| Chapter 9 - The Deer |
| After my father returned from taking Karen to the airport, he started searching through the garage, which was as much of a mess as any other part of the house. Everything on the worktable and the storage shelves had tumbled down. He found our big camping tent and told me to help him set it up in the yard. "Aren't we going to sleep in the house?" "It's off the foundation," my father said. He was frowning with worry. "It's worse than it was last night. I don't know if it's safe." "It doesn't look that bad. You mean we might lose the house? My father shook his head. "We might have already lost it." "Then why were we cleaning it?" My father look surprised. "Because," he said, "we wanted to." Nobody had asked me if I wanted to clean a house that might be falling down anyway. When I thought about it, though, I was glad we had done it. It got my mind off the whole earthquake situation. But I wouldn't have scrubbed the bathroom so thoroughly if I'd known we might abandon it. Below us, new rocks were forming at that very moment. I felt a little aftershock through my shoes. They came every hour or so. Sometimes I though I might just be imagining that I felt something -- some slight vibration in my toes or, if I was sitting, in the seat of my pants. Probably, sometimes, it was my imagination. We were all pretty jumpy. One person would say, "Did you feel that?" And we'd all look around nervously. We set up the tent, unrolled pads, and spread out sleeping bags. Jon moved a few of his stuffies into the tent. I foud some clothes that had been buried away from the flying glass, loaned some to Josh, and we changed. Studying in the sideview mirror of the car, I looked at myself closely -- and noticed that I looked older. I was getting taller. I'd changed. Here I was blaming all our differences on Josh, but I had been growing up too. In clean clothes I felt fresh. We had a camp stove and folding chairs and a card table. I hung a Coleman lantern from the branch of a tree. It seemed as if we were living in Swiss Family Robinson -- salvaging our shipwreck and setting up a new life. I actually found myself looking forward to the evening. The worst was over -- or so I thought. We were together as a family -- plus Josh. I was operating on the theory that since Josh had wanted to stay, it meant we were still friends. He just had a funny way of showing it, staying shut up in his headphones. I liked camping. We would be under our wonderful redwood trees with our view of the sunset and the hills and the sea. I loved our mountai home -- even if it was only a tent. At night I saw flickering candlelight in the shed that was down the hill and across the road. I had to know who was in there. Jon was still clinging to me like a tick, but I managed to slip away when my father read him a story. Josh followed. He didn't ask where I was going or if he could come along. He simply came -- silently, in headphones. I clambered down the steep hillside and then ran across the road. A dirt driveway formed a circle around the shed. There was no way to hide. Cautiously, quietly, Josh right behind me, I walked to the dirty glass window and peered through. Inside were a man and woman. She was pregnant. She had beautiful tawny skin and shining eyes. The man was tall with the same dusky skin and a big nose. By the light of two candles they were sharing some apples and a loaf of bread. As far as I could see, it was their ony food. On the floor was a blanket spread over pine needles and grass. I walked back across the road. "Who are they?" Josh asked from behind me. "Homeless people," I said. "Why are we spying on them?" "I'm not spying on them. I just wanted to know who was there." "They've got like nothing. And she -- did you see her? She's totally pregnant." I'd seen the man before. Mornings, he stood outside the little grocery store down the road. Some days, a dozen men would be standing there. Men in pickup trucks would come by and hire them for the day to dig ditches or cut insulation or clean out manure or do some other job that nobody else wanted to do. We climbed back to out tent. It was crowed with the five of us. Jon insisted that I like down beside him. My father read story after after until finally Jon closed his eyes. When he was asleep, I whispered to my father what I had seen in the shed. "Can we help them?" I asked. "Let's talk to them in the morning," my father said. "Good." But morning, as it turned out, was a long time away. Sometime during the night I felt a nasty jolt. At first I though it was Jon kicking me in his sleep, but then I heard the train roaring up the canyon. I heard groans from the house as if it were saying Oh no, not again. Then something snapped -- the unmistakable sound of breaking wood. I sat up with a start. My father and Josh were sitting up, too. We got up. We each had flashlights. We shined them on the house and saw that in the aftershock the old part had broken away from the new. The addition seemed to be straight while the old section -- the part we had been living in -- sagged at an angle. My father held on to me. I held on to him. The house of our dreams had split in half. "I'm so sorry," Josh said as if it were his fault. "I'm glad we weren't sleeping in there," I said. Jon came stumbling out of the tent. "Make it stop," he said. "I wish I could," my father replied. I was angry. I wanted to be mad at somebody. Scream at some fool. Punch and kick and yell at some horrible person who had cause this to happen. But there was nobody to blame. I thought of my great-grandfather who had always cursed the mayor for the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Maybe, like me, he'd needed someone to blame. I looked out over the hills. The moon was smaller tonight. Waning. Usually the lights of scattered houses dotted the dark hillsides, but withough electricity the mountain was dark. Except for right below. Something was flickering in the old shed -- flames, licking the window. The shed was on fire! We slipped and slid down the hill. By the time we got to the shed, there was nothing we could do. A candle must have fallen into the bedding of pine needles and dry grass. The walls had caught like kindling. The man and the woman had disappeared. At that moment they were hiding somewhere in the woods. If they had owned any possesions, all were now lost in the flames. "I hope they aren't hurt." my father said. "Would you try calling them?" I was the only one in our family who knew any Spanish, and not much at that. "Donde estan?" I called out. Where are you? No answer. "Ask them if they're hurt." "Estan bien?" Are you all right? Josh knew the word for hurt. "Heridos?" he called. No answer from the woods. "They must be terrified. Tell them we want to help." "Deseamos ayudar!" In reply, there was only the screech of an owl and the crackle of the fire. In minutes, the shed had collasped in a shower of sparks. No fire truck ever arrived. The whole system had broken down. You were supposed to phone them, and then they were supposed to sound the siren to call the volunteer firefighters to the firehouse. We had no phones. And, I suppose, no electricity to power the siren. This was more like living in the year eighteen eighty-nine. Like the pioneers. Next, would we be making our own soap? The shed became a glowing pile of coals. It was surrounded by plain dirt -- the driveway -- so there was no danger of the fire spreading. We watched it anyway for what seemed like hours. "I wish we had marshmellows," Jon said. Finally, we returned to the tent. Tired as I was, it was hard going back to sleep. Everyone else dropped off. I lay awake. My nerves were on edge. One more aftershock and I'd go mad. I don't know how long I lay awake. Gradually I became aware of a scuffling sound. It came closer. I though it must be the man and woman from the shed. Maybe they were sneaking up on us. Maybe they wanted to rob us and kill us and steal our food. You can't lock a tent. I lay frozen with fear. I tried to tell myself that they had looked like gentle, loving people -- not killers. Maybe they were hurt. Maybe they were limping to the tent. I had to do something. Move, body. I sat up. I shined my flashlight through the mosquito netting window. I was nose to nose with a deer. A doe. She froze in my flashlight beam. For a moment, I stared into those big wet eyes. Then I switched off the light. In an instant, the doe had bolted. As she leaped, she struck a rope and shook the whole tent. Greta woke up and started barking. And now everyone else in the tent was awake. "Make it stop," Jon cried. "It's all right," I said. "It's only a deer. She was checking us out." It has come to this, I was thinking. We are as skittish as deer. And the dow was wishing us welcome. Welcome back to the natural world from which we once came. |