California Gold (78 page)

The automobilists leaned toward one another to speak, Mack at some disadvantage because he drove from the right. Fairbanks plucked off his stiff-billed cap and smoothed his auburn hair. “I heard you were in the hotel. The implacable reformer and railroad foe visits the Del Monte. Pity we didn’t photograph it. What’s this you’re driving, a tin-plate bread box on wheels?”

“A new model Rolls-Royce.”

“Ah. English. An American car isn’t good enough for you? Looks slow as an elephant.”

“Faster than that paraffin-burner, Walter.”

“Would you like to put that to a test sometime?”

He snapped it out so fast and with such ferocity that Mack laughed. “Have you been lying in wait with that invitation? Yes, you have. Ever since the polo match. Or longer. Eh, Walter?”

Caught, Fairbanks thumped his steering wheel. “Yes or no?”

“Certainly. Anytime you say.”

“Next Sunday. That’s April fifteenth. I’ll be down here again—”

“I can arrange it,” Mack said. Maybe Nellie would be home.

“Just your auto and mine. My secretary will send particulars about place and time. Agreeable?”

“Sure.” Mack leaned back, letting stray sunshine warm his brow. He felt fine suddenly, finer than he had all weekend. He couldn’t help grinning, but it was done with a certain deliberation, because it goaded Fairbanks. “Delighted, in fact. Just prepare to get your ass whipped, Walter.”

And, with a wave and a clashing of gears, away he went.

Fairbanks leaned over the back of his seat. Through a cloud of sunlit steam he watched Mack negotiate the next downward bend.

At the lower edge of the property the road narrowed to one lane on either side of a stone bridge that spanned an ornamental lagoon. Mack slipped the Silver Ghost through the tight space and accelerated on the straight road beyond. Fairbanks saw his dust. A sudden cramp in his gut brought a gasp of pain.

Friday afternoon: a sultry, overcast day. Mack switched on the electric lamps in the garage. He’d been at work on the Silver Ghost since 8
A.M.

Yoshimo Okada had demounted the spare tire that rode upright on the right running board. This allowed him to unlatch the toolbox built in beneath it. There was a similar toolbox on the left side, and Yosh had both lids raised and was checking the contents against a list. He’d taken off his shirt and singlet an hour ago. The garage smelled of grease and sweat.

Mack’s forehead dripped. In the driver’s seat, he was examining and testing every control. He pumped the clutch, then the foot-brake pedal that worked with the transmission to aid steering. A large lever on the outside right braked the rear wheels for stopping.

He reached for the gear lever, located outside between the door and the brake, and shifted from first back to second, over and down to third, up to fourth. He tested the magneto switch, even honked the bulb horn.

On his knees beside the left-hand toolbox, Yosh raised his head and grinned. He was tired, Mack could see. He decided they’d better close up and rest the remainder of the day; they’d be driving all day tomorrow, Yosh following in the Cadillac with extra tires, tools, and fuel tins. Already Mack felt a tightness in himself. He was putting more importance on the race than he should. Somehow he couldn’t help it.

“Did you disconnect the governor, Yosh?”

“No, sir, I do that right before the race.”

“Then that’s about all we—”

He stopped, hearing a familiar sound on the back stair that came down from the floor above. Jim’s left foot, scraping the risers.

The boy entered the garage and gazed at the great silver car with an expression of awe. “Hello, son.” Jim responded with a small wave.

“Mist’ Jim,” Yosh said cheerily. He wiped his greasy hands on a cotton rag. “How you today?”

“All right, Yosh.” The boy came a little farther into the garage. On the packed-dirt floor, his foot didn’t scrape so loudly, but it left a trail where it dragged. From behind the wheel Mack stared at that. The sight of it hurt.

Jim sat down on a crate of spare spark plugs. “Pa, can I go with you down to Monterey?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I want to watch you race.”

Mack opened the half-door and jumped down. The raised silver cartouche glinted under the tin-shaded lights.

“I’ll be away a few days. After the race I’m going back to Carmel to visit Miss Ross. She wasn’t home last week, and I’m really eager to see her.” He reached for Jim’s hair to ruffle it. “I promise you, this’ll be the last trip for—”

Jim jerked his head away from Mack’s hand, and Mack’s face lost its look of good cheer. The boy darted behind the crate and then to the open door of the garage. He gazed at the dull sky, having taken himself as far from his father as he could without leaving.

Yosh’s dark eyes jumped between Mack and the boy. With attention to the rag, he finished wiping his hands, cleared his throat. “I be back. Excuse me.” He ran up the stairs into the mansion.

Jim stared at Mack with unhappy eyes.

“You don’t care that I want to see you win the race.”

“Of course I care, Jim.” Mack picked up Yosh’s rag and worked at some grease on his fingers. “But you’ve got to keep up with your studies with Professor Love. Angelina will take good care of you while I’m gone. She always does.”

Doggedly, the boy said, “Why don’t you ever want me with you, Pa?”

Mack wasn’t prepared for such a direct question. He approached his son, watching closely for signs of temper or withdrawal. “Jim, I’ve explained before. I want the best for you—a good education at a fine college like Stanford. That means you just can’t take time away from your lessons.”

“I hate them.”

“What? You used to like reading and doing math problems. What’s changed?” He knew very well what the answer was; anything he liked, Jim disliked.

The boy was stubbornly silent.

“Well,” Mack said, “regardless of how you feel about your studies, they’re necessary.”

He wasn’t selling it. He saw it in Jim’s angry pout, the sudden wetness of the deep-blue eyes. Westward, far away, thunder bumped.

“You just make all that up because you don’t want me around.”

“That’s not true. And when it comes to your education, your future, I mean every—”

“Who’s going with you to Monterey?”

“Yosh. To help me with the car.”

“Is Miss Emerson going? That whore?”

Mack’s hands dropped to his sides, clenched. “I’ve told you before. Don’t use bad language. Especially a word like that.”

“Miss Emerson’s a whore.”

“Jim, stop it. And stop crying. I’m tired of your sass and your constant rebellion. I won’t have it anymore.”

“That’s all you care about, hanging around whores.”

“You’re making me angry.”

He jutted his jaw. “Whore.”

“Jim.” Mack grabbed and shook him.

The boy danced up and down, pulling against Mack’s hand, wrenching. “Whore, whore, whore, whore.”

Mack let him go and slapped him.

Tumbling back against a wall stud, Jim smacked his head and almost sat down in the dirt. His tears seemed to dry up instantly. He clutched the stud, watching his father as if he couldn’t believe, couldn’t comprehend his cruelty.

Furious with himself, Mack stretched out his hands. “Come here. I didn’t mean to blow up and—”

Jim ran under his hands as fast as he could with his dragging foot. Mack heard him on the stairs, struggling—fleeing.

Mack picked up a silver-plated wrench and twisted it. Suddenly he struck out. The blow left a deep dent in a stud.

He walked to the garage door to watch the storm gathering over the rooftops. The wind flung trash along the gutter. Yosh tiptoed in and they went to work, closing up, saying nothing.

Hellburner Johnson listened to the storm.

A single shaded electric light sharply defined a circle in the midst of his darkened sitting room. Johnson had slicked his crinkly gray hair with pomade and put on his best blue cotton traveling shirt and string tie. A folded coat, dark-blue cord, lay on his leather valise at the edge of the circle.

Things were in a fix in the household. Someone had spread the word about Mack hitting Jim; evidently Jim hadn’t kept quiet about it. Meanwhile Mack had gone out in a fury. Johnson had been waiting for him in the rain-lashed house since dinnertime.

He sat by the light, trying once more, to concentrate on the handwritten foolscap sheet given him by his friend London. Knowing Johnson’s love of travel, the young writer had copied some thoughts he wanted to use in a future story.

Don’t you sometimes feel you’d die if you didn’t know what’s beyond those hills, and what’s beyond the other hills behind those hills? All the places of the Earth are just waiting for me to come and see them.

That surely fit his own nature, and his present mood, Johnson reflected. He read the passage again. Lightning washed the windows. As the thunder quieted, he heard a familiar tread on the stair.

He folded the foolscap and tucked it in his shirt pocket to save. Then he reached for his cord coat and what lay under it.

“Jim?” Mack tapped softly. “Jim, answer me.” He tapped again. Water oozed from the soles of his shoes and his cuffs were soggy. He’d wandered hatless, collar up, hands in pockets, bumping along in the downpour, trying to figure out how to correct his relationship with his son. That he had to correct it, and drastically, he no longer doubted.

The boy didn’t answer the repeated knocks, so he tried the handle.

Locked.

A footstep startled him. Johnson ambled out of the shadow between little electric wall lamps. Their shades focused the light downward, leaving great dark spaces. Mack immediately noticed his partner’s slicked hair, fresh shirt, black string tie.

“Leave him be, Mack.”

Johnson’s tone stunned him. “What?”

“I said leave the boy be until you can treat him right. I heard what you did, and I talked to Jim about it ’fore supper. Tried to make him feel better. Couldn’t do it.”

“I slapped him, I shouldn’t have—”

“That’s true, you shouldn’t have. Tannin’ a youngster’s bottom is one thing. But what you did—that’s downright mean. You better not do it again.”

Mack stared into the leaf-green eyes and saw a clear reflection of how far he’d drifted. Putting an arm around Johnson, he drew him away from Jim’s door. He felt weak and beaten. He was simply not used to feeling either way.

“What does he want from me, Hugh?”

“Ain’t so hard to figure out. He just wants a father. One who ain’t so damn busy all the time with his ranches and his oil and his real estate and his reform committees. And his women.
And
his personal feud with some snob lawyer. Are you and Fairbanks two snotty kids fightin’ over the marbles in the schoolyard? You sure as shit act like it sometimes.”

Mack stopped on the stair overlooking the hall. Above, sheets of rain battered the skylight. He felt a piercing guilt, a sense of being unmasked as a criminal. In a few plain words, Johnson had stripped down the long quarrel with Fairbanks and put it in a ridiculous light.

The right light.

He hated to admit that, and so he dodged around it. “You’re all duded up.”

“Goin’ away again.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Hell, Mack, you ain’t around long enough for anybody to tell you anything. Wouldn’t listen if they did. I’m catchin’ the midnight for the East, then maybe a cattle boat to France. Lately, I don’t like livin’ here.”

He stepped in front of his partner and jabbed him with a finger. “I’ll tell you this much ’fore I go. You’re still my friend, but in some ways you’re sure-God messed up. You said some while back that you didn’t want to raise no hothouse lily. Then you turned right around and started raisin’ Jim exactly that way after he got hurt. Go off and get this damn stupid race out of your system—”

“I’ll stay in San Francisco this weekend. I’ll telephone Fairbanks that I can’t—”

“Don’t bother,” Johnson said with a wave. “Jim don’t want to talk to you right now. He’ll cool down by the time you come back, I reckon. Then you can try to repair the damage. You better. You better start takin’ good care of that fine, smart boy or you’ll deal with me when I get back.”

With an almost feminine delicacy, he touched and lifted the left side of his blue cord coat. The Peacemaker with the lone star embossed on the ivory grip jutted from his waistband. He dropped the coat again.

“You want to fight with somebody, I can make old Fairbanks look like a beginner. Don’t ever give me cause. You got your work cut out around here. So long.”

Little Jim heard the stutter of engines and flung himself out of bed. He’d hardly slept at all while the storm raged through the night. There was a worse one inside him.

He ran barefoot to the bay window. Dawn lit the lace curtains. He raised them and leaned on the sill. Under his dark-blue eyes his cheeks were puffed and raw from crying.

He watched the automobiles roll through the intersection of Sacramento and Mason, bound south. Four men with lunch pails pointed and commented from the curb. Pa drove the Silver Ghost, already mud-splashed. He’d raised the canvas top and Jim couldn’t see his face, only the shoulder of his duster and his right gauntlet, working the brake and gearshift.

Emotions flew over the boy’s face; resentment, and pain; anger, and resignation—Tears welled again. He hated them almost as much as he hated Pa.

The Cadillac followed the Silver Ghost through the intersection. Over San Francisco’s sturdy downtown buildings, billowy clouds caught the pink light of morning on their eastern curves. What a beautiful day in spring.

A good day to do what he’d planned all night. Jim let the lace curtain fall. Head down, he stood motionless, then drew a deep breath, finding courage. He limped to the hulking mahogany chiffonier and opened a drawer, glancing briefly at the bolt on the hall door. Still secure—no one would bother him.

He pulled out a favorite shirt and threw it on the bed. Another. Then a belt. Jeans. From the wardrobe he fetched his heaviest shoes. Then he thought of something, hurried to his study desk, and rummaged under his schoolbooks. He caressed the lacquer of the abacus. He loved the parade of fire-breathing dragons chasing themselves around the frame. Clicking a couple of the red and yellow beads, he swallowed and then rubbed his cheeks. He’d show Pa.