Lord of California

by Andrew Valencia

  I blacked out briefly on the staircase, and when I came to I was in the middle of the front parlor with Dad standing between me and the door, a drunken smile stretched across his face. He seized me by the shoulders and shook me, looking around at the other patrons who weren’t paying the slightest attention to the scene we were making. I couldn’t look into his eyes, but I’m sure they were full of pride. He said, “There’s the man. How do you feel?”

  My heart was beating like I had just gone up fifty staircases instead of coming down one. I said, “Good. I feel good.”

  “Told you there wasn’t anything to it. Most natural thing in the world.”

  “I think I’d like to leave now.”

  “In a little while. I ran into some associates from Bakersfield over at the bar. Come have a drink and give us some details.”

  “I can’t take any more drinking tonight.”

  “It won’t kill you. Besides, you never forget your first drink after your first time.”

  “I said I’d like to leave!”

  Dad let go of my shoulders and backed away slowly. I think I startled the whole room with my outburst. The girls on the sofas were all looking around idly, as if they had never seen the wallpaper before, while the men at the bar, Dad’s so-called associates, were watching us with their eyebrows raised in cautious bemusement. Dad shook his head.

  He said, “All right, fine. Let’s go.”

  I was two steps ahead of him all the way to the door; four steps by the time we reached the Charger. Dad hoisted himself into the cabin and set us cruising back down the driveway. Neither of us bothered with a seatbelt. Glancing through the side mirror at the lighted windows of the whorehouse, the full delayed reaction of everything I had just discovered, the truths and lies and nightmarish implications, came and settled over me like the early symptoms of some debilitating nervous condition. Once as a child I had sprained my ankle playing soccer and felt no pain until hours later when I crawled into bed. That’s what it was like. My face and arms went numb, my throat contracted, electric needles danced across my kidneys and spine. I wasn’t even sure if I was still drunk. And still the thing that scared me most was the fact that Dad hadn’t said a word since we left the establishment.

  I could see him on the edge of my periphery, darkness shrouded in darkness, enormous arms gripping the steering wheel, eyes unwavering even as his heart was pumping more whiskey than blood. The farther we drove along that deserted stretch of valley road, the more aware I became of the immense and terrible presence of his body, and of all the terrible acts it was capable of perpetrating, directly and indirectly.

  I said, “Dad. It’s been a long day. You mind if I grab a quick nap till we get to the hotel?”

  He looked away from the road. I was too out of it to realize what an ominous sign that was, or to perceive the narrow tightrope I was walking. “As a matter of fact, I do mind. You don’t go to sleep when someone else is driving. It’s bad manners.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Speaking of bad manners, you never thanked me for introducing you to Livia. Seems like the sort of thing you should make a point to do, to show your appreciation. You should do it now, in fact. Right now.”

  I could feel the tension building the longer Dad waited for me to thank him. It was easy to lie. I was just beginning to realize that. But this time I chose against self-preservation. I said, “Introducing us. So that’s how you see it.”

  Dad started to swerve into the opposing lane. He jerked the wheel abruptly to get us back between the lines. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust you’re too drunk to know what you’re saying. But whether tonight or tomorrow, come hell or high water, you are going to thank me for all I’ve done for you tonight. That’s not an option.”

  “Have fun waiting for it, then.”

  “I’m not joking around. You keep running your mouth and I’ll run us off the road.”

  “Go ahead and do it. See if I care.” I stared out the window and waited for the road to disappear out from under us. Of course he would never really do anything so dramatic. Not if it meant putting his own well-being at risk. One day in his company and I already felt like I understood what was going on in his head, even if what lay in his heart remained a fearful mystery to me. I said, “Just tell me one thing. Why her? Of all the girls you could have picked out, why that one?”

  I waited for an answer as the Charger continued to barrel ahead through the omnipresent darkness. At long last he said, “I wanted you to enjoy yourself. She’s a tight piece of ass with plenty of meat on her. I figured she’d be able to show you a good time. If not, you should’ve said something while we were there, instead of making a scene.”

  I sat up in the seat. “How do you know? That she’s a tight piece of ass?”

  “How do you think?”

  “Pull over.”

  “Christ, you’re uptight. What, you think you’re the first boy ever became milk brothers with his old man?”

  “Pull over.”

  “If you didn’t have fun with the girl, then it’s your fault, not mine. It’s about time you grow up and stop blaming everyone else for your own problems.”

  “Pull over! Now!”

  Dad took his foot off the gas and eased us over to a strip of ground that sloped down drastically as soon as the asphalt ended. The Charger settled to a stop at an extreme slant, and when I opened the door it was like falling straight down into the upturned soil that bordered whatever kinds of trees were assembled like legionaries in front of me. My feet sank into the earth, and I only managed a few steps before curling over. It was so dark I couldn’t see the vomit splattering even as my head hung just a few paltry feet off the ground. A cigar flared in the corner of eye. I looked up to see Dad standing on top of me, puffing away in the darkness.

  He said, “I told you to drink responsibly. Maybe next time you’ll listen.”

  I don’t remember how I managed to make it to town. I had no money, no directions, and the supermarket parking lot where I awoke was six miles to the north on the edge of a small farming town whose name I only learned because I had to (Western Union and Mom both came through for me in a pinch, though the latter had plenty of I-told-you-so’s to impart over the phone). If my subconscious really had tried to repress that night, then I wish it would have repressed what happened next, instead of preserving it in such perfect, step-by-step detail. I threw a punch, my first and only. I saw the look on Dad’s face as he ducked out of the way, watched the cigar fall from his lips, and felt his massive fist collide with my jaw. And even as I lay sinking into the warm soft ground, and felt his size 14 oxford slamming between my ribs, I couldn’t shake the wonderful-awful sensation that I was finally getting exactly what I had been looking for, that the truth had finally been revealed to me, and that not even Death, lurking among the trees, could raise me from my earthly, earthy abyss. I was a new kind of Adam, and I had created myself.

  Dad backed away panting. He tucked one foot behind the other and wiped my blood off on his pant leg. He said, “Don’t call me. Don’t try to get in touch. I know I sound calm right now, but believe me, I’m shattered on the inside. You did that to me, son. You broke my heart into a million pieces. And for what? For what?”

  I watched the Charger’s taillights recede and then disappear into the night, two red pinpoints converging in the distance. The taste of blood was stuck in my mouth. So, too, was the taste of dirt. After a while, it became hard to distinguish one from the other.

  I had given Jennifer three days to get the other women on board, but I assumed the worst when I didn’t hear from her by the end of the second day. By then I had run out of vodka, and with nothing but supermarket beer and wine to even me out, a variety of doubts cropped up to keep me awake at night. I began to wonder if they were preparing to call my bluff, if they realized that reporting them to the Ag Bureau would screw me over just as much as them. If a faction had risen up to silence Jennifer, or wors
e, if she had found it more pragmatic to go over to their side, then my only recourse would be to find other means of securing their cooperation, even to the point of leaving me culpable if and when the authorities got involved. There were times in the course of those two nights when I would be lying awake in the early morning hours, half-sober and bloated from the watery supermarket beer, and find myself counting heads and taking inventory, as if preparing for the terrible culling that would have to take place if the women couldn’t be made to go along. But then, on the morning of the third day, the satellite phone vibrated, and I put the thought out of mind for the time being.

  Jennifer’s message read, Good to go see you sunday, and nothing more. Immediately I called Russert and laid out the specifics of the deal. He remained silent on the issue of Jennifer’s double-share. In fact, he didn’t say a word until after I had finished explaining the details of the contract and emphasizing how soon I would need to have the faxed copies in my hands. I imagined him sitting alone in his office with the sunlight coming in and reflecting breathlessly on how wrong he had been to underestimate me when we first met.

  He said, “You’ve done a good job for me, Mr. Temple. You came through just like you said. All the same, I don’t appreciate the communication blackout you’ve kept me in all this time. If you want to make deals on my behalf, you need to keep me in the loop. At this level of business, you’re expected to keep the boss up to speed with your progress, even if it seems like there’s nothing significant to report. Anything else is unprofessional.”

  I was glad he couldn’t see me through the phone line; my smile must have looked pretty boyish and goofy. I asked him, “Is that what you are to me now? My boss?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Close up this deal and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He had the contracts ready before the end of the same business day. I hightailed it to the nearest fax machine, which was also at the supermarket (I was beginning to see a pattern with these small valley towns). I sat in the parking lot with the Lexus idling and went over the contract line by line, serving as lawyer for myself to make sure I was getting everything I wanted. My hands were trembling as I reached the end. It was all airtight. In a matter of days, Russert would be the legal tenant of the farm in Orosi, and I would finally have enough money to get my start in life.

  Understandably, I celebrated too hard through Friday night and most of Saturday; on my orders, Kylee bought out most of her associates’ remaining vodka stock and brought over some of her Porterville colleagues for a two day-long rager at the Blossom Road. By the time Sunday morning arrived, I had to shower with the bathroom light off just to keep my brains from oozing down the drain. Nothing was going to keep me from my meeting with the widows, though. Had I awoken blind from alcohol poisoning, I would have searched out a doctor only after the contracts had been signed.

  I was on the road before noon with my sunglasses on and a stomach full of aspirin and coffee. The roads in the valley were always horrendous when it came to dust, to say nothing of the dirt and gravel trails leading into the interiors of the parcels. By the time I reached the co-op and parked beside one of the houses, the whole lower section of the Lexus was as filthy as it had ever been. I got out and slammed the door so they could hear it; the meeting would have to begin with someone coming out to receive me. A fairly obvious power play, but good enough for the hicks, as Dad would say. I waited much longer than I expected until finally one of the girls came out onto the porch. I recognized her from the first time I came calling. She had the same contemptuous look on her face that she had been wearing then.

  I said, “It’s Ellie, right? Sandra’s daughter?”

  She slapped her palms onto the wood railing and leaned her weight against it. She said, “That’s right. Sandra’s girl. And Elliot’s.”

  “Right. Nice to see you again. Can you go inside and fetch your mother? It’s time for the adults to sit down and iron things out.”

  “I don’t see any adults around here.”

  I showed her a friendly yet firm smile as a measure of my patience. The sun was behind the house, just a few degrees below its zenith, and even with my sunglasses on my head was beset by a nauseating ache that made the present situation all the more unacceptable. I said, “That’s fine. You’ve had your turn at playing cute. Now go tell them I’m ready to deal.”

  She let go of the railing. Walking slowly toward the steps at the base of the porch, she didn’t resemble Dad so much as she captured perfectly the essence of his strutting gait. How she thought she could intimidate me, only she knew. But regardless of whatever logic or illogic was driving her, she placed her hands on her hips and said, “You deal with me. Or you deal with no one. Those are the only options you’re gonna get. So I suggest you fix your attitude pronto.”

  I laughed. Even though it worsened the pain in my skull, I laughed. “I don’t have to take this. I really don’t. I know I sound calm right now, but in another couple seconds I’m going to be walking through that door, whether you invite me in or not. Because it’s your mother’s name on the lease, not yours. She’s the one I should be talking to.”

  “My mother tried to commit suicide two days ago.” Her voice didn’t crack, nor even waver, and yet I could tell all the same that it hurt her to talk about it. “She’s alive, in case you were wondering. But she’s in no state to negotiate with anyone. That’s why you’re gonna have to deal with me, or else fuck off. I’m the oldest of her three daughters. The responsibility for her share of the farm passes to me.”

  The more I heard from this girl, the more intrigued I became. She wasn’t like her mother, or most of the valley women I had met, for that matter; she had confidence, and didn’t seem to view it as a liability to be suppressed and outgrown like most country girls her age were taught. Under different circumstances, I might have been impressed. But if she thought I was going to shrink in the face of her mother’s madness and her own half-cocked notions of primogeniture, then she clearly didn’t realize who she was talking to.

  I said, “Even if you do have the authority to speak on your mother’s behalf, which is debatable, your mother’s share only counts for a fifth of the total cooperative. So before any kind of agreement can be reached, I’ll have to speak with the other women involved.”

  She shook her head humorlessly. “Wrong. This woman right here. That’s all we need.” She reached into her pocket to remove something, but before I could get a clear look she let go and it hit the boards with a thud and a series of short ricochets. Once it settled, I understood that something had gone terribly wrong. The satellite phone rested face-up, its screen as gray and listless as the eyes of a corpse. She appeared exceedingly proud of her accomplishment, and even struck a condescending grin to mark the occasion. “Your flunky isn’t here to help you make your case. Given what she tried to do to us, pulling the wool over our eyes, while conspiring to help you drive us out, it figures that she’s forfeited any right she had to a seat at the table. And since I’m the one who ran her off, I’m laying claim to her share myself.”

  “Well. Isn’t that something? In two days’ time, you’ve managed to go from having no say to controlling the biggest share of the operation. Maybe when you finish school, you can come work for me as an associate of some sort. Assuming you know how to use a computer.”

  “Whatever business we have to settle, it ends today. It ends with you ripping up your contract and walking away. But first, you’re gonna give me your word that you won’t tell the government or anyone else how we came by this farm. That’s the assurance you’re gonna give me before you leave.”

  “Interesting. And why should I do any of those things? Why, pray tell, shouldn’t I head to Ag Bureau in Tulare and tell them everything I know?”

  The screen door squealed open and a tall Hispanic boy with the wispy beginnings of a mustache stepped out onto the porch. He wore high-waisted, rodeo-style jeans and a plain red t-shirt that was at least a
size too small. After a moment, I recognized him as one of Claudia’s boys, the eldest one, though his name escaped me despite Ramirez’s files and meeting him in person a week earlier. He said, “Because we share the same father. Because the same blood is in our veins that’s in yours, and that can’t count for nothing.”

  I said, “It counts for whatever you want it to count for. Which, in my case, is nothing.”

  They both looked at me for a while and then traded glances with each other. The whole scenario was Jennifer and Dale all over again: lightweight brains and lumbering brawn, conspiring together for mutual benefit, when on their own they would have been completely helpless, misfit animals waiting for natural selection to run its course. Ellie even surrendered her positional advantage by descending to the second lowest step of the small front stoop. Now we were facing each other eye to eye. She said, “I don’t believe that you could stand there, knowing what we both know about our father, about our family, and tell me it doesn’t mean a thing. There’s no way you could be so cold.”

  “Why not? Because we’re kin? Is that what you’re supposed to be to me? My kinfolk?”

  “I’m a fourteen-year-old girl with a very sick mother and two young sisters to look after. Think about that even if you don’t see us as family. What’ll happen to us without this place?”

  “There are plenty of fourteen-year-old girls in this world who have it so much worse. You’ll still be doing better than them, even without a farm.”

  “And you don’t mind putting me in that position? You have no problem with seeing us all out on the street?”

  “You sound just like him.”

  “Answer me. Say you could sleep at night if we wound up homeless on your account.”

  “Don’t make this all about you. You were born and raised on one of his farms. Until he died, you never had to worry about anything. Me, I had to struggle and suffer through being that man’s son, and when he died I lost the only family I had left. You talk like I’m standing here with an eviction notice in one hand and a loaded gun in the other. But if the shoe were on the other foot, if you found out after he died that all his money was tied up with me in a business on the coast, wouldn’t you try to do whatever you could to get a piece of it? Wouldn’t you even say that you had earned it?”