California Gold

by John Jakes

  Now, though, things were different. His mood had been darkened by recent events, and the winter, and a persistent sense of failure. He’d lost Jim, he’d lost Nellie long ago—he seemed to have lost his grip on life itself. Were it not for the stewardship of good trustworthy helpers like Alex Muller, Enrique Potter, and Rhett Haverstick, God knew that he might have lost his millions too.

  Steinweis telephoned at least once a day, pressing for a decision. As Mack stared at the little message chits, his antagonism focused on Steinweis rather than the self-professed Hollywood Christians. Get out of California, Steinweis. Go home. I don’t need your money. I don’t need your trouble.

  The short letter that went to Steinweis early in February said in part:

  I have considered your offer. I can’t at this time see my way clear…

  One gray afternoon in the February of what seemed an endless winter, Mack quit work at two-thirty and went for a drive alone. The Packard bumped down the foothill drive, which the rains had rutted badly. At the bottom, turning into the main road to Riverside, he heard a loud report.

  Backfire, he thought. But he’d felt the left side of the auto vibrate. He parked and got out to study the Packard’s yellow paint. What he saw made the hair on the back of his neck crawl. Round and black, a hole was punched through the passenger door.

  Scanning the groves across the road, he saw some men at work, but they were too far away to be clearly visible. He also heard a horseman somewhere but couldn’t see him.

  He stuck his finger in the hole, all the way through to the inside of the auto. Then he spied something gray and flat on the floor rug: the spent bullet.

  He thought of the Committee of Conscientious Citizens from Hollywood. “My God, surely not.”

  “But what other explanation is there?” he said to Hellburner Johnson at supper that evening. Johnson had stepped off the 5 P.M. local. He had a week’s vacation from Essanay while Anderson rushed to Chicago to confer with Spoor about broadening distribution of the stupendously successful Broncho Billy pictures. In the next, Johnson was to be promoted to town marshal, a major character part.

  “Dunno, Mack,” Johnson said. “You’ve made a passel of enemies in your time. Could be any one of ’em. Does it make a hell of a lot of difference who’s on the givin’ end, so long as you don’t get caught receivin’?”

  Mack retrieved his .45 Shopkeeper’s Colt from its peg in the office closet. He oiled it and wore it wherever he went now, with spare ammunition weighing down a coat pocket. Sometimes the chopped-off Peacemaker reassured him. Other times, he was more realistic. Lot of good a holstered revolver would do if some crazy Californian wanted to blow him down from ambush.

  Carla saw him quite suddenly, his face bright as a coin, lit by winter sunshine. He was up on a ladder, spraying some chemical on a Valencia orange tree.

  “Pull over, park here,” she said, tapping the chauffeur. He steered the touring sedan to the shoulder. “Not so far,” she exclaimed as the bonnet nosed up beside a tall billboard that trumpeted REDLANDS CITRUS COOPERATIVE. The chauffeur braked, the rear end of the auto stopping clear of the board.

  Carla had badgered her husband until he’d revealed where he had seen the boy. He would say no more than “Pasadena,” so she resorted to using her own money to hire a private inquiry bureau. “Don’t bother me with a lot of details, just come back to me when you know where he is.”

  It took them seven weeks, starting at the Pasadena Police Department. Her son had been a witness to some crime, and though the perpetrator had disappeared, the boy had been required to leave a forwarding address, in case the man was caught and indicted. The address was no longer good when the detectives got there, but the landlord said he’d put Jim and his companion or guardian in touch with a relative, a grower in Redlands who always needed good workers. Her son was working in the groves and living with the older man in a shanty in the country outside Redlands. He was apparently making no effort to conceal his whereabouts. Well, why should he?

  Weak yellow sunshine bathed the car and reflected from its windows. The chauffeur lit a cigarette. Carla cranked her window down a few inches.

  Several of the workers had noticed the long dark car and were staring, but Jim had given it a glance and gone back to work. Even so, Carla drew back into the shadow of the tonneau—as if anyone could see her, heavily veiled as she was. The veil was golden silk, thin as a membrane of some shining insect. It hid the unbidden tears on her cheeks.

  What a handsome boy he was. Darkened by weather, slim, and strong-looking in his denim pants and old shirt. Flesh of her flesh. The sight of him made her feel soft and full of a diffuse love. She wanted to know that he was all right. She wanted to know that he could care for himself. He certainly looked capable of it—tall, hardy, and capable. A young man…

  “Mrs. Fairbanks?” said the chauffeur, finishing his cigarette.

  “Not yet. In a moment.”

  “Water,” Jocker said as he pulled the hand cart through the grove. “Water here, my lads.” When the orchard workers surrounded his cart, he handed out dippers filled from two casks. The owner of this orchard was a decent man, took care of his help. That’s why Jim insisted they stay on.

  The winter afternoon had a muted pastel quality. Spears of misty sunshine thrust between the trees and the earth and the air smelled sweet and damp. A speeding train whistled in the distance, but the real world seemed remote. Jocker picked up the cart handles and trudged along to the end of the row. Jim was just coming down the ladder with his sprayer.

  “Hello, Jocker,” Jim said. “Hand me some water, will you? It’s stinking work spraying this stuff.”

  Jocker couldn’t work on the trees because of his arthritis, but he could do odd jobs like pulling the water cart. Together, he and Jim made enough to live decently, and drifted through the days with no ambition but to get their food and sleep and an occasional growler of beer. That was fine with Jim after the ordeal with Brother Paul at the tabernacle.

  Jocker passed out dippers to three other men, then filled one for Jim. Jocker wore a regular jeans coat and pants now—no more peculiar tramp costumes. A Redlands barber cut his hair once a month for 10 cents; Jim insisted. As he handed the boy the dipper he spied an auto partly hidden by the co-op’s billboard at the edge of the grove.

  “Did you see that car?” Jocker said. Jim nodded. “Someone inside is lamping us pretty hard.”

  Jim turned and saw a woman in a huge hat and golden veil. She saw him look and drew back from the window.

  “Just some tourist,” he said with a shrug.

  The auto started its engine and pulled away in a cloud of exhaust.

  Carla clasped her hands tightly in her lap. She was thankful for the veil; the chauffeur wouldn’t see her tears. She struggled to keep them silent.

  What a handsome lad, her son. He favored her, resembled her unmistakably. She hoped he didn’t resemble her emotionally or psychologically; that would ruin him.

  For a moment back there, she’d wanted to step out, run to him, and clasp him to her. “Hello, Jim—I’m your mother.”

  Ridiculous. She knew what she was. Why spoil his life?

  The auto bumped on down the country road toward Redlands.

  In the last week of February, Margaret motored from the City to the Monterey peninsula, a five-shot pistol under her seat in case of trouble. No one molested her, though she had to change a tire and later stop overnight. In Carmel, she asked directions to Nellie’s cottage by the sea.

  She found Nellie in disarray, the sleeves of her shirtwaist blouse rolled up, the tie collar undone, the bosom smudged all over with lead pencil. Margaret was beautifully and expensively dressed. She gave Nellie her hand in a mauve glove.

  “I do hope you’ll forgive the unannounced call. You’ve no telephone here, so I couldn’t contact you in advance.”

  For a moment, opening the door, Nellie had looked annoyed. But it had passed now, and she was gracious. “Come in, please, Miss
Leslie. I know your face. I saw your last picture, Broncho Billy and the Orphan. You were very good.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind of you.”

  “The films are enormously popular—”

  “America loves Billy.”

  The cottage smelled of fresh coffee. Nellie showed Margaret a sunlit writing table and many discarded sheets of foolscap. “I’ve been drafting an article for William R. Hearst. I don’t do many of them anymore, but he’ll take any that I finish. His editors send me pleading letters regularly. They’d like me to cover news stories again. I do that only once in a great while.”

  “You certainly don’t need to—you’re a very famous and successful writer. I admired Huntworthy’s Millions more than I can say.”

  “Thank you.” Nellie cleared some pillows from a sofa. “Would you care to sit down?” The initial pleasantries were running to their end and Nellie’s dark eyes fixed on her visitor curiously.

  “Might we walk down to the beach?” Margaret said then. “I hear it’s lovely. I’ve never been fortunate enough to visit in Carmel before.”

  “Then this is a special occasion.” Nellie reached for a shawl. “But I’m really not sure why you’re paying this call, Miss Leslie.”

  “To speak to you about a man who matters to both of us. Mack Chance.”

  They crossed the dune to the same shore Mack and Nellie had walked before. This afternoon the vista was considerably more beautiful: Long white combers rolled in, and the ocean, dark as navy cloth, sparkled in the sunshine. The cloudless air made for superb visibility. The horizon seemed to be a hundred miles away.

  After they talked a while, Nellie sat down on a driftwood log. She planted her chin in the palms of her hands and stared out to sea, the salty wind tossing her straight dark hair. Today she was the hoyden, while Margaret—swan-necked Margaret with her smart clothes and aristocratic features—might have come from a society luncheon at the St. Francis. Margaret had a courtly air; it befitted a member of America’s new, slightly scandalous, but vastly admired moving-picture royalty.

  “It’s all very well to say these things, Miss Leslie—how I ought to think differently about Mack because he’s changed—”

  “But he has, in certain important ways. Let me repeat what I said as we walked down here. Mack encouraged me in my career with Essanay. He never once discouraged me because I was female.”

  Nellie made a cynical little moue. “Apparently he has different rules for different people.”

  “Well, I’m sure there are special ones for you. You’re the only one he truly cares for, other than his son, who’s gone.”

  “Why are you doing this? Crusading for him?”

  “Because I love him.”

  “You—”

  “Love him. Probably as much as you do.”

  “See here, I’m not absolutely sure that I—”

  She stopped, an elbow on her knee, the back of her wrist to her forehead. “Hell. That’s a lie. Of course I do.”

  Margaret smiled, then said in a gentle and sympathetic way, “You’ve also cleared up one terrible, ridiculous misunderstanding.”

  “Mack never asked me about my visitor from Northern California. I never even saw him that night. He just went off with his assumptions and sulked.”

  “He’s an impulsive man. He can be frightfully wrong-headed. Does that mean you should reject him forever? If you do, you’re not the intelligent woman whose mind shines through in her books.”

  “You’re certainly forthright.” Nellie pressed her lips together. “Sorry. I am too. When forthrightness is applied to oneself, it can sting badly.”

  “To be sure,” Margaret agreed. She found Nellie both too defensive and too uncertain, and she decided a jolt was needed.

  “I must be leaving soon. Please understand one more thing before I go. I’m no altruist. I’d take Mack Chance away from you in a trice if I had the slightest hope of doing so. I don’t. He doesn’t return my affection. I’ve accepted that. I have my own life and I intend to get on. Mack feels strongly about you. Two people who care for each other shouldn’t be kept apart by trivialities.”

  “That sounds perfectly reasonable. But I’ll tell you, it isn’t easy for me to admit past mistakes.”

  “He said the same thing.”

  “There you are.” Nellie made a helpless little gesture. “Impasse.”

  “If you choose.”

  “If I choose?”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s 1911, Miss Ross. A lot of time has passed since you and Mack first met. He’s a wonderful brave man in spite of his shortcomings, which I don’t minimize for one moment. However, no man like Mack will spend the rest of his life alone. Eventually he’ll find another woman. More likely, she’ll find him. She’ll be enthusiastic about his virtues, and quite willing to forgive his worst faults. And he’ll respond. One of these days, when he’s tired of being alone, he’ll respond to that woman. If she’s someone other than you, it would be a tragedy.”

  “What can I do?” Nellie exclaimed. “I’m what I am.”

  “I grew up poor, Miss Ross. But we had a neighbor, a farmer, who was prosperous. He planted many willow trees on his property. I loved them. I noticed that even if there was a fierce storm, they survived. They bent, but didn’t break. And after the storm they kept their same beauty, their same shape—their same character.”

  Nellie stared at her. Margaret smiled again. She held out her mauve glove and Nellie grasped it, looking a bit dazed.

  “Thank you for your courtesy, Miss Ross. I hope I’ve not offended you with my candor.”

  “No,” Nellie said, though there was a strange, distracted light in her eyes. She gazed at the ocean, the combers, the wheeling gulls. “No,” she said again, sounding unsure.

  Margaret went over the dune and left her.

  Nellie sat a long time, her head in her hands. It was a defeated posture, not characteristic of her. But the visitor had shattered her defenses with her unexpected candor.

  She’s right, Nellie thought. I’ve done so many things wrong. My ambition was proper, his wasn’t. I have a lot to make up for…

  To Mack in Riverside, Margaret wrote:

  Her “lover” is her favorite cousin, Tomás—the one she accompanied to Yosemite Valley when she was small. She said she told you about him years ago. You’re an idiot, Chance. I forgive you because idiocy is inevitable—you’re a man.

  Love,

  M.

  82

  THEY ATE THEIR LUNCH at an Armenian restaurant. The proprietor was friendly to the movement, so no one caused them trouble.

  There was little conversation. The Fresno campaign had begun with enthusiasm in August, but since then enthusiasm had waned. The campaign had gotten rough, and the number of men willing to risk themselves was shrinking. Today they were down to three.

  Now they left the restaurant silently, Marquez carrying the soapbox, Frank Little, the tough bantam-sized leader of Local 66, the flag. Gopal Mukerji trailed along with copies of The Industrial Worker for distribution to listeners—if they managed to collect any listeners on this weekday in late February…

  Mukerji was a slight, sinewy brown man, twenty-two years old. His eyes were small and bright, his face dark and finely featured. He came from a village near Jullundur, in the Punjab, and had crossed the Canadian border and worked his way down to California when he was nineteen. He read English passably, and had a large fund of off-color stories that he was fond of relating, in Hindi, to other workers from his part of the world.

  They set up on the usual corner, Mariposa and I streets. Marquez placed the soapbox. He lived up to the name Wobbly; a fever was consuming him. After three days in solitary and a night of the water cure in the Fresno jail, he’d taken sick. It was the third time he’d been locked up since the campaign started.

  Frank Little unfurled the red flag, then slipped the staff into a hole in a corner of the box. His good eye raked the streets; the other eye was milky and useless. As he se
ated the staff, the side of his coat lifted to reveal the walnut butt of a revolver stuffed in his pants. Many of the Wobblies practiced what they called passive resistance; Frank Little thought it not only cowardly but stupid.

  Gopal Mukerji placed himself next to the box, an engaging smile on his face. He wore secondhand pants, a much-washed blue cotton shirt, and a spotless white turban—his treasure. A well-dressed gentleman in a bowler paused to spit a cigar cutting at his feet, and Mukerji smiled and offered a copy of his paper. The gentleman hit it with his walking stick and strode away, muttering about anarchy. Mukerji kept on smiling.

  A trolley passed, bell ringing. I and Mariposa was a busy downtown intersection in the city of twenty-five thousand. There were buildings of Victorian gingerbread on the corners, trolley tracks, trolley wires, and modern autos along with farm wagons, pedestrians, and horsemen. The Wobblies were by now a familiar sight in town; what little attention they generated was mostly silent, mostly hostile.

  Marquez put a foot on the soapbox. The toe of his shoe was split, showing a dirty sock. His stained and wrinkled black suit resembled a priest’s, but his shirt was red silk. Mukerji found Marquez’s seediness quite distasteful. Like most Hindustanis, he bathed every day if it was possible, and considered personal hygiene almost as important as one’s religion.

  “Sure you’re up to this, Diego?” Frank Little asked. His good eye shifted here and there, searching out potential danger.

  “Certainly. If not me, who else?” Marquez said. Above his long beard his cheeks glistened as if they were greased.

  Sometimes Marquez felt a vast futility about this campaign. A lot of comrades had come to Fresno in the fall, riding the rods from Denver, Salt Lake, Chicago. But a lot of them were gone now, scared out by the billy clubs of Chief Shaw’s police, the midnight torchings of Wobbly tents out at the western city limits, the screaming editorials in the Morning Republican and the Sacramento Bee, the vagrancy arrests, the militant patriotic wrath of sentencing judges, the brutal jail with its bread-and-water diet and its water cure. A lot of the comrades had worked off their sentences with leaf rakes in Courthouse Park, then fled. Others had pleaded guilty and been paroled on condition that they leave town.