Page 14 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

14.

The aftermath of a mass disaster can be heartbreaking.

Dorion Shaw had witnessed firsthand the hollow gazes and tear-soaked faces of families as they stared at the ash-filled foundation pits that had once been their homes, and the repositories—naively considered impregnable—of mementos that represented sometimes centuries of family history.

She recalled one family sifting through flattened ruins searching for the tiniest object to salvage—only to find that the devastation was so great on the street that they’d been searching the remains of a neighbor’s house.

Dorion Shaw absolutely did not want the citizens of Hinowah to face that fate, but her priority was to make certain they were safe from far worse: the deaths and injuries themselves.

She was going door-to-door, delivering the warning in her stern voice. William and the girls had learned that her “mean look” was mostly inadvertent—or a bluff—but to those not in the know it could be quite intimidating. Mary Dove had said once that her children could make up the Police Force of Shaw. Russell would be SWAT and intelligence.

Colter the detective.

And Dorion would be the no-nonsense traffic cop.

Sir, I do not believe you only had two beers. Please step out of the car…

She had learned much about building and infrastructure in her years on the job, and she recognized an irony in Hinowah that was true in many places. If the levee were to go, the Never Summer tidal wave would most likely destroy the newer houses. Thinner studs and economical Sheetrock meant vulnerability. But the older structures had been built according to the conventions of the day: your house was to be passed down for generations—hundreds of years—and that meant tamarack and cedar and oak construction. Some houses in Hinowah were log cabins, but the settlers here, like most in the 1800s, preferred their wood hewn into flat planks, which were stronger in support and lasted longer than the raw, round timber used by early pioneers.

Over the next half hour, she dislodged two dozen families and individuals and, with a metaphoric butt-swat, sent them on their way to Hanover College.

She walked past a transformer station, a twin to the one that had blown up earlier; Dorion had texted or emailed everyone who was or might be a responder about the dangers of electricity in a flood.

These rules had been learned long before she thought of starting a disaster response company. In the Shaw household years ago, Ashton had taught the children about the dangers of the invisible force.

Never touch an appliance in a flooded area, even the outer housing.

Never stand in water that has risen above the level of electrical outlets.

Never trust that there are ground-fault circuit interrupters, as there might still be live outlets and wires not connected to them.

Never approach downed power lines.

So much to safeguard against…

She passed a house that had been pointed out to her earlier, the darkened residence of the county supervisor. What was his name again? It was distinguished…That’s right: Prescott Moore. It was in disrepair and the yard even more badly overgrown than it had seemed from the command post. She recalled the man had moved to Fort Pleasant, presumably—and understandably—because of his wife’s death last year. Why had he kept this house, though?

She paused, noting that there appeared to be fresh footprints leading from the sidewalk around to a side door, then back again. She walked up to the front and peered in. It was a mess, almost as if it had been ransacked, but more likely abandoned quickly by the last surviving occupant.

There was no answer when she knocked loudly so she turned back to the sidewalk.

Noting the flickering light from a TV inside the next house she came to, a single-family home squatting on a lot not much bigger than the structure’s footprint, she approached and rang the bell.

A young mother—her two toddler sons were in front of the TV, watching Pixar—greeted her with a cautious smile that vanished when she saw Dorion’s name on a lanyard. It was hardly official, just her laminated company ID with a picture, but the card, along with Dorion’s demeanor, suggested stern authority.

The woman blinked in shock at the news.

“Oh, those voices, the loudspeaker. I couldn’t understand them, then the car or truck was past. I thought it might be an election thing.”

Dorion told her to leave immediately—either to friends or family outside of the valley or to the college.

“It’s that bad?”

“Yes.”

“My God…” She ducked her head out and looked at the waterfall that the levee had become. The gray sky glinted in the surface of the water as it flowed relentlessly over the side. “My parents’re in Salinas but I’m not driving in this stuff.” A nod at the stormy sky. “I’ll go to the college.”

“Okay, get there now. And when you leave, lock up.”

The woman frowned. “We don’t really bother with that. It’s Nowhere.”

“It’s what?”

“Nowhere. That’s the nickname for Hinowah. It’s a nice place. Nobody’d break in.”

“Lock up anyway…”

“You mean, people would actually rob somebody? A time like this?”

Yes, people actually would. Dorion told her so.

“Good Lord.”

Marshaling the children up, the young woman said over her shoulder, “You’re going house to house?”

“That’s right.”

“Two doors up, to the right, that big house? It’s Mrs. Petaluma. She’s Indian. I mean Native American. I don’t think her English is real good. Never says a word. Might be deaf and mute.”

Hadn’t one of the local officers mentioned the woman?

“I’ll check on her. Take only a change of clothes, medicine, computer, phone and charger. That’s all.”

“But…” The woman’s stricken face looked at a wedding photo on the wall. Her husband was in uniform.

Dorion said, “It’s okay. You can take the picture.”

Then she was outside and headed up the street. She suddenly got it. Hinowah. Hi- nowah.

Nowhere.

She looked around her at the town. Modest, rugged, rustic, scuffed.

Dorion allowed herself a rare moment of the sentimentality that was virtually unheard of in the Shaw household. She thought:

But it’s somewhere to me.

And I’m doing whatever I can to save those who call it home.

—

Mrs. Petaluma’s house was an old hewn-log structure, much like the others surrounding it, though it was more ornate. And there were two stories. Most of the others in downtown were one.

The style was what Dorion’s mother, Mary Dove, called “gaudy gingerbread.” Wooden scalloping and frills and ornate frames surrounded the door and windows. The house itself was dark red, the trim yellow and green. The porch sported a number of hanging flowerpots in bloom. They rocked in the wind. Some beer barrels, cut in half, rested open side up and were filled with dirt. Flowers grew in these too. This was the largest lot in this portion of town—about a half acre—and the entire backyard was devoted to a garden. Now, June, some of her spring sowing was showing results as rows of green sprouted up, ankle high.

The Compound featured a similar garden, though bigger; it provided vegetative sustenance for the family all year long. Their father was insistent they stay true to the spirit of his favorite book, Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Shaws lived primarily off the land and streams. Pike, trout, bass for fish. Venison from the fields and forest—the term usually was taken to refer to deer, but in fact it meant the meat of any game: deer, elk, moose, caribou, antelope, pronghorn, for instance. They had a small cornfield and Ashton ground meal for bread that he himself baked. Dorion recalled the first time she ate a piece, covered with unsalted butter, declaring it the best thing she had ever tasted. And since then, few delicacies had come close.

Dorion approached the woman’s house and rang the bell, which sounded inside, suggesting the young neighbor’s thinking that the woman might be hearing-impaired was wrong, although some systems for the hard of hearing include a light as well as a bell to announce visitors.

A moment later a slight woman in her mid-sixties opened the door and looked at Dorion with an expression that was, she decided, unfathomable. Not hostile, not curious, not suspicious, though hardly welcoming.

“Mrs. Petaluma?” Dorion looked past her at the unlit interior of the house, filled with pictures of family and largely Native memorabilia and artwork, much of it cloth.

There was Indigenous blood in the Shaws. Mary Dove’s ancestry traced back to the Ohlone, who once inhabited California from San Francisco down to the Monterey Peninsula. Their mother was fluent and had passed a few words on to the children but Dorion had forgotten every one of them.

She said, “I’m working with Mayor Tolifson, the police and fire department. The levee’s in danger of collapsing and we’re evacuating the town to Hanover College. On Route Ninety-four, west of town. Do you know it? We need you to get there now. Is that your truck outside?”

Still no word.

The woman leaned forward and looked toward the waterfall of the levee without a hint of reaction. Then she eased back.

So language and hearing were not issues.

“I need you to leave now. I can help you pack.” She stepped inside.

Mrs. Petaluma drew back her apron revealing an old-time pistol in the waistband of her skirt. It was a cap-and-ball model, a muzzle-loader. The gun didn’t use brass shells, but round balls were squeezed into each cylinder from the front and sat atop a charge of gunpowder.

A Colt Dragoon, Dorion was pretty sure. A classic.

And extremely powerful.

A moment of silence.

The woman simply stared.

Dorion said, “You have a nice day now.”

And returned to the sidewalk to continue her role as town crier.