California Gold (86 page)

Jim flailed and fought his way through the blizzard. Snowflakes melted on his eyelids. He was freezing.

He dropped to hands and knees in a huge drift and dug down to find the path. As soon as he dug the hole, the storm filled it. The strange snow was as fluid as running water.

Some distance away, hatless, Mack floundered toward him. He knew Jim was somewhere ahead but couldn’t seem to reach him. The howling wind kept battering him back, blinding him with flying pellets of ice.

“Jim? It’s Pa. I’m coming. Hang on—”

Mack saw dark shapes towering in gaps in the flying snow-shanties on the hillsides, the superstructures of mine heads. He knew this place. Why couldn’t he find the path?

Suddenly, another rip in the snow veil revealed his son digging frantically. Mack threw himself forward and shouted Jim’s name again. The boy raised his head. His skin was gray, his mouth blue.

“Pa? Pa, here I am….”

Mack laughed triumphantly. Only twenty or thirty feet more, and he’d swoop the boy up in his arms and take him home…

A grinding in the earth made him look down. The snowdrift shuddered and split open, and underneath, a great crevasse of ice appeared; it was half a mile deep.

Snow crumbled under Mack’s feet. As the crevasse widened, Jim reached toward his father with pleading arms…

Their fingers almost touched. Then Mack fell into the blue depths of the ice gorge, and landed hard on his back.

On the carpet at Greenwich Street.

Weak autumn sunshine filtering through the lace curtains patterned his face. Mack rubbed his head and yanked at the silk dressing gown binding him around the legs. Blinking and straightening his spectacles, which had slipped off his left ear, he climbed to his feet amidst the litter of last night’s newspapers. He remembered now: He’d drunk two bottles of wine, then lain down to nap.

Someone was knocking. He stumbled to the parlor door. On the landing, Señora Olivar gasped with relief.

“Señor Chance, are you all right? I heard a great thump.”

“I was asleep on the couch. I fell off.”

Angelina Olivar twisted her apron. “I was so worried. For two hours and more, I have been thinking I must wake you.”

Mack turned his stubbled face toward the soft light at the windows. “How late is it?”

“Sir—it’s half past ten.”

Mack groaned and rubbed his temples. Sleeping late was becoming a habit. An escape.

Noisy wagons passed in the street. Municipal crews worked all day and all night. Older said they were cleaning up something like six or seven million bricks.

Señora Olivar was still standing at the door. “Yes?” Mack said. “What else?”

“A gentleman is downstairs. An old friend who has come home again.”

“Hellburner?”

“Yes, Señor. The same.”

“Warm the coffeepot. I’ll throw some water on my face and be right down.”

He vanished in the hall leading to rooms in the back. Angelina Olivar took note of his step. For once her employer was not moving like a tortoise. Ah, but behind his hazel eyes-there, she saw no change. Behind his eyes, he was dead.

The parlor on the floor below had been converted into Mack’s office. It was dark and rusty as the rooms above, but crowded with cabinets and work tables.

Mack came shuffling in. Johnson stood next to his valise, turning his wide-brimmed hat in his hands. He wore a sheepman’s coat and the inevitable bandanna, this one black. His fingers constricted on the hat brim.

“Lord God. I heard you wasn’t doin’ so well. Looks like that ain’t the half of it.”

“Hello, Hugh. Welcome back.”

Mack moved slowly to his desk, flattening his uncombed hair with his palm. Angelina Olivar served mugs of coffee on a tray and quickly retired. Mack sat and eyed his partner.

“If you’re really back,” he added.

“Yep.” Johnson sailed the tall white hat onto a black horsehair sofa. The muffling drapes were black too. Johnson shucked off his coat and dropped it, then dropped himself into a chair and reached for coffee. “Back for a spell, anyway.”

“I live upstairs. There are three empty bedrooms. You can take your pick.”

Johnson nodded to acknowledge the offer. “I sure don’t recognize the town after what happened.” He blew steam off the coffee. “You know I’m not so good with words. But I want to tell you how sorry—”

“Don’t bother. Jim’s alive—somewhere.”

Mack left his desk and drifted across the room to a closet. “There’s whiskey in here if you want to lace that.”

Johnson covered the mug with his other hand. “My Lord, never this early.”

“You don’t mind if I do.”

He opened the closet. Johnson saw decanters and bottles and bottles of Sonoma Creek Vineyard wine. Mack rummaged a glass from a shelf and filled it with red wine from an open bottle. Then he knocked it back like a couple of swallows of water.

“What about the place on Nob Hill?” Johnson asked. “I didn’t go by there—”

“Burned to the ground.”

“Gonna rebuild, aren’t you?”

Mack refilled his glass and shut the closet. He picked up a roll of plans from a bookshelf. “Starr, the original architect, thinks I should. Margaret thinks I should. Everyone thinks I should.” He threw the plans back on the shelf. “Except me.”

He drank a second glass of wine in quick gulps, then shuffled back for more. Johnson sipped coffee and unhappily watched his friend pour his third drink. He didn’t know how to help Mack. Maybe no one could help him in this state.

O
N A TUESDAY IN
early November, Mack returned to the apartment on Greenwich Street at half past three in the afternoon. Three men on scaffolds were brushing gray paint on the frame of the bay window next door, and someone was hammering in the tobacco shop on the corner. Hammers could be heard all over San Francisco.

Mack wore a brown derby, a suit with a brown stripe, and a short, solid-brown topcoat. The suit and outer coat were London-made, but it was a conventional, not to say drab outfit. It discouraged attention rather than inviting it.

Mack hooked his cane on his arm and unlocked the front door. Alex sprang out of the parlor, red-cheeked and eager; he still had not come down from his romantic cloud. He touched a stack of folders on a marble-topped table. “A messenger from the Haverstick office brought these. Mr. Haverstick himself telephoned five minutes ago to remind you that the oil leases require attention immediately.”

Mack dropped his cane into a ceramic stand. “They’ll wait.”

Alex stepped back, thwarted by his employer’s curt, almost defiant answer. He indicated the office door. “You also have a caller—Mr. Marquez.”

Mack’s stoic face suddenly became animated. Stepping inside, he found Diego Marquez sitting with Johnson. Although the heavy drapes on the bay windows were open and tied back, it was fall, and afternoon, and the parlor seemed dimmer than usual. Dusty too.

Marquez heaved up from the horsehair sofa. He was almost grossly fat, and shabbier than ever. His beard hung to the middle of his chest, gray and patriarchal. He walked to Mack with an odd rocking gait, like a man hurting. Piles, Mack suspected. Piles or some other malady of age.

“Diego.” Mack held out his hand. “Welcome. Is Felicia with you?”

“No, Felicia left me. Pregnant by a rancher’s son. That’s an irony, eh?” A sad little shrug. Then he said, “It was inevitable, I decided. To be poor all the time, despised, constantly threatened—it’s no life for a young girl. And idealism melts in the acid juices of an empty belly. No need to discuss it further. Let me instead express my profound regret about the loss of your son.”

“Temporary. Just temporary, Diego. We quarreled—he ran away—he’ll be back. I’ve hired Pinkerton’s to find him. Sit down. Do you want some whiskey? Some wine?”

He didn’t. Mack helped himself. “What can I do for you?”

Marquez ordered his thoughts before speaking. “I have been working in the Central Valley. Quite near your ranch below Fresno.”

“Working with the stoop labor?”

“Yes. They must be helped constantly. They must be educated so they can speak up for their rights. Not only a fair wage—adequate food, decent quarters. Do you know that some of the owners will not provide even one toilet for a hundred men and their women and babies? That is not the case on your property, I’m happy to say.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

Johnson crossed his legs and scowled over the abruptness of Mack’s question. Marquez frowned too. It wasn’t going well.

“I am here to speak for a certain group of workers no one will hire—just as the ranch owners once refused to hire my people, or the Japanese and Chinese. There are several hundred of these men presently in the vicinity of Fresno—”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The Hindustani.”

“Ah, the Indians. I’ve seen them.”

“They come principally from the Punjab, in India’s northwest. They are expert agriculturists, skilled in the cultivation of cotton, melons, figs, corn. But they can’t find work—not even at the meanest, lowest wage.”

“Why not, if they’re so good?” Johnson asked.

“Because they are too dark. Very different. We like to boast that California is a golden door of opportunity standing open for all. Unfortunately, if you don’t have white skin, that is usually untrue.”

Mack regarded him with lifeless eyes. Marquez leaned forward. “I personally know of seven Hindustani who are starving. If you would lead the way—hire some of them, if only for a trial period—”

“I’m a businessman, not a social pioneer. Hiring is my foreman’s responsibility.”

“Mack—I am asking you in the name of friendship.”

Mack grabbed the upright telephone. He seemed put upon, annoyed. “I’ll speak to the foreman, but it’s his decision.”

In the Valley, it was still 87 degrees, and hot harsh light flooded Jesse Tarbox’s office. Outside his dusty windows bright fans of water rained on the low short-pruned arbors of raisin grapes.

Tarbox was a lean, pale man who tended to redden with sunburn. For clothes, he preferred what he was wearing—tan jodhpurs, brown cavalry boots, a khaki shirt. He sweated heavily and changed shirts two or three times a day. His wife sometimes complained, but one or two strokes of the cane shut her up.

A Hoosier, Tarbox had been run out of a private academy after teaching for sixteen years. His abusive disposition undid him; he caned one pupil too many, and the young man’s broken forearm didn’t set properly. After that, he drifted through Kansas and Colorado, learning farm work, gaining experience. Finally, at fifty-seven, he had a position he liked. Here he could cane with impunity.

The wall telephone rang and Tarbox sprang to answer. Fresno central connected him with San Francisco. “Tarbox speaking,” he said nervously. His employer was a hard man—moody these days, and unpredictable.

Tarbox listened. “All right, sir, you want my opinion, here it is. Don’t hire rag-heads. Absolutely not. They look like niggers—in town, just walking around, they scare the womenfolk half to death. Some ranchers claim they’re good workers, but I don’t believe it. I say they’re not worth the trouble.”

“Thanks, Jesse. Everything all right?”

“Fine, sir.”

Mack said good-bye and rang off. Tarbox hung the earpiece on the prongs. Out in the arbors, the pumps hissed and clicked, brushing the air with the great golden fans of water that sprinkled the Alexandria muscat vines and left them gleaming.

The foreman stared at the telephone in a fixed way. Macklin Chance paid well, but Jesse Tarbox didn’t like him. Tarbox hated all those he perceived as his betters, and he loathed his inferiors. Which left damn few worthy white men on his own level.

The door flew open and a runty Mexican rushed in, clasping his straw hat to his sweat-soaked blouse.
“Señor, la tubería de la estación de bombeo se rompió y se està inundando.”

A burst line in the pump house was a problem. But Tarbox perceived a bigger one. In Spanish, he said, “Aguilar, I’ve told you and told you, never come in here without knocking first. I’ll have to remind you in some way you’ll remember.”

Smiling, he reached for his cane.

Mack pushed the phone back to its corner of the desk.

“My foreman says no. The local people don’t like the Hindus.”

Abruptly, wrathfully, Marquez rose. “That’s your answer?”

“That’s right.”

“I think the man I met some years ago would have answered differently. He would have decided for himself. I heard it said that the loss of your son changed you. I did not understand how completely.”

“Diego, I don’t need your moralizing.”

“I’m sorry, Mack. If you’re the enemy of those I help, you are my enemy also.”

Mack shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He turned away, as if interested in the dusty heaps of correspondence around him.

Johnson and the burly man exchanged sympathetic looks. Then Marquez picked up a battered straw hat like those worn by his migrants, and without a backward glance, left.

The moment the door shut, Johnson whistled.

“You’re pretty rough on an old friend.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“No opinion. Fact.” Johnson shook his hand-rolled cigarette at Mack. “Time was, you’d of jumped to help any underdog in sight.”

“Christ, you sound like Diego. Is he giving you lessons for the priesthood?”

“Don’t you get snotty with me. If Nellie was here, that’d be three of us tellin’ you to head in.”

“Well, Nellie’s on her way back to Europe to write a new novel. You probably passed her on the cattle boat coming home. Stand on your own feet.”

Johnson planted them in front of the desk. “I surely will. I got somethin’ to say.”

“As usual. I don’t want to hear it.” He opened a folder of sales and construction reports from San Solaro. The summary sheet said permanent population had reached 1,003.

Johnson snatched the folder and flung it, spilling paper. “Listen here, Mack. I know you’re hurtin’ bad inside. I’m sorry about that. But it don’t give you leave to act like a son of a bitch.”

Mack hurled out of the chair and began picking up the papers as if they were treasures. “I think we’ve had this conversation before. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. If you object to the way things are, Hugh, the door’s right there. Always open.”