The Carpetbaggers
ROBBINS Harold
… And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men. They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone. They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises. They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities. They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun. And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had crammed all their worldly possessions. It was from these bags that they got their name. The Carpetbaggers. … And they strode the dusty roads and streets of the exhausted Southlands, their mouths tightening greedily, their eyes everywhere, searching, calculating, appraising the values that were left behind in the holocaust of war. … Yet not all of them were bad, just as not all men are bad. Some of them even learned to love the land they came to plunder and stayed and became respected citizens.
ROBBINS Harold
The Carpetbaggers
PREFACE
For PAUL GITLIN as a small appreciation of his friendship and guidance across the years
… And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men. They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone. They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises. They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities. They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun. And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had crammed all their worldly possessions. It was from these bags that they got their name. The Carpetbaggers.
… And they strode the dusty roads and streets of the exhausted Southlands, their mouths tightening greedily, their eyes everywhere, searching, calculating, appraising the values that were left behind in the holocaust of war.
… Yet not all of them were bad, just as not all men are bad. Some of them even learned to love the land they came to plunder and stayed and became respected citizens.
JONAS – 1925
Book One
1
THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO FALL FROM THE SKY INTO the white Nevada desert as Reno came up beneath me. I banked the Waco slowly and headed due east. I could hear the wind pinging the biplane's struts and I grinned to myself. The old man would really hit the roof when he saw this plane. But he wouldn't have anything to complain about. It didn't cost him anything. I won it in a crap game.
I moved the stick forward and came down slowly to fifteen hundred feet. I was over Route 32 now and the desert on either side of the road was a rushing blur of sand. I put her nose on the horizon and looked over the side. There it was, about eight miles in front of me. Like a squat, ugly toad in the desert. The factory.
CORD EXPLOSIVES
I eased the stick forward again and by the time I shot past, I was only about a hundred feet over it. I went into an Immelmann and looked back.
They were at the windows already. The dark Mexican and Indian girls in their brightly colored dresses and the men in their faded blue work clothes. I could almost see the whites of their frightened eyes looking after me. I grinned again. Their life was dull enough. Let them have a real thrill.
I pulled out at the top of the Immelmann and went on to twenty-five hundred feet. Then I hit the stick and dove right for the tar-pitched roof.
The roar from the big Pratt Whitney engine crescendoed and deafened my ears and the wind tore at my eyes and face. I narrowed my lids and drew my lips back across my teeth. I could feel the blood racing in my veins, my heart pounding and the juices of life starting up in my gut.
Power, power, power! Up here where the world was like a toy beneath me. Where I held the stick like my cock in my hands and there was no one, not even my father, to say me no!
The black roof of the plant lay on the white sand like a girl on the white sheets of a bed, the dark pubic patch of her whispering its invitation into the dimness of the night. My breath caught in my throat. Mother. I didn't want to turn away. I wanted to go home.
Ping! One of the thin wire struts snapped clean. I blinked my eyes and licked my lips. The salty taste of the tears touched my tongue. I could see the faint gray pebbles in the black tar of the roof now. I eased back on the stick and began to come out of the dive. At eight hundred feet, I leveled off and went into a wide turn that would take me to the field behind the factory. I headed into the wind and made a perfect three-point landing. Suddenly I was tired. It had been a long flight up from Los Angeles.
Nevada Smith was walking across the field toward me as the plane rolled to a stop. I cut the switches and the engine died, coughing the last drop of fuel out of its carburetor lungs. I looked out at him.
Nevada never changed. From the time I was five years old and I first saw him walking up to the front porch, he hadn't changed. The tight, rolling, bowlegged walk, as if he'd never got used to being off a horse, the tiny white weather crinkles in the leathery skin at the corner of his eyes. That was sixteen years ago. It was 1909.
I was playing around the corner of the porch and my father was reading the weekly Reno paper on the big rocker near the front door. It was about eight o'clock in the morning and the sun was already high in the sky. I heard the clip-clop of a horse and came around to the front to see.
A man was getting off his horse. He moved with a deceptively slow grace. He threw the reins over the hitching post and walked toward the house. At the foot of the steps, he stopped and looked up.
My father put the paper down and got to his feet. He was a big man. Six two. Beefy. Ruddy face that burned to a crisp in the sun. He looked down.
Nevada squinted up at him. "Jonas Cord?"
My father nodded. "Yes."
The man pushed his broad-brimmed cowboy hat back on his head, revealing the crow-black hair. "I hear tell you might be looking for a hand."
My father never said yes or no to anything. "What can you do?" he asked.
The man's smile remained expressionless. He glanced slowly across the front of the house and out on the desert. He looked back at my father. "I could ride herd but you ain't got no cattle. I can mend fence, but you ain't got none of them, either."
My father was silent for a moment. "You any good with that?" he asked.
For the first time, I noticed the gun on the man's thigh. He wore it real low and tied down. The handle was black and worn and the hammer and metal shone dully with oil.
"I'm alive," he answered.
"What's your name?"
" Nevada."
" Nevada what?"
The answer came without hesitation. "Smith. Nevada Smith."
My father was silent again. This time the man didn't wait for him to speak.
He gestured toward me. "That your young'un?"
My father nodded.
"Where's his mammy?"
My father looked at him, then picked me up. I fit real good in the crook of his arm. His voice was emotionless. "She died a few months back."
The man stared up at us. "That's what I heard."
My father stared back at him for a moment. I could feel the muscles in his arm tighten under my behind. Then before I could catch my breath, I was flying through the air over the porch rail.
The man caught me with one arm and rolled me in close to him as he went down on one knee to absorb the impact. The breath whooshed out of me and before I could begin to cry, my father spoke again.
A faint smile crossed his lips. "Teach him how
to ride," he said. He picked up his paper and went into the house without a backward glance.
Still holding me with one hand, the man called Nevada began to rise again. I looked down. The gun in his other hand was like a live black snake, pointed at my father. While I was looking, the gun disappeared back in the holster. I looked up into Nevada 's face.
His face broke into a warm, gentle smile. He set me down on the ground carefully. "Well, Junior," he said. "You heard your pappy. Come on."
I looked up at the house but my father had already gone inside. I didn't know it then but that was the last time my father ever held me in his arms. From that time on, it was almost as if I were Nevada 's boy.
I had one foot over the side of the cockpit by the time Nevada came up. He squinted up at me. "You been pretty busy."
I dropped to the ground beside him and looked down at him. Somehow I never could get used to that. Me being six two like my father and Nevada still the same five nine. "Pretty busy," I admitted.
Nevada stretched and looked into the rear cockpit. "Neat," he said. "How d'ja get it?"
I smiled. "I won it in a crap game."
He looked at me questioningly.
"Don't worry," I added quickly. "I let him win five hundred dollars afterward."
He nodded, satisfied. That, too, was one of the things Nevada taught me. Never walk away from the table after you win a man's horse without letting him win back at least one stake for tomorrow. It didn't diminish your winnings by much and at least the sucker walked away feeling he'd won something.
I reached into the rear cockpit and pulled out some chocks. I tossed one to Nevada and walked around and set mine under a wheel. Nevada did the same on the other side.
"Your pappy ain't gonna like it. You messed up production for the day."
I straightened up. "I don't guess it will matter much." I walked around the prop toward him. "How'd he hear about it so soon?"
Nevada 's lips broke into the familiar mirthless smile. "You took the girl to the hospital. They sent for her folks. She told them before she died."
"How much do they want?"
"Twenty thousand."
"You can buy 'em for five."
He didn't answer. Instead, he looked down at my feet. "Get your shoes on and come on," he said. "Your father's waiting."
He started back across the field and I looked down at my feet. The warm earth felt good against my naked toes. I wriggled them in the sand for a moment, then went back to the cockpit and pulled out a pair of Mexican huarachos. I slipped into them and started out across the field after Nevada.
I hate shoes. They don't let you breathe.
2
I KEPT RAISING SMALL CLOUDS OF SAND WITH THE huarachos as I walked toward the factory. The faint clinical smell of the sulphur they used in making gunpowder came to my nose. It was the same kind of smell that was in the hospital the night I took her there. It wasn't at all the kind of smell there was the night we made the baby.
It was cool and clean that night. And there was the smell of the ocean and the surf that came in through the open windows of the small cottage I kept out at Malibu. But in the room there was nothing but the exciting scent of the girl and her wanting.
We had gone into the bedroom and stripped with the fierce urgency in our vitals. She was quicker than I and now she was on the bed, looking up at me as I opened the dresser drawer and took out a package of rubbers.
Her voice was a whisper in the night. "Don't, Joney. Not this time."
I looked at her. The bright Pacific moon threw its light in the window. Only her face was in shadows. Somehow, what she said brought the fever up.
The bitch must have sensed it. She reached for me and kissed me. "I hate those damn things, Joney. I want to feel you inside me."
I hesitated a moment. She pulled me down on top of her. Her voice whispered in my ear. "Nothing will happen, Joney. I’ll be careful."
Then I couldn't wait any longer and her whisper changed into a sudden cry of pain. I couldn't breathe and she kept crying in my ear, "I love you, Joney. I love you, Joney."
She loved me all right. She loved me so good that five weeks later she tells me we got to get married. We were sitting in the front seat of my car this time, driving back from the football game. I looked over at her. "What for?"
She looked up at me. She wasn't frightened, not then. She was too sure of herself. Her voice was almost flippant. "The usual reason. What other reason does a fellow and a girl get married for?"
My voice turned bitter. I knew when I'd been taken. "Sometimes it's because they want to get married."
"Well, I want to get married." She moved closer to me.
I pushed her back on the seat. "Well, I don't."
She began to cry then. "But you said you loved me."
I didn't look at her. "A man says a lot of things when he's humping." I pulled the car over against the curb and parked. I turned to her. "I thought you said you'd be careful."
She was wiping at her tears with a small, ineffectual handkerchief. "I love you, Joney. I wanted to have your baby."
For the first time since she told me, I began to feel better. That was one of the troubles with being Jonas Cord, Jr. Too many girls, and their mothers, too, thought that spelled money. Big money. Ever since the war, when my father built an empire on gunpowder.
I looked down at her. "Then it's simple. Have it."
Her expression changed. She moved toward me. "You mean – you mean – we'll get married?"
The faint look of triumph in her eyes faded quickly when I shook my head. "Uh-uh. I meant have the baby if you want it that bad."
She pulled away again. Suddenly, her face was set and cold. Her voice was calm and practical. "I don't want it that bad. Not without a ring on my finger. I’ll have to get rid of it."
I grinned and offered her a cigarette. "Now you're talking, little girl."
She took the cigarette and I lit it for her. "But it's going to be expensive," she said.
"How much?" I asked.
She drew in a mouthful of smoke. "There's a doctor in Mexican Town. The girls say he's very good." She looked at me questioningly. "Two hundred?"
"O.K., you got it," I said quickly. It was a bargain. The last one cost me three fifty. I flipped my cigarette over the side of the car and started the motor. I pulled the car out into traffic and headed toward Malibu.
"Hey, where you going?" she asked.
I looked over at her. "To the beach house," I answered. "We might as well make the most of the situation."
She began to laugh and drew closer to me. She looked up into my face. "I wonder what Mother would say if she knew just how far I went to get you. She told me not to miss a trick."
I laughed. "You didn't."
She shook her head. "Poor Mother. She had the wedding all planned."
Poor Mother. Maybe if the old bitch had kept her mouth shut her daughter might have been alive today.
It was the night after that about eleven thirty, that my telephone began to ring. I had just about fogged off and I cursed, reaching for the phone.
Her voice came through in a scared whisper. "Joney, I'm bleeding."
The sleep shot out of my head like a bullet. "What's the matter?"
"I went down to Mexican Town this afternoon and now something's wrong. I haven't stopped bleeding and I'm frightened." I sat up in bed. "Where are you?"
"I checked into the Westwood Hotel this afternoon. Room nine-o-one."
"Get back into bed. I’ll be right down."
"Please hurry, Joney. Please."
The Westwood is a commercial hotel in downtown L.A. Nobody even looked twice when I went up in the elevator without announcing myself at the desk. I stopped in front of Room 901 and tried the door. It was unlocked. I went in.
I never saw so much blood in my life. It was all over the cheap carpeting on the floor, the chair in which she had sat when she called me, the white sheets on the bed.
She was lying on the
bed and her face was as white as the pillow under her head. Her eyes had been closed but they flickered open when I came over. Her lips moved but no sound came out.
I bent over her. "Don't try to talk, baby. I’ll get a doctor. You're gonna be all right."
She closed her eyes and I went over to the phone. There was no use in just calling a doctor. My father wasn't going to be happy if I got our name into the papers again. I called McAllister. He was the attorney who handled the firm's business in California.
His butler called him to the phone. I tried to keep my voice calm. "I need a doctor and an ambulance quick."
In less than a moment, I understood why my father used Mac. He didn't waste any time on useless questions. Just where, when and who. No why. His voice was precise. "A doctor and an ambulance will be there in ten minutes. I advise you to leave now. There's no point in your getting any more involved than you are."
I thanked him and put down the phone. I glanced over at the bed. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be sleeping. I started for the door and her eyes opened.
"Don't go, Joney. I'm afraid."
I went back to the bed and sat down beside it. I took her hand and she closed her eyes again. The ambulance was there in ten minutes. And she didn't let go of my hand until we'd reached the hospital.
3
I WALKED INTO THE FACTORY AND THE NOISE and the smell closed in on me like a cocoon. I could feel the momentary stoppage of work as I walked by and I could hear the subdued murmur of voices following me.
"El hijo."
The son. That was how they knew me. They spoke of me with a fondness and a pride, as their ancestors had of the children of their patrones. It gave them a sense of identity and belonging that helped make up for the meager way in which they had to live.
The Carpetbaggers Page 1
