Desperation Reef

Brock parks and steps out, hears the frogs down in the pond, and smells the fresh scent of sage. Sees the dark thicket of manzanita down by the creek. Loves this land. Checks that moon again. A quarter. Stands there for a moment, a grown man in shorts and a dumbass dachshund logo T-shirt, with tattoos of waves and suns and moons and fish and birds all over him — “Mom” inked on one shoulder and “Mahina” on the other — arms raised as he listens to his wife climbing the front porch steps, unlocking the security screen door, and banging into their home.

The house is a small two-bedroom built in 1915 by locals. River rock walls, heavily cemented, a newish aluminum roof. Vaguely Craftsman in design, with a peaked front porch under the roof extension and staunch beam caissons.

Brock and Mahina have furnished it in secondhand, mostly Pacific Island furniture — bamboo and rattan, bright floral padding, a glass tabletop on coconut-tree stumps, Hawaiian carvings of turtles and fish. White bamboo bookshelves. Masks. A humble tiki bar.

Inside, Mahina hands him a very cold Bohemia. They touch bottles and sip.

“We did good work today, Brock. We maybe saved Gail’s life.”

He nods. Imagines the sidewalks of tents and tarps, the slow-motion citizens eyeing them suspiciously, caught in squalor.

“And we got Mae back,” she says. “What do we need from here, for the Barrel?”

“Fire extinguishers, guns, and night-vision goggles.”

“Are you worried?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you’re still alive.”

Brock looks through the windows facing east. Hidden down there are twenty-six trailers, some small and some large, most of them older. Last he checked, there were eighty-seven people housed there, including twelve children — six home-schooled and six who catch the bus at the Aguanga post office for the public schools in Anza Valley.

The Breath of Life Rescue Mission charges no rent, and supplies the electricity, propane, and water pumped in at some expense by the county. Random Access Foundation, which bought and donated the property four years back, chips in a little every month.

All the Breath of Life Rescue Mission asks of its once-homeless citizens is that they help each other as they help themselves, keep up the grounds and pick up after their dogs, obey state and county laws, attend Breath of Life services on Friday mornings when possible, help clear the brush, level the ground and pour the cement pads needed for more trailers. No recreational drugs except for marijuana.

Brock sets his empty bottle on the kitchen counter and looks out the window. Considers the faint shapes of new trailer pads being cleared, which is tough work in the tall, dense, iron-tough manzanita that thrives throughout the church property.

Back outside, they load the gear they’ll need if Jimmy Wu and his rough crew actually try to burn down the Barrel.

Brock sees a minivan parked across the big parking area in front of the big cinderblock church. He notes the crippled slouch of the van, and a stuffed, tarp-clenched luggage rack on top.

They crunch across the lot toward the church, pale in the moonlight. Brock likes the stout, secular, no-nonsense air of the church. No meddlesome gods there. It’s the opposite of spiritual. It’s functional: serving as chapel, schoolhouse, meeting room, kitchen and dining hall, concert theater and auditorium, and a half-court basketball venue when it rains. Plus an indestructible concrete floor, and a fireplace big enough to keep the whole thing almost warm on the cold, high-desert nights.

It was built in the 1950s by a San Diego utopian cult as a meeting hall, complete with a steel-reinforced basement bomb shelter. There have been various owners, squatters, and vandals since then. The entire property was purchased then gifted to the Breath of Life church just after Brock and Mahina founded it. Brock was just twenty-two, Mahina thirty. The gift was an unpublicized donation.

Brock and Mahina and their scant new “congregation” reroofed the building, cleaned out the massive stone fireplace, broomed away the lizards and field mice, rebuilt and refurnished the industrial-sized kitchen, bought enough folding chairs for a small army, and set up a good PA system so Brock could be heard.

Now, the congregation varies on any given Friday morning between ten and seventy worshippers. Brock chose Fridays for worship to distance the Breath of Life from the other churches, gods, and saints.

But he’s not at all sure this hasn’t hurt attendance, given that lots of people work on Fridays.

His very first Friday morning congregation?

One: Juana Flores, a young Cahuilla Indian woman who was living in one of the caves in the rough hills behind the compound, selling her handmade baskets and carved wild gourds from a blanket on the shoulder of Highway 371.