Hers the Kingdom (24 page)

     I saw him again in the afternoon. Thad, who likes to sit with me in the arbor not far from our family garden, headed directly for the man. I soon saw the reason. The tall Chinaman was picking our second-crop strawberries, Thad's one great weakness.

     "Wait, Thad," I called after him, but he is quick for such a small boy and his thin little legs were flying. By the time I pulled up, puffing, Thad's mouth was jammed with strawberry, the juice oozing out the sides, and on his face was an expression of pure delight.

     "I am sorry," I said to the man, I haven't the slightest idea why. It occurred to me that he might not speak English. "Do you understand . . ." I began, slowly.

     "Yes, I do," he answered in impeccable English.

     Startled, I put my hand out for Thad, who scooted beyond my reach. I glared at the child.

     "I hope you don't mind my giving the boy a berry," the Chinaman said in his remarkable Queen's English, "He asked for it so nicely, and as you can see . . ." and he smiled, "his enjoyment is overflowing."

     I nodded at his small joke. I tried to think what to say next—what did one say to a Chinese who was six feet tall and spoke with a British accent?

     "My father was in the British navy, in the port of Tsingtao. My mother was Chinese," he said.

     "So many people ask?" I replied, surprised out of my confusion.

     "Oh, yes, I'm an oddity among the Chinese, too—although they, as you, are much too polite to ask . . ."

     The conversation ended there because Thad, a strawberry in each hand, was off for the arbor and there was nothing for me to do but follow. I am curious, however, and I will find out more about this strange, tall man who speaks so eloquently.

Two days later came another strange event. At midday the dogs set up a terrible barking, as they do when a stranger approaches. The St. Bernard's low bellows were punctuated by the collies' excited yelps. Before long a man appeared at the house gate. When he did not come through, but waited in the midst of the barking dogs, Willa went down to meet him, at first believing him to be one of the drifters who now and then find their way into the ranch, looking for work.

     He was a thick-chested man in his middle years with a stubble of beard and stained teeth.

     "I be Jacob Shurz," the man said to Willa as she quieted the dogs, "I come to see the Mister."

     Jacob Shurz is the settler who lives in the mountains to the north. He homesteaded a small ranch and cut his own road through to the beach. Rather than take the longer public road to the east, on the other side of the mountains, he chooses to get his produce to the markets in Santa Monica by traveling the beach at low tide. Owen, who is continually adding to the ranch, recently bought the property through which Shurz' road was built. Willa had a good idea why the homesteader had finally come to call on us.

     "Won't you come into the house?" she said, with the politeness one affords a neighbor. "My husband isn't here at the moment. He's in Philadelphia on business, but perhaps . . ."

     "What I want to know," he said, making no move to come through the gate she held open for him, "is about my road."

     "What about your road?" Willa asked, a trifle more formally.

     "I've always passed free and clear," Shurz answered.

     "I'm sure my husband will not change that," Willa said to the man, "my husband is a reasonable man."

     "I dug that road and I keeps it clear," Shurz went on, as if he had been given an argument.

     "I am sure you may continue to use the road," she said, a thin film of ice in her voice, adding, "even though it runs through our private property, so long as it is to bring the produce from your farm alone to Santa Monica."

     She waited for a moment to see if he understood what she was saying, then went on, "You have our permission to use the new roadway we have cut along the beach, also, so long as you do not interfere with the work of our ranch."

     "The beaches don't belong to you," the man countered.

     Willa's back stiffened.

     "The beach below the mean tide line is in the public domain," she corrected him. "That is not at issue here. I repeat: You may continue to use your road, but you would do well to remember that you pass at our pleasure."

     He looked at her, turned his head and spit a long streak of tobacco juice which squarely hit one of the lizards that live near the rock by the gatepost.

     "I've come to see the Mister," Shurz repeated.

     Willa turned abruptly and walked toward the house; without turning she said, "Then you will have to return when he is here."

     "When's that?" Shurz called after her, but she did not answer.

In retrospect, leafing through the journals, I can almost draw a line of demarcation—a place where things started to go wrong. It was not
any one action or event, but many; some were important, some not, but altogether they told, it seems to me now, that the good years were giving way, that we were about to enter a time of trouble.

October 8, 1894:
The heat is terrible. No sea breezes blow. Even the children lie about, lethargic. Yesterday Trinidad's little Marcella was sitting on the ground near the path to the bathhouse. Next to her, coiled, was a rattlesnake. Seeing it, Trinidad shrieked—a high, piercing cry that carried through the heavy air, slicing it, reverberating. Then there was the loud crack of a gun. The snake collapsed. Willa, seated still in her saddle, had shot the creature from twenty feet.

     What is remarkable is this: I did not know that Willa possessed a gun, or that she could fire one.

     
October 29, 1894:
The
Santanas
have been blowing for two days now, hot dry winds from the desert. Everything is dry, brittle. The taste of dust is in our mouths. It is too hot to eat, too hot to sleep, sleep is filled with bad dreams.

     Tempers flare. Willa bit into a muffin and cracked a tooth on a bit of pecan shell which had been left in. She went into the kitchen and upbraided Trinidad without mercy. To avoid that scene I went outside and, to my surprise, startled Ignacio, who was listening, his face full of woe for his wife. It is difficult to surprise a man like Ignacio in the act of emotion.

     "It's the
Santana
," I said to him. "My sister does not mean what she says." He only lowered his head and left. Strange, I thought, how these unrelenting winds flay us.

     After that, Willa rode Princess into town and came back with play-pretties for each of Trinidad's children.

     
January 7, 1895:
I am sick at heart, I do not know what to do. Owen is sending Wen away in the fall. He will go to a boarding school in Redlands; henceforth, he will be with us in the summers
only. The child is scarcely seven years old! It is too soon! I do not understand, not at all.

     Willa and I have been planning a school that was to begin this fall on the ranch. We have five children of school age, two of them older than Wen. Thad and Aleja and Pablito and the rest of Trinidad's growing tribe will need education. We were going to find a teacher, to use the beach cottage as our schoolhouse. Willa would give instruction in math and I in music. Owen knew of our plans, about which we have talked incessantly! But I think now, for the first time, that he has never joined in, never planned with us. Why did I not notice that at the time? Owen never intended for Wen to stay on the ranch for his schooling.

     "Why?" I asked last evening. "Why," I said, "when Wen loves the ranch so? He is healthy and happy here, he needs to be with his family. It is not as if we aren't qualified to give him a good beginning education. Owen, you have one of the finest libraries in all of California here on the ranch . . ."

     Owen's handsome face was set, his eyes opaque. There was to be no moving him, I could see.

     "The boy needs friends his own age," he said.

     It didn't make sense. Owen, to whom family meant so much. I looked at him, trying to understand.

     He went on, "Wen needs to be with Anglo-Saxon children like himself."

     "Anglo-Saxon?" I asked, dully, beginning to see.

     "Yes," he repeated, in a tone I had seldom heard, "Californios are fine people in many ways, but they lack certain traits—energy, ambition, purpose. They are not an industrious people, and I do not want my son to be influenced by them."

     "Have you ever explained this to Ignacio?" Willa suddenly spoke. The vein on Owen's forehead stood out in sharp relief. I thought for a moment he was going to lash out, but when he spoke his voice was carefully modulated.

     "We are not discussing Ignacio, but I think it would be well if you would remember . . ."

     "Oh, I will remember, Owen," Willa said, her voice higher than usual. "Separate but equal as the Southern Senators like to say."

     ". . . if you will remember," Owen went on, "that I have amply rewarded Ignacio's exceptional service. He has a large house in which to rear his growing family."

     It seemed to me—but I may be wrong—it seemed to me that Owen stressed the word "growing" ever so slightly.

     "When is Wen to leave?" I asked, knowing even as I said it that I was admitting defeat.

     "At the end of summer."

     I went to my room then, and I have not left it since. A weight has settled on my chest. I have not been able to sleep, even though I have drunk half a bottle of Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, which almost always cures my insomnia. I wished that I had something to dull the time, to blot out everything.

     Willa knocked on my door late in the afternoon. When I did not answer, she came in. I turned my face to the wall, hoping she would go away, but she did not. She sat there, her hands loose in her lap (I did not need to look at her to know that). After a while I knew she was not going to leave so I turned to her.

     "Did you decide, or did Owen?" I wanted to know.

     "He did," she answered, "but I agreed."

     I waited awhile. There was something I had to say but I could not remember what it was, my mind was furred.

     "You agreed? You?" That was it, that was what I could not pull out of my mind.

     "But no one asked me," I blurted before she had time to answer. "I was supposed to share the children . . . and I have done my part, my share." I knew that, I was sure of it. "But I didn't have anything to say about it."

     "Nor do I," Willa answered.

     "It isn't right," I whimpered.

     "No, it isn't," she agreed. "Wen is more your child than mine and so is Thad, and that is what Owen sees as the problem."

     "Owen thinks I'm bad for the boys?" I cried, wounded.

     "No," Willa answered in that same calm, cold tone, "he thinks they are too dependent on you, yes. But it's me he thinks bad for the boys."

     I didn't know what she was saying, but she made me furious.
She had agreed.
That was all I needed to know.

     "He's not seven years old and he needs to be here with us—it is too soon to send him away," I insisted.

     "I know, I'm sorry," Willa said.