California Gold

by John Jakes

  Hellburner Johnson listened to the storm.

  A single shaded electric light sharply defined a circle in the midst of his darkened sitting room. Johnson had slicked his crinkly gray hair with pomade and put on his best blue cotton traveling shirt and string tie. A folded coat, dark-blue cord, lay on his leather valise at the edge of the circle.

  Things were in a fix in the household. Someone had spread the word about Mack hitting Jim; evidently Jim hadn’t kept quiet about it. Meanwhile Mack had gone out in a fury. Johnson had been waiting for him in the rain-lashed house since dinnertime.

  He sat by the light, trying once more, to concentrate on the handwritten foolscap sheet given him by his friend London. Knowing Johnson’s love of travel, the young writer had copied some thoughts he wanted to use in a future story.

  Don’t you sometimes feel you’d die if you didn’t know what’s beyond those hills, and what’s beyond the other hills behind those hills? All the places of the Earth are just waiting for me to come and see them.

  That surely fit his own nature, and his present mood, Johnson reflected. He read the passage again. Lightning washed the windows. As the thunder quieted, he heard a familiar tread on the stair.

  He folded the foolscap and tucked it in his shirt pocket to save. Then he reached for his cord coat and what lay under it.

  “Jim?” Mack tapped softly. “Jim, answer me.” He tapped again. Water oozed from the soles of his shoes and his cuffs were soggy. He’d wandered hatless, collar up, hands in pockets, bumping along in the downpour, trying to figure out how to correct his relationship with his son. That he had to correct it, and drastically, he no longer doubted.

  The boy didn’t answer the repeated knocks, so he tried the handle.

  Locked.

  A footstep startled him. Johnson ambled out of the shadow between little electric wall lamps. Their shades focused the light downward, leaving great dark spaces. Mack immediately noticed his partner’s slicked hair, fresh shirt, black string tie.

  “Leave him be, Mack.”

  Johnson’s tone stunned him. “What?”

  “I said leave the boy be until you can treat him right. I heard what you did, and I talked to Jim about it ’fore supper. Tried to make him feel better. Couldn’t do it.”

  “I slapped him, I shouldn’t have—”

  “That’s true, you shouldn’t have. Tannin’ a youngster’s bottom is one thing. But what you did—that’s downright mean. You better not do it again.”

  Mack stared into the leaf-green eyes and saw a clear reflection of how far he’d drifted. Putting an arm around Johnson, he drew him away from Jim’s door. He felt weak and beaten. He was simply not used to feeling either way.

  “What does he want from me, Hugh?”

  “Ain’t so hard to figure out. He just wants a father. One who ain’t so damn busy all the time with his ranches and his oil and his real estate and his reform committees. And his women. And his personal feud with some snob lawyer. Are you and Fairbanks two snotty kids fightin’ over the marbles in the schoolyard? You sure as shit act like it sometimes.”

  Mack stopped on the stair overlooking the hall. Above, sheets of rain battered the skylight. He felt a piercing guilt, a sense of being unmasked as a criminal. In a few plain words, Johnson had stripped down the long quarrel with Fairbanks and put it in a ridiculous light.

  The right light.

  He hated to admit that, and so he dodged around it. “You’re all duded up.”

  “Goin’ away again.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Hell, Mack, you ain’t around long enough for anybody to tell you anything. Wouldn’t listen if they did. I’m catchin’ the midnight for the East, then maybe a cattle boat to France. Lately, I don’t like livin’ here.”

  He stepped in front of his partner and jabbed him with a finger. “I’ll tell you this much ’fore I go. You’re still my friend, but in some ways you’re sure-God messed up. You said some while back that you didn’t want to raise no hothouse lily. Then you turned right around and started raisin’ Jim exactly that way after he got hurt. Go off and get this damn stupid race out of your system—”

  “I’ll stay in San Francisco this weekend. I’ll telephone Fairbanks that I can’t—”

  “Don’t bother,” Johnson said with a wave. “Jim don’t want to talk to you right now. He’ll cool down by the time you come back, I reckon. Then you can try to repair the damage. You better. You better start takin’ good care of that fine, smart boy or you’ll deal with me when I get back.”

  With an almost feminine delicacy, he touched and lifted the left side of his blue cord coat. The Peacemaker with the lone star embossed on the ivory grip jutted from his waistband. He dropped the coat again.

  “You want to fight with somebody, I can make old Fairbanks look like a beginner. Don’t ever give me cause. You got your work cut out around here. So long.”

  Little Jim heard the stutter of engines and flung himself out of bed. He’d hardly slept at all while the storm raged through the night. There was a worse one inside him.

  He ran barefoot to the bay window. Dawn lit the lace curtains. He raised them and leaned on the sill. Under his dark-blue eyes his cheeks were puffed and raw from crying.

  He watched the automobiles roll through the intersection of Sacramento and Mason, bound south. Four men with lunch pails pointed and commented from the curb. Pa drove the Silver Ghost, already mud-splashed. He’d raised the canvas top and Jim couldn’t see his face, only the shoulder of his duster and his right gauntlet, working the brake and gearshift.

  Emotions flew over the boy’s face; resentment, and pain; anger, and resignation—Tears welled again. He hated them almost as much as he hated Pa.

  The Cadillac followed the Silver Ghost through the intersection. Over San Francisco’s sturdy downtown buildings, billowy clouds caught the pink light of morning on their eastern curves. What a beautiful day in spring.

  A good day to do what he’d planned all night. Jim let the lace curtain fall. Head down, he stood motionless, then drew a deep breath, finding courage. He limped to the hulking mahogany chiffonier and opened a drawer, glancing briefly at the bolt on the hall door. Still secure—no one would bother him.

  He pulled out a favorite shirt and threw it on the bed. Another. Then a belt. Jeans. From the wardrobe he fetched his heaviest shoes. Then he thought of something, hurried to his study desk, and rummaged under his schoolbooks. He caressed the lacquer of the abacus. He loved the parade of fire-breathing dragons chasing themselves around the frame. Clicking a couple of the red and yellow beads, he swallowed and then rubbed his cheeks. He’d show Pa.

  He put the abacus with the clothes. Couldn’t leave his favorite possession behind, could he?

  58

  STATELY EUCALYPTUS SHADED THE drivers. They had parked their automobiles in a grove on the east side of the Coast Road, some twenty yards separating them; they wanted to check and adjust their machines in privacy.

  Fairbanks had brought the starter, an officious young man from the new City office of the fast-growing Automobile Club of Southern California. He was as dull as his brown suit, white shirt, detachable collar, and cuffs. He drove a dull brown Luverne.

  Here, on this Sunday, the Coast Road below Point Lobos was deserted. Slightly inland from the Pacific and twisty and deeply rutted, it wound away south toward the Tehachapis, north toward Monterey and their chosen finish line. It was 11 A.M. on a fresh April day.

  Mack sweated in his duster and driving cap. Yosh had the bonnet raised and was priming the induction pipe. “All right, Mist’ Chance.”

  “Petrol tank air valve open.” Mack liked to call out the steps in starting. It helped establish concentration. That was harder than usual today; all the way down from the City, his thoughts had repeatedly veered to Jim. And Johnson’s warning.

  He reached down for the hand pump and worked it vigorously, then watched the gauge needle rise. “Fuel pressure one p.s.i. One and a half p
.s.i. Flooding carburetor now. Turn her over, Yosh.”

  The Japanese man slammed and latched the bonnet and grabbed the starting crank at the lower front end. He grunted as he revolved the crank, counting aloud. When he said, “Eight,” Mack’s gloved hands darted.

  “Coil switched in. Magneto switched in. Advancing ignition.”

  The Silver Ghost had run a while this morning; she was warm, so advancing the ignition started her on the first try. He shivered and leaned back, ready.

  The starter waved to the drivers. “Gentlemen, if you please. We’re six and a half minutes late already.”

  Fairbanks shifted and drove his White steamer out of the grove, braking just this side of a line scribed across the road.

  Mack pulled the Silver Ghost alongside the White on the left, acknowledging Fairbanks with a brusque nod. Fairbanks returned an unusual, almost smug smile and a little wave.

  The starter held a blank cartridge pistol. “The rules of this contest are simple—”

  “Just one moment,” Fairbanks interrupted. “I’d like to wait for my rooting section. There.”

  Mack heard the auto approaching from the direction of Monterey. When it bounced over a low hill into view, he couldn’t immediately identify the make or the two people riding in it. It was painted bright yellow, and it bounced and banged toward them with a tinny sound. A man in livery was driving. Beside him sat a woman in a beige duster, large gauntlets more suitable for a man, and a stiff-billed cap held on by a golden-yellow veil tied in a bow with its ends flying over her shoulder.

  Can’t possibly be. The little auto, which he recognized as a Buffalo, now puttered up to the starting line, and then there was no mistake; it was Carla.

  She’d grown heavier, a half-moon of chin fat peeping from behind the veil bow, and her expression was bleary. The chauffeur pulled off the road, turned off the motor, and ran around to the passenger side. Carla put her yellow shoe on the running board and missed the edge. With a cry, she tumbled against the chauffeur. He wasn’t quick enough to catch her, and she landed on her knees in the dirt.

  The chauffeur babbled apologies while helping her up, but she wouldn’t take his hand, waving at it as if it were a pesky fly. Drunk. And this early. God help her.

  So far she hadn’t glanced his way. Deliberate, he imagined. Fairbanks got out of his car, and Mack felt obliged to do the same. The dull young man with the pistol studied a pocket watch with affected concern.

  Mack swept off his cap and goggles and, at that moment, Carla looked at him. “Good morning, Mack.” A smile curved her rouged mouth. It was a self-satisfied smile, like that of Fairbanks a while ago. What kind of private joke were they sharing?

  “Carla. This is a real surprise.”

  “I came all the way down from the hotel to wish you luck. But of course not as much as I’m wishing your opponent.” She linked her arm with the lawyer’s.

  So that was it. A new liaison. He hadn’t heard it mentioned in the City. But Swampy didn’t keep track of his daughter, and Mack didn’t keep track of Fairbanks’s private life. Fairbanks had always wanted Carla, but Mack wondered if he really knew what he was getting. He was surprised to feel a genuine, if brief, pang of sympathy for the lawyer. For himself, there was only a renewed relief, like that felt by an ex-prisoner whose freedom was all the sweeter because he could remember what it was like to be locked up.

  Mack hid his feelings under a polite smile and tried to banter. “If you’re cheering for Walter, you certainly don’t owe me any good wishes.”

  “Oh, my dear, there’s a lot that I owe you.”

  The hate in those deep-blue eyes chilled him. He put on his goggles and jumped up into the Silver Ghost. “Let’s go.”

  Carla flung her gloved hand around Fairbanks’s neck and kissed him. All the men saw her open her mouth. Fairbanks’s embrace seemed stiff, and Mack caught the gleam of the rolling white of an eye. The man of propriety, worried about the brazen kiss.

  Fairbanks extricated himself and turned away to shield a whispered conversation with Carla. Mack heard “my dear” and “at the hotel.” Then Fairbanks strode around the bonnet of the steamer and vaulted up.

  Carla stepped back and hit her heel on a half-buried stone. She’d have fallen again if the chauffeur hadn’t caught her. She favored him with a slurred thank-you, not bothering to look at him.

  The starter stepped in front of the auto bonnets shining in the sun. “You gentlemen are familiar with this road, I believe. A direct route running north and inland to the Del Monte. Total distance is ten miles. The first auto to reach the hotel and park in front wins. Drive off at the sound of my pistol. Do you have any questions?”

  “No,” Fairbanks said. He was driving bare-headed, with goggles. Carla blew him a kiss and waved with the energy of a sentimental schoolgirl. Fairbanks seemed to like that. He returned another jaunty wave, then began tapping his wheel with the fingers of both hands. It gave him a relaxed, almost playful air.

  “Can we get on with this?” Mack blurted out. Carla’s presence had unnerved him. He didn’t love her, but she had once belonged to him. This new affair was a kind of violation of that intimacy.

  He fiddled with his goggles. The elastic was too tight. Then he wiped a sweaty cheek. Yosh had been watching the byplay from the roadside. He knew the former Mrs. Chance by sight and reputation and he saw Mack’s agitation; his face said he was worried.

  A breeze ruffled Fairbanks’s auburn hair. As the starter bustled to one side, Mack poised his hands on the wheel and the outside gear lever. Then the pistol fired.

  Fairbanks rammed the steamer across the starting line and immediately veered left. “For God’s sake, Walter,” Mack yelled. The steamer struck and glanced off the high forward end of the Ghost’s front fender.

  The White pulled back to the center of the road, accelerating. Mack coughed in the dust, then raised himself off the seat, inevitably losing speed as he surveyed the damage. The fender bent downward, inches from the Dunlop tire. Silver metal menaced the rubber like a knife.

  So that was how Fairbanks wanted to play it. All right.

  Mack twisted the levers that loosened the top half of the wind screen and slammed the top section down, striking the lower part so hard the glass cracked. His cap blew off, and wind and dust particles attacked his exposed face. Somehow it wakened him and fixed his concentration as nothing had before.

  The great silver machine chased the green steamer through the empty countryside. The Monterey County highway hardly deserved the name. It twisted back and forth, and up and down like a corrugated washboard. Dust bathed the drivers and sweat on Mack’s face turned it to a thin runny mud.

  His speedometer showed thirty-nine miles per hour, the mileometer above it indicating that he’d gone two and a half miles. He roared along, one car length behind the steamer, the road too narrow for passing. Unexpected holes or shallow transverse ditches shook the cars and bounced the drivers like cowboys on wild broncs. Mack clenched his jaws so hard they hurt. Better that than an open mouth and a risk of broken teeth.

  The road abruptly leveled between grape arbors, and some Mexicans pruning vines gaped at the roaring autos. Suddenly, a sharp report sent Mack’s hand flying to the brake lever. The rear drums squealed and smoked. He narrowly avoided hitting the White as it careened off the road, its right rear tire punctured.

  Walter Fairbanks spat profanity into the wind and dust as Mack roared by.

  He settled back comfortably to cruise the rest of the way to the Del Monte. He could hardly believe he’d won so easily, but the flat would cost Fairbanks ten minutes, minimum, a loss impossible to make up.

  He stopped for a minute at a rickety stand to buy a large green apple from an old woman. He was filthy with dust, his hair blown every which way, but the sudden easy victory left him famished.

  The mileometer showed he’d raced six miles.

  A half-mile farther on, he drove out of a grove of wind-blasted cypress into a long blind bend, and when
he emerged from that, he suddenly confronted a wide pool of water in the road. If he slowed down to a safe speed, he’d lose momentum, but better that than breaking an axle. The decision was automatic. He braked and then hit the mud hole. He felt the engine strain, the front wheels spin—

  The Silver Ghost lurched forward out of the hole. The rear wheels splashed in, spun, then sank back, mired.

  Mack pounded the steering wheel. Why such a huge puddle? After the last storm, the whole route from the City to Monterey County had dried. Completely.

  Then he noticed a man in scabrous overalls sitting in a rocker in front of a shanty set back from the road on the left.

  The man wandered out to the Rolls-Royce, his eyes, little brown mud balls, assessing Mack with open amusement.

  “Looks like you’re stuck bad.”

  “Can you help me out? Have you got horses?”

  “Two mules, yonder in that shed.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “Sure,” the man said. “A hundred dollars.”

  “I thought you were a farmer, not Black Bart,” Mack snarled.

  “Too high for you? Stay there,” the man said with shrug. And Mack knew that Mother Nature wasn’t the one who had flooded the hole in the road in order to trap the unwary automobilist out for a scenic drive. Mack had read about similar tricks aimed at the rich and their toys.

  Seething, he said, “I’ve got the cash. Get the mules.”

  Hitching them took ten minutes. Bringing them to the road and attaching chains to the front axle took ten more. The farmer demanded his pay before he whipped up the team. Mack handed him a $100 note, and for the first time the farmer was impressed. He tucked the note in a dirty pocket of his overall and applied a quirt. “Giddap, General Grant. Giddap, General Lee.”

  Straddling the chains, Mack cranked the engine, then jumped in to restart it. With combined mule and horsepower, he surged the Ghost’s rear wheels out of the mud. The auto’s rear fenders were bent down as badly as the right front; now three twisted knives poised over the tires.