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

tarp down—we were not much of a team for speed—most of the cornfields were covered. We sloshed around our last tarp and down to the riverbank and Kathryn. The river took a torrey pine past us, tumbling in the flood with its needles still green, its roots white and naked.
    Almost the whole crew had gathered by the drowned drainage channel: twenty of us or more, watching the Mendezes and Nicolins run around the tarps and crawl under them, tightening and letting slack. A few people made for the bathhouse; the rest of us stood around under umbrellas describing the unrolling to each other. The fields were now glistening, ridged plastic surfaces, and the rain hitting the tarps leaped back into the air, a score of droplets jumping up from each raindrop that fell, so that the plastic itself was almost invisible under a layer of wild droplet mist. Sheets of water poured off the lower ends of the tarps into the drainage ditch, free of mud and our summer crops.
    We all trooped over the bridge to the bathhouse. Inside the big main room Rafael had been hard at work; it was already hot, and the baths were steaming. He was congratulated on his fire, “a nice controlled indoor bonfire,” as Steve said. As I stripped my wet clothes off I admired for the hundredth time the complicated system of pipes and holding tanks and pumps that Rafael had constructed to heat the bath water. By the time I got in the dirt bath it was crowded. The dirt bath was the hotter of the two, and the air filled with the delighted moans and groans of scalded bathers. I couldn’t feel my feet, but the rest of me burned. Then the heat penetrated the skin of my feet and they felt like one of Pa’s pin cushions. I hooted loudly. The sheet metal of the bath bottom was hot to the touch, and most of us floated, bumping and splashing and discussing the storm.
    The clean bath had wooden seats anchored in it, and soon folks hopped over and gathered around those, talking and relaxing in the warmth. The boom of the rain on the corrugated metal roof washed over the chatter now and then; the pitch of the boom was an exact sign of how hard the rain was falling, and when it deepened enough people stopped talking and listened. Some of the group had gone out to help spread the tarps before their own gardens were covered, and they had to put their clammy clothes back on (unless they kept spares at the boathouse) and leave, promising all the while that they would hurry back. We believed them.
    The firelight cast dancing shadows of the pipe system across the roof, and the plank walls glowed the color of the fire. Everyone’s skin was ruddy. The women were beautiful: Carmen Eggloff putting branches on the fire, the ribs of her back sticking out; the girls diving like seals around one of the seats; Kathryn standing before me to talk, thick and rounded, beads of water gleaming on her freckled skin; Mrs. Nicolin twisting around and squealing, as John splashed her in a rare display of playfulness. I sat in my usual corner listening to Kathryn and looking around contentedly: we were a room of fire-skinned animals, wet and steaming, crazy-maned, beautiful as horses.
    Most of us were getting out, and Carmen was handing around her collection of towels, when a voice called from outside.
    “ Hello there! Hello in there!”
    Talk stopped. In the silence (roof drumming) we heard it clearer: “Hello in there, I say! Greetings to you! We’re travelers from the south! Americans!”
    Automatically the women, and most of the men, went for their towels or clothes. I yanked on my cold muddy pants, and followed Steve to the door. Tom and Nat Eggloff were already there; Rafael joined us still naked, holding a pistol in his hand. John Nicolin bulled his way through us, still pulling up his shorts, and pushed out the door.
    “What brings you here?” we heard him ask. The answer was inaudible. A second passed, and Rafael opened the door again. Two men wearing ponchos entered before John; they looked