But you can’t sleep forever. What broke my last hold on an uneasy half-sleep was the w-whoo, w-whoo of the canyon owl—Nicolin’s signal, repeated insistently. Nicolin was out there, under the eucalyptus no doubt, calling me. I sat up, looked out the door; saw him, a shadow against the treetrunk. Pa was sewing. I got my shoes on. “I’m going out.” Pa looked at me, hurt me once again with the puzzled reproach in his eyes, the slight hint of condemnation. I was still wearing the torn clothes I had had on the night before. They stank with fear. I was ravenous, and paused to break off half a loaf of bread on my way out. I approached Steve chewing a big lump. We stood together silently under the tree. He had a full bag over his shoulder.
When the bread was done I said, “Where you been?”
“I was in Clemente till late this afternoon. God what a day! I found the scavengers that had been chasing us, and sniped at them till they didn’t know who was after them. Got some too—they thought a whole gang was after them. Then I went back up to Dana Point, but by that time they had all gotten away. So—”
“Mando’s dead.”
“… I know.”
“Who told you?”
“My sister. I snuck in to get some of my stuff, and she caught me just as I was leaving. She told me.”
We stood there for a long time. Steve took in a deep breath and let it out. “So, I reckon I got to leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“… Come give me some help.” My night vision was coming in and with the exhausted sound of his voice I could suddenly see his face, dirty, scratched, desperate. “Please.”
“How?”
He took off toward the river.
We went to the Marianis’, stood by the ovens. Steve made his owl call. We waited a long time. Steve tapped his fist against the side of the oven. Even I, with nothing at stake, felt nervous. That led me back to all that had happened the night before.
The door opened and Kathryn slipped out, in the same pants she had worn the night before, but a different sweatshirt. Steve’s fingernails scraped the brick. She knew where he would be, and walked straight to us.
“So you came back.” She stared at him, head cocked to one side.
Steve shook his head. “Just to say goodbye.” He cleared his throat. “I—I killed some scavengers up there. They’ll be out to get back at us. If you tell them at the swap meet that I did it and took off, that it was all my doing, maybe it will all stop there.”
Kathryn stared at him.
“I can’t stay after what’s happened,” Steve said.
“You could.”
“I can’t.”
The way he said that, I knew he was leaving. Kathryn knew it too. She folded her arms over her chest and hugged herself as if she were cold. She looked over at me and I looked down. “Let us talk awhile, Henry.”
I nodded and wandered to the river. The water clicked over snags like black glass. I wondered what he was saying to her, what she was saying to him. Would she try to change his mind when she knew he wouldn’t?
I was glad I didn’t know. It hurt to think of it. I saw Doc’s face as he watched his son, the living part of his wife, lowered into the ground beside her. Helpless to stop myself I thought what if the old man dies tonight, right up there at Doc’s place? What about Doc then?… What about Tom?
I sat and held my head but it didn’t stop me thinking. Sometimes it would be such a blessing to turn all the thinking off. I stood and tossed rocks in the water. I sat down again when the rocks were gone, and wished I could throw away thoughts as easily, or the deeds of the past.
Steve appeared and stood looking over the river. I stood up.
“Let’s get going,” he said thickly. He walked down the river path toward the sea, cut into the forest. There was no talk between us, just the silent walking together, side by side, and briefly I recalled how it had felt for so long, for all our lives, when we had hiked together silently in the woods at night like brothers.
He went down the cliff path without looking at it, going from foothold to foothold with careless mastery. There was a slice of moon, nearly on the water. I descended the obscure cliff more slowly. Once on the sand I followed him to the boats. We broke the sand’s water crust, left big footprints in the loose sand below.
A couple of the fishing boats had sockets on the keel, where you could step a small mast and spread a sail. Nicolin went to one of those. Without a word we took bow and stern and skewed the boat from side to side in the sand. Normally four or five men push a boat into the water, but that’s just for convenience; Steve and I got it moving pretty easily. When it was across the tide flat and in the shallows we stopped. Nicolin climbed in to step the mast, and I held the hull steady on the sand bottom.
I said, “You’re going to sail to Catalina, like the guy who wrote that book.”
“That’s right.”
“You know that book is a bunch of lies.”
He never stopped unfurling the sail. “I don’t care. If the book is a lie then I’ll make it true.”
“They aren’t the kind of lies you can make true.”
“How do you know?”
I did know, but I couldn’t say. The mast was stepped and he started jamming the cotter pin through the socket. I didn’t want to just come out and ask him to stay. “I thought you were going to spend your life fighting for America.”
He stopped working. “Don’t you think I’m not,” he said bitterly. “You saw what happened when we tried to fight here. There’s not a thing we can do. The place where something can be done is Catalina. I bet there’s a lot of Americans already there who think the same, too.”
I could see he would have an answer to everything. I shifted the boat’s stern, got ready to push.
“I’m positive the resistance is strongest over there,” he said. “Most effective. Don’t you think so? I mean—aren’t you coming with me?”
“No.”
“But you should. You’ll regret it if you don’t. This is a little out of the way valley here. That’s the world out there, Henry!” He waved a hand westward.
“No.” I leaned over the stern. “Now come on, do you want help with this boat or not?”
He pursed his lips, shrugged. His shoulders drooped when the shrug was done, and I saw how tired he was. It would be a long sail. But I wasn’t going to go, and I wasn’t going to explain. He hadn’t expected me to say yes anyway, had he?
He roused himself, got out of the boat to push. Quickly it floated clear of the sand. We stared at each other from across the boat, and he stuck out his hand. We shook. I couldn’t think of anything to say. He leaped in and got the oars out while I held the stern. I shoved it into the current and he started rowing. With the crescent moon behind him I couldn’t make out his features, and we didn’t say a word. He rowed over a swell coming upriver. Soon he’d be out where what was left of the Santa Ana would clear the cliff, and catch his sail.
“Good luck!” I cried.
He rowed on.
The next swell hid the boat from me for a moment. I walked out of the river, feeling chill. From the beach I watched him clear the rivermouth. The sail, a faint patch against the black, flapped and filled. Soon he was beyond the break. From there he wouldn’t hear me unless I shouted. “Do some good for us over there,” I said, but I was talking to myself.
I climbed the cliff path, water dripping from my pants. By the time I got to the top I was warmer. I walked along the cliff. It was a cloudless night again, and the setting moon shone across the water, marking the distance to the horizon. It was a night to make you see how vast the world was: the ocean, the spangled sky, the cliff, the valley and the hills behind, they were all so huge I might as well have been an ant. Out there under a pale handkerchief patch was another ant, in an ant’s boat.