California Gold (30 page)

Her mouth pressed his shoulder blade, her tongue licking his flesh. He wanted to turn and take her, on the cot, on the floor, it didn’t matter so long as he had her. He hurt from wanting that. But he fought the need for the same reason he’d fought it before, and lifted her hands away when they dropped beneath his waistband.

She stepped back.

“San Solaro’s still Wyatt’s property,” he said. “So are you.”

“When are you going to stop this stupid, priggish—”

“Go home, Carla. Just go home.”

He patted her shoulder but she wrenched away. He sighed and walked to the cot, missing the reaction on her face—anger, and then a steel determination.

She started to say something sharp, but before she could, her eye fell on the crate he used as a bedside table. She snatched up T. Fowler Haines and pulled out the gold scarf.

“This is mine. You saved it.”

“What of it?”

She crushed the silky material in her hand. “It means that your protests are just talk. It means you really want the same thing I want, and one day you’ll stop all your idiot prattle about respecting Wyatt’s rights. He hasn’t any rights. That’s simple enough. So is this: I want you and you want me. Here’s the proof.”

She lifted the scarf and kissed it seductively. Her deep-blue eyes held his while her tongue tasted the fabric a moment. Then she laughed, a little laugh of victory, flinging the scarf on the mussed cot. He stood staring at it after the tent flap fell in place behind her. The
santan
howled like some wild beast baying in a cave.

T
HE
SANTAN
FLUNG DUST
clouds through the streets of Los Angeles and Mack held tightly to his hat outside Southwood’s So-Cal agency. Boards nailed over the door said Swifty Southwood’s vacation in Vancouver was permanent.

He trudged up toward the plaza. Christmas bunting and greens decorated the hotels and the windows of stores. In a season of hope, he searched for hope within himself and couldn’t find any. That had never happened before.

He wasn’t a religious person. Not formally, anyway. He knew nothing of Catholicism. Still, almost unconsciously, he was led to the studded doors of the church on the plaza, Nuestra Señora la Reina. He sank down in a back row, rested his folded hands on the pew ahead, and gazed at the glittering altar, the candles in tiny red glasses, the melancholy Christ gazing down from the cross. He sat there more than an hour, a drab figure, noticed but not bothered by the elderly priests who walked through occasionally. He searched deep in himself for the hope that had always been there to lift and renew him in bad times.

Presently the noise of the wind fell off outside, and the solitude and reassuring strength of this holy place restored him. Christmas without a home made a man feel a crushing loneliness, but he’d survive that, and he’d survive San Solaro, and move on. Moving on was imperative. There was no longer any doubt.

Muted voices interrupted then, and a door squeaked open at the head of the left aisle. A priest in a white surplice shook hands with a man wearing a dark sheepman’s coat. The priest vanished through the door and the other man walked up the aisle toward the plaza entrance, carrying an old leather valise. Mack recognized the broad nose, heavy features, bull-like body, and scrambled from the pew.

“Father Marquez.”

“Mr. Chance.
Que placer encontrarlo.
Totally unexpected.” They stepped outside. The wind had calmed, and westward over the Pacific, evening light was breaking through rents in the clouds. The stocky priest had a fatigued look; he lacked the energy Mack remembered.

“How long have you been in Los Angeles?” Mack asked.

“One hour.”

“Are you transferring here?”

The priest shook his head. “There has been a bitter dispute between the owners of the three morning newspapers and their union typographers and printers. Because times are growing hard again, the owners want to cut wages ten or twenty percent. I understand there have been lockouts, and negotiated settlements on the
Tribune
and the
Herald.
But the
Times
men are still out. A strike may be a worthy and necessary endeavor, but it can’t fill the empty bellies of a family. The men will need encouragement.”

“And you came for that?”

“Yes.” Gravely, he added, “Without sanction by my superiors. Indeed, they expressed disapproval.”

“Father…” Mack approached the subject hesitantly. “All three of the morning papers are still being published. I read the
Times
today.”

“How can that be? The telegraph message I received said the printers were still out. I must go to headquarters—”

“I have my wagon at a stable close by. Come along, I’ll drive you.”

The wagon bumped south along Spring Street. Gaslights in stores and cottages made the dusk even more lonely. They passed an adobe with a candle-decked holiday tree in the window and heard a family lustily singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

“It has been a long while since we met in the jail in San Francisco.”

“And a lot’s happened,” Mack replied.

“Change rolls on like the sea. But some things—injustice, the greed of those who control property—they do not change.” Marquez chuckled. “You perhaps understand why my reputation grows steadily worse within the Church, and my position more untenable.”

“But you came here anyway.”

“There is a call. One answers,” the priest said with a solemn shrug. “Actually, this is both duty and a holiday of sorts. When my family lost most of its grant lands, they managed to save the main building, the original heart of the
rancho.
I am its temporary custodian. When my only nephew, Gonsalvo, is grown, I am hoping he will marry and take the place over. Until then, it stands empty. It’s a beautiful spot, down the coast, overlooking the sea. I was going to hire a horse and have a look. Would you like to go along? I’d welcome the company.”

Mack started to say no, then asked himself why. Wyatt spent all his time drinking. He’d been asleep when Mack left that morning to dutifully check the station and the hotels for prospects he knew he wouldn’t find. In the lonesome December dark, the priest’s invitation cheered him.

“Yes, Father, I’d like to go. I have the time, and I’ve never seen one of the original
ranchos
.”

“Please—not ‘Father’ any longer. Diego.”

Mack grinned and shook hands on it.

The small frame building on South Spring housed the Los Angeles local of the International Typographers’ Union. Half a dozen men were gathered in the office amid a litter of literature, handbills, and copies of the
Times.
There was a dispirited air about the printers, though they welcomed Marquez warmly.

The priest shucked off his sheepman’s coat; underneath he wore a white shirt with his clerical collar. He pointed to a stained bandage on the head of one of the typesetters. “Is that a result of the trouble?”

“Aye. Otis brung in some plug-uglies from San Diego and Sacramento. They’re scabbing for him. I got this from one of ’em. The scabs are the reason the
Times
is still being printed. ’Course, the colonel, he lauds ’em to heaven…”

He gave Marquez a handbill. After scanning it, he passed it to Mack. The florid prose referred to the strikebreakers as “Liberty-loving immigrants. Pioneers of sound, selected stock, who vow to defeat the cancerous foreign-inspired plague of trade unionism.”

“They’re a rough bunch, Father,” another printer said. “No need for a godly man to mix it up with the likes of them.”

“But there is every need,” Marquez said. “Are you manning a picket line?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to see it.”

Three pickets walked wearily back and forth outside the
Times
office on the northeast corner of First and Fort streets. It was a substantial building of brick and granite, dominated by a three-story turret at the corner. A bronze eagle with spread wings stood guard atop the turret, and a bronze plaque proclaimed the credo of the proprietor.

STAND FAST. STAND FIRM.

STAND SURE. STAND TRUE.

Mack tied up the wagon horse while Marquez introduced himself to the pickets. Presses grumbled inside the building, shaking the sidewalk. A guard on a stool in the gaslit foyer glowered at the new arrivals.

Marquez laughed at something a picket said, then walked to the doorway. The guard stepped up to bar the priest with his arm.

“What do you want?”

“I want to speak to the men in your pressroom.”

“No unauthorized visitors permitted. Orders of the colonel.”

“Then get the colonel down here so I can speak to him.” The guard didn’t move. “Summon him. I insist.”

The guard slammed and latched the door. A few moments later, Otis marched out, garters on his sleeves, ink on his thumb, lightning in his eye. Three hulking pressmen in stained aprons followed, though they stayed in the foyer, eyeing the pickets. Otis drew up at attention in front of Marquez.

“Who are you, sir?”

“Father Diego Marquez of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.”

“Here in what official capacity?” Otis sounded like a sergeant hectoring a private.

“None. I come as an individual, the messenger of my own conscience. I want to speak to your new printers.”

“Why?”

Marquez stood up to the hostile stare, the intimidating tone. “To tell them what they’re doing is wrong. They’re abetting an unjust cause.”

“Ah, so that’s it. That’s what you are—some communist. Well, sir, you may mount your filmy attacks in San Francisco and suffer no opposition—that town is a moral sinkhole, a nest of radical Democrats. But try it here and every decent citizen will mobilize against you. Stand away from my door.”

Marquez drew a breath. He looked strong as a great rock, braced there on his short heavy legs. “I will not be moved. I intend to go in.”

“Men!” Otis shouted, swinging an invisible saber, and the hulks in the foyer jumped out to the sidewalk. Marquez turned sideways and tried to slip between two of them. Mack yelled a warning, too late; one man pounded a fist in the priest’s gut, doubling him over and sending him to his knees.

Otis kept shouting oaths and incoherent orders, and another pressman ran over to kick Marquez from behind. Mack threw himself on the man’s neck and dragged him around. Astonished, the man put up his fists to defend himself. Mack feinted, drew the man off balance, then slipped past his guard with a left-right combination taught him by Corbett. The man’s eyes crossed, then he leaned over the gutter, cupping the blood spurting from his nose.

The pickets swarmed around Mack and Marquez to protect them. Mack shot his hand out to the priest and Marquez clasped it and hoisted himself up.

“Had enough?” Otis roared.

Marquez said, “No, I’ll be back, walking this line.”

“At your peril, sir. At your peril. Men, if any of them attempt to breach our defenses and invade the building, retaliate with force.” He pointed at Marquez. “I’ve memorized your face. Foment anarchy in Los Angeles and we’ll muster the entire town against you. You’ll be jailed, maimed, or worse—and that papist collar won’t protect you.”

“We’ll peel your brown greaser hide and hang it out to dry,” one of the pressmen added. He leaned over and blew spit in Marquez’s face.

Marquez’s fists flew up, but he fought them down and with visible effort contained his fury. The pressman laughed and went inside.

The priest turned and squeezed Mack’s arm. “Thank you for pulling that man off. Bravely done.”

The pickets decided to abandon their vigil for the night. “I’ll be back here standing with you the day after tomorrow,” the priest promised them as they crowded into the wagon.

“That would be Christmas Eve, Father.”

“What day more fitting? Our blessed Lord was Himself a just and militant man. Often at odds with entrenched powers. We’ll carry on in that spirit on His birthday.”

Someone else said, “It’s a damn disgusting mess. Here’s that Otis, a card-carrying union typographer and printer ever since he was a boy in Marietta, Ohio—and he locks us out, and pits thugs against us. Why does a man do that?”

“Money,” Marquez replied. “The alchemy of money and property. It debases the gold of character. It destroys all but the strongest.”

In the back room of the local, Mack and the priest talked until after midnight. Marquez carried three well-thumbed books in his valise: a Douay Bible, Marx’s
Capital
, and a work called
Progress and Poverty
by Henry George.

“George was an editor on the
Oakland Transcript.
One day, in the hills, he had a vision, something like St. Paul’s on the Damascus road. It came to him that the principal cause of the gulf between rich and poor in California, indeed everywhere, is land monopoly. The person who works the land pays a high physical and financial price for mere survival. The person who owns the land amasses wealth without labor—at the expense of others. To redress that, George proposed a single tax on what he calls the unearned increment—the wealth created by rents, and the inevitable increase in land value.”

“I don’t like that idea very much,” Mack said. “I own an interest in some land, and I work hard at the same time.”

“Then perhaps you’re an exception. Whether you will be all your life…time alone will answer that.”

“I wouldn’t want some radical taxing me—”

“Don’t talk like Otis. And don’t condemn what you don’t understand. Read the book. It appeared in ’79 and it has never been out of print. George is in the East now. He has many followers.”

Mack fixed the title in his mind, said good-night, and rolled up in a blanket. As he drifted off, the priest was still sitting in the corner, studying his Bible by the light of a candle.

Early next morning, the two men drove toward the Pacific under a clearing sky. They crossed the new Santa Fe branch line to Redondo. As the wind freshened and the temperature soared, both shed their coats.

“I’ve brought some simple provisions, and two bottles from Buena Vista,” Marquez said. “Haraszthy’s own vineyard. We’ll celebrate the Christmas season like the outcasts we are.” He was jocular about it.