California: A Novel (11 page)

H
ours into their journey, Frida remembered something her mother had told her when she was a teenager. “I felt so confident when I was pregnant with you,” Hilda had said. “And then it happened again, with Micah.” She’d gone on to describe a peculiar peace that descended upon her with each pregnancy. As if, along with the necessary hormones and the double volume of blood swimming through her veins, a mother-to-be produced a reserve of courage for the life to come. Even naïveté could have a purpose. It was a survival skill, the same one that made a woman forget the pain of childbirth soon after it happened, so that she’d be willing to do it again someday. The species had to continue, didn’t it?

Maybe Frida was feeling what Hilda had described. How else to explain how easily she pushed through these foreign woods, as if she would never be afraid again. She gave a secret nod to the coyote, hoped he’d eaten his kill and had taken a long nap after she’d run from him. Frida hadn’t told Cal about the coyote, and she wasn’t planning to. She deserved another secret from him. It evened the score.

At dusk they tucked themselves into what must have been a campsite for August and his carriage. It was a clearing just big enough to set up a tent and let the mare rest, drink water from one of the many nearby streams, maybe eat a bucket of oats. Was that what mules ate? Frida had wondered before where August had procured his animal, and if it slept in a stable somewhere, if it was offered a modicum of comfort and safety after each journey. Maybe Frida would finally find out.

Cal made a small fire while Frida unpacked their bedding and pulled out provisions for dinner. At the bottom of her backpack, rolled in a sweatshirt, nestled the turkey baster. She’d nearly forgotten about it. Her contraband.

She’d pulled it from the other artifacts after Cal had told her everything, and after she’d banished him from the house. She’d told him she needed to be alone to think, that he didn’t deserve to share a home with her. Once she was alone, the plan was already sprouting in her mind: they would go find these people, and she’d offer the baster as a gift. This was how disparate civilizations were supposed to interact, wasn’t it?

She hadn’t told Cal about her idea. It was another secret she deserved.

She still had trouble believing that, for months, Cal had known about the insidious Spikes, had known that August traded with the people beyond them. Since hearing Bo’s story, Cal must have conjectured about August. He might be from the Spikes himself, or he might be their leader. Cal must have reconsidered the Millers’ death, too: Had these strangers wanted their friends dead? And why?

This is what hurt Frida the most: that her husband had bounced these ideas off the wall of his mind like the only child he was—alone, without anyone’s input. He’d played with that tennis ball by himself, and he’d scuffed the same place on the wall again and again without any progress or relief. He’d acted as if Frida weren’t there to help, or as if he wished she weren’t.

They’d moved in together a few months after they began dating. It was a decrepit studio apartment in Hollywood, with a Murphy bed that came out of the wall. Their neighbors were either elderly or junkies, or both, always loitering out front or arguing with one another in the parking lot, and Frida and Cal would hole up in their place, lock the deadbolt, and tell each other about their lives.

Frida had told him how it felt to see her mother cry when Micah left for Plank. How she knew she’d never be enough for her parents. How neither of them expected much of her, how they believed her baking was silly—a stoner’s hobby—and how, secretly, she agreed with them.

And Cal had told her how he couldn’t stand to go back to Cleveland, even after they were allowing families of the deceased into the broken city, even though there was land that belonged to him. He didn’t have the guts, he said. There were the Plank Chronicles, too. She could have recited the names of the animals there, the chores he did, the classes he took. He told her of his desire to carry the school’s idealism into a world that maybe didn’t deserve it.

Even though she knew it was arrogant to think this made them different from any other couple falling in love, Frida had believed that what they’d shared was more than what other couples gave each other.

But, now, she realized how silly she had been. She understood that these confessions, these stories about the past, were a rite of passage for any couple, clichéd but crucial, necessary to their survival. If she’d been with other men before Cal—not random one-night stands, or ongoing trysts with deli busboys, but real relationships—she might have known this.

She would have understood, too, that all the talking in the world couldn’t give everything away, that a person was always capable of keeping secrets. It might have saved her from feeling betrayed by her husband here at the end of the world.

As twilight turned to night they ate beets and the remainder of their jerky in silence, the fire glowing orange between them, popping and hissing in that way that still delighted Frida, even after these two-plus years. She was relieved that she and Cal had been smart enough to travel during a gibbous moon so that it wouldn’t be inky dark once the flames were extinguished.

Frida remembered how undark it had always been in L.A., the sky the green-gray color of something miasmic until well after midnight. She wanted badly to know what that sky was like now, if there was enough electricity to ensure that the city would remain bright and wasteful. Sometimes she pictured Hilda and Dada venturing out into the night together; in her mind they held hands.

After dinner, Cal tied the remainder of their food to a tree branch and then wiggled into the sleeping bag. He didn’t ask her to join him; he had stopped requesting things of her since he’d suggested the stupid bulletproof vest. He probably wanted her to feel she was acting of her own volition, making her own choices, sharing in the difficult decisions of life. How thoughtful.

Frida didn’t even pretend to have other plans: she got into the sleeping bag with him. He was her only shelter, and she wanted to be near him. The sleeping bag reminded her of their days in the shed; its slippery fabric smelled like mildew and dirt. If she let herself relax against him, she could enjoy this, the outdoors, the open space. The moon above them was the white button of a sweater, tucked halfway closed.

“I can grab the flashlight,” Cal said. “If you want it.”

She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

“I have no idea.” She didn’t tell him that one moment she imagined pilgrim settlements and the next a high-tech world hidden in the brush: computer labs and electric toothbrushes, drivers texting from their hovercrafts. It was all so ridiculous, but in their Murphy bed in Hollywood she would have described each possibility to him in detail. She would have told him her biggest fear: that Bo had been fucking with him, that miles away there was nothing but more miles.

“They might kill us,” Cal said.

“If you really think that, why agree to the trip?”

“Because you’d hate me otherwise.”

His voice had turned hoarse, and Frida understood he was laying himself bare, making up for lost time, for past lies.

“I just want you to be prepared,” he said.

“What? Prepared to die?”

He grabbed her leg under the covers. “No. But you need to remember that not everyone loves you immediately.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“They don’t
want
us there, Frida.”

“I need to be told that to my face.”

“I know,” he said. And then, after a moment: “Remember when we would go walking in your parents’ neighborhood?”

Frida nodded. Cal knew she’d been ruminating on their courtship, on their young love. Either he could read her mind, or she was hopelessly predictable. Or both.

“Of course I remember,” she said. They would go there to walk, because their own neighborhood was unsafe and ugly.

“I miss that,” he said.

Frida nodded. They had only just moved into their apartment, and she’d missed her parents’ house, her parents. It was her first time away from them, as pathetic as that was. It had been Cal who initially suggested they head there for a stroll. They’d ride their bikes over so as not to waste gas and walk along the old familiar streets. “It’ll make you feel better,” Cal had told her, as if he didn’t mind how dramatic she was being; they lived only twenty minutes away from the neighborhood she’d grown up in, and she was acting like they’d moved to the moon.

“Hard to believe those walks happened,” Frida said to Cal now. “And here we are.”

“It doesn’t seem all that different.”

Frida didn’t answer because this was the root of the problem. Cal didn’t feel any different—about her, about life—as he had all those years ago. For him, L.A. was the same as here. He’d been away from home since he was eighteen, and so everything was foreign, everything took some getting used to. She understood. Almost.

Frida was about to say good night, even though she was far from tired, when she felt Cal move closer to her.

They kissed, and he pushed himself against her, undoing the button of her jeans. She could feel by how desperately his tongue sought her own that he was afraid. Not of the night nor of the wildlife that probably surrounded them, eyes glowing yellow in the darkness beyond. It was tomorrow that frightened him. If these strange people welcomed them into their world, their lives would change. Again. Cal was trying to hold on to something. He was trying to hold on to her.

The next day was unseasonably warm. Frida could tell it would be hot before the sun had finished rising, and so she hadn’t used any of their drinking water to wash up, even though her crotch smelled like manure. How sexy. She would be prudent with their drinking water, she told herself, she would squelch her vanity and her squeamishness. They would need water for the final leg of their trek, when they were tired and their mouths were sticky-dry, and Frida would be prepared. She could have bathed in a nearby stream if they weren’t so eager to get going. Cal said there’d be more streams and bathing sources along the way, they were in a floodplain, after all, but she knew neither of them would want to stop.

Five hours into the trek, the dense forest cloaked the sounds of trickling water. The path was difficult and uneven, but Cal kept telling her they would keep east, no matter what. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to cross any dangerous rivers, though here it was dank and still, and Frida wanted badly to dip her toes and dunk her head in water cold enough to turn her numb.

Finally, the woods gave way to a large field, carpeted with goldenrod and aglow with sunlight. Frida grinned. What a relief to be out of the forest! She could actually breathe.

“At last,” she said, but Cal was quiet.

“What is it?” she asked, and he pointed into the distance.

She followed the line of his finger.

She’d been so enamored with the change in the landscape that she hadn’t noticed the medium-sized school bus parked at the other end of the field, its yellow face yellower than the goldenrod.

“Look at that,” Cal said, a smile breaking across his face.

Yellow. That unmistakable color. You’d think a world that was running out of oil, a land extinct of mountain lions and swordfish, would have also depleted resources of yellow dye. But no.

As Cal and Frida got closer, they saw that this bus wasn’t like the abandoned bathtub—aside from a cracked taillight, it was in good condition, and it must have been used as a vehicle, as a transporter of people, not too long ago. It bore a fine layer of dirt and grit, and there was no license plate or any other identifying information on it. On the back were printed the familiar instructions:
STOP WHEN RED LIGHTS FLASH
.

“Whose is this?” Frida asked.

“I wish I knew,” Cal said.

She wanted to get inside it, but the accordion door was locked, and Cal didn’t want to break in. “We don’t want to give anyone a reason to hurt us,” he said.

It was a good point. Besides, when Cal had given her a boost to peer into its windows, she saw that there was nothing inside: just rows of green-vinyl seats, waiting to be useful.

“It’s really getting warm now,” Cal said. He put a hand to the bus’s side and removed it quickly. “We’d better keep moving.”

By the time they saw the first Spike, rising sharp beyond the meadow they were crossing, Frida’s shirt was heavy with sweat, and there wasn’t much water in either canteen. They needed to save whatever little was left, Cal said, in case they were turned away.

From afar, the Spike was less ominous than Frida had imagined. At this distance, its surface glistened smooth in the sun, inoffensive as a sculpture in front of a bank. She had assumed, when she saw the first one, that she might feel an abrupt shock at its presence. She had pictured herself gasping or perhaps holding a hand over her eyes, her mouth falling open. But there it was, its existence undeniable, and it was immediately old news. She had longed to feel something stronger.

But then they kept going, up a small hill. Their journey had been on such flat land that it felt strange to be ascending. Exhilarating, even.

“Holy shit,” Cal said.

Here, at this slight altitude, they had a better view of what lay beyond. It looked like the first Spike was leading the others. Frida counted twenty, and there were many more. They reminded Frida of the wind turbines east of the Bay Area: nonhuman structures that seemed, nevertheless, to possess consciousness and judgment. As if they were watching you.

“They’re real,” Frida said.

“Did you doubt it?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Bo never could tell a good story.”

That was true. A man with no past has little to narrate.

“Let’s go see them,” she said, and she broke into a run.

She felt as she had yesterday: brave and invincible, her body a machine whose only purpose was to follow her commands. The ground was uneven beneath her feet, and she skipped nimbly around rocks, asters, more goldenrod, a brown snake. She was getting closer to the Spikes, to whoever had built them. She kept running.