Lord of California

by Andrew Valencia

  It’s okay, he said. No shame here.

  There were other incidents after that where Chris overstepped his bounds or spoke too crudely and made me feel dirty inside my own skin. I learned to do a better job of laughing it off, of making like I enjoyed the vulgarity he inflicted on me the way fat kids at school pretended not to mind the jokes played at their expense. We still went out hunting at least three times a week, so much that halfway through the summer Chris had to buy another bar of soap. Then, one Saturday in August, we packed a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks and headed out farther than we ever had before, out beyond the boundary of the main parcel tract and into the bare country on the outskirts of Reedley. We dropped a few crows we found perched on telephone lines, but no larger prey revealed itself. Toward midday we stopped and rested beside an abandoned irrigation pump and ate two avocado sandwiches apiece. Chris lit a cigarette and put his boots up on one of the pipes. He was in a relaxed mood. He shooed a mosquito off his thumb and watched it fly away and didn’t wait to see if it returned.

  Now that you know the basics of how to handle a weapon, he said, you can learn to hunt pretty much anything. Someday you should try your hand at hunting deer. Probably come away with a pretty nice buck.

  I’d like to, I said. Been thinking about it since we first started practicing.

  Should ask your father next time he’s in town. He might know some rich folks who’d let you use their property up in the mountains.

  I took a drink of water from the canteen and wiped my lips and sat with my head low between my shoulders. He’s not much for the mountains, I said. But Mom might let us go camping sometime in the winter, when there’s snow in the hills. You should try asking her.

  Chris took his feet off the pipe. He stood and dusted off his pant legs. You’re going to have to start making your own plans, he said. I’m heading out at the end of the month.

  I rose to my feet slowly and came up close beside him. I could smell the cigarette smoke in his hair and on his skin and I could see the way he was trying to avoid looking me in the eye. Where are you going? I asked. What happened?

  Nothing’s happened, he said. Season’s over. Job’s finished. It’s time to move on.

  You’re a foreman, I said. Mom should’ve talked to you about staying on through the winter. She should’ve asked for your help in seeing us through the cold months.

  She did. She invited me to stay on straight through to next year’s harvest. But I turned her down. I got enough saved up now to start the next leg of my journey. No sense sticking around here longer than I have to and making things complicated.

  I looked at him with the beginnings of tears in my eyes. What did it mean to be complicated if our time in the orchards had been simple?

  You’ve got no reason to be like this, I said. How can you just wander from one place to the next, changing the lives of the people you touch, and then leave without a second thought? How can you live like that?

  That’s how it is on the road, he said. You stay in a place for a while and make friends while you’re there. Then you pick up and leave and maybe you see them again and maybe you don’t. It’s nothing personal. It’s just the way it is. You get used to it. Trust me, you’ll remember me more fondly after I’m gone. The heart appreciates distance. It’s a forgetful little muscle.

  He kicked the lid on the cooler shut and picked the cooler up by its handle. Suddenly it hit me that the hunt was over, that he was packing up to leave, and that this would be the last hunt we ever went on together.

  You told me to stay at home, I said. You told me I had it good here, and I should think twice before leaving. Did you believe that? Did you ever mean any of the things you said?

  You’re my boss’s son, he said. You really think I’m going to encourage you to run off?

  No, I said. But you did other things with me you weren’t supposed to do.

  He set his hands at his sides and looked at me. Yeah, he said, and you did things you weren’t supposed to do either.

  I could tell on you. I could tell Mom about it.

  Yeah. And I could tell her about the rifle.

  I can’t go back. Not now. How can I go back to the way things were? How I used to be?

  You’ll find a way, he said. You think it wasn’t hard for me after the war? You think I never looked inside myself and felt completely alone? At least you have faith. I lost any faith I had a long time ago. And you’ve got your own rifle now. I won’t deprive you of that. So buck up. It’s not the end of the world.

  He turned and started walking with the cooler swinging at his side. I followed after him, but didn’t try to close the gap between us. Not the end of the world. Spoken only like someone of that generation could, the ones who awoke one morning to find the world they knew gone and still had to decide what to do about breakfast. I kept the rifle in the closet and told Mom he took it with him when he left. What he really took from me, I never told a soul.

  How do we begin to build? How do we start over again when the blood inside our veins is tainted with betrayal? Poisoned by tragedy. Pain of trauma inherited through cellular memory. Indians knew it, heathens though they were. Cain and Abel never saw the garden, but they felt the sting of disobedience in their hearts, and knew it from their parents’ stories. Probably why Cain couldn’t work the soil worth a damn. Too much to live up too, too many expectations. Only the free can find favor in the fruits of their labor, and there’s no freedom for a child burdened by a parent’s broken dream. What must it have been like to grow up in that house, to hear of a world without pain where no one ever died and nakedness was a thing without a word and so it wasn’t a thing at all? Father Ramsey used to talk about lost tribes in South America, about heathens in Africa who’ve never been blessed to hear the Word of God. Anecdotes of a world we’d never see filtered through the American accent of a middle-aged virgin. Some clueless boy would ask, Wouldn’t it be better if they never heard the Word at all? At least then they’d be more likely to end up in Purgatory instead of receiving eternal damnation. And the old priest would bat his weary eyes and reply, Everyone deserves the opportunity to receive salvation. What good would it do sparing them the Word if it wound up costing them the chance to enter paradise? That was his answer to Adam’s children. That was what we had to content ourselves with when our parents told us old stories about life in the garden.

  I try to imagine what life was like back then. I tend to see it as full of contradictions, as a world where everyone was rich and happy and also addicted to crack. Tom Hanks and Eddie Murphy fighting terrorists in space while obese children starved to death. Dad never talked about that world. It was old and sad and complicated, and so it didn’t concern me whatsoever. Mom talked about the mistakes they made back then, that whole generation living it up like the party would never end, dumb sluts popping champagne corks on the deck of a sinking ship.

  Should’ve seen the sort of things we wore in public in those days, she’d say, shaking her head. You’d be ashamed of your mother if you could’ve seen her then.

  Ashamed? Is that what you wanted? Is that what all this was for? Why do I have to learn from your mistakes, when I may have been one myself? Your pain and your shame are in my blood, they are my pain and my shame, too, but that’s not all I feel. Here’s what I’ve seen and what I know and what I remember. I was eight years old and it was January. Worst frost on record. Dad was gone, off wherever it was that he went. For three days the power was out and there was no butane left in the gas tank and the foremen were under emergency lockdown at the state camp. You’d dress me in sweaters each night at bedtime and pile me with extra blankets to keep the cold of morning from creeping in. You’d wake at dawn with the electric alarm broken and walk out into the vineyard with a hatchet stuck through the pocket of your mended winter coat. And by the time I awoke you’d have already hacked and gathered the grapewood and built a fire in the living room hearth and boiled water over the range to make the oatmeal and hot cocoa for my breakfas
t. That was you. That was your love. And on the fourth day, after the fuel truck came, I opened my eyes in the morning and missed the smell of woodsmoke in the house.

  Was it blood that made you stay by me when all others went away? Was blood the only thing? Child, born of blood and agony, proof of maternity laid bare for all to see as soon as the head begins to crown. No swabs needed, no tests required. Is that why I was dear to you? Is that why he never had faith? I’ve tried… I’ve tried to be better than I am. That world you lost, the one that took my brother… I’ve tried to live up to all the good things you’ve told me about it, and shut out the wicked things as you shut out your past. But I’m not a fresh start for anyone. I was never such pure clean clay. My name was written somewhere before I was born, and blood won’t help me with the task ahead. If I build, I build on a foundation of tears.

  For two days and two fitful nights I stayed by the prisoner’s side. For two days I tried reading to him from Scripture, alternating between various passages but coming back time and again to the part about Lazarus rising from the dead. The longer I delayed, the more unreachable he became. Unreachable and incoherent. I tried my best to keep his wound clean. Each morning I rinsed the area with warm water and iodine and applied fresh bandages to the cut. But still the wound began to fester. By the third morning he was running a fever so high he couldn’t even sit up to take soup. From then on all he could do was lie on his back and suck ice cubes and empty his stomach irregularly into a tin bucket on the floor by his bed. The chain had already been pointless for some time, but now it just seemed absurd. The only way he was going anywhere was if someone carried him off. And if God wasn’t going to step in and do it, then I knew exactly who the responsibility would fall to. Chris was right. The clean kill is best. A dying animal is nothing you want to have on your hands.

  By day four I was almost as agitated as him. Katie had sent the pickers and foremen away indefinitely and the whole farm was at a standstill waiting to see what we did next. What I did. Ellie seemed especially worried, and had taken to bringing me soup in the back room just as I’d done for the prisoner up till then. I was skipping meals and she knew it, but most of all I think she wanted to keep an eye on me, and to see how close I was to declaring his soul lost. Truth was I didn’t feel capable of holding out another night the way I was going. Not unless I wanted to aspire to martyrdom at such a young age. But all through the afternoon I kept reading to him from the Bible, unsure of whether he could understand me, and hearing in my voice an absence of conviction that troubled me more than anything except the killing left to be done.

  Then Jesus raised His eyes, I said. And He said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.

  He let out a groan and rolled onto his side with his hand clutching his stomach. It was more of a torture now than anything, keeping him alive. But still I hesitated, because I was afraid, and because I’d learned enough from my own readings of Scripture to know what marks may be branded on those who take up arms against their brothers. And he was my brother. That was the shit of it. That was what I couldn’t get past. God help those who failed as their brother’s keeper. I took the blanket from the corner of the bed and laid it over him and knelt by the corner of the bed where his head was resting.

  Do you want some wine? Would that make you feel better?

  He stirred slightly at the mention of it and then rolled onto his back with his face curled in disgust. Vodka, he said. Enough to put me out.

  I’m sorry. We still don’t have any vodka. It’s hard to come by in these parts.

  Doesn’t matter, he said. Just stop looking at me.

  What?

  You heard me. I can feel your eyes on me every second of the day. Just stop it, please.

  I shook my head and looked down at the carpet. You need to see a doctor, I said. You’ve needed one for a long time. I’ve been ungenerous with you until now. Just say you’ll forget about us, about the farm, and I’ll drive you into town myself. We can tell the people at the clinic it was a motorcycle accident. They won’t make a stink about it. And you’ll get the help you need.

  He coughed violently into the bed sheets, his throat muscles convulsing with each strong hack. He shuddered and caught his breath and afterward he lay in such gentle stasis I was afraid he’d finally passed out. There’s only one way out for me, he said. You know it as well as I do. So take your little farm boy gun and finish me off. Unless you haven’t got the balls.

  I stepped back and watched him from as much distance as the size of the room would allow. I’ll do it, I said. I’ll put you to rest. But on one condition. Confess your sins to me right now. Let me give you over to the other side with a conscience free of guilt.

  The sounds of a dying man are troubling, but none more so than the sounds of his laughter. His body couldn’t handle the stress of it, and after a few big chuckles he was back coughing into his sheets. Are you a priest now? he asked. Are you equipped to deliver last rites?

  He was too smart for me, damn him. He knew I wasn’t ordained to do anything more than offer him false comfort before the end. Any talk to the contrary was just Protestant optimism at its most weightless. I’m not equipped to do anything, I said. But who’s to say what God hears and what he doesn’t? If you unburden your soul to me now, before the end, I have to believe it would count for something. All this time you’ve been without God’s love, you must’ve thought at least once about what you would do when you were on your deathbed, if you were called upon to repent.

  Of course not, he said. I never imagined I’d be anywhere near a believer when it happened. I hoped to die alone, with a small empire to my name, leaving behind a jealous public, and a few close friends to scatter my ashes into the Golden Gate.

  We’ll bury you in the orchard and say a prayer over your grave, I said. That’s the best we can do. I’m sorry, but you haven’t left us many options. But you can still guard your soul against the doom of eternal damnation. You believed in it once. Why not now, here at the end?

  He seemed to grow tender at the sound of my words. His eyes stayed shut for a good long while. Then he opened them again and cleared his throat and looked at me in a way he hadn’t since the afternoon he first came to us, when he was the very picture of importance, and all his ugliness was still waiting to be revealed.

  I’m not who I was when I was your age, he said with sweat shining across his forehead. I’ve done things you couldn’t imagine. I know things that would leave you shattered.

  I closed my Bible and crept closer to the side of the bed. My hands were shaking from a lack of sleep and from nervousness and from the sudden excitement of what he might say next. You sound ready, I said. You sound like you’re ready to confess.

  You’re not a priest.

  No, but I’m still your brother. We’re brothers by blood, and brothers in Christ. That’s about as good as we could hope for without having an actual priest around.

  He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Actually, he appeared to shift his body away, as well as he could in his weakened condition, anytime I fixed my gaze on him too long. You’re not my brother, he said. Who fucked whose mother and who planted what seed don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

  He was still talking smart, but I could tell the fever was draining his resistance. There was a careful desperation in the way he spoke, like a drunk man talking slowly to avoid slurring his words. Our father wasn’t perfect, I said. But he was still our father. That’s a truth bigger than anything we can hope to change. The same is true for us. We’re still brothers. Blood is blood. The Lord decided it was so before any of us were made.

  I killed our father. What does your God have to say about that?

  I looked at him and smiled. You’re trying to bait me, I said. But it won’t work.

  It’s true, he said. I killed him. He was sick and I killed him. I pressed a pillow over h
is face until he stopped breathing.

  Why are you saying this?

  It’s what you wanted. I just gave you my last confession.

  That’s not possible. He died of appendicitis. The doctors said so.

  The doctors didn’t look close enough. His appendix burst, but that’s not what killed him. I tied him down and suffocated him with his own pillow. I did it. Me. Not God.

  You weren’t there. You couldn’t have.

  I was. I was there when his life gave out. I felt it leave him. Big man that he was, it was like feeling the air go out of an inflated cushion.

  My eyes went cloudy. I took a step back and put my hand on the bookcase to steady myself. All the sleepless nights in that room had made it seem bigger than it was. But once I was against the wall, seeing the room in its entirety, I suddenly felt more claustrophobic than I had in my entire life. Even the smell of the place, that stifling smell of sickness and stale air, seemed to close off the space around me. I leaned over and swallowed the saliva rising up from the back of my tongue.

  How could you do that? Your own father.

  Don’t pretend it’s a mystery, he said. You knew him. You know what he was like.

  It doesn’t matter. You were his son. That’s like the worst thing a person can do. I can’t even think of anyone in the Bible who did something so evil.

  Try a different religion, then. Look at the Greeks. That’s how Zeus got his big break.

  I used the edge of the bookcase to increase my forward momentum so that when I lunged forward it came as quite a jolt to his system. He started coughing again, but I wouldn’t give him a chance to breathe. I was crouching over him with my face just a few inches above his.

  Tell me, I said. Tell me how you could do it. What was it for?

  Money, he said. I wanted money to start a new life. So I tracked him down and tried to squeeze some money out of him. But there was nothing there. He was broke except for the farms. So I killed him and went looking for what I was owed. That’s how I ended up here.