Humpty Dumpty in Oakland Page 7

  Inside him he felt a deep spurt of his own nature, his own cunning. And he laughed. “The hell with that,” he said aloud. Go and call without knowing anything? With only having someone’s word?

  Why should I believe Harman? Why should I believe anybody? I didn’t get where I am by relying on what people tell me. On rumor.

  But he had to be sure he saw the right place. So, lifting the phone, he called the number next to Harman’s name on his sheet of old customers.

  * * *

  That night, when he got home, he passed his wife without a word. He went directly into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, and before Lydia’s voice could distract him he had turned the tub water on full.

  As he lay in the water soaking, he thought, I know where it is. I can find it.

  It was his plan to go up the next morning as early as possible and to be back to his garage by noon. Lying in the tub on his back, staring up at the steam-drenched ceiling, he went over each bit of the plan. Relishing it, revolving it in his mind, he made of it the most he could; he filled it in so that nothing was left unthought.

  A new one, he thought. It would be new, every aspect of the place. No grease, no stale smell; the dampness, the sense of age, the discarded parts heaped in the corner . . . all gone. Swept away. Piles and pools, the dust. None of that.

  The hell with them, he thought. I’ll have an office with all glass and soundproofing; I can see down at the mechanics. I’ll be overlooking. With several intercoms. Maybe the kind without wires. Fluorescent lights everywhere, like in the new factories. Lots of automatic stuff. All organized; no wasted time costing money.

  It’ll be science throughout, he told himself. Atomic, like in the labs. Like Livermore where they invented the Bomb.

  He saw himself a part of the new world, along with Harman, along with all other enterprising men. This is America, he thought. Vision. What you do with capital and imagination. And I have both.

  Boldness, he thought. You have to be bold. Even ruthless. Or otherwise they’ll get you. They’re always in wait, trying to pull you down to their level; naturally when you get up there they resent it. They envy. You ignore that, however. Like Nixon does; he stands and sneers when they insult him, throw rocks, even spit. Risks his life.

  His eyes half-shut, submerged in the hot water, with new water roaring, the old man thought of himself that way, not lost in the dirty, unimportant San Pablo Avenue of drive-ins; he saw himself with the big people who mattered. I’m in industry, he thought. Not politics; that’s not my game. This country is founded on business. It’s the backbone.

  Investment! I’m investing, in the future of America. Not for my own good—hell, not for profit—but to expand the economy. And it will count. What I do will count.

  6

  The early-morning street was damp, and over all the houses was a fog, wet enough to start drops slipping across the upright surfaces. Nobody was out, but occasional yellow rectangles were kitchens in which, Jim Fergesson imagined, men stood before open ovens with their rumps to the heat.

  He shaved, and fried some mush left over from the day before, drank gritty dark coffee that had been standing in the pot, and then with his overcoat around him he descended the stairs to the basement garage in which his Pontiac was parked. Lydia was asleep. No one heard him; no one saw him go.

  Moisture had gotten into the engine and it died twice as he backed the car from the garage. Its hollow coughing continued as he drove down Grove Street, and he could not help thinking that had he the time he would take the car entirely apart. Almost everything in it was worn; nothing engaged. He did not shift into high gear but remained in second until he reached a stop light; there he looked carefully and without stopping turned right. Soon he was driving at thirty-five miles an hour through Oakland. By the time he had gone a mile the engine had warmed and was working a little better. He put on the radio and listened to a program of the Sons of the Pioneers.

  Most of the drivers along Eastshore Freeway had in mind the idea of going to San Francisco. Traffic was heavy facing him but his own lanes were open as he continued toward Richmond. The windows of the Pontiac were up and the heater was on. He felt comfortable and sleepy, and the cowboy music lulled him. Gradually he let the car slide from its lane, and then, as a car behind him honked, he drew himself up on the seat and concentrated. The time was six-thirty.

  Along the flat shoreline of the East Bay, on his right, ran the Aquatic Park. He had by this time reached a speed of sixty miles an hour, and that seemed to him plenty. Apparently he had not been this way in more time than he realized; there were changes in the freeway, new overhead ramps being built, detours and cut-offs which confused him. And already, he noticed, the freeway was twelve lanes wide. Did they have to make it even wider? The pavement was white cement and there were no stops. The flatness of the pavement pleased him. He held the wheel with both hands and gazed at the houses and hills to his right.

  Now the problem came of finding Hoffman Boulevard; he had to get over to the right or he would not be able to leave the freeway. So he drifted gradually, thinking that this was the best way. Cars on his right, however, did not think so; a chorus of horns jolted him. Gunning the car forward, he shot into an open space in the right-hand lane, almost the asphalt shoulder. A moment later his car coasted along the narrow, bumpy temporary start of Hoffman; he shot past a green light at an intersection and under an ominous black-iron overpass with huge warning signs and winking yellow lights; the lights alternated in a pattern that made him feel, as he drove beneath them, that something terrible was going to happen. The passage under the overpass was so narrow that for a moment he thought the car would not make it. He had the illusion that he would scrape on both sides, and it was all he could do to keep his hands on the steering wheel. But already he had come out on the far side; there, once more, was the Bay to his left.

  Several miles later Hoffman entered a strip of cut-rate gasoline stations and truck drivers’ cafes, and then the worst section of run-down Negro shacks that he could recall. Traffic moved very slowly, with huge diesel trucks interspersed among the cars. This, he understood, was Richmond. Trash littered the broken sidewalks.

  To his left he saw factories and wharves. Near the water, he realized. Train tracks, one after another. And then, ahead, a steep hill with houses. The street turned sharply. He saw an open place, and then the immense Standard Oil refinery. All at once the street became a freeway again, climbing, with the cars picking up speed on all sides of him. He whizzed along a broad curve, above the refinery, and now he saw the Bay once more, and the bridge that connected the East Bay to Marin County. It was the ugliest bridge he had ever seen, but it did not depress him; instead, it made him laugh.

  He slowed at the toll plaza of the bridge, paid his seventy-five cents, and then found himself on the bridge. They had built it so that the driver could see nothing, no water, none of the islands, not even his destination; all he could pick out were the heavy metal rails.

  What genius, he said to himself. What planning. Again he laughed.

  At last one sight became obvious; he fastened his gaze on it, far ahead. San Quentin Prison, clay-colored buildings like some old Mexican fort, spread out at the water’s edge, all in very good shape. The bridge passed to the right of the prison and let him off on a wide freeway which led into one cut-off after another. Again he was confused. But a sign told him which cut-off to take to get onto US 101 North. And so he took that.

  He sped across a flat plain at enormous speed, a car behind him and another ahead. Wind whipped at his Pontiac. There was San Rafael and US 101; he had almost arrived, and it had not taken very long. He was well ahead of schedule, and his spirits rose even further.

  When he saw a gas station on a little side cut-off road he made a signal and coasted from the freeway. After several turns he found himself at the gas station. Leaving the road he brought the car to the nearest island of pumps. The morning air, as he opened the car door, was warm. Wind riffled
the stalks of weeds growing in the surrounding fields.

  He lifted the hood and with a page of newspaper took an oil reading. The oil level was down, so he picked up a quart of 30 weight from the rack by the pumps. The boyish attendant in his white uniform was hurrying over as the old man emptied the oil into the pouring-can that had been put nearby.

  “Hey,” the boy said indignantly. “None of that.”

  “Sorry,” Fergesson said, remembering, now, that he was not in his own garage. “Give me five of the regular.” He had already begun to reach for the gas hose, but he pretended that he had been reading the price. Ethyl was thirty-nine cents a gallon. He showed amazement at the amount as the boy lifted down the hose.

  The boy was still upset. As he walked to the rear of the car and removed the gas cap, he watched the old man as if expecting him to tinker again with the company’s property. Self-consciously, the old man got back inside the car and remained there until the boy came around to wash the windshield. “No, no,” he said to the boy, wanting to leave, pushing several one-dollar bills at him.

  The boy gave him change and retrieved the pouring-can. The hood slammed down and the old man drove from the station back onto the road. There a milk truck honked at him as he pulled in front of it.

  As he drove, his eagerness increased. Now, at any time, he might see the sign leading to Marin Country Gardens. But he had left the freeway; the little road did not lead back to it but brought him out on a residential street. A huge wire cyclone fence separated him from “the freeway, and beyond the fence cars shot along at enormous speed. However, he continued on with no diminution of spirits, disconnected from the freeway as he was. Evidently he had entered San Rafael, a town to which he rarely, if ever, came.

  Between silent houses he drove at twenty-five miles an hour. The blocks were short. A number of men could be seen on their way to work, walking rapidly, some wearing suits, others in work clothes. They all had a speeded-up motion, as in an old film. That amused him, too.

  For a time he drove through the town, still keeping in sight of the freeway, wondering where he was but enjoying himself. And then at last he sighted something heartening. The broken-up expanse of new dirt which, he realized, was construction beyond the freeway. Great culverts lying in rows, the ceramic drainage system which would go down first, before anything else. And parked machinery. Big ones. The major equipment which the Federal Government used in its work; he had seen them when Highway 40 had been rebuilt, the Eastshore Freeway.

  He came, then, to the very edge of the construction zone, and halted his car; he had no choice but to halt—the pavement ended in a series of jagged projections that had already cracked. The road on which he drove had been scooped away by the digging equipment. He saw down, into a drop-off. Dirt only. The underneath part which they usually never got to see. It frightened him, and he pulled on the handbrake. Machines, he thought, had carried away everything here; had left nothing at all. What power to remove! Nothing could stand . . . he looked to the right and left. Furrow for a long way, and so God damn wide. Did cars go across? Could one go and rejoin the freeway on the far side? He saw, high up, tiny swift dots. Cars on the freeway.

  Parallel to the freeway ran a double track. Tread marks in the dirt, imprinted by pressure. Some vehicles. So he started up the car and drove down, off the asphalt; the car bumped, creaked, lifted on first one side and then the other. He drove carefully along the rutted tracks. The car shuddered as stones broke beneath the wheels. He gripped the steering wheel and eased the car into holes and out again.

  Once he passed workmen who gaped at him. Then he passed mounds of machines. And, at last, he saw a metallic bulk approaching him head-on.

  He stopped the car as the object became a bulldozer. The driver, perched high up in his seat, shook his fist and shouted; he, too, stopped, and the two vehicles faced each other. Fergesson did not get out. He remained behind the wheel.

  The driver of the bulldozer jumped down and walked over. “Who the hell are you? Get this heap out of here.”

  To Fergesson the bulldozer and the angry driver were unreal. He heard the man panting and saw his red face moon up at the window, but still he did not stir. He did not know what to do.

  “Get back!” the man shouted. “Get back to the road! Come on, fellow!”

  Fergesson said, “You know Mr. Bradford?”

  Other workmen arrived and with them was a man in a business suit. They pointed at Fergesson’s Pontiac and waved more workmen to follow. A line of figures grew along the rise of equipment and dirt: onlookers.

  The man in the business suit came to the window and said, “I’ll have to ask you to back your car the way you came. This is a private road for use by the State.”

  Fergesson could think of nothing to say. He had come almost a mile along the rutted tracks in low gear. The idea of backing bewildered him. He felt confused and he could not speak.

  “What’s the matter with him?” the driver was yelling. “Christ, I have to get by—I can’t fart around here.”

  A workman said, “Maybe he doesn’t speak English.”

  “Let me see your driver’s license,” the man in the business suit said.

  “No,” Fergesson said.

  A workman said, “He don’t know how to back out.”

  “Move over,” the man in the business suit said. He opened the car door. “I’ll back it. Move over, buddy. Look, we can give you a citation; you’re on State property. You’re a trespasser. You have no legal right to be on this road; it isn’t a road, it’s a construction project.”

  He pushed Fergesson over, slammed the door, and, putting the Pontiac into reverse and peering over his shoulder, began to back. The driver returned to his bulldozer and followed. It took a long time to reach the point at which the genuine road had ceased. Fergesson gazed at the floorboards and said nothing.

  “Okay,” the man said, tugging on the parking brake and stepping out. “It’s all yours.”

  “How do I go?” Fergesson said.

  “Back, up the rise, the way you came.”

  Fergesson pointed across the expanse of dirt, at the freeway on the far side.

  “Go back,” the man repeated. “Back to San Rafael and find a street to cross there.” He walked rapidly off and Fergesson was alone. He could hear the rumble of the bulldozer and the sounds of the workmen; they were starting their day. Shifting into gear— the teeth clashed—he drove clumsily back along the road and once again found himself in the residential section of San Rafael, among the houses and lawns.

  When he saw a man walking along the sidewalk, Fergesson leaned out the window and called, “How do I get across?”

  The man glanced at him and went on without speaking. Fergesson rolled up the window again. He felt shaken and depressed and he did not pursue the man. The time was now nine o’clock and the sky was warming. Yellow sunlight hung over the trees and sidewalks; the lawns sparkled. A mailman walked slowly along and Fergesson brought the car to the curb beside him.

  “How do I get across 101?” he said.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Marin Country Gardens,” he said, resting a little as he sat behind the steering wheel.

  The mailman consulted with himself. “No,” he said, “I never heard of it. Go down to the city hall and ask them. Ask somebody down there; they’ll know.” He continued on.

  From then on the old man drove aimlessly, not knowing where to go or whom to talk to. He seemed to be getting farther and farther away from the main part of town; the streets became steeper and the houses older. At last he came out into what seemed to be a housing tract, but an old one; the houses were decayed and the weeds high in the yards.

  Once he saw a policeman, but the policeman looked tough and unsympathetic so he did not stop there either. The time was now a quarter past ten. This is a hell of a thing, he thought to himself. Where am I? Still in San Rafael? He saw, past the tract, what appeared to be a glimpse of open country. Fields, hills far of
f.

  At ten-thirty he came to an intersection at which was a small imitation-stone building with a sign over it: DOWLAND REAL ESTATE NOTARY PUBLIC RENTALS. So he parked the car and went inside.

  Behind one of the three desks sat a middle-aged woman in a print dress, wearing a hat and talking on the phone. She smiled at him, concluded her conversation, and then came over to the counter. “Good morning,” she said.

  Fergesson said, “I want to go to Marin Country Gardens.”

  The woman pondered. She seemed well groomed with gray hair pulled back and waved; her clothes looked expensive and she smelled of powder and perfume. “That’s not ours,” she said. “That’s one of the new subdevelopments on the far side of 101.” Hesitating, she said, “I frankly don’t even know if they’re showing, yet.”

  “I want to see Mr. Bradford,” he said.

  The woman leaned against the counter and tapped at her teeth with a yellow lead pencil. “You can double back for a mile or so and then get across. Or you can go on. Your subdevelopment is up the highway toward Petaluma, so you might as well go that way. They’re working all around there; you really should be careful. It’s easy to get lost.”

  By bringing a map to the counter she was able to give him directions that he could make out. He thanked her and returned to his car, feeling new confidence. Maybe now, he thought. At least it did exist; she had recognized the name.

  Once more he was in motion, and again in the area of construction work. The road became a tangle of dirt and asphalt, broken down, he decided, by heavy equipment; but it did cross the highway and he reached the far side, flagged by an old man in blue jeans, along with a group of other cars. There he was sent left along a pitted old blacktop road that followed the course of the freeway, but perhaps a mile to its left. On each side of him were orchards of dead fruit trees. He could not tell what sort they had been.