Hers the Kingdom (51 page)

     "And you find that marvelous?" Owen asked, annoyed.

     "No, not marvelous," she came back, "but a marvel—a strange sort of marvel." She was excited, her eyes glistened as if she had come close to knowing something, but she could not convey it to us.

     "A person can belong to the land," she tried again, "but the land cannot be possessed. We belong here—not so much because we have legal claim to the Malibu, that is the smallest part of it. We belong because we are right with this place. The fire was terrible, and yet . . . and yet I have never felt so much a part of this land as I did during the fire."

     Owen sighed. What she felt did not make sense to him. He mourned the loss of the old ranch, the old time . . .
before the fire.

     "Mama would have understood, I think," I ventured. I could not see Willa's eyes in the gathering dusk. I wondered if she had considered how her devotion to the Malibu was like Mama's to Porter Farm.

     And then, for what reason I could not guess, Owen said, "I wonder if Jacob Shurz would agree with you."

     "About what?" Willa answered, her voice spitting sparks.

     "About the land not being possessed, about legal claims being the smallest part of it," Owen shot back, taunting her for seeming to accept the fire's devastation.

     "Perhaps," I said quietly, "Jacob Shurz' attachment is to something else."

     I had meant to calm things down, but Willa turned on me. "Shurz? Attachment to what?" she demanded.

     "I don't know," I lied, "he does keep talking about the public's right of passage . . ." My voice trailed off.

     "Do you believe that?" Willa demanded.

     I bit my tongue and wished I had never brought it up. Owen, however, came to my rescue.

     "It
is
a delicate issue, Willa," he said. "So far, I have been able to keep it out of the litigation, but I'm not sure how long we will be able to ignore it."

     "I cannot believe that any court in the land would force us to open our private roads—which we build and maintain and which cross only our own property—to the public," she repeated.

     'The point," Owen came back, "is whether others have the right to pass through. Eventually, the county is going to want to build a road that connects Santa Monica to, say, Santa Barbara. They will offer to pay us for the land; if we refuse, they could try to condemn it, paying us what they consider to be a fair price."

     "I don't want any pay, and I don't want a road," Willa said fiercely. "It would change the Malibu, more than a fire ever could."

     "Yes," Owen sighed, tired of the argument, "but we may have no choice. The time will come when we will have to consider building a road ourselves, beating them to it—so we can decide where it is to go. I'm afraid my contention that the beach is not a public thoroughfare will not hold up much longer, if anyone takes us to court again."

     Willa was obstinate. "I will fight any road. I can't believe that you truly feel we can do nothing."

     "I didn't say we could do nothing," Owen rejoined, "I simply
said that it may not be in our best interest to be stubborn about it."

     I could feel the word "stubborn" surging through Willa. The atmosphere was charged. All was quiet for a time, then, and I was relieved that I had not had to answer her question.

     I could not risk alienating my sister. I understood, perhaps better than anyone, the depth of her commitment to fight all encroach-ments on the ranch. It was not an issue to be argued, she could allow no opposition. Not from Owen, and certainly not from me.

     As for me, my devotion was to the family. I did not plan to jeopardize my place in it—mine, and by extension, Wing Soong's. Willa was aware of his influence on me. He had become more intricately involved with the training of young Chinese militia for a revolution taking place half a world away. He did not try to hide his commitment to Dr. Sun's cause. Willa and Owen knew about it, and tolerated it because of Soong's extraordinary service to our family. Willa knew there was more between Soong and me than was evident. It had taken us so long to find each other, to reap what we had planted. Perhaps it was forbidden fruit, but it was sweet and nourishing and tender and it made my life, for the first time, whole. I believe it was so for Soong, too. We had not thought to find such joy in this life. Having found it, I intended to keep it as long as I could.

     Still, the truth was, I believed Jacob Shurz to be right. I did not think that Willa, or anyone else, had the right to claim a part of the earth and to refuse others the right of passage.

Willa and Owen marked their sixteenth wedding anniversary with a quiet stroll through the young orchard. Owen broke off a small branch of orange blossoms and tucked them into the heavy coil of hair she wore twined around her head.

     "You've just wasted a good part of our first orange crop," she laughed.

     "Not wasted," he answered, "nothing beautiful was ever wasted on you." He held her face in his hands and kissed her, lightly, on the lips. "The fragrance makes me think of Hawaii . . . the smell of plumeria and . . ." A tender look lit his face, "Sometimes I long for Hawaii," he said, "everything so quiet and sweet-smelling. I think even death must be pleasant in those islands."

     She touched his face. "How can you say that, when everything is so green and alive here?" He walked a few steps away, to examine something on one of the young trees.

     "Wouldn't you like to sail off to Hawaii with me?" he asked, as if testing.

     "I think the boys might want to stay home this summer," she parried, "they've been at school all year . . ."

     He smiled, abandoning the idea. "You're right," he admitted, "I think I might like to do some camping with the boys this summer. Thad, especially, needs to be toughened a bit. And then," suddenly he became practical, "I have to make one trip north to a little place called Freshwater—it's a lumber town up near the Oregon border. The syndicate is set on buying the mill, and I want to see it first."

     "Why don't we see if the boys want to go, and make it a family trip?" Willa put in.

     "Maybe not all the way to Freshwater," Owen answered, "I'm told the accommodations there are something less than primitive. But why don't we all go to visit Aunt Emma and the Captain—that's about halfway, and I can go on from there and pick you up again on the way back."

     Willa thought about it. "I would love to see them—they are getting up in years. Thad would be happy to go, but I'm not sure about Wen."

     "We'll include a couple of days at the Del Monte lodge—Wen has a taste for elegance," Owen added sardonically.

     Willa laughed. "Sounds wonderful," she said, tucking her arm in his. They walked along in silence, then, easy in each other's presence. Their bodies moved together, keeping pace; the
familiarity of the years had replaced old uncertainties. They had been together long enough to listen for shadings of meanings. She no longer saw the handsome face so much as the flickering of expressions, and the small subtleties that told her more than words could.

     If once Willa had wanted more than he could give, she had now settled for what was possible. In time, she would look at the summer with Connor McCord in the same way as she looked at the fire. It had burned bright, had been devastating in the heat it generated—but once the firestorm was over, her world had rearranged itself in quieter ways. She had passed through her seasons of discontent, of guilt and shame, and had achieved a new calm.

     In the new ranch house their bedrooms were connected, but more often than not they slept apart. Still, he never failed—on those nights when he was at the ranch—to spend a few minutes alone with her at the end of each day. If it was not a marriage of passion, it had become one of real affection. There were times when Willa was convinced it was what Owen had wanted all along, and she was glad. What neither realized was that Willa's own passion, which still burned bright, had been transferred to the land. The ranch that rose from the ashes of the fire was, in every way, Willa's creation.

In June, a carriage was sent into Los Angeles to meet the boys at the Arcade station. When they returned, late in the afternoon, Wallace Sayre III was with them.

     "Sorry not to give you advance notice, sir," the young man said to Owen, "Wen hadn't time, really, since I only decided to come at the last minute. My mother was sailing to France, but I've always wanted to see the American West, and Wen said you wouldn't mind."

     The self-assured young man was a full year older than Wen. His legs were powerful, but shorter than his torso, which gave him a squat appearance. His eyes were a faded shade of blue, as if they had been exposed to strong light. Willa glanced at me. She, too, was trying to decide what she thought about the sudden appearance of Wen's school friend.

     At dinner that night Wen told us, "Wallace is from one of New York's first families." There was an embarrassed pause.

     "First in what?" Willa could not resist asking, though she softened it with a smile.

     "In society, Mother," Owen answered, as if she were not quite bright.

     "But I understand your family is quite distinguished, sir," Wallace said to Owen, ignoring Willa.

     Owen guided the conversation in new directions, drawing out the boys on the subject of school, being as charming and entertaining as he was with adults.

     As soon as the boys had been excused, Willa whispered, "Officious little snob."

     And Owen answered, "Which one?"

Wen and young Sayre declined to make the trip north with the family. They preferred, they said, to stay at the ranch where they could swim and fish and do some riding. I suspected the real reason was to be free of Owen's firm hand. I was not entirely comfortable with the idea of chaperoning Wen and his insolent friend, and yet I was glad for Thad. The older boys did not hide the contempt they felt for him. I could only guess at the miseries he had to endure at school. It seemed to me Thad deserved some time with his parents; the three of them had always been happy together.

     I sighed and waved them all off. Ignacio and Trinidad were to go into the house in Santa Monica to do some work while the
family was away. Aleja and I would take care of the ranch house. At age fourteen, she looked fully a woman and she did a woman's work. I had grown fond of the girl in our long weeks together in the beach cottage after the fire. "Take good care of Miss Lena," Trinidad had called to her strong young daughter, and Aleja and I had laughed.