Hers the Kingdom (27 page)

     "Do you suppose that's why they wear red kerchiefs?" Sara asked.

     I frowned. "It's cruel business, isn't it?" I asked.

     "It's life," she shrugged, and added, "even in the center of the world."

     The cows were licking their calves and lowing in a pitiful way, as if to comfort them, while the young bulls—the
tauritos
—milled skittishly among them, their edginess barely contained. Only a certain number of bulls could be allowed to service the herd. By law, those young bulls deemed inferior could not be allowed to roam freely. Today those would be castrated, to prevent weakening the strain.

     Wen wanted to get close, so we climbed down, turned Thad over to one of the girls, and joined the others on the corral fence. Willa reached for Wen, and made way for us. The acrid smell of burning hair and burning flesh, mixed with blood and dust, fear and sweat, filled the ring—thick animal smells, edged with danger. It was the danger that produced excitement, the possibility of the spilling of blood that created the sport. And it was a sport, you could see that in the faces of some of the men.

     "Look," Sara whispered to me, nodding toward a chisel-featured Spaniard. A scar ran the length of his face, ending at the side of his mouth so that his lip was lifted in a perpetual sneer. He looked evil. The knife he fondled added to the sinister quality of the man.

     
"El fiero!"
a
vaquero
called, and a boy came running with the brand.

     
"Viva! Viva!"
the shouts came, thick and fast, as the men pushed themselves to perform.

     Ignacio sent the Lattimore brothers to replace two Californios in the corral. "Hey now," one of the Kentucky boys drawled, "we're gonna show you folks what
dos gringos
can do!"

     As the two set to work, the corral rang with calls of "Hey!" and "hey-le-le!" The Spaniards cheered the two good-naturedly, willing to give them credit for the energy expended, if not for grace.

     In the midst of this McCord climbed into the ring. He moved skillfully, dodging riders and cattle, making it clear that he knew what he was about. He knelt to inspect the eye of a heifer which had been trussed for branding.

     "Some salt," he called, "foxtail has pierced its eye."

     Owen took a few steps into the ring; he was watching McCord, he nodded his approval. Owen would like it that McCord was the kind of man to pay attention to details. He raised both hands above his head then, the signal for the men to dismount.

     "Fix your saddles," he instructed them. Each man did as he was told, recinching, and at a signal from Owen they mounted their horses and began again.

     "Look at the Evil One," Sara said in my ear.

     The Spaniard with the knife stood ready, his stance as dramatic as a matador's, his knife glinting. Two
vaqueros
rode after a young bull, a big, dusty, black creature that was wild with fear.

     "Look out," someone yelled.

     "The
taurito!
" another shouted.

     The first rope had missed its mark and the young bull broke loose, charging for the biggest target in the ring—Owen.

     Willa screamed and the sound hung there in the dusty air, piercing the dust and blood and stink.

     Then a rawhide sliced the air and the bull was jerked off balance; two more riatas pulled the beast to the ground and with a single long stroke of his knife, the Spaniard slit the testicles and threw them high in the air, where a rawhide sliced out and splattered them, sending bloody remnants spraying.

     Owen had been frozen to the spot, unable to move. It seemed
to me his body convulsed slightly now. His shirt, so perfectly white this morning, was speckled with red, the blood of the castrated bull. He walked over to where Connor McCord was looping the data back in place. He was thanking him, we all knew that. It was McCord's data that had pulled the bull off balance. The
vaqueros
would not look at Owen. He had not moved to protect himself, and for that they would judge him less than a man, the victim of a failure of courage, they thought.

     Owen would not mind what the
vaqueros
were thinking. He might, however, wonder about McCord. I was relieved to see the two of them squat to examine the heifer's eye.

Three hours later the last calf had been branded, the last ear cut and tossed into a box. Owen nodded to Ignacio, who began to count the bloody bits of hair and skin.

     
"Trescientos y dos,"
he called out, three hundred and two new calves. Owen entered the date and the number in his black record book. He knew the number was correct, having counted them in his head as the work progressed.

     Long tables had been set up in the sycamore grove and covered with fresh ferns for a cloth. They were heaped with food, all of it from the ranch or taken from the sea—there was mutton and fattened angora kid, rabbit and quail, pompano and fresh sardines, wild honey, a haunch of venison and bread and butter. Trinidad had made a great basketful of tortillas, and put the hot peppers on the table. It was a splendid feast, and the men ate and told stories and celebrated the day's work.

     By the time we reached the ranch house the sun was casting a long shimmering reflection on the surface of the Pacific. Willa took her two dusty sons to the bath house while I saw Sara to the guest room. My back ached from the long day, so I lay down on my bed to rest a spell. When I woke some hours later, the house was in deep quiet.

     
Owen's record book
, was my first thought. I would need it to make out my reports, and Owen would be leaving before daybreak, I was sure.

     I lit a candle, took it over to the clock. It was two in the morning.

     Perhaps Owen had left the book on my desk in the second parlor.

     I heard their voices as I approached, and I stood quietly for a moment, trying to think who Owen would be talking to at this hour.

     McCord, of course.

     I knocked tentatively, opened the door.

     Owen looked utterly exhausted. "I'm afraid I've kept Mr. McCord up half the night," he said to me, "going over all the ranch business."

     At that, McCord, who seemed not at all tired, rose to take his leave, and I got the distinct impression my interruption gave him a chance to escape.

     I left Owen there, in the office. I do not know if, on his last night at home, he joined his wife in bed.

THE DAYS AND weeks that followed the rodeo were sunny and cool. It was that interlude between the winter rains and summer heat when the hills were a terrible, luminous green laced through with wildflowers—wild tiger lilies and columbine and sumac, and outrageous sweeps of bright orange poppies.

     Wen discovered bees that spring and they were all he could talk about. We searched his father's library and when we had exhausted that source we set out to find Yang Ng, the ancient Chinese who knew where the bee caves were.

     In the orange grove Wen said, "There's the big Chinaman," and ran up to Wing Soong demanding, "what are you doing?"

     Wing Soong squatted on the ground next to the child and opened his hand. In his palm were three miniature green oranges.

     "You've picked them too soon," Wen reproached him.

     "I have picked them at precisely the right moment," Soong answered in his beautifully accented English. "Now the one orange left in the cluster will grow big and be filled with sweet juice. It will be a giant among oranges, you will see. And only because I
removed these baby oranges from its nest. There is an old Chinese proverb," Soong went on, looking at me for the first time, "one big orange better than four little oranges."

     When I laughed, Wen looked thoroughly perplexed, so Soong became serious again. "You will return in a month," he said to the child, "and then, in another month, I promise you a giant orange will be here and it will be yours."

     I explained our bee mission. "The old one knows more about bees than you will find in a book, I daresay," he agreed, "But he is not comfortable in your language." He was looking at Wen as he said this. Like Sara, and unlike anyone else I had ever known, Wing Soong spoke to a child as he would to an adult, out of what seemed to be some essential politeness, as if it would be rude to do otherwise.

     "Perhaps you can tell me what you wish to know about bees," he said to the boy, "and I could ask the old one for you."

     Wen's questions came tumbling out, some of them sensible, others childishly funny. Clearly, Wen was intrigued with the mating habits of the queen bee. Wing Soong treated each question with gravity. We were to come back the next day for the answers.

     As we walked back to the ranch house Wen asked me, "Is Wing Soong an 'old one'?"

     "No," I told him, "I doubt he is much older than I am." Until that moment I had not thought about it. It had, I believe, never occurred to me to think of the Chinese in comparable terms.

     Each morning promptly at eight Connor McCord appeared at the door of the front parlor, which was always open, and rapped softly with his knuckles until Willa looked up. I was usually already at my desk in the adjoining room with my door closed. Still I could hear the reverberations of their voices through the wall, and I could tell by the timbre that for the first few days Willa did most of the talking. Then, as the daily sessions continued, more and more of Connor's lilting tones carried through the walls. It was almost like a song, the erratic patterns of speech becoming smoother, more rhythmic, punctuated at last by what could only be laughter.

     And yet there was nothing to justify my forebodings of the morning of the rodeo. I was beginning to feel thoroughly foolish for letting my mind slip into such murky waters. The ranch was running smoothly; McCord seemed to be everywhere. The men had accepted him, perhaps because, while he worked through the afternoon siesta, he didn't expect them to change their ways. He consulted Willa on all but the most minor decisions and she seemed satisfied that she was, indeed, in control.

     One morning, after her usual session with McCord, Willa came into my room, but said nothing. I was adding a long column of figures and I did not stop, but still she stayed, running a finger through the film of dust that continually covered the furniture.

     I sighed and stopped.

     "What is it?" I asked.

     "It?" Willa answered.

     "Willa," I said, smiling in an exasperated way, "you've cost me my place and now I'm going to have to add this column all over again. So what is it?"

     "I've asked Connor McCord to take his dinners with us," she told me.

     I looked at her.

     "You've asked Connor McCord to take his dinners with us," I repeated.

     "Yes."

     I turned back to my adding, but she wouldn't have it.

     "What's wrong with that?" she demanded.

     "I didn't say anything was 'wrong,'—you did," I reminded her.

     "Then what is it, exactly?"

     "I don't know,
exactly
," I said. "It's just that, well, Ignacio never eats with us."

     She had her answer ready. "But Connor is taking Owen's place, too, remember."

     "Really, is he now?" I said in as good an Irish brogue as I could manage.

     "Lena," Willa laughed, her eyes shining, "you are wicked."

     "I wish I were," I sighed, "but if you have already asked McCord to eat with us, you don't need to consult me. You are the lady of the manor; but I refuse to be cast in the role of the straightlaced crippled keeper of the morals and holder of the chastity belt." I paused then, feeling a pang, and added, "But I guess we can both use a little male companionship. And McCord seems to be more interesting than most of the men who turn up around here."

     Willa was looking at me with an edge of anger, and for a moment I thought I had pushed too far. Then she said, "I think you are a little daft, Lena, and I don't particularly like your crippled-keeper-of-the-morals self-righteousness, but you are right about one thing. We do need male companionship, both of us. Maybe proper English ladies don't, but I do. And so do you."

     What she said was troublesome, but it was true. I grinned at her ruefully, and she smiled to show she forgave me. Then she flicked me lightly on the cheek with her fingernails, a gesture that had always meant, "We're in this together now." I tried not to remember that as often as not it had also meant trouble in the end.

     So Connor McCord joined us for dinner that night, and the nights to come, and I was proven wrong again. He came promptly at seven-thirty and left promptly at nine, after which Willa and I would sit together and sift through all that had been said, reliving the pleasure of the dinner and the talk.

     Connor McCord's gift, as I was to come to think of it, was in listening with such intense interest that he seemed neither shy nor quiet. We found ourselves telling him stories of our girlhood on the farm in Illinois, we told him about Mama and her atlases, we told him things we had never told anyone else, and we were not sorry. We laughed together, the three of us, and it seemed right.