“Holy Christ, it’s that wheelchair I tossed.” Gina didn’t know whether to jump right in, in some goofy heroic attempt to help, or back away in shame at the calamity she had set in motion: Joey was going to be slushed away to drown.
Alhambra’s hand touched Gina’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine long as she doesn’t go past the rocks. Water boils around in there but there’s no big current, that’s more to the center. See the logs out there?”
“That’s not a log-”
One of the logs flipped upright at Joey’s side, eye-blink fast he grabbed for the chair, hissing.
“Crap. That’s the guy.”
“Too right.” Alhambra’s full lips curled up. “This is gonna be good.”
“Uh, Alhambra? Karen? Those two people can drown in there. What happened to Miss Sunshine No Sorrow?”
Alhambra stepped to the edge of the icy water, a short leap away from the spectacle. “The snake and the elephant.”
“Should we interfere? Or scream?”
The wheelchair, flung by one of the combatants, skidded on the gravel to their left. Someone screamed.
“Ah. Screaming is what we do.” But Gina didn’t scream. It wasn’t in her nature to scream. She shouted, “Tha’s right, Joey! Pound that slimy fucker! Tha’s right, Joey! Take im out!” The chant swelled, backed by the river’s grumble, “Take im out! Take im out! Take im out!”
Joey had the fake gimp’s arms twisted up behind his back, held easy in one of her huge hands, with the other she had hold of his hair, dunking him face first into the river. The muscles of her arms pumped up and down, relentless pistons pushing him under the water, out again, snap back into the river. Her eyes had gone flat and gray, her mouth twisted.
Alhambra said, matter-of-fact, “Let him get a breath now, Joey.”
Joey shrugged, lifted his head, peered at the fake gimp’s face with scientific detachment.
He gagged, green-brown river water puked from his mouth. He took a stuttering gulp of air, his eyes fluttering.
Joey shook him, wrinkled her nose, straight-armed his head back under.
Gina stepped toward the river. “That fucker isn’t never comin up.”
Bubbles.
“He ain’t worth it, Joey,” Alhambra said. Simple statement.
Gina’s voice rose up over the river’s howl, “Hey! Never goin back? Joey-you ain’t never goin back. Remember?”
Bubbles. An eternity of bubbles rising pock pock pock to the surface.
Joey looked up, took a breath. Nodded. She thrust the man from her, into the current, staggered up to the shore. “Thank you.” She popped her knuckles, tipped her head left and right to get the tension out of her neck. “Thank you.”
They watched the limp form spin in the current, catch on the next curve, and lie there for a moment before the man began to pull himself up the gravel.
Gina muttered, “Fuckers like that never die.”
Joey sighed, “I’m keeping the wheelchair though. Damn.” She folded the thing up, hoisted it over one shoulder, waved to Alhambra and Gina. “Have yerselves a jolly day. Clean and sober. Oh yeahhhh.”
The rain had let up, Gina and Alhambra were walking down the same path they’d rocketed down the night before. The only sound was the steady noise of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water rushing to the sea. Billions of gallons?
“Tell me, Alhambra. What you find up here you never got in the city?”
“Look up at the damn trees, Gina. Listen to the goddam river. Pay attention to what’s right here.”
“I want answers to questions this here river and tree world doesn’t care about-lookin at trees ain’t gonna make the hurt stop.”
“Sometimes it’s the only thing make the hurt stop. Come here and look over there across the river.”
Gina saw a power pole on the far shore with a wooden box on top. Snaggly sticks poked out in all directions.
“Young osprey built a nest up there. First year she was ready to mate, she built her nest on the only tall thing didn’t already have someone else’s nest on it. Her babies died when they hit the electric wires. One of the locals climbed up there, built her a platform.”
Gina stared at the ungainly nest in a box. She whispered, “Maybe next year the babies will live?” She looked at Alhambra. “You think?”
Alhambra lifted her shoulders, “There’s a chance. Yeah.”
Gina tipped back on her heels, hands in her pockets. “So. What you’re sayin is-what you’re sayin is?”
“Somethin like that. Yeah.”
Gina got off the bus at Sixteenth and Bryant, stretched her back, lit a cigarette, looked at the city. Not too shabby. It was home. She understood it, knew pretty much when to shift aside, when to stand firm. She headed up the steps to the park. She had a whole pack of American Spirits for Lucas, they’d smoke her welcome home, talk about rivers underfoot that were, and one that still is. For another winter season at least.
“Hey. You seen Lucas?”
“Nah. He not been here, day, two days, mebbe.”
“Hey. You seen Lucas?”
“Family trouble. He gone.”
Gina set off for the freeway underpass, right where another spring used to bubble. “Anybody seen Lucas?”
“Nope.” The man in front of the tents glared at her, made her uncomfortable until she realized the glare was permanent, one eye blind. She touched her own bruised face, said, “Mine’s only a day or two. Gettin used to bein a pirate with one eye. How long yours?” She shook out a few cigarettes from Lucas’s pack.
He smiled. “Hah. Ten years ago.” He allowed Gina to light his cigarette. “Funny you ask about Lucas. He was there. When it happen to me. Was his son’s eighth birthday. We got drunk and-” Still smiling, “Was a helluva lotta fun.”
“Where his son now?”
The man’s mouth curled down. “Where else? He in jail.” He wandered away shaking his head. “Least ways tha’s what Lucas said.”
Three boys whoopin in the parking lot. Here’s to a night under the moon, a hunnert miles an hour. Here’s to the girls that smiled at us.
Here’s to the father that loved us.
“You see Lucas, you please tellim I gotta story fer him. Yunno? So tellim I’m goin for coffee in the morning at the other place, down the street t’other way. Ain’t goin back to that Peet’s. Okay? Tellim I got to start the day off with him. Otherwise the mornin ain’t right. Yunno?”
The old man didn’t stop his slow amble away through the puddles, but Gina saw his hand raise up, as if to say, “Sure thing, girl. Sure thing.”
Under the dim freeway buttresses, several statues of La Virgin de Guadalupe dipped their bowls into the clear headwaters of the creek and, chuckling like pigeons, poured it over their heads.
AFTER HOURS AT LA CHINITA BY BARRY GIFFORD
The Bayview
Spooky backside of town, Third Street, San Francisco, late at night, in a motel office. The furnishings were shabby. La Chinita, once an elegant, Spanish-style motel built in the 1930s, was now, in 1963, run-down; paint was peeling off the walls and the wooden registration desk was chipped and gouged. A decrepit, moth-eaten easy chair and a few other rickety wickers with ripped seats and backs were placed against the walls. Hanging blinds, with several slats missing or broken, covered the glass-paned door. The office was clean, however, and presided over by a bespectacled woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties. She was seated in a lounge chair in front of the desk, knitting and humming softly to herself. Her name was Vermillion Chaney. The tune she was humming was “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It was two weeks before Christmas.
The telephone behind the motel desk rang. Vermillion did not move. The telephone continued to ring. It was as if Vermillion did not hear it. The telephone rang eight times before it finally stopped. After the ringing stopped, Vermillion put down her knitting, stood up and walked behind the registration desk, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed a number.