The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) by Kim Stanley Robinson Page A
Authors: Kim Stanley Robinson
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because we didn’t have food enough in the winters. Here was this valley soaked with rain and growing trees like weeds, and we couldn’t grow food from it to stay alive. All we could do was hunker down in the snow—snow here, damn it—and eat every little hibernating creature we could find. We were just like wolves, no better. You won’t know times like those. We didn’t even know what day of the year it was! It took Rafe and me four years to figure out what the date was.” He paused to collect himself and remember his point. “Anyway, we could see the fish in the river, and we did our best to get them into the fire. Got some rods and lines and hooks out of Orange County, tackle from fishing stores that should have been good stuff.” He snorted, spat at the river. “Fishing with that stupid sport gear that broke every third fish, broke every time you used it … it was a damned shame. John Nicolin saw that and he started asking questions. Why weren’t we using nets? No nets, we said. Why weren’t we fishing the ocean? No boats, we said. He looked at us like we were fools. Some of us got mad and said how are we going to find nets? Where?
“Well, Nicolin had the answer. He went up into Clemente and looked in a telephone book, for God’s sake. Looked in the Goddamned yellow pages.” He laughed, a quick shout of delight. “He found the listing for commercial fishing warehouses, took some men up there to look for them. First one we found was empty. Second one had been blown flat on the day. The third one we walked into was a warehouse full of nets. Steel cables, heavy nylon—it was great. And that was just the start. We used the phone book and map to find the boatyards in Orange County, because all of the harbors were clean empty, and we hauled some boats right down the freeway.”
“What about the scavengers?”
“That was when there weren’t too many scavengers, and there wasn’t any fight in the ones that were there.”
Now there I knew he was lying. He was leaving himself out of the story, as he always did. Almost everything I knew of Tom’s history I had heard from someone else. And I had a lot of stories about him; as the oldest man in the valley legends naturally collected around him. I had heard how he had led those foraging raids into Orange County, guiding John Nicolin and the others through his old neighborhoods and beyond. He had been death on scavengers in those days, they said. If ever they were hard pressed by scavengers Tom had disappeared into the ruins, and pretty soon there weren’t any scavengers around to bother them anymore. It was Tom, in fact, who introduced Rafael to guns. And the tales of Tom’s endurance—why, they were so numerous and outlandish that I didn’t know what to think. He must have done some of those things to get such a reputation, but which ones? Had he gone for a week without sleep during the forced march from Riverside, or eaten the bark from trees when they were holed up in Tustin, surrounded? Or walked through fire and held his breath under water for a half hour, to escape? Whatever he had done, I was sure he had run ragged every man in the valley, and him over seventy-five years old at the time. I had heard Rafael declare that the old man must have been radiated on the day, and mutated so that he was destined never to die, like the wandering Jew. “One thing’s for sure,” Rafe said, “I walked with him by one of the scavengers’ geiger counters at a swap meet once, and that machine almost busted its bell. Scavengers took off.…”
“Anyway,” Tom was saying to me now, “John Nicolin did or directed everything that had to do with fishing, and doing it was what brought the people in this valley together, and made us a town. The second winter after he arrived was the first one no one died from hunger. Boy, you don’t know what that means. There’s been hard times since, but none to match those before Nicolin arrived. I admire him. So if he’s
“Well, Nicolin had the answer. He went up into Clemente and looked in a telephone book, for God’s sake. Looked in the Goddamned yellow pages.” He laughed, a quick shout of delight. “He found the listing for commercial fishing warehouses, took some men up there to look for them. First one we found was empty. Second one had been blown flat on the day. The third one we walked into was a warehouse full of nets. Steel cables, heavy nylon—it was great. And that was just the start. We used the phone book and map to find the boatyards in Orange County, because all of the harbors were clean empty, and we hauled some boats right down the freeway.”
“What about the scavengers?”
“That was when there weren’t too many scavengers, and there wasn’t any fight in the ones that were there.”
Now there I knew he was lying. He was leaving himself out of the story, as he always did. Almost everything I knew of Tom’s history I had heard from someone else. And I had a lot of stories about him; as the oldest man in the valley legends naturally collected around him. I had heard how he had led those foraging raids into Orange County, guiding John Nicolin and the others through his old neighborhoods and beyond. He had been death on scavengers in those days, they said. If ever they were hard pressed by scavengers Tom had disappeared into the ruins, and pretty soon there weren’t any scavengers around to bother them anymore. It was Tom, in fact, who introduced Rafael to guns. And the tales of Tom’s endurance—why, they were so numerous and outlandish that I didn’t know what to think. He must have done some of those things to get such a reputation, but which ones? Had he gone for a week without sleep during the forced march from Riverside, or eaten the bark from trees when they were holed up in Tustin, surrounded? Or walked through fire and held his breath under water for a half hour, to escape? Whatever he had done, I was sure he had run ragged every man in the valley, and him over seventy-five years old at the time. I had heard Rafael declare that the old man must have been radiated on the day, and mutated so that he was destined never to die, like the wandering Jew. “One thing’s for sure,” Rafe said, “I walked with him by one of the scavengers’ geiger counters at a swap meet once, and that machine almost busted its bell. Scavengers took off.…”
“Anyway,” Tom was saying to me now, “John Nicolin did or directed everything that had to do with fishing, and doing it was what brought the people in this valley together, and made us a town. The second winter after he arrived was the first one no one died from hunger. Boy, you don’t know what that means. There’s been hard times since, but none to match those before Nicolin arrived. I admire him. So if he’s
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