California Gold

by John Jakes

  “Then you’ll stay around here for a while?” Mack had asked.

  “I might. In many ways I prefer it to the City. The climate’s glorious. I can’t say that about the men. Pack of boring farmers. With a few exceptions.”

  The subject of oil came up now. Mack was interested to hear that there were tar pools on Swampy Hellman’s ranch in the Santa Clara Valley. He’d given a development lease to the Pennsylvania wildcatter Stewart.

  “Oil’s filthy stuff, and it attracts filthy people,” Carla said. “Go into Santa Paula and you might think you were in the wildest part of the West. Shootings every night. The men are all dirty and illiterate, with the look of desperadoes—”

  “Whereas in San Solaro,” Wyatt said, waving his glass and spilling some, “we are genteel.”

  “And drunk,” she said.

  “Drunk,” he agreed.

  She refilled her glass. To the top.

  The kerosene lamps were trimmed low, lending the room and the three diners a forgiving softness. It was impossible for Mack to keep his eyes away from Carla. She was rounder and heavier than he remembered—an erotic heaviness, broad-hipped, big-breasted. A perfect Victorian woman, at least physically. The more she drank, though, the more she behaved like a dockhand. She matched Wyatt/June glass for glass.

  “If the country around here is so rough,” Mack said, “is it safe for you to drive here alone?”

  “If anyone bothers me, I tell them I’m Hellman’s daughter. If that should ever fail, I have something in my travel bag that won’t. A Remington vest-pocket twenty-two-caliber. I’m an expert shot. Papa taught me. So be careful, Chance.”

  Gazing at Mack in a way that unsettled him, she toasted him, then gulped her wine. Red droplets dotted her gold waistcoat like bloodstains. She sighed and leaned back.

  “God, too much food. A positive orgy.”

  “It was a big day,” Wyatt said. He staggered to the ticket window and took a cigar box from the drawer. “Three lots. Got to sell the rest by the end of the year. Stick the suckers with the deeds, take the cash down payments, and get out.”

  Mack pressed his palms on his knees under the table, trying not to get upset. Wyatt fumbled with the box lid. “Boom’s about to hit bottom.”

  Carla licked the rim of her goblet and glanced at Mack. It aroused him all over again.

  “In town they say it already has, June.”

  Wyatt blinked at her, shrugged, produced an enormous dark-green cigar, and struck a match on the stove. He blew a cloud of smoke over the table and dropped the burning match. Mack stepped on it.

  “June, that is absolutely vile,” Carla said.

  Wyatt scratched his groin. A bit of food still clung to a corner of his mouth. “Cuban. The finest.”

  “It still smells like burning grass and dog shit.”

  Mack’s face tightened. Carla was speaking more and more sloppily, like Wyatt. It was hard to tell who was drunker. Hellman had said alcohol made her crazy.

  “Put it out,” she said.

  Wyatt’s anger boiled up, but only for a moment. He gave her a low bow—he nearly fell over—and stabbed the cigar into the glass she’d just refilled for herself. “Anything for you, sweet.” He caressed her arm, his knuckles pressing into the swell of her breast. “Anything at all.”

  “June, you prick, you’re sodden.” She turned her glass over and poured the whole mess on his littered plate. Wine ran onto the table and dripped to the floor. Mack had never heard such language from a woman. Perhaps rich girls were excepted from the rules. But, strangely, it made her more desirable—at least when he was full of wine.

  Wyatt bent to nuzzle her neck. “Carla, be nice. This is a special evening.”

  Her lips pursed, as if tasting something bad. She pushed him away. “Don’t do that. I’m tired.”

  She slipped out of her chair, avoiding his hand, and went to the open window with a rolling, tipsy step, the whole withdrawal conveying not anger so much as boredom. There was emotional white water churning up, and maybe a storm. Mack squelched his jealousy and cleared his throat.

  “I’ve got to be up early to catch the train to town. Thanks for the dinner, Wyatt. Glad we had a successful day.”

  Wyatt fell into his chair, cravat undone, strings of raven hair falling over his forehead. He kicked out his lanky legs and gave Mack the barest of nods, his eyes staying on the guest indifferently gazing out the window.

  “Miss Hellman—a pleasure. Good night. Perhaps I’ll see you again…”

  She turned quickly, all her drunken sloppiness seeming to slough away. Above Wyatt’s nodding head, her eyes seized Mack’s again. Wide, dark blue, ardent…Nellie was forgotten.

  “I’m certain of it, Mack. Dream sweetly.”

  Outside, he closed the door and leaned against it, exhaling with relief. He hated leaving Carla, but he was glad to be out of that drunken scene. As he rubbed his sleepy eyes, he heard their voices.

  “Would you leave your hands off me, June? My head’s spinning. I’m tired.”

  “Tired, tired—is that how you repay your kind host?”

  “Don’t whine, June. Whining bores me to death.”

  “You’re a fucking stuck-up bitch sometimes.”

  “Shut up. I want to go to bed.”

  “By yourself?”

  A long silence. “Pour me the rest of that lovely wine. Then we’ll see.”

  Deeply troubled, Mack stumbled away into the dark.

  20

  IN SPITE OF THE depressed market, they signed their agreement in Newhall. The legal hack said:

  “Bear in mind, Chance, this document gives you no rights except as stipulated. You have no voice in decisions affecting San Solaro. No access to the books and other confidential papers of the corporation. No bank privileges. If we’re clear on that, please sign here.”

  Twenty percent of nothing is still nothing, Mack thought. He signed anyway.

  After selling three lots in one day, Wyatt couldn’t close on any more, couldn’t even come near.

  Prospects grew scarcer. Mack doubled his effort in Los Angeles, calling on twice the number of agents, offering twice the number of tips to porters and waiters. But fewer tourists arrived on the trains, and those who came didn’t buy real estate, even at distress prices. Platted towns and subdivisions began to disappear, along with their developers. Prices continued to fall. Wyatt’s outbursts of temper were directly proportional to the number of visitors Mack brought back. On days when there were none, he cursed and drank and broke things, and Mack stayed away from him.

  Nightmares plagued Mack again: the blizzard dream, and another, of Bao Kee lying dead in his arms while Bay Beauty sank. The wounds of his humiliation and defeat had healed, but the scars would stay forever.

  He slept four hours a night. An ambitious person couldn’t afford to lose more time than that. From 10 P.M. until 1 A.M., he studied all the San Solaro sales contracts; Wyatt had given him permission. He read chapters of a book on real estate law Wyatt kept on his desk but never opened. He wanted to know what the law required of a man who bought and sold property. He wanted to know some of the pitfalls. He learned.

  One bright October morning, Mack spied Swampy Hellman driving a buggy along Main Street in Los Angeles. On an impulse he hailed the old German, and Hellman nearly ran over three pedestrians in his haste to turn the buggy around.

  “Well, Johnny, what a surprise. I got a while till my appointment. I ain’t looking forward to it. Lawyers, phooey. To them and to most, I’m just a vein of gold waiting to be mined. Hop in, I’ll treat you to a lager.”

  “Mr. Hellman, it’s nine-thirty in the morning.”

  “So what? Beer in the morning aids digestion. I been drinking it for breakfast since I was seven. Don’t argue—get in.”

  At the uncrowded bar of Noonan’s Bird Cage, Hellman blew foam off his stein and scrutinized Mack. “They ran you out.”

  “Yes, but not permanently.”

  “Good for you, Johnny.
You making any money down here?”

  “A little,” he lied.

  Hellman sighed. “Well, it’s good to be ambitious, but I’ll tell you, some problems money won’t touch. It won’t relieve gas or reform a daughter. Carla’s in Southern California, did you know?”

  “Yes, I heard that,” Mack said carefully.

  “I wish she’d leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, she’s got herself in another mess. She’s running around with two, maybe three men.”

  Mack paled.

  “I don’t know who they are, except one, but he’s the one I worry about,” Swampy said. “Buddy Beavis. Lionel Beavis, the lumber king. Know him?”

  Mack shook his head.

  “He’s got a face like a flounder, but downstairs—the part that keeps the ladies happy—they say he’s a regular Schwert Kämpfer. A Mr. Swordsman, if you get the drift. Buddy wouldn’t give Carla a tumble at first. So naturally she had to chase him. Damn little fool—Buddy Beavis is a married man. They went off to some backwoods lodge for a few nights but they weren’t careful and somebody saw ’em. It was a rotten scandal. Still simmering.”

  “He’s in lumber, you said. Where—Oregon?”

  “Nah, just his trees are up there. His papa’s trees. Buddy lazes around in San Diego. They say he’s still loony about her. She can have that effect on gents.”

  Mack stared into his beer.

  “Of course by now Carla’s had her fun,” Swampy went on, “so she cares for Buddy about as much as a squashed bug. If you see my daughter, do yourself a favor. Cross the street. Quick.”

  On an afternoon in November he retreated to the San Solaro orange grove to answer Nellie’s latest letter. As the shadows lengthened, he sat with his back against a Joshua tree, and from time to time glanced up to watch Wyatt leading three prospects through the tract. Wyatt was walking slowly, without his usual energy. Earlier, Mack had listened to part of Wyatt’s sales talk. He droned on by rote, and his own indifference fed that of the prospects, who were a sad, cheap lot to start with. Another bad day.

  Frowning, Mack concentrated on writing his letter.

  I keep coming back to one bothersome question. This land isn’t worth much, but obviously it cost something. Where did he find the money?

  The sound of thudding hooves and rattling wheels snapped his head up again. There came Carla’s phaeton, billowing dust behind.

  She drove fast, as usual. She spied Mack sitting up among the Joshua trees, waved, and slowed down. Mack hid the unfinished letter in his shirt.

  Carla tied the horse to a lot stake, ducked under the rope, and ran up the hill. She wore a smart riding habit, white cambric trousers and jacket with full sleeves. Her hair was swept back inside a gold scarf, a duplicate of the one he kept in the guidebook. Deep shadows beneath her eyes suggested nights without sleep.

  But she was spirited and smiling as she hurried toward him. He felt both excited and wary—Carla had a way of mixing him up like that.

  “What are you doing here? Wyatt said you never came over during the day.”

  “I made up an errand. I ate lunch in the tent. You weren’t there.” It was pointed, heavy with sexual intent.

  “I was doing an extra chore—repairing a hole in the depot roof. It rains in whether or not we have prospects.”

  “Well, your partner is positively sullen today,” she went on.

  “And every day. Business is terrible.”

  Her eyes darted past him, checking for something. He turned. Wyatt and the prospects were walking the bank of the canal, almost out of sight. Carla relaxed and stepped into the scanty shade of a tree.

  “Since you’re so reticent, Mr. Chance, I’m forced to be forward. I made up an errand for a daytime visit because I can’t exactly slip out to your tent when I’m here at night. If Wyatt found out, it would cause a dreadful row.”

  “Are you sparing me, or yourself?”

  She liked the retort. “Both of us, my sweet,” she said merrily. “It’s time you and I were alone together. Where can we do it safely?”

  Mack’s heart raced off like one of Stanford’s blooded horses. “Carla—”

  “Let’s choose a day.” Her voice was husky all at once. “Instead of going to Los Angeles you can drive over to Ventura County. You can say you didn’t find any prospects.”

  Had she acted like this with Beavis, the lumber king? He snapped at her. “Carla, no. Forget it.”

  She reacted with surprise, then gave him a vicious smile. “Oh, did I misjudge you? Have you been playacting all this time? Do you have a hidden aversion to women?”

  Mack’s expression indicated the remark was a mistake. Hastily she stepped back, then held out an appeasing hand. “I’m sorry—that was cheap. That was awful of me. I just don’t understand this…reluctance, when I’ve come here virtually pleading…” Her voice trailed away.

  Mack said, “I can explain my reluctance, as you call it.” He reached for an orange. It was wrinkled, and had lost its vivid color. Time to replace it—another of his jobs. He tapped the fruit. “This belongs to Wyatt. As far as I can tell, right now so do you.”

  “That’s for me to say, thank you.”

  “No, you’re lovers. You don’t keep it secret.”

  “Occasional lovers. I’m tired of him. He can be charming, but he’s very irresponsible. Lately he’s been a boor. He seems to feel he’s never obliged to control his temper, not under any circumstances.”

  Again she looked toward the distant figures by the canal.

  Screened by a Joshua tree, she stepped to Mack, her breasts touching him through the white cambric. “Whereas you, my dear, are a man in almost perfect control. I intend to break that control. It won’t be unpleasant, I promise…”

  He wanted to kiss her but somehow found it in himself to push her away. “If I’m going to poach on another man’s territory, I’ll decide when and where.”

  “You don’t want me as badly as I want you?”

  “Not under these conditions, no.”

  She colored suddenly, and pulled her right hand back as if to hit him. But she didn’t deliver the blow, instead forcing a chilly smile. “You have a very peculiar and old-fashioned code of honor, Mr. Chance. I put you on notice—it’ll do you no good. I admire you intensely. You may be poor now, but you won’t be forever, because you go after what you want.”

  He searched for signs of coquetry, insincerity, but saw none.

  Now she pressed the attack. “I’m like you: I go after what I want. And if someone denies it to me, that only redoubles my determination to get it. And I always do get it, my love.” She caressed his cheek. “Always. Fair warning?”

  She ran down the hill to the phaeton, and Mack watched it speed away. Stupid damn fool, turning down a woman that beautiful. A woman who doesn’t scorn a man’s ambition…

  He couldn’t do anything else—that was the problem. With a curse, he seized one of the oranges on the Joshua tree and yanked it so hard the cord broke.

  Daybreak. December. Yellowish light was seeping into the gray over the eastern hills. Mack’s breath plumed as he checked the horse’s bit. The secondhand wool coat he’d bought in town was too light.

  The depot door opened and Wyatt stumbled out barefoot, hugging himself. His two-day-old beard, black stubble, marred his good looks, and his purple satin robe, its elbows worn through, hung on his narrow frame. At least he didn’t seem truculent. It was too early.

  “God, winter’s in the air.” He slapped his ribs and hugged himself again.

  Mack climbed to the wagon seat. “I thought it never got this cold in Southern California. Never any danger of frost to kill the oranges and lemons—”

  “You’ve been reading that book again. You should know better.” Wyatt grinned, sleep-bleary but cheerful. Mack thought the mood propitious for questions, but he didn’t ask the important one immediately.

  “Wyatt, I’ve always wondered—how much did you pay for this land?”

&
nbsp; “Sixteen dollars an acre.”

  “Eighteen hundred acres—that’s close to thirty thousand dollars. Where’d you get that kind of money?”

  Wyatt sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Borrowed it from Carla’s father.”

  “Otto Hellman? You never mentioned that.”

  “For a reason. A lot of people despise Hellman. Having his name associated with San Solaro could hurt the project. Hellman’s a reasonable man, though. When I stated the situation, he understood, and we agreed to keep his interest quiet. If it ever does get out, I’ll just deny it.” Though still friendly, his tone sharpened. “That satisfy you, partner?”

  “Sure,” Mack said, though he was still puzzling over it. The sweetly reasonable Hellman just described didn’t sound like the Swampy he knew. Was Wyatt really so persuasive?

  “Get going or you’ll miss the train.” Wyatt slapped the snorting horse lightly. “Bring back some warm bodies.”

  “If there are any to be had.”

  Mack drove the canvas-topped wagon toward the arch. Light streaming across the eastern hills struck the wrought-iron sunburst, igniting a show of fiery color. His eye lingered on it.

  That sun isn’t rising, it’s sinking. Fast.

  In the deserted lobby of the Pico House, a Mexican boy on a ladder was hanging small tempera-painted piñatas from the beams. Christmas—Mack had forgotten.

  He found Reilley in the steamy kitchen.

  “Nobody,” Reilley said. “Not for three days now.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “You think I don’t know it?” the old waiter said, sadly polishing his spectacles.

  “The waiter called it,” Mr. Swifty Southwood said, squaring a stack of pamphlets on the counter and blowing dust from another stack. “I can’t give these things away. The golden bubble’s burst—” A pouf with his fingers demonstrated.

  “Thanks anyway, Swifty.” Mack put on his broad-brimmed hat and started out.

  “Don’t bother coming around next week. I’m taking the wife and heading up to Vancouver. We’ll feed on my brother a while. I’m starving to death in this town.”