We all unstuck ourselves from our tracks and took off running. The noise continued, and appeared to follow us.
“What is it?” Mando cried.
“Scavengers!” Nicolin hissed. And the sound cranked up and down, closer to us than before. “Run faster!” Nicolin called over it. The breaks in the road surface gave us no trouble at all; we flew over them. Rocks began clattering off the concrete behind us, and over the embankment that the freeway ran on. “Keep the shovels,” I heard Del exclaim. I picked up a good-sized rock by the road, relieved in a way that it was only scavengers after us. Nothing but fog behind me, fog and the howl, but rocks came out of the whiteness at a good rate. I threw my rock at a dark shape and ran after the others, chased by some howls that were at least animal, and could have been human. But over them was the blast, rising and falling and rising. “Henry!” Steve shouted. The others were down the embankment with him. I jumped down and traversed through weeds, behind the rest. “Get rocks,” Nicolin ordered. We picked up rocks, then turned and threw them onto the freeway behind us all at once. We got screams for a reply. “We got one!” Nicolin said. But there was no way of knowing. We rolled onto the freeway and ran again. The screech lost ground on us, and eventually we were into San Mateo Valley, and on the way to Basilone Ridge, above our own valley. Behind us the noise continued, fainter with distance and the muffling fog.
“That must be a siren,” Nicolin said. “What they call a siren. Noise machine. We’ll have to ask Rafael.” We threw the rocks we had left in the general direction of the sound, and jogged over the ridge into Onofre.
“Those dirty scavengers,” Nicolin said, when we were onto the river path, and had caught our breath. “I wonder how they found us.”
“Maybe they were out wandering, and stumbled across us,” I suggested.
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“No.” But I couldn’t think of a likelier explanation, and I didn’t hear Steve offering one.
“I’m going home,” Mando said, a touch of relief in his voice. He sounded odd somehow—scared maybe—and I felt a chill run down me.
“Okay, you do that. We’ll get those wreckrats another time.”
Five minutes later we were at the bridge. Gabby and Del went upriver. Steve and I stood in the fork of the path. He started to discuss the night, cursing the scavengers, the old man, and John Appleby alike, and it was clear his blood was high. He was ready to talk till dawn, but I was tired. I didn’t have his stamina, and I was still shaken by that noise. Siren or no, it had sounded deadly inhuman. So I said goodnight to Steve and slipped in the door of my cabin. Pa’s snoring broke rhythm, resumed. I tore a piece of bread from the next day’s loaf and stuffed it down, tasting dirt. I dipped my hands in the wash bucket and wiped them off, but they still felt grimy, and they stank of the grave. I gave up and lay on my bed, feeling gritty, and was asleep before I even warmed up.
2
I was dreaming of the moment when we had started to fill in the open grave. Dirt clods were hitting the coffin with that terrible sound, bonk bonk bonk; but in the dream the sound was a knocking from inside the coffin, getting louder and more desperate the faster we filled in the hole.
Pa woke me in the middle of this nightmare: “They found a dead man washed up on the beach this morning.”
“Huh?” I cried, and jumped out of bed all confused. Pa backed off, startled. I leaned over the wash bucket and splashed my face. “What’s this you say?”
“I say, they found one of those Chinamen. You’re all covered with dirt. What’s with you? You out again last night?”
I nodded. “We’re building a hideout.”
Pa shook his head, baffled and disapproving.
“I’m hungry,” I added, going for the loaf of bread. I took a cup from the shelf and dipped it in the water bucket.
“We don’t have anything but bread left.”
“I know.” I pulled some chunks from the loaf. Kathryn’s bread was good even when a bit stale. I went to the door and opened it, and the gloom of our windowless cabin was split by a wedge of muted sunlight. I stuck my head out into the air: dull sun, trees along the river sopping wet. Inside the light fell on Pa’s sewing table, the old machine burnished by years of handling. Beside it was the stove, and over that, next to the stovepipe that punctured the roof, the utensil shelf. That, along with table, chairs, wardrobe and beds, made up the whole of our belongings—the simple possessions of a simpleton in a simple trade. Why, folks didn’t even really need to have Pa sew their clothes…
“You better get down to the boats,” Pa said sternly. “It’s late, they’ll be putting out.”
“Umph.” Still swallowing bread, I put on shirt and shoes. “Good luck!” Pa called as I ran out the door.
Crossing the freeway I was stopped by Mando, coming the other way. “Did you hear about the Chinaman washed up?” he called.
“Yeah! Did you see him?”
“Yes. Pa went down to look at him, and I tagged along.”
“Was he shot?”
“Oh yeah. Four bullet holes, right in the chest.”
“Man.” A lot of them washed up like that. “I wonder what they’re fighting about so hard out there.”
Mando shrugged. In the potato patch across the road Rebel Simpson was chasing a dog with a spud in its mouth, yelling at it, her face red. “Pa says there’s a coast guard offshore, keeping people out.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wonder if that’s it.” Big ships ghosted up and down the long coast, usually out near the horizon, sometimes nearer; and bodies washed ashore from time to time, riddled with bullets. But that was the extent of what we could say for sure about the world offshore, in my opinion. When I thought about it my curiosity sometimes became so intense that it shaded into something like fury. Mando, on the other hand, was confident that his father (who was only echoing the old man) had the explanation. He accompanied me out to the cliff. Out to sea was a bar of white cloud, lying on the horizon: the fog bank, which would roll in later when the onshore wind got going. Down on the river flat they were loading nets onto the boats. “I’ve got to get on board,” I said to Mando. “See you later.”
By the time I had descended the cliff they were launching the boats. I joined Steve by the smallest of them, which was still on the sand. John Nicolin, Steve’s father, walked by and glared at me. “You two take the rods today. You won’t be good for anything else.” I kept my face wooden. He walked on to growl a command at the boat shoving off.
“He knows we were out?”
“Yeah.” Steve’s lip curled. “I fell over a drying rack when I snuck in.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
He turned his head to show me a bruise in front of his ear. “What do you think?” He was in no mood to talk, and I went to help the men hauling the next boat over the flat. The cold water sluicing over my feet woke me up good for the first time that day. Out to sea the quiet krrr, krrrrrr of breaking waves indicated a small swell. The little boat’s turn came and Steve and I hopped in as it was shoved into the channel. We rowed lazily, relying on the current, and got over the breakers at the rivermouth without any trouble.