“Linda,” cried Lupita. “Mamá, get her, get her, please!”
Rosa hesitated only a moment before she turned and went in pursuit, but the floodwaters carried off the doll faster than she could stride through the waist-deep water. She knew she would never close the ever-widening gap, nor could she seize the doll without first letting go of the basket. Behind her, Lars shouted for her to come back, and Lupita pleaded for her to go on, and the downpour blinded her and the roaring of the falls filled her ears. Numb from the cold, her teeth chattering, Rosa turned and pushed on through the water to the trail where Ana and Marta waited, where Lars was wading out of the shallows and staggering onto the muddy shore. As soon as he had carried Miguel and Lupita out of the flooded creek, Lupita wriggled free of his grasp and dashed to the water’s edge, tears indistinguishable from rainwater on her cheeks, her sobs drowned out by the tumult of the surging water.
Lars handed Miguel to Marta and hurried back into the creek to help Rosa to safety. “I’m sorry, mija,” Rosa gasped as she struggled free of the water. She set down the basket heavily beneath the rocky ledge where the lantern cast a thin circle of light around the shivering children. Ana flung her arms around her, but Lupita remained at the water’s edge, weeping and gazing off after her lost doll.
“We can’t linger.” Lars squeezed Rosa’s shoulder, strode over to Lupita, and scooped her up. He set her down beside her sisters and hefted the tarpaulin sack over his shoulder. “You can stop crying, little miss,” he told her shortly. “Your mother is fine, and so are your sisters and brother, and so are you.” He took Miguel from Marta. “Can you carry the valises?”
Marta nodded and seized their handles. Lars took the lantern from the ledge, and then they were on their way again, crossing beneath the cover of the scrub oaks to the foot of the trail leading up the canyon wall to the mesa. The climb was more slippery and treacherous than the descent had been, and to Rosa it seemed that hours passed before they reached the top, but at last they did, and the clamor of the falls and the swollen, rushing creek faded to a low murmur behind them. The horses whinnied in recognition as they approached, but Lars led their small party to his car parked just beyond the wagon. As Rosa loaded the children and their belongings inside, Lars strode off to check on the horses. He soon returned and assured the children that the horses were fine and that a little more rain wouldn’t hurt them, since they were on high, level ground and there hadn’t been a single rumble of thunder in the dark skies since the storm began. Ana and Marta seemed to take heart, but Lupita, sitting between them in the back, hugging her knees to her chest and sniffling, was inconsolable without her doll.
Lars took the wheel, and soon they were bouncing and jolting across the mesa. When they reached the road, Lars turned east, away from the Barclay farm. “I thought we’d take the Old Butterfield Road into Camarillo,” he said.
“In this weather? At night?”
Lars shrugged. He knew the dangers, but it couldn’t be helped. “We’re less likely to run into anyone we know.”
“If John’s been arrested, why do we need to hide?”
“We don’t know when he’ll be released.” Lars kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead, barely visible a mere two feet beyond the headlamps. “It’d be best if there’s no one to tell him which direction they saw us go.”
Rosa knew he was right, so she sank back into her seat, cradling Miguel and stroking his head until he drifted off to sleep. Before long, silence from the backseat told her that her exhausted daughters had fallen asleep too, but she was too nervous to speak while the car creaked up the narrow, winding road to the summit. Once they cleared the pass, she breathed a sigh of relief as the car rumbled down the road into the Camarillo Valley. As long as the brakes held, they were sure to make it the rest of the way to Oxnard safely.
She glanced over her shoulder to be sure the girls were still asleep, and then she turned to Lars. “Tell me what happened.”
Lars hesitated, rubbing the stubble of golden beard on his chin. “Like I said, I was hauling a load of apricots to the packinghouse in Camarillo when John came after me. I didn’t get home until hours after it was all over.”
“After what was all over?”
His reluctance to tell her was evident in his pauses, and in the glance he gave her as they descended into the foothills. “My brother told me John showed up at the house, waving a pistol and demanding that they send me out.”
“Didn’t they explain that you weren’t there?”
“I don’t figure John was much up for a rational discussion of the facts, but Oscar shouted that I wasn’t there and that he’d better shove off because Mother had called the police. Evidently John didn’t believe him, because he shot out the window Oscar had been standing at only seconds before.”
Rosa gasped. “Was he hurt?”
“No, he’s fine. On account of the rain, everyone was inside—the family, the hired hands—so they decided to wait it out until the police arrived. Then what do they see but Elizabeth driving up to the house in my car.”
“Oh, no.”
“She’s okay too,” Lars quickly went on. “John fired at her, but she threw the car into reverse and sped off back the way she came until she was out of range. Then she turned the car to block the road, to cut off his escape.”
“Did John go after her?”
“No, but he threatened to. For a while he paced in front of the house in the rain, shouting that they needed to send me out or he’d go after Elizabeth. As you can imagine, Henry wasn’t about to let anyone harm his wife—” His voice broke off and he shot Rosa a quick, sidelong look, and Rosa felt herself diminished in comparison, a wife that a husband did not value enough to protect. Lars cleared his throat and fumbled for her hand, which he squeezed and held on the seat between them. “So. So Henry and Oscar and one of the hired hands—Marco, maybe you remember him—they slipped out the kitchen door. Oscar and Marco went around one side of the house, while Henry went around the other and snuck across the yard to my car.”
Rosa took comfort in the warmth of his rough, callused hand around hers. It seemed a lifetime ago since they had last held hands in the shade of the apricot orchard, blissful in each other’s company, the sun warm upon their shoulders, the air fragrant with spring blossoms. “And then?”
“And then Henry told Elizabeth to get out, or he pushed her out, or something, and while she took cover in a ditch, he drove the car straight at John.”
Rosa knew John, and she knew he wouldn’t have jumped out of the way. “John fired at him.”
Lars nodded. “The bullet shattered the windshield. When he took aim again, Henry tried to swerve out of the way, but the car struck a rock and flipped on its side. Henry managed to climb out, but John had that pistol fixed on him and was coming closer, so Henry must have thought he had no choice but to charge him.” Lars drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “John shot again, and that time he hit him. Close range, right in the chest.”
“Dios mío.”
“When they heard the gunshot, Oscar and Marco came running. They tackled John and wrestled the gun away from him. The police showed up shortly after that. One squad car took John to prison, and the other took Henry to the hospital.”
“Do you know if he survived?”
Lars shook his head. “Elizabeth rode along with him, but last I heard, she hadn’t yet called with any news. From what Oscar told me, Henry was wounded very badly. It’ll be a miracle if he pulls through.”
“Oh, poor Henry,” said Rosa. “Poor Elizabeth. She has no one else in the Arboles Valley, no family, no money—what will she do?”
“She has work and a place to live,” Lars reminded her. “My family will look after her. Don’t worry. And don’t write off Henry just yet.”
Rosa nodded. For all their reserve, the Jorgensens were kindhearted people, more forgiving than her own family.
“By the time I got home, the police had taken everyone’s statements and had left,” Lars
said. “Oscar filled me in and helped me get the car upright, and I headed straight to your place.”
“By then I was already in the cave with the children.”
“I didn’t know that. I thought maybe he’d—” Lars cleared his throat and continued. “He never came after me like that before. I knew he must have finally figured out about the girls, or maybe you told him—”
“I swore I would never tell.”
“I know that. You made me swear too. I thought maybe he…forced the truth from you.” Lars flexed his hands around the steering wheel. “Rosa, I thought he’d killed you. I raced over there fearing I’d find you dead on the floor of the adobe, the children around you, sobbing—”
“Don’t talk like that.” Rosa glanced at the backseat, where the girls slept on. “Obviously he didn’t kill me.”
“Not for lack of trying, by the look of it,” said Lars. “He’s lucky he’s safe behind bars, or I’d—”
“No, Lars. Don’t even say it.”
“I swear to God, Rosa, I’ll never understand why you continue to protect him after all—”
“He’s not the one I’m protecting,” she snapped. “If you hurt him, you would end up in jail. What good would that do you? What good would you be to me or the children then?”
From the corner of her eye she saw a muscle work in his jaw. Long ago, he had promised her that he would not harm John, and she knew he would keep that promise and all others she asked of him from that day forward as atonement for the one promise he had broken, the one that had compelled her to marry John instead of him.
They drove along in silence across the valley, past rain-soaked fields of strawberries and alfalfa, past the large Queen Anne homes of prosperous farmers and small adobes like the one Rosa had left behind.
When Lars spoke again, the anger and frustration had left his voice. “You need to see a doctor.”
The pain in Rosa’s side had subsided to a dull ache, but the cuts and bruises on her face throbbed. All she wanted to do was find a safe, soft bed somewhere and sink into a dreamless sleep. “Ana and Miguel need to see a doctor more than I do.”
“There’s no reason why all three of you can’t see a doctor. We’ll go straight to the hospital.”
“Not tonight, please,” Rosa begged. “I can’t face doctors and questions tonight.”
Lars looked as if he might argue, but he glanced at her face and nodded reluctantly. “First thing tomorrow morning, then. I’ll ask around and find someone who’s good with children.” He paused for a moment, lost in thought, and absently patted his coat above his heart. Rosa heard the faint rustle of paper within the inside pocket. “I collected a payment for Oscar at the packinghouse, but in all the excitement I forgot to give it to him. I guess what I’m saying is that I have money for the best doctors we can find. I know Oscar wouldn’t mind.”
“I have money too,” said Rosa, suddenly remembering the valises. “Oh, Lars, John is mixed up in something very dangerous. I don’t know what exactly, or how long it’s been going on, but he’s been hiding guns and liquor and cash in the hayloft.”
Lars shot her a curious look. “Cash and guns too?”
“Yes, four crates of tommy guns and three valises full of money. We—I took two of them.”
“Why didn’t you take all three? And why not a few of the guns for good measure? They might be handy in a tough spot.”
It took her a moment to realize he was teasing her. “Lars Jorgensen, this is no joking matter. John’s breaking the law.” Suddenly something Lars said gave her pause. “You said ‘cash and guns too.’ You knew about the liquor? And you didn’t warn me?”
“I suspected, but I figured you knew more about what was going on than I did.”
“I didn’t know anything about this until a few minutes before we fled for the mesa. Lupita saw John stashing the valises, and she showed me where they were.” She studied Lars, bewildered. “What did you see that I overlooked? What made you suspicious?”
“Do you remember that day in June when Elizabeth and I came by to pick up the mail, and John and I got into it?”
“Of course I do,” said Rosa, although she wouldn’t have described the incident that way, since all the rage had come from John’s side. John had been off on one of his mysterious errands when Lars and Elizabeth arrived, and while Marta and Ana led Lars off to play, Elizabeth came into the house to post a few letters to her folks back home in Pennsylvania and stayed to chat.
Then, suddenly, they had heard angry shouts from outside. John had returned and had flown into a rage when he discovered Lars playing with Marta and Lupita in the shade of the orange trees. John had seized the girls by the arms and was dragging them away from Lars, his face red with fury. “I told you to stay away from my family!”
Lars tried to calm him down, and when Rosa intervened, John knocked her to the ground. As Lars helped her to her feet, John shoved the girls into the house and returned a moment later clutching something in his right hand. Rosa heard Elizabeth cry out in alarm as he flung the object at Lars’s chest. Instinctively, Lars caught it. Clear liquid sloshed inside the glass bottle.
“I remember what you are even if she doesn’t,” John had snarled. “Crawl back inside your bottle and leave us alone.”
How Rosa had despised John at that moment, for frightening Marta and Lupita and bruising their arms as he dragged them away from Lars, for mocking Lars and the misfortunes of his past when he had struggled so hard to overcome them, for giving Lars the poison he could have used to destroy himself again. She had hoped that Lars would leave the bottle in the dirt before he drove away, but when she went out later to check, it was nowhere to be found. She assumed that he had taken it with him, awaiting the moment when he could slip off to some secluded corner of the Jorgensen ranch and drink it dry, but the next time she saw him, he had been as clear-eyed and levelheaded as ever, and had evidently not started back down the path that had once taken him away from her. She was so relieved that he had not fallen into his old ways that she never spared a thought for the bottle itself, and how John had come to have it. Liquor was not that difficult to come by, despite Prohibition, for a man who wanted a drink badly enough.
“That was a fairly pricey import, not some bathtub gin,” said Lars. “Then, when I considered that flashy Chrysler John’s been tearing around in, I put two and two together and it added up to trouble.”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
He kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “What would you have done?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t leave him when he beat you. You wouldn’t leave him when we had another child together. I didn’t think you’d leave him over a few tenuous links to organized crime.”
The implicit criticism stung. “You know why I couldn’t leave.”
“I know why you said you couldn’t leave.” When she made no reply, his voice lost its sharp edge. “Anyway, I didn’t have much proof, just a bottle and my suspicions. So I turned the liquor over to the feds.”
“You didn’t drink it?”
She regretted her words the moment they left her lips. “No, Rosa,” he replied evenly. “I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been much good as evidence if I had.”
“Does John know that you reported him?”
“I don’t believe he does, but it might not matter now anyway. When I went looking for you at your place, county deputies were already there, searching the entire farm for clues. By now they’ve surely found John’s stash in the hayloft. He could be brought up on charges of racketeering as well as murder.”
“Attempted murder,” Rosa corrected him. She had to believe that Henry might somehow pull through.
“For his sake and Elizabeth’s, I hope you’re right.” Lars fell silent for a moment. “I’m sure you know that I didn’t report John to the Prohibition agents out of any deep and abiding admiration for the law. I did it hoping they would seize John and lock him up somewhere far away from you and t
he children. I understand that you don’t want me for a husband, but for the love of God, Rosa, you shouldn’t be with him.”
Rosa stroked Miguel’s soft, curly hair as he slept in her arms. “I know.”
But she had wanted Lars for a husband. If he had been then the man he was now—sober, diligent, steadier—she would have married him despite her parents’ objections.
They drove in silence the rest of the way to Oxnard. It was nearly midnight when Lars finally parked the car near the corner of Fifth and A Streets. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, and hurried off. In the backseat, the girls stirred sleepily, awakened by the sudden stillness. The storefronts closest to the car were dark, but light spilled from the windows of a few restaurants scattered down the street, and whenever a door opened, bursts of laughter and music punctuated the night as couples or groups of young men spilled out onto the sidewalk, holding umbrellas high if they had them, pulling up the collars of their coats if they did not. The men were loud and grinning and flushed, young and old and in between; the women were young, with short skirts and bobbed hair and high, teasing voices that rose into laughter or shrieks of dismay if they unwittingly stepped in a puddle. Rosa slouched in her seat and combed her long dark hair in front of her cheeks with her fingers, concealing her injuries, praying that the few passersby would be too absorbed in their gaiety to notice her. The sight of a woman with a bruised and battered face sitting in a car full of children downtown on a rainy Saturday night would surely linger in their memories should anyone come around asking questions later.
Exhausted, she closed her eyes and waited for Lars, but apprehension and dread kept her on edge. She had come to realize that John was not the only man who might be looking for her. The deputies who had searched the farm after John’s arrest—surely they would have questions for the gunman’s wife. They might assume she was John’s accomplice and arrest her too. How could she prove she had not known her husband had become involved with bootleggers? Who would believe her? And what if the money she had taken was not John’s payment for services rendered, but part of the cache itself? What if she had stolen from the mob? Gangsters wouldn’t care that the police would have confiscated the valises anyway if she had not taken them. They wouldn’t care that she had meant to take John’s money, not theirs. If they tracked her down, they would punish her all the same.
Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Page 5