Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [79]
When they first heard the name, learned to pronounce it correctly: Tulee Lake, there had been conjecture. A lake. Would there be trees, the sound of birds, fish beneath the surface? Or would it be an urban lake, an unknown Chicago, set about with modern blocks, noisy with streetcars?
Stiff from the journey, they climbed awkwardly from the baggage car, urged on by soldiers with rifles and bayonets. The rest emerged from the train, blinking in the sunlight. The corridors were awash with fluid and there was a stench of urine; toilets had overflowed, soaking shoes and baggage stacked in the corridors. Mothers held babies clasped in their arms. A group of unaccompanied children, dressed alike, faces blank, small hands linked, moved as one, bunched tightly together. All around, dry flatness encircled them; there was no lake to be seen. Far off, dull green patches indicated some sort of cultivation, but the green was thick with dust. They were in a place of dust; dust baked into a substance as hard as rock beneath their feet, the only landmark a low hill rising in the distance.
No streets. No streetcars, just a line of coaches waiting to suck in unwilling passengers and spew them out a few miles further away, at their desert destination.
Set in a shallow dust-bowl like a scattered house of cards stood row upon row of huts. Raw timber, tar-paper, crudely constructed, flimsy shacks. Joey recalled a long-ago walk with Nancy, looking for wild blackberries. They had come upon a cluster of huts thrown up by desperate and homeless men using whatever they could cull from the waste ground around them. The inmates had called such places Hooverville – a bitter joke at the expense of a president they held responsible for their plight. The huts before him now, geometrically placed in a grimly functional grid, formed the official equivalent of a Hooverville; a government-commissioned shanty town. But there was a fundamental difference: when the homeless had put up their scattered, patched and tattered dwellings they were free to come and go as they wished. Here, stumbling from the coaches, the new arrivals could see the campsite was ringed by barbed wire with watchtowers at the corners. In the watchtowers were guards, with machine guns. The guns were trained on the camp itself, for the enemy lay within.
No one expected trouble on day one. The buses had disgorged them, shaky and exhausted, the walk to the distant gates was daunting. Children dragged their feet and soldiers called out mechanically, telling them to keep moving, khaki-clad sheepdogs rallying a tired flock.
Mr Takahashi felt more than tired; he felt unwell, and he stumbled, tripping on loose stones.
The day before, with his home clean and tidied, stacking dishes on shelves as though he were simply leaving on a short vacation, he had been approached by a neighbour, who had offered to buy his car.
‘I guess you won’t be needing it, where you’re going.’
The tone was amiable and Mr Takahashi was not offended by the insensitivity. After all, the statement was true. He pondered what the car might be worth; he had looked after it carefully, maintained it in immaculate condition.
His neighbour tapped a wheel thoughtfully with the toe of his shoe. ‘Tell you what: give you a dollar for it.’
For a moment Mr Takahashi thought it was a little joke; the American sense of humour. Then he saw the man was serious. A sourness rose up in his throat, a nausea. He said levelly, ‘The car is not for sale.’
‘No? Suit yourself. Be a heap of rust before you see it again.’
Long before, when Mrs Takahashi was still alive, the couple would drive out on a Sunday, heading east on the highway, then taking the back roads to a quiet fishing spot for Mr Takahashi. Though neither of them ever spoke of this, the setting was one that brought back their Tokyo childhood. In the distance Mount Hood loomed, its volcanic peak catching the sunlight. Below its slope the woods spread out, and curving below them was the