At the farthest corner a wedge of dirt slid suddenly into the shoulder of the freeway.
Moments later, a hundred feet up the slope, the bonds that had held the soil together had lost all their strength. They surrendered to the gravity of the slope. A crack three hundred feet long zipped itself open, and the entire slope dissolved into mud, pouring thickly over the lip of the concrete abutments onto the freeway. The flow carried with it the rusted old flowerpots, the marble markers that had headed each hole, and the contents.
The first Robinson knew of it was when the truck slammed on its brakes. "Jesus, would you look at that?" somebody cried from the front seat. Robinson and Dennis pushed back to the crack in the truck's cover and peered out. It was hard to see anything, because they were down in a cut; far ahead they could see the construction work that they had been supposed to be heading for, with a huge crane vibrating in the wind. But they could not see just what was on the side of the road. There was an off-ramp marker, but there was no ramp. There was not even a shoulder. The truck had moved gradually over into the center lane, then even into the fast lane . . . and Dennis saw wonderingly that the other lanes were gone.
The road was completely blocked. The entire northbound section of the freeway was filled with mud, a slide that went up twenty feet on the right to join the slope of the hill and filled all three lanes to the concrete divider on the left. "Back it up, dummy! Back it up," somebody squawked from in front, but the gears ground and the wheels spun, and the truck would not move. The mud had the car. "Oh, shit," yelled the engineer. "Now you've done it." And then, louder, craning toward the back, "Everybody out; from here on we walk!"
The dozen men in the truck looked at each other, then sprang from the tailgate. They barely made it. They slogged through the quicksand-flowing mud to the hillside and found it was coming to meet them. The only way was back, along the freeway, to a point where a retaining wall still held, and then they turned to look back.
The river of mud had already filled the inside of the truck. It was cresting over the top, like slow-motion surf, and riding the top, like a sort of surfboard, was a huge mahogany box, earthstained and crumbling. As they watched, the side ripped open, and the contents, staring emptily at the^storm, slid out.
From the hilltop a quarter of a mile away Manuel could not see the earthslide, but he saw the sad remaining cypress dip and bow. He crossed himself, not sure he had actually seen it.
Manuel was not a stranger to hard work, because you could not grow up to child-rearing age in the Sierra Madre without tens of thousands of hours of it; but in Aguatarde it had been his own land he fought for. Not Danny Deere's. Especially not this real-estate corporation who was hiring his family today.
Especially not when any man could see that it was all useless; the walls would stand or they would not, and what foolishness they tried with sandbags and plastic sheets would make no difference. In any case, the five men of his own family and the fourteen construction workers, all who had shown up at the job that morning, were not enough to make a difference. From his great car on the road the fat boss had been sending orders here, there, everywhere, some on the telephone in the car, some by his narrow- eyed men who plowed up through the mud in their narrow shoes, destroying their cream-colored slacks and spoiling their pale trench coats forever. Manuel knew he had been demanding help from the county for many hours, but he was not the only one demanding. Meanwhile, a man had to think of himself. The young men were out there; Manuel had found a spot on the second floor of the building, where the rain came in only in driplets from the canvas- covered windows and where, if anyone should appear, he could make a great show of putting the canvas back where he had prudently ripped it loose an hour before. It would be worrying if the person who came, if anyone came, should observe that his poncho was dry, so Manuel was careful to stand by the open window every now and then to soak it a little.
All this would pass. Everything always had. All the same, Manuel was not at ease in his heart. There was a worry he had never had before, and he could not know if it was real. He inclined to think that it was only a filthy imagining of his nephew Jorge's cousin Pilar, the puta. Against his orders, she had sneaked into his house in his absence, not once but often. Always she brought disgrace on the family, not to mention the sickness of the privates that his nephew and even his sons could not be persuaded to fear. She had been one of those people on television, with the shoe-blacking on their faces. Manuel himself had seen her on the six o'clock news, being chased by the doorman of a great hotel in Beverly Hills. Yet she had seemed for once in her life sincere! Was it possible? Was it true, as she had once told Jorge and Jorge Manuel himself, that those little nuisance earthquakes that happened any time—one never even noticed them until one saw the reporter joking about it on the newscasts—these tiny shudders, with the ground so wet, could be serious indeed? He did not know. He did not want to know. He had nearer concerns. He had left the women with instructions to move everything of value to the back of the truck, and to drive the truck for high ground at need. The Danny Deere might believe that his home was safe from natural disasters, but he was a man who could afford to be wrong; a poor man could not. Yet who knew if the woman would remember? Or if she could drive the truck without destroying it? There were many worries!
He observed that he was truly not needed, because at last the fat man's bellows had been heard; eight or ten new men were slogging up through the mud toward the work crews behind the project. That was good.
But not altogether good, Manuel perceived, because he was not there; and with all those men there would be a need for an underboss. Who better than himself? And an underboss could almost certainly demand more than the three dollars and fifty cents an hour that was all these scoundrels would pay for the risk of a man's health and life. It would be necessary to get very wet again.
But it was worth it. Manuel looked around at the room, sighed and left the building to climb toward the top of the hill. Just in time.
Buster Boyma had not set foot outside his car the whole time he had been there. It hadn't saved him. His russet- brown jogging suit was spotted with water and mud, the carpeting in the car was filthy, even his hands were smeared with soil. It gave Boyma pain to have his hands dirty; they felt dry and cracked. It was just one more thing to make him furious. For this he had failed to show at a grand jury hearing! His lawyer would smooth it over, no doubt, that was what he was paid for; but his lawyer would expect to be paid accordingly. And for what? His whole purpose in being here was to make sure his property was safe, but what good was he doing? He had kept the car phone busy with appeals to everyone in California for help, and where was the help? Fourteen volunteers were supposed to be on the way, but what good would fourteen men, shovels and bare hands, no earthmoving machines, no engineers even, do against this rain?
Somebody would pay for this! He had already marked a dozen somebodies, three or four of his own men, a lot more of the people in government who owed him. He yelled for his driver, off taking another message to the handful of workers on the hill—actually the same message, Do something! But the storm made it impossible to be heard, of course. . . .