Lord of California

by Andrew Valencia

  There’s boys like him all over the country. On the coast mainly, but in the capital also. Boys whose families were well-off before disbandment and whose parents used the crisis to cement their position as aristocrats. They grew up in the shadows of the sea walls, with phones in their pockets and gates around their neighborhoods, believing they’ve faced real hardship because their parents make them study all the time. I worked for those boys. I killed for them. I lost my faith in God and man in part because of them. So if anyone has a reason to despise them, and what they represent, it’s me.

  And here you are trying to get me to set one of them free. You’re asking me to forgive him for all that he’s done. For all that he is.

  Yes. I am.

  Why?

  Several reasons.

  Name one.

  Well. For starters, I decided he doesn’t deserve to die.

  I laughed. You deciding on something doesn’t make it right.

  No, but it’s good enough for me.

  You just said you don’t have any faith in people.

  That’s right.

  But you’ve decided this person is worth trying to keep alive.

  Yes. I have.

  You don’t have faith in God either. You’re not a Christian.

  I’m not.

  So how can you say who deserves to live and who doesn’t?

  Because I decided on it.

  That’s no kind of answer.

  You’re wrong. It’s the most important kind.

  You’re not related to him. Not by blood.

  I’ve already told you I’m not.

  And there’s no higher power you answer to either.

  Not in the way you mean.

  Then what do you care if he lives or dies?

  Because I decided on my own to look out for him, or at least to save him from himself. That’s important, the deciding part. Anyone can do the right thing when they believe they have to, because of family or because of faith. But when you make the choice to help someone else, even when there are no ties binding you together, you make the choice to step up and act more decently than most of the people who have ever lived or ever will. And then your life is your own canvas, and you become freer in the doing than you ever would have been if you’d held yourself back. You stop trying to live up to something and you start trying to live.

  This is who you spend your time helping? A boy who’s already had more privilege than me and all of my brothers and sisters put together?

  Ramirez cleared his throat. He looked at me and looked at the contract and warped his mouth into a pained grimace that frankly startled me. If we’re going to have any kind of country at all, he said, we can’t go around killing everyone who deserves it. There’s too much blame to go around. The whole of California would be a mass grave before the end.

  You didn’t always think so, I said. All that time you were killing for the rich and powerful, you must’ve thought at least some of them deserved it.

  I did. There were some bad ones for sure.

  And some good ones also? Ones who didn’t deserve it?

  I said so before.

  Right. So how do you decide to kill all those people and then turn around years later and tell me I haven’t got the right to do what I need to do?

  I didn’t decide. Not really, anyway. If I did make a decision, it was that following orders was a good enough excuse to get me by.

  You were older than me then? You were older than me when you started to kill?

  Yes. I was already grown.

  But you expect me to be more mature than that. You expect me to turn the other cheek for no reason other than because it’s the right thing to do.

  He shook his head. I don’t expect you to do anything unless you want to, he said. But I will say that you won’t like it. You won’t like living with yourself if you harm that boy. We all have to live with the decisions we make, even when we tell ourselves there was no other choice. Can you do that, son? Can you live to be as old as me and still feel regret in your heart for what you did when you were seventeen? Your brother did some awful things, and so did your father, but you don’t have to be like them. You can choose to be better.

  Ramirez set his spit cup on the table and crossed his leg back over his knee. He was waiting for me to decide on how I could be better, but all I could think of was how much better he was at looking after Elliot than my father was at looking after me. He didn’t have to be here. He didn’t have to be working so hard and saying these things to try to get through to me. At church we learned about faith and duty. Honor thy father and thy mother, be your brother’s keeper until you just can’t keep him any longer. To see somebody go to such lengths over somebody he barely knew, and without the weight of heaven on his shoulders for incentive, was something I’d never had to puzzle out before. It gave me a strange feeling down inside, like a sadness over something I knew I’d lost but couldn’t remember having.

  Ellie, I said. Could you come in here, please?

  Ramirez turned and watched Ellie appear from behind the wall with the rifle hanging low at her side. The safety was still on. She’d heard the same things I had.

  Is Mr. Ramirez going to be taking the prisoner with him? she asked.

  It’s not for us to decide by ourselves, I said. I need you to find our moms and the others and get them in here for a vote.

  Ellie nodded. She handed me the rifle and smiled at me and left the kitchen at a quickening pace.

  Come on, I said. You can see him now.

  Ramirez followed me down the hallway. There were no sounds from the other side of the door. I kept both hands on the rifle with the safety on and my finger on the button.

  He’s in bad shape right now, I said. There was an incident a few days ago that he started, and it could’ve turned out a lot worse. You’ll want to get him to a doctor right away.

  I’m sure you handled him the best you could, he said. You mind if we have a moment alone?

  Go ahead. I’ll be out here if you need me.

  From where I was standing, just outside the door, I could’ve heard everything they said, except they didn’t seem to be saying anything. My worries swelled and solidified and seemed to be confirmed when he came out again and I saw the look on his face.

  What happened?

  Ramirez put his hand to his forehead and held it there. I was too late, he said. Now I’ll have to live with it forever.

  He’s really gone?

  See for yourself.

  Ramirez stepped back from the doorway to make enough space for me to pass. The musty odor hit me in a single wave, followed by the shock of realizing what had happened in the room in the short time since I left it. The prisoner was mounted to the foot of the bed with his mouth open and saliva leaking down his chin. Seeing how he’d managed to carry it out, it was clear it had been a slow and terrible way to go. First he had to wrap the chain around the posts of the bedrail until it was as taut as possible. Then he must’ve crawled up onto the top of the rail and swung his feet over to the other side. As weak and feverish as he was, every step along the way had to be an ordeal. No energy left once he was dangling, though there were still scuffs in the carpet from his free foot’s thrashing. On account of the chain, one of his legs was twisted back, suspended in air. It made him look like a marionette, like a grotesque Pinocchio who chose to die rather than remain an imitation of a living boy. I walked back out of the room and closed the door and stood in the hallway facing Ramirez. His head was down.

  I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, he said. I might have been able to reach him.

  Don’t be sorry, I said. Whatever hell he’s in now can’t be worse than he hell he brought with him.

  I tried to seem calm, but my head was spinning as we marched back down the hallway. When I finally took my eyes off the floor, I saw that Ellie, Mom, and the rest of the women were all seated in the kitchen, just as it had been weeks before when our lost brother first revealed himself to us. I looked around
from one side of the table to the other, studying the individual faces of my family. Katie stood up from her seat. She was holding the new contract.

  Are you men about ready to start talking business?

  Father. My father. What did you do? What pearls did you lay before the swine who betrayed you? What pearls did you withhold from me? What blinded you from seeing me? The real me?

  I only did half of what I promised. I buried him in the orchard with the evening sun blazing red across the sky. Will and Logan, me and Ellie, together we carried him out of the house wrapped in a sheet and dug him a final resting place in the soft earth between two rows of nectarine trees. We chose the younger trees so the roots wouldn’t take him right away. We dug deep so the coyotes and wild dogs couldn’t get at him. We covered him and smoothed out the soil and stood around the plot with our heads bowed. But I didn’t say a word to commemorate him or guide his soul in passing. No one else spoke either. He wouldn’t have wanted prayers, and it didn’t seem to matter one way or another. He was dead now, another branch of the family severed and gone forever. Whatever sins or secrets he took with him couldn’t trouble us, and those he left behind were already being washed away in the frenzied business of planning our next maneuver.

  Ramirez left that same evening and couriered the contract to Russert on our behalf. A money order arrived two days later with four-fifths of the sales price all together in a lump sum. Mom had never had so much cash on hand at one time. None of us had. In our final nights at the farm, around the kitchen table where so much else had happened, we sat together and talked in measured voices about the Vandeman Act, about the direction the country was headed in, and about where we saw ourselves in this new world where the only money problem we had to worry about was how we were going to hold on to what we had already earned. Everyone had their own ideas about where we should go or what line of work we should get into next. But absent was the distrust that had plagued us when we first met at Katie’s barbeque. The change was subtle, but it was obvious. The mothers didn’t guard themselves like they used to. The children didn’t sit off by themselves with the siblings they’d been raised with originally. Instead Mom and Dawn traded jokes back and forth that got the whole kitchen shaking from our collective laughter. Beth held little Karina still on her lap while Sebastian practiced his boxing jabs on Logan’s open hands. Eventually it was decided that Fresno would be a good place to start at until we arrived at a more definite plan. But after the final vote was taken, no one seemed afraid of what was in store for us, at least compared to how we felt a year earlier when our world lay in pieces and we were all skeptical that we could put it back together, or find any better alternative.

  On the morning we were scheduled to head out, I was loading boxes into the trunk when Ellie came out to the driveway. Her new clothes suited her well, not that she would go in for anything too flashy even with extra money to throw around. She sat down on the hood and put her foot up on the bumper. She was closer to fifteen now than fourteen, and a lifetime removed from where she was when we first talked in the orchards outside Katie’s.

  Mom wants to know if you need more snacks for the drive up, she said. Way she’s been fussing over this trip, you’d think it was a ten-hour drive instead of one.

  I closed the trunk and came around to the front and stood next to her. Glad she’s excited about the move, I said. She’s looked a lot happier in general lately.

  Ellie smiled. She is happy, she said. That’s a new one for her.

  Well. Things are starting to look up.

  Yeah, they are. You nervous?

  No. You?

  A little bit. I’ve been wondering what your plans are for after we get settled. Whether you’re going to look for your own place or not.

  Been thinking about it. I still got a few months before the Army’ll take me. Might see if Will and Logan need any help getting their business up and running.

  That’d be a good way to spend your time. Better than getting shot at.

  Yeah, I guess.

  I asked her to get off the hood so I could wipe it down with a shammy. She watched me run the damp rag over the metal. I knew she was waiting for the chance to say something else.

  A lot of things are going to change now, I said. But you know I’ll always be around to protect you.

  She laughed. If that’s how you want to think of it, she said, then go ahead. But know this. I love you. You’re my brother and I love you. And I figured I might as well say so if you’re never going to.

  All right, then, I said. I guess I love you too.

  She smiled and stood on tiptoes to hug me around the shoulders.

  You’re still kind of a bitch, though, I said.

  I know, she said. It runs in the family.

  With the cars packed up, all that was left to do was round up the kids and say goodbye to the farm. But I was already itching to go. I knew enough secrets about the land not to get sentimental about putting it behind me. And besides, any chance I had to sit behind the wheel of the Lexus was one I was going to take. I pulled the small key out of my pocket and unhooked the club from the steering wheel. The first time I saw it lying in the backseat, I had no idea what it was. I had to ask Mom, and felt foolish after she explained it to me. Of course Dad would’ve taken extra precautions to keep his new car safe. He was always worried about his things falling into the hands of the wrong people. He wouldn’t have approved of me driving his convertible. He wouldn’t have approved of any of this. But his approval didn’t matter anymore, if it ever did. I was driving his baby the whole way there, and not giving it up.

  My brothers piled into the backseat while Mom sat up front with Karina balanced on her leg. She made the sign of the cross over her chest. She smiled at me.

  You ready, mijo?

  I pressed the button to let the top down. Yeah. I’m ready.

  Mother. My mother. Thank you. Thank you for doing the best you could by me. It wasn’t an easy life you led. It wasn’t the life you expected. But thank you for helping me to become free.

  Somewhere in this valley, or somewhere beyond, is the land we were promised when we made our promises to one another. A promise made not in blood, but in something stronger. Blood is weak. Blood is deceitful. They got that lesson wrong in Sunday school. Slash the vein, watch it pour. Nothing constant, nothing real. Watch it change colors in ordinary air. Watch the yellow plasma separate after a few hours on the ground. Wine becomes it in the hand of a priest. Wine betrays it in the mouth of a father. My father. Your husband. My children will know his name, but will never hear me honor it. In the vineyard, where our story began, there is too much poison to grow anything new. In the orchard, too, where our stories converged, nothing new will grow there either. But we will grow, and we will prosper, in California as well as anywhere. My sisters and brothers and mothers and me. We will finally have a home.

  Our city is out there. We will find it before the end.

  Our city is rising. Lay the stone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for their support during the writing process: Robert Lasner, Ryan McIlvain, Kathy Valencia, Brian Desmarais, Elise Blackwell, David Bajo, Brandon Haffner, and Matthew Fogarty.