by John Jakes
Forty-four years old, energetic, and enormously ambitious, the corpulent Johnson put on the same show at every stop. He doffed his coat and wire spectacles, loosened his tie, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and jumped on the rear seat of the open auto. From there he lit into the opposition, whether he had an audience of two or two hundred. He was a splendid, polished orator with a vibrant voice.
Today he garnered about thirty-five people. Mack sat on a shaded bench in front of Person’s Hardware, paging through the previous day’s Stockton Trumpet. He knew Johnson’s stump speech by heart.
“My friends, we are going to reclaim California for honest government. We are going to drive the money changers out of the temple of the people. We are going to do it by electing trustworthy officials and enacting three important reforms.”
Unexpectedly, Mack saw someone familiar at the back of the crowd: Diego Marquez.
“One, we will enact the initiative provision in the state constitution and local charters. This will put legislative power directly into your hands. You will be able to band together to initiate new laws or modify bad ones. No legislator in Sacramento wiggling in the hip pocket of the SP will be able to stop you in this exercise of your rightful power.”
A couple of farmers clapped, but Mack’s eyes were riveted on Marquez. His spectacles were thicker. His beard hung almost to his enormous belly and he hadn’t cut his hair in a long while. Large bruises discolored his forehead and left cheek; someone else had taken exception to his opinions.
Mack folded the paper and stared at the ex-priest. He was sure Marquez had seen him, but was refusing to make eye contact.
“Two, the referendum. This reform will allow citizens of California to step to the ballot box and veto any corrupt or wrongful legislation. It will send a powerful message to Sacramento, and foil those lawmakers who consistently and shamelessly serve special interests instead of the common good. Third, and finally, the recall. If all else fails—if the toadies of the Southern Pacific and the other power barons fail to heed the will of the people—your will, my friends—they can be removed from office. Those are the three strongest planks in the Progressive platform. I ask you to vote for them—for me—and for a new era of decent government in California.”
Johnson’s fiery finish stirred them: Everyone clapped long and hard. After looking at the candidate for several moments, Mack glanced into the crowd again. Marquez was gone. He’d have liked to talk to the ex-priest, whether Marquez wanted it or not, but there was no time to search for him. They had one more stop before sunset, down the road in Salida.
The crowd broke up, and Johnson jumped out of the car to shake hands, while Mack leafed quickly through the rest of the paper. A boxed advertisement for a San Francisco rally caught his attention; Nellie’s name was prominent. He checked the date.
“Hiram, I’m leaving you for a couple of days,” he said when they were rolling down the dirt highway. “I have to go back to the City. It’s important.”
He couldn’t find a seat—hundreds packed the hall and squatted in the aisles and leaned against the side walls—so he stood in the dark at the rear. Under a huge portrait of Johnson, photographed triumphantly with his arms upraised, Nellie spoke passionately to the throng.
“During the administration of Abraham Lincoln, the first secretary of war, before Mr. Stanton, was named Simon Cameron. Cameron was a powerful, some say venal political boss from Pennsylvania—he ran the state machine. On one occasion someone asked him for his definition of an honest politician. “That’s easy,’ Cameron replied. ‘Once he’s bought, he stays bought.’ ”
Laughter. When it quieted, she went on. “My friends, California has suffered for several decades with a plague of ‘honest’ politicians. The Progressives intend to change that with the initiative, the referendum, and the recall—three checks upon the outrageous cupidity of some of our elected officials. Further, our parry is pledged to work for social good. For conservation of our forests. Hospital and prison reform. A curb on illegal child labor and on the unregulated urban saloons. We want direct election of United States senators, instead of nomination by political cronies—or secret ballot in the SP boardroom. We demand a minimum wage for working women. A public utilities board with real power, beholden to none. A railroad commission that will set fair rates, and then enforce them—a commission that is not a puppet or a propaganda bureau for those it is meant to regulate.”
On the huge stage, dwarfed by the great portrait, she still held every listener’s attention.
“As a woman, I am forbidden to vote for Hiram Johnson or any other Progressive candidate. That in itself is a crime and a scandal.” In the orchestra and gallery, men booed. Nellie’s eyes flayed the great dark pit of the audience. “I repeat: a crime and a scandal. But we’ll win that battle someday.”
A man in a front row snickered. The sound fell into a moment of silence, and mass laughter erupted. Nellie slapped the podium. It was loud as a shot, and her subsequent words carried to the farthest rows.
“Yes, we’ll win that battle—gentlemen—and write our suffrage doctrine into the Constitution, whether you approve or not. Our first priority, however, is to win on the eighth of November. So I say: Down with the railroad and its political captives. Down with ‘honest’ politicians who warp the truth, scoff at morality, and manipulate our legislatures and our courts for profit. Now, after forty years and more, that kind of despotic rule is over. On the day after the election, California will once again belong to you, to me, and to all of her people. Thank God, I say. Thank God. Thank you, and good night.”
Nellie’s face was turned up to catch the stage lights. For a moment that face, a shining cameo of bravery, maintained the silence. Then the first rows came up stomping and cheering, and like a breaking wave, the ovation spread. Mack clapped till his hands hurt. In the anonymous dark at the back of the hall, his face glowed with pride and love.
For nearly five minutes, pols and well-wishers milled around her. Then the chairman gaveled the hall to order and introduced two local candidates, each of whom spoke well, but it was anticlimactic. Mack fidgeted, eager for the rally to end so he could find Nellie. It was time to mend things, start over.
After the concluding speech, the pit orchestra struck up a march. Mack fought his way down the aisle, against the noisy enthusiasts coming the other way, and ran up the steps at stage right.
He saw her in the wings, in her evening wrap. She dashed up to a portly and genial-looking stranger in a tuxedo. The man was older, bald, deeply tanned, and wore an expensive silk scarf draped around the collar of his jacket; it was as white as his huge drooping mustache.
Her eyes shining, Nellie threw her arms around the man’s neck and kissed and hugged him. They walked out arm in arm, laughing and chatting like intimates. Stunned, Mack turned and left the stage.
On November 5, the Saturday before the election, Wyatt faced the tabernacle’s board of elders.
The special meeting was convened with a day’s notice, and the elders had invited all communicants, Elihu Flintman personally spreading the word by telephone to a network of callers. At 10 A.M., Wyatt confronted all of the elders and some 270 tabernacle members in the sanctuary.
Wyatt sat in a tall chair behind the pulpit, stiff and affronted. Dust-moted sunbeams lanced down from high windows. He let his eye rove over the congregation. What a shabby, ignorant lot, he thought. Indiana farmers newly come to California and still raw red from the sun. Stiff-necked ugly women with dried-up dugs, wrinkles, and righteous expressions. How he hated them—all the more because they were so gullible.
This morning, though, he noted a difference in the faces of these small-towners come to live out their last years in cheap bungalows. Where he had previously seen earnest sympathy and affection for him, he now saw dislike, even outright hate. It was the hate of infantile minds coming sluggishly to an awareness that they had been deceived…
Flintman stepped up and took charge, clearly savoring the opportunity. He
was prosecutorial with the bank check, which he flourished like a dead fish left in the sun too long.
“I call your attention to this thirty-thousand-dollar donation, Mr. Paul.”
“Brother Paul, if you don’t mind.”
Flintman glared right back. “You donated this money to the Democratic campaign of Theodore Bell. I show you the name of the state campaign organization on the face, and the endorsement on the back. The bank that cleared the check called the irregularity to my attention.”
“What irregularity, for God’s sake?”
“We’ll come to that.”
“They had no right, Flintman. Bank transactions are private.”
“Yes, the bank violated confidentiality. But its officers obeyed a higher law—”
“What shit,” Wyatt said under his breath. A woman in the third row heard, but he stared her down.
“They called attention to the donation because it was not permissible.”
Wyatt shot out of his chair. “What do you mean, not permissible?” He was loud, belligerent. There was no trace of his customary charm. Flintman had first shown him the canceled check at 4 P.M. the day before, and he hadn’t slept all night. “Why not, I ask you. That money came from my personal account.”
“That is not true. That is a flagrant lie. The account on which this check is written is not your personal account, it is the general tabernacle account. That is why the bank took notice. I charge that you diverted tabernacle funds for a private purpose. That is serious malfeasance. Not all of us here wish to see the SP candidates elected.”
Cries of, “No!” and, “They’re crooks!” filled the hall. Christ, how those smug stupid faces disgusted him. He saw Winona Flintman in the second pew, looking at him as if he were vermin; He wished he had a pistol to blow her eyes out.
Wyatt stormed to the pulpit; Flintman retreated a step. “You’re telling me to whom I can and cannot make political donations?” He tried to be scornful, to brand the thought ludicrous. But Flintman stood up to him:
“In this case, yes. What misguided thinking prompted you, I don’t know. Nor do I care. I am merely stating irrefutable fact. You gave tabernacle funds to a personal cause.”
“I am the tabernacle. The rest of you are ciphers. Dung. Nothing!” He yelled it, pushed beyond reason.
Outraged stares and exclamations showed the dreadful miscalculation. He dug his nails into his hands, the pain helping him regain control.
Flintman was pleased by Wyatt’s outburst and now regaled the founder with a pious smile. “Your opinions are immaterial at this stage, sir. You are not the supreme authority here. You are not a dictator, though perhaps through benign neglect and tolerance we have given you that illusion. You have broken faith with the members and the ruling elders of this congregation.”
And then Wyatt knew, truly knew, how bad this was. The bearded old bastard was going for a kill. A great vomitous feeling overwhelmed him. Of course he wouldn’t allow them to win. He would not. He went on the attack, seizing hold of the pulpit and startling Flintman into another retreat. With his aggressive stance and his fierce gaze, Wyatt defied all the set mouths, the vicious pig eyes, the puny minds in front of him.
“Ruling elders? What have the ruling elders got to do with it? Who do you think coined the term ruling elders, for Christ’s sake? I did. I wrote the articles of organization—me, personally. They were meaningless then and they’re meaningless now.”
“No, sir. Lawyers have examined them. Advised us they are enforceable and urged us to act upon them. We are specifically enforcing the clause which states that all members of the tabernacle shall be of high moral character, beyond reproach. You have cheated us, Mr. Paul. You have falsified other financial records. You have engaged in acts of moral turpitude which I personally witnessed.”
Wyatt’s smile went on like an electric light. “Elihu. Friend. Let’s not air these ridiculous—”
“You are a disgrace, sir.” Flintman pointed at him with a trembling hand. “A whoremaster, a deceiver—a monumental fraud.”
Winona Flintman sagged forward, sobbing into her gloved hands as angry mutters ran around the hall. Wyatt stood slack-mouthed again. His attack had failed, hadn’t intimidated them even slightly. A queer ringing filled his ears, and he saw double images of Flintman.
“Effective at noon tomorrow,” Flintman said, “the board of elders relieves you of all authority in the tabernacle. You have no followers, no church—and with the cooperation of the bank we have seen to it that tabernacle accounts are beyond your reach. You’ll steal no more of our money, Mr. Paul.”
Wyatt jumped him. “I’ll break your fucking neck.”
Flintman yelled and pulled at Wyatt’s hands on his throat, then lunged sideways. He missed the edge of the platform, fell, and landed hard in front of the first pew. Everyone heard his head knock the pew seat. Winona Flintman shrieked and threw herself over the back of the pew. “My husband has a weak heart.”
Men from the congregation ran to the platform and surrounded Wyatt. He spat and snarled and rammed his elbows in their bellies. “Hold him, for God’s sake.” They were older, less strong, but his violence drew them out of the audience in large numbers, and in a few moments, he was wedged inside a mass of bodies. He cursed and kicked until a louder voice overrode him—that of another elder.
“Let him go. Jephtha, Donald, Cleve—stand away from him. He’s whipped.”
Panting, Wyatt shoved his tangled hair off his forehead. They’d rumpled and soiled his white suit, ripped off his clerical collar and trampled it.
Elihu Flintman stood up groggily. His cheeks had a blue tinge and he was bleeding from a forehead cut, but he had the strength of righteousness. He swayed forward to the platform and pointed.
“Noon tomorrow. Twenty-four hours. Be out of your quarters and off these premises, taking nothing but your clothing. Otherwise there will be a sheriff’s warrant for your arrest.”
On Sunday, Elihu Flintman and Jim worked in the bookkeeping office from one o’clock until dark, pulling and listing every ledger and record of the tabernacle in preparation for turning the lot over to the attorneys. Flintman dictated the descriptions and Jim wrote them down with a steel nib in his fine large hand.
Flintman was smugly exultant, though his good feeling was blunted by occasional severe angina, and by worry about Winona. After the frightful session the day before, from which Wyatt had stalked screaming the vilest obscenities, Winona Flintman had collapsed. Flintman rushed her to Pasadena Hospital, where she was sedated for nervous prostration.
Jim worked quietly, following instructions, asking no questions. He hadn’t been allowed to attend the meeting, but he knew that a group of elders and a sheriff’s deputy had escorted Brother Paul off the grounds at five past twelve. Jim was relieved that the founder was gone; Brother Paul had always frightened him a little. He just hoped he and Jocker would continue to have jobs.
Around eight o’clock, just as he was starting to yawn behind his hand and wonder if he dared ask Flintman about supper, he heard someone cross the veranda with a soft tread. Then faint clicks signaled the opening and closing of the front door. Immersed in canceled checks, Flintman didn’t Look up.
“See who’s there, Jim David.”
Dutifully Jim left the office. Deacon Rowena, Deacon Helen, and the others had packed up and departed sometime Saturday night. Could it be one of them coming back for something? He limped from the central foyer past the staircase and caught his breath. Brother Paul was halfway up the stairs.
“Mr. Flintman,” Jim shouted.
“You little prick.” Brother Paul lunged at him, shooting his hands over the banister. Jim jumped back, but his bad foot twisted, and Brother Paul’s fingers brushed his throat.
Elihu Flintman lumbered from the office. “Here, what are you doing? Come to add thievery to your mischief?” Flintman rushed up the staircase, though he slowed, noticeably on the last few steps. He grabbed Wyatt’s arm. “Get off these pre
mises. Jim, telephone the sheriff.”
Brother Paul bashed him with an elbow and Flintman staggered down three steps, sucking air, his eyes bulging. Jim struggled up past the bookkeeper as fast as he could. “You hurt him,” he yelled, throwing himself at Wyatt. He got one hand around Wyatt’s arm and then Wyatt punched his jaw.
Jim’s teeth cut the lining of his mouth. He spat bloody saliva. A few drops splattered Wyatt’s sweater, and it seemed to drive the man wild. He grabbed Jim’s blond hair and kicked him between the legs, then flung him bodily down the stairs.
Jim landed hard, skidding. As Wyatt ran down, Flintman clutched at him. “You—monster—” Wyatt pivoted and threw a brutal blow into Flintman’s abdomen. The bookkeeper collapsed, grasping for the banister and choking. His eyes rolled up in his head. Then he flopped like a rag doll.
Wyatt’s head was afire with rage and the lovely unexpected satisfaction of dealing with these two. He darted the rest of the way down and paused over Jim’s prostrate body.
If he had ever seen the boy before, it hadn’t made an impression. They said everyone in the world had a twin; this boy was Carla’s. Uncanny. How like a beautiful sleeping seraph he was…
Wyatt’s dreamy smile vanished, and he kicked Jim’s head viciously. The boy’s head snapped over. Wyatt heard his weak cry as he ran to a bay window. Grinning, Wyatt tore draperies from their rings, and then he held one edge up to the gas until it flamed.
Jocker Sprue was sitting in the cool darkness outside his cottage when he saw the rose-pink light in the octagonal house. He shouted until he roused two other gardeners who could run faster than an arthritic old man. They reached the tabernacle as the fire spread out of the foyer. Flintman was found with his legs still on the stairs and his mussed gray hair resting on the polished floor. The gardeners dragged his lifeless body outside, then rescued Jim from the puddle of blood where his head lay.
By nine o’clock the fire had gutted the tabernacle. By half past, the last beams crumbled in shining waterfalls of sparks. Old Jocker shivered in the night air and thoughtlessly remarked that the fire was bright as the sun.