“In San Joaquin?”
“Yes. Don’t ask me which county, though.”
Russert reached across the desk to a glass decanter full of water and raw asparagus. The asparagus stalks were bound together in the style of a Roman fasces and caused a gurgling sound as he poured. He sipped from his glass and slid the other one over to me.
He said, “Mr. Temple, either you’re trying to cheat me, or you’ve been cheated yourself. I’ll be polite and give you the benefit of the doubt. The simple fact is that no one could buy a farm in San Joaquin for all the money in the world. The government’s got that whole valley nationalized as part of the parcel program. Country bumpkins packing peaches in rented sheds. That’s what the land is earmarked for.”
“This isn’t a parcel. It’s a cooperative, the biggest of its kind. The government makes a special exception for co-ops. They can transfer the lease to anyone, including a private company like yours. All you have to do is buy them out.”
“Sure. But I wouldn’t really own the land, would I? I’d be at the mercy of the Ag Bureau. I’d still have to pay rent every month, and sell my produce for a fraction of what it’s worth.”
“In the beginning, perhaps, but then things are more than likely to work out in your favor. You know as well as I do that once the Vandeman Act passes Congress and the parcel program is phased out, all that land in the valley is going to be worth ten times what it is now. I’m giving you the opportunity to step into a new world and plant your flag before anyone else. And I hope I was right in assuming you’re an ambitious man, the kind of man who wouldn’t back down from the chance to build an empire up from the ground.”
Russert laughed. “A hundred and twenty acres is hardly an empire. With all the mountains between here and the valley, it’s more like a far-flung outpost. Probably more trouble to maintain than it would be worth.”
“As a businessman, Mr. Russert, I can understand why you would try to play hard to get, but I wish you would draw the line at being disingenuous. You can’t sit here and pretend your pushing into Gilroy and Hollister isn’t part of some grand forward-thinking strategy. I don’t need to convince you of what an opportunity this is; you’ve already realized it yourself. The grower who succeeds in spreading eastward down the middle of this country will have all the blessings of heaven and earth at his disposal. You’ll have your army of Asians, the most fertile land on the planet, and equidistant access to the markets of San Francisco and L.A. From there, nothing will be out of your reach. You could probably become president of the Republic if you wanted.”
“Flattery and daydreams are two things I simply don’t have time for.”
“It’s not flattery to suggest that a powerful man could become more powerful. Nor is it daydreaming to imagine that same man using his power to gain even more.”
Russert turned and brushed his hand over the computer hibernating in a built-in compartment at the center of the desk. Immediately the machine bloomed for him, unfolding silently and contorting itself until the keys were right within reach. He moved his fingers over the screen. Then, as abruptly as he had turned to the device, he shut it away again. The rain, which had been trickling lightly when I first arrived, finally started to pick up, slamming the windows with intermittent gusts of wind rising up from the sea wall thirty miles to the west.
He said, “The state of agriculture in this country. It’s like something out of the Dark Ages. I truly believe that a hundred years from now people will look back at this point in our history and wonder how we ever allowed so much valuable land to go underutilized for so long. All that wasted potential. Future generations will mock us for it, and rightly so. Like the Chinese with their Great Leap Forward.”
“The valley is a backward place in an otherwise forward-thinking country. That’s what my father believed.”
He said, “There’s one part of this I can’t put my finger on. You. What’s your stake here? You say you’re in a position to help me buy this place cheap, but clearly you’re not the one with your name on the lease. Which means you’re going through all this trouble for a measly ten percent on the deal.”
“I was thinking more like forty percent.”
“Forty? Jesus. That’s a hell of a finder’s fee.”
“True, but that’s between me and the other party. I wouldn’t ask you to front my commission in addition to what you’d already be paying.”
“Well. Isn’t that gracious of you?” He stood and turned to the wall and looked out at the rain splattering on the outside glass. Seizing the moment, I removed the flask from my pocket and mixed a shot of vodka in with my asparagus water. It had been a few hours since my last drink and I needed to keep my head together. Russert said, “Tell you how I see it. Seems to me like you’re nothing but a middleman in all this. What’s to stop me from going behind your back and dealing with the tenants directly? A co-op that size couldn’t be too hard to find, especially now that I know your name. And whoever the other party is, I can’t imagine they’re very eager to carve forty percent off the top just to pay your end. So I bet I could negotiate a better deal without your help. What do you think of that?”
I smiled and swirled the asparagus water in my glass. “I think that, without me, there’s no way they would ever agree to sell, to you or anyone else. That’s the advantage I’m pressing here, Mr. Russert. They won’t sell if they don’t have to, but I have it in my power to persuade them.”
“That sounds pretty sketchy.”
“You need not concern yourself with the details. Let’s just say my father didn’t leave me much, but he left me what I need to get my start as an entrepreneur. You see, I’m after more than just a finder’s fee, Mr. Russert. This deal is going to be the catalyst that sets the rest of my future in motion.”
“You want to make a career for yourself in agriculture?”
“I want to make money. How I do it at this point is incidental.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very meaningful way to live.”
“I searched for meaning a long time and didn’t like what I found. Now I’m focused solely on the living part. Leave the meaning to the ministers.”
Russert’s eyeglasses slid almost imperceptibly down the ridge of his nose. I would have been surprised to learn that he was a godly man, as opposed to a sometime convert like Dad, or some brand of agnostic like so many in his field claimed to be. He said, “I can’t get a clear read on you, Mr. Temple. Can’t tell if you’re the real deal or some joker off the street.”
“In this instance, all I’m asking for is the right to approach the sellers on your behalf. You’ll lose nothing if the deal falls through. And if I succeed, which I will, you’ll have a leg up on everyone else trying to move in on the valley.”
“You’re welcome to go and talk with these people, and if you can work your magic on them like you say, I’ll consider making an offer. But they’d have to agree to a full transfer of tenancy rights. Land, house, and all. I don’t have time to mess with squatters.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t even know they were ever there.” I emptied my glass and stood to leave. As I was refastening the middle button on my suit jacket, I looked up suddenly and raised my finger to hold his attention. “One more thing.”
He sighed and reached again for the decanter. “Go on then.”
I smiled. “Do you know a good place around here to print up some business cards?”
We were halfway through our second round when Kylee brought our starters out from the kitchen. I was so hungry and tipsy that each bite of carrot soup seemed to replenish something essential in me, without which I didn’t know how I was going to survive the rest of the evening. Dad didn’t speak for a while after the food arrived. He kept his fork suspended over his plate, delivering clumps of romaine and blue cheese dressing to his mouth with mechanical stiffness. With every sip of vodka that entered my system, I grew angrier and more aggrieved by his stubborn silence. I wanted to lash out at him, to seize him from across t
he table and demand that he say something, but then the weight of my guilt rolled back onto my shoulders, reminding me that he was paying for my food and drinks tonight, just as he had paid to support me through all the years I was in school. And so I made myself drunker waiting for him to talk, taking hurried swigs from my glass every time the ice had melted enough to offset the burn.
He finally wiped his lips on the napkin and said, “There are only two ways to make a living from God, you know. Being a minister and being a fraud. And maybe selling Bibles.”
I smiled. “What about poets?”
Even before Dad glared at me, I knew the joke had been a mistake. He set his knife and fork down and pushed the plate away. He said, “I’m talking about making a living, which is something you should be thinking about from here on out. If you won’t go to college, then you’ll have to figure out a way to earn your keep from day to day. Unless you plan on living off your mother indefinitely, stringing her along with promises of getting into Stanford one day.”
“I’m not a leech. I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Maybe that’s why you agreed to drive down here with me. Because you thought you could coax me into supporting you until you get on your feet. As if ten years of monthly checks weren’t enough.”
“I followed you down here because I hadn’t seen you since I was fourteen. If I had said no, who knows when we would have seen each other again?”
Dad shook his head and took another drink of whiskey. He was already acting surly, and I couldn’t be sure if he had even heard me. “There are times I worry your generation will forsake the rest of us the moment we stop being useful to you. Like those native tribes in the Arctic, where the young people set their elders adrift on the ice so they don’t have to worry about being burdened by them.”
“I don’t know where you get these ideas about me. You’re my father. I wouldn’t think you’d set your father adrift for convenience’s sake.”
“Your grandfather died of a heart attack not long after disbandment.”
I blinked several times in rapid succession. I never knew about my grandfather or how he died; Mom had never met the man, and Dad hadn’t mentioned him until now. That someone so close to me in blood and influence should remain such a mystery seemed wrong somehow, not because I felt incomplete without the knowledge, but because no one had ever thought to satisfy that curiosity they should have assumed I was bound to feel.
But all I said was, “That’s sad. Did he lose his business in the crash?”
“He wasn’t an entrepreneur. He was a school teacher in Stockton. Eighth grade science. Never had any real ambition.”
Kylee’s return offered a momentary reprieve from the gloomy streak we suddenly found ourselves on. For dinner we were presented with cuts of pink and charred tri-tip served on heavy cast iron platters with grilled asparagus, potatoes, and mushrooms. Dad waited for her to freshen our drinks before cutting into his meat. I tried forcing some of the starchy potatoes down my throat, but since the soup my stomach had turned around on itself, shedding hunger in favor of mild nausea and disgust.
I said, “It must have been rough, living through disbandment. When I was younger, some of my friends’ parents used to talk about what it was like back then. Sounded like everybody lost something that was dear to them.”
Dad nodded as he finished chewing through a bite of steak. “It was the crash that really made things difficult. Your mother and I were living near Carmel at the time and overnight the whole area was overrun with economic refugees from other parts of the state. Davis, Riverside, Fresno. People came from everywhere and flooded the coast looking for work. Used to be that inland folks would say we were crazy living so close to the water. Conventional wisdom said that, when the next big earthquake hit, the entire coast would break away and fall into the sea. Hicks around here, they laughed at us before, but the second things started to fall apart, they came running to beg at our door.”
“You’ve got to admit, though, there is some cause for concern. We might never fall into the ocean, but if the sea walls ever broke, we’d be under water regardless.”
“They’d never let San Francisco stay sunk. They’d cut down all the redwoods and raise the city up on a pier first.”
“I suppose that would keep the inland people out.”
With more than a half a pint of whiskey in him now, Dad started to get sloppy in a way I had never seen from him before. Up to that point he had been so stiff and composed; it was strange to see him roll his eyes back while he was thinking, or run his tongue over his mustache to mop up the stray liquor and grease. He said, “Don’t misunderstand me. It was hard times waiting on the economy to recover, but disbandment was still the best thing that ever happened to California. We have our own independent country now. We have the sixth largest economy in the world, and we get to keep all the profits for ourselves. Not like how it was under the US.”
I hadn’t expected to wind up talking politics with Dad, to say nothing of hearing him express views that were the polar opposite of everything I had been raised to believe. Mom was a staunch Unionist who had marched against disbandment in the streets of Palo Alto and even voted against the California Constitution as a matter of principle. Growing up, ours was one of only a few houses in the development that still celebrated the fourth of July every year by filling the summertime air with the savoriness of barbecued hotdogs and the sulphurous stench of Chinese fireworks. I tried to imagine the circumstances by which they would have moved past their differences, but I couldn’t picture either of them being that tolerant and accommodating. Dad must have changed his views since the divorce, or kept his real opinions to himself the entire time they were married.
I said, “We were a whole lot richer before disbandment, though. Or at least America was. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to live back then. To have a whole huge country to see and explore.”
Dad pointed at me with his fork. “It was already rotten long before disbandment. That’s what happens with great nations, they rot away from the inside. But ask any botanist or farmer and he’ll tell you the same thing, that rotting flesh can be used as fertilizer to help new life get its start. Sometime after the fall of Rome, you can bet there were boys like you, longing for the dream of an empire that had collapsed before they were born. At the same time, though, men of talent and ambition looked around and saw that there was fresh opportunity all around them. They worked hard and became medieval lords while the nostalgic ones sat around waiting to be turned into serfs. You think about that.”
I thought about it. I thought about what he had said and wondered how much of it was from the heart and how much was the product of the whiskey and his own grandiose self-image. “In school they taught us that the centuries after the fall of Rome were a bad time for everyone. Isn’t that why they call them the Dark Ages?”
Dad sneered and wiped his damp mustache on the back of his hand. He said, “That’s a myth, a revisionist smear campaign launched by later historians with radical agendas. No one who was alive at the time would have called the medieval period an age of darkness. It’s true, the hardships of life were greater in those days, but then so were the pleasures.”
I watched Dad’s eyes flicker in the diminishing evening light. Outside the big bay windows at the back of the room, the sun had gone down enough that the oppressive heat and brightness of the valley were reduced to far more tolerable levels. And yet Dad seemed more tired and disoriented than he had all day. Even as he carried on with issues of political and historical importance, there was an almost perverse intensity to the way he was behaving, and suddenly I was grateful for the vodka, and for the sleepy-sick feeling it had brought over me.
“Men had real honor in the medieval period. And women knew what it meant to be real women. Each king and each lord ruled like the pure manifestation of God on Earth.
That’s why, pound for pound, medieval lords were the greatest rulers in history. They didn’t just rule well, they ruled totally. Think about it. I mean really think about it. Each lord had total dominion over his land, but his land was nothing without the people who cared for it. He had to rule over his serfs, his servants, his squires, and his knights, as well as his daughters, his sons, the rest of his family, and his wife. Can you even imagine it? There’s no way to skate by in that situation. You’re either a leader, with talent and responsibility, or you’re nothing. Now think about all the sad bastards today who can’t even manage to take care of themselves. And then try to tell me the medieval period was a dark time to be alive.”
I looked down at my plate and said, “They still had more things to worry about back then. Like bubonic plague. The Black Death.”
“Of course you’d bring that up. You’re a negative person, you always have been. That’s your mother’s side coming out in you, depressives and pessimists all through their bloodlines.” Dad raised his glass and drained the last ounce of bourbon and swirling grease from the bottom. His food was getting cold as he continued to eulogize. “You know what really happened during the Black Death? The lords and noblemen, basically everyone who was educated and worth a damn, they all fled to their estates in the country, while the peasants in the cities and the hicks in the fields stayed behind and perished. I know what you’re thinking. Oh, what a tragedy, oh, what a shame, half the world gone in the blink of an eye. But do you know what happened after things returned to normal, when suddenly the world was only half as crowded as it used to be? The Renaissance happened. The Age of Discovery happened. Suddenly the exceptional men were able to raise themselves up without a whole host of human parasites weighing them down. And now here we sit, in a fine restaurant with steak and whiskey in front of us, indebted to a deadly pathogen from seven hundred years in the past.”
Lord of California Page 11