by S. L. Hawke
They had a hectic day transferring to Olive’s new school. On accident, Olivia found a foot trail back to the neighborhood. The well-maintained trail went through the resort above the neighborhood and led them right back into the well-kept cemetery a block from the house.
It was a modern, not historic, cemetery, as the realtor had promised. Still, the day was warm and beautiful. They came home ready for a quiet evening of homework. Olivia, curious to see if there were any historic cemeteries open to the public within Santa Cruz, googled the subject and found one: Evergreen Cemetery, owned by The Museum of Art and History. In a review of her emails, she found a request from Olive’s new teacher to be a chaperone for a school tour to the Museum. The Cemetery was included in the field trip.
The day was done and with summer feeling so near, Olivia left the window in her bedroom wide open.
She fell right to sleep.
Knock thump thump. The light curtain shivered.
Olivia woke, startled.
Thump thump click.
Olivia lay still for a moment. Sounds like someone is walking around outside. She felt like her ears would burst. Thump knock, click.
Yes, Olivia was certain, that’s footsteps. Firm footfalls. On stone. Someone was down on Selene’s patio.
Peter snored softly. Olivia got up, sliding the bedroom’s glass door to the deck carefully, moving the heavy metal frame open an inch. Putting her ear near the opening, she listened again for any sound.
She heard walking again. Down below. Someone was definitely down on Selene’s patio.
Who can that be? She thought, annoyed at being woken up. Pushing open the door, she strode out onto the deck, prepared to chase the intruder off.
She gasped. It’s so cold now. The night air felt near freezing. Her breath became mist, gathering about her like fog. She huddled, shaking, shifting her feet, making the deck creak.
Olivia approached the railing and searched the gulch.
There was a man standing on Selene’s patio.
His dark form wavered as if he were not quite present, like a photo or a projected image, unfocused and poorly lit. Silence held him steady. For a moment, Olivia wondered if she should call the police. Selene’s house was dark.
Maybe not, Olivia told herself. Did Selene have a visitor? Olivia didn’t see anyone else at the house that day except Selene. She tried to focus on the dark form below but he seemed unpinned, transient, and elusive. He wore a hat like her father’s and a long trench coat. He seemed more shadow than shape.
Olivia leaned against the rail, trying to see more of him. The deck groaned like someone in deep pain. She felt sick for a moment, overcome with a sudden yearning as she met the man’s eyes and the etched face of someone who spent their life outside, just like her late father. The grief of his passing suddenly hit her, like the flat smack of a rogue wave. No, it can’t be, can it? Dad, did you come to see me?
“Dad?” Olivia called out. Her voice lost power, seemed to choke, then die. Her father had been dead for over a year. Is this really him, visiting me, telling me I did the right thing, telling me that he forgives me for not coming back? She truly wanted to see him again.
Her breath fumed outward as the cold intensified. Fear, sadness, and, yes, she could feel it as the hairs on her arms stood up, that something was terribly wrong. Fear for her family, fear for her own life seized her, ice-like and painful. Something has happened to someone I love…
This tall man in a wide-brimmed hat was now watching her, waiting. She could see his gently glowing face, pale, with black eyes, cheeks hollowed out, as if he were starved. He looked old, sad, and radiated loneliness.
In his left hand was a coil of rope. He nodded to Olivia, then turned away, walking…she saw…right off the end of the patio, dissolving into the gulch.
Sound came back to her ears. Cars whizzed by on the freeway, and an owl hooted loudly. The warmth of summertime returned to the early spring air.
Olivia ran back inside, turning on all the outside lights as she did so. Then she ran back out onto her deck, grabbing a broom, sweeping frantically, watching the canyon as she did so. Sobs left her.
“Olivia?” Peter’s voice made her jump. He was holding up his phone. “Did you get the call too? Do you want to go up to the hospital?” Olivia suddenly thought of her brother. Oh My God. It’s him. Something’s happened. Oh God, not him. I can’t lose any more family… Had he been shot again? This had happened twice before. Randall was a law enforcement officer who lived and worked up in the City, San Francisco.
“What?” Olivia came inside and shut the sliding glass door. “What are you talking about?” She looked down at Peter’s phone. The light from its huge screen illuminated both their faces. But she knew what he was going to tell her.
Peter frowned and reached out to hold her shoulders. “You didn’t get the call?”
“My phone’s on the charger in the bookshelf.” she let him wipe her face free of tears.
“Your brother’s been shot. But he’s okay. We can go see him right now if you want.”
Olivia turned away from him, running out the front door. Compelled by reasons she would later understand, Olivia went next door. Peter did not follow.
Selene’s door opened before Olivia could pummel on it.
“Peter just called. I’d be happy to sit with Olive while you go up to the City,” Selene said calmly, placing a hand on Olivia’s bare shoulder. Selene closed her front door quietly behind her and walked Olivia back through their shared yard. Something strange was happening; somehow Selene knew just what to say or do as if she too knew to be watchful for this moment.
“Randall’s stable. By the time we get up there he probably can have visitors,” Peter announced as he handed Olivia her coat.
“I saw...I…” Olivia began to weep. “Someone on the patio...”
“I know…” Selene answered as she helped Peter put an extra sweater across Olivia’s shoulders. “Go. Don’t worry. I’ll stay here until you return and if you can’t make it back by morning, I’ll take Olive to school. Let me know how things turn out.”
Olivia watched, as she and Peter drove away, Selene waving to them from the doorstep of their new home. For a moment it felt as if her mother had come back to help her. Olivia wept with gratitude. Somehow she felt her father had forgiven her.
Elk Path, near the Main Gate
Arana Gulch, Santa Cruz
“This is a dump, Olivia.” Randall Ikebara tapped the deck he was standing on, only after making sure his niece Olive and his half-sister Olivia did not come out onto its rotted planks.
“A cheap dump and we have no payments,” Olivia emphasized. “We intend to put some money into it. We’ve got permits too.”
Randall pushed his hat back an inch. “Well, I can do the deck. Just buy the materials.”
“Seriously? Are you feeling up to it?” Olivia stepped out onto the deck with one foot. Randall frowned at his sister.
“I need a project. Something to get my mind off things.” Randall reseated his hat.
Olivia strode out onto the deck and embraced her brother tightly. “Well, first things first. You have to work on your room.”
Randall opened the door to the basement area. It wasn’t too bad. No window, however. There was flooring, which was hardwood, and the walls were dry. He straightened his back for a moment, feeling a dull ache near his hip. He took off his hat and hung it on a large nail that stuck out of the wall. There was a small bathroom complete with shower stall coming off to the side. A door to the left led into a huge unfinished open basement complete with a window. This could be a lower second story, Randall thought, or an entirely separate apartment. It wouldn’t have too much light, but it seemed westerly, and it looked into the gulch. Right now, the sun streamed through the dirty, unbroken panes, lighting up the entire cement subfloor’s contents of dust, spider webs, vermin droppings, and left over tenants’ belongings. Randall sighed and sat down on a nearby set of cinder blocks. The
memory of this morning was still buzzing around inside his head.
“Randall, this is your third, and let me emphasize this again, THIRD time shot in the field. If you don’t take a desk job, you might as well retire.” Director Simmons ran his hand over his balding head. Randall knew this was a sign that pressure came from the ranks above him. Randall half smiled at the thought of pissing off the top brass.
“I suppose. Alright, what’s done is done.” Randall stood with some difficulty and put on his new hat, a present from his sister to replace the old one he had lost during this last episode with a bullet. Director Simmons‘eyebrows went up in a vain attempt to replace his hairline.
“That’s it? No ‘I can still run with the best of them’ line?” Simmons stood.
“Look,” Randall handed over his cuffs, his badge, his gun and clip. “Those old guys who mistake the gas pedal for the brake?” He and Simmons exchanged a look of understanding.
Simmons smiled slightly and extended his hand. “You are the best, Randall. To the end.” They shook on it.
Randall went home to an empty house and a cold beer. They let him keep his cuffs, had stamped his badge “retired”, and consigned his gun to the weapons locker. He took out one he owned and began to clean it.
His hip ached where the bullet had entered. The doctor said a millimeter either way would have killed him, the major artery being so close. Everyone around him thought this brush with death was why Randall ‘couldn’t do his job’ anymore. But it wasn’t that.
It was the dream while under the knife that haunted him. Why on Earth did he dream of being pursued in a burning house? That seemed normal, but wearing a dress was another matter entirely…
“All this needs is a few nice touches,” Olivia intruded into his musings. He didn’t hear her come in.
“And another window in the livable part.” Randall stood up. “In fact, I’ll go down to that Home Depot I passed on my way here and get one. The wall over here is unfinished, so I can see there are no support beams in the way. I’ll have it in before dinner.” Randall put his hat back on. “You are okay with me stayin’ awhile?”
“Yes, I am. Besides, I can’t think of a better way to bless this house than with MY relatives staying for the Easter holiday!”
Randall paused. He fingered the brim of his hat.
“You heard anything from Ellen?”
Olivia crossed her arms. “Why?” So she has, Randall thought.
“Maybe she could come up–” Randall got his car keys out of his pocket.
“She hasn’t told you about him.” Olivia looked so smug, Randall felt a bit annoyed. Women and their secrets! Then Randall caught himself. Ellen’s mother would have known what to do. At least if Ellen is not going to talk to me, she can talk to Liv. “He’s a very nice guy.”
“You’ve met him?!” Randall felt his heart race. He mashed the hat onto his head. “Why won’t she introduce him to me?”
“Maybe because she’s afraid you will arrest him or do a background check on him or BOTH.” Olivia smiled at her brother. “So, I did one better. I invited them for dinner. Deal with it.”
Randall let out a sigh. “I’ll cook.”
“I can cook.”
“Right. Just get me a dozen eggs and some kale. I’ll figure out the rest when I have a look into that kitchen pantry of yours.”
“And you wonder why Ellen won’t bring anyone home?”
Randall rolled his eyes. “Do you have anything for me to sleep on?”
“I have a futon couch you can use down here. When Peter gets home, you two can move it in. Dinner is at 6.”
The Old Section
Arana Gulch
I lived off what was once known as “The Soquel Road”. Researching Mick’s deed placed the land he (and I) now owned as a piece of the great Branciforte Adobe. History around here, especially Latino history, seemed skewed to me, painting the Adobe as an old jail filled with criminals when it really was one of the oldest settlements of Spanish culture.
Perhaps it may have been this way in its later days, but not during the early Spanish colonization. A small preserved section of a wall, a curb, and now an elementary school stand where the Adobe had once been. The street bearing the Branciforte Villa’s name is completely straight for exactly one mile, unchanged, I learned recently, from its original horse race track origins.
For this home, and Olivia’s home, the name Rodriguez was all over the old deeds. I was extremely happy just yesterday to find the actual handwritten deed to a section of our shared property. I also found copies of maps, now online courtesy of the collections up at UCSC, of Arana Gulch, known in those days as Rodriguez Gulch BEFORE A.J. Sloan had been murdered. A friend of Dot’s gave me a photo of a decaying adobe that used to be on the land next door to the neighborhood. That land was now owned by a modern cemetery. The picture was labeled: “Lorenzana Pueblo.” I hung it up on my wall but it was A.J. that I often found my thoughts returning to the most.
Using a combination of the Internet, actual physical searches of documents of the period by hand (such as actual Marshal writs to bring in fugitives, all jumbled in a box at the National Archives), and getting seasick looking at microfiche copies of old newspapers of the era, gave me a clearer insight into the times, but not Sloan. The man truly was ghost-like, as if someone wanted to erase all traces of him.
Finding A.J.’s headstone felt like a confirmation of my connection with this Ghost. A solid one, I reminded myself. The question was how to proceed with this find.
Someone knocked on my door.
They knocked again, then rang my brass ship bell that I had hung in place of a doorbell.
If it’s Mikhail, Dulcet’s husband, from across the street, I did not want to open that door. The last thing I needed to hear right now was talk about bums going through my recycling can.
Three weeks ago, a house that had been in foreclosure for over a year finally took down the ‘for sale’ sign. The Beaumonts moved in and since then this whole end of the culde-sac has seemed brighter. Peter had a very strange father named Bartholomew who used to be a biochemist. He claimed to have glaucoma and a medical marijuana prescription, but Peter let me in on Bart’s true story, a motorcycle accident that left him in chronic pain and a different man than he used to be.
As I shared my knowledge of local history and some of my research into the area’s deeds, we counted out (Olive and I) the homes of our tiny neighborhood scattered across the dirt road affectionately called a street. I pointed to the place where A.J. Sloan was ambushed and told a careful story about the events of the time rather than the popular tale of ambush and drunkenness.
I liked them both, Peter and Olivia, and felt less lonely as they filled up the creaky, broken house with boxes and plants. They were from Monterey but had decided to move closer to the University. He was a physicist and she was a yoga instructor. Their young child, an eerie double for my own daughter at that age, was between them. They seemed full of enthusiasm and hope. I phoned my son to let him know that the house next door had finally been sold. Mick was in law enforcement, so I gave him as much detail as I could, including the couple’s name. He went silent on the other end.
“Mom that is Ellen’s aunt.”
“Your girlfriend’s aunt? She’s so young!”
“Yeah, well, Ellen’s dad had a different father and he was, like, ten when his mom married some Aussie rancher.”
“There is a reason you are telling me this.”
“Well, he’s like me.”
“In law enforcement?”
“Quarter Japanese. And yes, he’s an FBI agent. You two should meet.”
“Has Ellen told him you guys are living together?”
“Uh…”
“What is going on with them?”
“It has to do with her mom and dad, they…well what difference does that make?”
Randall was going to be okay, Olivia told me a few weeks ago, and he was coming down, moving in and helping them
renovate the house. He’d be staying with them for the next few weeks, through Easter.
The doorbell rang again. I opened the door.
“Hi, it’s us again.” Olivia was blond, about 35 with sea green eyes and freckles sprinkled across her nose. I found it hard to believe that she was Ellen’s aunt (Ellen was my height, much, much thinner, with dark blond hair, bright blue eyes and a laugh that sounded like bells). Olive held her mother’s hand.
“Everything okay?” Why do I ask that? It just springs forth.
“We were wondering if we could borrow some eggs? “
“My uncle is cooking dinner for us!” her daughter interrupted. “He’s staying with us because someone shot HIM!”
“Olive!” Olivia reddened. Kids would spill the beans sometimes, though I have often thought it was best they did speak out. “He was retired out, budget cuts, and he’s not as recovered as he hoped to have been after getting shot in the field. He lives alone, so I thought it might be good to keep an eye on him.”
“He’s lucky to be alive. What exactly did he do to have that happen?” I added then quickly filled the uncomfortable pause with: “Sure, come on in.” Mick had told me Randall was a LEO, but I had to ask.
Olivia was close to 6 feet tall. I gave her my dozen eggs. She looked embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s only me. I don’t eat these much.”
“Why don’t you come over with Mick and Ellen and have dinner? You can meet him. He’s also in law enforcement, my brother,” Olivia said with a smile that looked like my cat Loki when he had gotten on the dining room table while I had turned my back.
“I’m sure he’s already done a background check on everyone here,” I joked. But Olivia started at the remark.
“Daddy was right! He said you’d be perfect for him!” Olive piped. I waited for an explanation of what her father thought we’d be perfect for. Olivia reddened again.
“How did you guess?” she whispered conspiratorially.
“Law enforcement family,” I said with commiseration. Olivia grinned and giggled, taking the eggs.
