Lord of California

by Andrew Valencia

  You think you could do that yourself?

  I nodded.

  All right then, he said. But we’re going to start you off on glass bottles, work your way up to targets that move and breathe.

  A bird doesn’t look that hard to hit.

  It’s not, if all you want to do is take it down. But I’m going to show you how to go for the clean kill each time, and that starts with practicing your aim.

  The clean kill?

  He pressed two fingers to the base of his throat. Through the neck, he said. That way you won’t have to deal with having a wounded animal on your hands. It’s less important for birds, but a bigger animal can make a real mess if you don’t put it down clean on the first shot. You get what I’m saying?

  I nodded again.

  All right then. I’ve got some bottles here in my pack. You count off twenty paces in that direction while I set them up. And try to keep each step the same distance.

  He followed his own advice, positioning each bottle in the center of the post so they were all spread out evenly along the top of the fence. I would’ve recognized Mom’s brands of wine anywhere, but it didn’t stop me from firing when I was ordered to shoot. The first two shots sailed high, but then Chris adjusted the sight for me and afterward I hit four in a row, three dead-center through the labels. He brought out more bottles and had me try it again from fifty and a hundred paces, instructing me all the while about holding my grip steady and the difference between squeezing and pulling. On the final series I hit two bottles through the base and knocked another off its post without breaking it. Chris seemed pleased with the quick progress I was making. He reached over and touched my shoulder and squeezed it gently.

  It’ll take more practice for you to really get comfortable with it, he said. But you’re on track to become one hell of a marksman, I can already tell.

  I hope so, I said. Can we come out here again tomorrow?

  If you like. But do me a favor. Don’t tell your mother about the bottles I got out of her recycling bin. I know she likes to turn them in for the deposit.

  Don’t worry. I won’t say anything.

  Thanks. You’re a good man. Proud of you.

  He smiled and took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with a match. He took one drag and held it out for me to accept. No harm in it, he said. Long as you don’t make it a habit.

  I held the burning cylinder between my fingers and breathed smoke into my lungs for the first time. I tried not to cough, but I couldn’t help it. As much as Dad enjoyed his cigars, he was never around enough for me to get used to them. I took a second drag, this time without inhaling, and passed the rest back to Chris. Thanks, I said. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

  Chris smiled. Nothing ever is, he said.

  He swung the rifle over his shoulder and started leading us back out the way we came. Now I had two secrets to share with him. I liked that, having a secret to hold onto with an adult. Sometimes it felt like everything I did was under the scrutiny of the older generation. If not Dad himself, then Mom, the teachers, the administrators, the priests, and all the clerks and busybodies in between. So having someone older around who knew how to do things, and was eager to teach them to me, and who confided in me like I was a grown man myself—it meant a lot to me. Maybe more than the shooting itself.

  Next time we’ll try out some live targets, he said as we crossed back into the vineyard. You really impressed me today with how fast you caught on.

  Thanks, I said. It felt good hitting the mark.

  Always does, son. Always does.

  The orchards became our private hunting ground, a poor man’s country club where the only leisure activity available involved pitting our skills and brains against the survival instincts of whatever smaller creatures came before us. Squirrels, gophers, hawks, even the occasional lanky brush rabbit. All that fell within our sights were taken down, through the neck, a clean kill to rid our lands, or at least the neighbor’s lands, of whatever minor nuisance the animals were capable of provoking. The first time I saw a coyote in the distance, slapping its flat paws on the gravel with its snout low to the ground, the rifle almost leapt out of my hands, I was so excited. From the shady blind of overgrowth I was in, I turned the bolt and drove a bullet straight into the chamber. But Chris stopped me before I could discharge the safety and send the bullet on ahead to do its work.

  You don’t have it, he said, lowering the barrel with his outstretched hand. From this distance all you could do is wing it. Best case scenario it’ll take off running, and then bleed out a mile down the road. You don’t want it that way. Trust me.

  I set my eyes on the dirt beneath us. Without having to see, I knew my opportunity had come and gone, that the coyote had scampered back behind the safety of the tree cover, oafishly unaware of how close it came to being fired upon.

  What if I don’t get another chance like this? To catch a coyote in the open?

  Then you don’t get another chance, he said. That’ll happen more than once in life. The best you can do is make peace with the loss and try to hold out hope for something better.

  Is that what you did after you deserted the Army? You hoped for something better?

  He looked at me with a mix of anger and surprise, which made sense, I suppose, given how rarely I resorted to talking back to him. I wanted that coyote, damn it, and now it was gone, and in my resentment I forgot myself, and how easy it would’ve been for him to pack up the rifles and tell me never again. But instead he looked off into the distance at whatever point on the horizon he liked to fixate upon. The rings under his eyes were red and dry and scaled with dust from so many hours in the vineyard. He licked his lips and began to speak without turning.

  There was no hope left in those days, he said. For a while we lived like animals. We took whatever we wanted, and measured the right and wrong of a situation by how strong we were compared to the other party. Some still live that way even now. You give up on the little things, the little rules you set for yourself, and you’ll forget the big ones too in time. That’s why we go for the clean kill. Because it’s a short walk down the road to savagery.

  He put his hand to his nose and smelled the stink of tobacco on his fingers. I couldn’t tell, from where I sat, whether he was talking to me like I was a child or full-grown man. All I knew was that I had spoiled the mood somehow, as I was bound to do, and now the guilt of a hundred glaring priests was bearing down on me at once without Chris even having to look me in the eye. His words were enough.

  I could do some wicked things, I said. If I wasn’t careful, I could be a pretty bad guy.

  I expected him to laugh at me for talking tough, but instead he nodded his head and leaned in closer under the shade of the dry grass thicket. So could I, he said. Ain’t we a pair?

  When I looked out again at the strip of clearing, the coyote was nowhere to be seen, and the sun was beginning its final blazing descent into the Pacific a whole world away. As if beholden to some similar, cosmic time piece, Chris stood and came out from behind the thicket with the rifle perched sideways across his forearms. He started walking away, not back toward the vineyard the way we came in, but farther out into the border edges that our neighbor’s parcel shared with two others just like it. I followed. I wiped the dirt from my pantlegs and jogged after him and kept the pace alongside him all the way to the end of the trail. My legs were half-asleep from crouching so long. I didn’t let it show.

  You want to check out the orchard across the road?

  He kept on walking at the same pace. Some other time, he said. Just got one thing left to do before we head back. Won’t take but a minute.

  We walked through a gap in the tree line and out through the other end and walked down a dirt trail bordered on both sides by the deep-cut and hardened tread lines of two massive truck tires. At the end of the trail, we came upon the concrete bank of a waterway that had been dug out and paved long before I was born. All over the valley, the old American irriga
tion ditches lay dry except for a few repurposed channels the new authorities saw no point in letting go to waste. Two feet of black water flowed hurriedly along the floor of the ditch, driven onward by some change in elevation too imperceptible for human eyes to detect. Chris sat on the edge of the bank and tore his boots off one after the other and lay them upsidedown against his pack. His socks were soiled brown and sported gaping holes on both heels.

  You going for a swim?

  Chris started to undo his shirt buttons. I’m washing up, he said. Suggest you do the same if you plan to sit at your mother’s dinner table.

  He had a point and I knew it. By any civilized standard, we were filthy beyond tolerance. All afternoon the sweat on our skins had sealed the drifting dust in our pores and built up a muddy residue behind our ears and in our ass cracks. Laying his shirt over the concrete, Chris revealed a chest covered in sweat-matted hair and two thick biceps split in half by what the white boys called a farmer’s tan. Tattoo across his right pectoral, insignia of some forgotten unit of an army of a nation that no longer existed.

  Got some soap in my bag, he said. Reach in and get it, will ya?

  I bent down and unzipped the pack and removed a crumpled ziploc baggie containing the eroded slivers of two soap cakes. When I stood up again, Chris had his pants off and was taking his first steps into the water below. His pale thighs clenched at the coldness of it, but he knelt down all the same and splashed some over his face and shoulders. Then he turned and looked at me, naked as the day he was made, and motioned for me to join him.

  We got to make this fast, he said. Your mother’s liable to start worrying.

  I held the baggie between my teeth and pulled off my shoes and socks. The heat of the ground against my bare soles was all the motivation I needed to get in. And once I was standing with the icy water racing past my legs, I didn’t think about what we looked like, standing together as we were, like a couple of Edenites basking in our own ignorance. I let out my breath and opened the baggie. Chris reached in and grabbed one of the slivers and started soaping himself. He laughed as I turned my back to him.

  It’s nothing I ain’t seen before, he said. Quit fooling around and get to work. We both smell like ass, whether you notice or not. Wouldn’t feel right bringing you home in such a state. Your mother would never forgive me.

  I backed away from the edge and turned and bent down to wet the soap. As I started in on my chest and armpits, I tried to keep my eyes on the water and its dizzying current and undertow. Sprigs of yellow grass growing up through cracks in the cement floor, bending with the flow of the water without yielding root. But gradually the sounds of Chris’ lathering drew my gaze until finally we stood facing each other, suds and scum leaking down our legs, with the high sun already bringing out the color in places that normally never saw its light. While I had barely begun to peel away the layer of grime on my own body, Chris was working himself over with the soap like he hadn’t had a real good scrub in months. He left no spot untreated, starting from the ridge of his freckled shoulders and moving down across his stomach and into the hairy pockets of his inner groin. It was the first time I’d seen anyone besides my brothers bathing, and even more exhilarating than the sight of him was the awareness that he was watching me too.

  It’s okay, he said. We’re not breaking any rules out here. We’re just a couple of soldiers in the bush, doing the best we can. Am I right?

  Yeah. You’re right.

  Good. Now don’t forget the back of your neck. Lot of dirt builds up there.

  When we’d finished rinsing off, we climbed back up to the bank and sat there for a while drying in the sun and not saying much. We slipped our clothes and shoes back on and started walking back toward the vineyard with wet dirt sloshing inside of our socks. It took me a while to get over the feeling that I was in trouble of some sprt, that despite the soap and water I was somehow even dirtier now than before. I couldn’t help but think of Dad standing over me with the swab in his hand, and what he would’ve said if he could’ve seen me there in the ditch. Or what Mom would’ve said for that matter. Or Father Ramsey. I’d always known, in one way or another, that I wasn’t the natural goody-goody the nuns and teachers doted on, that any goodness I hoped to exemplify would have to be done in spite of my nature and not because of it. But still, I always tried to keep my sinful tendencies in-check, and if from time to time I wandered off into the orchards, it was always on my own. No one had ever seen that side of me till now.

  Chris must’ve known something was up, cause he slowed his pace and set his hand between my shoulder blades. You impressed me with how you handled yourself today, he said. You got more sense than a lot of the hunters I’ve known. And they were grown men.

  Thanks. I hope to keep getting better.

  I know you do. That’s why I want you to have my spare rifle.

  I stopped walking and turned to look at him. What do you mean you want me to have it?

  Chris smiled. I mean it’s yours, he said. It’s a pain in the ass keeping them both hidden from the camp managers, and all I really need is the one anyway. I’d rather it go to somebody who’ll get some use out of it. And it looks like that somebody’s you.

  I don’t know what to say.

  Shit, say yes. That .22 was made before disbandment. I’d have killed to have a weapon like that when I was your age.

  I looked down at the rifle and turned it over in my hands and felt a new sense of wonder about it simply because it was now my own. For my last four birthdays, Dad had gotten me the same thing—shoes. They weren’t fancy or unique or engineered for sports, they were just plain black sneakers for day to day use. But far more important than the shoes themselves was the fact that they were new. How many of your classmates have new shoes every year? he asked after the second pair. How many boys around here can feel proud of the things their parents give them to wear? Of course he had never been to my school in person or seen any of my classmates in the flesh. If he had, he would’ve known that every family in the valley bought their kids new shoes once a year for the same reason he thought it was important to do so. Now, after four years of walking with my father alongside me, of feeling his callousness with each step I took, it was amazing to be given a gift that actually made me happy, regardless of the circumstances that had preceded the giving.

  This is the best present I’ve ever gotten, I said. I’m going to hold on to it forever.

  That’s good to hear, Chris said. But hey, do me a favor. If your mother asks, tell her I loaned it to you for practice. It’s not registered, and I’m afraid she might not want it in the house if she found out.

  You want me to lie to her again?

  No, just keep it open-ended. Tell her what she wants to hear. You get me?

  Yeah. I get you.

  He started walking again. Good, he said. Now let’s pick up the pace. Getting late.

  I kept the rifle in my closet, at the bottom of a duffle bag full of old clothes that were too small for me but not yet big enough for Sebastian. I took it out from time to time when I was alone, to clean and polish the barrel, or just to look at it and admire the deadly simplicity of its design. And of course I took it out in the afternoon to go hunting with Chris, to follow him in search of whatever prey we could find, which never seemed to grow beyond small birds and brush critters no matter how skilled I became at tracking.

  I looked for the coyote. Every time we were out there, on the edge of the clearing where I first saw him, or in the stone fruit labyrinth across the road, I fixed my gaze far into the distance, just in case he might show. But he never did. It got to where I questioned whether I’d actually seen him it all. He had come into my mind and laid his bony tracks and then disappeared without yielding a second chance. I didn’t know what I’d do if I ever got him, if I’d try to have him stuffed like some wealthy sportsman, or if I’d simply stand over him a while reflecting on what I’d done and then leave the hairy carcass to rot. With hunting or with anything else, I never
thought about what I’d do after the prize had been won. I knew there were some Christians who thought often about heaven and the glory that awaited them when they got there. But I could only focus on the journey, and all the pitfalls that awaited me along the way.

  We continued bathing together in the irrigation ditch. Either Mom never put two and two together, and never questioned my wet hair and cleanliness at the end of the day, or she figured there was nothing strange about two men washing together and didn’t think to say anything. Not that there was anything strange about it, in that sense. Another couple of years and I’d be showering with up to fifteen boys at a time in the locker room after wrestling practice. Somehow, though, no matter how comfortable we became around each other, there was an uneasiness between Chris and me. It always felt like he was egging me on, pushing me to strip away even more layers until he could see me for what I really was.

  One time we were in the water with a fresh bar of soap, luxuriating in the amount of lather it produced. The sun was so bright that every time I closed my eyes and opened them again the world seemed tinted blue like I was seeing it through colored glass. I noticed Chris had stopped scrubbing and was looking at me with his hands on his chest.

  You’re starting high school soon, yeah?

  In the fall.

  You got a girlfriend in your class?

  I shook my head. No. I’ve never had one.

  Right, he said. But I bet you still get a little taste now and then.

  I’m a Christian.

  Does that mean your junk don’t work?

  It means I haven’t done anything. With anyone.

  Chris smiled. You got a nice cock for your age, he said. You’re saying no girl’s ever touched it or put it in her mouth? You’re saying you wouldn’t want her to?

  He looked at me as I stood, my arms and shoulders drying quickly in the burning light. For the first time since the first time, I turned so he couldn’t see. I could hear him laughing behind me.