Lord of California

by Andrew Valencia

  He laid back suddenly across the bed and rested his bruised head beside the sandwich. Vodka, he said, and closed his eyes.

  Fine, be like that. See where it gets you.

  He still had his face to the wall as I slammed the door and left him alone once again in his improvised jail cell. I hadn’t taken two steps toward the kitchen before the regret started to sink in and I could see clearly what Ellie had meant. It was too easy for him to get to me. I’d have to learn to keep a cool head if I was going to keep working at him, and if the peaceful resolution we hoped for was ever going to be a real possibility.

  I sleep every night in a hot room, seven, eight months out of the year. Sweating into the sheets. Turn the pillow, find the cool side. Every window open and no breeze to be felt. No reprieve in the nighttime, no relief. Crickets in the brush patches, lights of cars, strange screams from the labor camps, like pagan howls. My heart is deceitful and my body is a gullible sap. This hand doesn’t know what’s right and wrong, or it would submit to being hacked off. Above all, dreams are ungodly things, shadows of sins waiting to be committed, maggots feeding on an already rotten brain. Feel them harden and hatch to flies, vomit acid on the childish parts of you, until there is no innocence or ignorance left to hide behind, and you can smell your own wretchedness through the dark, rank and chlorinous in the heat of the room. At night he stalks you for miles across an open terrain, shoulders hard and red from the late day sun, a serpent-skinned Lucifer to ply you with food and drink, and reveal to you the true knowledge about yourself, although it’s too painful and terrible to bear. You wrestle with him all night and through to the break of dawn. Feel the torn sinews of muscle contract deep into your thigh. You wrestle, and you fail to understand. You wrestle, alone and agonized, in the early morning dark. You wrestle until your own breath disgusts you, swamp gas settling low over the moist bedding. None of it matters when morning comes. Just another day until the next worms hatch, until it all starts over anew.

  I was skinny, but I was strong. I had big hands, a fighter’s hands. That’s what the PE teacher said. On the school jogging track, in the heat of the summer, and in the freezing mist of the winter, he would have us sprint fifty and one hundred and two hundred yards side by side and measure our performances against one another, and pull the champion out from the pack and shower praise on him, on me, and point out the hard places on my calves and arms where the new muscles stood out, and make me feel like real manhood was within my grasp, and that all life demanded was continued suffering and pain to get me there, to make me great like I imagined I could be. It wasn’t enough just to be a fighter. I had to be something more. I wanted to be a soldier. Chris had been a soldier. I think Dad would have been proud to see me a soldier. A soldier knows what he’s meant for and carries out his duties without hesitation. Resolve. That’s what he has. That’s what I always needed. That’s what Dad said, anyway.

  When I was fourteen he showed up out of the blue one day and asked Mom what was for dinner. He had put on weight since the last time we saw him, making him seem more giant to me than he already was. When he reached across the table for a piece of bread, you’d have sworn he planned to crush the basket in his palm and devour the whole thing, wicker and all, in one massive chomp. Nobody could eat like Dad could. The rest of us were burnt out on the bland meals that Mom prepared daily in the kitchen that always smelled of burger grease and aerosol. But Dad ate with the same gusto regardless of whether it was Mom’s cooking or Chinese takeout. At our table his appetite was always healthy, and as a rule we knew to stay quiet until after he’d finished his first serving, and to leave at least one quarter of every dish at the table for him to take or leave at his discretion. Fourteen years old and I was already over six feet tall, and I was hungry as hell all the time, and still I couldn’t take an extra spoonful of chili without permission. Not when he was at the head of the table.

  Eventually he killed a belch under his breath and looked up from his demolished first helping. So, he said. What’s going on around here? What’s new with everybody?

  He turned his head and zeroed in on me before anyone else had a chance to speak. I could tell right then that he knew. Somehow he knew. I’d been concealing my guilt from the moment he pulled up to the house, and now, by some secret means of intuition, he had smelled me out for the liar I was. Mom tried to preempt what she must have seen coming.

  Dad, she said. Anthony’s been—

  I don’t believe I was asking you.

  My brothers’ eyes shot up from the table. Like no man I’d ever seen, Dad could silence a room without ever raising his voice. Mom sunk back into her chair and rested a hand on her stomach. My new sister or brother was due any day now, and whatever strength she had to resist him was probably eaten up by the same fatigue that drove her to take five minute naps half a dozen times throughout the day. Dad kept his eyes on me until I finally broke down and made eye contact in return.

  I got an interesting call the other day, he said. You wouldn’t know this, but I made it clear a long time ago to the school district that they’re supposed to get in touch with me directly if any problems ever arise concerning you and your brothers. It’s my right as a father, after all. To know what’s going on inside my own house. And since I assumed correctly that your mother couldn’t be trusted to keep me in the loop, I had to find other methods of staying informed. That was rather prudent thinking on my part, given the circumstances. Wouldn’t you agree?

  Dad, he’s just a boy. This is what boys—

  Believe me, you’ll know when I’m ready to hear from you. Until then, kindly keep your damn mouth shut.

  Mom lowered her head and stirred the congealed chili on her plate. Mark started to whimper as fat tears rolled down his face. Seizing her moment to escape, Mom got up and carried him and Sebastian to the back bedroom, leaving Dad and me alone at the table. I didn’t blame her for that desertion. The first thing I did whenever Dad was scolding her was take the boys outside. Once the first plumes of smoke appear on the volcano, you have to get to a safe distance before it erupts. Even if that means leaving someone behind.

  Well, now, Dad said. I believe you have something to tell me. So quit dancing around it.

  I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—

  Until now, no one in my family has ever been suspended from school. I never was. Neither of your grandparents ever were. Do you know what type of person gets suspended? Delinquents. Deadbeats. The type of people who can never hold on to anything, just like the trash you see working out in the orchards for pennies on the hour. Is that your future? Is that what you have planned for yourself after all you’ve been given? After all I’ve given you?

  It’s not. I swear it’s not. I’m sorry. What happened was—

  I’m not interested in your carefully crafted explanations. Your principal already told me exactly how it went down. I had to squeeze it out of him over the phone, but I got the full picture. I don’t know which is more shameful, that you got suspended, or that you couldn’t even hold your own in a one-on-one fight against a boy a grade below you. You made an ass of yourself and you didn’t even have it in you to stand your ground. That’s what I call a lack of resolve.

  Dad pushed his plate away. I said nothing, staring down under the table at my worn and dust-covered tennis shoes. I had to wonder what version of events the principal had given him, if he had stuck to the simple facts of who hit who and when, or if he had explained about the confrontation that preceded the fight. Did Dad know what a creep the other boy was, and how he had spent half the lunch period harassing girls on the yard, snapping their bra straps under their shirts until they ran crying to the restroom? Would he have been proud to know that, of all the boys who’d seen him carrying on like that, I was the only one who stood up and told him to stop? Or was all that rendered meaningless on account of I had lost the fight? Two days later and my side was still sore from where he kept punching me. Short, fierce jabs to the kidney, one after another. Of course he would be
psycho enough to read up on the human body, to learn all the weaknesses of our anatomy just so he could put his knowledge to use in a schoolyard bout. I’d barely managed to land a punch across his shoulder when he slid left and started in on my side, seizing my shirt collar with his free hand to keep me from backing off. He even knew to pivot between blows so I couldn’t work my way around him. I never really had a chance. And anyway, it wasn’t long before the alarm sounded and the monitors were swarming in around us.

  There’s one other thing I’d like to know, Dad said. Your principal told me this boy has a history of being picked on, and that the other boys tease him all the time because of his weight. He wouldn’t tell me much else about him. But I want to know—was he taller than you? Was he?

  I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. There were times I hated being burdened with height. All through elementary and middle school, teachers and coaches were always sizing me up and commenting on how fast I was growing and making assumptions about my athletic prowess, and then acting disappointed when I failed to develop as a basketball or volleyball player. It was true I was always in the top row of every class picture I’d been in as far back as kindergarten. But adults forget how toughness gets started in the heart of a child, and how easily a tall boy can turn soft if he’s not vigilant, and how meanwhile the short boys are all turning into Mexican dogs, just waiting to sink their teeth into the neck of the first tall thing that crosses them. And then the tall ones have to make the choice to become tough, and to keep the toughness in their hearts all the time, and reflect on it day by day like the faithful reflect on their religion.

  I’m not hearing a response, Dad said. You will answer me, though. Even if we have to sit here together all night.

  He wasn’t, I said. He wasn’t taller than me.

  He was shorter than you?

  Yes.

  You lost a fight against a boy who was younger, fatter, and shorter than you?

  Yes.

  I could hear Dad’s breath passing in and out of his nostrils. He seemed calm. He seemed calm even as he pushed his chair out from the table and stood and pulled the jangling keys from his pocket. I think it’s time we went for a drive, he said.

  It had been more than a year since I’d ridden in a car with Dad. It was a Sunday afternoon and he drove all of us to a Chinese restaurant on the far side of Visalia. Sebastian and I were in the backseat while Mom sat up front with Mark on her lap, trying to keep him quiet enough not to irritate Dad. The car he was driving then seemed small to me for some reason, or maybe it was the feeling of having the whole family packed together in the same vehicle for the first time in forever. In any case, this time he had me sit in the front seat right next to him. No where to go to escape his gaze. True, he kept his eyes on the road the whole time, but it still felt like he was watching me, keeping me in suspense over what he was thinking and where we were going and what he was going to do to me when we got there.

  We drove through town and out of it again and then turned onto the fresh black road that stretched for miles through dusty nothingness until dead-ending right in front of the county ag bureau and a few other government buildings. Dad took us about half the distance to the bureau before pulling into the parking lot of a general medicine clinic with the blue and green emblem of the national health insurance emblazoned on the main wall facing the road. Dad parked in the most deserted corner of the lot and shut off the engine. He motioned for me to get out with him.

  I’m a responsible man, he said. I don’t shirk my obligations, least of all when it comes to my own flesh and blood. But that’s just the thing. Blood is blood. That’s all there is. It’s what binds us together, and without it, all that’s left are empty words and disappointment. That’s why we’re going to find out right here and now whether your failures are really my own, or if some treacherous slut has been making a fool out of me for fifteen years.

  He popped the trunk and reached down deep inside. The nylon bag he took out was about the size of a beer can with a thin zipper running the full length of one side from seam to seam. He unzipped the bag and removed a clear plastic tube with a cap on one end and a strip of masking tape holding the cap in place. I peered into the tube and saw that it contained nothing but a plain cotton swab attached to a wooden handle that was almost as long as the tube itself. Dad held the strange container in front of my face and shook it from side to side.

  Do you know how a paternity test works? he asked.

  Instead of answering him, I pressed my lips together as tight as I could, like I was trying to form an impenetrable seal across my face.

  It’s very simple. I’m going to use this swab to collect saliva from the inside of your cheek. That’s the DNA sample. The staff in there already has my DNA, and they’re going to run some tests to see if we’re a match. It takes about two days for the results to come in. I’ll wait at the house with you and your mother until then. If, at the end of two days, the tests come back negative, if they show that I’m not and never have been your father, then I’ll know who it is who really deserves to be punished. I’ll finally know who to blame.

  Tears came to my eyes without my realizing. It was too late to try to force them down, so I let them flow freely down my face. I thought about Mom alone in the house with my brothers, walking through the kitchen with bare feet and straining through the burden of her condition, and all the while trying to get Sebastian and Mark to settle down and give her a break. I didn’t know much about her life or the kind of woman she was before she met Dad. But I knew she was a God-fearing woman, and that she wouldn’t lie to me about where I came from, or about whose blood it was that every second of the day was coursing through my heart and flesh. I dropped to my knees right there in the parking lot.

  I’m your son, I said. I know I am. I have to be.

  He tore the cap off the cylinder and pinched the bare end of the swab between his huge fingers. You may be right, he said. But it’s time we know for certain. Now open your mouth.

  I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe, but somehow I still managed to talk. Please don’t. I’m certain. I’m already certain you’re my father.

  You can’t know for sure. You weren’t even born. Now open up.

  As I spoke, I tried to shrink my mouth to a point no wider than a needle, in case he tried to get the swab into me by force, which seemed to be the direction he was headed. I have your eyes, I said. That proves it. My eyes are the same as the ones you’re looking at me with.

  He stepped back and looked at me like he’d never taken the time to notice the color of my eyes before. Anyone can have blue eyes, he said. That doesn’t prove anything.

  I feel it, though. I know that I’m a part of you. Mom wouldn’t betray you like that. She wouldn’t break a Commandment.

  Dad shook his head and smiled mercilessly, turning his wrist so that the swab swirled like a magic wand in the hand of a birthday party magician. They say that sometimes our blood can work through us without us even realizing it, he said. Cellular memory. That’s what they call it. Seems to me that if you were really my son it would be so much more difficult for you to do things that embarrass the family name. So maybe you were never meant to carry my name. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to tell me and you don’t even know it.

  I clutched his pant legs in my fists. My knees were already sore from kneeling on the asphalt, but at that moment I wouldn’t have stood for anything in Heaven or Earth unless he ordered me to. I’m your son, I said, though I could barely speak through the grip of the invisible hand on my throat. I am your son. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Forgive me.

  I looked up at him again and saw that his face was blank above the protruding rim of his beard. He held the swab suspended above me and I didn’t move and didn’t try to get away.

  You’ve hurt me a great deal, he said. I hope you realize that. You hurt your father with how you handled yourself. You’re too much of a hothead.

  A low breeze sw
ept in over the lot, drying some of the tears on my face. I know, I said. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I get angry so easy. I’ve tried to keep it in check. I’ve prayed to God for patience and strength. Nothing works. It’s like there’s this part of me that’s impossible to figure out no matter how hard I try.

  No one told you to go and make yourself complicated, he said. You’re a country boy. A farm boy. You should be carefree and easy-going.

  I know. I’m sorry.

  Call me sir. It’s a sign of respect.

  I’d never called anyone sir or ma’am in my life except sarcastically, when me and my friends were joking around. Just the sound of it felt gaudy and old-fashioned.

  Do you realize how embarrassed I was to get a call like that from your school?

  I do.

  You do what?

  I do, sir.

  Do you promise never to put me in a position like that again?

  I do, sir.

  Do you promise that, if you ever get in another fight, you’ll do it away from school?

  I do, sir.

  And do you swear that, no matter who it is next time, no matter how much bigger or older than you he is, you won’t back down until the fight is finished?

  I do, sir.

  Good. Now get up. Your mother’s going to be worried.

  We drove back the same way we came. On the way through town he stopped at a drive-thru and bought me a chocolate milkshake in a tall paper cup. Don’t breath a word of this to your mother or brothers, he said. Tell them we sat outside drinking milkshakes and had a long talk about responsibility. Don’t even mention the paternity test. I’ll know it if you do.

  The milkshake had turned soupy by the time we got home. I’d held it in my hand the whole way, but couldn’t bring myself to drink it.

  I imagine myself in prison, in a room of iron and stone. I see my captor’s pale face. I ask what crime I’ve committed and I don’t receive an answer but I don’t fight against the prison walls because I know in my heart I’m guilty in one way or another. I was born guilty, and every day I’ve been alive I’ve only incriminated myself further. My sickness is my guilt. My guilt is my sickness. What healthy person would have dreams such as these? What dreams such as these would come to a healthy person? When I open my eyes for the first time in the morning, there’s a moment of blissful amnesia when I forget that I am who I am. And then it all comes back to me, the flesh and substance of reality, reminding me as well as I can be reminded that I’ve never been true to the word of God Almighty, that I’ve lied in confession, lied in conversation, lied in my day to day actions, and died already, spiritually, through my inaction. Who is there to hear my plea? Not the parish priest, that orange-haired man with his American accent and the logic of Rome buzzing inside his skull. Not the monsignor, old relic of the old way, discredited now by two popes in succession. What if no one is there to hear my broken cry? What if no one cares to be burdened with it? Is it damnation, or is it release, this feeling of being abandoned? Who am I, if not the child that was never wanted deeply?