Sacred Ground (40 page)

“Then what about the biker she ran off with?” Challenge in her tone.

“That was something you overheard from a man who was quoting hearsay. Maybe she meant to go away for only a weekend. Maybe she had planned to come back for you but something happened. Erica, you might never know what really happened to your mother.”

She shook her head, bitterness in the gesture. Then she knelt by the stream and dipped her hand into the water. Jared surveyed their surroundings, trying to recall what he had read about mountain lions in this area, and then realized that even though they had come only a short distance from the car, it couldn’t be seen through the trees, nor could the lights of Palm Springs. He watched Erica take a sip of the crisp alpine water, and when she stood and ran her hands down her skirt, he said, “There’s more, isn’t there? Something you aren’t telling me?”

She shook her head, avoiding his eyes.

“Erica, I nearly went out of my mind when you were trapped in the cave. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. For the first time since Netsuya died, I realized I cared about someone else. I think it started when I saw you confronting Charlie Braddock with that tomahawk. There you stood in your high heels and cocktail dress, brandishing an ax at this towering giant. And then at Sam’s secret meeting in Century City, the way you stood up to him and the others, how you fought for the rights of a woman who died two thousand years ago. You’re such a fighter, Erica. And seeing you like that reminded me that I was once a fighter, too, before Netsuya died.”

She turned away and walked a few steps until she saw in the moonlight petroglyphs carved on a boulder: human stick figures with bows and arrows hunting large animals. She traced them with her fingertips, and said, “These are so old.” She turned tear-filled eyes to him. “Everything I deal with is old and dead. I want
life
, Jared.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Then let me in. Tell me what you haven’t told me.”

She started to cry. “Jared, did my mother leave me because of my sickness?”

He stared at her. “Good God, is that what you think?”

“Because I was having the headaches, I was difficult to take care of! That’s why I was never adopted! One family tried to keep me— the Gordons. They were very sweet and tried hard, but Mrs. Gordon just couldn’t cope with my spells that could happen anywhere. So they gave me back to child welfare services.”

“Erica, you can’t blame yourself for your mother leaving you. You were just a baby. My God, is this why you never married, why you aren’t in a relationship? Because of the headaches and fainting spells? In the weeks we have been working at Topanga I haven’t seen it.”

“I’m very careful,” she said as the tears flowed down her cheeks. “I know the signs. When I feel a certain tension in my neck or hear a roaring sound, I know I am about to have one of my spells, so I quickly go to my tent and be by myself until it passes. I can’t burden another human being with that responsibility of taking care of me. And I am terrified of having children because I think it might be hereditary.”

“
I
would take care of you.” He pulled her to him suddenly and kissed her hard. Erica’s arms went around his neck. She clung to him for a long, breathless moment.

Then he drew back, and said, “Erica, I’ve just been going through the motions of life. My heart hasn’t been in the fight for the Emerald Hills cave.
You’re
the one who’s been putting up the real fight. I admired you four years ago when we squared off on the Reddman case. And I admired you last year, too, during the whole Chadwick incident. It wasn’t your fault that the shipwreck was a hoax. Chadwick managed to fool the world’s top underwater archaeology experts. You were just one part of a whole team. Your job was to authenticate the Chinese pottery, and that you did admirably because the pottery was
not
fake. And the way you stood up for your side of it, and your public apology for your part in it, that, too, was very admirable. But I’ve done nothing since Netsuya died. I’ve hidden behind a mask and mouthed empty words. You make me remember what it’s like to be alive and fight for causes again.”

He took her face in his hands. “I never thought I would fall in love again and here you are, warrior-woman, good and strong and wise.”

He kissed her again, more slowly and tenderly this time, until the kiss grew urgent, and passion and need overwhelmed them. Jared lowered Erica to the cool sweet grass and high overhead, the stars so old suddenly looked brand-new.

Chapter Sixteen

Angela

1866 C.E.

Ghosts haunted her.

Not just people-ghosts but the ghosts of memories and years past; the ghosts of trees and sunsets, of love and sadness, of words spoken in anger and in the dark. Even Angela herself was one of the ghosts who haunted her on this morning of her ninetieth birthday, following her, whispering about remembrances of times long past.

Throughout the day, as she had gone through this hacienda that had survived eight decades of floods, fire, and earthquakes, making it the oldest house in Los Angeles, Angela was remembering things for the first time in eighty-five years. The lost years, she had always thought of them, for she had no memory before her sixth birthday in this house. Her hair was white now, as white as the snow that capped the San Gabriel Mountains in winter, but her back was still straight and she walked without aid, and her mind was as sharp as glass. But when she had awakened at the dawn of this ninetieth birthday, it had been to find her mind filled with perplexing, long-forgotten memories.

Like a crowd of unexpected party guests, recollections of events from decades ago had swirled in kaleidoscopic color and noise as she lay watching the sunrise shed new light across her bedroom. Inexplicably, she had found herself thinking of baskets woven by Indian women and recalling that the patterns in the weave contained a story. And then she heard herself, eight years old, asking Doña Luisa: “Mami, why is the village named for angels?” And Luisa had answered: “Because it was built upon sacred ground. What other reason could there be?” Stories of Coyote the Trickster, and Grandfather Tortoise who causes earthquakes sprang into her head. And then Angela was remembering a warm afternoon long ago when the new plaza was being dedicated by Governor Neve and everyone had been given a little cross made of tin. She had stood there with her parents… or had it been just her mother? The colonists from Mexico numbered forty-four that day, eighty-five years ago. Such a small population… She frowned. But no, there were others there, standing away from the celebration, silent onlookers with flat expressions. The Indians. They had numbered in the thousands that day. How many were left? A few hundred.

But there was a blank space among the memories, as if in all this remembering she had forgotten something.

After she had bathed and dressed with the help of her personal maid, and then had drunk her morning chocolate and silently recited her first prayers of the day, she had gone straight to the kitchen, thinking that the thing she had forgotten involved the food for today’s feast.

Because Angela’s large family was now a cultural mix of Spanish, Mexican, and American, all tastes had to be considered. Along with tortillas, tamales, and frijoles there would also be Spanish-style seafood and American-style beef. The huge kitchen with its three enormous ovens, massive tables, and deep fireplace was already, at this early hour, alive with the bustle of Indian women cooking, gossiping, filling the air with exotic aromas and words. Angela paused to inspect the
puchero
, a stew made of knucklebone, meat, vegetables, and fruit, layered and set to simmer for hours. The mistake was in stirring. Puchero must never be stirred. She lifted the lid and found that the layered stew was cooking nicely.

When all seemed to be going well in the kitchen, Angela wondered if the thing she had forgotten involved the musicians and the dancers. Or had she perhaps forgotten to invite someone? Were there enough chairs, plates, garden lights? For even though the party was being held in honor of her birthday, Angela insisted upon overseeing all the arrangements herself.

She stopped at a window to look out across the rolling hills in the haze. Spring was over, the flood season had passed, now it was summer, the season of smoke. Soon would come the desert winds that annually cleansed the air by driving it out to sea, after which came the fire season, when mountainsides raged with brushfires. There was comfort in the progression of the seasons and the predictable cycle of nature. Benevolent California, she thought wistfully. And once in a while the ground shook to remind Angelenos that they were mortal.

She continued through the house, searching for something to fill the empty space among her clamorous memories. She stopped at the bedroom that had been Marina’s, thirty-six years ago. On that very bed, the eighteen-year-old had wept and confessed her love for a Yankee. Angela had not heard from her daughter since, and not a day had gone by in the ensuing thirty-six years that Angela had not taken a moment to send her thoughts across the distant horizon and say a silent prayer to the Blessed Virgin to watch over Marina and keep her safe.

In the corridor, she came upon the set of four upholstered antique armchairs that had been brought to California long ago by Doña Luisa. The brocaded silk was worn and faded now, and the veneered arms and legs nicked from the assaults of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The chairs were to have been a wedding present to Marina. But Marina had run away and the chairs had stayed.

Angela trailed her fingers along the antique wood and thought: We five came together from Mexico. But why can I not remember that journey from Mexico? Why do my memories begin on my sixth birthday?

Voices interrupted her thoughts. Two grandsons talking as they came along the colonnade. “The cattle haven’t been doing well since the drought.” And the words triggered another memory. Cattle. Angela five years old and watching strangers arrive with large, frightening beasts. There was never meant to be cattle on this land. They were brought from across the seas. That is why they are dying.

“And Captain Hancock has found oil seeping onto his property. It makes the land useless for crops and grazing. We are not far from the tar pits. We might have oil, too. We must convince Grandmother she should sell the rancho while the land is still good.”

“Everyone is selling. The Picos and the Estradas have sold much of their land to Anglo newcomers, George Hearst, and Patrick Murphy. We would be wise to do the same.”

The men were accompanied by women in wide, sweeping crinolines. Angela herself did not wear the heavy cumbersome frame beneath her gown, but simply a petticoat. And she had stopped wearing a corset fifteen years ago. Women’s fashions, she thought, were becoming more and more torturous.

She greeted her grandsons and their wives with a smile and open arms. It was always so wonderful to have the family gathered together.

Navarro wasn’t here, of course. He had died twenty years ago, exactly sixteen years after the night Angela stabbed him. Outside of Carlotta, no one knew about the attack. On that fateful night, when Angela had seen that Navarro still lived, she had summoned a doctor, who had stitched and bound the wound, and helped put her husband to bed. The doctor was paid for his secrecy and when Navarro regained consciousness he had ordered his wife and eldest daughter not to tell anyone the truth of his condition— a man stabbed by his own wife was too humiliating.

And of course, Marina wasn’t here either.

Six months after her sister disappeared on the night of her wedding, Carlotta received a letter from Marina saying she was safe. Carlotta had written back to say that their father wasn’t dead, that he had survived the knife wound and that she could never come home, he would kill her for having run off with an
Americano.
Carlotta never heard from her sister after that, and when Navarro died twenty years ago, the family had no idea where to write to Marina to tell her it was safe to come home. They also had no idea if she was even still alive.

“We’ve come to collect you for the photographer, Grandmother,” the grandsons said, flanking her on either side, each to take a frail arm. “He is getting ready to take pictures. It’s the light, he said. The light is perfect right now.”

But there was something Angela had forgotten, if only she could remember what.

* * *

In September of 1846, at the outset of the Mexican War, there was rebellion against the American forces occupying the Pueblo of Los Angeles. An American fur trapper named John Brown rode five hundred miles in six days to inform Commodore Stockton in Monterey of the resistance. U.S. troops were immediately dispatched and, shortly thereafter, the
New York Herald
sent a cub reporter named Harvey Ryder to cover the story.

That was twenty years ago. Ryder never returned to New York.

“Ironic when you think about it,” he was saying now to the photographer who was setting up his equipment beneath the banyan trees near the Navarro hacienda. “The Spaniards came here three hundred years ago looking for gold and when they didn’t find it they wrote California off. Gave it away to the Mexicans and then the Mexicans lost it to the United States. And then gold was found.” He laughed. “I’ll bet their king wishes he’d never given up this gold mine! These folks should be glad the Americans came along. Without us that gold would never have been found. It would still be in the ground and Los Angeles would still be a cow town of five hundred people.” He pushed his bowler hat farther back on his head. “Well, it’s still a cow town, only now it’s a cow town of five
thousand
people.”

The reporter fixed his eye on an Indian woman walking by with a basket of fruit on her head, her long braids swaying. “The
New York Herald
sent me to cover the war with Mexico,” he said to the photographer who was either listening or not. “I was supposed to report on the war, but it was all over by the time I got here. Never went back to New York, though. Gold was discovered right after the treaty was signed and, like everyone else, I went north to make my fortune. Found a little gold. Not much. Knocked around in Oregon for a while after that. Got married and divorced. Even have a couple of kids somewhere. Then I ran into an old friend in San Francisco, who told me the
Los Angeles Clarion
was looking for a reporter.”

Servants were getting the garden ready for the party. Bowls of fruit had been set out, from which Ryder helped himself. “This place is growing,” he said as he peeled an orange. “No doubt about it. Everybody’s buying up the ranchos and naming towns after themselves. Met a dentist by the name of Burbank the other day, bought himself a Spanish land grant in the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley. And Downey, same one who was governor a couple years back, subdividing his rancho and selling lots. Some folks are even keeping the Indian names, they think it’s romantic.” He shook his head. “Like Pacoima and Azusa sound romantic?”

He separated a wedge of orange and popped it into his mouth, juice squirting down his chin. “Angelenos are an unpredictable breed. You think all they do is gamble and take siestas. But you should have seen them when war between the states broke out. This town was instantly divided over the issues of slavery and secession. I am talking all-fired, gun-shooting passionately divided. Half the menfolk rode off to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, the other half stayed home and tore the town up with drunken fistfights and gun battles. But the war issue was quickly overshadowed by the drought of ‘62, which devastated the cattle industry here. Close on its heels was the smallpox epidemic that carried off half the Indians. Seemed ironic to me, as the Indians were the ones who worked the herds. When the cattle died, seemed like there was no more need for the Indians.” He smiled and looked at the photographer for approval. The man kept working.

“Got a serious bandit problem here though. Mostly ne’er-do-wells if you ask me. They claim they’re taking revenge on the Yankees for stealing their land. Hell, it isn’t stealing! A lot of those old Spanish land grants weren’t valid. No U.S. judge is going to allow a crude map with someone’s name on it to stand as legal title. The Mexicans didn’t even do proper surveys. Just rode out to some trees, drew them on the map, then rode south to a rock, drew that, then rode over to a creek, drew that, and they called it legal. That’s how they took it from the Indians. Now, the Americans did it properly, came in with surveyors and lawyers and obtained the land fair and square. But you can’t make the
banditos
understand that.”

He ate some more orange and inspected his fancy satin waistcoat for drops of juice. “Lotta lynchings hereabouts, too. Hotheaded group of Texans living out in El Monte, call themselves the El Monte Rangers, darned near started a civil war right there in town when a comrade name of Bean— brother of Judge Roy— was found dead in a field near the Mission. Those old boys rode through shooting at everything in sight and strung up just about anything that didn’t move.

“Can’t blame the people for turning vigilante, though. You have one sheriff and two deputies covering the whole county, and one marshal as the only lawman for the town. Folks are forced to take the law into their own hands. ‘Course, Los Angeles isn’t a town anymore. Got promoted. Five thousand people living in twenty-eight square miles are now officially a
city—
leastwise according to the California legislature. But I tell you my friend, I’ve seen Paris and I’ve seen London. And Los Angeles is no city.”

He removed his hat and fanned himself with it. “But I predict someday it will be. The railroads are coming, and with them, hoards of new immigrants from the East hungry for land. You don’t see many Indians anymore. Used to be there were thousands but over the past quarter of a century, despite a few uprisings, they died, the Missions were secularized, the Indians were let go, and they just vanished, mostly to death.”

As he licked his fingers and then wiped them on his handkerchief, he looked around the grounds for the family. He had sent a couple of men to round everyone up for the portrait. He was supposed to interview the matriarch, Señora Angela Navarro, and ask her how it felt to be ninety years old.

“Something mysterious happened in this family back in 1830,” he said as the photographer continued to set up his contraptions and plates and squint frequently at the sun. “The youngest daughter disappeared on her wedding night and Navarro, who owned this rancho, took to his bed with an inexplicable illness. Bedridden for weeks, I hear, and when he recovered he was a different man. Ceased to have any interest in the running of the rancho, so his wife was forced to take over.