Hers the Kingdom (89 page)

On my third evening back on the ranch, I sat with my eyes on my plate, more to avoid looking at Thad than anything else. I concentrated on cutting the chorizo Trinidad had made.

     We ate in silence, except for the sounds of Thad's chewing,
until I felt Willa's hand on my arm. I followed her gaze, to Thad.

     Using both knife and fork, he was cutting the sausages expertly, and eating them in the European fashion.

     "Trinidad is a genius in the kitchen," he said in a voice so crisp it sent a chill through me, "has she ever written her recipes down?"

     Stunned, we could not answer.

     "Incidentally, Mother," he went on in the same intelligent tones, "at school one of the masters spoke of archeological digging sites. Isn't it true that the Malibu had several important Chumash Indian villages at one time? Perhaps we should form a Malibu Archeological Society. Do you think one of the universities might be interested?"

     His voice was young, eager; his face was animated. Willa said something, I don't remember what. And then we watched as Thad faded before our eyes; in a matter of seconds his eyes were empty, his mouth drooped open.

     "No," Willa cried pitifully, "oh, Thad, no . . ." It was as if he had held out something precious, something beautiful, to her but before she could take it he jerked it back, pretended it was gone. I stared at him, angry and pained, as he sat chewing stoically, as if nothing at all had happened.

     It had taken place in a matter of minutes, but the effect was shattering. Willa was excited beyond all reason; she was sure a full recovery was possible now, and she could talk of little else. As if to prove her right, Thad's periods of lucidity increased as the nightmares all but vanished. He would, quite suddenly, begin to speak and would carry on for two or three minutes at a time before sinking back into emptiness. The subjects he spoke on were banal— usually having to do with school—but the spirit and the liveliness were there. If the change took place when he was out of sight, in the hallway, or in another room, he sounded like Thad at thirteen or fourteen. His voice was higher, his laugh clear and spontaneous.

     I know I should have rejoiced with Willa, but I could not. I came to dread being around Thad, watching the transformation—
seeing the boy appear in the man's body. I was ashamed of myself for what I was thinking and feeling, but I could not but believe that Thad had made as much progress as he was going to make. He was locked in time, a boy forever . . . I did not believe that the Thad we had known before the accident would ever come back. I became convinced of this one rainy day when I came upon Thad in the parlor, poring over the stamp collection Owen had started for him the year he had sent Thad off to school. For Christmas one year when she was with us, Sally had given him several beautiful and quite rare stamps from her own father's collection.

     "Do you remember who gave you this stamp?" I asked him, pointing to one of Sally's gifts.

     Thad looked at me, his eyes clear and guileless.

     "I don't, Auntie. Was it Papa?"

     "No," I said. "It was Sally."

     His eyes registered no recognition, none at all.

     "Sally?" he said, "I don't remember any Sally."

     I patted him on the arm and told him that my memory must be failing, that Sally must have been with us while he was away, at school. He accepted my explanation without question, turning back to the study of his stamps without, it seemed to me, any curiosity at all about Sally, who she was or why she might have given him two extraordinarily beautiful and rare stamps for his collection.

     The incident had no effect on Thad so far as I could tell, but it made me feel even more miserable, and the more miserable I felt, the less capable was I of leaving. I could not abandon Willa, not while she was so besieged with problems. Especially since she would not admit to so many of those problems. Joseph had spoken to me twice since my return, imploring me to help him make Willa understand how grave the financial situation had become. The companies had done well enough, but they were overextended. Willa had consistently drained off cash for legal fees and to build the Casa Blanca.

     Joseph was no alarmist. If he said that Willa was heading for the most serious imaginable trouble, she was. Soon enough, I understood Joseph's frustration. When Willa did not wish to confront a problem, she distracted herself. She was going from day to day, pushing away the problems, perhaps hoping that a solution would present itself. It was easy enough to find distractions. The house itself was a massive one.

     The Casa Blanca. It was another reason that I no longer felt entirely comfortable on the ranch. Sitting on its perch, looking out and over everything, I felt we were above the ranch, not of it. I couldn't step out of a door and onto the earth, but must always tread across the smooth, hard surfaces of tile. The old ranch house had been a place to live in. Dust gathered and was ignored. The wooden floors were worn, walls spotted with rain water were never corrected. The house had not been so important as the life within it, but the Casa Blanca was an art object in itself. I grew bored and weary of examining bits of cloth and talking about furniture and fittings and chandeliers.

     One chandelier, in particular. The whole of one nerve-wracking week was spent—squandered is a better word—in arranging for the purchase of a crystal chandelier that had hung at Versailles during the signing of the peace treaty. It was not an original, but rather a new, electrified copy thought necessary to produce adequate light for the signing of the treaty that would end the war to end all wars. One of Willa's agents had assured her that it was a great stroke of luck, finding the piece at "quite a good price." It was quite a price, to be sure. Nothing would do but that Willa have it for the ballroom, even though the ballroom was far from finished. She paid, and had the thing hung at once—a folly, it seemed to me, in more ways than I cared to list.

     "I must speak to Joseph about arranging payment," she said.

     And I answered, "You are impossible."

     Willa's road war was, at this same time, winding down. She had spent the better part of two decades waging it, and though she had
won several skirmishes and a few battles, the war itself was lost at a terrible cost. When it was too late by far, she offered to negotiate the site of the road. By then the forces aligned against her, which included the county, state, and federal governments, the people of the coastal cities and towns to the south, the settlers to the east, and the redoubtable Jacob Shurz, who were in no mood to give quarter. The road would parallel the beach. It would slice through the most beautiful part of the ranch.

     The rout had been total. The Supreme Court of the United States decreed that Willa must not only grant the right of way along the ocean, but laterally as well—with roads coming over the mountains. "Land may be condemned to build highways to places of pleasing natural beauty," the judges wrote.

     The decision was read to Willa over the telephone, by one of the lawyers who had been so certain she could win. Before he signed off, he added a plea for quick payment of his already overdue charges.

     "Yes," Willa had said in a voice drained of feeling.

     Jacob Shurz appeared on the hilltop two days later. His face was weathered, his expression stoic. Willa walked out to meet him at the top of the road.

     "I've come to say it's over now, done with," Shurz offered.

     Willa looked at him. "I know what is over," she said. "Why did you think you had to come to tell me? Do you need to crow over it? Is that why you've come?"

     "No, mum," Shurz said, "I never meant it personal. I just wanted what was right. Now it's done."

     "I am really terribly pleased," she said in a voice filled with irony, "that you are so wonderfully infallible on the question of right and wrong. You and the judges who think you can build highways to 'places of pleasing natural beauty' and not destroy the beauty in the process. You want to cover these hills with houses and roads and clutter the beaches with shacks, so that people can defile the beaches with their trash. They'll invade these wild canyons, Shurz.
They'll come like locusts and cut the wood and drive the animals out, the birds and the deer. One hundred years from now, no one will know what a beautiful place this once was. The hawks will be gone, your 'people' will gouge out the hills and poison the waters. People have a right to beautiful places, the judges say. You say people have a right to plow and change the earth. You say they should build roads through the wilderness, and start fires that rampage and kill. Tell me, Shurz, who is to keep the land beautiful for your children and your grandchildren? Have you thought of that, Shurz?"

     She was all but shouting now. She had not, since receiving word of the Court's decision, had a chance to vent her anger, and Shurz had provided the chance.

     He listened, hat in his hand, and when she was finished he nodded, mounted his horse, and rode off. I watched from a side terrace. Willa stood, watching him ride away, her face unchanged— the anger and hurt and frustration there. I felt sorry then, immensely sorry for them both. Each had felt so totally right. It had never been possible for them to compromise. I had never liked Jacob Shurz, but that day I admired him—for coming to say what he had said and for giving Willa the chance to say what she had to say.

     Willa was not an easy woman to be around at that time. There were days when I wanted to throw up my hands and tell her that she was impossible, and that I had no intention of standing by and putting up with her, that I had reached the end of my tether. I never did; I hadn't the courage. Or maybe it was just that so much of the world seemed lined up against her. The local newspapers ran scathing editorials, calling her "The High Priestess of the Holy Kingdom of the Malibu." They said she believed herself above the law, that she was an imperious autocrat, feudal in her outlook. They scorned her for, as they put it, "attempting to subvert the will of the people."

     She deserved some of it. We tried to dissuade her from getting a court injunction to prevent a picnic celebration that would have marked the beginning of the road building. The result was to delay
the picnic for a month, and add hundreds to her list of detractors.

     Willa would spend the whole of a day answering an editorial that had been critical of her. She would pour out her frustrations, making long and complex arguments that, she was certain, would convince them of the righteousness of her position.

     Thinking that Philip might be able to talk sense to her, I asked him to come to the ranch. It was a mistake. Philip had disqualified himself a number of times from proceedings involving the ranch. We all assumed that Willa understood his need to do this. Perhaps she did, but she used it now to attack Philip. She battered him, and the courts in general, until he lost all patience and told her that she was acting like a willful child. She glared at him, remaining silent until he could take it no more.

     "Confound it, Willa, you're an intelligent woman. Why won't you listen? The Malibu is open now—there is no way in God's green world that you can keep it closed. If you try, you'll be carted off to the lock-up. Get your mind cleared out—once you talked persuasively about preserving the ranch, keeping it wild. Now all I hear is how you have been maligned—your rights, your money, your land, your reputation.

     "And the fact of the matter is, most of it does belong to you and you can still have a great deal to do with how civilization infringes. The Malibu doesn't have to become an outpost of Iowa, as so much of southern California has been. As long as you can pay the taxes, this land is yours. So it's about time you looked ahead, there is so much that is still possible."

     As he spoke, his anger dissipated, so that by the time he finished Philip was pleading for understanding.

     "Is that all you have to say?" Willa asked, her voice chilly. "Perhaps you are right. You think like a judge, and I have to believe that you are all wonderfully wise, you judges. You say there is little I can do to keep people out of here, that they'll build anyway. I'm sorry you can't see the tragedy of it, Philip. I'm sorry you don't understand that the Malibu as we have known it is condemned."

     She thought that Joseph had talked to Philip, that he knew about the taxes. A large payment was due and there was not enough to cover it and meet the company payrolls.

     "You cannot delay any longer," Joseph had said, his voice taut with controlled anger. "We must make some decisions now, Willa. Now."

     Willa hardly spoke for two days. She was not angry with me, but preoccupied, and I knew she was turning the problem over in her mind. She needed to raise a quarter of a million dollars within the next three months. She was grappling with the problem with such concentrated energy that I felt she was regaining her sense of balance, her drive. I fully expected her to call me in to the office soon to see what I thought of this plan or that. In spite of our predicament, it was good to see Willa so occupied.