Mendoza in Hollywood (6 page)

Oscar’s face lost some of its aplomb. “Well, no, not yet.”

“Aw, that’s a shame.” Porfirio’s grin of sympathy was very white under his mustache. “I can’t think why nobody’s interested in that thing.”

“Neither can I,” Oscar said. “You’d think, in this wild country overrun with mice and insects, that the natives would fight for a chance to possess such a marvel of guaranteed safe storage for all manner of comestibles, whether fresh-baked or fried, complete with buttermilk well and yeast compartment!”

I leaned forward, genuinely intrigued. “What is this thing, señor?”

“Ah! Let me show you,” said Oscar, running to his cart. Porfirio rolled his eyes at me, but I got up and went to look anyway. Oscar unfastened a couple of latches and opened out one whole side of his cart. Glass jars glinted, and various hanging utensils and tools swung and shone in the firelight; but Oscar gestured past them to a big cabinet kind of thing that took up the entire back wall.

“There you have it. Positively the last word in preservation of fine baked goods. All drawers lined with plated tin to prevent the unwelcome attentions of minor pests such as mice, rats, or voles. And! Regard the patented securing latches designed to foil the marauding efforts of coons, polecats, or possums! Why, given the superb solid-oak construction and high-quality brass reinforcement, I daresay the Criterion Patented Brassbound Pie Safe could withstand even the predations of our friend the bruin.”

He didn’t know bears very well. Still, I had to admit the thing was impressive. It gleamed with fanciful brass trim all etched and inscribed with curlicue patterns of dizzying complexity. The various locks and latches looked formidable, and in addition to the drawers and cabinets were features at whose purpose I could only begin to guess: weird upswept or recessed sections.

“Gee, Oscar, that’s really something,” I said.

“Isn’t it? And yet—can I interest even one member of the native populace of Los Angeles in this modern marvel? You’d think any one of them would jump at the chance to call it his or her own. Yet here it remains, unpurchased, unowned.” Oscar shook his head in bewilderment.

“Well . . .” I hunted for the words. “You know, Oscar, I’ve been in California for a hundred and sixty-two years now, and in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pie. Maybe that’s part of the problem? I mean, nobody even grew much wheat here until recently. And this safe was designed for real Yankee-style pies, right? Two crusts, blueberry or rhubarb filling, that kind of thing?”

“True.” Oscar looked wistful. “I could go for some rhubarb pie myself this very moment.”

“San Francisco,” Porfirio remarked from where he was stirring the frijoles. “That’s where he could sell it. Not in El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles.”

“I beg to differ,” Oscar said hotly. “I have sold these people maple syrup, quilting frames, and birch beer extract. I
will
sell this fine item. I simply haven’t found the right customer yet.”

“There must be plenty of gringos in Los Angeles,” I said.

Porfirio grinned. “They don’t make many pies. Too busy shooting one another.”

“I’ll sell it, I say, and not to a fellow Yankee,” vowed Oscar. “Do you hear me, sir?”

“What, is this a bet?” said Porfirio, sitting back on his heels. “You want to wager on this?”

“By the goddess of consumer goods, yes! Name the stakes.”

“Okay.” Porfirio looked thoughtful. “Let’s say . . .I get one of those snappy patent pearl-handled shaving razors you carry, if you don’t sell that pie safe before you’re transferred out of here. If you
do
sell it to a nongringo, I’ll personally prepare that New England boiled supper for you. I’ll even eat it with you.”

“Then dig yourself a root cellar and lay in the rutabagas and parsnips,” said Oscar, eyes flashing. “For I’m at my best when given a challenge, sir, I warn you.”

Porfirio turned his attention back to the grilling beef. “Go for it, man” was his reply.

Personally I thought Porfirio would lose the bet. Los Angeles was becoming more of a Yankee city with every passing year. I learned from our copies of the bilingual
Los Angeles Star
that bullfights had at last been outlawed, to be replaced with the more humane pastimes of baseball, Presbyterian prayer services, and debating the outcome of the Civil War.

That Civil War raged on, over on the other end of the continent, at Mill Springs, Pea Ridge, and similar quaint-sounding places. Los Angeles was a world away from that, mired in its own problems. (Literally mired: the new brick sewers were proving a slightly more complicated engineering feat than had been expected.) To my amazement, though, the local Yankees—I must get out of the habit of calling them that, now that about half of them take it as a deadly insult—the
Americans
among us actually staked out sides and fought the war here in their own way, right in front of their bemused Hispanic neighbors. The older Yankee element, the sober sea captains and shopkeepers, were staunchly pro-Union. Banning, the stagecoach fellow, actually took time out from building his fine new house to donate land at San Pedro for a Union army barracks, so his side would have a military presence in California. The trash, the white boys from the States who’d failed at gold prospecting and trapping, were ramping stamping secessionists, so I guess Banning was wise.

Maybe I’ll go on calling them Yankees anyway. The Union will
win the war, after all. And it’s less offensive than calling them Americans, to the people of South America, who have a claim to that word too; and less offensive to the Yankees than calling them Anglos, when so many of them were shipped into this country as Irish bond slaves. Come to think of it, I guess most Latinos don’t like being called Hispanic, after the way the conquistadors treated their grandmothers. You can’t win, can you?

To me, the whole issue seemed irrelevant, living back in that canyon as I was with the stagecoaches arriving and departing as time and mud permitted. I was more amused by the fact that Mexico was now in danger of becoming French. It should have warned me that I was out of touch, that I’d been in the hills too long. But for three hundred years now, the only political reality had been the long slow ruin of Old Spain’s fortunes in the New World. These Kentuckians, these Narragansettians, these absurd Cape Codders, I knew they too were destined for their part on the world stage. But I was perhaps too slow in realizing that the curtain had already risen on their act. How could it affect me, after all? Nothing in the pageant of mortal fools had been able to affect me since the English Reformation, and I’d sworn never to let anything else get to me again.

“O
UT OF MASA
,” announced Einar, rummaging through the storeroom. “Out of brown sugar. Out of coffee. Half a bag of pinto beans. You want me to go to the store, chief?”

“Good idea. You can take those damn coyotes to the transport depot too, how about it?” Porfirio said.

“Okay, okay. I didn’t think they’d make that much noise. The last batch didn’t.”

“You’re going into town?” Imarte stuck her head out of her room. “Will you wait until I’m dressed? I’d like to go down to the Bella Union.”

“I wasn’t planning on staying overnight,” Einar said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll catch the next stagecoach home.” She ducked back into her room, and there was a great rustling of silks and creaking of whalebone. I was wondering why she didn’t walk back—I would have, because the pueblo didn’t look that far away from up on the ridge—when Einar turned to me and asked:

“How about it? You want to come?”

I blinked at him in surprise. “Okay,” I said, deciding to continue my program of readaptation to human company, though it did seem a bit reckless. If there were bloodthirsty crazies hiding out in the chaparral, how many more of them would be in the infamous saloons and
gambling dens? On the other hand, I’d have to visit the place sometime, and Einar seemed able enough with a gun.

I went to put on my best shawl and pin up my hair. By the time I came out, Einar had hitched a pair of horses to our wagon. Imarte came sashaying from the adobe, complete with painted face, scarlet satins, and feather boa.

“Wow, you really do look like a whore,” I complimented her, with my most naive expression.

“Thank you. You won’t mind riding in the back with the coyotes, will you, dear?” She vaulted into the seat beside Einar. “This satin crushes so terribly, the least little thing makes wrinkles that simply won’t come out. I envy you that plain broadcloth. And how lucky you are to be able to wear that color. Dirt and stains are almost invisible on that particular shade of—what would you call it? Olive drab?”

“Matches your eyes, doesn’t it?” I said, clambering up into the back, where the month’s catch of
Canis latrans
slept soundly in their crates.

“Break it up, ladies,” Porfirio snapped at us. I shelved my next remark, which had to do with the bitches I was riding with. You know, in the twenty-second century the feminist Ephesian Party will bid for political power on the grounds that if women ran the world, there would be less senseless aggression. Strangely, they’ll never be able to get a consensus within their own party. Can you imagine why not?

“Let’s have a nice happy little drive into town, shall we?” Einar said. He clucked to the horses, and we bumped and rolled away down the canyon, to turn right on the dirt road that was El Camino Real and would one day be the Hollywood Freeway.

“Check it out!” Einar pointed with his whip as we rumbled along. “Hollywood Bowl, back up in there.
Symphonies under the Stars
. That hill over there? Whitley Heights, where all the movie stars live before Beverly Hills is fashionable. Rudolph Valentino will have a house right
there
.”

“I’ve never seen one of his films,” I said. “I really ought to, sometime.”

Einar half-turned in his seat as an idea hit him. “We should have a film festival! We can show them after dark. All the great Golden Age of Cinema stuff. I wonder if I can get films that were shot right here in town.”

“Probably.” Imarte sniffed. “You could try to find the interesting ones. There are only a few with any historical value, in my opinion.”

“We’ll do it,” said Einar, bouncing on his seat. “We’ll have the first film festival in Hollywood, how about it? I’ll see what I can order from Central HQ.”

We emerged from Cahuenga Pass and swung left down the track of the future Hollywood Boulevard, where Einar gave us a running commentary on the famous sights we couldn’t see yet. I remember the corner of Hollywood and Vine, not for any precognitive vision of Clara Bow zooming around it in a fast car but because we had to bump through a particularly vicious seasonal creek that cut across it, and mud splattered Imarte’s scarlet finery. I was proud of myself for not smiling.

As we entered the plain below the foothills, the land opened out more and changed: low green hills gently rolling as far as the eye could see, dotted with oak trees and starred everywhere with golden poppies. Here and there wandered herds of longhorn cattle, grazing and growing fat.

“See those guys?” Einar’s voice was sober. “This is their last hurrah. Nobody knows it yet, of course, but this drought will pretty much wipe them out. And when they go, the old Mexican gentry go too; they’ll lose their revenue, get into debt to the Yankees, and sell off their estates. Boom, whole way of life gone. The Yankees will run cattle after the drought, but not these longhorns: they’ll bring in their own stock, Jerseys and Holsteins—Eurocows. All kinds of useful genetic traits scheduled to disappear from the bovine gene pool when these longhorns nearly go extinct. It’ll be a bitch collecting specimens—expensive, too—but I really should get started on it.”

“Why expensive?” Imarte asked. “I should imagine the rancheros will be desperate to sell, once the drought is in progress.”

“Yeah, but by then the specimens will be weak and stressed out. The Company wants healthy, happy cows.” Einar shook his head.

I sat up and stared at the gentle landscape, so pastoral, such an idyll. Cracked earth and skeletons soon, to be followed by another Eden, this time of prosperous little Yankee orange groves, to be followed by a gray wasteland of diesel exhaust, concrete, and steel. Paradise and hell, boom and bust, together forever in Los Angeles. I shivered and wished I was back in Big Sur.

We followed the Hollywood Freeway route all the way into the city, creaked gradually uphill, and paused at the top of a long low ridge. Einar pointed at the vista below us, a wide gesture taking in the whole horizon. “There you go, Mendoza. The original wretched hive of villainy and scum.”

It didn’t look particularly dangerous. What surprised me was the space it took up. It sprawled and sprawled, out to the edges of the sky, and yet you could count the number of two-story buildings on the fingers of one hand. Right below us was a squat brick thing like an armory in a weedy central plaza crisscrossed with dirt paths. I found out later that it was a cistern for dry years. There was a solid-looking church with its back to us—recently repaired, to judge from the two-tone plaster. There were a couple of stately adobes with pink tile roofs and peeling whitewash. But the vast majority of structures were little flat-topped shacks with tarred roofs, rows of them leaning on one another and single ones peeping out from orchards or ranged across fields. I couldn’t see a single living soul moving in that vast panorama. You could have fit every other city in California into the space Los Angeles took up, and yet it looked like nothing so much as somebody’s big cow pasture, with an unusual number of cowsheds. A dark line of willows and cottonwoods snaked through it, and one particularly big sycamore: the trees must have marked the bed of the Los Angeles River, which actually had water in it this year.