California Gold (31 page)

The two talked easily, acquaintance beginning to edge toward friendship. Mack described his enforced departure from San Francisco and his misadventures in Los Angeles real estate. The priest brooded aloud on his cause, and the increasing problems it created for him within the Church.

“Ah, well. So be it,” he concluded. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else but standing beside my brothers in Los Angeles.”

“The printers were right—things could get ugly there,” Mack said. “Otis thinks the open shop will attract a lot of new business and be the making of the city.”

“And never mind that workingmen must starve to build his metropolis.” They reached a crossroads. Marquez signaled the way: the coast road, south.

Dead or dying real estate developments rolled by one by one.
LA BALLONA CREEK ESTATES: HOMES ON THE PROUD NEW HARBOR OF THE SOUTH!
They crossed a bridge over a flowing tidal creek and Mack pointed seaward. “They dredged out there, serious about developing a harbor to replace Wilmington. The plans were good, but they failed anyway.”

They passed through Walteria, where two Chinese men were chopping up signs advertising a sacrifice property auction. They rode along the perimeter of the abandoned New Market Tract. They cut a corner of an apple orchard planted with five thousand young trees for settlers who would never pluck their fruit or savor their shade.

Late in the morning they passed a white boundary stone with a Spanish inscription. Mack heard the Pacific surf beyond thickets of palms and sea grape on his right. The late-season
santan
had blown out, replaced by an invigorating sea wind. Soon the wagon bumped southwest on a peninsula, and started over a series of low hills. When they surmounted the last, Mack reined up, awed by the breathtaking view.

The peninsula jutted into the Pacific, where a million needles of light bobbed on the blue water. Scattered about the peninsula, half hidden among the scrubs, Mack saw tiny wooden cottages. Squatters—perhaps fishermen. The end of the peninsula was dominated by a large adobe ranch house on a rise of ground that gave a commanding view of the land side as well as the sea.

“There it is,” the priest said. “Rancho de los Palos Verdes del Pacífico.” His dark callused hand swept in an arc, right to left, more than 180 degrees. “You see before you and around you the land of the Marquez family of Spain and Mexico. We have been passing through other sections for almost an hour.”

“How much of this peninsula did you own, Diego?”

Memory haunted the priest’s eyes.

“All of it.”

The rambling ranch house of gray adobe, unpainted oak, and redwood was an enormous
U
, two stories high. The arms of the
U
pointed inland and a veranda ran around the entire house on both floors.

Marquez showed Mack through. There were twenty-eight rooms, this one equipped with six clay ovens for baking, that one filled with silent looms that had once woven blankets and carpets, another for cellaring hundreds of bottles of wine, several for general storage, and the remainder living quarters for a large family. In most of the rooms, spiders spun in the ceiling corners and rodent droppings littered the hard-packed earth floor. The spartan kitchen, the parlor, and one bedroom with three commodious beds were less dusty.

“This was a self-contained world,” Marquez explained as they walked. “You get some hint of that from the extent of the house. There were many other outbuildings, however. Stables and barns, sheep-shearing pens, a tannery and rendering plant, an underground cave for storing ice from the mountains. At one time, before the Anglo revolution, the adobe supported ten thousand longhorns, three thousand sheep, and a herd of one thousand blooded horses. New England ships put in along the coast, and we did a brisk trade in tallow and hides—California bank notes, they were called in those days. To the east, in the fields, we raised corn, beans, peas, lentils—everything the adobe required. The well in the quadrangle brimmed with sweet water. Now it’s cloudy and stinks of salt.”

A short distance from the adobe, Marquez rigged a snare. Within an hour a fat jackrabbit hung upside down by his rear leg. Marquez killed and slaughtered the rabbit without apology, then set Mack to work at the chopping block, dicing onions and yellow peppers from his provision bag.

While the sun set on the Pacific, the two men sat in sturdy wooden chairs on the second-floor veranda, resting their heels on the rail as the unseen surf below the bluff boomed rhythmically. Marquez uncorked the first bottle of Buena Vista white. The wine was warm, but crisp and delicious.

The priest rolled the barrel-shaped glass between his palms. His eye roved to the red horizon, where a steam packet churned north against the half-circle of the sun.

“My grandfather entertained the young sailor from Harvard Richard Henry Dana on this porch. My father died at this house. When the Anglos and their courts and judges stole our land, something twisted in his head.”

“A friend in San Francisco told me the story.”

“That he became an outlaw? Terrorized the southern counties for six years, killing gringos?”

“Yes.”

Bloody light tinted Marquez’s face. “They cornered him here. The house was built on this rise of ground so that strangers riding up the road were completely visible. They cleared trees and brush from the roadside for that reason. My father saw the posse coming and put his silver pistols away after he counted forty riders. He went into the courtyard bareheaded, unarmed, to face them. He stood shouting at them as they rode up. He said this was our family’s home—our family’s land—he would never surrender it…”

Marquez’s voice fell so low, Mack almost couldn’t hear it above the surf.

“They counted sixty-one bullets in his body before they buried him.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“At first I was in my room. I was ordered to hide, but I crept out. I saw the Anglos wheel their horses around him. I saw them shoot. They laughed; they were enjoying themselves. I saw my father fall, while the bullets kept striking. His body leaped and twitched on the ground…” He swallowed. “I saw everything.”

A great condor wheeled and swooped out of sight below the bluff. Mack was so moved by the emotion in the priest’s voice he couldn’t speak.

Marquez sat with the untasted glass tight between his palms, watching the steamer diminish and disappear. The sun was down and the water flashed with sulfurous reflections from the clouds.

“There is so much cruelty in the world. So much injustice. I have faith that the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ are the right ways. And yet—sometimes—often—they do not prevail. At such times, to my shame, my wrath rises up to defeat my reason, and my faith wavers. I waver—”

His voice broke. Mack saw the tracks of tears on the priest’s broad dark cheeks. Marquez sensed the scrutiny, turned his head away, and quickly drank his wine.

Marquez opened the kitchen shutters. They squeaked and creaked and one rusty cast-iron hinge tore out of the adobe. He gazed sadly at the shutter a moment, then let it hang.

Dusk gave way to night. The air was mild, the sound of the Pacific soothing. The second bottle of white wine stood between them on the hand-hewn plank table. Marquez was more relaxed now, the sharp edges of memory dulled by the wine.

“Delicious,” Mack said. He forked up some of the rabbit the priest had stewed with the onions and peppers, some flour, and seasonings. “I have a friend in San Francisco, a news reporter, who wouldn’t approve of me enjoying this. She hates the slaughter of animals.”

Marquez wasn’t offended. “I learned to hunt before I learned to read.”

Mack brought up the priest’s favorite subject again, the labor situation in California. Marquez said, “It isn’t ideal, not even in San Francisco, a town people think of as a workingman’s bastion. The truth is, class strife has split San Francisco for decades.”

He spoke of a Jim D’Arcy and his followers, called Sandlotters because they held rallies in vacant lots. He mentioned Denis Kearney of the Workingmen’s party. “Both of them purported to speak for the laboring man, but both were bigots, and their organizations protectionist. They wanted jobs secured at the expense of those they considered beneath them. Kearney’s slogan minced no words: ‘The Chinese Must Go.’ Despicable,” he said with a shake of his head. “But perhaps I expect too much of people. Perhaps that’s why I’m so uncertain about my course. What it is, what it should be…”

He sighed and poured wine. “What of you, my friend? Are you still certain of your direction? To better yourself with wealth—wasn’t that how you put it when we met?”

“Absolutely. I want some of that money and property that ‘debases the gold of character’—isn’t that how you put it?” He saw Marquez smile. “In fact I want a lot of it,” he went on. “When I have it, I won’t be stingy with it. I grew up poor. I remember what it’s like.”

“Laudable,” Marquez murmured; “if somewhat unrealistic.”

“You don’t believe a man can be rich and decent too?”

“If you are, you will be one of the rare ones, Mack. One of the very rare ones.”

His eyes said he really didn’t think it possible.

Mack slept that night in one of the three beds, in a corner. On one wall above him hung a pair of huge Mexican spurs, handmade of silver, with sharply pointed rowels and silver
conchas
decorating the old faded leather. From a niche in the other wall, a Madonna with gentle hand upraised beheld the room. A nice pair of symbols of the priest, Mack thought.

In the morning Marquez repaired the shutter and they drove back to Los Angeles. It scarcely seemed like Christmas Eve, with the temperature so warm and the wind picking up again, fierce and gritty from the mountains.

Mack squinted into the blowing dust that revealed and then hid Los Angeles on the plain. “I thought we were through with the
santan
.”

“But nature is never through with us. Perhaps it won’t last long. It certainly isn’t usual this time of year. One would say it’s a bad omen—if one were a native, given to traditional superstitions.”

Marquez was smiling as he poked fun at his own background. Mack smiled too. He liked the priest, except for his tendency to establish himself as a conscience for others.

“Thank you for accompanying me,” Marquez said when they neared town. “I need to check on the property occasionally. You made the trip less onerous.”

“Thanks for that excellent dinner. Even if you did kill a rabbit.”

“I am nothing if not a Californian. Merry Christmas, my friend.”

“Merry Christmas, Father Diego.”

The
santan
howled. The men leaned forward on the seat, trying to protect their faces from the worst of it. The air filled with debris and dust, dark as some evil twilight.

That same afternoon, Wyatt woke on the floor of the office, and retched at the smell. Suddenly it came back, all of the wine drunk up the previous night…and then falling, rubber-legged, face-first, into his own vomit.

The runty owner of the Newhall mercantile store had started him on this latest binge, riding out late yesterday with a deputy and insisting that the San Solaro account be cleared up. It was several months in arrears. Wyatt had smothered the visitors with charm, but it hadn’t worked. The storekeeper said he would file a lien.
Bastard.

Wyatt staggered to his feet and leaned against the wall, his raven hair hanging to his eyebrows, his shirt out again. He could still smell the wine fumes. Perhaps they were real, perhaps imaginary. On the desk he saw all the damned papers and letters demanding things; they weren’t imaginary. On the wall he saw the mocking record of his failure. He ran at the tally sheet and tore it down, shredding it to tiny snowflake scraps that fell around him.

A bottle gleamed under the desk. It still had two inches of dark red fluid in the bottom, and he drank it greedily. The ticking wall clock showed half past three.

Wyatt’s eye fell on the desk again, and the letters itemizing supplies purchased months ago, requesting payment, then insisting, then threatening legal action. He swept them off the desk in one motion.

It was all over. He knew it was all over. It had been failing for weeks—months—and he knew that too. He’d concealed it from everyone. From his sanctimonious partner, whom he sometimes admired, sometimes hated. From Carla Hellman. From himself, with the aid of drink…

Wyatt’s mind began to slip back and forth from the present to the past. Flickering scenes from Osage, Kansas, blurred over the vista of San Solaro he saw when he opened the office door.

God, the
santan
was blowing again, turning the day to night. Pathetic marker flags snapped in the gale wind. He walked around the corner of the depot and let out a cry. Inside the tent, motionless, he saw Mother. Pale, pious, dumbly affectionate—

“Get away,” he screamed. She vanished.

He went wandering the streets of his dying dream. Ghost towns, that’s what the Escrow Indians called these failed tracts. He saw Mother standing by a lot marker, and he shouted at her again. She vanished.
Oh yes
,
ghost towns
, he thought.

Sand began to accumulate in his hair, settle on his eyelids, crust on his mouth. At the intersection of two streets, he discovered another bottle. Joyfully, he ran and snatched it up. Empty. He smashed it on the ground.

A large square of cardboard skated up behind him and nuzzled his legs:
SAN SOLARO OPERA HOUSE
. He fell on it and ripped it apart, and the wind took the pieces, flung them aloft, sailed them away. Suddenly he was sitting in a corner, snowdrifts outside the window, with Mother wrapping his naked scrawny body in wet sheets.
“Leave me alone.”

She wouldn’t. He felt Mother’s hands on his head, exploring the phrenological configurations: the bumps of intelligence, moral firmness, sin, bad character. He kept screaming at her, and everything blurred, but this time she only retreated to the orange grove, where she stood among the Joshua trees, regarding him with her Christian solemnity…

The past flickered behind his eyes again. He was doubled over with pain in the privy, shitting out his insides, shitting so hard he couldn’t stop, because of all the stuff she’d forced into him—pepsin syrup, calomel, bitter castor oil…