California Gold (25 page)

“Catch your fancy, does it?” Wyatt asked.

“Well, it—Wyatt, you’re promising that the climate in your town will cure everything from nerves and dyspepsia to the fantods and marital disorders.”

“Right. I decided to leave out cancer.”

“What about these photographs? Where did you get this one? You look like you’re ready for the grave.”

Mack pointed to a matching pair of stiff portraits. In the right-hand one, “After,” Wyatt looked normal, but the “Before” shot depicted him with deep, dark eye sockets and wasted cheeks above a beard longer than a Civil War general’s.

“An artist in town doctored that one for me. I told him to make me look as bad as possible.”

“It says California completely cured your consumption. I didn’t know you had consumption.”

Wyatt laughed as they cut past the end of the tent. Neither the woman nor the four bandsmen gave their employer friendly looks or a greeting. In fact they were all sullen.

They walked along Grande Boulevard. “I noticed you’re going to build a sanitarium.”

“Absolutely. Have to have one to attract the one-lung crowd. That’s why I faked the picture.”

Ahead, on the hillside to their left, Mack saw a cluster of half a dozen twenty-foot trees with globular orange fruit. They looked decidedly peculiar, their leaves high above the ground and clustered at the ends of thick branches.

Wyatt spoke in a reflective way. “Mack, I owe you a considerable debt. So I’d like to find a place for you. But if I do, you’ll have to understand how things work. Easterners come out here with their noses dripping snot, their lungs sloshing with blood, their bowels stopped up with glue, their cocks dead since last Fourth of July, their cunts full of cobwebs and fairly quivering for a second coming. One drink from the California grail, they think—one drink. Bang! A fucking miracle.”

Mack’s smile hardened in place and his skin crawled.

Wyatt gestured in that grand way of his. “They step off the train. The sun dazzles them. The balmy air. They’re in a beautiful daze. They see what they want to see—a warm, bright place, free from sickness, away from the cold—where anything’s possible—even the redemption of their corrupt white flesh…”

His gaze fixed on thunderheads in a sky whiting out with heat haze. Mack saw the opal flash of his eyes.

“I hated my parents, but I learned something useful from them, stupid as they were. My mother taught me there are always fools panting after miraculous cures. And you remember my talking about my old man?”

“That he tried real estate, and failed—yes.”

“Two things whipped him: a conscience, and too many laws hemming him in. I don’t think I was ever bothered with a conscience, and out here I don’t have to bother with laws. That’s the beauty of California: the freedom. That’s the lure. That’s why we’re all here.”

“Wyatt, there are plenty of laws in California.”

“I’m not talking about the petty stuff. A legal hack in Newhall handles that for me. I’m talking about forgetting higher laws. Thou shalt not deceive thy prospects. Thou shalt not cheat, thereby remaining poor. Higher laws,” he repeated, with such charming good cheer that Mack was almost persuaded that what he said was perfectly all right.

Almost.

“Anyway, my prospects deceive themselves. They’ve read Charley Nordhoff’s book or the SP advertising in their railway depot back home. They
know
that they’re going to live better—feel better—in California. I just say to them, ‘Certainly, help yourself to the miracles.’ Even if they are manufactured.”

With a merry expression, he crooked a finger, summoning Mack to a path leading up the nearby hill. He lifted a rope hung with keep out signs. They ducked under and scrambled up the slope.

“Still carry a clasp knife?”

Mack handed it to him. Wyatt reached to a high branch of the nearest tree and cut through twine. An orange dropped from the twisted tree limb. Every orange was hung that way, on all the trees.

“The pride of the South,” Wyatt said, balancing it aloft on his fingertips. “The California navel.” He tossed it to Mack. “These are Joshua trees from the Mojave. The trick isn’t original with me; I picked it up from a developer down in Riverside, where you find the real groves. I keep that rope up, and I keep the prospects down on the boulevard, and it works.” He clapped his hands and flung them over his head. “Miracles. Goddamn miracles!”

Mack was alternately fascinated and repelled. He didn’t know what to say. Music saved him, a snare drum and the horns, striking up a march. Wyatt shielded his eyes.

Dust boiled around the gateway arch. From the tan haze a large wagon emerged, rigged with a canvas top on poles. Someone with a dark face under a straw hat drove the wagon. “That’s the crowd from the nine-thirty local.” He counted aloud. Two men, three women, plus a couple of youngsters seated on the wagon floor. “Shit. I should get rid of that kid who rounds ’em up. Too young. No push. Besides, he’s a greaser. Porters and waiters in the good hotels won’t give him the time of—Wait a minute.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at Mack like a prosecutor. “You know how to drive a wagon, don’t you?”

Wyatt conducted the prospects on a walking tour and Mack trailed along behind, admiring the performance. Wyatt had a fine command of words and the persuasive, emotion-charged delivery of a preacher. The group was cross from the heat and dust of the trip, but Wyatt’s jokes and line of chatter soon charmed them out of that—all except one.

Soder and Edna Erickson hailed from Minnesota. The two young girls, one shy and silent, the other maddeningly forward and noisy, belonged to them. Soder Erickson said he raised corn. He was overweight, red-faced, and perspiring, but he refused to remove his heavy coat of black alpaca, and he greeted Wyatt’s every claim with a suspicious mutter or a sideways sneer at Edna. Mack felt uneasy.

There were also a Mr. and Mrs. Cato Purvis, Danville, Illinois, colorless people traveling with the wife’s equally drab sister.

The baking white sky seemed to generate hellish heat, and Wyatt’s face glistened as though washed in oil. The children complained, the ladies fanned themselves with hankies, but nothing diminished Wyatt’s energy. He only stopped his sales talk when someone asked a question.

“…in answer to that, Mr. Purvis, yes, the prime lots are going fast. I sold four yesterday. But I can show you a couple of beauties up here at the town square. A hundred and fifty dollars each—and each lot comes with full water rights.”

Soder Erickson swabbed his sweaty triple chin with a bandanna. “What water?”

Wife Edna clucked. “Now, Soder, we accepted Mr. Paul’s hospitality, we mustn’t be rude.”

“What is rude? In Norway, where I was born, a question is a question, water is water. I don’t see any water.”

“And it’s a good question,” Wyatt said. “A very good question, sir. I like astute customers.” Of course he didn’t, and Mack saw that behind the clenched smile, heard it beneath the forced friendliness. “Step this way and I’ll show you the answer.”

They straggled down a cross street toward the dry watercourse. The obnoxious daughter pulled up one of the lot stakes. “Please put that back,” Wyatt said. Edna Erickson had to reprimand the brat before she would obey.

“At present,” Wyatt went on, “this property is served by a water well. Not adequate for a town, of course. The town’s supply will flow in here, through the San Solaro Canal.” His sweeping hand painted a rushing blue torrent in the air. “Each individual lot will be irrigated by a
zanja,
one of those highly efficient wooden ditches you see throughout the Los Angeles basin. The San Solaro Development Company intends to widen and deepen this channel to assure every owner a full and constant supply of fresh pure water for household and agricultural use.”

Mack stood back, smiling despite himself. My, how it flowed: the charm, the persuasion, the invisible water…

Soder Erickson folded his arms. “I ask you again, Paul. Where does this water come from?”

“Why, sir, from the greatest free supply of water on the continent.” He raised his hands to embrace the hills. “The rains from the mountains, delivered to us by nature’s dependable force of gravity.”

“You say that’s how it’s going to be. I see how it is right now. No water.”

Wyatt gritted out his reply. “Of course not. Technically this is still summer. The rains don’t fall in California until the winter months. We are building reservoirs.”

“Show me.”

“I’ll show you the blueprints. Construction has not yet started. By next year, however, the first one will be finished, along with our primary irrigation system.”

“How do I know?”

Wyatt stared him down, ice in his smile. “You have my personal assurance, Mr. Erickson. My pledge and my promise.” Erickson’s snort declared his opinion of that. “I’ll also be happy to put it as a rider in your sales contract.”

“Won’t be any contract. I’m not buying anything.”

“Oh, Soder, I like this pretty little valley,” his wife said. “Can’t we at least consider—”

“No.”

Everyone else remained silent, embarrassed by the enmity in the air. The walking tour continued, the prospects now subdued.

At a spot near the rope with the
KEEP OUT
signs, the obnoxious little girl exclaimed, “Mama, look. Real orange trees.” She dashed toward the rope. Wyatt shot out a hand to hold her back.

“Orange trees are delicate, miss. You must obey the signs.”

Soder Erickson pulled his daughter away from Wyatt. “I’ve never seen an orange tree close up.” His stare challenged Wyatt to restrain him. Mack thought,
This is getting bad.

“You’ll see hundreds soon, Mr. Erickson. The San Solaro groves will be a source of beauty and natural wealth for all those who live here.”

“Soon? I thought it took five, six, seven years for an orange tree to bear. What kind of tricks are you pulling? I’m going up to see those trees.”

Wyatt stepped in front and pushed him back. “Listen, pilgrim, I told you…”

Erickson snarled and scuffled with him, while his wife clutched the girls against her skirt. Mack saw the bursting rage in Wyatt’s eyes and ran between the men.

His pale shadow fell across Erickson’s face. The farmer blinked, startled. Mack gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder and a sunny smile.

“Look, sir. Any good town has rules for the citizens. San Solaro has rules, and one of them is this: No one, resident or visitor, disturbs the orange trees. That’s clear and fair, isn’t it?”

“What’s clear is that this whole operation is a damned fraud, and I’m wasting my time. When does the wagon leave?”

Wyatt shouted, “When I say so.”

“Wyatt,” Mack began, turning to him, away from the others, trying to calm him with grimaces of warning. He heard Erickson’s wife pleading, Erickson saying, “No, no,” the obnoxious girl whining. Finally, Soder Erickson stumped away up the street. His family followed, and then the confused and embarrassed Purvises. Wyatt watched them, trembling so hard it scared Mack.

“Goddamn that fat fucker—”

“Wyatt, stop. Calm down. Let me take care of it. Stay here. Stay right here.”

Wyatt seemed too overwrought to do anything else. He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed at the sweat on his face. His eyes remained on Erickson. They were venomous.

Mack dashed after the prospects. Band music drifted through the still air and he exhaled, relieved. He spread his arms like a shepherd behind a flock.

“That music means they have the buffet ready, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll be more comfortable back at the tent, in the shade. There are cold drinks too. Please step right along.”

Obediently, the Purvis trio shuffled in the direction Mack suggested. Edna Erickson clutched her husband’s arm to restrain further outbursts. When their obnoxious daughter whined that she wanted sweets, he yelled, “Be quiet or I’ll tan you.”

Mack let them get well started and then turned back to Wyatt, who stood at a corner with an air of embittered defeat. He was no longer trembling, Mack was happy to see.

“Thanks for that,” Wyatt said.

“I had to prove that I could be of some use when you hire me.”

Wyatt managed a smile. “
When.
You’re pretty certain.”

“You need a helper. I need work. Come on now, you have to stay with those people till they leave.”

Wyatt started to argue but changed his mind. Apparently his crazy violent mood had passed. He fell in step. “Wasted effort. I won’t sell anything today. One bad apple sours the whole basket. I’d like to kill that sneering son of a bitch.”

Mack shot a quick sideways look at Wyatt Paul. He sounded ready to do it.

Moths flew through the open window of the depot’s back room and fluttered at the chimneys of two feeble kerosene lamps. Wyatt picked up a pork chop from his plate and gnawed at it. Mack put a boot heel on the scarred table and gazed at the lamps. Out in the dark hills, wild dogs barked.

“Wyatt, how are you going to get gas illumination out here?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“How will you get the water in?”

“I don’t know. Hire an expert. A
zanjero—
a water commissioner. Do you want to be the commissioner? What the hell does it matter? Even if no town is ever built, anyone who buys a lot in San Solaro is making a prime investment. Land is always a prime investment.”

“Granted. But you’re selling a town. On promises.”

“I can take you to a dozen tracts doing exactly the same thing. What brought you to California? Promises.”

Wyatt gnawed the last meat off the pork-chop bone. “You’re a damn good cook.” He tossed the bone on the stained plank floor. Then he picked up a lamp and prowled past the ticket window into the office half. As soon as Wyatt’s back was turned, Mack threw the bone out the window. Then he walked into the other room. Wyatt had just finished inking his pen, and now turned to a sheet on the wall headed daily sales. He scratched a large zero in the box under the day’s date. Single digits filled a few other boxes.

Suddenly Wyatt stabbed the pen into the tally sheet, tearing and spotting the paper with ink. Mack held his breath.

“Might have closed that Purvis couple. Erickson bastard ruined it.”