by John Jakes
Mack tried to forget his obligation for that evening, but it nagged him as he stalked up and down the lanes, helping wherever he was needed. Where he saw a weak point, he told the men to set out additional wire baskets filled with soft coal or kindling. Freeze damage meant more than the loss of the season’s crop. If severe enough, the freeze would destroy the stock. Trees worth hundreds of thousands of dollars could be lost, requiring a wait of five, six, or seven years until new stock bore for the first time.
Throughout the afternoon he drove himself, and the workers too. By five o’clock all the burners and baskets were lit. Mack dragged himself into the saddle of his Morgan and walked the horse up the winding road to Villa Mediterranean.
Winter’s pale light was slanting from the west. Long sharp shadows lay on the heights. He overtook two wagons laboring uphill, stacked high with oil barrels. Would the fuel last? How low would the temperature fall?
Mack had made his decision about the evening, and he was braced for trouble.
He changed clothes in the wardrobe adjoining his office. At his desk, he tried to study the December cost and production reports. It was impossible; he couldn’t concentrate.
He heard the wind gusting over the roof tiles and raised his head and stared at the dark ceiling beams. Although Mack was not yet thirty, horizontal streaks of gray showed in the hair over his ears. Tonight his eyes had a sunken, fatigued look.
He heard her coming, her pumps rapping the floor in the hallway. It was hardwood, not the soft fir of the homes of poorer people.
She swept in without knocking. He had to admit she was breathtaking. Why not? She’d spent the afternoon bathing and dressing. Her princess gown was black satin and favored her golden complexion, with decorative ribbons of gold velvet falling from either side of the bodice all the way to the hem. Black aigrettes adorned her hair and black suede gloves reached above her elbows to puffed sleeves of black lace net over satin. She carried a painted and tasseled fan in her left hand, and on the fourth finger of her right hand, outside her glove, she wore a $15,000 emerald, rectangular and scissors-cut, in a gold mounting—his wedding gift.
“Mack, is it necessary for me to remind you that it’s New Year’s Eve? Supper starts at seven. We must leave in half an hour. Maria laid out your evening suit.”
“I wish she hadn’t gone to the trouble.”
Carla kicked her voluminous skirt behind her and the garments under her dress rustled in a way he found very feminine and seductive. “What do you mean by that remark?” she asked.
“I mean I can’t go. I have to stay in the groves. We’re going to have a bad freeze. Those oranges are my livelihood.”
“Ridiculous. You can buy ten more orange groves tomorrow.”
“It’s the livelihood of the men too. I need to be there, not abandon them.”
“This is the best country-club dance of the year. Clive told me so. Everyone will be there—”
“The only people who’ll be there are a few who have no investment in citrus. And the chefs, the waiters, and the orchestra. You won’t have many partners.”
“I’ll find a man to dance with—don’t worry.” It implied that he, perhaps, was not a man.
Frowning, he crossed in front of her. He caught her heavy orange-blossom scent and then, underneath, whiskey. He switched on the two elaborate ceiling fixtures with trumpet-flower glass shading the electric lamps and, above them, gas mantles, necessary because the power company often shut down without warning.
“Are you going to ignore me completely, Mack?”
Remaining angrily silent, he unlatched the shutters on the windows overlooking Riverside. The sky was a cold dark blue. Lights winked below, lovely jeweled patterns. How strange that millions could be lost on such a pretty night.
Wind pushed at the windows, setting up a humming vibration. The windows were the finest antique glass obtainable, full of visible waves. Each had a decorative border of leaded red glass rectangles. That was yet another sign of wealth; red glass was made with ground gold.
“Mack, I’m waiting. I insist you take me to the club.”
“No. I’m staying.”
“My feelings aren’t important to you?”
“Of course, but—”
“If I’d known when I married you that you’d act like this—”
“You knew exactly what I was. If you wanted some other kind of man, why did you want to marry me?”
A sweet smile. “You screwed me into it, darling.”
“My God.” He fell into his favorite leather chair and tossed a scarred boot onto the ottoman. “You’re a beautiful woman, Carla. But sometimes you’re a foul-minded drunk too.”
“Oh, aren’t we righteous.” She kicked her skirt again, stalking him. “Aren’t we good…”
A blood vessel stood out in his left temple and he closed his hand on the chair arm. “I’d still like to know—why did you marry me?”
She leaned forward, spat the words. “It was something to do.”
He glared. “I believe you.”
“Why did you decide to marry me? Because you couldn’t get a tumble from that little newspaper slut?” He jumped up. “Oh, I saw how you looked at her. I’ve no illusions. And you have none about me. A foul-minded drunk—isn’t that what you said?”
“Carla, I’m sorry…” He tried to appease her with outstretched hands. He felt helpless; she was mercurial and unreasonable when she drank. “…I’m sorry I lost my temper. Please go ahead to the dance.”
“How generous.”
“Ah Sing will drive you and bring you home.”
“I don’t want a damn ignorant Chink for my escort; I want my husband.”
The blood vessel rose up thick as a rope. Outside he heard a horse on the winding road. “I’ll watch for the coach coming back. We’ll open a bottle of champagne.” He walked toward her. “Please have a good time if you can. I’ll make it up to you some way.”
He started to kiss her cheek but she pulled back, withholding herself. The whiskey odor engulfed him. She gave him another of those sweet, vicious smiles.
“Good night, darling,” she said.
“See you next year, then.”
“Who knows? Let’s hope so.”
She kicked her skirt back a third time and sailed out, her dancing pumps rat-tatting on the hardwood.
Then that faded beneath other, heavier footsteps. Johnson’s boots. He walked in with uncharacteristic long strides that spoke of agitation. He wore dirty jeans, a leather vest, his usual long bandanna. This one, ironically, was bright orange.
“All your burners going?” Mack asked.
“Yep, every one we got. There ain’t enough by half to take care of the Valencias.”
“What’s the temperature?”
“ ’Round thirty. Falling.”
Mack snatched his broad-brimmed brown hat from the desk and Johnson trailed him down the faintly lit hall. “Something wrong here, Mack? Carla was dressed up prettier’n a queen, but she looked like she could spit bullets.”
“Nothing’s wrong. She’s going to the dance alone.”
“Listen, it ain’t gonna warm up just ’cause you hang around. Climb into your fancy suit and go with her.”
“I can’t do it. Not tonight.”
He clattered down the hardwood stair. Johnson followed, an even deeper frown carving the deep lines of his face.
The north wind blew relentlessly and constellations sparkled, the veils of cirrus gone. As they tethered their horses Johnson took notice.
“Not a cloud. Not a blasted one.” A cloud blanket would have moderated the effect of this wind that felt frigid as the North Pole.
In the hilltop grove, groups of Chinese huddled near the burners. Mack could smell the strong crude oil as he and Johnson walked under the trees. He checked every burner and adjusted the drafts of some.
To supplement the burners the men had lit torches, sooty smudge pots, and more soft coal and kindling in the wire baskets. Smoke drift
ed and stung the eyes.
“Wind’s too strong,” Mack said. “It’ll dissipate the heat.”
“Not much we can do about that,” Johnson said.
Mack jammed his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and eyed the winter sky.
By eleven, he was stretched out beneath a tree, Johnson dozing next to him. All across the horizon in the foothill belt you could see the glow of burners and coal baskets—the watch fires of the gentleman orchardists…
Mack wondered if Carla was having a good time. In another hour a new year would begin. Would their relationship be better? Not unless he did something about it. Something other than pleading for understanding; she was incapable of that.
Johnson woke, checked a tin pail by his side, then held it out. “Cerveza?”
Mack drank some. “Hell, the beer’s the only thing warm tonight. What’s the temperature?”
Johnson consulted a thermometer tied to a branch. “Twenty-six.”
“Wind’s down, though.” It was true. The smudge-pot and coal-basket smoke no longer dispersed immediately. The burner could be felt.
“It’ll go hardest with the lemons down yonder,” Johnson said, squatting again. “Up here, maybe we’ll make it. You should of gone to that shindig.”
Mack didn’t respond. They heard some workers arguing softly and then the click of gambling tiles. Mack thought of Bao Kee. It made him feel worse.
Johnson finished the beer. “Tell me somethin’. You been married most of a year and a half now. You happy or not?”
Mack’s hazel eyes caught the blue-white flicker of the flame in a burner. “I should tell you it’s none of your damn business.”
“Just askin’ as your friend.”
Mack blew on his hands. “If being happy is making money, then I’m happy.”
“Not exactly what I meant.”
“Anything else I’m too busy to notice.”
The pale-green eyes fixed on him. “I can understand you frettin’ about the oranges. Still, women do take some noticin’ now and then. I ain’t ever been tied up in matrimony, but I learned that much.”
“Sure, I know, but…”
Suddenly he was tired of dissembling. He needed to confide in a friend. He sat up straight.
“It’s more than a fight over a dance. Carla’s slipping back into her old ways. She was fine for a few months. Now when I try making up to her with little gestures, suggestions—a horseback ride in the country, a picnic—she isn’t interested. She’s bored. She wants something else—a party, a trip, always something else. Swampy warned me.”
“Seems pretty clear all she wanted tonight was what both of you’d planned on.”
“And I was the one who balked?”
“Uh-huh. You got reasons for what you did. Pretty good ones. But you still stayed home. Don’t put all the burden on Carla.”
“Thanks for the lecture.”
Johnson sighed. “You can be a mean bastard when you’re riled. That’s good in a fight, but it don’t do much for marriage.” He paused a while. “Listen here. We get through this night, I got somethin’ to say to you.”
“Something else? Say it now.”
Johnson ignored the sarcasm. “In the mornin’. If we ain’t wiped out. ’Scuse me.”
He sank down on his haunches, his back to the tree, snapped his hat low over his eyes, and went to sleep.
Mack watched patterns in the coiling smoke. He stood and held his hands near the burner. It warmed his flesh but not his soul. He didn’t know how to handle a rich, spoiled woman like Carla. His intentions were good, but his temper, and her whims, canceled that out.
At midnight someone in a distant grove fired a volley to welcome 1897. That was the extent of the celebration. He expected Ah Sing would bring Carla home in an hour or two.
The cold lonely night chastened him. Johnson was right: Carla’s bad behavior didn’t excuse his own; he bore half the responsibility. In the morning, he’d try to make it up to her.
Mack woke. The ground was frigid under his legs, the tree trunk hard on his spine. He didn’t remember falling asleep.
The rasp of Johnson’s snoring penetrated his sleepiness. Johnson hadn’t budged from the tree, though his hat had fallen off. In the east, the morning light was breaking.
Mack’s breath plumed when he exhaled, mingling with the burner smoke rising in scores of straight columns, as though the grove hid a whole subdivision of row houses with fuming chimneys. One of Mack’s best men, a young Chinese named Kim Loo, opened the door of a burner to check the oil supply.
“Almos’ gone, Mist Chance.”
“Better refill them. Feels like another cold day.”
Kim Loo nodded and hurried away. Mack stood up, stretching and flexing out the stiffness in his knee joints. He checked the thermometer. Twenty-four degrees. He plucked down an orange, wiped it, pierced me skin with his thumbnail, and sucked the juice.
He nudged Johnson with his boot. “I think we made it.”
Johnson yawned and complained. After a few minutes, Mack decided his foreman was sufficiently awake.
“Now, what was it you wanted to tell me this morning?”
“Gettin’ restless, that’s all.”
“You mean you want to traipse off again?”
“Think so. In the spring, maybe.”
“The polo club won’t be happy. We need you. I’ll never play as well as you. You’re our strongest rider.” They were still making up teams exclusively from their membership. Mack looked forward to playing another club someday.
Johnson chuckled. “Yeah, and I got to admit I like the applause from the ladies on the sidelines. Like gettin’ paid, too. Just never figured a dirt-poor Texas boy would take to a fancy-pants game like that. Still, I do get these hankerings—”
“You know I depend on you,” Mack said. “But it’s always been conditional. You’ve always been free to go. Still are.”
“What about all this?”
“I’ll promote Billy Biggerstaff till you get back.”
“Will you get along all right if I go off a while?”
“Sure—absolutely,” Mack said with a quick nod. Could his friend tell that he was lying?
Half an hour later Mack trudged up the hill to Villa Mediterranean. The great house was still and chilly. He felt grubby and exhausted as he climbed the stairs to the master suite. He took care to open the carved door quietly.
The huge room was dark, all the shutters closed. He listened.
Silence.
Anxiously, he walked toward the bed. The pegged flooring gave off small creaks.
“Carla?” he whispered. “Happy New Year—”
No breathing. Nothing.
At her side of the bed, he ran his hand over the spread. The bed was perfectly made. Empty.
He went downstairs for a cup of coffee. In the kitchen, the household majordomo, an old haughty Mexican named Rodolfo Armendariz, showed him a bottle of Mumm’s standing in a silver bucket. Water filled the bucket to a depth of six inches.
“Here is the champagne, Señor. I set it out at midnight, as you requested.”
Mack had completely forgotten. He’d spoken to Rodolfo before going to the groves—preparing for a little celebration when Carla came back.
“The ice is melted, Señor.”
“I see. Someone else can drink it. Anyone. There won’t be a celebration this morning.”
Mack slept for three hours, then ate breakfast. It was another clear, cloudless day. But the wind had died and the cold felt less severe.
He checked his pocket watch. Quarter past ten. Walking down to the lower limit of his property, he inspected the new barracks. Two stories, closed in and roofed but not yet painted, the building was tucked out of sight behind a windbreak. He’d built it to provide clean, comfortable quarters for some of his workers, the young bachelors like Kim Loo who could not yet afford a bride from one of the Chinatowns or the home country.
He walked the groves a while, talki
ng with the tired men refilling the burners. There was some defoliation from yesterday’s wind, but no sign of the split bark caused by sap freezing in the cambium layer.
He leaned against a tree. It felt like the end of the afternoon. He pulled out his watch again. Half past twelve.
Looking down the winding road, he saw only two of his Chinese on foot.
He wandered aimlessly for more than an hour. Finally, up on the summit, he walked into the dirt yard in front of the carriage house. A Chinese boy with greasy hands was using a wrench to tighten the front hub of Mack’s new safety bicycle. He saw the owner and smiled.
“Got her all fixed, Mr. Mack. Wheel run good now.”
“Thanks. The cycling club’s going on a twenty-mile ride on Sunday, and—” The rattle of a coach on the hill interrupted him. “Thanks,” he shouted, enthusiastically this time, and ran.
Ah Sing halted the team, avoiding Mack’s eyes. When Mack opened the coach door with the gold-leaf JMC cartouche blazoned on it, Carla regarded him with puffy eyes. She was still in her New Year’s Eve finery.
“Long party. It’s after two o’clock.”
“I got a little drunk. Some friends put me up.”
“What friends?”
“Oh, I’m now accountable to you, am I?”
Her clothing looked mussed and all her lipstick was worn away. He fought a jealous anger. “No, Carla, and you never have been.”
She jerked the door shut and thumped the front of the compartment. “Ah Sing, goddamn you, go on.” Ah Sing shook the reins. The sudden forward lurch of the coach flung her against the cushion with a pained cry. She pressed her palms to her temples, eyes squeezed shut.
The coach passed and left him standing in dust.
After dark the temperature dropped below thirty-two again, but the night was windless: Mack stayed in the grove until midnight, then made a bed on the couch in his office. In the morning he saddled up and rode down to the flats. Damage was spotty, and most of his oranges were unharmed.
Clive Henley’s lemon grove was different. It had the blasted, wasted look of a war zone. Work crews wielded axes and saws, cutting off defoliated limbs, in some cases all the way back to the trunk. Teams of dray horses with chains pulled other trees right out of the ground.