The Forge of God (40 page)

A tall middle-aged park ranger climbed onto the stage and stood before the microphone, raising the stand to her level. "Hello," she said, smiling.

The audience replied in kind, a low, warm murmur.

"My name—some of you know me already—is Elizabeth Rowell. There are about three hundred and fifty of us in the Yosemite now, and a few more coming in each day. I think we all know why we're here. We're all kind of surprised there aren't more here, but some of us understand that, too. This is my home, and I plan on staying
home.
" She thrust out her jaw and looked around the audience. "So do others, and not many people live here year-around, as I do. Those of you who have left your homes to come here, you're welcome to stay.

"We're awfully lucky. Looks like the weather is going to be warm. It may drizzle off and on, but there's not going to be much rain and no snow at all for a week or so, and all the passes are open. I just wanted to say that the park rules still apply, and we're all behaving as if things are normal. If you need help, we're fully staffed with rangers. Park police are on duty. We haven't had any trouble, and we don't expect any. You're good folks."

The man with the Coors box smiled and raised his can to that.

"Now, I am here basically to introduce folks. First, there's Jackie Sandoval. Some of you know her already. She's volunteered to be our spokesperson, sort of, tonight and for the rest of our stay. Jackie?"

A small, slender woman with long black hair and doll-like features came on stage. Rowell lowered the microphone for her.

"Hello," she said, and again the warm sound emanated from the crowd in the amphitheater. "We're here to celebrate, aren't we?" Silence. "I think we are. We're here to celebrate how far we've come, and to count our blessings. If what the experts tell us is true, we have three to four weeks to live in this wilderness, to appreciate the beauty and to think back on our lives. How many have had a chance for that kind of retrospective?

"We are a community—not just all of us here, but people everywhere. Some of us have stayed at home, and others have come here, perhaps because we recognize that all of Earth is our home. Each night, if we wish, if we all agree, we'll gather in the amphitheater and share our dinner, perhaps have people sing for us; we'll be a family. As Elizabeth said, all are welcome. I noticed some bikers camped at Sunnyside. They haven't caused any trouble, I've been told, and they are welcome. Maybe for once in our history we can all be together, and appreciate what we can share. Tonight, I've asked Mary and Tony Lampedusa to sing for us, and then there's going to be a dance at the Yosemite Village visitor center. I hope you'll come.

"First, there's a couple of announcements. We're pooling our books and videotapes and such at the Ahwanee to make a kind of library. Anybody who wants to contribute is welcome. The park service has chipped in a lot of books about Yosemite and the Sierras. I'm the librarian, so to speak, so talk to me if you want to read anything, or donate anything.

"Oh. We're also arranging for a music library. We have fifty portable optical disk players used for recorded park tours and about three hundred music disks. If you want to donate more, anything is appreciated. Now, here's Tony and Mary Lampedusa."

Edward sat with the half-full beer can between his knees and listened to the high, sweet folksinging. Minelli shook his head and wandered off before they were done. "See you at the dance," he whispered to Edward in passing.

The dance began slowly on the open-air wooden deck of the visitors' center. A ranger's powerful stereo system provided the music, mostly rock tunes from the eighties.

About half the people in the park were single. Some who weren't single acted as if they were, and a few arguments broke out among couples. Edward heard one man telling his wife, "Christ, you know I love you, but doesn't this make anything different? Aren't we all supposed to be together here?" The woman, shaking her head tearfully, was having none of that.

Minelli had no luck finding a partner. His appearance—short, on the edge of unkempt, his grin a little too manic—did not attract the fit, well—groomed single females. He glanced at Edward across the open-air pavilion and shrugged expressively, then pointed at him and held a hand out, thumbs up. Edward shook his head.

Everybody was on edge that night, which was only to be expected. Edward stood to one side, unwilling to approach a woman just yet, willing only to watch and evaluate.

The dance ended early. "Not a great dance," Minelli commented as they walked in the dark back to Camp Curry. They separated near the public showers to go to their separate tent cabins.

Edward was not ready for sleep, however. Flashlight in hand, he walked west along a trail and came to the Happy Isles, where he stood on a wood bridge and listened to the Merced. In the distance, he could hear Vernal and Nevada falls roaring with snowmelt. The river ran high on the bridge pilings, black as pitch in the deeps, dark blue-gray in turbulence.

He glanced up at the stars. Through the trees, just above Half Dome, the sky was twinkling again, tiny intense flashes of blue-green and red. Fascinated, he watched for several minutes, thinking, "It's not over out there. Looks like somebody's fighting." He tried to imagine the kind of war that might be fought in space, through the asteroids, but he couldn't. "I wish I could understand," he said. "I wish somebody would tell me what this is all about."

Suddenly, his whole body ached. He clenched his jaw and slammed his fist on the wooden railing, screaming wordlessly, kicking at a post until he collapsed on the wooden deck and clutched his throbbing foot. For a quarter of an hour, back against the rail, legs spread limp, he cried like a child, opening and closing his fists.

A half hour later, walking slowly back to the camp, flashlight beam showing the way, he realized what he had to lose.

He climbed the steps to his tent cabin and collapsed on the bed without undressing. Tomorrow night, he would not hesitate to ask a woman to dance, or to return with him and stay with him. He would not be shy or principled or stand on his dignity.

There was simply no time for such scruples. He did not understand what was happening, but he could feel the end coming. Like everybody else, he knew it in his bones.

Reuben came awake at five o'clock. Eyes wide, he oriented himself: spread-eagled on a short single bed in a small, shabby hotel room. His nighttime thrashings had pulled the upper sheet and blankets loose and he was only half covered.

Sitting on the side of the bed, he put on his ballpackers (that's what his father always called jockey briefs) and a T-shirt and his pants. Then he pulled the curtains on the narrow window and stood in front of it, looking out at the predawn light coming up over the city. Gray buildings, old brick and stone darkened by last night's sleet and snow; orange streetlights casting lonely spots on wet pavement; a single ancient Toyota truck driving through slush below the window and slowly cornering past an abandoned and boarded-up storefront.

Reuben showered, put on his new suit, and was out of the hotel by five-thirty. He had paid his room tab the night before. He stood shivering for a moment by the abandoned storefront, listening to the network, getting his final directions. The old Toyota came down the street again and pulled to the curb in front of him. A man just a few years older than Reuben, dressed in overalls and a baseball cap, sat behind the wheel. "Need a lift?" he asked, reaching over to open the opposite door. Heat poured from the cab. "You're heading down to the Toland Brothers Excursion Terminal. You're the second I've picked up this morning."

Reuben slid into the passenger side and smiled at the driver. "Awful early to be out driving," he said. "I appreciate this."

"Hey, it's in a good cause," the man said. His gaze lingered on Reuben's face. He did not appear happy that his passenger was black. "That's what I'm being told, anyway."

They took East Ninth Street to the Municipal Pier. The driver let Reuben out and drove away without saying another word.

Dawn was something more than a promise as he walked along the pier and approached the heavy iron bars and gate beneath the giant painted TOLAND BROS. sign. A plump, grizzled man of something less than seventy years and more than sixty stood behind the gate with a flashlight in hand, waggling a cigar between his teeth. He saw Reuben but did not move until the young man was less than two yards away. Then he pushed off from the bars next to the closed gate and shined his flashlight on Reuben's face.

"What can I do for you?" he asked sharply. The cigar was soggy and unlighted.

"I'm here for the morning excursion," Reuben said.

"Excursion? To where?"

Reuben stretched out an arm and pointed vaguely at Lake Erie. The man scrutinized him for several long moments in the flashlight beam, then lowered the lens and called out, "Donovan!"

Donovan, a short, clean-cut fellow in a cream-colored suit, about as old as the plump man but far better preserved, came out of a shed near the office.

Donovan glanced quickly at Reuben. "Network?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Let him in, Mickey."

"Goddamn fools," Mickey muttered. "There's still ice on the lake. Making us go out before the season." He leaned his head to one side and concentrated on keying the padlock and releasing a chain from the gate latch. He tugged the chain out of the eye with a conspicuous machine-gun
snick-tink
, pulled the gate inward, and bade Reuben enter by swinging a large, callused red hand.

Halfway down the pier, past an old, boarded-up seafood restaurant, a two-decked excursion boat named the
Gerald FitzEdmund
belched diesel from twin motors through stern pipes just above the waterline. The boat was easily capable of carrying two or three hundred passengers, but at this hour it was practically deserted. Donovan walked ahead of Reuben and gestured for him to cross the roped boarding ramp.

"We'll cruise the lake for an hour or two," Donovan said. "We've been told to leave the three of you out there. Wherever'there' is. It's mighty damned cold to be sailing today, let me tell you."

"What are we going to do out there?" Reuben asked.

Donovan stared at him. "You don't know?" he said.

"No."

"Christ.
I presume
"—he used the word as if it had an official flavor, yet was not at all familiar to his lips—"I
presume
that you'll find something out there before we drop you off. Or maybe you'll just freeze to death."

"I hope to God we do," Reuben said, shaking his head dubiously. "Find something out there, I mean."
They haven't done me wrong yet.

He walked toward the bow and joined a white boy some four or five years younger than he, and a well-dressed black woman about thirty. A stiff, icy breeze cut across the deck, blowing the woman's hair past her face. She glanced at him, then faced forward, but said nothing. The boy held out his hand and they shook firmly.

"My name's Ian," the boy said, teeth chattering.

"Reuben Bordes. Are both of you network?"

The boy nodded. The woman gave the ghost of a grin but did not turn away from her view of the lake.

"I'm possessed," Ian said. "You must be, too."

"Sure am," Reuben said.

"They make you do things?" Ian asked.

"They're making me do this."

"Me, too. I'm a little afraid. Nobody knows what we're doing."

"They'll take care of us," the woman said.

"What's your name, ma'am?" Reuben asked.

"None of your damned business. I don't have to like any of this; I just have to do it."

Ian gave Reuben a screw-faced glance and cocked an eyebrow at her. Reuben nodded.

Donovan and Mickey were climbing to the pilot house on the upper deck. A man in a dark blue uniform was already at the wheel. With only the six of them aboard, the excursion boat pulled away from the dock and headed out onto the smooth, lazy morning waters of the lake. Chunks of ice slid spinning past the bow. "We'd better go inside or we'll freeze, ma'am," Reuben suggested. The woman nodded and followed him into the enclosed passenger area.

Fifteen minutes into the cruise, Mickey descended to the lower deck with a cardboard box and a Thermos. "The galley ain't open," he said, "but we brought these things aboard with us." He peeled the top of the carton back to reveal doughnuts and three foam cups.

"Bless you," the woman said, sitting on a fiberglass bench. Ian picked two doughnuts and Reuben followed his example. Mickey poured steaming coffee as each held a cup. "Donovan tells me nobody knows what's out there," he said, capping the Thermos.

Reuben shook his head and dropped sprinkles of powdered sugar from his doughnut into the coffee.

"So what do we do if there's just water? Let you drown?"

"Something's out there," the woman said.

"I'm not doubting it. I just wish I didn't feel so damned creepy. Everything's gone to hell the last few months. Thank God it's not the season. No tourists. The President's going nuts. Whole world."

"Are you part of the network?" Ian asked.

Mickey shook his head. "Not me, thank God. Donovan is. He's told me about it, and he showed me the spider. Damned thing wouldn't bite me. Shows you what the hell I'm worth. I've thought about calling up the newspapers, but who would believe me? Who would care? Me and Donovan, we've worked the lakes for thirty years, first fishing smelt, then running geehawks—that's tourists—all around. I named this boat. It's a joke."

Nobody understood, so he cleared his throat. "I tell people, 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.' Remember that song? Ore tanker went down. Big wave or something broke its keel and it sank without a trace. But what the hell-geehawks don't know nothing about the lakes. They think lakes are puddles. These lakes are goddamned oceans, landlocked oceans. You could hide anything at the bottom, whole cities…" He glared at them for emphasis, one pencil-thin eyebrow raised. "So I've been thinking. No need to talk about what I've been thinking. I'll just let that sit with you, and with Donovan. If the goddamned spider doesn't bite me, sure I'll cooperate—he's my partner—but I say the hell with it, and with everything else."