| Chapter 8 - Greta |
| In the morning some people cooked pancakes and bacon over camp stoves. It was sort of social, like a pancake breakfast at the volunteer fire department, and sort of sad, like a soup kitchen. We ate quickly. I had a huge appetite. Jon, even though my father had returned, stayed at my side, clutching my belt loop in a death grip. Mrs. LaFeau was gone. Josh's mom seemed restless, not interested in what was happening on the mountain. It wasn't her home. She wanted to take Josh and go back to Pomona, but she had driven up here with my father and couldn't leave until they could take her to the airport. Again and again she said, "Do you think it's on television? It has to be." Their house had always had a TV blasting even when nobody seemed to be paying attention to it. I don't think Karen would really believe that an earthquake had happened until she saw it on the tube. But for now, she had to stay with us. And so did Josh. Today, Josh wore no headphones. He didn't talk to me at breakfast, but didn't avoid my eyes, either. He drank three cups of hot chocolate. He seemed tired. So was I. Usually my father would dawdle over coffee. Today he skipped it completely. "Let's get out of here," my father said. We drove down the road. Even in the car, Jon held on to my pocket. We passed the house where the woman had been cursing her garden hose. Now there was nothing but a chimney and charcoal. There was a black scar on the trunk of the redwood tree, but I'd seen lots of trees with worse burns. They survive. We passed another house that looked more like a lumber pile. A man stood in the center of the heap over a mound of bricks, lifting handfuls of roof shingles and splintered pieces of wood. My father looked worried. He stopped and called to the man: "Is somebody under that mess?" The man shook his head, "Nobody was home." He took a deep breath. "Thank goodness." He spoke slowly. "I'm just looking for my wedding ring." He paused after each sentence, as if he could only think ahead by one small thought at a time. "I left it on the mantle." Pause. He pursed his lips. "Back when it was a mantle." Pause. He frowned. "There's nothing else worth saving." Pause. He scratched his ear. "The only good news is that nobody was hurt." Pause. He brightened slightly. "And that it didn't burn." Pause. He wiped his brow. "Some good person turned off the propane." That was me. But I didn't say anything. For a moment my father watched the man. He worked slowly, deliberately, sifting through the rubble. "You seem so calm," my father said. The man looked up. "Outside I'm philosophical," he said. "But inside I'm boiling." We drove on. At the big new house next to Mr. Wright's, a woman was now hauling an armful of clothing out to her Winnebago. A man came out of the house. He, too, had an armful of clothing that he dropped inside the door of the Winnebago. My father stopped the car. He knew them. They'd just moved here from New Jersey. "You folks okay?" he asked. "We're fine," the woman siad. "Physically, anyway." "How's the house?" "Lost a chimney," the man said. "And a few windows." My father nodded at the piles of clothing in the Winnebago. "You going out to do laundry?" The woman shook her head. "We're packing," she said. "We're getting out of here. Just as soon as the highways clear, we'll be gone. We're leaving. Leaving California. Are you staying?" My father looked surprised. "Of course," he said. "Right here on this mountain?" "Of course." They stared, neither understanding how the other could even think of doing what he was doing. Mr. Wright's chickens were scratching around the yard. They seemed to be able to take care of themselves. We parked near the crack where the road had split apart. Two men with tape measures were on opposite sides, and a woman was standing inside the gap jotting notes on a clipboard. On the pavement right next to the edge of the gash sat a thermos and a steaming cup of coffee. On the road they had spray-painted circles and lines with fluorescent paint and planted little red flags on stakes. They certainly hadn't wasted any time getting here and getting started. "It's bigger than yesterday," I said to my father. The woman looked up at me. "It is? How much?" I studied it for a moment. "About half a foot," I said. "Wider? Or deeper?" "Wider. I can't really tell how deep it is." She made a note on her clipboard and asked, "When did you first see it?" "Just a few minutes after the quake." "Before the first aftershock?" "Um... after." "Before the second big one?" "I'm not sure how big it was." "There was a big aftershock -- five point nine -- about five minutes after the quake and another -- five point two -- about a half hour later." During the first aftershock, Jon and I had been sitting next to the house, wondering what to do. During the second one, we had been running to the fire station. "I saw it after the first one, before the second one. How big was the earthquake?" "We're calling it six point nine. But it might have been higher. We don't know yet." Josh asked, "Are you a geologist?" "Yes." "Is this the fault line?" I asked. Mr. Perkins had explained about faults, where two sides of an earthquake slip in opposite directions. The woman shook her head. "There's no offset," she said. "Huh?" I said. Immediately I felt embarrassed for sounding so stupid. Mr. Perkins would say Huh is a sound made by cattle. We are not cattle here, Justin. The geologist didn't seem to mind. "If it was a fault line, one side of the road wouldn't line up with the other. These two sides line up perfectly." "Then what is it?" "It's more like the separation at the top of a landslide, but that doesn't make sense either because the downhill side of the crack is slightly higher than the uphill side. Landslides don't go up. And there's no armchair scar." "Huh? I mean -- what?" "A landslide leaves a scar on a hill that looks like an armchair. And we don't have that here." She seemed used to explaining things -- and seemed to enjoy it. She continued: "The fact is, we don't know what this crack is, and there's more cracks around here, too. I need to measure them and map them before the highway department comes along and fills them up. Then I'll look at the data and see if I can figure out what's going on." "Is it safe, standing in there?" "Oh, sure. If anything, it will get wider. Like you saw. Of course, maybe I shouldn't be so confident since I just told you I don't know why this fissure is here in the first place." Someone had laid a board like a footbridge over the gap. We passed over it and walked toward our house. Standing in our driveway was Chris. And Greta! Greta came bounding up the driveway to greet us. Her fur was full of foxtails and stick-me-tights, but otherwise she was no worse for wear. Jon grabbed her around the neck. Greta licked him and curled around and beat him with her wagging tail. I wondered where she had spent the night. Even more, I wondered what she had sensed that made her whine and go trotting out of the house -- leading us behind her -- just two minutes before the earthquake struck. Josh got on his knees and with his fingers started combing and picking at Greta's fur. "I wish I could give you some M&M's girl," he said. Greta didn't need chocolate. She was simply glad to be back. As he groomed Greta, Josh stole glances at Chris. He seemed wary. Chris, in turn, nodded a greeting -- which made Josh look away. I'd told Chris a few things about Josh -- that he was going to visit me, that he was an old friend. I wondered what he was thinking. "Chris," I asked, "where'd you find Greta?" "I saw her going by me house this morning." He looked down and toed the ground with one shoe. He was a little shy. "So I ran outside -- I mean, I thought maybe you were -- I mean, I just happened to come out looking for the newspaper -- but you weren't there -- but I guess you know that -- anyway, she came up to me and wagged her tail and seemed to want me to follow her, so I did. So here she is. I hope -- uh -- I mean, do you mind that I came over to your house?" "Of course not. I'm glad. That is, I just happened to -- you know -- just happened to want you to do that." Chris stepped over to Josh, who was still kneeling by the dog. "Uh... Josh?" He remained on his knees. He looked up at him cautiously. "I -- uh -- I mean I just happen to have -- uh -- " He held out his hand. "Would you like this?" On his palm was a somewhat mangled -- but still wrapped -- Hershey's bar. I'd told him about that aspect of Josh, too. Josh stood up. Without a word, looking slightly afraid, slightly guilty, slightly embarrassed, he took the Hershey's Bar. He opened the wrapping and broke off one square and put it in his mouth. He broke off another square, started to offer it to Greta, then -- catching himself -- pulled it back and ate it himself. Greta looked disappointed. Chris turned to me. "So -- what's new?" I smiled. It felt good to smile. "Everything," I said. "And yet somehow, some things are still the same." And the things that were the same were making me smile. It felt good to be alive. Good to have Greta. Good to have my father back. Good to be standing in the warm morning sun. But a glance at the propane tank lying on its side reminded me that not everything in my world was in suck good repair. My father had already gone into the house. Chris said goodbye and headed for home. I followed my father toward the house. Behind me I Karen asking Josh, "Does their TV work?" I found my father staring at the mess in the kitchen. Jon asked a question that may have seemed strange, but there was a good reason: "Will the raccoons come back?" "Maybe they already have," my father said. He knew what Jon was thinking. "From the looks of the kitchen, there's no way to tell." We used to feed the raccoons from the kitchen window. They'd climb up a redwood tree and out on a limp to get to the windowsill. Once, we'd left the window open a crack, and the coons had worked it open during the night. They ransacked the place. They tore open a bag of cornmeal, bit through a plastic two-liter bottle of root beer that dribbled all over the floor, broke a honey jar, stole a bag of granola, and left sticky footprints on the counter. Greta had slept right through it. She never barked. We spent the morning working on the house. My father and Karen cleaned out the kitchen with a wheelbarrow. They filled six garbage bags, which I held open while Jon was attached to my pants pocket. Then we swept and mopped. And mopped. And mopped. No matter how many times we mopped, the floor was still sticky. My father made some changes to the plumbing so that we could get water from a hose faucet outside the garage. It came murky out of the tap. In one of the buckets that my father filled, a live tadpole was swimming around. Dead insects spurted into another. "Don't drink it," he said. Our water came from a cooperative water system. That is, each homeowner helped repair the pipes and maintain everything. The filter, my father said, was broken. He'd hiked up to check. We were sucking new untreated water. And that little dam had failed. The reservoir was nearly empty. I picked up stuff from my room. Josh helped. I set my dresser on its feet and stuffed the drawers back inside. My clothes were covered with slivers of broken window glass. Under the bed Josh found two AA batteries -- and his face lit up. "Oh, wow! Could I like borrow these?" Sigh. What could I say? "Sure, Josh." On went the headphones. Jon detached himself from me long enough to gather all his stuffies and line them up on a shelf. With Josh I took the bedspreads outside and shook them out. The little shards of glass still clung to the fabric. We found the linen trunk under a pile of clothes in the closet and pulled out clean bedcovers. I repotted some plants that had jumped to the floor. I cleaned the bathroom. The door of the medicine cabinet had burst open, and everything had dropped into the sink. My father salvaged a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise. With a can of tuna, that was lunch. He's saved a bunch of other cans, too, though the outsides were covered with goo. After lunch, my father said he had to find a working telephone. He said he might as well take Karen and Josh to the airport -- if he could get through -- and use the phone there. "No," Josh said. We all stared at him. "I'm not ready to go home," Josh said. He was still wearing headphones. "I need -- I want -- I mean -- Mother, you go." "Josh. I can't allow -- " "Mother, this is totally important. I want to -- you know -- see this. I've never seen an earthquake before. This is history, what's happening here. It's on television." He'd put it in words his mother could understand. I would have preferred that Josh wanted to stay to see more of me. Things had been seeming rather tentative since last night. At least, I told myself, if he wants to stay, he must be feeling somewhat comfortable with me. Chris had helped. His Hershey's Bar had made a difference. Josh was a little strange about chocolate. And I liked him for his strangeness. Chris in his gently way had known just how to get to him. I wondered if he knew how to get to me, too. And just how do you get to me, anyway? Did Chris know something about me that I didn't know? Maybe it was Greta. He used the dog to get to me. Was I that simple? Anyway, I liked him. Just happened to. Karen was concerned that Josh would be in the way of my father with all the work the needed to be done, but my father said he could use an extra pair of hands. Eventually, Karen agreed to fly back without him. Josh could stay through the rest of the week. I still wasn't sure where I stood with Josh. It had been a tumultuous visit so far in more ways than one. Nobody had asked if I wanted him to stay. So I asked myself. And the answer was Yes. I wanted his company. Headphones and all. |