by Chip Jacobs
“They’re not mutually exclusive.”
He’s done reasoning with my feisty-curmudgeon routine. “Dispatch,” he says into the Motorola walkie-talkie clipped near his right epaulet. “Sergeant Grubb requesting backup to the Colorado Street Bridge, and probably the department shrink if she’s around. Copy?” Ssssssssssssss. “I said, ‘you copy?’” Evidently, no one does. He wrenches down on his Motorola to bring it nearer to his mouth. “Dispatch, dispatch,” he says louder. Nope: still static isolation.
The flatfoot, even so, has drawn closer. Once he bum-rushes me, he won’t even require handcuffs to subdue me, just a decisive hand around my grizzled neck. For a lifer likely a decade from his pension, Grubb has moves.
Then again, so do I.
When he lunges at me, I release the torch, which clanks metallically on the bench. My weapon of choice is less formidable, outwardly anyway. It’s my walker. The action-reaction is karate-esque. He barrels my way. I bash him in the temple with one of the walkers’ space-age-light aluminum arms. Kiai!
Down goes the sergeant. Down in a heap at my polished Italian loafers. For the first time in years, I’m a senior in control.
He comes to quickly, perpendicular to me, discovering that he’s pinned down on the deck. One of my walker’s green-tennis-ball-tipped-legs presses on his throat. The other squishes his crotch. While old age has shrunken me, I’m still six-feet two-inches, so my legs fit easily over the top of the walker to keep the pressure on.
From the concrete, Grubb sputters statutory threats: about how I’m guilty of assaulting a law-enforcement official; how I’ve ratcheted a minor vandalism charge into a felony; how my walker “better not have fucking cracked” his Ray-Bans, the location of which, like his police cap, he’s unsure. He’s a squirming human alligator, ashamed at his predicament, madder by the second.
Anxious about what I’ve done—hey, even us old fogies saw the Rodney King thumping—I subpoena every stringy muscle to continue immobilizing him. I grunt. I channel applied physics I heard at a free Caltech lecture. I ask God why he’s led me down this preposterous road, and to spare me physical agony once the officer thirty years my junior breaks free.
That shouldn’t be long. Heart palpitating, I wonder about releasing him. Pleading for mercy; blaming the antidepressants, a dead wife, despair over my evaporating social relevancy. Anything.
Then, faster than the hot winds blow, to quote from those gods of classic rock, I sense a change in my combatant’s degree of resistance. His writhing is slowing; so, too, have his hands, which before were scrabbling for leverage.
Sergeant Grubb, whom I’ll soon learn transferred to Pasadena after the 1992 Los Angeles riots made him question humanity, has stopped fighting because he’s worked the math. He’s calculated that he wants to hear my far-fetched yarn a few integers more than he desires to club me within legally defensible police guidelines.
“Sonny Jim,” I say, “let me ask you something. Do you believe in second chances?”
He eyeballs me from his back. “Depends on what kind?” he says. “For a codger quicker than he looks?”
“No. The kind, and this will sound worrisomely eccentric, that Shirley MacLaine would applaud. Life repeats.”
“Not really. I’m Catholic. We believe you go up or down. Not around. But if you can spell it out before any of my colleagues see me like this, imprisoned by a glorified cane, I’m open.”
“Deal. Imagine a past when—”
The Birds of Pasadena
Say what you will about his morning pep and cowlick, his galling diet and corny pride. No one ever rode Mrs. Grover Cleveland, the animal, quite like Nick Chance.
Already the speediest one in the yard, she shifted into another gear whenever Nick sank down on her fluffy mane and whispered encouragement. Promised a treat. Today, as she folded her black wings into her white chest to blow ahead of the competition, you might’ve expected smoke coiling off her hooves. They didn’t call her the “feather cannonball” unwarranted.
Nick’s companions breathed her dust, but on this four-mile pleasure dash anything was possible. Adept a rider as their front-running chum was, they knew he often grandstanded in the lead, and sometimes took harrowing spills he was fortunate to walk away from with only bruises and a laugh. So, they pressed their boots into their own steeds, whooping to themselves this wasn’t over.
The three good-timers raced under the trees atop their six-foot-tall birds, whose feathers were guaranteed retail gold. Moving at a blurry clip, in a canyon being auctioned off by the day, the group rooted up dust onto a pathway trimmed with imported shrubs and plants where gauzy light laced through the veiny branches. Everyone, human and beaked, wished the jaunt could stretch into dusk.
Their valley trail was pristine, so far as trails go, and empty, with no snobs around to bewail what they couldn’t comprehend: two-legged animals being ridden saddle-less, low to the ground, where hands served as reins. The steeds, cobra-necked creatures more prehistoric roosters than horses, high-stepped in this amber light, their clawed feet pahrump-ing on the terrain.
Mrs. Cleveland was particularly delighted to be away from her monotonous day job being sheared for the textile business. She cranked her pimpled mouth to telegraph this.
Awk-awwwwwwww. Awkawwww. The ostrich’s shriek of joy carried a wild edge.
The posse next burst into a shamrock-green meadow, clopping past mossy ponds filled with ducks and swans, then grasslands, and then chubby sheep too busy grazing to observe this unusual bunch.
Nick, a dark-haired free spirit in a white, collarless shirt, was also ready to whoop. Rotating his torso back, eyes electric, he shouted at his pursuers: “If either one of you idiots says life can get better than this, I’m stealing your wages. I swear it.” The best part for him still lay around the bend, due north, though he didn’t advertise what others might call obsession.
Waldo Northcutt and R. G. Crum nodded in agreement, snapping mental photographs of their lunchtime joyride away from Cawston “World Famous” Ostrich Farm where they all worked. Someday, they might be retelling escapades about how they mimicked cowboys, if only for a few hours a week, on the backs of quicksilver beasts native to South Africa. Reverie over the burning competitors in them tried closing the gap, even if was merely for show.
Around them now flew hillsides blanketed in myrtle and ivy, tarweed and wild oats—vistas of fauna and flora so pervasive they provided thirty gardeners full-time employment. Before long, they came to the perimeter of the more formal section of the grounds. This part of the great wash was brushed with stands of willows and redwoods, wisteria and camphor, cacti and oaks. Each were meticulously planted to shade park benches and picnic areas, or simply to conjure whimsy.
A master horticulturist from Scotland, with a $2 million budget, crafted this nature preserve and semi-private park, consumed by the tiniest detail. Robert Fraser spaced the jacarandas and birds-of-paradise so they didn’t upstage the citrus groves. He researched what type of mulch to shovel into the scented flowerbeds for durability.
Every inch of these thirty acres was actually his boss’s backyard, and America’s beer king demanded nothing shy of arboreal perfection. “Make it beautiful!” Adolphus Busch commanded, probably with German-accented bravado. “Make it different—regardless of expense.” His Scotsman listened.
The three riders, all raised here in the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountain range, appreciated the transformation of the ravine from “tin can dump” and animal graveyard to botanical eye candy. Since Adolphus began “wintering” in Pasadena in 1904, his gardens were graded and hoed, contoured and planted into the unofficial “eighth wonder of the world,” all courtesy of his staggering wealth and ferocious imagination.
Blindfold the trio and they could still pinpoint the fairy-tale nooks, where terra cotta replicas of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and other mystical beings aw
aited children’s squeals.
Fast upon them was the baby elephant statue, then to the right the thatched-roof Old Mill home with spinning water wheel, the latter a residence that Adolphus converted into a playhouse for a daughter. Nice childhood, if you were born into it.
Even so, it was the sunken gardens—a dreamscape of grassy veld terraced in circular patterns over banks and swales—that could spur the cruelest heart to skip. Trails to explore them dipped and rose around planters and benches, a canvas of variegated green finer than the world’s priciest golf courses. Optically, it was as close to heaven as mortals were permitted. The three compadres and their amber-eyed ostriches, Nick’s Mrs. Cleveland, R. G.’s Mr. Mahatma Gandhi, and Waldo’s Maggie, had cavorted here before.
They galloped along the familiar path, just beneath the first steppe, batting around sarcastic jibes characteristic of twenty-seven-year-old men hesitant to fully grow up. Busch Gardens was theirs, this being mid-September, except for a few couples gripping maps sticky pink with cotton candy.
RG, freckled and fair complected, was the first to hear the intrusion of a black motorcar puttering to their right on a trail-hugging road. Being in the rear of the pack, he initially paid the gate-crasher no mind. Then, as the car persisted alongside, he recognized he must. The automobile, a shiny, black Ford Model T with its top down, appeared intent on making a statement. Animals were quaint, but engines were California’s new apex predator, even in a rockery chattering with birdsong.
Behind the wheel was an older man in a charcoal suit, who had bushy eyebrows akin to a supercilious owl. RG didn’t dislike him entirely, amused by watching how the driver’s gray hair and shaggy mustache quivered in the wind like wild grass. A minute elapsed before RG noticed something alarming. Rather than a delirious grin about being in Adolphus’s oasis, the man’s expression was competitive.
Pinkies to lips, RG whistled to Waldo ahead, next hollering, “We got company.” Waldo’s eyes bulged after the Model T man chugged past him and toward Nick. Between the driver’s puckered face and lead-foot pace, it was obvious he was egging for an impromptu race between, as it were, metal and feather.
Waldo pinched Maggie’s lower neck, coaxing it to slow from gallop to canter. RG pulled up next to him on Mr. Mahatma Gandhi. (Maggie was named for a character in the comic strip “Bringing Up Father;” Mahatma because the pacifists at the farm revered Gandhi, and this bird had his eyes.) “Should we attempt dissuading Nick?” asked RG. “I fear this could culminate with a priest over someone.”
Waldo, with windblown black hair and a cleft chin, asked back: “How?” You intend on catching Mrs. Cleveland without a motor?”
Nick, now forty yards ahead, probably wouldn’t have heeded prudence anyway. Over the years, he leapt from waterfalls to assure the more timid it was safe; tongue-tied a president; stuck his hands into smoldering machinery vital to his employer’s bottom line. His middle name wasn’t reckless; it was Augustus. It just sometimes felt that way, especially with dares.
The narrow path they were traversing was ripe for one, too, an unusual straightaway in serpentine Busch Gardens. Dead end aside, it was ideal for a race if you added testosterone.
When the Model T man flashed into Nick’s peripheral vision, Nick twisted his head, first puzzled, then irritated. Yet the provocateur changed that. He communicated wordlessly, jutting his chin several times toward an imaginary finish line ahead.
Nick squeezed his tongue into his cheek, tallying pros and cons, triumph versus discretion? You only live once, he thought. Take him. Two head dips broadcast his assent.
The driver stamped the accelerator, pushing ahead a few lengths in a spurt of black, fizzy exhaust. Nick’s ostrich, named after her human doppelganger, Frances Folsom, a handsome First Lady with a pronounced brow, took offense inhaling the crud. She puffed up her neck, gyrating the flexible muscle around 180 degrees toward Nick to register her complaint.
“Nip me back at the farm,” Nick said. “Let’s show that motorcar what you can do.”
Maybe it was Nick’s inflection, or her premonition of a blood orange for reward stimulating her pea-size brain. Whatever the incentive, she was now a fowl with a purpose, afterburners engaged, not unlike her fellow birds in the Tournament of Roses’ ostrich-chariot races. She tucked her wings further into her oval torso and straightened around her head. Behind that breezy, slightly bowlegged lope was sheer velocity. Pawrump, pawrump.
Mrs. Grover Cleveland made up so much ground on the Ford you might’ve suspected that one of its whitewalls frayed. Nick rocked forward, tucking his chin into the base of her neck. Her speed was thirty-nine miles per hour, sub-Cheetah, but still plenty fast. Tied with fifty yards to go, Nick already knew the race’s outcome. Nobody bested Mrs. Cleveland’s stretch kick. It’s why Nick gave his spontaneous opponent a two-fingered salute blazing to victory going away.
“Here, here!” Waldo hooted from behind. “Atta boy.”
Nick, however, couldn’t get too bigheaded, for that could get you killed. He focused on deceleration, lest he plow headfirst into a flower bed a hundred yards from Adolphus’s cliffside mansion, “Ivy Wall.” A tug here, a boot nudged there, and Mrs. Cleveland, the feather cannonball, extended her wings for drag.
Nick’s opponent brought his Ford to a rolling stop, gnawing his bottom lip in disgust. Atrocious idea; he never should’ve listened to that salesman who crowed the automobile could take a Kentucky Derby champ.
After he spun Mrs. Cleveland around, Nick dismounted, hoping to shake his competitor’s hand. The sore loser would have none of it, refusing even eye contact. He snatched his black cap from the passenger seat, scrunching it over his rumpled hair. The dog-leg-shaped veins bulging from his temples were exhibits of humiliation.
His attempted exit from Busch Gardens provided a second dose of it, as well, for he allowed himself scant room to navigate a U-turn. Needing to back up before he could blast out of there, he threw the knobby gearshift into reverse. This, though, only propelled the Ford unartfully over a low curb dividing the road from the parkway. Stranded neither here nor there, he grinded gears while Nick and company watched him struggle to achieve traction for his polished automobile.
Finally, the Model T lurched onto the road, nearly sideswiping Mrs. Cleveland on its pebble-spitting departure. As it did, the driver, an affluent brick manufacturer, fantasized about barbecuing the ungainly critter on his backyard spit. Mrs. C brayed Aw-aw-awwwwww at him.
“You sure taught him a lesson,” RG said. He’d ridden over to Nick, who stood at the finish line scratching his bird’s chest. Waldo joined them on his ostrich, pocket watch in antsy hands.
“She did, anyway,” Nick said. “That fella will be seeing her in his nightmares for the next month.”
“And forgetting to tell his wife,” RG added. “Henry Ford may soon be receiving hostile correspondence recommending he add horsepower to the next version.”
“Don’t think Ford will be sweating too much,” Nick said. “Read the other day we have more motorcars in town than any other city. There’s thousands.”
“More than New York? Or ’Frisco?” said RG. “I don’t believe it.”
“No, per person, or something mathematical. Point is we better relish this time while we can. Next thing we know ostriches and, heck, horses will be nostalgia. Not that I’m opposed to progress.”
Waldo twirled his pocket watch by its chrome chain around his finger and reversed direction in a wider orbit. “I hate,” he said, “interrupting this illuminating dialogue about the course of civilization, fellas, but perhaps we can request our local universities to pursue it.”
“And why’s that?” Nick was chomping a piece of straw he extracted from behind his ear, grinning that cheeky way of his.
“Because we best be heading out. Check the time. You know the sticklers these new owners are about punctuality. Neither RG nor I are favored sons like you
, Nick. Heck, we’re barely management.”
“Oh, please,” Nick said with a laugh.
“My stomach is going to be rumbling all day on account of your lunchtime gallops,” RG said with a titter. “Going to be crackers and a stale apple, if I get lucky.”
“You’re already lucky, if you catch me,” Nick said, stroking Mrs. C’s fleecy side. “Look where you are. I won’t be too much longer myself, in case anyone asks.”
“Can’t resist a gander this close, can ya?” RG said. “You chose the wrong profession.”
“I have plans. Now hit it, goldbrickers. We’re coming back next week, ready for all takers.”
Soon enough his friends and their mounts, Mr. Mahatma Gandhi and Maggie, were receding south past upper Busch Gardens, toward the woodlands. Once the Raymond Hotel, a sprawling, European-style hotel on old Bacon Hill was in view, they’d be within shouting distance of Cawston.
Nick swept the bangs from his eyes and inhaled the buttercup nectar in the air. He looped his arm around Mrs. Cleveland’s neck, which alerted her he was hopping on and not to buck. “One more stop, girl. Then it’s home. Extra grain for you tonight.”
They plunged north through timbered landscape that, from a leasable hot-air balloon, resembled a Christmas tree with a crooked trunk. No out-of-state millionaire with an estate on the bluff yet commandeered this scruffy part of the Arroyo Seco as a passion project. Not yet. The branches from the tangle of wild trees here were so densely intersected it could’ve been midnight at noon.
In the dark, you needed hometown soil in your blood to know that the trail paralleled Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena’s glitziest residential street. It bisected roads with English-Lord-sounding names—Arlington, Barclay, Bradford—a few hundred feet above the ravine to the east. Here, California Street segued to Arbor Street, Arbor to Clay Street.
