Sacred Ground (8 page)

As Erica crossed the noisy camp, she looked over at Jared Black’s ostentatious forty-foot Winnebago, parked a distance away from the humbler tents and trailers. There were no lights on inside. She had seen him leave early that morning, tearing out of the parking area as if the backseat of his Porsche were on fire. Apparently he hadn’t yet returned.

Jared was not an idle man. Even though he was on the State Native American Heritage Commission, he still had his private law practice with a prestigious firm in San Francisco. He was currently having his staff run searches on local deeds and historical references to the cave, poring over the records of the Franciscan Missions, digging through city, county and state archives, trying to find if Indians had ever been owners of record or if there were references to any particular tribe in that area.

Erica had been inside the RV once, when Jared had called a meeting between her and Sam and members of a local tribe. The Winnebago was equipped with state-of-the-art electronics, an entertainment center, king-size bed, Sub-Zero refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave oven, automatic ice maker, plush carpeting, and glass cabinets displaying crystal stemware. It was ritzier and loaded with more conveniences than any apartment Erica had ever lived in. Jared Black, the lawyer and Indian rights activist, was a flashy show-off, in her opinion, reveling in the spotlight. Jared had a secretary, on loan as a courtesy from a local law firm, who came every morning and then left with a full briefcase. People were in and out of Jared’s RV all day long— attorneys, politicians, tribal representatives. His professional life was an open book.

Jared Black the
man
, on the other hand, was something of an enigma.

At the end of the day, when work shut down and city crews went home, and Erica and her team put away their tools and dispersed to the cafeteria tent or to private living quarters, Jared Black also closed down for the day, the visitors stopped coming, the lights went on in his RV, his door remained closed. He never joined the others for dinner but dined alone. And then around eight, he would leave, carrying a small athletic bag, and return two hours later, his hair damp. Erica imagined he went for a workout somewhere, perhaps to play handball or to swim laps, but it wasn’t just two or three nights a week, it was every single night almost without fail.
He’s a personal trainer to prizefighters and kung fu stars. He climbs the outside of the Bonaventure Hotel every night, with permission of course. He wrestles alligators that are going to be made into Gucci wallets.
Whatever it was, it accounted for his build. Even in a three-piece suit, it was obvious Jared Black possessed a trim, hard body.

From what Erica could see, he had no social life. She wondered about his wife, why she hadn’t come to join him. He had gone away for four days a couple of weeks back, Erica presumed it was to go north to San Francisco, where he lived.
He and his wife engaged in passionate and unbridled lovemaking. They made love everywhere— in their bedroom, in Golden Gate Park, in a cable car— an insatiable love fest to make up for lost time and to tide them over in the celibate months to come.

Jared’s pieces didn’t fall together the way other people’s did. Erica couldn’t find his story. Although she knew the surface facts about him, she could not unearth the artifacts that were buried beneath his complex layers.

Erica did know one thing about Jared Black, however: she didn’t trust him.

A booming voice pierced her thoughts. “There you are!” Sam Carter, emerging from the cafeteria tent with coffee stains on his tie. “I was just coming to see you.” The news wasn’t good. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with the OEM. We’re at the mercy of nature, Erica, that’s all there is to it. Those aftershocks yesterday, another swimming pool sinking, they’re saying this whole canyon could go in a second. You have to be ready to move out at a moment’s notice.”

“But I’m not finished!”

“The Office of Emergency Management doesn’t want to take responsibility for your safety should another big aftershock strike— and they
are
expecting one.”

“I’ll take responsibility for myself.”

“Erica, your safety is
my
responsibility and if the OEM says we have to clear out, then we clear out.”

He saw the book she was holding. When she caught his questioning look, she handed it to him.
Rare Medium, Well-Done: The Strange Life and Ministry of Sister Sarah.
The title was taken from the headline of a story that had run in the
Los Angeles Times
in 1926 reporting the smashing success of the medium’s mass séances at the Shrine Auditorium, where over six thousand hysterical people had claimed to see and speak to spirits. “Doing a little light reading before bedtime?” Sam said.

“I’m curious to know what drew Sister Sarah to this spot. Why she chose this canyon for her Church of the Spirits.”

“Probably because it was cheap. A lot of land in this area was cheap in those days. No roads, no utilities. I’d guess it was a pain to live here.” He flipped through the black-and-white photos and paused at a dramatic portrait of Sarah in her white robes, marcelled hair, vampish eyes. She looked more like a silent-movie star, he thought, than a spiritualist. And then he seemed to recall that that was how she had gotten her start. Hadn’t she been “discovered” or something?

Handing the book back, Sam squinted over at the Winnebago, and said, “I’m looking for our commissioner friend. Have you seen him?”

“I don’t think he’s home.”

“Where do you suppose he goes every night?”

“He’s taking guitar lessons from a retired jazz musician.”

Sam gave her a surprised look, then saw the wry smile. “Someday, Erica, that imagination of yours is going to get you into trouble.”

…”My father is a spy and my mother is a French princess who was disowned by her family for marrying him.”

…”Erica, dear, why are you telling lies to the other children?”

“They’re not lies, Miss Barnstable. They’re stories.”

…”Class, Erica has something to say to all of you. Go on, Erica, tell the class you’re sorry for telling lies.”

“Have you unwrapped the fur bundle yet?” Sam asked, knowing she already had a story for it even though she didn’t know yet what it contained. That was what had gotten her into so much trouble with the Chadwick shipwreck: too much imagination and too much eagerness to know the story. If the facts didn’t tell it, then Erica’s mind did. In her hands a piece of pottery wasn’t just a piece of pottery, it was the anger of a wife furiously working the clay and thinking about her husband making eyes at his brother’s wife— a lazy husband who was no good at hunting so that his wife was forced to labor over pots to trade for fish and meat while her husband considered breaking a tribal taboo that was going to destroy them all. Erica brought passion to her work. No scientific detachment for her. “Look at this!” she would cry, holding aloft a dirty, moldy something, and saying, “Isn’t it great? Can’t you just
see
the story behind it?”

The stories didn’t have to be true, merely possible.

Maybe that was why she was such a loner. Maybe her stories were enough. Sam marveled at the ease with which Erica had moved into the camp, using her few possessions, the way she always did, to transform a tent into a home. She didn’t have a permanent residence; her address was a P.O. box in Santa Barbara. She was incredibly mobile, able to take reassignment at the drop of a hat and often laughingly referred to her “vagabond” life. There was a time when Sam had envied her rootlessness because he himself was tied to a heavily mortgaged home in Sacramento, with his adult children and small grandchildren living a few streets away, and his ex-wife, with whom he remained on good terms, still in the neighborhood, and his invalid mother residing in a nearby nursing home. To be able to just pick up and go anywhere, no explanations, no promises to call or hurry back, had been a midlife dream for him. He had stopped envying Erica, however, one Christmas when they were on a dig in the Mojave Desert and Sam had flown home to spend the holiday with his family while Erica had stayed behind to catalogue bones. He learned afterward that she had had Christmas dinner at the local desert truck stop, sharing processed turkey and canned cranberry sauce with three truck drivers, two California Highway Patrol officers, two young hikers, a local park ranger, and a grizzled old prospector named Clyde. Sam thought it was the loneliest thing he had ever heard.

He sometimes wondered about her love life. He had seen men come and go in her life, but they never stayed for long. How did the affairs end? With Erica saying, “You have to go now”? Or did her partners soon tumble to the fact that the physical was all she would allow, that her heart was off-limits? There had been a time, when they had first worked together, when he had experienced a brief infatuation with her, but Erica had gently told him that she admired and respected him and didn’t want to risk spoiling their friendship with complications. Sam had thought at the time that she had rejected him because he was twenty years older, but since then he had decided that Erica wasn’t going to let
anyone
inside her carefully guarded walls. He suspected it was because of her past. No one could say Erica Tyler had had an easy life.

“I wonder why Jared’s wife doesn’t come to visit him,” Erica said now as she and Sam continued to stare at the dark RV.

He gave her a startled look. “Jared’s wife? You mean you don’t
know
?”

* * *

“Hi, son, your mother and I were just talking about you and wondering how you were doing.”

Jared started for the answering machine, then stopped.

As he dropped his briefcase and car keys on a table, he listened to his father’s voice come through the speaker: “We were reading about you in the newspaper… the work you’re doing there in Topanga. We’re very proud of you.” Pause. “Well, I know you’re busy. Give us a call. At least call your mother, she’d like to hear from you.”

Jared hit the mute button and stared for a long time at the phone. I’m sorry, Dad, he wanted to say. All the words have been spoken. There aren’t any left.

Turning on lights and fixing himself a drink, he picked up a fax he had just received from the Congressional Native American Caucus in Washington. But hard as he tried to focus on the words, he finally had to lay the letter aside. His father’s phone call had triggered the pain again, and the anger.

He began pacing the length of his RV, from driver’s seat to bedroom, pounding his fist into his palm. He needed to go to the Club. He could feel the rage building up in him like lava inside a volcano. Only an hour at the Club, thrashing himself to his physical limits, could vent the power of his fury. But they were closed tonight for maintenance, leaving tigers and tigresses to prowl the streets of Los Angeles in search of outlets for their energies and frustrations. Like most members of the Club, Jared didn’t go there for physical fitness.

As he looked around at the clutter inside this temporary home/office— the computer that never slept, the bank of phone lines that never stopped ringing, the fax that never stopped spewing out messages, and the papers, stacked, spread, lying everywhere as if a snowstorm had blown through dropping three inches of documents, briefs, memos, letters, deeds, writs— he realized that the motor home, despite its size, was too small to contain both himself and his anger. He grabbed a jacket and flung himself out into the brisk night.

* * *

At the edge of the mesa, on a promontory overlooking the ocean, stood a fabulous old Victorian gazebo left over from Sister Sarah’s Church of the Spirits. The builder of Emerald Hills Estates had had it restored and then landscaped the area to make a small communal park for the residents. Unfortunately, the hillside had been declared unsafe and there were warning signs to stay away, so the gazebo was never used. Which was why Erica loved it.

Ever since she had first started coming here a few weeks ago, she felt a sense of peace in this spot. She wondered if it was because she was away from the camp and her work, beyond the energy and vibes of the enthusiastic volunteers and staff. Or was it simply the ambience of this delicate gazebo, a relic from a more peaceful past, symbol of a simpler age?

She looked at the book in her hand. What had drawn Sister Sarah to this place? Had she sensed an inexplicable peace on this hilltop, or—

Erica felt a chill as a new thought suddenly came to her: in those days the canyon wasn’t filled in, the cave was accessible. Did Sarah go inside and see the painting and decide that it was a sign that here was where she should build her church? Sarah claimed to have built her temple of spiritualism in this area because it was conducive to reaching the Other World. But what exactly did that mean? Had she chosen to build her church of the paranormal here because it was called Haunted Canyon? Was she attracted to the notion that spirits were already supposed to be in residence? Erica had only just begun to read the biography of the enigmatic figure of the twenties, a woman whose face had been known by every person in America, who was seen everywhere in newspapers, magazines, newsreels— a flamboyant personality whose theatrics and mesmerizing voice were the butt of editorial cartoons and social comedians, and yet whose personal life and background were practically unknown. Sister Sarah had sprung out of nowhere, become an overnight sensation, and then had disappeared just as quickly under mysterious circumstances, leaving her church fragmented and in shambles.

Erica stepped into the gazebo, which shone like a wedding cake in the moonlight, and as she laid her hand on the wood she felt it hum with stories— of stolen kisses and broken promises, of moonlit trysts and séances for the dead. Music and love and disappointment and greed and spiritual contemplation had been absorbed by these old boards over the decades until the gazebo quivered with the remnants of lives that had passed through it.

Erica looked out at the water and wondered if her mother, wherever she was in the world at that moment— on the Champs Elysées in Paris, on a beach in the Caribbean— felt she wasn’t complete because she had abandoned her child.
She is walking through Central Park right now, on the arm of her second husband, a dentist, and feeling that there is a piece of her missing, not knowing that three thousand miles away that missing piece is walking, breathing, dreaming.