The Triggerman Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  As always, the sound of the Santa Anas shot him back to his childhood. Now he felt the same way that he felt at age five with the big winds hitting: awestruck, surrounded by a power much larger than his own, immersed in the pure velocity of change. They had always made him think of time, and made him realize how the present passes so quickly into the past, how the present is just a series of future moments marching backward to meet you. He had always loved the way the wind made you feel each of those moments going by. He had always loved the way he could just stand there in that wind and let it blow right past him, flattening the grasses, bending the trees, lifting silver-green spray off the faces of advancing waves. It was like seeing time itself. Seeing himself within time, John had always felt small. But he had felt integral, too. With the wind blowing around him he understood that he was a part of larger things, like the grass, the trees and the waves. He remembered, age ten, jumping off the roof of his uncle's house in a high Santa Ana with bed sheets spread behind his outstretched arms, wanting not so much to fly as to dissolve into the wind and let it take him with it. He was hoping it might carry him to his mother and father.

  John stood in the clearing, looking out at the buffeted landscape and feeling his slow reentry into the present. He thought about Rebecca. Here was another day, another moment he wished she could have shared. He listened for her voice in the wind but heard only the wind. He pictured her again on the asphalt in the March rain. Then the Santa Ana turned furious, bellowing up the trail toward him, howling against the oak tree, punishing its branches and hissing into the fence. There it is, he thought: The Fury. The reason I am here. He let it rage into him and he locked it inside, adding the wind's anger to his own. The dogs sat with their backs to the gusts, heads lowered, looking ashamed.

  A little after six a.m., he started back down the trail with his walking stick, empty coffee cup and camera.

  CHAPTER 20

  Vann Holt was down by the shore in front of his cabin when John got back. A white Range Rover sat next to John's pickup truck. He could see Holt watching him as he came around the edge of the lake, but he had no idea when Holt had first spotted him. The dogs frolicked along, lending an air of innocence to the day. The penlight felt heavy in his pocket and he wondered, who needs a penlight on a morning this bright? He slipped it into his right pant pocket when Holt wasn't looking. Boomer spotted Holt and charged ahead to greet him, barking histrionically and wagging his tail. John waved.

  "Hello Mr. Holt!"

  Holt lifted his head in acknowledgement but said nothing until John was closer.

  "Morning John. Fairly spectacular, isn't it?"

  "I love these winds."

  "Just like breeze off the ankles of God."

  "Who said that?"

  "I did."

  They shook hands.

  "Out for a morning walk?"

  "We headed up that trail on the other side there."

  "Watch for snakes this time of year. The hatchlings are out and about."

  "Saw a few cottontail is all."

  Holt studied him for a long moment. "Be a good idea for you to stay kind of out in the open. Lane's blood pressure rise: when he sees something in the bushes. Shoot quick and ask questions never. That's Lane."

  "Wouldn't want to give him a stroke." John flicked the last drop of coffee from his mug.

  "You don't want to get shot, either. Come on, let's take ; drive around the Ridge. I want you to see it."

  They took the Land Rover down the road, toward the bi] house, then veered off north and into a shallow valley. At the top of a rise, John could see the groves stretching before them, perfectly groomed acres of orange trees heavy with fruit. He could smell them, too, not the sweet flowers of late winter and spring but the oranges themselves, issuing a clean acidic fragrance into the air.

  They passed a row of cottages, all neatly kept. Holt waved to a stout redheaded woman who stood in a cottage driveway having chosen this dusty, blustery hour to wash her car. The stream of water shot from the hose, splashed against a door, the turned to mist. A boy of perhaps three purposefully scrubbed a a hubcab with a large sponge.

  "How big are your groves?"

  "Two hundred acres. Certified organic, all Valencias. Best for juice. I've got five workers on payroll right now, plus the supervisor. Harvest time, all the cabins are full."

  "Do you sell the fruit?"

  "Bulk of it. The best I give away. Carolyn—my wife—use to juice them and make preserves, I mean tons of preserves, bi she can't do that anymore. No more marmalade from Carolyn I've got friends all over the world, and getting fresh oranges from Southern California is a real treat for some of them. Floors 'em over in Europe."

  "There aren't even any weeds."

  "Smooth as a pool table was my goal. No flaws."

  "I'd say you accomplished that."

  "My supervisor is a duplicitous old prick, but he really gets work out of the workers."

  The road was smooth too, though dirt, and the Land Rover slid along the south perimeter of the grove. John looked down the rows as they passed. The sky above them was pale blue, wit just a trace of cirrus clouds up high. John watched a silver speck and contrail move slowly from west to east.

  "Have you lived here a long time?"

  "Five years. It's been in the family for almost eighty. When Mumsey died, the Big House went empty. Five years ago, my wife had some problems and we moved in here. I rebuilt the Big House. Added some of the outbuildings. Pools and tennis. Aviary. Heliport. Fenced the whole shebang."

  "It's like a paradise."

  "It is paradise." Holt chuckled then. "To me, anyway."

  At the far corner of the grove the road forked—one turning to follow the trees and one leading straight. Holt went straight, guiding the truck up a hill, then down the other side. They were in the chaparral now, though it was not as dense as on the other side of the lake. Holt swerved down a narrow dirt road, scraping the truck panels on stiff red fingers of manzanita.

  Then the Rover seemed to stand up, and John found himself leaning forward, facing the dashboard, hearing the groan of the differential and the skidding of tires beneath him. The road rose steeply, leveled off, then rose again. Then came a long series of switchbacks, still rising. Finally the road leveled. A few minutes later, they rolled into a wide turnout, and Holt parked.

  "Top of the World," he said.

  They climbed another fifty yards to the top. The peak was leveled and graveled. Three large white marble vaults stood in a semi-circle at the far end of the level ground, facing a large stone table and benches. Atop each of the vaults was a statue. But John's eyes were drawn to the doors of the vaults, their rich gold shining in the sun.

  "We're at 1,300 feet," said Holt. "Highest part of the Ridge. Best view."

  John looked back to the south, in the direction from which they had come, then down to the windswept spectacle of Liberty Ridge. The lake, from this angle, was a deep cobalt blue, the island in its middle a circle of bright green. The hillsides rose above the lake and rolled for miles. The big house was a white box with a reddish roof and windows that threw the sun back at him in blinding silver rectangles. The outbuildings stretched out from it in a diminishing semi-circle. From here, John could see just how large the park-like grounds around the compound were, and how small the tennis courts, helipad and aviary looked. And all of this was bordered by the two hundred acres of Valencia oranges, which from here looked like a green ocean speckled wit orange fish.

  "Not the same at night. Even from the observation deck."

  "No," said John.

  "Assessor taxes me on twenty-four mil. If I subdivided an went commercial/residential, you'd be talking a lot more."

  "Are you going to do that?"

  "Hell no. I'll protect this place 'til the day I die here. Let me show you exactly where I'll be buried. Got it all set up."

  They approached the vaults. Patrick's was on the left. His bronze likeness stood casually, with a couple of books in h
hand, like a student pausing between classes.

  "I'll always remember Pat as a reader," said Holt. "That Carolyn and I—the sculptor based it on an old wedding picture.

  The bronze Holts stood arm-in-arm like wedding-cake-figures, but the sculptor had cast details into their faces that made them seem almost human. "Carolyn's insistence. She is a romantic. Was, anyway."

  Valerie's was to the right, flanking her mother and father She was portrayed mid-step, with a springer spaniel trotted along beside her.

  "Nice," said John.

  "Just had it done last year," Holt said. "Wanted her to look adult. Val liked it. Said the whole thing up here is ostentatious and I can't argue that. So a man's proud of his family. Of himself. No harm there. Doors to the crypts are finished in gold. Something, isn't it, the way they catch the sun up here?"

  "It's very beautiful."

  "Come in. I'll show you Pat's urn."

  Holt swung open the heavy door and John stepped inside the cool marble vault.

  "You don't lock them?"

  "Don't lock much of anything on Liberty Ridge. Don't need to, which is just the way I designed it. There, that urn's got Patrick’s ashes inside."

  It was a stout, low rectangle that looked to John like black marble. Holt stared at it and sighed. "I don't expect it to mean much to you."

  "Well, that's not the point of it."

  "Sure isn't. God, I do miss that boy. Anyway, that's the inside of Pat's place. "

  Holt let John pass back out, then pushed the door closed. The gold, stamped with images of birds rising in flight, flashed in the sun.

  "Really something," John said.

  They walked to the edge of the gravel and looked out. "It's Val's now. I've made enough pesos to see her great-great-grandchildren through their lives. It's all paid for. Won't break it up. Ever."

  John breathed in the hot dry air. With the Santa Anas blowing from the northeast, the brush on the hillsides shivered stiffly and the lake rippled with uniform wedges. The ocean, far off to the west, looked bright and flat as a sheet of new foil.

  John could see the little chain of buildings that housed the Liberty Ops execs. He watched as a platoon of Holt Men— miniature soldiers in their black uniforms—loaded into four orange-and-black patrol vans.

  "It'll be gone soon," said Holt.

  "I thought it would be here for Valerie's great—"

  "—Oh, Liberty Ridge will. But the rest of the county will fester up around it like acne. This is what it was. This is what our berserk and murderous ancestors lived and died for. The West. Manifest Destiny. The California Dream. All those nonspecific words. Well, here's the specificity. Here it is, the soul of what people wanted. Look at it."

  John gazed to the north, where the hillsides gave way to the endless housing tracts of Orange County.

  "Not that direction," said Holt. "That's the future. Ugly baby, isn't it? Look south or west and look real hard, because what you see won't be there long."

  John watched a raven shoot down toward the Big House, then bank up high again on a gust of wind, wings almost vertical, tail angled to catch the air.

  "Too bad," said John.

  "Brought it on ourselves," said Holt. "People like you and me."

  "How so?"

  "Didn't reproduce fast enough. Not enough of us. Too busy building cars and cities to get the numbers up. Need a good bench to play in this league. We made too much of everything but ourselves. Just aren't enough of us left. By the time I die, Liberty Ridge will be a little island in an ocean of people who won't understand its value. No concept of the value at all. Price, ye; Any yahoo with a calculator can figure price. But not value Asians, Latins, Blacks, Arabs. You name 'em. Got nothing against those people, but they didn't work for this. Isn't in the blood. Don't understand this land anymore than I could understand theirs. Say, Vietnam or Culiacan or Kathmandu. They can overrun it easy enough. Can buy it up lot by lot. Suck away the fruits. But they won't add to it. Only diminish. Only take. Like vampires. Not their fault, though. Human nature to take what good."

  Holt stood for a moment and looked out toward the ocean John saw the proud set of his mouth and the hard, prying squint of his eyes.

  "Well, I really didn't bring you up here for a lecture."

  "Lecture on."

  "I'm bored by my own ideas."

  "I'm not."

  "You've spent ten seconds with them. I've spent six decades."

  "No, go on. Explain. Why do these new people have to diminish the land? Isn't that what the Juaneno Indians would say about you?"

  "Reasonable question. So far as the Indians go, too bad they couldn't hold on to it. They got it. They understood. Had a totally different slant than us. But they were outnumbered, outpowered, outfoxed and outbred. Same thing that's happening us. Did we diminish it? Fuck yes, and that'll be the death of it. And us. But look at the Ridge. A little gem in the miserable flood of human progress. Beautiful fruit. Habitat for wildlife, plants, human beings. Clean air and a lake jumping with fish. Rich earth. I didn't diminish this, proud to say."

  "Then why will the new barbarians diminish it?"

  "Already told you. Because they don't understand it. Land makes people. The land shapes people. Forms them to its purpose. So people need to invest in their heritage. Never abandon it. Work their own dirt—it's what gave them life, isn't it? The need to protect and defend it. A land should never be sold. Conquered, maybe, as history proves. What do you think?"

  "I think those are words well spoken."

  "I didn't ask for a critique of my oratory. I asked you what you believe.

  "In politics, you should always agree. Wayfarer may couch his pathology in politics, and he may couch his politics in pathology, so you must do the same. Never fawn; and rarely defer. Question his planks; but endorse his platform.

  "I believe that what you say is self-evident. What it begs is the smaller personal question of whether to stick it out and watch things rot, or pack it up. I packed it up for Anza three months ago. But I'm not sure it was the right thing to do."

  "I can guarantee you it was the wrong one."

  "I feel the pull of the land, too, Mr. Holt. I grew up here, you know. I used to poach fish out of the lake, camp out in these hills, surf that ocean. Yeah, it was the wrong decision—to go. I knew that, not long after I'd left."

  "Case closed. It's easy to sound like a racist crackpot sometimes. Hell. Maybe I am."

  "Not at all. I think you're speaking for the way a lot of people feel but are afraid to admit."

  "Probably. But you're wrong about either staying put and watching things rot, or heading out. Third option is the winner. That's to stay put and do something. Work. Fight. Create. Resist. Gather. Whatever you want to call it."

  "That takes a person of capacity and vision. I'm not sure I have either."

  Holt laughed then. "You certainly do. You proved that three days ago when life and death were at stake. Sometimes it takes special pressure to bring one's vision into focus."

  "Well, that was an extreme circumstance, sir."

  "Without extreme circumstances nothing very interesting gets done."

  "You're right."

  Holt stared at John then, his pale blue eyes steady behind the thick lenses of his glasses. His look suggested levels of assessment. "What do you want?" he asked.

  "Well, sir. I would like to get a trailer set back up for myself."

  "No. Not right now. The long run. For your life. What's your plan? I've watched you for three days now, and I know you're not stupid. You observe. You consider. You must have some inkling of what you want. How you can get it."

  To get a confidence, give a confidence. "Mr. Holt, I've never thought that way. I've always believed in taking a day at a time, trying to improve a little at the thing you do. I started writing when I was a kid and I enjoy it. I'd like to keep at it. But I've developed the unsettling notion that a lo of life is waiting things out between disasters."

  "Christ, that's pa
thetic. It sure can be, if you choose to se it that way. What disaster?"

  "A woman I was going to marry."

  "So, what happened to her?"

  "She was coming over to my place one night and a drunk ran the light. She died and he broke his nose."

  Holt nodded slowly, gravely. "What was her name?"

  "Jillian."

  Jillian is your torch. You can use her to light a path to Wayfarer. She is your Carolyn—the catalyst of your self-pity, the see of your hate. She is Rebecca.