Early Warning

Texas and Arizona had not prepared him for California. The sunshine was brilliant but refreshing, and even when the ocean was invisible, Tim could sense that it was out there — not the flat, warm, green-blue ocean he knew from Maryland and New Jersey, but something colder, more beautiful, and more endless, lit by the sun to a burnished hyacinth color hour after hour for the whole long day. And hitchhiking was easy, especially in uniform. The first car took him to Venice; that guy offered him a hamburger. The second couple, about his parents’ age, took him to Morro Bay, where they invited him to stay the night. The next one to stop was a girl, maybe seventeen, who seemed unafraid, and took him up and down a steep grade — maybe the steepest he’d ever seen — to Atascadero. A Mexican fellow got him to Salinas, and another guy dropped him near the San Jose airport. The weather was perfect, and the hills to either side of the road were pale velvety green. At San Jose, he made his way to a different highway, one that headed to Oakland, and he waited. It was almost dusk when a pickup truck — a beat-up Ford — stopped maybe a hundred feet past him, and an arm waved to him out of the passenger’s window. He shouldered his duffel bag and ran.

A guy in a sharkskin suit opened the door and got out, throwing a large package into the bed of the truck, and gesturing to Tim to throw his duffel in there. A woman was driving, maybe Tim’s age. She had on a revealing beige cotton dress and high-heeled sandals. Both the man and the woman wore sunglasses, even though the sun was about down. He got between them, and at once began to regret it. “You in the army?” said the guy, as if that wasn’t obvious, but before Tim could speak, he said, “I was a marine myself. Out of Camp Pendleton. You know where that is? Down south. We’re coming from around there now.” He looked Tim up and down, then said, “We should feed this guy to the horses.” The girl laughed. “I was in the marines for eight years. You believe that?” Tim opened his mouth, and the girl laughed and said, “No!”

“Eight fucking years,” said the guy. “Thought I was a big shot. Who did Wayne get?”

The girl said, “A sailor.”

“Yeah.”

“He said.”

“Anyway, I’m out now. Never got to ’Nam. I don’t look that old, but I’m forty.”

“You look forty,” said the girl.

“Shut the fuck up,” said the guy.

“Well, you dress like someone’s dad.”

“I dress like your dad. That’s why you fuck me.”

Tim shifted his weight. They passed a sign that said “Fremont.” Tim looked at the speedometer — eighty-seven. The girl said, “Keep telling yourself that, asshole.”

There was a pause, and then the guy turned suddenly to Tim. “Where you headed, soldier?”

Without thinking, Tim gave Eloise’s address. The two exchanged a glance across him, and the glance clearly said, Nice neighborhood. As if to underline this thought, the guy said, “We can take you right there. No trouble.”

Tim’s skin was practically prickling, he was so sure that this man was dangerous. Here it was, 1966, and he was dressed like an old-time gangster from New Jersey: the sharkskin suit, right down to the flashy tie, and his hair had marks from being combed that you only got with plenty of Vitalis. He offered Tim a cigarette, which Tim took, and then the three of them smoked in the darkness with a thoughtful air as they sped toward Oakland.

The girl knew right where to go, as if she was from Oakland, and the girl and the man exchanged two more significant glances as they turned corners. Eloise’s neighborhood hadn’t started out nice — the houses were modest wooden ones, similar to one another and probably built from kits. But the yards were large, the trees and gardens had grown up nicely, and now it was a little on the prestigious side, or so Eloise had told his mother. You could see under the streetlights that nice cars were parked in front of them, too: T-birds, a couple of Chryslers, an Oldsmobile, a Cadillac. When the man peered up through the windshield, let his gaze drift along the block with a whistle, Tim became convinced that he planned to kill Tim, and maybe Eloise and whoever was there at the moment — his cousin Rosa, her baby. He maybe outweighed Tim by fifteen pounds, but a lot of that was belly. If he had to, Tim could take him.

The man read out the addresses in the dark, and the girl pulled up in front of Eloise’s place, now dimly visible, the porch light bright. The girl turned off the engine. The three of them sat there. Then the man shifted deliberately and stared at him. He said, “I like this place. I like this whole neighborhood. Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”