Chapter 27. Slung into the Sloughs

Lightning bolts lit the dark landscape, and thunder rolled over the rumble of the Harley, as we sped towards I-80 from Benicia to beat the rain. In lieu of goggles, I had to make do with cheap drug store sunglasses for eye protection. The dark lenses on the road at night were a hazard but they were better than nothing, since even a light drizzle stung like nettles on unprotected areas of the face at any speed above twenty. Adding to our discomfort, we had nothing for helmets but wool watch caps. Larry held on the best he could from behind. I suspect that most men feel a little uncomfortable, like I did, with another man clutching like a woman from the Sissy-Seat. However, I wasn’t distracted long and was occupied with one eye on the traffic ahead and watching the rearview mirrors, as any normal biker would. But I was no normal biker that night and the behavior of a certain set of headlights several cars behind us could not be ignored.

I switched lanes a few times before the bottleneck at the I-80 junction. The lights followed each zig and zag. I managed to gain some distance by slipping ahead between lanes. Twisting the throttle, I blasted ahead, passing where I’d planned to turn-off at Fairfield. The next exit at the summit before Vacaville was a good place to backtrack if I could shake whoever it was following us.

I left the freeway and waited at the top of the overpass from there and shut off the motor to watch, listen, and not be heard.

Larry shouted, “Why are you stopping here? I’m cold… my hands are freezing…” he shivered, “We gotta get where it’s warm.”

I pitied him a little. He was wearing jeans, sweatshirt, and his yachtie windbreaker. “Quit bitching. We don’t have far to go,” I assured him, but his comfort mattered less to me than keeping an eye on the freeway. It was well-lit there… enough so that I’d be able to identify whatever vehicle was following us if they took the exit. Within a half-minute my hopes were fulfilled. A Land-Rover approached but turned the other way from us and out of sight onto the old Lagoon Road that wound out of sight around a knoll.

I cranked up the Hog to go back towards Fairview, “Hold on, Larry. We have a nasty ride ahead of us.”

Past Travis Air Force Base, from Fairview to the Rio Vista Junction, and on to Yolano the roads are paved but rural. Another lifetime ago, I landed more than once at Travis on C-130 Herks and commercial liners. Old memories of young GIs being met by spiteful anti-war protesters blocking the gates in the 60’s contrasted with what I knew would be bucolic roads where the greatest obstacles would be running into a crossing of Basque sheep… day or night… rain or shine. Then we had to cut off the paved roads onto paths through soggy peatbogs to the sloughs. I was anxious to get past those clouds, pregnant with rain, before they dumped. We had gotten out of range from those who might have been tailing us. The mud track and ditches would slow down anyone unfamiliar with them because they ran ruler-straight and came unexpected in the dark to several 90-degree tees. I nearly lost it more than once slipping and skidding around these turns. The bike’s road-rubber tires spun out, slipped and slid, and with both feet out, I damned near walked it through. Hell, not only was I wearing sunglasses at night, we were riding the heaviest of all road bikes over mud tracks alongside of drainage ditches that would be more than enough of a challenge for any dirt-bike in the weather we were facing.

The sky opened-up five minutes from our destination with a blinding sheet of rain. The section of our destination at Prospect Slough was straight and narrow, a hundred feet wide… enough above sea level to need a minor berm along its side to protect the lowlands from flooding. The levee running parallel to it on the opposite side arose at a 40 ͦ incline seventy-five feet. It held back the waters of the Sacramento Deep-Water shipping canal above us. We rode the slippery muck on the berm a quarter mile to where the track opened-up wide enough for a campsite and arrived just in time before the downpour made the road impossible to power through. The trailer-camper was tucked into a small copse of old Box Elders and thick brush. We were wet, cold, and Larry was shivering violently, by the time we reached the trailer. I dropped him off at the door and had to lean the Harley against a tree behind the camper in some bushes. It was not visible there and in no way, would the kickstand hold it up in the softened earth. I got the rifle out of the saddlebags and brought it inside.

A box of Diamond matches and a white gas Coleman lantern was ready for us on the table. I found the CB radio and a pair of field glasses in the storage under the drop-down table’s camper seat. I pumped up the pressure in the lamp’s tank and lit it along with two of the burners on the propane range. These, combined, began heating the place enough to hang our clothes to dry.  The small closet next to the range had wool blankets, a couple pairs of jeans, and a few flannel shirts. I found a can of cocoa mix in the cupboard then put a kettle on and, tossed a pair of jeans and a shirt at Larry, “Here, get into some dry clothes.”

I left the door open a crack but Larry shut it.

“Leave it open Larry or you’ll die in your sleep.”

“Uh, why?” He stripped off the shirt. His back had long scars from gashes.

I nodded at the range and lantern, “You ever hear of asphyxiation?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry’s better than dead. You get those scars on your back from havin’ fun?” I asked.

“Smerdyakov … uh, I meant, Yuri’s art of persuasion.”

I caught him in another lie. “You’ve seen Smerdyakov then? You said you hadn’t.”

Larry shrugged into the shirt and, wrapped in the blanket, he changed into dry jeans the way surfers do at public beaches. I poured boiling water onto cocoa powder into the Styrofoam cups.

After Larry changed into dry clothes we sat across from each other at the table. His hands still shook as he sipped the cocoa, “I can make a deal with Smerdyakov.”

 “Larry, forget that. We ruined their party and now they’ll get rid of us. Especially you. You’re dead meat.” I busied myself with breaking down the rifle on the table, wiping its parts, making sure everything was in working order.

It didn’t matter that he lied about Smerdyakov. It just felt good to be relaxing over hot cocoa on a rainy night, “Yeh, these sloughs aren’t for humans. Cold and wet in the winter. Summer on the Delta’s a bitch too. It gets hundred-ten degrees from May to September. People… that is, white people, aren’t supposed to live here. Grizzly Bears and Indians did… in the old days, but I don’t know how they did it. It’s miserable enough to be another reason the Navy liked to train here.”

Larry came back to my original question, “No, it wasn’t fun at all. Fuckin’ Yuri. I’m not gay.”

I was amused at Larry’s fear about what he might be and ribbed him a little, “No one thought you were until you mentioned it… out of the blue like that. Do you think I might be?”

“Well, I’m not,” he insisted.

At times, the rain came down so hard we couldn’t hear ourselves talk. In a lull, I said, “Larry, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Even if I was as queer as a three-dollar bill, you ain’t my type.”

 “Well, I’m not gay!” he insisted.

“Larry, calm down. It doesn’t matter to me.” It was my turn to change the subject, “Looks like we’ll have to settle for catfish for protean if we’re here long enough. I can put out a couple lines if we make it to morning. There’s probably some gear in the boot outside. Try to get some sleep.”

At the mention of sleep, I tossed my cushion to the floor. I thought I’d give him one last poke, “I don’t want to sleep with you, sweetheart. We’re gonna have to keep watches but sleep on the deck… stay low, hear me?”

“You think we can expect trouble in this weather?”

“Not likely ‘til it dries out, but you never know. Yuri was trained in Siberian forests and tundra. This is picnic weather for him. We bought a little time back there but I’m thinking they’ll be on us within a few days… If not sooner. Listen for radio chatter.”

“Crash, they have eyes everywhere. I know they’ll kill us all unless we make a trade. Maybe Anna. She’s the one that got us into this.”

“From what you’ve said, the only trade they’d be willing to make would be our body parts. You’d better get that straight. Reverend Larry. You preached the love of God and all bullshit that in your church. Dyin’ oughta be easy for you. Right? Accept the Lord! You fuckers always say… and even a baby raping Sodomite, will go to Heaven. Am I right? It’s the living of life that’s hard.”

“So, what if I’m a Christian? I’m a sinner. But you, what are you and that giant back there in Benicia? You aren’t any better than Smerdyakov. What are you guys, Kraszhinski, some kind of hit men… murderers for the C.I.A.?”

My feelings for this walking turd, looking down his nose at me, vacillated between homicidal and mild disgust. I wanted to jack-him-up right there but thought better of it.  Hell, I might have felt compassion for him from time to time too. As I stepped out the door, I said, “Calm down, Larry. I don’t know. I’m talking shit to myself. Get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”

“In the rain?”

“Can’t see shit from in here.” I looked forward to laying down in the bush, “And, Larry, I don’t mind being called a murderer. But this just might be true for you too, the label that’s evaded my grasp all my life is being called a fuckin’ human being.”