California: A Novel (12 page)

Her lungs were all right at first, and then they began to struggle.
Stop, stop,
they begged. She slowed. The Spikes were still far away.

She was bent over, gasping for breath, by the time Cal caught up with her.

“Please,” he said, and put a hand on her back. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

When she was breathing normally, he took her hand, and they walked forward. Cal had once told her that the act that takes longer to achieve is often the more valuable one. The dinner cooked from scratch, the dress stitched by hand. The march into the unknown.

The closer they got, the more the Spikes resembled what Bo had described: they were at least fifteen feet tall, sometimes twenty or thirty, and each one was unique. They seemed to be made of metal, or at least pieces of them were, because they reflected the sunlight. They glinted in some places, maybe even sparkled. Some curved over like dying flowers, while others shot straight out of the ground—Frida had no idea how they were supported. They weren’t smooth, as she had first thought, but bulky, uneven, and rough. She thought of the word
corrugated.

The first one they saw up close was wrapped in chain-link fence and barbed wire, and it held all kinds of junk: a car bumper; a child’s easel; an old plastic bottle, sinking into itself like a rotted bell pepper; and a walker for the elderly, tennis balls still stuck to its feet, gray instead of Day-Glo. The Spikes weren’t spaced evenly apart as Frida had first assumed, and she thought she could see them inching closer and closer together the farther they walked. Did these beasts form a wall, a maze? How did anyone get out, let alone in?

“Are you sure you don’t want to turn around?” Cal whispered.

“Of course I’m sure.”

She knew what August had said, that the people who had built these things weren’t afraid to use violence, but she nonetheless had the urge to keep going. The Spikes were ominous, casting shadows, their tips sharp, their edges serrated, but they were also beautiful. They changed the landscape, rendered it unfamiliar, even as they served their first purpose of protection from outsiders. She and Cal had ventured onto an unfamiliar planet, into an unidentified galaxy. Or they themselves had shrunk; they were ants walking among blades of grass.

Cal was holding her close, as if she might slide her bare hands across their barbed surfaces and perforate herself.

“I’m not stupid,” she said. “Or fragile.”

He smiled. “But you are pregnant.”

If she was honest with herself, she could admit that Cal’s gesture of protection turned her on a little. She had a passing vision of them getting naked right here, in the shadows of these terrible, stunning things. The Spikes were so breathtaking, somebody should.

Beneath the rusted wire of the next one, Frida saw junk she hadn’t thought about in years: a lawn mower, a car battery, a stapler, a New Hampshire license plate,
LIVE FREE OR DIE
crimped and rusted along the last word.
Die.

She wondered most at the stapler. Why that, of all objects? It was so small and ineffectual, but it could have been made into something else. A doorstop even, or a blunt object to throw at enemies. Its placement suggested wealth or profligacy, and, she had to admit, that was turning her on, too. In the last few years she had learned to sew up holes in her socks and underwear—
to darn,
for God’s sake—and she was itching to waste something. Maybe these people understood that need and celebrated it.

She squeezed Cal’s hand, and he squeezed back. She could tell he felt the same excitement, because he pulled her forward. “Come on,” he said, his voice louder.

The Spikes reminded Frida a little of the Watts Towers: the sculptured junk, the imperfections. She had been only once, but Micah had begun going there regularly after he’d graduated from Plank. After some prodding on her part, he’d admitted that he went with friends from the Group. This was early on, before the Group had even hijacked the fund-raiser.

They stepped around another Spike. This one looked like it had been covered in papier-mâché before being wrapped with wire. It resembled an unfinished and nefarious piñata—instead of candies it would spill empty, yeasty wine bottles, splintering table legs, an old espresso machine. Once, in L.A., Frida had seen a barista apply red lipstick using the reflective surface of her coffee machine as a mirror. It had made Frida’s day, the way objects could be remade, given a new and unexpected purpose.

“Micah would have loved these,” she said.

Cal raised an eyebrow, and she knew she couldn’t say what else she was thinking: that the Spikes were magnificent, proof that the people who had built them were magnificent, creative and daring, and threatening, too. But it was only a taste of threat, a dash of it, for flavor. She knew if she told all this to Cal, he’d say she was being naïve again, that she had too much faith in people and in their capacity for joy and art.

They kept walking. There was no doubt they’d gone farther than Bo and Sandy had dared, for the walk became more mazelike and challenging, nothing like what Bo had described to Cal. A few Spikes had been built so close together, they were impassable, and Frida and Cal had to navigate around them, doubling back until they found a wider path. Frida was thankful each Spike was so specific, each one its own landmark; otherwise, they would have no way of knowing if they were moving forward, backward, or in circles.

“This is like a video game,” Cal said at one point.

“Like your mom ever let you play a video game,” Frida said.

When they hit another wall, six Spikes so close their necks intertwined like swans’, Frida felt her first pang of fear. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t. They might be stuck in here, she thought, panic winching her throat closed. How long did they have to walk? Would they ever get there? She shook the questions away, tried to play it cool as Cal pulled her left, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. She wanted to make him laugh, wanted to maintain a clear mind. There was an end to this maze. The trick was not to freak out. She kept looking to the ground, at the dead grass beneath her. The land was flat here. They could have been on an old soccer field. In the last hour, the entire world had begun to feel man-made, not just the Spikes. This should have made her hyper with expectation, but now she felt as Cal did: hesitant, suspicious.

She had just asked Cal for a sip of water from his canteen—screw the rationing; why hadn’t they followed that sound of water, a ways back?—when she heard a sound like knuckles cracking, like the twist of an old man’s spine. She stopped.

“What?” Cal whispered.

“Listen,” she said, and thought immediately of Micah, of his last word, which she had exiled from her vocabulary after his death. Cal must have noticed the word, too, because he had turned pale.

The sound again. Frida imagined someone, a man, hiding behind one of these many Spikes. He was cracking the knuckles on his other hand, one by one.

“Who’s there?” Cal called out. His voice was steady, and it gave Frida confidence.

“We’ve come for help,” she yelled, trying to sound as calm as he had.

Nothing. They waited. And waited.

A tightrope of anxiety strung itself sharp across Frida’s body. Her poor baby. This feeling, if it remained, would ruin him. He’d come out of her trembling.

Frida looked up. The Spike next to her was the tallest one yet, and at its top sat an orange traffic cone, bent over in defeat as if a big rig had run over it.

She was still looking at it, wondering if it was a signpost for these people, when she heard a whistle like a catcall, and a man stepped from behind a Spike a few feet away.

He was more of a boy. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and he was thin, small framed. Frida was shocked by how normal he looked; he didn’t wear a gown of feathers or chain mail or a silver space suit. He had on a dingy white T-shirt; the elastic around the neck was shot, so that it ruffled flaccid at his collarbone. Brown corduroys, the hems frayed. His sandals looked like they’d been made from tires.

“Go away,” he said. He carried a rifle, but he held it against his thigh, as if he had no intention or desire to use it.

Cal stepped forward and put out his hand slowly. “Please. My wife and I have come to find out who’s out here…We’ve settled so close to you.”

The man looked Cal up and down. He did not take his hand.

His hair was dark brown and pulled into a scraggly ponytail. His eyes, also brown, were clear and focused. There was nothing shifty or unpredictable about him, Frida realized.

“Go away,” he repeated.

“No,” Frida said. “Not until we get some help.”

He shook his head. “You need to leave. I can give you water, but that’s all.”

Frida put a hand to her chest. “That’s it?”

The man raised an eyebrow and turned to Cal. “What’s with the shirt?” he finally asked.

“Pussy is a kind of mushroom,” Frida said.

Cal blushed, and the man just looked confused.

Frida looked away from his face and to his hand, the one that was wrapped around the gun. It was calloused and dry, his fingernails caked with dirt. The man lifted his left hand to scratch his smooth cheek, and Frida saw that his fingertips were peeling, almost chapped.

Tattoos had been so common by the time they’d left L.A., Frida hadn’t noticed the ones on this stranger at first, but then they were all she could see. A single blue party balloon floated across the inside of his wrist, and what looked like an octopus tentacle, suction cups and all, peeked from his shirtsleeve. There was an old-fashioned anchor, too; it was no doubt ironic, this kid hadn’t been on a ship in his life.

The line of anxiety that had been strung so taut across her snapped; she thought she could feel her baby, falling from that uncomfortable balance, back into an easy sleep.

“We don’t want water,” Frida said.

“Look,” Cal said. He laughed. “I was almost about to say,
Take me to your leader,
but that makes me sound like some kind of alien invader.”

“Please,” Frida said. “We just want to meet you all and get some help.”

“Not going to happen,” the man said, shaking his head. Frida saw that his ponytail had been secured by one of those hair ties with two red plastic balls, as if he were a little girl.

“We believe in containment,” he said.

“So we’ve heard,” Frida said.

The man raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“We know August,” Cal said.

Recognition passed over the young man’s face, but he said nothing. He was holding the rifle tighter now, as if more conscious that the weapon was at his disposal.

Cal wasn’t giving up. “I’m Cal.” He put a hand on Frida’s back. “This is my wife.”

“My name is Frida.”

It was if she’d said,
Open sesame.
The young man looked up suddenly. “Frida?” He shook his head as if he were emerging from a cold pool of water.

“That’s me,” she said.

“Frida? That’s your name? Really?”

“Why does it matter?” Cal said. “You don’t know us.”

The young man bit his lip. “You better come with me.”

T
he kid’s name was Sailor. “That’s my real name,” he explained, after Frida asked if he’d been christened that by friends. She had gestured to his forearm, and Cal saw that it was tattooed with a solid black anchor fit for Popeye. Sailor shook his head, told her his parents had been whimsical people. “Child as art project, that kind of thing.”

Cal wouldn’t have noticed the tattoo if Frida hadn’t pointed it out. But she had probably recorded everything about Sailor; she probably liked his narrow shoulders and his nervous bravado and the way he just kept saying, “Follow me,” whenever Cal asked where they were headed. Frida was obviously smitten—she couldn’t hide it.

Or maybe she just felt protective of the kid, her maternal instinct kicking in. He looked so young. Sailor had told them he was twenty-two, but that seemed impossible. He reminded Cal of certain first-years at Plank who ate and ate and never gained an ounce, who had yet to grow chest hair or even a passable goatee. In other words, a Planker like Cal had been. He hadn’t been malnourished when he arrived for college, just young, boyish.

Cal was relieved to have a guide, at least. Someone who understood these Spikes and the labyrinth they formed, who wasn’t intimidated or enamored by them. The latter was Frida’s problem; she walked around each one with awe, as if the Spikes were brilliantly rather than sloppily constructed, as if they were any better than the découpage and found art projects his mother had done with her friends every other Tuesday night when he was a teenager.

Her
salon,
she’d called those get-togethers.

Cal was impressed with how mazelike the Spikes were, though: how they could confuse and terrorize a stranger, keep him out, force him to give up, go home. He longed to see the intricate route from above. He wondered if together the Spikes formed a beautiful design, like a crop circle. Or maybe a word.
Boo!
Or a phrase.
Crown of thorns.

The words had shot across his mind as if from Sailor’s rifle, catching him by surprise.
The crown of thorns that surrounds the city of God.

“What’s that?” Frida said.

He hadn’t meant to say the phrase aloud. If he remembered correctly, the quote was about Rome, about the shantytowns that encircled the city. He couldn’t recall who had said it.

“Pasolini,” Sailor said. He was walking just ahead of them and turned to smile.

How had this kid known that reference? Because he didn’t want to betray just how impressed he was, Cal simply nodded at Sailor and kept walking.

“What are you guys talking about?” Frida asked.

“Famous words by famous men,” Sailor said. “That’s all.”

He led them around another series of Spikes, and then another. For a moment it seemed they were doubling back unnecessarily, and then Cal realized they had done so to avoid a veritable castle wall of Spikes, built so close together their trunks kissed.

And then Sailor pointed to the ground and said, “Careful.”

Before them, in various places, pieces of glass protruded from the dirt and grass. Cal had read about places in Latin America where they lined walls with bottle shards to keep people from climbing over. These pieces of glass, which he and Frida tiptoed warily around, had clearly been placed for the same purpose: to slice people’s feet, to maim them or, at least, wreck their last pair of shoes.

Because this trail of glass required that they keep their eyes to the ground, Cal stopped walking and looked up. He wouldn’t follow the maze’s implicit rules just because he was afraid of a torn-up heel. These people, they didn’t want him to take stock of location, perspective. Well, he would.

The sky was blue but hazy in the way it got when it was hot, and only one crimped ribbon of cloud interrupted the solid color.

From behind, Frida tapped his shoulder. “Go on,” she whispered. She thought he’d stopped because he was afraid. He kept moving.

Sailor seemed almost giddy as they reached the edge of the maze, and Cal wondered if anyone had ever done what he was about to do: bring outsiders inside. Sailor wore a stupid saggy grin on his face, like he’d just won a first-grade spelling bee. Cal could hear Frida behind him, her breath loud and shaky. She only breathed like that when she was nervous.

Cal trusted Sailor; the kid was obviously guileless, and he didn’t seem cunning enough to do them any harm that Cal wouldn’t see in time to prevent. But maybe Sailor was unknowingly leading them into danger. His compatriots might not agree with his choice to accept two more people. The only person who could have been talking about them was August, and Cal couldn’t imagine what August had said that made Sailor suddenly so welcoming. One second he’d been telling them to get lost, and the next they were the guests of honor. And it was Frida’s name that had been the magic password. Cal didn’t like that. He didn’t like that he didn’t like that. It meant, if he had to be honest with himself, that he didn’t trust his wife.

All at once, sudden as a hiccup, they reached the end of the labyrinth. Sailor had led them around one more Spike, and it was over. They were back on flat ground at the edge of a field. There were no trees in the distance—they must have been razed. Were it not for the Spikes behind them, it might feel like they were standing at the center of any large suburban parking lot, and maybe they were. Cal looked up once again at the wide-open sky and remembered his one and only trip to Cedar Point with his father, before the amusement park had been shut down. At the end of the day, his father had forgotten where they were parked, and they’d ridden the lot tram for forty-five minutes until they finally discovered the truck, tucked into a line of minivans. Now, Cal rubbed a foot along the grass before him. It was dry and striped with brown, the kind that sprouted like tinsel out of asphalt. If left to prosper, it could grow into a field. Cal shuffled at the grass, and sure enough, it gave way to a patch of concrete beneath.

“Don’t move,” Sailor said.

Across the field loomed a wooden platform. It was a lookout tower, the kind prison guards watched from, but rudimentary, as if it had been built in a rush. But it was certainly in use: at the top stood two figures, binoculars in front of their faces.

Sailor stepped forward and waved his arms, the one with the rifle in it a little lower and slower moving than the free arm. Frida laughed. She had probably noticed that the gun was too heavy for the poor kid. Cal winked at her.

Sailor began moving his arms in a choreographed sequence that must have meant something to his compatriots. He looked like a majorette, and Cal felt transported home, to the Midwest, with its flag girls, its chilly autumn evenings, and what felt like the whole world preparing for winter. But it wasn’t the whole world, because Frida didn’t have any of those memories; she’d once told him that they didn’t make those kinds of nights in California. Or those kinds of girls.

Cal watched as the men in the tower above them waved their arms back at Sailor. One of them reached behind his back, and Cal stepped in front of Frida. But the man had pulled out not a weapon, but a whistle, and he blew it three times, each note long and piercing.

“Does that mean ‘intruder’ or something?” Frida asked.

Sailor laughed. “Nah,” he said. “It means I’ve come back, with two strangers. He’s telling the others. But don’t worry, it’s not the panic whistle.”

Frida nodded. “I like you better when you’re forthcoming.”

Was she
flirting?

“Just wait till he sees you,” Sailor replied.

The whistle blew again, five quick bursts, and Sailor nodded, flung his arms up once more. “Follow me,” he said. He had turned official once again.

As they crossed the field—
A parking lot,
Cal told himself—Sailor moved his rifle so that he was holding it diagonally across his chest. This was probably how he was supposed to carry it; he’d get in trouble for letting down his guard, even if it was for Frida. Maybe she was their god.

Two men jumped from the bottom of the tower’s ladder. One was about Sailor’s age, Cal guessed, but broader in the shoulders and bearded. The other looked about forty. They wore ripped-up jeans and old T-shirts. The older guy’s had a picture of the Olympic rings.

All at once they were running at them, like soldiers.

“Hey now,” Cal said, and once more stepped in front of Frida.

“Be cool,” Sailor said. Cal didn’t know if the comment was directed at him or the others.

The Olympian put out a hand, covered in cuts, thumbnail black and warped. “Your bag.”

Cal turned and saw that Frida had already handed the rucksack to the other one. “I need it back,” he said.

“He’s just searching it,” Sailor said. “Relax.”

The Olympian actually said thank you when Cal handed over the backpack, which Cal appreciated. They could all be civil.

“You should also know,” Cal said, “I’m carrying a pistol.” He put up his arms immediately, so that it wasn’t perceived as a threat.

The Olympian nodded, and Cal pulled the gun from the back waist of his pants. Sailor took it with a smile. “I knew we could trust you.”

“What’s your name?” the Olympian asked. “I’m Peter.”

“Cal.” He grabbed for Frida’s hand. “This is Frida.”

“Frida!” Sailor repeated fiercely. Peter socked him in the shoulder.

The other man was named Dave. Cal was glad they didn’t all have cutesy names like Sailor. Dave had chosen to kneel and go through Frida’s rucksack item by item. Cal turned just as Dave was pulling Frida’s shirt out of the bag like a magician’s endless scarf. He shook it out and, satisfied that it didn’t hide any knives or bombs, tossed it to the ground.

“Come on,” Frida said. “Really?”

“Let’s not get too security guard on her, Dave,” Peter said.

Dave looked up at Peter and scowled. Unlike Sailor and Peter, he had shorn off his hair, and his scalp was pink beneath the blond bristle. What an idiot, Cal thought. Not even a hat.

Dave was rooting around deep in the rucksack, his brow furrowed. Cal imagined him as a former mechanic, diagnosing car parts.

“What is this?” Dave said.

Frida stepped forward. “Please, it’s meant as a gift.”

From where Cal stood, it looked like Dave had pulled out a discarded page from a magazine, wrinkled as a pirate’s map. It was just paper, but it was wrapped around something.

Frida looked at Cal, and then to Sailor. “Please don’t.”

Dave stood up as he unwrapped the paper. Cal saw it was old wrapping paper, shredded at its edges, from a Christmas long ago. Was it possible that he recognized those anthropomorphic gingerbread men with their demonic red eyes and meaty fingerless hands?

Cal turned to Frida. “What
is
that?”

“You don’t even know?” Sailor asked.

Frida tried to take the package out of Dave’s hand, but he stepped away from her.

“I told you,” she said. “It’s a gift. Please just leave it be.”

“If it’s a gift,” Dave said, “then I’m excited to open it.”

“Maybe it’s for you,” Sailor said to Cal, smiling.

Dave unfolded the paper and pulled out a turkey baster. “This?”

Frida nodded. “I don’t know who it’s for. It’s an offering. I guess.”

“Where’d that come from?” Cal said.

“One of my artifacts,” she said, under her breath.

“What are those things called again?” Sailor asked.

“It’s a turkey baster,” Cal said.

In another life, this would have been any other piece of kitchen equipment, though rarely used; his mother had only trotted theirs out on major holidays, and once, as part of his fine arts credit, she’d had him draw it, first in pencil, and then with charcoal. He didn’t remember owning one himself. And this one was new and fancy, its cylinder made of glass. It still had its tag.

In another life, Frida would not be in love with this object, but he could tell, by the heat that colored her neck pink, that it meant a lot to her. More than it should.

He imagined taking the baster from Dave and cracking the cylinder in two over his thigh.

“We’ve got one of these already in the kitchen,” Sailor said, taking the baster. He held it up to the sky. “But that one’s cloudy and made of plastic. This one’s a beaut!”

Peter took the baster from Sailor and handed it back to Dave. “Wrap it back up. Let her choose who to give it to.”

Dave folded the paper around the baster and shoved it along with her sweatshirt back into the rucksack. “We’ll keep these bags for the time being,” he said, and Cal was about to protest when he saw that Frida was merely nodding. She looked at the three men, then at the ground, once at the sky, and back at the Spikes. She was looking everywhere but at Cal.

All at once, he pitied her. His dear wife. When had things gotten so bad? He remembered something his father had once told him. “People get sad.” It was true. Maybe sadness was where they were all headed.

“Let’s go,” Peter said, and blew his whistle three more times, the same message as the first. After a pause, he blew it once more, quick and sharp. His whistle was a train station announcement, a grandfather clock, an emergency broadcast system.

Cal and Frida were led onward. As they passed the lookout tower, Sailor grabbed one of its wooden girders and spun around it as if it were a telephone pole and he were the star in a musical.

“Calm down,” Peter said.

“How can I?”

Dave grunted.

Past a few spindly trees, they reached what looked like a kiosk at a movie theater or a small visitors’ center. Cal was all at once back at Cedar Point, the line to buy tickets not as long as it should have been. He remembered the way his father had leaned into the windowed booth to give the uniformed woman cash for two tickets. On their way out, a different woman had stamped their hands with fluorescent ink that smelled of lemon cleaning spray. “So’s you can get back in,” she’d explained.

The windows of this kiosk were covered with foil, and he couldn’t see in. By the blisters in the paint and the vines crawling along the sides, it was clear that its original purpose had long been discarded.

“What used to be here?” Cal asked.