Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

The silence that follows starts comfortable, but goes on a little bit too long.

I start to rise. “Well, good n—”

“Paul didn’t die in the quake, did he?”

She’s stooped, breathing hard. But her eyes are bright. Alert.

I open my mouth to tell her that of course he did… but I don’t have it in me. Not after everything that’s happened.

“I knew, from the way my Annie was tonight. This wasn’t nature. He was killed by something… preventable, I guess is the word. He was a good man. An honest one. Fair few of those around, I don’t mind telling you. And you know how good he was to my Annie.” She breathes a shaky sigh, and under the porch light, her cheeks glisten with tears. “God, I wish he was here.”

“Mrs Cr—Sandra-May…”

“I need to ask you something.” Her voice is suddenly hard. “And you’d better answer straight. Was it drugs? Were y’all involved in some drug thing?”

“What? No…”

“Guns? Gang nonsense, anything like that?”

“Of course not!”

“Is my Annie involved in something that hurts people? In any way at all?”

I hold up my hands, just to give myself time to get my thoughts in order.

“Paul would never hurt anybody,” I tell her, forgetting to use the past tense. “Neither would Annie. Or me. We’re not criminals.”

There’s a long pause where she just stares at me. And I know what’s going to happen next: she’s going to push. She’ll make me tell her, and I don’t know if I can lie. But I can’t tell her the truth, either – not without bringing the wrath of Tanner down on my head.

But then she nods. “I get it. You don’t think you should be the one to spill it. I suppose Annie will, when she’s ready. Just promise me one thing.”

“Of… of course.”

“You keep her safe. You don’t let her get hurt. She’s already been through enough, and she’s going to need a lot more help after this. So you watch out for her. Understand?”

Slowly, I nod. Not wanting to admit how relieved I am.

Sandra-May gives me a slow smile, then starts to move back into the house. I push myself up, thinking I should get while the getting’s good.

And then I spot something… a little weird.

Actually, a lot weird.

Across the street from Sandra-May’s front yard are the Watts Towers. The big, alien-spaceship-looking sculptures, rising out of the cul-de-sac. The houses around them are in bad shape, some even knocked over completely. But the towers… they’re undamaged. Ditto for the wall around them. Those tall, fragile, airy constructions of rebar and concrete are still there. I didn’t even notice before – our arrival at Sandra-May’s was a blur of people and trays of food and boxes of beer. But they’re still there. Undamaged.

“What?” Sandra-May says. She follows my gaze. “The towers?”

“Yeah. I thought they’d be…”

She huffs a laugh. “Let me tell you a little something about the Watts Towers. See, they were built over a period of thirty years by one man. One single man, bit by bit. Simon Rodia, his name was – although back in Italy they called him Sabato Rodia.” She sees my expression. “Don’t worry. It’s not a long history lesson.”

“OK?”

“Anyway, Rodia used nothing more than seashells and bits of glass, held together with mortar. And in the fifties, the city decided that the towers were a hazard – if a quake happened, they’d fall over and kill people. Personally, I don’t think they gave a tin shit about the folks in Watts – they just didn’t want any of ’em having a nice piece of art nearby. We didn’t hold with that, made them do a test. They brought in a crane, tied steel cables to the towers. Ten thousand pounds of force. And they couldn’t budge them – not one inch.”

“Why? That doesn’t make sense.”

“No idea. Only person who could tell you is dear old Simon Rodia, and he’s long gone.”

She spots the disbelief on my face, and laughs. “You can look it up on your phone. It’s all documented – photos and everything. Takes more than a couple little earthquakes to knock down the towers.”

“Kind of an obvious lesson, isn’t it?”

She shrugs. “Gets me through the day. I’ll leave a comforter on the couch for you, and there’s extra blankets in the hall closet if you get cold. I’ll see you in the morning, and I do believe I’ll hold you to that breakfast.”

She goes inside, shutting the door quietly behind her.

The neighbourhood around me is quiet… but not silent. A few doors down, there’s a barbecue going on – a group talking in low voices, the sizzle of meat on a grill, a charred scent in the air. On the far side of the towers, on Santa Ana, a car drives past. Moving slow, negotiating the cracked road. Its lights illuminate a group of kids, out way past their bedtimes, chasing each other in some game. On the corner of the triangular park the towers stand in, two women talk over the glowing light of a cigarette, laughing at some unheard joke. In the distance, a dog barks – and underneath the sound, very faint, the soft hum of Los Angeles traffic. Nothing like it was before the quake – but still there, all the same.

Yeah. Definitely an obvious lesson.

Which doesn’t stop it being true.

I put my phone back in my pocket. Then I lift my tired body up off the porch, and step inside, closing the door behind me.

Seven days earlier. Olympic National Park, Washington.

A pickup truck pulls into an empty parking lot on the shore of Lake Cushman, not too far from the Vance Campground.

The truck is a big Ford F150, double-cab, with huge tyres for negotiating uneven roads. It comes to a stop, the driver parking it neatly between the lines. In the silence that follows, the trees crowding the lake seem to bend a little closer.

The Director is in her mid-twenties, with a willowy figure and an oval face dotted with acne scars. Her blonde hair is tied back in a neat ponytail. She wears a polo-neck sweater under a North Face vest, with hiking pants and thick, chunky boots.

“Listen, you go ahead,” says the man in the passenger seat. He’s a little older than she is, with thick black hair going very slightly grey at the temples. “I’ll watch the little monster.”

The girl in the backseat giggles. “I’m not a monster.”

That earns a smile from the Director – but suddenly, a worry line crinkles her forehead. “Olivia, you’re sure about this?” she says.

The girl blinks at her from behind owlish glasses. She’s a plump five-year-old, slightly stubby fingers clutching an iPad. Her feet, clad in comfy child-size Crocs, dangle off the big backseat.

“Positive,” she says. She spins the iPad to face the Director, fingers dancing effortlessly to bring up a satellite map. “Here. Just take the trail in for… hmmm… for three miles. It’ll work, I swear.”

The Director pats her knee. “Thanks, sweetie. I’ll see you in a little bit, OK? Ajay’s got some snacks if you want.”

“Are they Pringles?”

The man named Ajay rolls his eyes. “Olivia. You know we don’t eat those.”

“Why?”

Ajay gets a kiss on the cheek from the Director. She hops out the car, grabbing her daypack from the cargo well. It’s a bright, cold day, overcast but not dull. There isn’t another soul around.

The Director hefts her pack, heading for the far side of the parking lot, the painted white blaze marking the start of the trail. The trees close in on her, swallowing her from view.

Olivia has almost never been wrong before. She could look at two other kids playing baseball, study them for a moment, and tell you that the pitch after next would break a window – and which one it would be. You’d put her in front of an office building, tell her about the companies that occupied it, and she’d say whether the next person who came out the front doors would be a man or a woman. And the one after that. And the one after that.