by Win Blevins
Where in heaven or earth did she find that fellow? wondered Sumner.
Sumner dropped the ring into the velvet bag and slid the bag back into his pouch.
“I give you five pesos for it,” said Eyebrows. A week’s wages.
Sumner shook his head. “I already said, worth twenty.”
They debated. They bargained. Eyebrows asked to see the ring again.
Sumner pulled the velvet bag out again, except that now it wasn’t the same bag. Grumble had said the timing was critical.
Eyebrows slid the ring onto her finger. She held it in several positions and admired it. In a few more exchanges they settled on ten pesos.
She put the ring on her finger and walked across the patio admiring her ruby, held high in the sunlight.
Sumner ran toward his friends, he skipped, almost danced. When he got to their table, he held out the shiny silver coins. Coy gave a little yip, and Meadowlark quieted him.
Quickly Sumner gushed out the whole story, including the surprise appearance by the expert.
“Lucky break, that,” said Grumble. “Actually, the trick works well done straight across the street from a jeweler’s shop. The jeweler makes a good expert.”
Sumner nodded his understanding.
“Altogether,” said Grumble quietly, “well done.” He didn’t want to inspire any more exuberance. He divided the coins. “One for Sam the capper,” he said, “four for Sumner the actor, five for me.”
Sumner put an expression on his face, but Grumble cut him short with a word. “The teacher gets half. At least half.”
Sumner smiled.
“The ring,” said Grumble, palm out.
Sumner fished the bag out sheepishly and dropped it into Grumble’s palm.
“Let me see,” cried Meadowlark.
Grumble handed her the ring.
“Four pesos is enough to live on for a week,” the cherub told her.
Sumner nodded, playing with his coins.
Good. Grumble wanted to keep Sumner dependent on himself. He has talent. A capper was valuable.
“This is the first money I ever earned in my life,” said Sumner. “Thank you.”
“Earned?” said Sam.
“The artist is worthy of his hire,” said Grumble. “The beauty of this flimflam,” he went on, “is that she’ll probably never realize that we had a little fun with her, and will always be delighted with her bauble.”
Coy whined.
Meadowlark tried the ring on several fingers until it fit the middle one of her right hand. She held it high and turned it in the afternoon sun. “So, so beautiful.”
Grumble grinned at Sam. “You better quit beaver and join us flimflam artists.”
The black youth held up his stack. “Freedom is coins in your pocket,” he said.
Just then Flat Dog ambled up and claimed a seat. He’d been shopping, and they all took a moment to admire his purchase, a handsome red shirt with puffed sleeves, the first cloth garment he’d ever owned.
“By the way,” Grumble told Sam, “our black friend speaks fluent Spanish.”
Sam gave Sumner a look.
“I told you,” said Sumner, “I am not what I seem.”
Sam looked at him amazed. Those words had come out with the plummiest of British accents.
“This Nigger done talk low-life too.”
That sentence was pure slave English.
“Maybe you should tell us all who you are,” said Grumble. “Your teacher would like to know.”
Sumner gave the broadest of smiles and spoke in plummy style. “I was born in Santa Domingo, on a big cane plantation. Since my mother worked in the big house, I grew up there, and played with the white kids. Our master was the second son of a viscount, or some such foolishness. I grew up speaking the king’s English.”
Now he shifted back to slave speech. “At night, though, down at our hut, we was with other Niggers, including my father and his brothers and their wives, and they all spoke Spanish, nothing but Spanish. So I grew up talking both tongues.”
“Truly bilingual,” said Grumble, no doubt thinking how to turn that to advantage.
“Trilingual,” said Sumner. “In New Orleans I learned Nigger English. Safer that way.”
Then he looked quick at Sam. “I’m doing the skip on Captain Smith. You’re not going to tell him where I am, are you?”
Sam shook his head. “My Delaware friend Hannibal gave me the best advice I ever got. Hannibal, the man I told you about. He said every man should follow his wild hair. That sure as hell leaves out slavery.”
Suddenly Sumner asked Grumble, “What’s wrong with you?”
The lad was observant.
Grumble drawled, “We need to find that expert with the magnifying glass.”
Sam and Meadowlark knew the village, having rambled the streets. With an inquiry here and there the expert was easy enough to find—how many such men could there be in a small town? He was working in a small building adjoined to a smithy.
One look and Sam decided the jewel man was something odd, as much woman as man. He had a gentle voice and delicate hands.
Sumner made introductions—Grumble, Sam and Meadowlark, Flat Dog. Then he made Coy sit and shake hands.
Around the corner of the building came a surprise.
“Gideon!” Sam introduced his longtime partner to his old friend Grumble. Then he asked Gideon, “What are you doing here?”
The bear man looked like he wanted to give three or four answers at once. “I came to watch another smith, and I found Angel.” He spread his arms theatrically and grinned. “Angel is an artist.”
The shed was hung with examples of metalwork. Silver cups. Gold plates worked up fancy somehow. Copper plates …
“These are superb,” said Grumble, and launched into teaching. “This is a simple copper plate”—he touched one with a finger—“gilded with gold in this intricate pattern you see, making something beautiful with the simplest of means.”
He handed it to Meadowlark and took up another one.
“This one”—he held up a larger platter—“is silver embossed, or the more proper term is repoussé.” He turned it upside down. “You see, the ornamentation is made by pushing out the reverse side.” He showed them the front again. “Then it is chased, that is, punched with a hammer, for this effect …”
Gideon leapt in, holding up another plate. “On this one the chasing is in relief.”
Grumble’s face lit up with delight. “Here it’s in intaglio.”
Sam and Flat Dog rolled their eyes at each other, hoping Grumble wouldn’t explain this too. Meadowlark was fingering the plate she held, almost with reverence. “Nothing for it,” Sam whispered, “but to let them go crazy.”
Coy slunk to a corner and lay down, bored.
“Ah!” Gideon grasped a jewel-encrusted crucifix and held it to his chest, modeling it for the others.
“Were you raised in the church?” asked Grumble.
“The priest who visits every two or three years, he baptize me,” said the French-Canadian. “Our village, it was near Lake Winnipeg. I love his robe and his crucifix. Le bon Dieu, when I am at Montreal and am taught the words that go with the ceremonies, I am somet’ing less than charm-ed.”
Grumble gave Gideon the look of a compadre.
Angel held a silver chalice and plate out to Grumble.
“The implements of communion,” the cherub said, taking them and smiling hugely, “inlaid in niello.” He held them out to Gideon. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
On tables all around the room were many beautiful things made in silver—drinking bowls, spoons, frames for mirrors, picture frames, candlesticks, and plates, plus sacramental objects—chalices, censers, rosaries, crucifixes …
On the walls hung necklaces and earrings. Meadowlark modeled a gold necklace for Sam.
In halting Spanish Grumble asked Angel, “Where did you come by this skill?”
In halting English he replied, “I am apprent
ice to an artist in Seville and then I work in Mexico City.”
“How on earth did you end up in California?”
“I don’t end up in one place,” said Angel, “but always journey forward. I wish to practice my craft. The bishop in Mexico City, he informs me that California has many missions, a great need for liturgical objects, and no artisans to produce them. So I come. I am travel—traveling?—from mission to mission.”
“It really does look wonderful,” Sam admitted to Gideon.
Tentatively, tenderly, Gideon murmured, “I would like to do this work myself.”
Sam’s heart pinged.
“I have promised to teach Gideon,” Angel said. “I need an apprentice. It is my good luck,” said Angel, “that so many enormous ranchos are very wealthy, and there are wealthy women who appreciate the beauty.”
“Señor the goldsmith, let me treat you to a fine supper,” said Grumble eagerly.
“I regret,” said Angel, “but … Ah, here they are now.”
A fine carriage pulled alongside Angel’s shop. Two gorgeously dressed Spanish women alighted, one in her twenties and the other in her late teens, striking because of her tawny hair and gold skin. Angel made the introductions. The elder was Doña Reina Rubio y Obregon, the teenager Señorita Julia Rubio. They were sisters, and Doña Reina was married, Angel explained.
But no one noticed his explanation. Everyone saw that something extraordinary was happening. The looks between Julia and Flat Dog were bonfires. All stood stupefied for a moment. Sam noticed that Julia had remarkable green eyes.
It was Sam who broke the silence. At his instruction, Coy stepped forward, sat, and extended his paw to the ladies to be shaken. Charmed, Julia took it.
“Doña Reina,” said Angel, “your necklace is finished.” He fetched it from a drawer and handed it to the older sister. It was an emerald beautifully set in gold and suspended on a fine gold chain.
Julia and Flat Dog still could not take their eyes off each other.
Sam and Meadowlark hid their smiles.
Grumble leapt to the rescue.
“May I invite everyone to dine with me—you ladies, Angel, and my friends?”
Doña Reina seemed uncertain. “But where?”
“I don’t know what in the village is suitable …”
“I believe nothing is quite suitable, really,” she said. She spoke elegant, slightly overpronounced English.
Señorita Julia intruded. “Perhaps …”
Finally she took her gaze off Flat Dog. The sisters exchanged eye messages.
“Have you visited the Pacific Ocean?” asked the señora. “Near our Rancho Malibu it is very beautiful.”
“We were going to see it at San Pedro,” said Sam.
Meadowlark frowned at him.
“San Pedro is ugly,” said the young girl.
“Perhaps you will visit us at our rancho,” suggested Doña Reina. “All of you, Angel, Gideon, and you, our new friends. Our father, Don Cesar Bartolomeo Rubio, will be very glad to have you. You will be our guests for a night, and on the second day we will have a lovely trip to the ocean.”
Julia and Flat Dog sparkled.
Nine
The Pacific Ocean
Sam awoke to an amazing sound. Every few seconds a gentle roar, a kind of tender crash, drifted through his mind. Then a fizzy sound, or maybe silence, and another crash.
He knew what made the sound, for he had watched it carefully late yesterday afternoon, when he and Meadowlark arrived. Coy had chased the surf as it retreated, then fled from it as it crashed and then swished up the sand. Sam could hardly believe it would go on all night, a kind of chorus that rocked and pillowed his sleep at once, and go on all morning, all day, and forever.
He lay back and listened.
He and Meadowlark had stolen some time to be alone together.
Two days ago the whole party had arrived at the rancho. Julia’s father was expansively courteous. “Call me Don Cesar,” he told everyone. He showed them around his splendid home, which had more than a dozen rooms, most with fireplaces. Don Cesar particularly showed off his collection of weapons and items of soldiering—a conquistador sword and breastplate; a matchlock rifle; two fine dueling pistols; a cutlass from a pirate vessel; a jeweled dirk belonging to a Spanish grandee; several styles of whips and lashes, including a cat-o’-nine-tails and a knout. The cat, the don explained, was preferred by the British, the knout by the Russians. Since it had wire interwoven with the rawhide, it looked nasty. He tapped the handle into his hand with an air of satisfaction. His prize possessions were a garrote and beheading ax said to have been used during the Inquisition.
Sam looked at the breastplate and whispered to Flat Dog, “Wouldn’t that thing bounce the arrows off?”
Then Don Cesar showed everyone to private bedrooms, and the party reassembled in the evening for a feast such as Sam had scarcely heard of.
After a sumptuous breakfast the next morning Julia asked to see Sam and Meadowlark’s tipi, and Meadowlark quickly erected it for her.
Rubio was fascinated by Coy. “A coyote?” he repeated, giving the word the Spanish pronunciation. “Is he trained to attack?”
“I don’t think he needs training for that,” said Sam. “Not if I’m in danger.”
Rubio pulled at his goatee and looked at Coy askance.
Sam called Don Cesar’s attention to Paladin, and would have shown him some of the mare’s tricks, but Rubio wasn’t interested. “An Indian pony,” he scoffed.
Julia told her father that Sam and Meadowlark wanted to camp on a beach somewhere.
“Splendid,” he said. “You may make your camp in a fine place. One of my men will guide you. It is called Playa Topanga.”
Sam was a little tickled at the dismissiveness of the term “camp.” It was true that their tipi hardly compared to Rubio’s fine house, surrounded by buildings for blacksmith, tanner, candle-maker, and so on. But camps were Sam’s home, and Meadowlark’s, and the homes of the Crow people, one camp after another, endlessly. One good place, he consciously thought, following upon another. Home.
That afternoon the whole party rode down to this small beach suggested by Don Cesar. While everyone else returned to the luxury of the rancho, Sam and Meadowlark stayed at the beach, taking a kind of honeymoon.
Now the gentle roar lulled Sam’s mind again.
Coy scratched at the tipi flap, his way of asking to be let out.
Sam eased from under the blankets, careful not to disturb Meadowlark. He crawled to the flap, slipped the pegs out, and stepped into the chill morning, naked.
Before him spread the Pacific Ocean. Far to his left, the southwest, a point of land made a faint smudge on the horizon. Far to his right, the northwest, a similar smudge. Somewhere between them, straight out and across an unimaginable reach of blue water, lay the land the maps called China.
Here at Sam’s feet churned the surf. He smiled at this strange doing, a soft whoosh of protest, perhaps, at water running up against land and being turned back. A protest made every few seconds through every day of every year through a past too long to picture, into a future he couldn’t imagine.
Meadowlark stepped to his side, naked. They faced west. Sam’s thought was, The sailors say China is strange, a country beyond the mind’s ability to grasp. I say, without knowing, that this sea is stranger yet. He called to mind the kinds of creatures he’d heard of, inhabitants of the ocean depths. He was sure no shape he might dream up, no visage from his nightmares, was as weird, as alien, as the creatures who actually lived in the water before his feet.
He didn’t say any of this to Meadowlark. He knew her thoughts, whatever they were in particular, played in the same fields as his.
Topanga Beach, the don had said. Topanga meaning what? he mused. He said aloud, “It should mean ‘wonder.’”
Meadowlark smiled at him.
Coy struck a pose, nose pointed toward the far end of the beach. There a creek dingled into the ocean, and a
figure walked, human, solitary.
The naked Sam and Meadowlark slipped back into the tipi.
He put his hands on Meadowlark’s slender waist. She turned to face him. He brushed her nipples lightly with his fingertips and leaned forward to kiss her.
She feather-bussed his lips and said with a smile, “Later.” She reached for a dress. Sam had spent his hard-earned brigade money for green cotton, and Meadowlark had sewn it into the pattern of the kind of hide dress she always wore. Therefore for this special day she flew an emerald flag against the light blue of the sky, the dark blue of the sea, and the lovely red-brown of her face.
Abby had promised to show her how to decorate the dress with some lace at the neck and the wrists, but Sam didn’t think she could look more beautiful than she did now.
They set out to walk along the sand, Meadowlark barefoot and Sam wearing only a breechcloth. He stuck a butcher knife in his belt—no telling who that figure might be. Coy followed, chasing the waves in and out.
They walked away from the solitary figure and toward the point to the northwest. They zigzagged down toward the sea and up the sandy rise, more or less keeping their feet out of the water, and turning the zigzag into a dance. They also jumped over long litters of seaweed, at least Sam supposed that’s what it must be. It was no longer rooted anywhere, and the waves must have flung the stuff up on the beach.
Small birds stilted along the sand and stuck long, curved beaks down among the grains. When Sam and Meadowlark got too close, these birds didn’t fly away, but scooted off rapidly on long, sticklike legs.
White birds with dark wing tips drew curves across the crisp morning air.
They came to a rocky finger jutting into the water. “Look,” Sam said, “the dunes behind show where the ocean sometimes rises.”
“It’s far out now,” Meadowlark said happily. “We can see lots.”
“This must be what they mean by a low tide.” On the trip to Malibu the whole group had talked of nothing but the ocean, though only Abby and Grumble had ever seen it. Sam and Meadowlark were now full of unfamiliar words and wild surmises.
It was Meadowlark who noticed them first. In the tideland at their feet, half sea and half earth, were little pools, each separated from the others by rocks. What Sam was looking at in the dozens of pools, he soon realized, were individual worlds of life.
