Slide (15 page)

Sightseers were gathered at the police barricade on the highway north of the slide. Some had come as far as a hundred miles for a look. They couldn't see much from there and they resented not being allowed nearer. The fascination, of course, was death, and binoculars were used to scan the distant muddy slope for any sign of it.

Sirens and motorcycle growls.

The crowd parted, the barricade was lifted aside for a pair of highway patrolmen on Harley Davidsons, escorting two Cadillac limousines, an Army-colored Chrysler and two highway patrol cars. The limousines had government insignias, eagles, attached to their bumpers front and back. Also decals of orange Day-Glo that said:

The vehicles stopped a short distance beyond the barricade. Senator and Mrs. Hugh Tyler got out of the lead limousine. Both had on clear plastic raincoats. She wore a clear plastic bonnet that tied beneath her chin and his hat was identically covered. Large black umbrellas were held over them. A man from the second limousine hand-held a sixteen-millimeter motion picture camera that he aimed at the senator and shot in spurts from various angles. Another man took stills with a Nikon. The senator glanced at the crowd, acknowledged them with a quick smile and a single wave, but he didn't wait to see that no one waved back. Changing his expression to grim, he turned his attention to the slide.

The rest of the inspecting party consisted of Brigadier General Schyler and Major L.C. Babb of the Army Corps of Engineers, James McCrary, former television network news analyst and now the senator's campaign adviser, Bill Everett, commander of Zone Six of the highway patrol, along with his immediate assistant, Supervising Inspector Hal Chapin.

From the last highway patrol car, last to get out, Captain Royden Dodd. He hadn't been home at all, had only changed his socks, put on the fresh pair he kept in a desk drawer at headquarters.

The group proceeded along the highway in the direction of the slide. Senator Tyler held his chin forthrightly up and out, an affectation he believed in, although it often gave people the impression he was looking down his nose at them. Dodd walked slightly behind, in range of Zone Commander Everett in case he had any questions but definitely away from the senator and his entourage. Dodd hadn't voted for the man in the last election, wouldn't in the next.

A hundred yards from the edge of the slide the senator stopped so abruptly General Schyler stepped on his heel. The senator had decided he was near enough. He was skeptical of the hillside on the left, camouflaged his apprehension by pointing to the top of the slide for General Schyler's benefit. That also inspired the cameraman, who hastily switched to a longer lens that would optically make the senator appear close up to the slide. Campaign adviser McCrary clipped a microphone to the Senator's lapel.

“Is it on?” the senator asked.

“Not yet.”

“Tell me when.”

“Okay, when.”

McCrary, on camera, introduced himself and announced where he was and who he was with. The camera angle widened to include the senator.

“My schedule called for me to speak at a National Association of Manufacturers breakfast this morning, but as soon as I learned about this terrible tragedy I hurried here.”

“You have a special personal reason for involvement, Senator.”

“Oh, yes,” the Senator remembered the leading statement. On the way down from Los Angeles he and McCrary had gone over what they would say. “Yes, I most certainly do. I was born and raised right here in Orange County. In Fountain Valley to be exact, where my father ran a grocery store. So, these are my people.”

“Yesterday the President designated Southern California a disaster area. How do you feel about that?”

A thoughtful pause. “I most certainly agree the situation calls for emergency measures.”

The interview continued.

Zone Commander Everett signaled Inspector Chapin with a glance and they went further down the highway. Captain Dodd followed along. All the way to within a few feet of the slide. They stood in silence for quite a while, then Everett asked Dodd, “How many did we lose?” Meaning highway patrolmen.

“Twelve.”

Everett lowered his head and shook it slowly. It was worse than 1970, when four officers had been killed in a shootout in Newhall. “Families been notified?”

“All but two.”

“Sure?”

Dodd was sure because he'd seen to it himself, had spent all morning on the phone. He'd always made it a point to know the personal lives of his men, got acquainted with their wives and families whenever possible.

“You were real lucky, Dodd,” Inspector Chapin said as he appraised the slide.

No comment from Dodd. Being the only survivor wasn't a distinction. He should have been dead and buried with the others. He didn't give a damn how it looked to anyone. That wasn't it. It was how he felt. Every breath he took now was borrowed.

Everett told him, “Lucky for us.” The commander seemed to realize the weight of the guilt that had been turning over and over in Dodd's mind.

Dodd thanked him.

“I'll send you up a replacement for Porter,” Everett said. “Unless you have someone you especially want.”

The man Dodd would have wanted was with Porter, dead.

They returned to the others. Senator Tyler was concluding his film interview.

McCrary was asking, “Have you ever seen anything so horrible as this mud slide?”

“No, and I hope I never do,” the senator replied, aiming sincerity right into the lens. He was campaigning for a second term. Thus the slogan on the bumper stickers: TYLER 2

The senator, his wife, McCrary and the cameramen retreated to the limousines. Everett, Chapin and Dodd remained there with General Schyler and Major Babb.

“The army will do all it can,” Schyler promised.

“How long will it take?”

“I'd say we could have the highway open in three weeks, maybe a month.”

“What about down below, the supermarket?”

“That could take another couple of months, at least. Anyway, there's no reason to hurry, is there?”

They looked to the slide.

“Not really.”

“We'll bring in the equipment and get to it soon as the weather clears.” Rain was pouring from the beak of Schyler's gold-braided cap.

“Nothing you can do now?” Dodd asked.

“Nobody can handle that mud,” Schyler said.

They went their separate ways then, Dodd back to headquarters on East Santa Clara Avenue in Santa Ana. There he drew a mug of coffee, put his feet up, and phoned the two victims' wives he hadn't been able to reach earlier. One, the second, was Rita Porter. Dodd knew her well, so breaking the news to her was all the more painful. Rita absorbed the first shock and, still sobbing, asked Dodd how he thought she could best tell her two sons.

“They're good strong boys. Tell them straight out.” Thirteen and fifteen, they would supply the support she needed, Dodd believed.

When he clicked off he had a bad taste in his mouth. He tried to wash it away with coffee but that made it worse. He sat there staring past a lot of paperwork and decided he needed to go home, to see Helen.

He used his own car rather than an official one, hoping thereby to avoid any chance of being pressed into duty along the way. Heading north on Harbor Boulevard he was passed by two speeding souped-up cars, a young couple in each. For their amusement they were causing splashes left and right, all the way up onto the sidewalk. Dodd's automatic reaction was to hurry and stop them, but his fatigue let them go. Nothing short of a holdup would get to him, he promised himself.

On 17th Avenue he noticed an outdoor advertising billboard for a suntan lotion that had originally shown a girl displaying most of her skin ideally bronzed, along with the words, “D
ON'T
B
URN!
N
EVER
P
EEL!
” Now the advertisement itself was peeling, panels of it soaked and coming down in places, so that it read “B
URN!
” and the girl's good looks were splotched and she was possibly topless.

Further on in a residential district Dodd saw that a house with a large lawn had its sprinkler system on despite the downpour. Perhaps the sprinkler control mechanism was out of order, or, just as likely, the owners had reached the point of denying reality.

When he arrived home, before going in, he took a look around the backyard. All the roses were definitely drowned. And the fruit-bearing lemon tree he'd planted ten years ago was losing its leaves, which had turned pale yellow. He reached up to pick a lemon, disturbed a branch and caused more leaves to fall. Losing his temper, he grabbed the branch, shook it hard. When he let go it was practically bare.

Not feeling any better from that, he turned, saw Helen's face at a kitchen window. His first sight of her in two days. A smile. He went in to her, to a welcoming kiss and another, and he held her longer than usual.

She was forty-five, a warm, attractive woman of few words. Short-cut salt-and-pepper hair, eyes the color of chestnuts, very little makeup on her exceptionally fine, clear complexion.

“I made soup,” she said.

He sniffed, a wonderful hearty smell. Vegetable soup the way she made it from scratch was one of his all-time favorites, and this was the time for it, she knew.

He had two large helpings that truly helped and nearly a half a loaf of toasted French bread.

“Pretty good one-handed soup,” he said, lightly referring to her right arm in a cast.

“Left-handed soup.” She laughed, and then, after some eyes-to-eyes silence, fondly, “You don't look tired.”

That was her special way of telling him he did.

He went into the living room, intending to stretch out on the sofa, but Helen wouldn't have it. She urged and tugged him into the bedroom, insisted that he take off his clothes, take a relaxing shower. By the time he came out, drying, she had the bed turned down. Fresh sheets.

“In with you,” she ordered, contradicting her severity with a kiss.

He grumbled and that was the extent of his resistance, although, really, he didn't feel the least bit deserving.

18

Brydon's sense of time was off.

Minutes — five, fifteen, an hour of them — swept swiftly around the face of his watch. But that same time, when he concentrated on it, also seemed compressed in keeping with what his existence had come down to. Each moment exaggerated itself, went inevitably by, but slowly, very slowly, as though somehow restrained.

The rise of the mud was as regular as clockwork. Brydon used a nail to scratch his estimate of inches and feet on the length of a plank that he stuck in and down until it reached bottom. Fixed in place with metal shelf stripping, it could be read like a tide-level marker.

According to the marker, the mud was coming up steadily one-half inch an hour. At that rate there were thirty-six hours left before the mud would reach the tops of the islands.

During the night Brydon at times stretched out on the hard wooden surface, his jacket balled up for a pillow. He didn't sleep, only napped for a minute or two. He spent most of the time pacing Island Eight, seventy feet from end to end, trying but unable to believe in rescue, so, instead, trying to figure some way out. Anything that came to mind was quickly vetoed as impossible. If only he had the most primitive sort of tools, even an ordinary rock for a hammer, some fibrous vines to bind and tie. But he had nothing. There was no way.

Eventually futility won out so many times that his ideas balked, refused to be presented, and all that got through were the irking messages of hunger and thirst.

He went to Spider Leaks on Island Seven. Spider had been observing Brydon, whose pacing looked familiar to him. He had seen men pace their cells when they were about to flip.

Spider stood as Brydon approached.

Brydon kneeled.

So did Spider.

“Hungry?” Brydon asked.

“My stomach thinks my throat's cut.”

Brydon remembered the little jars of caviar he had in his pocket. He wasn't in the mood for anything so delicate and, he decided, neither was Spider.

“Crazy thing, man,” Spider said, “us being in here with nothing to eat.”

The shelves were bare. Everything was under the mud.

“Think we're being punished?”

“I didn't do anything.”

Peter Javakian overheard and joined them. Amy was extremely hungry and he had been considering ways of getting at the food. His best idea, he thought, was to make a net. “We could weave it with strips of clothing,” he said, and went on to describe something of the sort used to catch butterflies.

“What would you do for a pole?”

“Use a plank.”

Possible but difficult and unwieldy. Another problem would be what to use for a hoop to form the mouth of the net.

Peter suggested metal shelf stripping. Doubled and twisted, it might be sturdy enough.

Brydon doubted that but he respected Peter's spirit, tactfully told him: “I don't know about you but I'm too hungry to fool with anything that complicated.”

They crossed over and went to the forward end of Island Five. Judith Ward and Marion Mercer were there. The two women parted quickly and got up. Brydon apologized for the disturbance.

“Going fishing,” he said, “and I seem to remember this was a good spot.”

He took off his clothes, everything. Removed his belt and looped it around his right wrist. “Just in case. It'll give you something to pull on.”

Peter Javakian took off his belt and tightened it around Brydon's left wrist.

By then the others had come to Island Three. Brydon felt their attention on him. He stepped to the edge, sat, hesitated a moment to look down at the dark mass. It seemed placid, almost inviting. Putting his weight on his hands he turned and lowered himself, feet first, into the mud.

It was colder than he'd anticipated and had it been water he would have plunged in, taken the shock all at once. But it was necessary that he go in slowly, and as nearly straight as possible. To his knees, to his crotch, to his waist. If he should lose balance he would be in very serious trouble. Like Emory Swanson.