South California Purples

by Baron R. Birtcher

  Jesse came out from our bedroom while I filled a glass with tap water in the kitchen. She was wrapped in a soft cotton bathrobe and wore a pair of fleece-lined moccasins, and squinted at me in the meager light that glowed from the fixture above the sink, marks from the pillow imprinted on her face.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been rode pretty hard.”

  “I’m fine, Jess,” I said. “Go on back to bed. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

  She eyed me, and even half-asleep she knew me to my core.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I’m just going out to chain the gate. I’ll be right back.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I had no desire to have this discussion at this hour of the night, but it appeared that the horse was now out of the barn.

  “And I want you to keep the house locked up from now on,” I added. “Especially when I’m not here.”

  We hadn’t locked the doors or closed the road gate in over twenty years.

  “You’d better talk to me, Ty.”

  “It’s a precaution is all. This undersheriff stuff is grating on my nerves.”

  She cocked her head and crossed her arms, and I knew I wasn’t going to bed anytime soon.

  “Is there any chance at all that we could have this conversation tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said and sat down on the sofa. “Not even a tiny one.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I WALKED DOWN the steps of the gallery and headed for the bunkhouse where I had asked Caleb to gather the hands. Dry gravel crushed beneath my boot soles and shafts of sunlight broke through pinholes in the cloud cover and speared the valley floor.

  The wellspring of rage that had been tapped the night before did not diminish with the arrival of a new day. I had not held any prior animosity at having been pressed into service by Lloyd Skadden, despite the fact that it had not been of my choosing. But it had already cost the life of Dub Naylor, not mine, someone who had not been privy to my own decision process. I would not abide the construction of victims, so the game was about to change.

  It was quiet inside when I pushed through the door, no sign of the usual roughhouse I associate with hired cowboys during Spring Works. Their bunks had all been straightened, tack and gear hung on hooks, and the atmosphere was one of sober gravity. The room was thick with equine odors and those of men living in close quarters, and the snap of orange flames in the woodstove the only sound.

  Caleb Wheeler nodded a wordless greeting to me and they stood as one when I took my place at the front of the room, in a fashion reminiscent of my military service. When I suggested that they all could be seated, not a single man did so.

  “This won’t take long,” I said.

  I removed my hat, held it by the brim, and looked each man in the eye, one by one.

  “We all mourn the death of Dub Naylor,” I began. “And I regret that I don’t know any more about the nature of his murder than I did when Samuel and I first found him. I can’t tell you why someone shot him, but I can say with a fair degree of certainty that it had nothing to do with anything he did.”

  My mouth went dry and I felt the edges of my anger creep in on me again.

  “The responsibility is mine. I owe him—and each of you—an apology for that. You’ve all heard by now that I’ve been appointed as acting undersheriff for the south end of this county. I did not ask for that job, nor do I want it. But I’ve got it anyway.

  “Things have gone to hell in the past few days, and no matter what you think about wild mustangs, or the BLM, or the kids camped out in protest down at the Pireu place, this whole damned town is at risk of . . . I don’t know what.

  “I thought it would all blow over,” I sighed out loud. “But I was obviously wrong about that.”

  The woodstove popped an ember out through the open door, and sounded like a rifle shot. It smoked and glowed on the floorboards for a moment before one of the hands crushed it out under his boot heel.

  “I need two volunteers,” I continued. “Two men who know how to use a firearm, and who know how dangerous this situation might become. I need somebody who can watch my back the way that I’ll watch yours.”

  Jordan Powell began to raise a hand.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I need you all to hear me out. I know that most of you don’t even live here, but I can tell you that from what I can see, it can spread to your town just as easily.

  “A young woman has gone missing. One of our cowboys has been murdered. And someone tried to punch my ticket with a sawed-off shotgun while I sat at a table in the Cottonwood Blossom last night.

  “You don’t have to answer me now. In fact, I don’t want you to. Think hard on it, and if it’s something you think you’d be suited for, come see me tomorrow. That’s all I’ve got.”

  I made a move to turn away, but remembered something else.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Anybody who wants to join me and my family for services in town is welcome to come along with us.”

  I STOPPED off at the barn for a few quiet minutes with Drambuie. I could hear him shuffle and pace inside the confines of his stall when he heard me come in.

  I unclipped the stall guard and he poked his big head over the top of the door, where it bobbed up and down like a dashboard toy. I chipped slices of apple with a bone-handled knife, and he nuzzled my chest when I stepped forward to feed him. He studied me with clear, shiny eyes that were the color of chatoyant quartz as he chewed.

  I mucked out his stall and rolled in a wheelbarrow load of fresh sawdust, then raked it out evenly over the mat. I scratched his muzzle and allowed him to search my empty pockets one last time before I left, slipping the gate latch behind me.

  I took the back way up to the house, past patches of wild crocus and daffodils that Jesse augmented with bulbs of iris that had only begun to display their first sprouts. I wondered at the absence of Wyatt, who usually accompanied me whenever I went down to the bunkhouse where the hands often spoiled him with food scraps and chunks of venison jerky. My question answered itself when I saw a familiar piss-yellow van parked in the driveway beside the rear door to the house.

  Jesse showed me a smile that was mostly sincere, but laced through with duplicity and a subtle warning for me to be nice. Cricket was seated at the kitchen table with Peter Davis, the young filmmaker, smoothing butter and slices of cheese and bologna onto bread they’d laid out in assembly-line fashion.

  “Hi, Dad,” Cricket said without explanation and without looking up from her work.

  “What’s all this?” I asked.

  “They’re making food for the kids at Teresa’s,” Jesse preempted. “Apparently, a lot of them don’t have anything to eat.”

  The television set was on in the living room, tuned to the news with the sound turned down too low to hear. When the broadcast cut to a Salvo commercial, Peter’s attention swung from the screen to my face.

  “Mr. Dawson,” he said.

  He appeared to have cleaned himself up since the last time I’d seen him. He wore a button-down shirt with a wide collar and printed with flowers, and looked like he’d even attempted to press it.

  “Where’s your friend?” I asked him.

  “Taking a shower.”

  Peter pointed a finger behind me.

  I turned to see Sly emerge from Cricket’s room, shirtless and barefoot, clad only in a pair of tight bell-bottomed trousers with vertical stripes. He was drying his mop of long curls with a bath towel and nodded a wordless acknowledgment of my presence as he twisted past me to open the refrigerator and examine its contents.

  I shot a glance at Jesse that said What the hell? to which she replied with a wink and a look of amusement.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, Peter, but what’s wrong with the shower at your place?”

  “We were staying at that motel down on Route 70, but the bikers kinda took over and asked us to leave.
”

  “They asked you to leave?”

  He popped a stray piece of cheese in his mouth and nodded as if this was an everyday occurrence.

  “They really didn’t have to ask,” he said. “It was pretty apparent we weren’t welcome.”

  “So you drove to my house.”

  Sly was helping himself to a glass of orange juice that he poured from a pitcher he had removed from the refrigerator.

  “Cricket said you’d be cool with it.”

  Before I could say anything that might embarrass her, Cricket changed the subject.

  “Peter and Sly said that things were starting to get sketchy down there. No water, no food, no bathrooms.”

  “I bet there’s a thousand people by now,” Peter added. “It’s radical.”

  Jesse handed me a steaming mug and leaned a hip on the counter beside me.

  “I told Cricket I’d speak with Pastor Dunn from the church to arrange a relief committee,” Jesse told me. “He’s already got half the congregation making sandwiches and taking contributions for bottles of water and fresh fruit.”

  “We’re delivering it there in the morning,” Cricket said.

  “Peterson Construction is donating chemical toilets,” Jesse put in.

  “Tomorrow is Easter,” I said.

  “When better,” Cricket said simply. “Are you going to pitch in here, or what?”

  Jesse handed me a roll of cellophane wrap that she drew from one of the brown paper sacks on the counter and I tried to make myself useful.

  I listened without comment while Peter and my daughter swapped stories of protests and politics, and came to understand that the mood at Teresa Pineu’s had grown decidedly more militant over the past day or so. Hundreds of new demonstrators had been drawn in by news coverage and were now planning a sit-in to block the BLM access road. I held my tongue while they congratulated themselves on their youthful resolve, and on getting the whole thing on film, and knew it was time for me to intercede with the local authorities at land management.

  “I don’t mean to rain on your campfire,” I said. “But you’re dealing with a federal agency. You are aware of that, right?”

  “Let ’em come,” Peter said.

  “You need to be careful with that line of thinking. When they do come, they’ll be carrying handcuffs and weapons.”

  “And jackboots and clubs,” Cricket said.

  I felt a blade of heat cross my face, and reminded myself to remain calm.

  “Let me explain how this works,” I said. “BLM doesn’t have an enforcement arm of its own, so they rely on local officials at first. Right now, that’s me.”

  “So?”

  “If they decide I’m not getting the job done to their satisfaction, they call in the staties, or more likely, the National Guard. You remember Kent State?”

  “Don’t lecture me,” she said. “Two days ago, I heard gunfire at Wounded Knee.”

  “I’m not taking their side, damn it,” I said. “The way the bureau’s handled the mustangs has been seriously screwed up. You’re not in the wrong about that. But I know how this situation plays out if you push them too far. You’ve got to resolve this through channels. I swear to God, Cricket, I don’t want to see you get hurt. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt over this.”

  She shook her head in frustration and pushed away from the table.

  “Let’s box this stuff up,” she said to Peter.

  I heard a knock at the front door, rinsed my hands in the sink, and dried them on a dish towel before I went to answer it. I could feel my daughter bore holes in my back with her stare.

  Jordan Powell and Samuel Griffin stood on the porch, eyes locked onto the floorboards and trying to give the appearance that they hadn’t heard the raised voices inside.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Samuel said.

  “What can I do for you boys?”

  “Captain,” Powell said. “Me and Griffin want to volunteer. I know you said to sleep on it, but I done all the thinking I need to.”

  “That goes for me too, Mr. Dawson.”

  I looked into their faces and measured the expressions they wore. They were two of my very best, and they’d both had military experience. I would have selected them myself had it not been beyond any appropriate expectation, and I was humbled to a point that choked me for words.

  “I appreciate that more than you know,” I said.

  Powell nodded and moved toward the stairway, but Griffin stayed put, twisting the brim of the hat in his hand and studied on thoughts I could see roiling behind his eyes.

  I didn’t trust myself to speak any further, so turned to go back in the house.

  I was stopped in my tracks by a firm grip on my shoulder. “There’s something you need to know, Mr. Dawson,” Samuel said. The tone of his voice was low, confidential, but his firmness of purpose was fixed in his eyes.

  “Nobody’s expecting miracles from you, sir,” he whispered. “You don’t have nail wounds in your hands.”

  I STRODE to the office to place the phone call to Melissa Vernon at the BLM office in Salem. They put my call through right away.

  “I know this is a Saturday . . .”

  “Is that a dig of some kind, Mr. Dawson?” she said. “A statement on the efficacy of the federal government?”

  “I am unfamiliar with the working hours of the bureau.”

  “We’re running out of patience with Teresa Pineu.”

  “Is that an ultimatum of some kind, Ms. Vernon?”

  The clack of typewriters and a flurry of voices filled the empty space on her end of the connection.

  “You may infer whatever you like.”

  “We need to talk, Ms. Vernon,” I said.

  “You can make an app—”

  “That won’t work for me. We need to talk now.”

  PART THREE:

  TROUBLE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EASTER MORNING BROKE boldly, a bank of cumulus stacked up along the back range, illuminated from within as though painted with the muscular brush strokes of the masters.

  Peter Davis had not overestimated the size of the crowd that had assembled on Teresa Pineu’s property, nor the aura of militancy and the portent of violence it had come to exude. They had constructed a makeshift dais from wood pallets and upturned produce crates, where an unidentified woman now stood speaking into an amplified megaphone. I could not hear the words at this distance, but the cadence and tone put me in mind of a tin pot dictator.

  I had parked at a far corner of a neighboring property whose fields were clotted with uprooted stones and clumps of dry weeds. Jordan Powell pulled his truck in beside mine, and both he and Samuel Griffin got out as I stood waiting with one hand resting on my hood. Teresa Pineu had seen us arrive and was crossing the open ground at a jog.

  “I’m happy to see you,” she said. Her breathing was labored from the distance she’d run; loose skin around her eyes was puffed and dry from lack of sleep. It was not the reception I had expected.

  I introduced her to Jordan and Sam, whom she acknowledged with the briefest of nods before returning her attention to me. A white pinfeather was lodged in the dark curls of her hair and fluttered in a ripple of wind.

  “You’ve got something stuck here,” I said and plucked it out for her.

  “I was feeding the chickens when I saw you drive up.”

  “Looks like you got what you wanted,” I said as my eyes roved over the spreading sea of supporters and the encampment they’d created.

  “I don’t know where they all came from,” she said, and looked away from me toward the hills. “You warned me about this.”

  “You knew it was coming, Teresa.”

  “Not like this.”

  “Have the Charlatans been back?”

  “They ride through every day. I’m sure they’re selling dope, and they like the young girls.”

  “Have you seen this one?”

  In the office the night before, I’d made mimeographed
copies of the photo Emily Meeghan’s father had given me. I showed one to Teresa Pineu.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s hard to say.”

  The stannic bleat of the megaphone went silent, and the young woman stepped down from the stage and cast a glance in our direction. Her mane of unruly curls was like an aura, backlit by the sun. She was replaced a few seconds later by a rangy kid in dungarees and a chambray shirt with sleeves rolled up beyond his elbows, looking like he had just been furloughed out from Parchman Farm. He took a seat on an upturned apple crate and started strumming Woody Guthrie songs on a guitar.

  Griffin and Powell wore serious expressions that betrayed their bewilderment and discomfiture with respect to both the size and semblance of the gathering. The mood now hovered somewhere between a rock concert and antiwar rally. The earlier arrivals had embraced a more pacifistic and egalitarian inclination, while the newer ones seemed to possess a distinctly more agitated mind-set. My main concern was not with this group as it was, its magnitude notwithstanding, but the delicate chemistry that could easily ignite if indelicately prodded or intentionally primed by outside influences, whether deployed by the authorities or otherwise.

  “It’s beginning to sound like a Weather Underground meeting,” I said.

  “All I was trying to do was save the horses,” she said.

  “I spoke with land management yesterday.”

  “Melissa Vernon?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re embarrassing her,” I said. “And the bureau’s scared of what’s happening out here.”

  “And you’re supposed to make it all go away.”

  “May I speak bluntly?”

  “Please.”

  “If this lasts too much longer, they will bring people in from outside. Bureaucrats have a low threshold of tolerance for embarrassment.”

  “What are you saying to me?”

  “You’ve made your point clear to them, Teresa. It’s time to go speak with Ms. Vernon. I believe she will listen to you now. But if this situation makes one wrong turn, that window’s going to close down on you. And when it does, it’s going to close down on you hard.”