California Gold (54 page)

Another corner overflowed with his collection of stories and pictures about horseless carriages. They were the coming thing, no doubt of it. But inventors and designers still argued about the best motive power. Gasoline? Electric battery? Steam? And what did you call such a vehicle? There was endless dispute in the press—and no accepted name. Sometimes it was
automaton
, sometimes
petrocar. Motorig. Mobe.
Or
motocycle.

Mack knew only that he wanted one. One of his favorite pastimes was rereading a long news account of the great race held in Chicago over Thanksgiving in ’95. Just one day after a bitter blizzard, six courageous drivers had raced their vehicles through rutted drifts from Jackson Park all the way up the shore to Waukegan and back. An Electrobat and a Sturges Electric competed against the “motor wagon” of the Duryea brothers and three German-built Benz cars. After more than eight hours at an average speed of seven miles per hour, the Duryea won. Mack sometimes shut his eyes and imagined himself careening along icy roads, gloved hand firm on the steering tiller, his other hand alternately sounding the foghorn or the brass trumpet. He wanted a horseless carriage; new inventions excited him. He yearned to be first to try them, own them, show them off. And he was beginning to have enough money to make it possible.

No dreaming of horseless carriages tonight, alas. A dreary but important legal document lay on the leather chair seat. He turned up the gaslight and sat down to read seventy-seven pages of by-laws and articles of incorporation for San Solaro Irrigation, Inc., a mutual water company formed under the Wright Bill. Mack planned to develop the town site eventually; the articles drawn up by Potter established a community water district to be owned by future residents—ten shares of stock per building lot.

He slogged through the dry paragraphs, his mind constantly slipping away, returning to Carla. Around half past one, he heard footsteps in the corridor. He jumped up, but his expectant smile vanished in a moment. The stride was too heavy—one of the servants?

Following a soft knock, Johnson stuck his head in. “Saw the lights. What’s the matter? Can’t sleep?”

“Work to do,” Mack said. Johnson yawned as he ambled in, bowlegged as ever. His knee joints creaked and his beard stubble showed, gray as his crinkly hair and ready for the morning razor.

“I was twistin’ and jumpin’ a bit m’self. Decided to stroll a while.” He poured two fingers of Mack’s best Tennessee whiskey. No permissions necessary; they were friends.

“Drag up a chair.” He did, gratefully, then slipped off his boots and sampled the whiskey. Mack poured some for himself; it was his first hard liquor in a long while.

“What was you readin’?”

“The water-company charter. Have to get through it. But I’d rather be drawing up designs for the yacht.”

Johnson chuckled. The gaslight put a convivial gleam in his green eyes. “Swear to God, Mack, I never seen anybody with such an appetite for tryin’ out new gadgets.”

Mack relaxed and put his feet on a stack of books. “Seems to go with the climate out here.” He sipped the whiskey. It warmed his belly but not his heart.

Johnson watched him. Finally: “You’re not feelin’ so hot these days.”

Mack concentrated on his glass. “Ever since the fire—”

“Oh, it ain’t the fire. We got that licked. Your pride took a whippin’ when you had to hire some of them slow-witted white boys, but Biggerstaff and me, we’re bringin ’em along. It’s somethin’ else.” A pause. “What?”

Mack shook his head. “You know me a little too well, Hugh.” He spoke slowly, uncomfortably. “Ever since the day I walked down from the Sierras and looked around and said, By God, I’ve made it, I’m in California—ever since then I’ve lacked for plenty of things. Sometimes a night’s shelter. Sometimes food. There was even a day here and there when I feared for my life. But I never lacked for hope. I kept opening that guidebook and I never lacked for hope. Not until lately.”

The office clock ticked loudly. Johnson slowly rolled the tumbler back and forth between his hard palms. He figured it would be good for Mack to get it all out. If he would.

“Things are bad with Carla…” Mack began.

“That’s no surprise, I’m sorry to say.”

“No, but I can’t seem to untangle them, either. Every time I try, I blunder.”

“Maybe that’s why you been so sore lately. Like a high-strung yearling feelin’ a saddle the first time.”

“You’re a candid bastard.”

Johnson shrugged a lanky shoulder. “If all you want is violins and geraniums, I’ll go back to bed.”

“No—stay. It’s just that—well, it’s tough to look at yourself and admit you’re failing.”

“Maybe it ain’t entirely your fault, Mack. You said Hellman warned you she wouldn’t take to marriage. Not very long, anyhow.”

“That’s true. She gets bored. I saw it start six months after the honeymoon.”

“That the reason she set the house girls to packin’ her baggage right after the game this afternoon—she’s bored?”

Mack sat up, alarmed. “She’s packing?”

“I had a cup of coffee in the kitchen ’fore I moseyed up here. ’Twas that bosomy little one told me. Nuncia—the one I keep tryin’ to bed. Nuncia said the señora is goin’ into Los Angeles in the mornin’. Plans to be there an’ shop for a few days.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.” Mack felt a rush of relief; for a moment he’d feared she was walking out for good. But the relief was quickly replaced by a feeling of insult, because she’d told the servants and not him. Given the scene at the polo field, he supposed he couldn’t blame her.

“Reckon you could hightail upstairs and put a stop to it.”

He considered it, then said, “No, I’d probably make matters worse. A few days on her own may do her good, calm her down. I’ll wait and then go in town and patch it up. Pour me another drink.”

O
N A MORNING FIVE
days later, Mack took the Santa Fe to the city. He went first to the Los Angeles Litho Company, where the foreman brought in press proofs of the Calgold crate label featuring the old prospector. There were proofs of the separate plates—red, pink, dark blue, light blue, yellow, and black—and a composite proof of all six colors.

They discussed corrections, then Mack, voicing his enthusiasm, signed off on the changes and hurried to the Baker Block. There he spent two hours with Enrique Potter and the water-company papers.

When they finished, the lawyer said: “That priest you know opened an office in town. Only he’s no longer a priest. The Church excommunicated him. He’s got a girl with him.”

Mack asked for the address. It was a bad block in the south of town. Walking there in the mellow sunshine, he marveled again at the changes since the day he first saw Los Angeles. Most of the adobes and false fronts were gone, razed to make way for taller buildings of granite and brick. Trim electric trolleys with overhead poles shot along shiny rails in the center of asphalt streets. The look was that of a thriving city, not a cow town. It could have been mistaken for an eastern city, were it not for the mountains and, against their sunlit splendor, all of the hundreds of oil derricks pumping away north and west of the business district. They were ugly, Mack had long ago decided. But he liked the derricks—maybe because their gangly presence symbolized enterprise, money, taking risks: everything California meant to him.

Soon he left the more crowded streets with their eternal wandering flocks of tourists, most of them pale, some of them sniffling and wheezing. He was in the bad section; Anglo and Mexican riffraff eyed him from the
cantinas.
He took note but didn’t worry. The sawed-off Colt rode on his hip, under his coattails. He didn’t need it; his eyes and his demeanor kept the sidewalk clear in front of him.

Up a rancid stair and down a dark corridor where bugs scurried in the dirt, he found a solid door with a card tacked to it:

LABOR LEAGUE OF LOS ANGELES.

He tried the handle, but it was locked. He rapped on the door.

“¿Quién es?”
It was Marquez’s voice.

“Es el señor Mack Chance, Diego.”

He heard footsteps, then the bolt shooting back.

“My friend,” Marquez exclaimed, and flung his arms around Mack. They hugged and slapped each other, Mack getting a noseful of sweat, garlic, and the stale musty smell of clothes worn too long.

The girl had been hovering behind the ex-priest. She was barefoot, a small-breasted, timid waif with a starved look. She had straight stringy hair, brown with streaks of yellow, and luminous brown eyes that regarded him with hesitancy or perhaps fear. Her appearance shocked him as much as the sordid little office: two rooms, the outer one crowded by a huge cheap desk. An unwashed window overlooked a yard where two cats prowled a refuse heap. Through a half-open door Mack glimpsed a gas ring, stacks of pamphlets, and a floor pallet big enough for two.

Mack smiled to hide his dismay. Diego Marquez, always a burly man, had gained thirty or forty pounds, most of it in the belly that rolled over his belt and strained the buttons of his threadbare white shirt. Red wine stains spotted the shirt front. He had also let his beard grow. It was huge, fan-shaped, and shiny-black, tipped with white. He wore rope sandals; his toes were dirty.

“It’s good to see you, Diego.”

“And you.” Marquez grinned widely. “What a sight. What clothes.
El millonario
.”

“Not quite.” He glanced at the girl.

“Ah, forgive me.” To the girl, in Spanish, he said, “Felicia, this is Señor James Macklin Chance. A good man, a decent man—despite his capitalist disguise. Will you run to the corner and get us a bottle of red?” He gave her a coin and she slipped out like an obedient puppy. Marquez carefully bolted the door after her.

Mack dropped his cream-colored rancher’s hat on the desk strewn with scribbled notes and some printed sheets headed
MANIFESTO
! On the wall hung a state map. Dots, arrows, and cryptic inscriptions in different colors covered the Central Valley and the regions around Los Angeles.

“Where did you meet that girl, Diego?”

“In the Valley, near Fresno. I was organizing the stoop labor. Her stepfather grows melons and treats his workers like serfs. Worse than serfs—swine. Felicia is nineteen years old. The man married her mother nine years ago and corrupted Felicia herself shortly after. He promised a posse would lynch me if she associated with me, but it was all bluff. She helps me in my work, and she has a better life now than she ever had before. Besides, I was chaste for many years; I have a lot to make up for.”

A flash of his eyes under his bristly brows carried a warning:
I’ve said all I have to say, so don’t ask more.

Marquez offered him the only chair, and out of courtesy Mack sat down. The former priest said he moved his headquarters often, going wherever he felt needed, organizing workers whenever they were courageous enough to risk the firings, threats, and violence of their employers. “I have another roving commission, but a less popular one than before. And you—you’re doing well—”

“Reasonably. I’m married—did you know that?”

“Oh yes, I heard. Los Angeles is still a small town, and you are a large figure in the landscape.”

“I own some orange groves—”

“Riverside,” Marquez nodded. “So now the gold drops into your lap from the trees while at the same time it flows out black from your oil wells. Remarkable. The day we met you said that your goal was riches. I congratulate you.” There was no mockery or reproof in his tone.

Felicia returned with a clay jug of wine. She placed it on the table, put her hand on Marquez’s shoulder, and raised on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. With a smile and a murmur to Mack, she went to the inner room and closed the door.

Mack didn’t want wine at this hour but he took half a cup and held it. “My lawyer told me you’d set up shop in Los Angeles.”

Marquez studied the cats prowling in the garbage. “Not a very impressive headquarters for a war, is it? But we don’t have much money—by ‘we’ I mean the movement—and what we have is better spent on handbills and meeting halls.”

“Why Los Angeles right now?”

The ex-priest snatched up a copy of the
Times.
“Because in Southern California, there is no greater Satan than Otis. He is the Antichrist of workingmen. Scarcely a day goes by without some attack, usually gratuitous—” He turned the pages, found what he wanted, and read aloud: “ ‘The scabrous scum and degraded desperadoes of the communist conspiracy skulk among us again.’ ”

Mack laughed. “He can turn a phrase, anyway.”

“It would be funny if it weren’t so despicable, not to say dangerous. He’s winning the battle here. Do you know what they’re starting to call this bastion of the open shop? Otis-town.” Marquez ripped the paper and flung the pieces on the floor.

Felicia was softly singing a lullaby in Spanish. Glancing at the inner door, Marquez’s face gentled. Mack put his wine cup on the desk and reached inside his coat. “I’d like to give you a bank draft. A contribution to your work.”

“Why? I’m not in the business of selling absolution to rich men anymore.”

“That’s damned insulting.” Mack stood up as if to leave.

“Yes,” Marquez said, frowning. “Yes, I suppose it is. I apologize. I am so used to every encounter being a confrontation, or becoming one, I’ve lost my churchly manners.” He laid a big hand on Mack’s shoulder. “I’ll be happy to accept a donation. Anonymous or otherwise.”

“I’d prefer it to be anonymous.”

That seemed to disappoint Marquez, but he said nothing. Mack wrote the draft for a thousand dollars.

“Thank you,” Marquez said quietly as he took it. Then he read the amount. “Thank you—
madre de Dios.
What a blessing. Be assured it will be put to good use.” He folded the draft quickly and thrust it in his shirt pocket, as though the miracle might vanish. “You are a good man, Mack. I apologize again for the slur of a moment ago. I heard that you defended your Chinese workmen bravely.”

“I guess I was stupid to do it. All the growers were against me because I paid a living wage, and 1893 just repeated itself. I couldn’t hire so much as one Chinese after the fire.”