Jennings introduced Tom and me.
“Timothy Danforth,” the Mayor said in reply. “Mayor of this fine town.” There was a little American flag in the lapel of his jacket. He shook hands with each of us; when I shook I squeezed as hard as I could, but I might as well have been squeezing rock. He could have squashed my hand like bread dough. As Tom said later, his handshake alone could have made him mayor. He said to Tom, “I am told you are not the elected leader of San Onofre?”
“Onofre doesn’t have an elected leader,” Tom said.
“But you hold some sort of authority?” the Mayor suggested.
Tom shrugged and walked past him to the porch rail. “Nice view you’ve got here,” he said, looking west, where the sun had been halved by the darkening hills. I was shocked at Tom’s rudeness; I wanted to speak up and tell the Mayor that Tom had as much authority as anyone in Onofre. But I kept my mouth shut. Tom kept looking at the sunset. The Mayor watched him out of narrowed eyes.
“Always good to meet another neighbor,” the Mayor said, in a hearty voice. “We’ll celebrate with a meal out here, if you like. It should be a warm enough evening.” He smiled and his moustache waggled. “Tell me, are you one who lived in the old time?” His tone seemed to say, are you one of those who used to live in Paradise?
“How did you guess?” Tom said.
The dozen men on the porch laughed, but Danforth just stared at Tom. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. There aren’t many of you left, especially in such good health. You’re an inspiration to all of us.”
Tom lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Really?”
“An inspiration,” the Mayor repeated firmly. “A monument, so to speak. A reminder of what we’re striving for in these most difficult of times. I find that old timers like you understand better what we’re striving for.”
“Which is?” said Tom.
Luckily, or perhaps deliberately, the Mayor didn’t hear Tom’s question. “Well, come sit down,” he said, as if we had been refusing to. There were several round tables on the porch, among small trees in big buckets. As we sat around one next to the rail Danforth’s little eyes peered at Tom. Tom innocently stared at the flag, which ruffled limply from a pole sticking out of the roof.
Twenty-five or thirty tables were set up on the freeway below, and more boats were arriving in the gloom of the early evening. The hills to the south were a brilliant green at their very tops, but that was the last of the light. From somewhere in the house a generator started to hum, and electric lights snapped on all over the island. The little buildings at the south end, the freeway railings, the rooms of the house behind us: all blazed with a white light. Girls my age or younger moved around the porch, bringing plates and silverware out from inside. One of the girls set my plate before me and gave me a smile. Her hair shone gold under the glare of the lights, and I smiled back. Men and women appeared at the top of the east ramp, dressed like scavengers in bright coats and colorful dresses, but I didn’t care. In San Diego things were obviously not the same. Down here they combined the best of scavenger and newtowner, I thought. One of the brighter lights shone on the flag, and everyone on the island stood at attention as the limp folds of red, white, and blue were lowered. Tom and I stood with them, and I felt a peculiar glow flushing my face and the chinks of my spine…
Around our table were Tom and me, Jennings, Lee, the Mayor, and three of his men, who were quickly introduced to us. Ben was the only name I remembered. Jennings told the Mayor about their trip north, describing the two bridges and all the major breaks in the track. He made the repair work sound difficult, and I guessed that they had come home behind schedule. Or maybe Jennings just exaggerated out of habit. He certainly did when telling them about my swim across the creek, and I blushed, pleased that the blond serving girl was hovering between our table and the next to hear the tale. Jennings made it a tall tale indeed, and as the San Diegans congratulated me Tom nudged me under the table. “It was nothing,” I told them. “I was anxious to get down here and see this town.” The Mayor nodded his approval of the sentiment, sinking his chin into his neck until it looked like there was nothing but folds of skin between his Adam’s apple and his mouth.
“What’s the shortest time it would take you to train up to Onofre?” the Mayor asked Lee. Tom and I nudged each other again: he knew which of his men to ask when he wanted a straight answer. Of course if he couldn’t figure out Lee and Jennings he’d scarcely be able to mayor a doghouse. But it was a sign.
Lee cleared his throat. “Last night it took about eight hours, from our stopping point up there to University City. That’s about as fast as it could be done, unless we left the bridges up.”
“We can’t do that.” Danforth’s mobile face was grim.
“I guess not. Anyway, another fifteen minutes to Onofre. The track’s in good shape to there.”
“And beyond as well,” Jennings added, which made Tom look up. The Mayor scowled.
“Let’s talk about that after dinner,” he said.
After the girls had set the tables, with plates and glasses and cloth napkins and silverware that looked like real silver, they brought out big glass bowls filled with salads made of lettuce and shrimp. Tom examined the shrimp with interest, forking one to get it closer to his eyes. “Where do you get these?” he inquired.
The Mayor laughed. “Wait till after the grace, and Ben here will tell you.”
All the serving girls came out and stood still, and the Mayor stood and walked to the rail, so he could be seen from below. He had a limp, I noticed; his left foot wouldn’t bend. We all bowed our heads. The Mayor declaimed the prayer: “Dear Lord, we eat this food you have provided us in order to make us strong in the service of you and of the United States of America. Amen.” Everyone joined in on the amen, which covered the little sounds Tom was making beside me. I ribbed him hard.
We started in on the salad. From below voices chimed with the sounds of clinking dishes. Between bites Ben said to Tom, “We get the shrimp from the south.”
“I thought the border was closed.”
“Oh, it is. Definitely. Not the old border, though. Tijuana is no more than a battleground for rats and cats. About five miles south of that is the new border. It’s made of barbed wire fences, and a bulldozed strip on each side of it three hundred yards wide. And guard towers, and lights at night. I’ve never heard of a single person that got over it.” As he took a bite the other men at the table nodded their agreement with this. “There’s a jetty where the fence hits the beach, too, and beyond that guard boats. But they’re Mexican guard boats, see. The Japanese have the coast right down to the border, but beyond that the Mexicans take over. They don’t do too good a job.”
“Neither do the Japs,” Danforth said.
“True. Anyway, the Mexican guard boats are there, but it’s easy to get past them, and once past them the fishing boats will sell you anything they have or can get. We’re just another customer as far as they’re concerned. Except they know they have us over a barrel, so they squeeze us every trade. But we get what we want.”
“Which is shrimp?” said Tom, surprised. His salad was gone.
“Sure. Don’t you like it?”
“What do the Mexicans want?”
“Gun parts, mostly. Souvenirs. Junk.”
“Mexicans love junk,” Danforth said, and his men laughed. “But we’ll sell them something different someday. Put them back where they belong, like it used to be.” He had been watching Tom wolf his food; now that Tom was done, he said, “Did you live around here in the old time?”
“Up in Orange County, mostly. I came down here to school.”