Missouri songs, rough Kansas men sang theirs, and those queer New England types sang no doubt the ancient songs of England, who could tell.
Then rain began to fall in an extravagant tantrum. High up in mountain country though we were, every little river became a huge muscled snake, and the water wanted to find out everything, the meaning of our sad roofs for instance, the meaning of our bunk beds beginning to take the character of little barks, the sure calculation that if it fell day and night no human man was going to get his uniform dry. We was wet to the ribs.
Crazy California weather, how come anyone ever come out here? said John Cole, with the voice of one who has not exactly chosen this destination.
We was lying out on the aforesaid bunks. Now the spring was supposed to be afoot was just as well as no one had dollars left to lose at cards, except the damn sergeant, who had won most of it. There were sharks in other segments of our unit too, Patterson and Wilks, both evil good card-players. Now they were likely struggling to keep their winnings dry. Those Yankee dollars were inclined to rust. The high snow melted and down that came too.
Next morning John Cole was shaking my arm to wake me. You need to do something other than lie there, he says. Sure enough the water was up over his bunk and just about to engulf mine. There was a smell of rats’ urine if you ever smelt that. Now that I think of it, we saw dozens of the critters swimming for their lives. We sloshed out onto the parade ground so called. Men were coming out of the sheds trying to hitch their braces. Well we had no high ground to go to. How come we got a flood here, we were saying? The way some genius built this place. True enough, now that we had the rain and meltwater to show us, the camp was kinda built in a odd way. If you can imagine a great scallop shape there, and the hills behind, and what was formerly the helpful little stream going past the boundary wall. Now blotted out. The night pickets were standing on the wall looking very doubtful. Some brave bugler bugled reveille but damn it we were all reveilled by then. The major was actually swimming up the way. Now the three hundred were looking to get up on the roofs, seemed the only way, and dozens of others shimmied up into the shade trees, if they were dizzy from heights they didn’t show it, up they went like monkeys in uniform. Myself and John Cole pushed over through the lead-heavy water and clumb a tree likewise.
We weren’t even all up there when something queer was stirring in the distance. No one had ever seen the like. It looked like someone had put the ocean on top of the forest, just thrun it down there, and now the ocean was doing the inevitable in the scientific way and was hammering and surging down towards us. We felt like three hundred very small and foolish creatures when we saw that, standing as we were on a bunch of low roofs. Major almost screams out his orders, and then the sergeants were echoing him, and then the men were trying to respond. But what had the major said? What had the sergeants called out? Where to go? We were already the citizens of a shallow sea. That coming wave looked like twenty feet of death. The flood came so quickly you couldn’t have laid a bet on it. You couldn’t a got the book open quick enough to mark the wager. Then the wild vicious thing reached our camp and spread itself over it carrying half of the forest with it. Trees and branches and bushes and bears and deer and God knows, birds and alligators, though I never saw alligators up there to be truthful. Wolves and mountain cats and snakes. Everything was gone then with the flood, that was able to be unmoored and move. Those fellas on the roofs had the shittiest cards in the deal, it was like nature’s hand just swept them off the table. I could feel our shade tree bending with the force and it was twelve feet round at the base. Man, it bent. Then unbent. Now we were nearly arrows being fired. Hold on there, John Cole! Hold on, Thomas! So we held, we gripped, we fastened ourselves, the great old tree whanged in the boiling waters, I doubt I will ever hear such a sound again, it was well nigh musical.
Dozens of troopers musta drowned. Maybe Watchorn and Pearl might have wished to be among them, but they survived. Me and John Cole. Thank God, John Cole. The major, and two hundred others. It was the men in the trees was mostly saved. Those roofs too low. We found bodies for the next weeks, lower down, as the flood waters fell. The townspeople came down and helped us with the burying. They hadn’t been so crazy as to build their town in a flood path anyhow. Guess we knew then what had scalloped out that ground. Goddamn engineers.