Drought (7 page)

‘Who knows?' said Santos. ‘I guess they don't like anybody who's not as dumb as they are.'

Martin heard three or four more knocking sounds as the boys continued throwing rocks, and then he heard a smash, as a front window was broken. Immediately, he stood up, dropped his folder on the verandah steps, and ran around the side of the house. Out on the sidewalk there were five Hispanic boys, about fifteen or sixteen years old, as well as two young girls in short sparkly shorts. Two of the boys were circling around and around on bicycles while the other three were collecting up lumps of concrete from the curb.

Martin said nothing, but stormed toward the nearest and the biggest of the boys, an overweight kid in a green T-shirt and Hawaiian-style shorts with palm trees on them. The boy lifted his right arm as if he were going to throw a rock at him, but Martin was advancing on him so fast and with such determination that he staggered backward and tripped over the curb, landing on his backside in the road.

‘
Don't hit me
!' he screamed, but Martin grabbed hold of his arm and heaved him back on to his feet. Then he seized his podgy thigh, as well as his arm, lifting him clear off the ground. He swung him forward, and then back, and then threw him directly into the dried-up flannel-bush hedge that separated the Murillo's property from the house next door. The boy screamed again, and struggled his way out of the hedge, his arms and legs covered in criss-cross lacerations. The other boys immediately dropped their lumps of concrete and started to back away, and the two cyclists pedaled off as fast as they could.

The girls stayed where they were on the opposite side of the street, holding hands and nervously laughing, unsure of what to do, but then Martin began to walk briskly toward the other boys and they both shrieked and ran away.

‘Look at me, you
mamon
!' protested the boy he had thrown into the hedge. ‘I'm all over scratches! I'm going to call the cops on you, man! I'm going to have you arrested, man – assault and battery!'

‘You just do that,' said Martin. ‘But if I catch you or any of your sorry-ass friends around here again, tossing rocks, I'm going to be guilty of something much worse than throwing you into a hedge. In fact, you'll be
begging
me to throw you into a hedge.'

He stayed in front of the house with his arms folded while the boy limped away down the street. He didn't really know if he made a mistake, chasing the boys away like that. There was every likelihood that when he had left, they would return to harass the Murillos even more. But it simply wasn't in his nature to stand by while defenseless people were being attacked. He had suffered too much in that jail in Kabul to tolerate bullies.

He checked the front of the house. One of the lumps of concrete had left a large hole in the middle of the kitchen window and it would have to be temporarily patched up. Like Esmeralda, the Murillos probably had no possessions of any value, apart from their plasma TV, but in this neighborhood anybody would take anything if it wasn't nailed down.

He returned to the backyard, where the family looked at him with almost no interest at all. They were all too hot and thirsty to care about vandalism.

‘So … what happened?' said Santos.

‘I chased them away for you, Santos. But they've broken your kitchen window.'

‘That's OK. I have a friend who mends windows. He won't charge us too much.'

Martin picked up his notes and checked his wristwatch. If he didn't leave now, he was going to be late for his next appointment.

‘Did you ever think about relocating?' he asked.

‘For sure. Many times. But how could we afford it? And where would we go? Mind you, if this drought goes on much longer, maybe we will have to. Maybe we will have to go back and live where the Yuhaviatam used to live, even before they found the Arrowhead Springs.'

‘Oh, yes? And where was that?'

Santos sucked on his stogie and then took it out of his mouth and stared at it, as if it held the answer to everything.

‘I shouldn't tell you this,' he said.

‘OK, then don't. I don't want you letting any tribal cats out of the bag.'

‘No,' said Santos. ‘What you did for us today has proved that you are one of the people, one of the Wa'am. You do not have to be born one of the people to become one.'

‘Forget it, Santos. I just did what anybody else would have done. Don't make me out to be some kind of hero, because that's the one thing I'm not.'

Santos continued as if he hadn't heard him. ‘My grandfather told me this, and it was told to him by
his
grandfather, who was actually there, when he was a boy. When my people first came out of the Mojave Desert, seeking a new place to live, they found a sheltered valley in what we now call the Joshua Tree National Park. When they arrived there, they made camp. One of their girl children went missing, and her mother was wailing and crying. But the girl soon reappeared, and showed the people that she had discovered the entrance to a hidden cave. Inside the cave was a huge underground lake, of the purest water. They named it the Lost Girl Lake.'

‘Never heard of it,' said Martin.

‘Well, you wouldn't, because most of the Wa'am wanted to continue the journey west. Their shamans had told them that the Great Spirit had made them a sign, a giant arrowhead on the side of a mountain, which would point to the place where they were supposed to settle, and they weren't going to be satisfied until they had found it. But … a few of them decided to stay at Lost Girl Lake and start a small settlement there, including my great-great-grandfather. The valley was sheltered and there was plenty of game and seeds and prickly pears to eat and of course there was always fresh water. I don't know for sure if it's true, but my grandfather told me that there were some years when the Arrowhead Springs almost ran dry, but the Lost Girl Lake never did.'

‘So what happened? There's no settlement there now, is there? Like I say, I never even heard of it.'

Santos sucked at his stogie and shook his head. ‘They lived there maybe five or six years, difficult to say. Not too long, anyhow. But then a party of militia came across them, more by accident than anything. They raped the women and then they shot them all. Only my great-grandfather and another man called Broad Face managed to escape, because they were out hunting for deer when it happened. My grandfather and Broad Face left Lost Girl Lake and came to join the rest of their people here in San Bernardino. They never spoke of Lost Girl Lake again, not only because of their grief, but because they believed that they had been punished by the Great Spirit by not following his direction to settle at Arrowhead. But … the lake is still there, even though most of the Yuhaviatam have forgotten it, and no white man has ever found it.'

‘Have
you
ever been there?' Martin asked him.

‘Once,' said Santos. His dull gray eyes widened, and seemed to grow brighter. ‘Before I died, I was going to tell my grandchildren where it is, but children these days … they are no longer dutiful, like they used to be. They don't care about the old ways. Not only that, I don't have too long.'

‘What's wrong with you, Santos?'

‘Prostate. Too late to do anything about it now. I got maybe a year if I'm lucky.'

‘Hey, I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. If the Great Spirit thinks that it's time for me to go, there's nothing that I can do about it. I have been waiting for a long time to find a man I trust, so that I could share my secret. Somehow I think that today is the time, Wasicu, and that you are the man.'

‘I'm flattered,' said Martin. ‘I don't have to tell you that I won't be trumpeting this particular piece of information from the rooftops. It stays with me.'

Santos reached out and took hold of Martin's hand. His fingers were leathery and claw-like, with large silver rings on every one, and he clutched Martin so tightly that it hurt.

At that moment, Martin's cellphone played ‘Mandolin Rain'. He carefully pried himself free from Santos' grip and said, ‘Excuse me for just one moment, Santos.'

He could see that it was Peta calling him. ‘Peta? What's up? Everything OK?'

She was crying so much that she could hardly speak. ‘It's Tyler,' she told him.

‘S
o, how's my favorite persuader?' asked Governor Smiley, coming up behind her and leaning over the back of the white leather couch with his usual predatory grin.

‘Oh, Halford, you've arrived,' said Saskia, setting aside her laptop. ‘I thought I heard a helicopter. Where's Mona? Didn't you bring Mona with you?'

‘Mona's gone to one of her charity bashes. Don't ask me which one. Spoiled Trophy Wives For One-Eyed One-Legged Tibetan Orphans, something like that. Besides, why would I bring Mona with me when I'm meeting you?'

‘For a threesome?'

Halford came around the end of the couch and sat down very close to her. He was a big man – over six feet three, with broad shoulders and a large rough-cast head. He had tight curly gray hair and an overhanging brow, underneath which his eyes glittered like the eyes of a wolf lurking in a cave. He was wearing a white suit with an orange shirt, and orange alligator shoes, with no socks.

He wasn't particularly handsome, but he had almost palpable charisma, which could make the backs of women's necks prickle, and forget what they were going to say next. One woman delegate from San Diego confessed that after Halford had sat next to her all evening during a fund-raising dinner, her gusset had been soaking. ‘He gives off pheromones like some kind of funky animal.'

Saskia, however, had known him for a long time, and although she was still aware of how virile he was, she also knew what a self-serving, blustering, untrustworthy man he really was. He even had his own way to describe lying to his electorate: he called it ‘telling the creative truth'.

Saskia herself was wearing a short Zuhair Murad dress in a slightly paler orange than Halford's shirt. Apart from being short it was very low cut and he stared into her cleavage and never raised his eyes once.

‘Mona?' he said. ‘Mona wouldn't go for a threesome. She's much too possessive. She believes in all this “to have and to hold, till death us do part” stuff.'

‘You don't regret marrying her, do you, Halford?'

‘I don't regret marrying her money. I just wish that she hadn't come along with it.'

Saskia smiled and shook her head. ‘If it hadn't have been for Mona, you never would have made Governor, you know that. Everything you want in life has its price, and Mona was yours. Now, what are you going to say to the good people of San Bernardino about the drought situation?'

‘Have you eaten?' asked Halford.

‘Yes, I have. Tuna salad. I don't recommend it.'

‘Then how about a drink? I could really use a drink.' He looked around the lounge and spotted a waiter in a yellow coat talking to one of the golf club members. Saskia didn't know how he caught the waiter's eye because he didn't even raise a finger, but the waiter immediately saw him looking toward him and excused himself to the man he was talking to. He came hurrying over and said, ‘Yes, your honor, what can I get you?'

‘Bring me a double Knob Creek on the rocks, would you, and this desirable lady will have a glass of Krug.'

‘Well?' asked Saskia, when he had gone.

‘What am I going to say to the good people of San Bernardino? I'm going to be straight with them.'

‘That'll be a first.'

‘Come on, Saskia, they're dumb but they're not stupid. They already know that we're suffering the worst nationwide drought since records began, so there's no point in trying to hide that from them, is there? What they
don't
know is that it's a hell of a lot more serious than we've been telling them, and it's not just the lack of rainfall that's to blame.'

Saskia raised one eyebrow. ‘Don't tell me you're going to admit that we've been turning a blind eye to decades of chronic mismanagement and underinvestment in the water supply business, and right now the infrastructure is so darn rotten that our pipes are leaking more water than is actually reaching people's homes?'

‘God, Saskia, you're such a goddamned lawyer. No, I'm not exactly going to put it like that.'

‘Don't tell me you're going to warn them that the little water that
is
getting through is five times more polluted than it's ever been? Or that the water in at least nineteen cities in California is pretty much poisonous? Did you see the latest tests from the water department? Every glass of water you drink in California contains agricultural pesticides and toxic chemicals from factories and mines, not to mention untreated domestic sewage.'

‘I'm not exactly going to say that, either.'

Saskia smiled. ‘I didn't think you would, Halford, not for a moment. You'll tell them one of your creative truths, won't you? Just like the creative truth I've been telling the county departments about your wonderfully egalitarian scheme for rationing water neighborhood by neighborhood.'

‘That's your job, Saskia. That's why I appointed you. Governing a state like California involves a whole lot more than looking after people's welfare. Now and then, God gets pissed with us, for one reason or another, and He shakes us up with an earthquake, or brings us a three-year dry spell, like He has now. When that happens, and it's simply beyond our capabilities to supply everybody with all the vital services they need, we have to keep people calm, and optimistic. We have to make it clear to them that we're doing everything we can, but most of all we have to make them understand that it's not our fault. I mean, whose fault was Hurricane Katrina?'

The waiter brought them their drinks, as well as a bowl of wasabi nuts and a selection of cheese straws. Halford immediately tipped out a handful of nuts and then clapped them into his mouth. ‘Haven't eaten since breakfast, and that was only muesli. Mona's got me on this goddamned health regime. I mean, do
you
think I've put on weight?'