Water is for Washing

He judged that the Valley was hotter than usual--but, then, it usually was. Imperial Valley was a natural hothouse, two hundred and fifty feet below sea level, diked from the Pacific Ocean by the mountains back of San Diego, protected from the Gulf of Baja California by high ground on the south. On the east, the Chocolate Mountains walled off the rushing Colorado River.

He parked his car outside the. Barbara Worth Hotel in El Centro and went into the bar. "Scotch." The bartender filled a shot glass, then set a glass of ice Water beside it. "Thanks. Have one?"

"Don"t mind if I do."

The customer sipped his drink, then picked up the chaser. "That"s just the right amount of water in the right place. I"ve got hydrophobia."

"Huh?"

"I hate water. Darn near drowned when I was a kid. Afraid of it ever since."

"Water ain"t fit to drink," the bartender agreed, "but I do like to swim."

"Not for me. That"s why I like the Valley. They restrict the stuff to irrigation ditches, washbowls, bathtubs, and glasses. I always hate to go back to Los Angeles."

"If you"re afraid of drowning," the barkeep answered, "you"re better off in L.A. than in the Valley. We"re below sea level here. Water all around us, higher than our heads. Suppose somebody pulled out the cork?"

"Go frighten your grandmother. The Coast Range is no cork."

"Earthquake."

"That"s crazy. Earthquakes don"t move mountain ranges."

"Well, it wouldn"t necessarily take a quake. You"ve heard about the 1905 flood, when the Colorado River spilled over and formed the Salton Sea? But don"t be too sure about quakes; valleys below sea level don"t just grow--

something has to cause them. The San Andreas Fault curls around this valley like a question mark. Just imagine the shake-up it must have taken to drop thousands of square miles below the level of the Pacific."

"Quit trying to get my goat. That happened thousands of years ago. Here." He laid a bill on the bar and left.

Joykiller! A man like that shouldn"t be tending bar.

The thermometer in the shaded doorway showed 118 degrees. The solid heat beat against him, smarting his eyes and drying his lungs, even while he remained on the covered sidewalk. His car, he knew, would be too hot to touch; he should have garaged it. He walked around the end of it and saw someone bending over the left hand door. He stopped. "What the hell do you think you"re doing?"

The figure turned suddenly, showing pale, shifty eyes. He was dressed in a business suit, dirty and unpressed.

He was tieless. His hands and nails, were dirty, but not with the dirt of work; the palms were uncalloused. A weak mouth spoiled features otherwise satisfactory. "No harm intended," he apologized. "I just wanted to read your registration slip. You"re from Los Angeles. Give me a lift back to the city, pal." The car owner ignored him and glanced around inside the automobile. "Just wanted to see where I was from, eh? Then why did you open the glove compartment? I ought to run you in." He looked past the vagrant at two uniformed deputy sheriffs sauntering down the other side of the street. "On your way, bum." The man followed the glance, then faded swiftly away in the other direction. The car"s owner climbed in, swearing at the heat, then checked the glove compartment. The flashlight was missing.

Checking it off to profit-and-loss, he headed for Brawley, fifteen miles north. The heat was oppressive, even for Imperial Valley. Earthquake weather, he said to himself, giving vent to the Californian"s favorite superstition, then sternly denied it--that dumb fool gin peddler had put the idea in his mind. Just an ordinary Valley day, a little hotter, maybe.

His business took him to several outlying ranchos between Brawley and the Salton Sea. He was heading back toward the main highway on a worn gravel mat when the car began to waltz around as if he were driving over corduroy. He stopped the car, but the shaking continued, accompanied by a bass grumble.

Earthquake! He burst out of the car possessed only by the primal urge to get out in the open, to escape the swaying towers, the falling bricks. But there were no buildings here-- nothing but open desert and irrigated fields.

He went back to the car, his stomach lurching to every following temblor. The right front tire was flat. Stone-punctured, he decided, when the car was bounced around by the first big shock.

Changing that tire almost broke his heart. He was faint from heat and exertion when he straightened up from it.

Another shock, not as heavy as the first, but heavy, panicked him again and he began to run, but he fell, tripped by the crazy galloping of the ground. He got up and went back to the car.

It had slumped drunkenly, the jack knocked over by the quake.

He wanted to abandon it, but the dust from the shocks had closed in around him like fog, without fog"s blessed coolness. He knew he was several miles from town and doubted his ability to make it on foot.

He got to work, sweating and gasping. One hour and thirteen minutes after the initial shock the spare tire was in place. The ground still grumbled and shook from time to time. He resolved to drive slowly and thereby keep the car in control if another bad shock came along. The dust forced him to drive slowly, anyhow.

Moseying back toward the main highway, he was regaining his calm, when he became aware of a train in the distance. The roar increased, over the noise, of the car--an express train, he decided, plunging down the valley. The thought niggled at the back of his mind for a moment, until he realized why the sound seemed wrong: Trains should not race after a quake; they should creep along, the crew alert for spread rails.

The sound was recast in his mind. Water!

Out of the nightmare depths of his subconscious, out of the fright of his childhood, he placed it. This was the sound after the darn broke, when, as a kid, he had been so nearly drowned. Water! A great wall of water, somewhere in the dust, hunting for him, hunting for him!

His foot jammed the accelerator down to the floorboards; the car bucked and promptly stalled. He started it again and strove to keep himself calm. With no spare tire and a bumpy road he could not afford the risk of too much speed. He held himself down to a crawling thirty-five miles an hour, tried to estimate the distance and direction of the water, and prayed.

The main highway jumped at him in the dust and he was almost run down by a big car roaring past to the north. A second followed it, then a vegetable truck, then the tractor unit of a semi-trailer freighter.

It was all he needed to know. He turned north.

He passed the vegetable truck and a jalopy-load of Okiestyle workers, a family. They shouted at him, but he kept going. Several cars more powerful than his passed him and he passed in turn several of the heaps used by the itinerant farm workers. After that he had the road to himself. Nothing came from the north.

The trainlike rumble behind him increased.

He peered into the rear-view mirror but could see nothing through the dusty haze.

There was a child sitting beside the road and crying--a little girl about eight. He drove on past, hardly aware of her, then braked to a stop. He told himself that she must have folks around somewhere, that it was no business of his.

Cursing himself, he backed and turned, almost drove past her in the dust, then managed to turn around without backing and pulled up beside her. "Get in!"

She turned a dirty, wet, tragic face, but remained seated.

"I can"t. My foot hurts."

He jumped out, scooped her up and dumped her in the righthand seat, noting as he did so that her right foot was swollen. "How did you do it?" he demanded, as he threw in the car.

"When the thing happened. Is it broke?" She was not crying now. "Are you going to take me home?"

"I--I"ll take care of you. Don"t ask questions."

"All right," she said doubtfully. The roar behind them was increasing. He wanted to speed up but the haze and the need to nurse his unreliable spare tire held him back. He had to swerve suddenly when a figure loomed up in the dust--a Nisei boy, hurrying toward them.

The child beside him leaned out. "That"s Tommy!"

"Huh? Never mind. Just a goddam Jap."

"That"s Tommy Hayakawa. He"s in my class." She added. "Maybe he"s looking for me." He cursed again, under his breath, and threw the car into a turn that almost toppled it. Then he was heading back, into that awful sound.

"There he is," the child shrieked. "Tommy! Oh, Tommy!"

"Get in," he commanded, when he had stopped the car by the boy.

"Get in, Tommy," his passenger added.

The boy hesitated; the driver reached past the little girl, grabbed the boy by his shirt and dragged him in.

"Want to be drowned, you fool?"

He had just shifted into second, and was still accelerating, when another figure sprang up almost in front of the car--a man, waving his arms. He caught a glimpse of the face as the car gained speed. It was the sneak thief.

His conscience was easy about that one, he thought as he drove on. Good riddance! Let the water get him.

Then the horror out of his own childhood welled up in him and he saw the face of the tramp again, in a horrible fantasy. He was struggling in the water, his bloodshot eyes bulging with terror, his gasping mouth crying wordlessly for help.

The driver was stopping the car. He did not dare turn; he backed the car, at the highest speed he could manage.

It was no great distance, or else the vagrant had run after them.

The door was jerked open and the tramp lurched in. "Thanks, pal," he gasped. "Let"s get out of here!"

"Right!" He glanced into the mirror, then stuck his head out and looked behind. Through the haze he saw it, a lead black wall, thirty--or was it a hundred?--feet high, rushing down on them, overwhelming them. The noise of it pounded his skull.

He gunned the car in second, then slid into high and gave it all he had, careless of the tires. "How we doing?" he yelled.

The tramp looked out the rear window. "We"re gaining. Keep it up" He skidded around a wreck on the highway, then slowed a trifle, aware that the breakneck flight would surely lose them the questionable safety of the car if he kept it up. The little girl started to cry.

"Shut up!" he snapped.

The Nisei boy twisted around and looked behind. "What is it?" he asked in an awed voice.

The tramp answered him. "The Pacific Ocean has broken through."

"It can"t be!" cried the driver. "It must be the Colorado River."

"That"s no river, Mac. That"s the Gulf. I was in a cantina in Centro when it came over the radio from Calexico.

Warned us that the ground had dropped away to the south. Tidal wave coming. Then the station went dead." He moistened his lips. "That"s why I"m here."

The driver did not answer. The vagrant went on nervously, "Guy I hitched with went on without me, when he stopped for gas in Brawley." He looked back again. "I can"t see it any more."

"We"ve gotten away from it?"

"Hell, no. It"s just as loud. I just can"t see it through the murk." They drove on. The road curved a little to the right and dropped away almost imperceptibly.

The bum looked ahead. Suddenly he yelled. "Hey! Where you going?"

"Huh?"

"You got to get off the highway, man! We"re dropping back toward the Salton Sea--the lowest place in the Valley."

"There"s no other place to go. We can't turn around."

"You can"t go ahead. It"s suicide!"

"We"ll outrun it. North of the Salton, it"s high ground again."

"Not a chance. Look at your gas gauge."

The gauge was fluttering around the left side of the dial. Two gallons, maybe less. Enough to strand them by the sunken shores of the Salton Sea. He Stared at it in an agony of indecision.

"Gotta cut off to the left," his passenger was saying. "Side road. Follow it up toward the hills."

"Where?"

"Coming up. I know this road. I"ll watch for it."

When he turned into the side road, he realized sickly that his course was now nearly parallel to the hungry flood south of them. But the road climbed.

He looked to the left and tried to see the black wall of water, the noise of which beat loud in his ears, but the road demanded his attention. "Can you see it?" he yelled to the tramp.

"Yes! Keep trying, pal!"

He nodded and concentrated on the hills ahead. The hills must surely be above sea level, he told himself. On and on he drove, through a timeless waste of dust and heat and roar. The grade increased, then suddenly the car broke over a rise and headed down into a wash--a shallow arroyo that should have been dry, but was not.

He was into water before he knew it, hub high and higher. He braked and tried to back. The engine coughed and stalled.

The tramp jerked open the door, dragged the two children out, and, with one under each arm, splashed his way back to higher ground. The driver tried to start the car, then saw frantically that the rising water was up above the floorboards.

He jumped out, stumbled to his knees in water waist-deep, got to his feet, and struggled after them.

The tramp had set the children down on a little rise and was looking around. "We got to get out of here," the car owner gasped.

The tramp shook his head. "No good. Look around you."

To the south, the wall of water had broken around the rise on which they stood. A branch had sluiced between them and the hills, filling the wash in which the car lay stalled. The main body of the rushing waters had passed east of them, covering the highway they had left, and sweeping on toward the Salton Sea.

Even as he watched, the secondary flood down the wash returned to the parent body. They were cut off, surrounded by the waters.

He wanted to scream, to throw himself into the opaque turbulence and get it over. Perhaps he did scream. He realized that the tramp was shaking him by the shoulder.

"Take it easy, pal. We"ve got a couple of throws left."

"Huh?" He wiped his eyes. ",,What do we do?"

"I want my mother," the little girl said decisively.

The tramp reached down and patted her absent-mindedly. Tommy Hayakawa put his arm around her. "I"ll take care of you, Laura," he said gravely.

The water was already over the top of the car and rising. The boiling head of the flood was well past them; its thunder was lessening; the waters rose quietly--but they rose.

"We can"t stay here," he persisted.

,,We"ll have to," the tramp answered....

Their living space grew smaller, hardly thirty feet by fifty. They were not alone now. A coyote, jack rabbits, creepers, crawlers, and gnawers, all the poor relations of the desert, were forced equally back into the narrowing circle of dry land. The coyote ignored the rabbits; they ignored the coyote. The highest point of their island was surmounted by a rough concrete post about four feet high, an obelisk with a brass plate set in its side. He read it twice before the meaning of the words came to him.

It was a bench mark, stating, as well as latitude and longitude, that this spot, this line engraved in brass, was

"sea level." When it soaked into his confused brain he pointed it out to his companion. "Hey! Hey, look! We"re going to make it! The water won"t come any higher!"

The tramp looked. "Yes, I know. I read it. But it doesn"t mean anything. That"s the level it used to be before the earthquake."

"But--"

"It may be higher--or lower. We"ll find out."

The waters still came up. They were ankle-deep at sundown. The rabbits and the other small things were gradually giving up. They were in an unbroken waste of water, stretching from the Chocolate Mountains beyond where the Salton Sea had been, to the nearer hills on the west. The coyote slunk up against their knees, dog fashion, then appeared to make up its mind, for it slipped into the water and struck out toward the hills. They could see its out-thrust head for a long time, until it was just a dot on the water in the gathering darkness.

When the water was knee-deep, each man took one of the children in his arms. They braced themselves against the stability of the concrete post, and waited, too tired for panic. They did not talk. Even the children had not talked much since abandoning the car.

It was getting dark. The tramp spoke up suddenly. "Can you pray?"

"Uh--not very well."

"Okay. I"ll try, then." He took a deep breath. "Merciful Father, Whose all-seeing eye notes even the sparrow in its flight, have mercy on these Thy unworthy servants. Deliver them from this peril, if it be Thy will." He paused, and then added, "And make it as fast as You can, please. Amen." The darkness closed in, complete and starless. They could not see the water, but they could feel it and hear it.

It was warm--it felt no worse when it soaked their armpits than it had around their ankles. They had the kids on their shoulders now, with their backs braced against the submerged post. There was little current.

Once something bumped against them in the darkness--a dead steer, driftwood, a corpse--they had no way of knowing. It nudged them and was gone. Once he thought he saw a light, and said suddenly to the tramp, "Have you still got that flashlight you swiped from me?"

There was a long silence and a strained voice answered, "You recognized me."

"Of course. Where"s the flashlight?"

"I traded it for a drink in Centro.

"But, look, Mac," the voice went on reasonably, "if I hadn"t borrowed it, it would be in your car. It wouldn"t be here. And if I did have it in my pocket, it"d be soaked and wouldn"t work."

"Oh, forget it!"

"Okay." There was silence for a while, then the voice went on, "Pal, could you hold both the kids a while?"

"I guess so. Why?"

"This water is still coming up.. It"ll be over our heads, maybe. You hang onta the kids; I"ll boost myself up on the post. I"ll sit on it and wrap my legs around it. Then you hand me the kids. That way we gain maybe eighteen inches or two feet."

"And what happens to me?"

"You hang onto my shoulders and float with your head out of the water."

"Well--we"ll try it."

It worked. The kids clung to the tramp"s sides, supported by water and by his arms. The driver hung onto~-the tramp where he could," first to his belt, then, as the waters rose and his toes no longer touched bottom, to the collar of his coat.

They were still alive.

"I wish it would get light. It"s worse in the darkness."

"Yeah," said the tramp. "If it was light, maybe somebody ,,ud see us."

"How?"

"Airplane, maybe. They always send out airplanes, in floods." He suddenly began to shake violently, as the horror came over him, and the memory of another flood when there had been no rescuing airplanes.

The tramp said sharply, "What"s the matter, Mac? Are you cracking up?"

"No, I"m all right. I just hate water."

"Want to swap around? You hold the kids for a while and I"ll hang on and float."

"Uh. . . No, we might drop one. Stay where you are."

"We can make it. The change"ll do you good." The tramp shook the children. "Hey, wake up! Wake up, honey--and hold tight."

The kids were transferred to his shoulders while he gripped the post with his knees and the tramp steadied him with an arm. Then he eased himself cautiously onto the top of the post, as the tramp got off and floated free, save for one anchoring hand. "You all right?" he said to the tramp.

The hand squeezed his shoulder in the darkness. "Sure, Got a snootful of water."

"Hang on."

"Don"t worry--I will!"

He was shorter than the tramp; he had to sit erect to keep his head out of water. The children clung tightly. He kept them boosted high.

Presently the tramp spoke. "You wearing a belt?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Hold still." He felt a second hand fumbling at his waist, then his trousers loosened as the belt came away.

"I"m going to strap your legs to the post. That"s the bad part about it; your legs cramp. Hold tight now. I"m going under."

He felt hands under water, fumbling at his legs. Then there was the tension of the belt being tightened around his knees. He relaxed to the pressure. It was a help; he found he could hold his position without muscular effort.

The tramp broke water near him. "Where are you?" the voice was panicky.

"Here! Over here!" he tried to peer into the inky darkness; it was hopeless. "Over this way!" The splashing seemed to come closer. He shouted again, but no hand reached out of the darkness. He continued to shout, then shouted and listened intermittently. It seemed to him that he heard splashing long after the sound had actually ceased.

He stopped shouting only when his voice gave out. Little Laura was sobbing on his shoulder. Tommy was trying to get her to stop. He could tell from their words that they had not understood what had happened and he did not try to explain.

When the water dropped down to his waist, he moved the kids so that they sat on his lap. This let him rest his arms, which had grown almost unbearably tired as the receding water ceased to support the weight of the children. The water dropped still more, and the half dawn showed him that the ground beneath him was, if not dry, at least free from flood.

He shook Tommy awake. "I can"t get down, kid. Can you unstrap me?" The boy blinked and rubbed his eyes. He looked around and seemed to recall his circumstances without dismay. "Sure. Put me down."

The boy loosened the buckle after some difficulty and the man cautiously unwound himself from his perch.

His legs refused him when he tried to stand; they let him and the girl sprawl in the mud.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her as he sat up..

"No," she answered soberly.

He looked around. It was getting steadily lighter and he could see the hills to the west; it now appeared that the water no longer extended between the hills and themselves. To the east was another story; the Salton Sea no longer existed as such. An unbroken sheet of water stretched from miles to the north clear to the southern horizon.

His car was in sight; the wash was free of water except for casual pools. He walked down, toward the automobile, partly to take the knots out of his legs, pertly to see if the car could ever be salvaged. It was there that he found the tramp.

The body lay wedged against the right rear wheel, as if carried down there by undertow.

He walked back toward the kids. "Stay away from the car," he ordered. "Wait here. I"ve got something to do." He went back to the car and found the keys still in the ignition lock. He opened the trunk with some difficulty and got out a short spade he kept for desert mishaps.

It was not much of a grave, just a shallow trench in the wet sand, deep enough to receive and cover a man, but he promised himself that he would come back and do better. He had no time now. The waters, he thought, would be back with high tide. He must get himself and the children to the hills.

Once the body was out of sight, he called out to the boy and the girl, "You can come here now." He had one more chore. There was drift about, yucca stalks, bits of wood. He selected two pieces of unequal length, then dug around in his tool chest for bits of wire. He wired the short piece across the longer, n a rough cross, then planted the cross in the sand near the head of the grave.

He stepped back and looked at it, the kids at his side.

His lips moved silently for a moment, then he said, "Come on, kids. We got to get out of here." He picked up the little girl, took the boy by the hand, and they walked away to the west, the sun shining on their backs.