Hers the Kingdom (38 page)

     "Shall I leave?" Willa wanted to know.

     "No." Owen was emphatic. "He would like that. Women make Jacob Shurz uncomfortable. He's going to have to deal with both of us. Let's not let him dictate terms."

     Willa only nodded, but she would long remember what Owen said that day—how naturally he had moved her into position to oppose Jacob Shurz.

     Owen, always hospitable, waved Shurz to our group, greeting him with as much enthusiasm as he would a friend. Jacob Shurz would not, however, take a seat, and he did not want a lemonade, no matter how fresh and cool, no matter we had grown all the lemons in our own orchard.

     "Mr. Shurz, sir," Owen said, taking the initiative so suddenly that I think even the taciturn Jacob Shurz was surprised, "I suspect you have come with some specific request. Perhaps you would like to tell us what that is?"

     Shurz shifted feet and in one, sudden short movement swept his gaze over Willa and me. "I be wanting to talk to you on business," he said.

     Owen smiled. "My wife and her sister know as much about the business of the ranch as I do—perhaps more," he said, leaning casually against the oak tree, his very ease punctuating the difference between the two men.

     Shurz would not let go. "I want to know why my neighbors cannot use my road to take their produce into the market at Santa Monica? If they go the back way, over the mountains, it's a far longer journey, as you know. I say they should be able to have free passage over my road, to the beach—why do you say no?"

     Owen was skimming a bare foot over the grass. "More and more farmers are settling in those hills beyond my property line. Soon they're going to want to use the ranch roads to get to town. Some of them do it now without my permission. They hunt on my land and they camp there, and they build fires. You know what fire can do to these hills and canyons, Shurz."

     "People got a right to take their crops to market, passage is a right," Shurz said.

     Owen changed tactics. "As I've told you, Mr. Shurz, you may continue to pass over my land so long as it is my land, and you are welcome as well to use the roads I have cut in to Santa Monica. I feel it is a courtesy I must extend, since you were here before me, and the owner of the property allowed you such a courtesy before me. You see, I believe in tradition and in courtesy, Mr. Shurz. I must tell you that I find it a bit difficult to understand why you wish to turn a private road into a public thoroughfare."

     "Because people have the right," Shurz repeated.

     "Rights," Owen said quietly, "are often decided in the courts. I cannot believe that you would wish to take this matter that far. You speak of rights, and I would like to remind you that we—my wife and I and our children, who will one day own this land—have rights, too. I do not want an army of farmers streaming in and out of the ranch. We have trouble enough with strangers passing through. Perhaps you heard about the smugglers that were caught here last summer? I will say it again—you are welcome to use your road, to pass freely over my land. But it is my land, and you may not open it to others or I shall have to reconsider."

     Shurz glared at Owen's bare feet. "The people have rights, too," he said, "maybe the people speak on this, maybe the courts have to say."

     "Do your neighbors help you keep the road clear?" Owen asked him then. "Do you allow them passage in return for road maintenance?"

     Shurz did not flinch. "That is my business," he said.

     "No, sir, it's mine," Owen answered. "They are on my land, remember, and that is called trespassing."

     With that Shurz turned his back and began to walk away. When he was no more than ten paces, however, he turned back. 'This isn't the end of it," he said before walking off with that determined, stolid way he had.

     Willa raised her eyebrows; Owen shrugged.

     "Do you think he's one of those German socialists?" Willa asked.

     "I certainly hope not," Owen answered, "the ungrateful wretch, stirring up trouble for us. What right has he to tell me what I can do? That's a dirty bunch, making demands on anybody that has more than they've got. They're making things hard on us back East, with all the union talk. And in the mines out here, it's an ugly business. Still, I'd like to avoid trouble as long as we can."

     Willa looked up. "What do you mean, 'as long as we can'?"

     "I mean it is going to come, sooner or later. This is one of the last of the great untouched ranches. People keep coming West, and there's little enough land for them left. It's not going to be easy, keeping them out."

     "Owen, you are a pessimist," I put in, "there are still all kinds of wilderness in the West. I don't think all that many people even know about the ranch, and there's not that much land here to farm anyway."

     "But it lies between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and one day Los Angeles is going to challenge the northern city. There will be calls for trains and for roads. You wait, it will happen. It has to."

     To which Willa said, in a voice that was low and tense with determination: "I won't have it."

     Owen was looking at the departing figure of Jacob Shurz. "Then you are going to have to fight," he said.

     What had gone unsaid between Willa and me began to grow. Each day the chasm widened, until I knew that I must speak of Connor. I had to. It hovered on the edges of my mind. I waited and I watched and I grew ever more apprehensive until the bang of a door would send me jumping.

The storms that blew in from the sea that winter came one after another, with high winds that ripped branches from the eucalyptus trees and scattered them about the barnyard. Wet leaves stuck to
everything; the rain saturated the verandah, a feeling of dampness crept into our clothes, into our lives.

     The front hall was filled with slickers and boots. I could not step outside without confronting soft earth and clay mud. Dry creekbeds were rampant with white, frothing waters that ran to the sea.

     All would be gray. For days on end we would not see the sky and then, suddenly, we would wake to a patch of blue. The clouds moved quickly, high and full. And then we could go outside in the winter sun and pretend that another storm was not brewing in the west.

     The winter was the wettest in living memory. The creeks were full, the heavens wept. I watched Willa's body swell, and I knew I must speak to her, and I couldn't.

     I came upon her in a lull between storms, sitting by the fountain, which was filled now with rain water, and afloat with bits of tree bark and flotsam of the winter storm. Her hands were in her lap, her eyes closed, her face turned to the sun. I did not want to invade her quiet, but I had to.

     "Willa," I began grimly, "I must talk to you." I could not keep the quiver from my voice. She opened her eyes.

     "About Connor," I said quickly, "about the baby."

     She closed her eyes again.

     "Willa, we must," I was pleading.

     She reached into her pocket and handed me a small square of newspaper, folded over several times. It was creased and fragile with wear, having been read many times. The date "September 26" was penned on the top. I read: "Mr. Connor McCord entered a plea of guilty to a charge of smuggling in the courtroom presided over by Judge Efram Peal. The admitted criminal was sentenced to a term of ten years to be served in the federal penitentiary at San Quentin."

     I read it twice. I said, "Guilty, he pled guilty."

     Without opening her eyes, Willa replied, "I envy him his punishment." She moved her hand over her belly where the baby was growing. Her face did not change expression.

     "I read something a day or so ago, a poem," I began awkwardly, "it went something like: 'I sit beside my lonely fire, and pray for wisdom yet—for calmness to remember or courage to forget.'"

     Willa's eyes remained shut; I thought for a while that she had not heard me, until finally she said, "I wonder why it shouldn't be the other way—'courage to remember and calmness to forget'?"

     I took a deep breath. "Can we talk about the baby, then?"

     She shook her head. "Not yet," she whispered. "I can't, not yet." She turned away. I wanted so to touch her, but I dared not.

     "You will find the courage," was all I could think to say, "and when you do, I will be there to help you. This time, I promise, I will not desert you."

     I turned and left quickly, shaking. I had said the words out loud that needed to be said. I had exorcised the thing that was coming between us. Willa would find a way, and I would help her.

In the Shadow of the Hawk
1896-1903

BEFORE FULL LIGHT on the morning of the twelfth of April, 1896, Willa came to my room. Perhaps I had been listening for her in my sleep. I am certain that I heard her hand on the doorknob, because I was at once full awake.

     "The pains have started," she whispered in a voice as swollen as her body, "now I must talk to you."

     "Hush, please, dear," I tried to say, but my heart was sinking. The baby should not come for another month; it was still too soon. "I'll call Trinidad, we'll send Ignacio for the doctor."

     "Not yet," she said in a voice that was part command, part entreaty, "come back into bed, please. . ."

     We pulled the covers over us and lay together as we had as girls when it was cold—tucked together like spoons, for warmth, surrounded by the heavy scent of the sleep heat of our bodies. I put my arm around her swollen belly, I could feel it grow tight, feel her pull in her breath to brace for the pain.

     Between pains, she spoke in a voice that was tired yet filled with urgency. "You know how it was with Thad, how bad," she said, "it could be that way again, today. I might not . . ."

     "Willa, let me send for the doctor," I had to interrupt.

     "Wait!" she said, biting out the word. "Not yet, listen to me. The baby . . . Owen is not the father . . ."

     "Willa, no," I said, but she squeezed my hand until it hurt.

     "I know," she said, "believe me, I know this baby is not Owen's. And it is not mine, either. I have tried to think of it as mine, but I cannot. I want you to take it, Lena. I want this baby to be yours. If it lives, it must be your baby."

     "Yes, dear," I said, "whatever you want, yes, but let me go for help." Still she held hard to me.

     "Promise," she said, her voice breaking, "promise me now. No matter what happens today, if there is a baby you will be its mother."

     "I promise," I said. "If it is truly what you want, I suppose." Her water broke. I felt the wet warmth spread beneath us on the bed. Suddenly I was terribly afraid. "Willa, there isn't going to be time for the doctor."

     "Everything will be all right now," she said in a voice of terrible calm.

In fact, everything was all right. The baby was born no more than two hours later, in my bed, a girl with a wet scatter of light hair on her head. It was an easy birth, altogether normal, with only Trinidad and myself in attendance.

     Trinidad held the baby in her big, dark hands and blurted,
"Que bonita!"
It was true. The newborn was perfectly formed, without the shriveled scowling of most new babies.

     "See what a good baby girl God has given you," Trinidad said, taking the baby for Willa to view.

     Willa looked at the child for an instant, no more, then turned her face to the wall. "I am tired, give the baby to Lena," was all that she would say. The glance had confirmed what she already knew.
The baby looked nothing at all like the boys had looked at birth. The child was Connor's.

     Trinidad plumped the covers, expertly rolling Willa's body one way and then the other to change the bed linens. "What name will you call her?" she wanted to know. "A pretty name, I think."

     "Ask Lena," Willa said, clearly annoyed. "Lena can name the baby. Let me sleep."

     "Rose," I heard myself say.

     "Rosa, yes!" Trinidad said with enthusiasm. "She is like a rose, this one."