A tired rain fell on the Shambles, and fine green moss covered the colorless cement of the smashed buildings. The musty air ushered the stench of the dead into the clothes of the living. In this dank and horrific junkpile, every smell, sight, and sound was a further affront to the human spirit. In an antebellum oration, Thaddeus Wentworth labeled this terrain, “the cadaver of botched civilization.”
Amidst the jagged, blood-drenched skeleton of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, a dozen heavily-armed San Franciscan militiamen lay in murderous wait. Gunfire, explosions, and the sporadic cries of the wounded filled the quivering ears of the terrified combatants. Wedged between the cement and steel, this gruesome nest provided cover and clear views in three directions. The militiamen, soggy with rain and sweat, clutched their antiquated rifles with the fervor of believers grasping crucifixes. They prayed for the day to pass and leave them living. They maintained absolute stillness, as if petrified by either intent or fear. A particularly frightened teenage recruit, recent to war, hyperventilated. He was a gaunt boy with thin blond hair hanging to his shoulders. His attenuated breaths and the drizzling rain produced two decidedly firm rhythms. As his lungs labored under his excruciating fear, his comrades watched with blank expressions and dumb indifference.
Meanwhile, the band’s overweight lieutenant lay back against a flat cement slab, listening for the approach of enemies. His eyes were shut tightly and he was grimacing. Next to him, a veteran of the Battle of King City peered through rusty binoculars out over the slimy landscape. This was, hopefully, the extent of their day of war: quietly on the lookout through the foggy drizzle for the blue-and-gray uniforms of their nemeses.
Suddenly, the lieutenant and the veteran perked up their ears. They bolted upright, guns at the ready. The lieutenant waved to his men; some stared back at him, some did not. But within seconds, the whole group heard the approaching footsteps. Somehow, an ALA band had crept up to the edge of the clearing to the militiamen’s north. The veteran now saw a dozen Angelenos slowly stumbling through the wet rubble. He discerned that the enemy did not anticipate the presence of his outfit, and he saw the opportunity for a quick, safe ambush. Other than a battlefield day on which nothing happened, the next-best thing was an easy ambush of the hated enemy.
The veteran motioned a thumb’s-up to the lieutenant, who, in turn, motioned to his men. Silently, the San Franciscans took position and aimed their unsteady rifles. They watched the approaching enemy band. The oncomers knew they were exposed but not that they had been discovered. They kept tightly together and watched their rear and flanks as they stumbled forward. They flinched at the slightest sound.
A few San Franciscans smiled amongst themselves with conspiratorial confidence. They stroked their guns with lurid intimacy. The youngest soldier’s fear only increased as his comrades readied for ambush. Still hyperventilating, he now fell forward, first to his knees, then to all fours; he had lost all control of muscle and limb. White spittle covered his mouth. The lieutenant waved at the man closest to the boy stop his noise. The soldier did not understand. The lieutenant looked back toward the creeping enemy platoon in fear that the boy’sgasps might forfeit his advantage.
At that confusing moment, everything changed. A second band of the Angelenos suddenly appeared from the east. These were not tremulous conscripts, but Advance Guard shock troops. This spot had harbored reluctant combatants time and again; ALA shock troops came daily to kill whomever fell into the trap. The professional soldiers quickly saw the setting, saw their own regulars walking, unaware, straight toward a nest of awaiting Friscans. Their leader shouted to the other group of his fellow citizens, then pointed inarticulately at the ambush that awaited them. The regulars dropped to the ground, then, following the orders of the Advance Guard leader, spread out to the west.
Now the San Franciscans found themselves encircled. Their enemies had clear sight- and shooting-lines. What had only seconds before appeared to be a safe, well-protected hideaway became a fish barrel, a coffin. The hyperventilating boy was shot dead; the veteran lookout became a corpse within seconds. Both sides shot wildly. The San Franciscans shot back, killing one Angeleno. The ALA regulars fired indiscriminately and uselessly, for they had no idea who was shooting, why, or where. They even killed a member of the Advance Guard.
The panicked militiamen climbed from their false shelter and ran in disarray. The Advance Guard followed them. One by one, the San Franciscans were killed as they fled. The Angeleno regulars who would have been ambushed had stopped firing and watched the running and the killing, but only for a moment. They turned back and silently disappeared into the cover of chaos provided by the Shambles. They did not acknowledge their rescuers with more than furtive glances.
#
The rain stopped and the sun showered the Bay, turning golden the Shambles and the city. The feckless battle carried on. In the morning, men died in the rain, in the afternoon, they died in the sun.
General Abe Benharash watched the battle through a short, fat telescope. The scientific instrument was the gift intended, by Puglese, to divert the insomniac general with stargazing. But Benharash most often used the present to watch the daily skirmishes. Though he would not, out of principles and pride, contribute his talent or his troops to the siege, he kept a tight watch on this quadrant of the battlefield. For seven months, he had studied the movements, counter-movements, and vagaries of this rubble warfare. Puglese mapped the field and composed finely-drawn charts on troop deployments and terrain. The general kept detailed notes on the tendencies and talents of the opposing armies. He had come to anticipate their commanders’ thoughts before they themselves became aware of them.
Benharash grimaced and shook his head contemptuously. So much was wrong. The ALA had entered battle without an iota of intelligence or preparation. The vice mayor was incapable of estimating the strength of his enemy, and he fought as though blindfolded. The General Staff ignorantly attacked despite San Francisco’s advantage of terrain: The defenders knew the Shambles by heart, and defending that treacherous and vital ground was the sole situation for which their tactics and drills had prepared them. Also, placing a city with an inexhaustible food supply under siege promised futility. The General Staff applied the strategies they had watched Benharash use successfully in the Central Valley, for they knew no other way to fight; but those tactics were totally unsuitable for the siege of a well-situated stronghold. Without sophisticated leadership, the manpower balance was insufficiently slanted toward the attacker.
Up under the front-porch awning over the porch, out of elements as much as he could be, Puglese lay on his host’s run-down sofa, his feet resting on the armrest. He was reading a 150-year-old book on the birds of the Peninsula. Always searching for diversions for the general, he frequently went into the camp at night to see if any of the soldiers had picked up additional plunder. He would buy or barter anything that might divert his patron and help him to bear the inactivity--a book, a game, a hobby. A few things, like the telescope, a monopoly set, and history books had brought the general pleasure and occupied his mind. Benharash was grateful to Puglese for trying, but he found it somewhat repellent that Puglese was willing to spend so much time securing trivialities for another man. Puglese knew how the general felt and told him straight up, “Serving you serves me well. All benefit is mutual.”
Looking away from his telescope, Benharash saw Puglese draped indolently across his front porch. The general snapped his fingers. Puglese looked up from his reading. Benharash gestured to the telescope and grinned cruelly. Puglese, stiff in legs and back, rose slowly from the couch; he paused, then gingerly bent down to pick up his sketch pad and hobbled to the viewing spot.
“You’ll need to note that encounter,” Benharash said with baritone authority.
Puglese bent down taking pains to avoid touching the tripod or the scope. As his lackey began to scribble, Benharash looked across his compound and gazed with carnal pleasure upon Elise sleeping half-naked in the sun. After all these months, he still founding himself excited at the sight of his young woman’s soft skin, broad hips, and large nipples. Her eyes opened under the heat of his stare; he motioned toward the telescope. She shook her head; Elise hated watching war. Sometimes he forced her to, but not today. Part of the bond between Elise and Puglese was their abhorrence of war. Their paths to pacifism were quite dissimilar. Elise hated war because she had seen the ALA storm her village in Kern County and seen her neighbors shot down. The life she had lived had been destroyed. The comfortable and giddy girl she had been was also destroyed. Puglese, on the other hand, had been a great supporter of the Reconqeste of the Aqueduct. But while witnessing his first battle, he became faint and vomited over and over, then could not sleep or eat for days. In accordance with his constitution, he became a pacifist.
Benharash looked eastward toward what had been Berkeley but now was nothing, and a desolate nothing at that. The general eyed the rolling hills, the brown bay, the dark islands, and the remnants of collapsed bridges, now cloaked in earthy rust. The rain had washed the air, cleaning away the smoke and stench, and he breathed deeply. On a sunny day, he could divert himself and avoid brooding. He had always been a victim of moods, and a dark day or gaunt season weighed down his spirit. Also, in the day Elise was awake and Puglese around in smallish doses, so Benharash had sufficient society. Elise, with her gift for summary, and Puglese, with his disorderly, encyclopedic accumulation of knowledge, she with her tenderness and he with his utter obedience, gave Benharash all he needed by way of allies on this interminable vacation. Their dependence on his good will and good fortune gave him satisfaction. In turn, his otherwise-defenseless wards were sufficiently grateful to make great effort to look after his interests.
Benharash walked to a tree stump at the edge of the clearing. In the west he could see his soldiers’ orderly compound and observe their drills. The hills were beautiful. Birds sang.
Puglese squinted into the telescope. His mouth was open and twisted, his eyes close to tears. His shoulders had become stooped. "This is the only way," he mumbled desperately. Then he stood straight up, faced Benharash; with grotesque faux cheer and a broken voice he said, "They’ll tire of war and come to you to lead them home."
Benharash grunted approval.
Several empty moments past. Finally, Benharash asked, "Is Kout going to get his daughter back?"
Puglese snapped his fingers. Haunted by the horrors he had just seen, he stood on his toes and cried in falsetto, "Done!"
Benharash nodded with slight satisfaction. He went back to the telescope but did not look through it. He waved his open palm across the Shambles. "The vice mayor continues to let the enemy spread across the field. He’s engaging them on their terms. I find it inconceivable that he could fail to see what is in front of him.”
Elise pushed herself up on an elbow and shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. "They’re so thick!”
“He’s probably not looking in front of himself. He lacks the predator’s tendency to go straight forward. For the politician, everything is circumlocutions--just the opposite of what’s needed in war. He has reverted to the tactics we used to guard the basin and the Aqueduct--his brilliant ‘cockroach formation.’ When I speak to the dumb fuck sometime in the future, I’ll make it a point to say that to him. I’ll do it publicly. ‘The vice mayor and his cockroach army.’ See how he likes that as his epitaph back home.”
Puglese shook with laughter. Elise had lain down again on her back, eyes closed to the sun. She smiled.
The general rubbed his chest and said, "In the end--"
Puglese cried, "In the end they’ll turn to you. You led them in the conquest of the Delta. In the march back to Los Angeles, you’ll lead them to peace. The King of Peace!" He did not know what else to say, and looked around as if expecting to find clues. Inspiration struck. "King of LA!"
Benharash nodded with satisfaction and rubbed his chest. He looked back into the telescope, slowly scanning 180 degrees, stopping to look at the rows of watchtowers on either side. There, too, men watched the battle through telescopes and binoculars. Across the lawn, Puglese and Elise watched their patron with the fixity of cats.
#
Such a high, spindly wooden tower as Benharash espied stood at the old corner of Gough and Pine. This TinkerToy-like scaffold was San Francisco’s central observation tower. The tower was always manned, and those who manned it surveyed the war below; but unlike general Benharash, the Wentworths had no cartographers, so sloppy sketches of the battle action by citizen volunteers were the only written intelligence coming from this strategic asset. Across the Shambles, the General Staff of the ALA had had build a somewhat sturdier tower for like usage. These rickety towers, with their shabby crow’s nests, swinging haplessly in any breeze, also served the adversaries for semaphore communication. This usually had to do with medical situations calling for a temporary cease-fire, bargaining over the frequent off days (holidays, as they were labeled), and the daily flinging of insults.
Close to sunset, an aged volunteer, well trained in semaphore but little else, viewed through mounted brass binoculars his counterpart across the Shambles. On the other side of the quieting battlefield, an Angeleno infantryman was flagging a message. The signals were sharp. The old San Franciscan urgently wrote down the message. The Angeleno stopped, the San Franciscan signaled back: He complemented his enemy on his mastery of flags. The other man responded with a vulgar slur. The volunteer, satisfied that he, at least, had tried to make war more civil, turned and began the descent down the narrow ladder. The tower was more than three stories high and the rope latter was the wind’s plaything. On the best of days, when the wind was still and the air temperate, going up or down required a man’s full concentration. But the old man was agitated; the message was great news and filled his head with excitement. In the darkening evening, with wind blowing in from the ocean west, the preoccupied outlook lost his footing and briefly dangled in the air, his ancient arms outstretched. His hands were strong from the daily climb and he had been in this situation before, so the old man kept his head. Below, three silent militiamen watched the gray-haired figure swaying like a string in a fan’s breeze. And the old man, too, kept silent. It even passed through his mind that if he fell, the message would get through anyway; he must hold it away from his body so that when he burst on impact, the paper would stay dry. As these thoughts went through his head, his clumsy and poorly-considered efforts finally met a stroke of luck as the wind blew the ladder directly into his feet. He righted himself. Then, with more care, he made his way to the ground.
The message was expeditiously handed to a redheaded officer. The officer stared at the old man, but the semaphorist just shrugged and turned. The old man walked a few yards away and sat on a great boulder. Out of his shirt he pulled a beaded pouch; out of the beaded pouch he pulled marijuana and papers. The redheaded officer, a lipless man with small hazel eyes, read the message. The old man offered him the joint, which the officer started to take, then thought better of the action.
“Are you absolutely sure? Is this every word?”
The quickly-calming man nodded.
The officer’s forehead wrinkled in though. “So be it,” he said. He turned and, without another word, ran off full-speed toward Lafayette Park.
The redheaded officer sprinted across the city streets. Civilians patriotically cleared the way, watching the scampering soldier with concern. That night, the account of the redheaded officer running across Lafayette Square toward the Wentworth mansion would be shared across dinner tables throughout San Francisco.
Panting, the officer ran up the broad cement stairway of the Wentworth mansion. Thurston Wentworth, just back from battle, his face still blackened from the flames of the tumult, stood atop the landing, describing the day to the four men who stood guard at his family’s door. Even though the redhead was one of their own, two of the guards blocked with their rifles his way to Thurston Wentworth, whom they were sworn to shield with their lives. The officer saluted smartly, then handed the paper to Wentworth between their pointed guns. Thurston smiled at the soldier’s earnestness. He took the note from the man’s hand, then snapped a return salute. After reading the message, Thurston eyed the man favorably. The redheaded officer had been noticed, and his posture quickly said as much.
The note was Isoka's proposal for a large prisoner exchange that included Irma Kout. Thurston pondered momentarily. The Yahoos usually refused prisoner exchanges, knowing that loss of men was infinitely painful to the civilian cultures they terrorized. Yet Isoka’s name closed the message, and by now all of California had learned to take this man’s words literally, for, as Thurston knew, the ambassador’s position was only as good as his word to his enemies. He slapped the officer on the back and touched his fist to the soldier’s chest. Then Thurston Wentworth pushed open his home’s great blue doors and disappeared into the cold, dark halls of his cavernous mansion.