Chapter 20

Nothing is lonelier than the rain. It falls as do the tears of the millions spared from immediate death, and thrust instead into the maelstrom of life without hope. It mutes the sounds of screams, and blocks the sight, but not the reality of the millions who now feed the crows. It hides the human vultures whose taste's run to those whose sentence has been reduced to life, and whose live's have been reduced to naught but the struggle for an easier death. A cleansing force helping to erode the flimsy foundation which we as humans have created to feed and clothe, and succor us, as it erodes the banks of the rivers which it swells. A final blanket which gives to those caught without the shelter of higher ground, an envelope of peace in the throes of a terminal war.

The camp as a whole spent a quiet night, but Chico's dreams were troubled. He had shot and killed a man, and had done it with no emotion. He had done it with the same attention he might have given the swatting of a fly, or a mosquito. It bothered him. That he could do such a thing and be unaffected. That he could end a man's life so easily, and so quickly forget.

Though his eyes were closed, and his breath regular and slow, he did not sleep. He shared the 'gun room' with Josh, and in striving vainly to banish his troubled thoughts, he wondered about the complexities of the man who had taken him in. As he had said at their meeting earlier, he knew of Mr. Hard-ass-ty from some of his father's stories, and had seen him on a few occasions when accompanying his father to work. The bank vice-president had either been working late, or came in response to a problem uncovered by the cleaning staff.

Chico had known about his father's drinking problem. But only recently had he come to grips with the fact that it had been the drinking, and not racism, which cost the elder Lopez his job. He also now realized it had been not understanding which had colored a large portion of his life. It had cost him many friends in the white community, and kept him from trying to do many of the things he would have liked. It had almost cost him his life.

He rose to one elbow and gazed through the darkness at the man who had given him a new chance. An opportunity to reverse his position from outlaw, to a part of a large family-like group. Though this man barely knew his name, he had risked a great deal, according to Gus, to give him a new chance at life.

"I can't sleep either Chico, wanna talk?"

The remark coming from the darkened room startled Chico, but not as much as the fact that Josh had addressed him as if knowing he had been having trouble sleeping, and was awake. He knew he had made no noise to alert the older man, but he...

"It isn't easy to kill, no matter how easily you did it today. It isn't easy because it does come back to you. It makes you question whether there is something wrong with the way you are put together."

The spoken words echoed the thoughts coursing through Chico's mind but moments before. Again they echoed as Josh spoke his own feelings.

"I don't know whether it is wrong not to feel remorse about killing the people we have killed. I don't really want to think about it, but no matter the direction to which I turn my mind, it always comes back to the same thing." Josh's deep sigh was clearly audible in the midnight gloom of the underground room, and said quite a bit to the young man with whom he shared the moment.

The sigh spoke of the impossible tasks before each member of the small group gathered at 'The Haven.' It spoke of the friends left behind forever in the violence of the day before, dreams banished by stark mushroom clouds, or murdered during the more personal slaughters which followed. Chico knew, here was a man to call friend, and a friend to stand with through the darkness of the coming night.

"Mr. Hardesty. Thank you for all you have done. If in ten days I have to leave, I will leave knowing you are a friend."

"Chico, I hope you are still here with us after that, because if you are not, it will mean the people here are not the kind of people I want to live beside and fight for. This whole thing has happened so suddenly. I wasn't prepared for the things that have happened, and I don't even know most of the people who are here now."

"In a way I am glad it has worked out like this. There are so many people who are with us in this, but will never know this piece of ground where we live. There are a large number whom I wish were here with us. Yet I also know to have had them here would deny others their chance for life. Their knowledge, or just their common sense would make it easier for a composite group to survive, but if they were all here there would be no room for others, and they would not be able to help those for whom they are even now making life possible."

"How can you be sure they are helping others, and they are not adding to the problems others are facing by seeking to control some vital resource."

"I'm not. I'll never be absolutely sure the people in my mind are the same as the people who now walk this earth. No one, until a situation arises, can even be sure of the way they will react. If I am wrong... If I can not depend on my gut feelings about these particular people. Then I hope I never find out about it, because it would frighten me into making a wrong decision about feeling comfortable around any people."

"Why would it be wrong to feel uncomfortable around other people, especially people you don't know. Shouldn't you always be on guard to keep others from taking advantage?"

The utter blackness which prevailed hid the frown and the creases which drew their thought-filled furrows across Josh's face, but could not hide the troubled sigh or stuttered start of the answer.

"M... M... Maybe so... I can't explain what process lets me feel comfortable around certain people. I can't even begin to tell you what to look for, or why there are some people to whom I will never give the opportunity to get close enough to betray me. There are so many reasons, and at the same time so few that it is not possible for me to explain them. I just feel good about some people, and I wouldn't trust others to throw out my garbage."

A long minute passed in silence as Josh worried with his thoughts, and Chico tried to assemble a less ambiguous question. " Shit, kid. it's late, and the sun rises early so let's leave the rest of the questions for the morrow and try to get some sleep."

Chico agreed, and soon drifted off without realizing it, but the question remained as a shadowy dream. Why had Josh trusted him even before he had known his name.

Josh sent Chico to work with Jim Abbott after a filling breakfast of oatmeal sweetened with brown sugar, then retired to the gun room to write down some of the ideas he had for improvements around the Haven. The problems he detailed had many solutions, some of them would take time to complete but would also last a long while. Others could only really be solved with a renewal of the everyday services people had taken for granted just two days before. He also drew up a list of possible resources which the small group could take advantage of if they worked a method of doing so without drawing attention to themselves.

One of the first things which Josh wanted to complete was a project which he had started with Tab some years before, but had stopped when it had become impossible to purchase a tract of land bordering his. Completion of the project would offer a number of advantages which would be nice to have, and all that remained to do was to cut the blocks for a sluice gate from a large cedar log which had been seasoning on a covered rack for more than a year.

Tab was responsible for the original idea. It had been his curiosity about the springs which fed No-Name Creek which led to the initial excavations along the creek bank, and the discovery of the fast flowing artesian spring located just over a ridge from his property line. There had always been a trace of larceny couched within their souls, and Tab had dug a gently sloping trench to within yards of the crest of the ridge before running out of time two summers before. Tab had planned to return and complete the job himself so Josh, if the aqueous theft ever came to light, would be able to truthfully answer he had had nothing to do with the canal which robbed the far side watershed of much of its volume. They thought the addition of the spring's volume, and a dam upstream from the house, would give them enough power to run a small generator, or at the least a water-wheel to pump water from the sweet water well near the house.

Another advantage, with the way they lined the excavated banks with stone and concrete, would be a safe swimming hole for the family and their friends to enjoy. The dam was carefully constructed from guidelines found in an army engineering handbook and was finished except for the sluice gate for the center channel. This channel was lined on each side with a special rubberized fabric held in place by twenty-four foot, creosoted bridge beams seated six feet deep in concrete, and sealed with a foam product similar to the soundproofing used in the basement. By using this same sealer on two foot lengths of the seasoned cedar Josh felt it would be possible to finish the dam in a few days.

There is always a 'but' though, isn't there? In this case, Josh knew what was needed to finish the dam, and even had the materials on hand, but he had no ideas on harnessing the power the dam would represent. He sketched the current situation, and drew up a design for the log-sluice-gate but still had no reasonable ideas, so he went upstairs to talk to Rafe, to see if he had any.

Jim Abbott liked the way the little latino worked. He asked questions when he didn't understand, but with only the barest direction he took a project beyond the point originally expected of him. What's more he did things the right way the first time.

The salt-and-pepper fringed mirror that was his bald pate swung gently from side to side as he realized the term he had used when thinking of the boy. He didn't chastise himself, because he knew it did no good to heap criticism on someone who was doing a good job, but who had messed up a detail in the process, especially if the person caught his own mistake before anyone else knew it had happened. Rather, he was surprised he had thought of the young man as other than 'one of those bastards.'

That had been the term which he had used when Josh first brought up the possibility of Chico joining the group. 'How can you even think about asking one of those bastards to join the group? The son-of-a-bitch would sell his mother if he thought she was worth anything.' had been the exact words he had used when he first heard the suggestion. Rafe had surprised him with quiet questions in reply.

"How long have I known you? " The question went unanswered as it was designed to, and was followed by two others. " How long have you known Chico?" and, " How much is your mother worth?"

It was partly in apology that he had volunteered to put forth the proposition to Chico, and partly because he had realized how right Rafe had been to jump on his case about attitude. Of all the people at the haven he knew only three, and those he knew only casually except for Alex with whom he had worked closely for the last two years. All of the rest were unknown quantities, and he rationalized this as one of the reasons he was so vehemently against the introduction of a known 'enemy' to their ranks.

He paused in his reflection to watch the energy which Chico put into even the simplest of jobs, and then went on to something else seemingly without a pause. He enjoyed watching someone who was so obviously enjoying his work, and was surprised when the young man stopped and frowned after wiping a streak of grease off of the bright chrome wheel of the truck he was servicing.

"Mr. Abbott, this is a beautiful truck, but that's not good. It was fine back before, but we need to do something about all of the chrome and lights so they won't attract so much attention."

At first he was startled by the matter of fact way Chico had come to a decision, and stated it as if there would be no argument. When he stopped to think for a moment he realized the kid was right. Not only was he right, that something needed to be done, but it needed to be done sooner rather than later.

"You're right. We need to do something about it, but what do we have to do it with?"

"Well, we could take this old engine oil and put a real fine film over all of the shiny parts, then throw dust on top to put a kind of sludge on it. It wouldn't last very long, but it would be easy to replace, and we have plenty of oil and plenty of dirt to work with."

"It sounds like a good idea, Chico. Why don't you and Darrell get started on it right after lunch, if that's alright with you Jim."

"Yeah, Josh, it's fine with me, but next time don't sneak up on me like that, would you. You 'bout scared the pants offa me. Yipe! I'm going to get you for that you big nigger. "

"If you hadn't been so caught up in being scared by Josh you would have heard me walkin' 'cross the gravel before I goosed you, you fat piece of white trash summ-bitch. "

Chico was startled when Jim called the big black man a nigger, but relaxed when Alex came back with his laughing rejoinder. Now as he watched Josh, he saw he too was at first surprised by the outburst from Abbott, it had sounded like it had come from the depths of anger, but relaxed and joined in with comments of his own about the personal habits of both of the verbal combatants.