California Gold

by John Jakes

  Mack hated to see it. He hated for living things to die. Besides, the grove struck him as a suitable picture of his marriage.

  36

  HE SLEPT IN THE office again that night. Next day Carla offered a half-hearted apology and asked him to come back to their bed. He did, but she refused his good-night embrace, and he slept on his side, turned away from her. At the end of the following week she packed and left to visit her father for several days.

  Meanwhile, Mack took the Santa Fe into Los Angeles. In his suite at the Pico House, he talked business with Potter. Then, on the second afternoon, he walked briskly to the Phillips Block at Spring and Franklin, where the Southern California Fruit Exchange kept offices in rooms 77 and 78.

  On the way he saw sign painters putting up new shingles for three doctors. He’d read an editorial in the Citrograph proudly proclaiming that California already had more doctors in proportion to its population than any other state—quite a contrast to Wyatt’s claim that doctors were few because no one sickened or died. Doctors wanted to practice here because they had so many patients; Otis and his cronies at the chamber of commerce brought them in by hawking the climate like a patent medicine. To potential new residents the chamber advertised Los Angeles as “the world’s greatest sanitarium for years to come.”

  In the rooms of the Exchange, about two dozen growers from the region gathered for a meeting. The only one Mack knew well was Clive Henley, who’d taken an early-morning train. The hottest topic of the afternoon was the cost of a citrus crate. The price had risen from 11 cents to 12 in the past year. Total production price of a crate of oranges from most groves, including Mack’s, was about 50 cents. If crate costs went higher, so would that figure, and no grower could afford it.

  “It’s the cost of box shook,” one grower said. “We’re helpless. We have to pay what the market demands.”

  “We wouldn’t if we had our own timber,” Mack said.

  “You mean the Exchange should go into lumbering?”

  “Exactly. We should own everything that’s necessary to produce a finished product.” There were mutters and scornful exclamations, almost universal disapproval of the radical idea. Mack shrugged. “Well, you gentlemen think whatever you want. This morning I authorized my attorney to buy ten thousand acres of prime timber up in Lassen County. I’ll have my own shook supply in a year.”

  After the meeting, they crowded around him, wanting to know how the Exchange could make an arrangement.

  Mack and Clive Henley rode the early-evening local back to Riverside, discussing the new president-elect, McKinley. Mack and Clive were Republicans, and had voted for McKinley over Bryan; Clive and most other Riverside Republicans thought Mack far too liberal, however.

  Mack speculated about the coming title fight between Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons, a serious contender; it was scheduled for March, at Carson City, Nevada. They talked also about Cuba and the nationalist revolt against Spain; both Hearst and his New York rival, Joe Pulitzer, were ardent supporters of the rebels. Many critics flayed Hearst for war-mongering for the sake of circulation.

  And inevitably, being Californians, they discussed the railroad. Only a few days earlier, Congress had settled the debt issue, actually handing Huntington a huge defeat by refusing cancellation or remission of the debt. Governor Jim Budd, a Democrat, had declared a state holiday in celebration.

  Clive, always more friendly to the SP and Santa Fe, resented this. He brought up the familiar arguments about the railroads creating prosperity for citrus growers by opening eastern markets.

  “But what does it have to do with the debt, Clive? Or the holiday? I sent Budd a telegram congratulating him.”

  Through all the talk, Mack had a feeling that Clive had something else on his mind. The Englishman wasn’t his usual relaxed and affable self. His mild gray eyes had a guarded look.

  The conductor announced Colton. Mack said, “We’ll be in Riverside soon. I think you’d better get down to the real topic.”

  The red rose straight up in Clive’s face. “Oh, God, I’m a terrible dissembler, aren’t I?”

  Mack smiled. “Yes, you are. Come on, what is it?”

  “Well, ah, I was asked—appointed, actually—to speak to you. Because we’re friends. Teammates—”

  “You said appointed. By whom?”

  “Oh, some of the other chaps—growers …Riverside.” It had a strangled sound. Clive popped his monocle out and polished it furiously on his white-linen sleeve.

  “What are you supposed to discuss?”

  “Your, ah, labor force.”

  Now Mack began to understand. “My Chinese?”

  “Yes, old fellow, exactly. You know of the, ah, trouble four years ago?”

  “I know that mobs of fruit tramps—white men—threatened and intimidated a lot of the Chinese in the groves because they wanted their jobs.”

  “Indeed, but it was worse than that. Celestials were robbed in the streets, beaten, driven out of their little houses and shops. A mob burned the Chinatown in Redlands. We had state militia on patrol, and two hundred special deputies. We don’t want to go back to that sort of thing.”

  “No,” Mack said. And waited.

  Clive coughed and wriggled in his seat. “But Mack—it’s the consensus that white men deserve the jobs in your groves also.”

  “Because they’re white, or because they’ll work for half of what a Chinese worker demands?”

  “Yes, there’s that—seventy-five cents a day and board against a dollar forty or fifty is a significant difference, old boy. The greasers and those half-breed Indian blokes, they’ll accept the lower wages too.”

  “I want the best workers, not the cheapest. The Chinese and Japanese are born agriculturists. Look at the Orange County boglands a few years ago—nothing there but drifter camps and poor people digging tule roots because they couldn’t afford potatoes. Then a couple of enterprising farmers hired some Chinese to experiment with celery growing. Now they ship thousands of carloads of celery out of the bogs every year. Land that was fifteen dollars an acre goes for five hundred and six hundred dollars. The Japanese worked the same kind of miracles with California asparagus, cantaloupes, lettuce, sugar beets. Orientals have a touch, a feel for the earth and for growing things. I want workers with that touch.”

  “But when you pay high wages, it’s bad for the rest of us. It leads to agitation and unrest. Perhaps we will be forced to pay more…”

  “Hire anyone you want, Clive, and pay them anything you can get away with. I’ll stick with the men I’ve got.”

  “But my friend, I told you that this isn’t merely my position. I’m stating it for the entire community of Riverside orchardists.”

  “You mean I’m out there alone?”

  “Yes, nearly,” Clive said with a hangdog smile.

  “Tell me this. If I refuse to change my ways, will it cost me your friendship?”

  This released a gush. “Oh, my dear chap, no. I only spoke with the utmost reluctance, at the insistence of the group. We remain friends always. Actually, I thought I might be doing you a service. There are still fruit tramps in the district from time to time—”

  “Yes, I’ve seen them camped along the roads.”

  “They’re hungry. They might not be inclined to accept your position peaceably. Then of course there’s Blas.”

  “ ’Fonso Blas, the contractor?”

  “Yes, he called on me.”

  “And me. It was over a year ago. I threw him out.”

  “Blas called on me last week. He’s very intolerant of you. He suggested that matters might, ah, degenerate into a renewal of the trouble of ’93.”

  Clive Henley was pleading with his eyes, his posture, his whole earnest gentlemanly demeanor.

  God, I don’t need this, Mack thought. “Sorry, Clive—the answer’s no. As for Blas—I don’t like him. Nobody threatens me.

  In his office on a Saturday in late February, Mack wrote an enthusiastic letter to the president
of the Los Angeles Litho Company, praising the company’s art department and placing an order for a crate label, to be printed by chromolithography, from stone plates, in six colors. After struggling to find a name for his citrus and an illustration idea, and rejecting everything that came to mind, he’d woken with an idea at 3 A.M. two weeks before. He’d had a terrible, loud fight with Carla over her drinking and general indifference before bed and in the middle of that miserable night, the perfect label design had popped into his head.

  A gaudy watercolor rendering of it lay near the guidebook. It showed an old California prospector, bearded, tough, and slyly smiling, offering succulent oranges in a miner’s pan. The label said:

  CALGOLD

  BRAND WASHINGTON NAVELS

  How often did good ideas come out of bad times? He didn’t know. But the label was perfect.

  He quickly finished the letter. Later, he was expecting Swampy for one of his rare overnight visits.

  Hellman came down by train from the ranch on the Santa Clara. A hired rig awaited him at the Riverside depot. His son-in-law had offered to meet him but Swampy said no; wealth conferred the benefit of independence, and Swampy enjoyed it. He did, however, always travel with his S&W, his Jesse James pistol, in his gladstone bag. California was still full of wild cowboys, sinister greasers, yahoos, and other undesirables.

  A beautiful white cattleman’s hat shaded Swampy’s eyes against the winter sunshine. His white suit, custom-made and brand new last Thursday, already showed stains and wrinkles. He slowed the buggy horse to a walk as he approached Mack’s boundary stone on the left side of the road. A lot of Chinese were hard at work in the groves. Industrious little buggers, Swampy thought. He relished the sight of industry, especially industry that enriched an owner.

  About fifty yards ahead, on some wooded land to the right side, he saw something less pleasing: a bunch of yahoos, twenty or thirty of them, camped among eucalyptus trees. A scrawl of smoke from their cook fire stained the sky. Lounging by the fire or sleeping under dirty blankets, they all had the same ragged, unshaven appearance.

  As Swampy’s rig approached, three of them strolled down to the road shoulder. Directly opposite, at the end of a windbreak, several Chinese were putting up ladders to prune the trees.

  Swampy itched his lumpy nose. He didn’t like the look of these yahoos, especially the three pointing and making remarks about the Chinese. The workers paid no attention, two of them scrambling up ladders with pruning saws.

  As he clucked to the nag to speed up the buggy, one of the tramps by the road picked up a stone and lobbed it to the other side, hard. It whacked a ladder and startled the Chinese climbing up. The man almost fell, but caught himself.

  “Go ahead, jump, you little bastard,” one of the tramps yelled. “Maybe you’ll break your neck.”

  His two companions laughed. One of them pulled out a big clasp knife and, after unfolding its four-inch blade, began to scrape under his nails, in a way the Chinese couldn’t miss. Swampy’s buggy drew abreast and he gave the yahoos a stare. He could smell their dirty clothes. Phew.

  The tramp with the knife said, “What the hell are you looking at, grandpa?” The long blade caught the sun and flashed.

  Swampy halted the buggy abruptly. “You, mister. Stay away from my son-in-law’s property.”

  “You mean that grove? We ain’t on it. We’re over here. This is free land.”

  Hearing the exchange, other tramps drifted toward them. Swampy pulled his gladstone closer with his boot. But they made no further move toward him and he shook the reins. Soon he was through the iron gate and into the winding drive.

  When Swampy arrived, Mack wanted to show him the label. But the old German had other things on his mind: a glass of peppermint schnapps, and the fruit tramps.

  “Ugly-looking bunch, Johnny.”

  “They’ve been camped there for three days.” Mack crossed the living room and found the schnapps. He hated the stuff but he kept it for his father-in-law.

  “What the hell they want?”

  “One of them came over and asked for work. I told him I had all the men I needed. He made some threats. Until they move on, I keep a man on guard by the main road every night. With a rifle, to sound an alarm.”

  “Coming out of Riverside, I seen a bunch of guards in the groves. No rifles, though.”

  “Those are posted to keep the tourists out, so they don’t steal souvenirs from the trees. The tourists are worse than a plague of locusts. I don’t have that problem up here in Arlington Heights. Not yet.”

  “Those yahoos got some special reason to pick on you?”

  “They hate the Chinese. And I had a run-in with a labor contractor whose services I wouldn’t use. I expect he spoke a word or two when this bunch drifted into town. Let’s forget about it. Bring your drink to the kitchen.”

  “What’s for supper?”

  “Bonito.”

  “That’s a mackerel, ain’t it?”

  “Tuna. Brought up from the coast yesterday.”

  “Will I like it?”

  “You better. I’m going to cook it.”

  Swampy chuckled and waddled after him, sloshing the schnapps around in his glass. Some of it stained his white suit cuff, but he didn’t notice.

  “Where’s Carla?”

  “Napping.”

  “She going to eat with us?”

  “I don’t know,” Mack replied in a flat voice. Swampy sniffed. He smelled trouble on another front. In this case it didn’t surprise him.

  They dined at the long refectory table, Mack at the head, Swampy at the foot, Carla between them. Overhead thirty-six candles burned in a great ring chandelier of hammered iron suspended by chains. It was a hundred years old, and the only fixture in the house not equipped for gas and electricity. Mack liked its mellow light; it gave the vast cool room the air of an ancient cloister.

  Carla drank claret from a long-stemmed glass, but left her food untasted. Her father, on the other hand, ripped through his plate of fish in a few lip-smacking bites.

  “Good, Johnny. Carla, you should take a cooking lesson from your husband.”

  His daughter regarded him with scornful amusement. “Really? Why? We have servants.”

  “Yah, but it’s a woman’s duty to cook.”

  “Leave me alone, Swampy.”

  The nickname goaded him. He leaned toward Mack. “She never wanted to learn. Can’t even break eggs, can she?”

  Mack didn’t answer. Looking venomous, Carla pushed her chair back and walked to the sideboard, draining the contents of her glass before she got there.

  Mack rapped his knife on his plate. “Don’t you think four’s enough?” His voice was controlled—not angry, just tight.

  “I’ll decide what’s enough, thanks.” She helped herself.

  Swampy gave Mack a dismayed look, then sat back while one of the Mexican girls glided up to serve another piece of the grilled fish.

  “You know, Johnny, I’m worried about those yahoos. They look mean. A businessman like you, he don’t need that kind of trouble. Wouldn’t it be easier to hire a few, give ’em some dirty work, and calm things down? You could make room by firing some of the Chinks.”

  “My men don’t like that word. I don’t use it.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Swampy said, rolling his eyes. He grabbed his mug of beer and swigged noisily, then wiped foam off his mouth. “I don’t get you sometimes. Why do you mess with those little yellow buggers if everybody hates ’em?”

  Mack tried to control his annoyance. “I mess with them, Otto, because they’re fine workers. I’m not going to replace them with white riffraff just because someone tells me to. The groves would go to hell. Besides, it wouldn’t be right.”

  Mack was all too aware of Carla still at the sideboard, drinking with her back to them.

  “I still don’t get it,” Swampy said, slurping more beer. “Why are you all the time so worried about the underdog?”

  “I guess because I was born on
e. Weren’t you?”

  “Yah, sure, but I come up in the world. That changes things.”

  They were saved from argument by a distracting noise outside. A second later Mack recognized it as Hellburner Johnson, shouting. The Texan burst into the room. Mack saw his Peacemaker tied on his leg, a sheen of panicky sweat on his face.

  “Tramps all over the place, Mack. They set fire to the barracks.”

  The Shopkeeper’s Colt hung on a peg in his office. He ran there, snatched it from the holster, and stuffed it in his shirt.

  Out in front of the house, Johnson was already in the saddle. Mack jumped up behind him and Johnson booted the horse down the steep road. Mack smelled the sweetness of the trees, and the sharper tang of smoke. He clutched Johnson’s waist and cursed when he saw the distant firelight.

  “Why wasn’t there a warning shot?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened to the guard?”

  “Quit yelling at me. I don’t know. Hang on.”

  Johnson reined the horse into a turn. They galloped along a side road, a dirt road beside the windbreak. At the road’s end Mack saw milling men silhouetted against a huge fire. Flames already consumed half of the two-story barracks.

  From the end of the building not yet burning, the fruit tramps dragged struggling Chinese into the yard. Jolting along the road, Mack watched two tramps shove a Chinese to his knees. The one behind held him and cut off his queue, while the other kicked him in the belly and groin. He cried out, and the tramp behind kicked him three times in the small of his back. The Chinese toppled over.

  Mack pulled the Colt from his shirt. All over the yard, the tramps had the workers outnumbered and at their mercy. They beat and kicked them. Other white men dashed from the barracks with the workers’ belongings and flung them into the fire.

  Johnson reined the horse so sharply Mack almost fell off. A Chinese man ran out of the burning section with his quilted coat afire, disappearing toward the road, blazing in the dark like an earthbound comet. Mack jumped down and hit the ground running.

  He headed for a tramp holding a worker’s throat with one hand while he stabbed him with the other. Mack stepped side-ways for a better shot, aimed hastily, and fired. The tramp screamed and grabbed his leg. The Chinese man ran away yelling, the black thorn of the knife bobbing in his arm.