Somewhere on the coast. A real city.
Think you’d do well over there, Anthony said. He stepped away from the support column and took a seat under the window sill next to Beth. I wasn’t sure if he was doing much to help her feel better, but from out of nowhere his own attitude had suddenly perked up. I hear there are towns on the coast where they still have internet, he said. Everybody’s connected to everybody.
That’s what they say, Beth said.
Not to mention the food. Every kind of restaurant you can imagine. Chinese, Japanese, Indian. After disbandment, all the good cooks in the valley packed up and headed for the ocean.
Beth looked out across the field with a far and dreamy look in her one good eye. With the wind picking up, the rows of topsoil had suddenly come alive, shifting and falling in place like lines of sand on a rattling tray. I’d just like to live in a place where there’s something going on, she said. Last year for my birthday, mom drove us up to Fresno to see a movie at the only theater left in the county. It’d been a long time since we were up that way, and when we got there the theater was all stripped down and boarded up. Big For Sale signs hanging in the windows.
Mama took us to see a movie down in Bakersfield once, I said. The faces on the screen were so huge Jessie thought they were going to gobble her up. Started crying so hard we had to leave after ten minutes.
It costs money to live in a city, though, Anthony said. A lot more than it does to live here. You’d have to find a good-paying job to make it.
I’ll find a way, Beth said. Anything’s better than sticking around here waiting to grow old.
I’ve been wondering, I said. When Elliot was alive, did he ever let you guys come with him to the coast?
Not me, Beth said.
Same, Anthony added. He always said the coast was no place for farm people.
There was a bitterness in Anthony’s voice that I worried would swing his mood back around the other way. Still, it was something like a relief to know that Daddy hadn’t excluded me and my sisters in particular, that he’d kept all his families equally confined to our humble lives down on the parcels.
I used to dream that someday he’d drive up to the house and take us away to live with him in a big city, I said. But now that I’m older, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable living in an area like that. They say people on the coast look down on folks from the valley. You might end up feeling lonely and out of place all the time.
Beth clenched her jaw and continued to stare out across the land. No one would need to know where I really come from, I said. I’d tell em I grew up someplace else.
Where?
Depends. If I lived in San Francisco, I’d say I was born in L.A. And if I was in L.A., I’d say San Francisco.
You’d be okay doing that? Lying all the time?
Everyone lies about something, she said. We’re lying right now about our father and where the money for the co-op came from. Our father lied to us and our mothers every day of our lives. Eric lied when he said he cared about me. What’s the point of being honest when the dishonest people always get what they want?
God’s the point, Anthony said. He judges everyone in the end.
I don’t believe in God anymore, she said. God is just another old man who’s never been there for us.
I watched Anthony’s eyes widen and his face go blank. For all he knew, this was the closest he’d ever been to an outspoken non-believer. I know what you’re talking about, I said. But I don’t agree about the lying. At the end of the day, I’ve got to believe there’s a way to stay honest even without some big man with a beard watching over us.
Good luck with that, Beth said. In the meantime, you’ll have one less Temple to run into at school, cause I’m done with it. I’ll stick around doing chores for mom and Jennifer until I’ve saved up enough money, then I’m gone.
You should try talking to Dawn about this, I said. She’s got a lot of experience living on her own. Might have some good advice for you.
She’s an angel, she said. Spent all morning looking after me. Tired herself out so bad mom finally made her go lie down in the bedroom.
You should talk to her before you decide to leave. What she has to say might be worth thinking about first.
See, that’s your whole problem right there, Anthony said. You keep looking to yourselves and your mothers and each other for answers. But God’s the only one who has any answers to give. Two thousand years before any of us were born, He laid out the correct path for us to follow. He’s with us now even if you don’t accept it.
Right, Beth said. Then I guess He was with me in the orchard last night too. He was right there watching while Eric beat on me.
Anthony scowled. It’s not His responsibility to explain why bad things happen, he said. The burden’s on us to keep faith in His word.
His word, I said. You mean like, Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord?
A shamed look I’d never seen on him before came over Anthony’s face. He hid his mouth behind his knees and hugged his legs to his chest. I thought he might’ve been praying at first, but his eyes were open and he wasn’t making a sound. With him crawling back into his shell, I hoped Beth would feel like talking some more, maybe opening up about what Eric’s betrayal really meant to her. But instead she went back to cleaning up after Grampa Reid, who had red wine dribbling from the corners of his mouth, making a mess of his shirt front. The wind continued to pick up, sending a current through the leaves and teasing the parched earth with the promise of rain. And still more clouds came rolling in from the west, though, like most things, they never stuck around the valley longer than they had to.
All told, it was a bad winter to try and get a farm up and running. The temperature dipped into the low twenties at night, and every morning the frost settled on the grass in crisp white blades. Neighbors who specialized in citrus watched helplessly as their winter crops came in hard and flavorless and gray. Most of the orange growers in Orosi had cashed out by the end of January, and with their departure the pickers at the state camp packed up and headed south for the season, leaving no one to prepare the land for spring. So many of our own laborers pulled out that we had to start paying their deposits back out of the household account. The big breakfasts I liked to cook on Sundays disappeared, replaced by morning after morning of farina and other packaged cereals that could be purchased in bulk at the local grocery. When Gracie outgrew her winter jacket, I took Mama’s sewing machine down from the closet shelf and altered Jessie’s to fit her. In turn, I gave Jessie my own heavy jacket and made do myself with one of Mama’s old coats. Without telling anyone, Dawn sold the rest of the clothes and makeup Daddy had bought her to a second-hand store in Tulare. We tried to refuse her money, saying she should’ve kept the clothes to have something nice to wear. She replied that, come summer, it didn’t matter if she had to run around in her chonies, so long as we were able to get by till then.
The first apricot was at least four months out, but still the trees needed watering and tending to make it through the winter. Jennifer’s foreman, Dale, really proved his worth in those uncertain days. Even with the state labor camp deserted, he used his connections to round up a team of hired hands to work off-the-books pruning and irrigating straight through to the first blossoming. Taciturn men with prison records and no proof of citizenship, they nonetheless knew how to keep an orchard in good health, and to keep out of sight if the county inspector came snooping round. Not everyone was thrilled to have them on hand, though. After what had happened to Beth, Mama said that none of us girls were allowed to play outside when the workers were in the orchard. We tolerated her command, as we’d tolerated her fear of the Mendes children, and spent our afternoons inside watching TV or doing homework.
Money and labor problems aside, I looked forward all day to coming home again. Even after pulling straight A’s in the first semester, school began to lose the value it once held for me. The frost had taken its toll on so many families in the area that come J
anuary fewer than half the upperclassmen returned from break. Most of the Math and English faculty were let go and the juniors were lumped together with the freshman and sophomore classes. I’d hardly seen Beth at school before she dropped out, but now I could feel her absence everywhere on campus. Each room I entered made me pause to wonder if she’d taken a class in there before. I spent my breaks and free periods hiding in the library and behind the cafeteria, avoiding anywhere my peers congregated in groups of two or more. Any time I thought I saw Eric coming toward me in the corridors, I turned and hurried off in the opposite direction or ducked inside the girls’ bathroom. I could never be sure if it was really him, but I wasn’t about to take the chance. Not surprisingly, I started to gain a reputation as a weirdo. With a small student body pulled from a handful of small farming towns, it didn’t take much to get labeled as one. Kids went out of their way to avoid sitting next to me in class, and on the bus ride home other girls burst into muffled laughter as I stomped through the aisle to the open seat at the far back. Once I overheard a pair of sophomore boys whispering a few seats ahead of me. One of them turned and looked back at me real fast. That’s the one I was telling you about, he said, and his friend glanced over his shoulder and laughed in my general direction.
I might’ve been spared these afternoon bus trips if Anthony hadn’t decided right out of the blue to go out for the wrestling team. After having her ear whined off all December long, Claudia finally decided that she couldn’t afford to lend the car to Anthony during the day—not if she was going to keep up her routine of giving confession at the local church three times a week. Fortunately for him, Dawn overheard their bickering and offered to let him borrow the Mitsubishi on weekdays. For a brief moment, I thought my days on the big yellow limousine were at an end, but then he went and decided he’d rather spend his afternoons getting manhandled by a bunch of sweaty dudes in leotards. There weren’t enough schools nearby for them to wrestle competitively, but the team still met for practice in the gym Monday through Thursday. Anthony would get home around seven and collapse in a chair at the dinner table. He’d spend another half-hour hunched over the plate of food his mother saved for him, too exhausted to do more than eat a few bites and wash them down with a gallon of ice water. I never came out and asked him why he bothered with it, but I never stopped being curious either. The longer I knew my brother, the more it seemed that his passions always led him to pursuits that excluded the company of women and incorporated violence in some crucial way. I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the way he chose to spend his time. Still, if wrestling kept his mind off the rifle in his closet, that was good enough for me.
I found him on the bleachers one afternoon during free period. His practice didn’t start for another ninety minutes, but he was already dressed in the red spandex and black socks of his team, in the same uniform he wore around the house, against his mother’s wishes, whenever he was too lazy to change before heading home. He appeared to be killing time watching a freshman PE class run laps around the track, though he might’ve been spacing out instead. I tend to believe the latter, seeing as how he didn’t seem to notice me approaching until I was already sitting down next to him.
Aren’t you cold in that getup?
He shrugged his bare shoulders and rubbed his hands together. Cold’s bracing, he said. Makes you stronger.
I guess. Feels like I hardly see you around anymore.
I’ve been busy.
Busy wrestling?
Busy getting into shape. I got to toughen up.
So you’re still planning on joining the Army?
Soon as I’m old enough. Or as soon as I can pass for old enough. Whichever comes first.
Right. Well, let me know when you decide to sign up. Cause I’m dropping out of school the very next day.
Anthony finally looked at me directly. As dark as he was, his cheeks still showed red in the cold. Is that your way of trying to guilt me into sticking around?
No, I said. I just don’t want to go through this alone. You’re my only friend here.
That’s no reason to drop out, he said. You’re brainy. You could do a lot with a diploma.
Like what? College?
Yeah. You might get a scholarship someplace good.
I shook my head and drove my fists deeper into my coat pockets. College is for rich kids in other states, I said. Round here they’re bulldozing colleges to free up space for more farmland.
So move to another state, he said. What’s wrong with you? The valley’s no place for somebody with your smarts.
I’ve got Mama and my sisters to worry about. I can’t just up and leave them.
That’s a shitty excuse. I think you’re just afraid of trying to make it on the coast.
Maybe I am. So what? Elliot came from the coast, and look at what a monster he turned out to be. Antony looked around the empty bleachers, as if to make sure no one was listening in. All this time we’d kept to an unspoken agreement never to talk about Daddy at school, and my sudden breach of the pact was clearly making him nervous. But he was worrying for nothing. The only students within a hundred yards of us were too busy sweating and panting on the freezing cold track to give a crap about anything we had to say. I know I sound like an obsessive, I said. But I’m trying. I’m trying every day to get him out of my head.
I didn’t know he was still in there. Thought you got him out a long time ago.
I quit mourning real fast, but that was because I was so angry and hurt by what he did.
Anthony stretched his arms out over his head. He didn’t have much yet in the way of biceps, but his chest looked fuller and less boyish than it did before he started training. You wouldn’t feel hurt if you didn’t still care about him, he said. It’s the way we were created. Everyone wants to be loved by their fathers and by God. Can’t fight the human condition.
I can harden my heart, I said. Same as how you’re working to make your body tougher.
Yeah, I guess you could.
I’ve already made progress. When we first met, I could hardly stand to look at you, because you have his eyes. Now they don’t bother me a bit.
His arms fell down at his sides. He looked at me and seemed on the verge of laughing, though his lips never cracked a full smile. I really do, don’t I? Have his eyes?
Of course you do. Why would you think otherwise?
Dad never said they looked the same, and mom’s color blind so she can’t tell. I always thought we had the same eyes ever since I was little, but no one ever came out and said it, so I wasn’t sure if I was right. I used to look at myself in the mirror and try to remember what he looked like. That was when I was eight or nine. Six months felt like forever then.
They always felt long. His away stretches.
That’s why even now I don’t mind the winter, or the hottest days of summer. Because he used to come home in January and July. We always had new clothes, toys, and Chinese food around those times.
As I listened, I tried not to show how this new bit of information made me feel. I must not have been doing a very good job, cause right away he shot me a concerned look. January and July, I said. Funny. We usually saw him around March and September. Right as the cold was dying off, and right as the heat was fading.
I never thought about that, he said. Guess he must’ve had a whole schedule mapped out for when he would visit each family.
It’s time to be honest with ourselves, I said. His being on the road all the time was never about making money or improving our lives. He just had a lot of families and farms to manage, and needed to ration the time he spent with us.
Anthony put his heels up on the bench and stared down at the soggied laces of his wrestling sneakers. He didn’t say anything for a while, and neither did I, and in our silence the steady thumping of feet on the track seemed amplified to an absurd degree. I thought you weren’t angry at him anymore, he said finally. What happened to getting him out of your head?
I don’t feel anything about
it either way, I lied. I’m just stating a fact.
Yeah, well, let’s see how you feel come March. This’ll be your first spring without anything to look forward to.
I’ll be fine. He gave terrible presents anyway.
Anthony smiled and nodded his head, and just like that I had confirmation that Daddy had been as thoughtless with his other kids’ gifts as he’d been with ours. The more stuff I found in common between me and my siblings, the sadder I felt for us all. What Anthony was going through was enough to break your heart all on its own. He really seemed to believe that, somewhere up there, God was looking down and taking stock of everything he did. And even if he believed, as Claudia did, that our father had been damned to the flames of hell, I’m sure there was a part of him that believed Daddy was somehow able to sit in judgment of him as well.
When the PE class had finished, Anthony bolted upright and commenced to sprinting around the track in full gear as a warm-up for his practice. I stayed and watched him as long as I could, until the clouds broke open and a cold rain began to fall. He was still running when I left.
As expected, March came and went without any of the fanfare of previous years, without any of the cooking, cleaning, and anticipation that Daddy’s arrival had provoked in our old way of life. I warned Jessie and Gracie not to let their disappointment show, lest they make Mama and the other mothers feel bad. Forget about how things used to be, I told them. We’ve got new things to worry about now. Which was true. The worst frost on record had left Tulare County bleak and neglected. The last of our neighbors finally cashed out, and we found ourselves with unoccupied parcels bordering three of the four sides of our property. We joked that, if we wanted to, we could buy up more and more land until our cooperative had consumed the entire county. Then we could rename the towns and landmarks any way we liked. Temple City. Mount Dawn. The Gracie River. We joked about it, but there was no money for land, or even to begin construction on the third house like we planned. Until the summer harvest came in, money would continue to go out, and the vastest empire we could hope for was a full dinner table.
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