Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
Owens Valley, 1973, story by Dirk van Nouhuys.
Anne Fujiwara signaled a pause at Lone Pine to look at Mount Whitney. Dennis Forbes parked in front of a green placard, colored and lettered like a highway sign but weathered and ramshackle. The big, top lettering read MOUNT WHITNEY PACK TRIALS, and below were details about buying equipment and hiring guides. Beyond the sign were brown sheds, almost shanties, beyond that low, kakhi hills. They lifted their eyes to the wall of peaks, The Sierras, at once distant and hovering to the west. Whitney was the highest among many peaks. Dennis knew “sierra” meant saw and asked Anne if she did.
“If they were a saw,” she said, “Whitney would stick out and be broken first.”
They stood silently gazing. They were not cold, but Anne shivered with her shoulders, and said, “Can you imagine what it is like on those ridges swept by the winds?
“Have you ever done that kind of hiking?” Dennis asked.
“No.”
“Me either.”
He toed gravel with his left foot. Without speaking they turned away to their car.
The road continued in the middle of a dry, glacial valley, khaki earth with more sage brush and creosote and fewer Joshua trees. Occasionally irrigated fields planted with alfalfa interrupted the view like lost chess squares. On both sides beyond the desert bluffs rose and beyond them peaks made the space seem vaster.
“I’m confused,” Denis said after a while, “which way is west?”
“The Sierra is on our left, that’s west, the mountains to our right, that’s, east, are called the White Mountains.”
“This space makes me feel free,” he said.
“Free of what?”
“Good question.”
Anne asked if he knew about the water wars.
Denis admitted ignorance. She recounted how at the beginning of the century this valley had been lush agricultural land watered by many streams from the snowy mountains, but the city of Los Angeles had viciously bought up farms and sucked the water away. “”Manzanar’ means Apple orchard. We grew apples there and lots of vegetables.”
In the open country they could see the entrance a good way off. Two thick poles made from slender tree trunks held a wooden placard hanging in chains. The chained placard bore in cleanly painted lettering the words, Manzanar War Relocation Center. A wide dirt road passed between the sign and a small building, hardly more than a room with thick, stone walls. Its roof came to a peak that suggested a pagoda. The dirt road reached for the mountains. A hundred or so yards to their left stood a guard tower, no more than a waist-high wall and a roof supported by about twenty feet of rough-cut, weathered, brown wood. Anne turned left onto the track. One large building hunched alone to one side maybe 50 yards away. Otherwise the 100 acres or so before them was without trees or shrubs, or buildings, only clumps of dry grass and concrete blocks that had once been foundations.
“I told you. There is almost nothing left. The barracks were torn down for lumber. Some of us bought it cheap at auction and hauled it away for construction.”
“I understand.”
Anne nodded toward the building in the distance. “It’s closed.”
She drove a ways into the open area, then turned right and wound hesitantly over rough ground. Finally she stopped, got out, told Dennis she wanted to look around, took the short shovel and bucket out of the car and began searching, moving ever more slowly from one deserted foundation to another.
Although an intermittent breeze carried a smell of juniper, it was hot. Dennis stood by the open door of his car wondering what her thoughts and emotions were. Finally she knelt, put her arms around her face, and began to cry. Dennis knelt beside her.
“I can’t find it. It’s gone,” she said among her tears. Dennis put his arm around her shoulders.
She loosed her arms from around her face and gathered her legs under her to rise. Dennis withdrew his arm. She stood while Dennis remained kneeling looking at the ground wondering what she had been searching for. She remained quiet and he rose looking at her questioningly.
She gestured at the block of concrete before them and said “I don’t know which one was ours. There were gardens everywhere.”
Dennis shook his head slowly, then asked, “Did you find it when you came here before?”
“The first time I came, in 69, I was with a group. We did everything together. I didn’t look for mine. When I came with Jack we found it. He was confident. Jack was always confident. But things look different now.”
“I can wait while you look.”
“Let’s go to the graveyard.”
They walked back to the car and she found a faint road. As they drove she explained that people had died. Dennis had not thought of that.
“Mostly children and old men.”
“And they are buried here?”
“Some were cremated and their ashes stayed in the apartments until their families went back; some were buried here and then when their families…what is the word?”
“Disinterred,” Dennis said. “Yes, disinterred and reburied them somewhere else. A few are still here.”
They reached a white pillar with a pointed top, it’s back to the mountains. Two bunches of wilting flowers graced its plinth. The air was more clear than clear. The pillar had three Japanese characters in bold black.
Dennis asked what they meant.
“’The answer that consols the soul.’” She turned her back to the mountains and walked to an otherwise untended area where few gravestones were scatted irregularly. Dennis wanted to ask her some questions, but her silence dissolved them. After she had stepped past each gravestone — there were nine — not reading them but gazing at the half tended emptiness where the barracks, where the community, had stood, she returned to the monument. Dennis followed her unspeaking; their footsteps crunching together.
“So, while you were growing up on the two farms, going to school, we were here, and when we came home it was gone.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Going to high school, college, choosing to be a lawyer — Did you ever think of being anything else?”
“Yes,” Dennis answered, but didn’t elaborate.
“…living places, did you move around much?” She did not wait for an answer…”having friends, lovers, maybe enemies —Do you have enemies?”
“Yes, you can’t prosecute people without earning enemies.”
“You said ‘’earn’ —is animosity a wage?”
“Not everyone who has received justice believes it is just.”
“And we struggled to find a place. Did your father and mother sell the farm?”
“No, my mother sold it after he died. Like, my sister and I did the selling.”
“Was there any kind of title search?”
“Yes. It showed that your father had sold us the farm. It was, like, clean from the title search perspective.”
“How much?”
“Six thousand dollars — That’s 1942 dollars.”
“I am not your enemy,” she said.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
She made a little gesture with her hand as if she were tossing something light away or catching it.
“Let’s go on,” she said. We can go to the hot springs in Bishop.”
They drove about 45 minutes north through higher dry country with sporadic watered fields. Kakhi bluffs sloped up from the valley floor and snowy peaks rose beyond them. The valley seemed as if it might go on forever, but after about three quarters of an hour a sign loomed beside the road. Two white poles supported turquoise boards with ‘Visit Historic Keough Hot Springs ‘in white. The poles and sign were weathered, but the letters were newly painted in some font with curly turns.
“Turn in there,:” Anne said. They continued about half a mile toward the hills on a dirt road and came upon a random collection of buildings, most small, one large, set on grassy area among low trees.
“Park by the building,” Anne said. It was two stories about 150 feet long. It looked something like a warehouse. The lower floor was a whitewashed wall with one door, the second story was wallboard. It’s planking was freshly white washed, but here and there it looked awry. No windows.
“The pools are inside, “Anne told him.
With crunching tires he parked near the door in a space where gravel meshed in crab grass. They unlatched the trunk of his BWM, opened their suitcases, and fished out swimming suits and flipflops. He took his wallet and she took a book, her red-framed glasses, and a pair of sunglasses with heavy black frames. The door opened into a space cluttered with pool gear which in turn opened out to a pool that looked like a public swimming pool in a park except that a powerful jet of water emerged from the second floor and rained on half its length. Dennis paid for admission at a grilled cashier widow. A plump, brown-haired woman in glasses behind the grill told him without rising that womens changing rooms were on this side, men’s across the pool. When he stepped to the side of the pool, he saw three people swimming laps and on the right, shadowed under a roof, a shallow, half-sized pool where several people drifted or clung to supports that extended from the edge. “That’s the hot pool,” he heard her speak behind him. The opposite side of the pool had space enough for recumbent deck chairs.
“See you in a few minutes.”
He walked to the other side on a narrow walkway. To his right was the shallow, half-sized pool; he put his finger in the water. It was hot. On his left arched the hefty jet into the full-length, open pool. He noticed smelling nothing, no chlorine, none of the acrid sulphury smell he associated with mineral springs. He stept down into the changing area.
There were two lines of booths, unpainted wood with swinging, louvered doors. He entered one. The was no place to lock up his clothes, so he left them on a shelf and emerged in loose, black swimming trunks. He stepped out through the swinging doors and looked around for Anne. A towel and a book lay on a lounge chair in the sun but he found her floating with her eyes closed in the hot pool. He paused, and she opened her eyes. “I’m going to do a few laps,” he said loud enough for her to hear over the sound of the jet. She smiled and nodded.
He was a good swimmer and often swam laps at a college pool near his office. He dove into the lap pool. The water was warm but not cloying. The rain of drops where the big jet were warmer than the pool water and pleasant. He thought of places he had swum before. He had been on his highschool swimming team. He settled into it, and his thoughts drifted to a girl who had been on the girls team in his highschool who he had always wanted to date but had never dared to, then to prospects at work that required his attention. He did not come to conclusions but passed his attention over them like petting a dog. He swam 20 laps and felt at first released from the unacknowledged tension of Anne’s challenge, and then tired.
He heave himself out of the pool. Anne was the only one using one of half a dozen lounges. She wore a muted red, single-piece bathing suit and was reading a book. He thought she looked lonely. He took a chair next to her and asked her what the book was.
“It’s called Escape form Freedom.”
Normally he read only legal books, but he had read this work a few years before wondering if it illuminated either people’s experience of incarceration or the public’s intention in employing it. It had disappointed him. He was eager to learn her thoughts.
© Dirk van Nouhuys
Dirk van Nouhuys is an American writer, computer scientist, and translator known for his work in fiction and non-fiction. His literary works span various genres, including novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is currently working on a novel centered on the history of San Jose, Ca. from 1932 to the present, of which this story is an excerpt. He has contributed something over 100 items to literary magazines and journals. Van Nouhuys’ writing often explores complex characters and intricate narratives, reflecting his keen interest in the human condition and societal issues. You can learn more about him at his web site, www.wandd.com.