Free The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) by Kim Stanley Robinson

clear, now opaque with mud—and leaned over to get our arms around it. Rain poured onto my lower back and down my pants; my poncho was flying around my shoulders. Gabby and Kristen were on the other end of our roll, and the four of us maneuvered it into position at the downhill end of some rows of cabbage. We unrolled it one lift at a time, grunting and shouting directions at each other, walking up the furrows ankle deep in water. The field sloped ahead of us black and lumpy. Gray pools of water bounced under the rain’s onslaught where the grading was not right. When we got to the end of the roll the last cabbages were just covered. Below us small bowed figures were unfurling other tarps: the Hamishes, the Eggloffs, Manuel Reyes and the rest of Kathryn’s farm crew plus Rafael and Steve. Beyond them the river churned, a brown flood studded with tree-trunks and drowned shrubs. A thinner cloud rushed over and for a moment the light changed, so that everything glowed through the streaky veils of rain. Then just as suddenly it was twilight again.
    The old man was at the bottom of the field helping to position the rest of the tarps, striding about under his shoulder umbrella, a plastic thing held over his head by two poles strapped to his back. I laughed and felt the rain in my mouth: “Now why can’t he just wear a hat like everyone else?”
    “That’s just it,” Mando said, hands clamped in his armpits for warmth. “He doesn’t want to be like everyone else.”
    “He’s already managed that without any such contraption on his head.”
    Gabby and Kristen joined us at the bottom. Gabby had fallen and was completely covered with mud. We got another roll and began pulling it uphill. Wind hit the trees on the hill above and their branches bobbed and bent, as if the hillside were a big animal struggling under the storm, going whoooo, whoooo, and making the valley seem vast. Water poured down the tarps that were already laid. The drainage ditch at the bottom of the fields was overflowing, but it all spilled into the river anyway.
    Tom came over to greet us. His sheltered face was as wet as anyone’s. “Hello Gabriel, Henry. And Armando, Kristen. Well met. Kathryn says she needs help with the corn.” The four of us hurried up the riverbank to the cornfields. Kathryn was at their foot, running around getting groups together, booting reluctant rolls uphill, pointing out slack in the tarps already tied down. She was as black with mud as Gabby. She shouted instructions at us, and hearing that shrill tone in her voice we ran.
    The shoots of corn were about two hands high, and we couldn’t just lay the tarps right on them without breaking them. There were cement blocks every few yards, therefore, and the tarps had to be tied down to these through grommet holes. So the blocks had to be perfectly placed to match the holes. I saw that Steve and John Nicolin were working together, heaving blocks and tying knots. Everyone out there was dripping black. Kathryn had sent us to the upper end of the field, and when we got there we found her two youngest sisters and Doc and Carmen Eggloff, struggling with one of the narrowest tarps. “Hey Dad, let’s get this thing rolling,” Mando said as we approached them.
    “Go to it,” Doc replied wearily. We got them to continue unrolling, while we tied the sides of the tarp down to the blocks. It took a lot of slipping around in the mud to get them right. Finally we got that tarp down, and hurried to start on another one.
    Gusts of wind grabbed at the plastic and tore it away from my cold fingers. It hurt to hold on as hard as I had to. Tying the knots got almost impossible. Thicker clouds flowed over, and it got darker. The spread tarps shone faintly. Kneeling in the muck and shivering, I looked up from a knot for a moment to see a field dotted with black figures, crouched or crawling or miserably bowed over, backs to the wind. I yanked the knot down grimly.
    By the time we got our third