Chapter Twenty-three
After I left San Francisco, I spent a long, arduous ten years in the high desert. I had no reason to return to San Francisco or Monterey. I was busy enough putting together a ranch and dealing with the many complications and hardships that were involved.
The difference between working cattle in the high desert and in the foothills and mountains of California are the trees and brush. There weren’t many trees in the high desert of Oregon. If you had a cow that wanted to get away, he had to outrun the vaquero’s horse. There was no brush to hide in. When I first started out learning to be a stockman, Genero and I would have to rope and stretch out the worst of the renegade cattle. Then we would cut and trim a three inch thick scrub oak into a six foot pole. Taking hemp rope, we would lash the pole on to the cow’s horns. When the animal tried to run off into the brush, it would crash the pole into it and bounce back. A steer would fight the brush until it was exhausted. Soon, the cows wouldn’t go anywhere near the brush and we could herd them where we wanted them to go.
In some ways, it was easier to work cattle in the high plains of Oregon, but there were some drawbacks. You had to ride for many miles to do anything with the cattle. A cow needed a great deal of country to support herself and her calf, so the brandings were a series of little gathers that went on for most of the year. The work never stops on any ranch, but it seemed more perpetual in the high plains.
There were other problems. Because of the distance a man needed to cover, I rode mostly thoroughbred horses with a long stride and lots of endurance. They were big, rank and sometimes stupid horses that could trot fifteen to twenty miles a day without breaking down. If they were young and vigorous enough to stand the work, they would most often buck in the morning. Some of the treacherous ones would wait until midday when their riders were relaxed. A man got hurt when he wasn’t prepared for danger.
In its own way, the country was spectacular. The vast emptiness, the unlimited horizons, the total quiet and peace. The endless space could drive a cowboy crazy if he stayed out too long, like a sailor too long at sea.
I usually had a business reason to ride to Portland, but if I didn’t, I would have made one up. Life was tenuous in the high desert. The Indian woman I had been living with died the previous winter. That was another reason I needed to take a trip. I too, had gotten sick, but I pulled through. The Indian woman’s name roughly translated to Stars in the Night. She and our unborn baby didn’t pull through. By the time that tragedy happened, I had been gone from California and from Lucinda for ten years.
Strangely enough, the news of Don Topo’s death reached me just as I rode into Portland. The chances of running into a sailor who knew a stockman of my acquaintance, then passing the news on to me was unlikely. That the sailor had been in Monterey two nights before and had heard of Topo’s passing was a fluke. That there was a berth on a ship sailing for Monterey on the evening tide was lucky indeed. The timing was perfect for me to attend the funeral of my mentor and benefactor. Topo would be buried soon. With no refrigeration, a corpse ripened in a hurry.
Don Topo, being dead, wouldn’t know I was there. I would be returning to honor a dead man. It certainly wasn’t to see Lucinda. I wondered if Don Topo’s ghost would be hanging around. Genero, my old Indian mentor, said the spirit of a dead person lingers in the air for three moons before they completely depart. As a matter of respect toward the only man who had ever helped me, I stabled my saddle horse and bought passage to Monterey.
The trip along the coast was swift and uneventful the way an ocean voyage should be. Though I hadn’t been back to Monterey for ten years, I found things much the same as when I left. The seals still played on the rocks and the smell of flowers still mixed with the sea breeze. The ship sailed into its mooring and I was taken in a rowboat to the pier.
At the Custom House, I asked when the Mass would be held and was informed it was scheduled for the morning. Don Topo’s name was not mentioned but he was such a powerful force in Monterey, it was understood who I was talking about. I immediately went into town to buy some clothes and get a room. As I was coming out of the hotel, I nearly walked into Lucinda.
“What are you doing here, Charlie?” she asked.
“Preparing to shop for some clothes for the funeral. My condolences on the loss of your father.”
“He will be missed, although death is everyone’s fate,” she said.
“Glad to see time has softened your manner,” I replied.
I stepped back and studied her. She seemed somewhat weathered but it was a subtle thing. There were creases in her face that had not been there before. Her hair wasn’t as glossy as it had been when I left her in San Francisco. Her eyes had not changed though. If anything, her eyes looked more intense, her smile more dangerous.
“If you are thinking of staying in a hotel, put it out of your mind,” she said with a commanding frown.
“Where would you have me stay?”
“In the house you have always stayed at, Charlie. We would all welcome you there.”
“Even you?” I asked.
“Me, most of all,” she replied and took my arm. “It is so good to see you. I knew you would come. Are you married? I heard you took up with an Indian woman in the high desert.”
“Cholera,” I replied, surprised that any news from the wilds of Oregon would filter back down to Monterey.
“Her name was Cholera?” Lucinda asked, surprised.
“No, she died of Cholera.”
“What kind of woman was she, Charlie?”
“Gentle and kind.”
“Much like me,” Lucinda said.
“Two peas in a pod,” I said.
“Well, she’s dead and you aren’t,” she said. “You need to buy some suitable clothes for the services in the morning. I will help you become presentable.”
Like that, with her incredible self-confidence and her slim hand in the crook of my arm, she steered me down the street. It was like I had never caught her with another man and no separation of ten years had occurred. We went into a men’s’ clothing store and without asking my opinion, she picked out a suit and white linen shirt.
The clothing store had a rather large dressing room and despite the frowning, disapproving looks of the store owner, Lucinda went with me into the dressing room, drew up a three legged stool and squatted down on it with her knees apart to watch me change.
“My father was right. You did turn into a fine looking man, with wide shoulders and a handsome smile. With your hair long like it is now, you can’t even see your ears. Do you remember when I shaved you?”
“Have you shaved Tiburcio lately?”
“You frown at me, and your tone sounds sarcastic. What you are trying to do now, Charlie? Keep a little of your pride?”
I took my pants off and put on the suit pants. The store owner walked in with his chalk and tape measure. After he made the marks he needed to hem the pants, he glanced at Lucinda, sniffed and left the room.
“Why would I have to worry about my pride?” I asked.
“I was thinking about taking you into my bed again. Would you like that? I can see part of you is reluctant but another part looks interested,” she said and laughed. I was surprised she didn’t point.
“It’s been ten years. I didn’t come here to see you. I came here to pay my respects to your father.”
“The question stands. Would you like to be in bed with me again? Your eyes gave you away the second I touched you. Oh, and don’t trouble your mind. I have something I need from you.”
“Doesn’t the request for a favor come while we are in bed?”
“If I were a normal woman, perhaps. If we were a normal couple certainly. I have always told you the truth. The truth is I need you to help me. I would also like to go to bed with you. They are two separate things. If I can only have one but not the other, it will have to suffice. I never said so at the time, but I have fond memories of you and I together.”
“Who
all have you slept with in the last ten years?” I asked her.
“You want me to tell you? You left because you were jealous. Now you wish to know about other men. I find that confusing.”
I looked at her left hand. She still had on the ring her father had paid for, many years ago to celebrate our sham wedding.
“You aren’t married?”
“I had many offers, of course. If they were rich and powerful they wanted to give me expensive presents. After they gave me things, they would try to lock me up in a big house. If they were young and handsome, they simply wanted to satisfy their lust and move on. Men will treat a woman as cheaply as she allows herself to be treated. I am not cheap, nor am I someone to be trifled with or controlled. My desire to be my own woman has always been a thorn in the side of the men in my life.”
She added as an afterthought, “Besides, I was already married to you.”
“Still working hard to make me feel good,” I said.
“I missed you, Charlie. I thought of you often. I am so happy to see you, I feel like laughing.”
“If you have many fond memories of me, why didn’t you write?”
“I did write. More times than I can count, but I never mailed the letters. Remember, I didn’t ask you to leave. I wasn’t going to beg you to come back. When things got rough in San Francisco there were many nights I wished you had stayed.”
It would take me at least a week of solitude to sort out what Lucinda said and interpret what it meant. As for now, I was speechless.
“Why didn’t you come back?”, she asked.
“I had to leave before your flirtations led to someone getting killed.”
“Have you outgrown your jealousy?” Lucinda asked with her infuriating smile.
“Have you learned to behave with proper decorum?
Lucinda looked toward the heavens and shook her head.
“Same old Charlie,” she said.
“What is the favor? Maybe I can help you out of respect for your dead father and we can forget about renewing our love life,” I said.
“I have heard you can lead a man to bed but you can’t make him lie down. So far, in all of California, that has only been true with you.”
I only stared, because I couldn’t think of anything to say and yet some perversity that I had sworn was behind me, wouldn’t let me walk out of the room.
“The favor?”
“My father didn’t pay taxes on three large pieces of property. The taxes weren’t due for another year. In the meantime, someone came in and paid them without my father’s knowledge.”
“What kind of cash did he leave?”
“Around eight hundred dollars in the house and two hundred in the bank, though the bank refuses to release the money to me.”
“How much is owed on the taxes?”
“Twelve thousand.”
“I can’t get that kind of money together unless I sell my livestock. That could take a while.”
“There may be another way.”
“When are the taxes due?” I asked.
Listening to myself talk, I could not believe I was letting myself be drawn into Lucinda’s problems. Given the angry resolve I had made never to see her again, this was a new low.
“The money is due by the end of the week. There is some sort of fix in with the courthouse. The lien is filed in secret. Then the property becomes forfeit before the property owner knows about it. These people have been cheating the old Californio families for several years using this scheme. They have managed to foreclose on thirty-thousand acres of ground surrounding Monterey for a past due lawyer’s fee of nine hundred and eighty dollars. Now the merciless curs own Monterey.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Bring the lawyer for the man who is stealing the land to see me. I believe I can persuade him to tell me where the tax liens are kept and then they can be burned.”
“Burning them will take care of the problem?”
“It will delay the problem. We both know my father kept large amounts of gold around. I just haven’t been able to figure out where he hid it. He left me a note but all it says is “wharf” and a number. I have thought about it until I am dizzy. I can’t figure it out. However, the note is a clue. It has to be. Once we figure out where he hid the gold, I can pay the tax lien.”
“Why not go see this lawyer at his office?”
“It wouldn’t be the right setting,” she said as if she were telling me a joke.
“You mean you want to tie this lawyer to a chair, cut away his trousers and tickle his private parts with a knife blade you’ve heated on the stove?”
“See, I knew it. You are the only one who truly understands me, Charlie. That would be fair treatment for what he is trying to do to my family. We have fought Indians together, Charlie. We have driven cattle through mountain passes and swam dangerous rivers. We can bend this man to our will.”
“You expect me to do all of this alone?”
“Vasquez is here for the funeral as well. He promised me he would help,” she replied.
“There is your answer. Tiburcio has a gang. Let him handle it.”
“Tiburcio is an outlaw, Charlie. If I find my father’s gold, he will take it. He is willing to help, because he smells treasure. You see, I am no longer the dewy eyed little girl I was when I let Tiburcio seduce me.”
The image of them together still turned my heart black, though I tried to keep it off my face.
“What makes you think I can stop Tiburcio if he finds where your father hid his gold?”
“Because you are the better man. I have seen enough of the world to realize that now. If you go up against him, my money is on you.”
She stood and walked to me, reaching her long fingers behind my head and drew my face down to hers. She didn’t kiss me, she seemed to inhale my breath. She smiled into my eyes and her perfume invaded my whole being.
“If we go now, we can make love in my parent’s bedroom,” she said.
I stepped back, pulling her hand down from my neck. “That is scandalous, even for you,” I said.
“The ferocious Dõna Inez is at my sister’s house, if that’s what is causing you to shrink back,” she said and put her other arm around my waist.
“I wasn’t thinking of your mother.”
“All of my sisters have tried the capital act on my parent’s bed at one time or another. They say it was very exciting. I feel left out,” she said never losing eye contact with me while she slowly curled herself against me.
“That is a degenerate thing to even think about and I will not have any part of it,” I said with a great deal of conviction.
Later in the morning I watched Lucinda as she sat astride me. The mirror in Don Topo’s bedroom was old but had excellent clarity. As I lay under her, I could see the rivulets of sweat slowly make their way down her back. She lifted her hair from her neck and fanned herself. I propped myself up with a pillow.
“Don’t you feel this is, at the least, disrespectful to your dead father?” I asked.
“My father loved you and you love me. We are together and we are happy, at least you sounded happy a minute ago. How is that disrespectful? My mother may not approve, but I don’t care what she thinks.”
Lucinda picked up a corner of the bed sheet and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I must have looked as quizzical as I felt.
“You are always in a fog when it comes to me. Are you this hazy with other women?”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about other people,” I said.
“It bothers you, not me.”
“If you are implying I am ignorant of why you do what you do, you are stating the obvious. You don’t seem to be particularly upset about your father dying. I don’t understand that. You were the favorite daughter.”
“My sisters are all wailing and pulling their hair in grief. My mother’s mind seems to have wandered from the shock. Someone has to keep their wits about them or we are all going to be left w
ithout a pot to piss in. It seems that person has to be me.”
I must have looked aghast. She smiled and traced her fingers around my ears, pushing the hair back.
“His death hasn’t sunk in yet,” she said and slipped off me to curl up by my side. “Soon enough, the shock will hit. I cannot afford grief right now. I had more than my share of good times with my father back when he was proud of me, when I would ride his race horses and compete in the events at the fiestas. Those memories will catch up with me and I won’t be able to stop crying, just like my sisters. I feel it coming. That’s why we are lying here in bed, Charlie. In my mind, you and my father are the same type. You are both good, dependable men. You are both men who generate respect. You both disapprove of me. This is my way of mourning him, and of holding myself together,” she said.
I looked down at her, searching for the joke in her eyes. For once she seemed sincere.
“Did you know my father quit talking to me after you left? Patricio went to live with his aunts and my father saw no reason to keep up our relationship.”
“I had no idea. Why?”
“He came to town to do some business and took me to dinner. After a bottle of wine, he unburdened himself. He said I had never been a respectful daughter. He went on about how much he needed you and blamed me for running you off. He called me a harlot and stopped just short of calling me worse. After that, neither of us saw the need to continue our association. I never saw him again before he died. You could have mended our relationship if you had come back. You have your pride, so I forgive you.”
“I have no pride when it comes to you, as I have proven this morning. I see you and lose the power of speech and thought entirely, much to my disgust.”
She glanced suddenly at the window.
“I hope you haven’t lost the power of movement because I think I hear my mother and sisters coming through the front door,” Lucinda said.
I pulled on my clothes and crawled out the bedroom window, barely making it down the trellis to the enclosed garden without breaking my neck. I walked quickly around to the front of the house and knocked on the door. The oldest sister opened the door, stared at me for a moment until recognition came into her eyes. She burst into tears and threw her arms around me. That brought the other two sisters to the door and they both hugged me as well.
Looking past the front room, I saw Lucinda having a hushed, but heated, discussion with Dõna Inez. When she saw me at the door, Lucinda came down the stairs and moved me away from her sisters.
“Charlie and I have things to discuss. I will be back in a while,” she said ushering me out the door, closing it behind us.
“Can I stay with you at the hotel tonight?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Because in a moment my mother is going to walk into her room and see her bed. I pulled the covers up but there is a large wet spot. My mother will know in a glance what it is and who is responsible. If I stay there she will make me feel like the scandalous child the way she always does.”
“Which you are.” I said.
“Do you own many cows in the Oregon desert?”
“A fair amount.”
“Knowing you, that means thousands. So, you are a big cattle rancher. You have a pistol stuck in your belt and money in the safe at the hotel. Yet, you scramble out the window and climb down the lattice like a little boy who has been caught sneaking a drink of whiskey. It was worth ruining my mother’s bed to see you flee out the window.”
“You’re the one who asked to stay in the hotel with me because you are afraid of your mother.”
“Maybe we are still like children running the streets of this little coastal town. That isn’t so bad, is it, Charlie?”
Her memories must have been happier than mine. I could only shake my head as I felt her hand tug my arm. I stopped and faced her.
“If you mean you have once again caused me to do something foolish and nearly get killed in the process, this is very much like our childhood.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. You would have survived a fall from the window,” she said and snuggled her face into my arm. She reached up and kissed me under the ear.
“How many years have we been married?” she asked.
“It has been thirteen years since the wedding.”
As we walked down the street, people looked our way. Lucinda was wearing a black dress and I wore an expensive suit. Neither of us had been around for a decade. Lucinda’s overwhelming presence was still in effect. People stopped and stared. She suddenly stopped and pointed.
“The attorney who plans to steal everything my father worked for has his office across the street.”
“Can we deal with that after the funeral?”
“Yes, it can wait, but not for very long.”
We spent the night getting reacquainted, causing the guests in the adjoining room of the hotel to bang on the wall and yell they about trying to sleep. Just before dawn, after I had finally drifted off to sleep, Lucinda nudged me sharply in the ribs.
“Who did you enjoy more?” she asked.
“Enjoy how?”
“Don’t be coy. Who did you like better, the Indian woman or me?”
“I refuse to talk about her. She was a good woman. She is dead and that is the end of it,” I said.
“Just answer the question, Charlie.”
There could be no woman that I desired more than Lucinda. If knew that if I ever found a woman even more exciting than Lucinda, I would spontaneously combust into flames, but I didn’t want to give Lucinda the satisfaction of knowing it.
“I am glad to see the thought of me with someone else bothers you.”
“It doesn’t bother me. I am just curious,” she said.
“If it doesn’t bother you, let me get some sleep and quit asking silly questions,” I said and rolled over.
The morning came shortly after. Lucinda left in time to go home and gather her clothes for the funeral. The hotel bustled with activity, due to the many visitors in town for the funeral.
The mission was not the huge castle I remembered from my youth, only a large adobe building. The pews were old and the place smelled musty. I entered the church and sat down. The Mass itself was a blur for me. I wanted to stand and command the podium to pay tribute to Don Topo. It had been many years since I had been in Monterey. When I left, I was very young and now I was thirty pounds heavier with scarred hands and eyes with a permanent squint from the sun. In spite of the fine new suit, I looked like what I was, an uneducated brush vaquero. Very few people recognized me. I wanted to stride to the front of the church and say that no one had ever helped me or believed in me or told me I could accomplish great things except Don Topo. In the end, feeling like an outsider, I said nothing. I sat in the back pew while Lucinda went to the front of the church to sit with the other family members. Patricio came up and hugged me, looking like he would become every bit as handsome and dashing as his father, Tiburcio Vasquez. He recounted an incident we had with a bear. Don Topo had sent him to stay with me for a summer in Oregon and during that visit, I found him to be brave, lazy and charming. He was ready for mischief but also polite and respectful. Genero was at the funeral, bent and crippled with age, but still managing a grin. I was able to visit with him for a moment and renew old times, much to my delight. We discussed horses and drank coffee until most of the crowd had left.
Dõna Inez, who had grown more rotund and buxom, sidled up next to me. She peered up and gave me a cursory embrace. She handed me an envelope with a frown.
“My husband wanted me to give you these letters. I have no idea what they say and I have no idea why they were so important to him, but here they are. Thank you for coming,” she said.
I offered my condolences and got a baleful stare for my troubles. No doubt Dõna Inez was thinking about the copious stains our lovemaking left on her bed.
“Charlie, it’s time to seek legal counsel,” Lucinda said brightly and took my arm as she nodded back toward t
own.
Scent of Tears