Part 7 (1/2)
Nine.
I GAVE up walking when the heel of my right foot began to bother me. The work shoes were too heavy for one who had spent such a chunk of his life barefoot. I wished I had taken the bus.
I found a good place to hitch a ride. I hate to see the d.a.m.n fools on the highways. .h.i.tching in the wrong places. It is a waste of energy. You have to be where they can see you a long way off, and where you, stand out well against the background. They have to be able to see a lot of highway beyond you, and they have to spot a place where they can pull off. You have to make a gesture at each car, a big sweeping one. You leave the duffel bag at your feet and you take your hat off, and you smile wide enough to show some teeth. An animal will roll onto his back to demonstrate his harmlessness. A man will grin. It is better to trust the animal.
A gaunt old man in a rattle-bang Ford pickup stopped at high noon and picked me up. He wore banker's clothes and a peaked cap that said Oakland Raiders.
”Only going as far as Lake Mendocino, friend,” he said.
”Is that past Ukiah?”
”Next door. I can drop you off before I make my turn. Get in.” He looked back, waiting for a hole in the traffic, and when one came along, he jumped into it with surprising acceleration.
”Don't know this country, eh?”
”Don't know it at all. This is the first time for me.
”Hunting work?”
”Well, I might have to do some to keep going. But mostly I'm trying to get some kind of trace of my little girl. I think she's out here somewhere.”
”There's a lot of young girls out here somewhere. There was a time in the sixties when they'd come drifting up from San Francisco. Communes and farming and all. What they call alternative lifestyles. Potheads, mostly. No offense. I'm not saying your girl is one of those. She missing long?”
”Six years.”
”Hear anything from her in all that time?”
”One time, and that was a few years ago. She'll be twenty now. Peg and me, we married young. Kathy was sixteen when we got those cards from her. They came over a month or so. They never gave an address we could write back to. They were mailed in San Francisco, and then the very last one was from Ukiah. It said she was joining up with some kind of church and we should forget about her forever. You know, when you've got just the one kid, you don't forget like that. It took the heart out of Peg. She died a while back, and after I sold off a little piece of land and the trailer and an old skiff, I thought I might as well use the money trying to find her.”
”Friend, this state is chock-full of religions. You can find any kind you are looking for. There's some that'll take you to Guyana and teach you to raise oranges and how to kill yourself quick. They start in the north and go all the way down to the Mexican border, and to my way of thinking, the further south they go, the crazier they get. People are hunting around for something to believe in these days. All the stuff people used to believe in has kind of let them down hard. You'd have to know the name of the religion first, I'd say.”
”I learned it by heart. The Church of the Apocrypha.”
”I've lived pretty close to Ukiah for ten years, and I can't say I ever heard of it. But I've seen some strange ones drifting around the streets there, selling flowers and candy and wearing white robes.”
”I can ask around there, I guess. Big place?”
”No. I'd guess maybe twelve thousand. What kind of work you do?”
”I fish commercial. Net work, mostly. Mullets usually. When they're hard to find, it pays good. When they're easy, it isn't hardly worthwhile going out, you get such small money. What kind of business are you in?”
”Investments.”
”Oh.” From the way he said it, I knew that was all I was going to learn. He moved the pickup right along, tailgating the people who wouldn't move over into the slow lane.
”Where would be a good place to ask in Ukiah?”
”Maybe the police. Police usually know about the crazies and where they live.”
He dropped me off at the Ukiah ramp. The wind felt cool and fresh. I found one gas station that wouldn't let me use the rest room, and another one that would. I shaved off the stubble and put on my wire gla.s.ses and looked into the mirror. In the hard fluorescence, my deepwater tan looked yellowish. Deep grooves bracketed my mouth. The gold gla.s.ses did not give me a professorial look. I looked like a desert rat with bad eyes.
He was an officer of the law. Not too long ago he had been a fat, florid, hearty man. The balloon was deflating. He had made a couple of new holes in his belt. His color was bad. His chops sagged. He looked me over with a listless competence. And he listened to my story. ”Apocrypha. Kind of rings a bell. Short dirty-white robes. Beards. Sister this and Brother that.” He dialed a three-digit number and leaned back in his leather chair and began murmuring into the phone, listening for a time while he stared at the ceiling. Then he hung up and took a sheet of yellow paper and drew a crude map.
”Where that outfit was, McGraw, they were over in Lake County. They had a pretty goodsized tract. What you do, you take Twenty East and go over past Upper Lake, maybe two miles, and there's a little road heads off to the east, unpaved but a good surface. You go along that road, mostly uphill, and it winds around and there are little roads heading off it, smaller still, and that encampment is off at the end of one of those. You'll have to ask around.”
”Thanks. I appreciate you taking the trouble.”
”Afraid it won't help much. Seems they've pulled up and moved off someplace. Might be n.o.body left there at all.”
”It's the only clue I've got.”
For the moment he forgot his own woes. ”Listen, McGraw. There's thousands of kids took off. A lot of them don't ever show again. It's a sign of the times. What I mean is, don't expect too much. It's a good thing to look around, to satisfy yourself you did all you could. But don't expect too much. Okay?”
”Thanks. I won't. I mean, I'll try not to.”
By Sunday noon I had found it. I had spent the night in a small rental trailer under giant evergreens. I had hitched three rides, walked through two monstrous rainstorms, and climbed what seemed to be several mountains.
So now I stood where Gretel and her husband had stood. The signs were large and explicit. Red lettering on white.
PRIVATE PROPERTY.
NO TRESPa.s.sING.
The wire gate she had described blocked the road. Beyond the gate the road curved up and to the right, out of sight behind the trees and brush. There was a lean-to on the right, just beyond the gate. The last people I had asked, the ones who had given me the final directions, had said that they thought there were a few left up at the encampment, but that most of them had gone away. They said that sometimes they saw a van on the road. Black, with a gold cross painted on the sides.
I am Tom McGraw, looking for the traces of a daughter lost. I have a father's bullheaded determination. So I forge ahead. Climb the fence close to the gate, drop the duffel bag, and drop down beside it. Shoulder it and walk up the muddy road.
There was a cathedral of evergreens on either side of the road, standing at parade rest on the slope, the ground silent with needles. The sun was suddenly covered again, and I heard a high soft sigh of rainwind in the pine branches. I trudged up the curve and up a steeper pitch. The stand of trees dwindled, and there were boulders among them big as bungalows. I came out at the top. Far away to the northeast I could see sunlit mountains. I was on an old rocky plateau, quite level, as big as four football fields. It sloped gently down toward valleys and gullies on every side. Off to my right, at the end of the big plateau, was a clutter of small structures. The biggest was a corrugated steel and aluminum building that looked like a pre-fab warehouse. There were several small cementblock buildings, and several trailers on block foundations. I saw one derelict truck.
There was no sign of life. I wanted to see if the road continued on the other side of the field. I hollered and waited and heard no answer. I walked across and looked. There was no road down the slope. There had been a stand of small trees there, with the biggest about three inches in diameter. They were broken off about two feet above ground level. At first I thought somebody had driven up and down there with a vehicle. Something nagged at my memory. I walked down the slope. The damage was not fresh. The wood was splintered and dry. I squatted and found where slugs had creased the bark. Very heavy sustained fire from an automatic weapon would chew them off just like that. Using the bark creases for rough triangulation, I was able to go back up the slope to the approximate area where the weapon had been. I poked around and finally saw a glint of metal in a crack of the rock. I levered it out with a twig. It was a white metal sh.e.l.l casing, center-fire, in a smaller caliber than I would have expected. But it looked as if there was room for a hefty load of propellant. There was an unfamiliar symbol on the end of it, like a figure 4 open at the top, and with an extra horizontal line across the upright.
I tossed it up and caught it and put it, in my pocket. A strange exercise for a church group, shooting down a young forest. And then picking up all the sh.e.l.l casings.
I headed toward the buildings, but before I reached them I heard, coming toward me, the sound of a lot of footsteps, running almost in unison. They burst up a slope and onto the plateau about fifty yards away from me. Seven of them in single file, weapons slung, left hands holding the weapons, right arms swinging. I had the impression of great fitness and great effort. They were young. They wore gray-green coveralls, fatigue caps, ammo belts, and backpacks. One of them saw me and yelled something. With no hesitation they stopped and ran back, spreading into combat patrol interval, spinning, falling p.r.o.ne, right at the dropoff line, seven muzzles aimed at me. I shed the duffel bag and held my arms high.
”Hey!” I yelled. ”Hey, what's the matter?”
”Down,” a voice yelled. ”Face down, spreadeagle. Now!”
Once down, I peered up and saw two walking toward me, weapons still ready, while two others were heading for the buildings, running in a crouching zigzag, in the event I had come with friends.
Hands patted me. I was told to shut up. I was told to roll over. One stood over me, muzzle at my forehead, and I suddenly realized she was female. The other, a man with a drooping mustache, did the frisking.