“Of what?” Tom said.
“Of the world situation?”
Tom shrugged. “I just heard about it. You folks know a lot more than we did. If it’s all true. We know there are Orientals out there on Catalina. Their bodies wash up on our beach occasionally. Beyond that, all we’ve heard is swap meet talk, and that changes every month.”
“You’ve had Japanese bodies washing up?” Danforth asked.
“We call them Chinese.”
The Mayor shook his head. “Japanese.”
“So that coast guard is shooting up some of the illegal landing parties?” Tom ventured.
Again the Mayor shook his head. “The coast guard is paid off. It wasn’t them.” He took a sip from his glass. “It was us.”
“How’s that?”
“It was us!” the Mayor said, suddenly loud. He limped to the window, fiddled with the drapes. “We sail up off Newport and Dana Point, on foggy nights or nights when we’ve been tipped off that they’re coming, and we ambush them. Kill as many as we can.”
Tom looked at the glass in his hand. “Why?” he said finally.
“Why?” The Mayor’s chin melted into his neck. “You’re an old timer—you ask me why?”
“Sure.”
“Because we aren’t a zoo here, that’s why!” He began to pace again, bobbing around behind his desk, around and behind our chairs, behind the desk again. Without warning he slammed his right palm onto the desktop, smack! I jumped in my chair. “They blew our country to pieces,” he said in a strangled, furious high voice, completely unlike the one he had been using just a moment before. “They killed it.” He cleared his throat. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. But they can’t come sight-seeing in the ruins. No. Not while there are Americans left alive. We aren’t animals in a cage to be looked at. We’ll make them learn that if they set foot on our soil, they’re dead.” He took up the tequila bottle in a trembling hand and refilled his glass. “No stepping into the cages in this zoo. When word gets around that no one ever comes back from a visit to America, they’ll stop coming. There won’t be any more customers for that scum north of you.” He drank hastily. “Did you know there are scavengers in Orange County arranging to give guided tours to the Japs?”
“I’m not surprised,” Tom said.
“Well I am. Those people are scum. They are traitors to the United States.” He said it like a death sentence. “If every American joined the resistance, no one could land on our soil. We’d be left alone, and the rebuilding could get on. But we all have to be part of the resistance.”
“I didn’t know there was a resistance,” Tom said mildly.
Bang! The Mayor’s hand hit the desk again. He leaned over it and cried, “That’s what we brought you here to tell you about!” He straightened up, sat down in his chair, held his forehead in his hand. Suddenly it seemed hushed and quiet again. “Tell him, Ben.”
Ben leaned forward in his chair enthusiastically. “When we got to the Salton Sea we learned about it. The American resistance. Although usually they just called it the resistance. The headquarters are in Salt Lake City, and there are military centers in the old Strategic Air Command quarters under Cheyenne, Wyoming, and under Mount Rushmore.”
“Under Mount Rushmore?” Tom said.
Head still cradled in one hand, face shadowed, the Mayor peered at him. “That’s right. That’s where the secret military headquarters of the United States always was.”
“I didn’t know,” Tom said, eyebrows gently arched.
Ben went on. “There are organizations all across the country, but it’s all one group really, and the goal is the same. To rebuild America.” He rolled the phrase over his tongue.
“To rebuild America,” breathed the Mayor. I felt that flush in my face and spine begin again. By God, they were in contact with the east coast! New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, England… The Mayor reached for his glass and sipped; Ben jerked down two swallows as if it were a toast, and Tom and I likewise drank. For a moment there seemed a shared feeling in the room. I could feel the alcohol going to my head, along with the news of the resistance, this dream of Nicolin’s and mine come to life. It made a heady mixture. Danforth stood again and looked at the framed map on the side wall of the study. Passionately he said, “To make America great again, to make it what it was before the war, the best nation on Earth. That’s our goal.” He pointed a finger through the shadows at Tom. “We’d be back to that already if we had retaliated against the Russians. If President Eliot—traitor, coward!—hadn’t refused to defend us. But we’ll still do it. We’ll work hard, we’ll pray hard, we’ll hide our weapons from the satellites. They’re inventing new ones in Salt Lake and Cheyenne, we’re told. And one day… one day we’ll spring out on the world again like a tiger. A tiger from the depths of the pit…” His voice shifted up to a scratchy strangled mutter that I couldn’t make out. He was half turned away from us, and he went on like that for a while, talking to himself in a voice that moaned and sighed. The lamp on his desk flickered, flickered again. Ben jerked out of his chair and went to a corner to get a kerosene lamp.
With a tap of the knuckles on the desk the Mayor raised his voice again, sounding relaxed and reasonable. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Barnard. The largest resistance group on this coast is centered around Santa Barbara, we’ve heard. We met some of them out at the Salton Sea. We need to connect with them, and present a unified opposition to the Japanese on Catalina and the Santa Barbara islands. The first part of that task is to rid Orange County and Los Angeles of all Japanese tourists, and the traitors who guide them. So we need you. We need Onofre to join the resistance.”
“I can’t speak for them,” Tom said. I bit my lip and stayed silent. Tom was right; it would have to be voted. Tom waved a hand. “It sounds… well, I don’t know if we’ll want in or not.”
“You’ve got to want in,” the Mayor said fiercely, fist held over the desk. “This is more important than what you want. You tell them they can make this country what it used to be. They can help. But we all have to work together. The day will come. Another Pax Americana, cars and airplanes, rockets to the moon, telephones. A unified country.” Suddenly, without anger or whispery passion, he said, “You go back up there and tell your valley that they join the resistance or they oppose it.”
“Not a very neighborly way of putting it,” Tom observed, his eyes narrowed.
“Put it any way you please! Just tell them.”
“I’ll tell them. But they’ll want to know just exactly what you want of them. And I can’t guarantee what they’ll say to it.”
“No one’s asking you to guarantee anything. They’ll know what’s right.” The Mayor took a long look at Tom, his little eyes bright. “I would have thought an old timer like you would be hopping with joy to hear of the resistance.”
“I don’t hop much these days,” Tom said. “Bad knees.”
The Mayor circled the desk and bent over Tom’s chair, looked at Tom. With both hands he trapped one of Tom’s. “Don’t lose your feel for America, old man,” he said hoarsely. “It’s the best part of you. It’s what kept you alive for so long, whether you know it or not. You’ve got to fight to keep that feeling, or you’re doomed.”
Tom pulled his hand away. The Mayor straightened up and limped back around the desk. “Well, Ben! These gentlemen deserve to enjoy a little of the partying outside before they retire, don’t you agree?” Ben nodded and smiled at us. “I know you men had a hard night last night,” Danforth said, “but I hope you’ll have enough energy to join the folks outside for at least a short while.”