California Bloodstock (6 page)

In two days the pyramid had turned into a swarming hill of maggots. The stench lasted for weeks, stretching fifteen miles down the wind. They never even got to the ones that went over the edge first. And who were those brothers who showed up to help with the skinning?

When a gaggle of rowdies calling themselves Bear Flaggers rustled a herd of horses being driven south to Monterey from Vallejo's Petaluma Adobe, the Burgett brothers were right there rustling with the best of them. And when the same gang of freebooters swooped into the town of Sonoma, sending General Vallejo in chains to Sutter's Fort and hoisting a crude flag above the plaza, Galon and Millard distinguished themselves in the looting.

The flag was a soiled and crusted swath of cheap cotton sporting a crudely drawn grizzly bear that most Californios thought resembled a hog. It was meant to give credibility to the formation of a new country and the positions of authority each of the Bear Flaggers announced for themselves in its government.

Galon declared himself Grand Wizard and took to wearing a dress sabre liberated from one of the thirteen Mexican Regulars garrisoned in Sonoma. The sabre was too long for Galon's short legs, and its tip trailed in the dust as he strutted the streets feeling the weight of his new status. As usual, his brother Millard was vacantly confused by events but enthusiastically chose for himself the title of Brother of the Grand Wizard.

Social order broke down throughout the region. The Worm Eaters who had been obediently working the cattle and crops in Sonoma's neighborhing countryside got word that everything had changed and wandered off. And worse, the mission Worm Eaters who had for years seen to the worldly needs of the spiritually inclined, dipping an endless number of strings into vats of bubbling candle tallow and delicately coaxing the mission grapes into decanters of sweet wine, could no longer be motivated.

The old padre in charge was beside himself. He had survived the 1822 revolution and the following period of independence from Mother Spain. While most other missions fell into ruin, he had been able, by cultivating Vallejo, to save a semblance of former affluence in spite of the theoretical freeing of the Worm Eaters and demotion of his mission to the status of parish church. But this new plague of infidels was something else. He perceived it as an assault on all that was holy. He called for the judgment day, and made lists of local heretics for God. When his Worm Eaters started sleeping in, he knew the apocalypse was at hand. His righteousness turned hysterical and he ranted about the plaza, clutching a golden
crucifix to his bony breast. The cross flashed in the sun, catching the eye of Galon Burgett, who was lounging near the flagpole.

Hey, preacher! Let's have a look at your necklace.

The old padre whirled in his tracks. He knew that voice, or thought he did.

Methodist Wolf!

The Grand Wizard had no choice in the face of such insolence. Scuffing the padre ahead of him like an empty sack, he rampaged through the chapel. He kicked in the altar and spit on the walls. He sliced the Lord's flickering candles with his sabre and threatened to drown the tempest-tossed old holy man in his own sacrificial wine. It was great fun.

The rest of the Bear Flaggers were naturally delighted and big things were predicted for Galon Burgett, but the incident turned out to be his only official act. On maneuvers in the countryside two days later, the Bear Flaggers ran into a superior force of greasers and, after a brief exchange of gunfire, Galon forfeited his position by deserting.

Galloping off over the sun-drenched hills, he shouted to Millard, riding loyally beside him, that he wasn't feeling well and was tired of public life anyway. When they pulled up in a shaded arroyo to give the horses a blow, Galon said that all he wanted was a long rest for himself. He then emphasized his need for a bit of R and R by puking up some blood. Millard was understandably confused and worried until Galon explained to him that their new country wasn't going to last long anyway.

He was right. When it was only three weeks old
the Bear Flag Republic was conquered by the United States of America.

It turned into a very American summer in California, especially in Yerba Buena. Captain John Montgomery (U.S.N.) landed a squadron of small boats on the mud flats and trudged to the plaza whistling “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Swaggering with the glee of conquest, he raised Old Glory himself and declared that he was taking over for what he called the
U States.
Marines in white gloves kept order without firing a shot. But it was an even bigger deal when a ship of faith carrying more than two hundred Mormons landed several weeks later, thereby almost doubling the population.

The locals gossiped about the excesses of polygamy and it was rumored that thousands of additional Mormons were on the way.

Old T. D. Slant considered all this from points of churlish vantage. Deballed at sixty-five, he found himself reduced to the pursuit of the simplest and most insipid of vices. He became a voyeur, a peeping poltergeist of the most lecherous ilk, and although he was very pleased to be in America again, his former interest in current events gave way to earthier preoccupations. He spent time like an old hound, sniffing out the vile indecorums of others, peeking through the cracks and crevices of the new American settlement.

He was especially taken with the notion of cunnilingus, Mormon cunnilingus better yet. He ached to see some gruff old patriarch of the seventh tribe yodeling up vulva canyons, lapping his way around a circle of pious young wives. As it was, only the sad-eyed Worm Eaters were given to such nibblings, and watching them was like watching animals. Mormons would be different, Slant was sure of it.

Slant took lodging on Battery Street, a wide dirt promenade that ran along the waterfront. Clearly Yerba Buena's rowdiest strip, it boasted three solid warehouses and one rather attractive structure standing amid a confusion of crumbling mud huts, driftwood sheds, and canvas lean-tos. The handsome building, a two-story wood and adobe arrangement, was known as Cargo West and it was there that Slant felt most at ease.

A combination gentlemen's club, brothel, and hotel, Cargo West was a mecca for buyers and sellers, a place where deals could be made, a place to be. It was never clear who owned controlling interest in the place, although Larkin was sometimes mentioned in this regard. It was, however, very clear that the place was making a lot of money and was frequented by men to be taken seriously.

Evenings, such men would make their way through the riffraff, copulating, drinking, and cheating each other randomly in open shanties, to find
civilized fellowship and masculine recreation at Cargo West. Even the most upright, men like Captain John Montgomery (U.S.N.), could be found among the clientele.

Slant took a suite upstairs and for a substantial bribe was permitted by the management to fashion a series of peepholes in his floor. He had one view of the large barroom that occupied a third of the main floor and another of one of the tiny rooms used for more intimate social contact.

Cargo West was run by a low-hipped woman of middle years who was said to have bounced her melon-sized breasts on the shoulders of congressmen as a younger woman in New Jersey. She was a real Wild Emma, in the nomenclature of the period, and was just cocky enough to take up the widespread label for any white woman with a good-time spirit and use it as her own name.

My name is Emma, she would say, greeting newcomers at the door, and I'm the wildest Emma of them all.

Wild Emma was very shrewd, and like all the other women who eventually made fortunes in California, she had no illusions about the men she catered to. Her operation at Cargo West was simple. She employed a sullen Greek with aristocratic manners as head barman and instructed him to make sure that every man taking a drink knew that she, Wild Emma, was indeed the only high-living gringo woman for thousands of miles and that if they expected to be welcome they had best mind their manners.

She filled the tiny rooms off the bar with pretty young Worm Eaters she got from Hippolyte Weed.
They generally lasted anywhere from four to ten months, at which time some were retained as maids. The less fortunate were simply turned out on Battery Street to make do as best they could. Since a tour at Cargo West left almost all of them either hollow-eyed and withdrawn or giddy with dependence on the sweet wine they were encouraged to drink with customers, they usually slid into one of the surrounding three-sided hovels to screw and beg for whatever they could get.

Well, Wild Emma would say if any of her customers turned high-minded about the fate of one or another of the Worm Eaters, you can always marry her. Subject closed.

Wild Emma was suspicious of old T. D. from the beginning. Guests who took upstairs rooms got automatic Worm-Eater privileges along with their board, but all this old fool Slant wanted was to drill holes in the floor. And he walked funny, some kind of Sneaky-Pete for sure.

So Wild Emma was cool toward old T. D. Slant, even when she took his money. Her spinosity, however, did not stop him from enjoying the ambience of Cargo West or taking pleasure at his peepholes. He turned nasty only with the arrival of fresh Worm Eaters. He couldn't resist peeking, of course, and their initiation into brothel life, with Wild Emma giving stern advice, always took something out of him. And the worst part was who some of the Worm Eaters reminded him of.

Time to look at the map. Not the map that T. D. Jr. bought from Larkin when they passed back through Monterey, rather the map that Tanya was charting for herself.

It surveyed no single region, this map, and was useless to look at for truth of area. It was linear, like a map of a road from here to there with no borders except its own width. A map to follow like a tunnel toward a light that, in Taya's case, illuminated Sewey and the Burgetts pleading hopelessly for mercy in the various twisting fates she conjured for them.

Following both maps, they rode south along the coast, day to day from rancho to rancho, through San Simeon and Esteros, over the green hills to San Luis Obispo and on to Santa Inez. Then down into Santa Barbara where the cannon of the old presidio poked
seaward over the whitewashed porticos of a small convent.

Taya had seen it all before on trips with old T. D. and was anxious to keep moving, but T. D. Jr. insisted on frequent stops to make daguerreotypes. He had made them all along the coast, pointing his lens off cliffs in all directions, looking for the widest angle, recording landscapes so distant that line and form fell into abstraction, yet catching the tiniest detail on his silver plates. Taya was growing impatient with him and his pumice powder and his mercury vapor and the long waits.

I thought you were going to help me.

He was unloading his camera and coating box from the packhorse on a bluff below the convent. He told her of course he was, but that he also had his work.

Some work.

You don't understand.

You don't.

She threw her face away from him and stared out over the ocean. He shrugged and went about arranging his equipment, engrossed in his work. Several minutes passed before he realized that she was speaking to him again, telling him the story of Concepcion.

The story of Concepcion was not yet embalmed in legend and Taya had no reverence for it. She simply
knew it. As a young girl she had heard it often. She told it to T. D. Jr. like old gossip.

Concepcion was fifteen years old and her father was the commandante then at the presidio near Yerba Buena. They were an important family and many young men liked her and wanted her because she was very beautiful. But she didn't like any of them. Then the count came and she fell in love with him. It was almost fifty years ago.

The count's name was Rezanov and he was a Russian, but he was handsome anyway. He came to trade for food because his people were starving in Sitka. Concepcion's father couldn't trade with him because he didn't think it was right to trade with Russians. Concepcion begged her father to help the count because she was in love with him. When the count found out, he fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. Then there was a lot of trouble because her father was very strict about things and because the count wasn't Catholic.

Concepcion pleaded with her father. She went to her room and would not come out or have anything to eat. The padres came and scolded her but she didn't care. Then the count told her father that he would get permission from the pope and become a Catholic. The padres said that would be fine and her father let them become betrothed and also traded the count what he needed for his people. Then they all had a big fiesta and Concepcion was very happy.

But the count had to go and get permission from the pope like he promised. When he sailed away, Concepcion stood on the beach and blew him kisses. The count promised to write to her from every place
he stopped along the way, but no letters came for her. People told her that the count had just loved her so he could trade with her father, but she didn't believe them.

She was very faithful. Fifteen years passed and he didn't come or even send a letter and her father made her become a nun. She cried all the time and was afraid the count was dead, but she was still beautiful. Soon it was too late for everything because her father found out that the count was dead. His horse slipped in a river in Siberia and killed him when he was on his way to see the pope.

When her father came to the convent and told her the count was dead, she didn't believe him. More years passed and she became old and ugly. She still believes the count is coming back to marry her.

The story was over and Taya pointed up the hill toward the convent, it was where Concepcion lived, if she was still alive.

T. D. Jr. didn't know what to say. That's a very sad story, he said.

Concepcion was a fool, Taya told him.

Out of the night when the full moon was bright there came a horseman known as Zorro.

Taya and T. D. Jr. had been pushing hard to make Agua Caliente before midnight, when the West's first Robin Hood swooped out from behind a big grey rock and got the drop on them with his rapier.
As formidable as he was in his black mask and cape, the gun turned out to be mightier than the sword and Zorro managed to retain the upper hand only until Taya pulled a pistol from her sash.

No fair, Zorro complained, slashing invisible Z's in the air.

The truth of the matter was that Zorro looked like a skinny old bum. This onetime folk hero had fallen upon hard times and had grown senile as the romance of the halcyon days dwindled in what he called the Californias. He had, of course, been hell to pay against the evil Spaniards back when he had lived as the sensitive, mild-mannered Don Diego by day and ridden the wind as Zorro by night. Just ask that fat Sergeant Garcia.

Naturally, T. D. Jr. wanted to make a daguerreotype. He had never made one at night, but the moon was so bright that he figured it was worth a try. The bigger problem would be Zorro, getting him to stand still. It would have to be negotiated. Zorro could obviously use the cash. But before he could broach the subject, who should pop out of the bushes behind them but that flamboyant roto, Joaquin Peach, with the drop on them all.

This is my apprentice, Zorro announced, pointing his rapier at Peach. I'm showing him the ropes.

I thought we'd meet again, Peach said to Taya.

What do you want? she asked.

What do you got? he answered.

Nothing, she said.

Well then, he winked at her, why don't you hang out with me and Zorro for a while?

The Californias are rich, Zorro volunteered. It's
easy to be bad. Bad is good and this is the best island of all.

We have our own business, said T. D. Jr., trying to sound tough. He figured he and Peach were about the same age.

Is that right? Peach asked Taya, ignoring T. D. Jr.

When she said yes, Peach shrugged and explained the normal procedure. Safe passage over the San Fernando Hills was usually best purchased from him and Zorro. Otherwise they couldn't be responsible; and it would be a sad thing if such a fine young couple fell prey to the hazards of the trail and wound up completely broke or even dead, like some other travelers who passed this way just recently.

Ah, come on, Taya said.

Yeah, said T. D. Jr., who do you think you are? Pizarro or something?

Pizarro, Zorro suddenly shouted. Who's Pizarro? I'm Zorro.

Yes, we know, Taya told him softly.

There must have been something in the old hero's desperate outburst or in Taya's response that softened Peach's attitude. Or maybe he just wanted to spend a little more time with people his own age. Or maybe it had all been a big joke anyway. Let's just talk some more, he said.

And they did: Peach trying to flirt with Taya; Taya trying to find out if Zorro had ever heard of Buckdown; Zorro trying to explain how things had gone from bad to worse; and T. D. Jr. trying to explain, as he set up his equipment, how he would use the moonlight.

As it turned out, T. D. Jr. did make a daguerreotype,
but it was not what he had expected. Zorro had refused to remain in the frame and had instead insisted on watching from a distance of at least ten yards behind T. D. Jr. Completely out of the picture. Yet when the plate was finished, streaks of moonlight angled to form a Z, erasing the features of Taya and Peach, even as their outlines came through clearly.

You'd better watch it, Zorro told T. D. Jr. when all were examining the daguerreotype. Pretty soon everyone will be getting one of these portraits the same way the rich Spaniards used to have themselves painted. And, just like the Spaniards, everyone will look more and more alike.

What he meant was that technology breeds doublecrosses.

Good old Zorro.

Dust, fogged up from hooves of their tired horses, hung above the ground like clouds of brown mist. The faded buildings fronting on the plaza blocked whatever breeze there might have been. It was very hot. The air itself was flat, opaque.

It was almost siesta time and the low-rent Californios lounging here and there in doorways had never heard of Buckdown or Sewey or the Burgetts. When Taya or T. D. Jr. asked about Counsel, the man old T. D. had said would know something, most closed their eyes and would say no more. Finally there was
one man, a rather distinguished old Californio in faded blue pants with silver stitching up each leg, who was willing to talk.

Counsel is a mean stupid gringo who can't talk good, he said. We ran him out.

The old Californio was sitting at a table in the shade watching a young Worm Eater coax a small donkey across the otherwise deserted plaza with a stick. The latticework that hung out from the cantina was covered with dry brown vines. It filtered the midday sun and freckled the old man's face with tiny points of shadow. Like most southern Californios, he sensed coercion in any arrangement involving three or more foreigners and enjoyed it very much when they wound up killing each other. He was drinking mescal.

If you want to kill this Counsel, he has a trading store near Tejon on the trail to the San Joaquin, he said. Good luck.

When T. D. Jr. told him that they just wanted to talk to this man Counsel, the old Californio became very agitated. He cursed out at the sun and fumbled in his belt for a pistol which he dropped on the table with a thud. He began talking very fast.

California is almost for dogs, he said, glaring at T. D. Jr. Mexico gives us monte players and cholos. France sends us prostitutes and little bullies. Chile, sneak thieves and rotos. Highway bandits come from Peru and some place called Ireland, probably a prison in England. Italy, pickpockets and bad musicians. Spain's degenerate priests are still here, and you gringos are all politicians and plotters. It is all getting to be the shits.

Taya told the old man that she understood. He paid her back by grabbing at her breasts and moving his hips obscenely below the table. T. D. Jr. snatched up the gun and leveled it at the old Californio's head.

Who do you think you are?

I am the mayor of Pueblo de Los Angeles, the old man shouted. Get out of my town.

Four hundred miles away, Joaquin Peach rode into Yerba Buena looking for bigger things. What kind of backwater trick was this? he wondered. Compared to Valpariso, this Yerba Buena was a dog village. Sweet erb, indeed.

Christ, what a collection of bullshitters all living together in a disgusting summer fog. In Valpariso there was a lighthouse, and white mansions set like pearls among groves of almonds and citrus, and hillside gardens with rows and rows of heliotropes and geraniums. Here he saw only mud flats and weeds. The wind howled over the sharp hills behind him and a shiver chased up his spine like a fine and violent lace.

He had left Zorro in a deserted Worm-Eater camp near the Mission San Antonio de Padua, which was now for sale. The old hero had insisted on keeping track of prospective buyers, hoping no doubt to run into some old ghosts. It was the ghosts that had started to trouble Peach. Zorro was always talking
about them; and worse, talking to them. Was that where
duende
led? Duende, that mysterious and ineffable charm of the good outlaw that Zorro more than anyone else had once defined. You sure as hell couldn't spend duende, couldn't even buy an old broken-down mission with it. Poor Zorro, he should have planned ahead. Shit, Peach thought, and here I am in this shit hole. To improve his mood, he went looking to get laid.

Interesting, how all living things seem to suffer postcoital depression, a sadness that sneaks in even after the most brightly colored of screws. Old T. D. Slant made a note of it. He was poised on all fours in his suite at Cargo West, once again squinting through his favorite peephole.

In the room below he could see Joaquin Peach stretched out across the bed like some deposed prince of love. Less than an hour earlier the roto had stomped into Cargo West like a conquistadore just returned from El Dorado with the loot. He had swaggered up to the bar and bellowed intentions to satisfy his various and wide-ranging carnal needs in every imaginable rut. It was then that old T. D. had bought him a drink of encouragement and hurried eagerly to his vantage points on the floor above. What a disappointment.

After less than an hour of undistinguished diddling with a perfectly capable and enterprising young Worm Eater, Joaquin Peach was deep in a funk. He was down, way down, but not because he had performed poorly. For the satisfaction of the
Worm Eater he cared zero. Let her go squat on an anthill. What bothered him was something, shall we say, more universal. He had not been doing well in California so far and this weighed heavily upon him now that his balls were empty. What would Pizarro have done? Joaquin Peach rose from the bed. He dressed slowly, covering his body and, he hoped, his doubts with the care of a matador about to enter the ring. Then he smiled sadly at the Worm Eater and, pants billowing, went back to the bar.

Old T. D. Slant was about to call it a night himself when another man eased into the room. A tall man with a close-clipped beard and nervous hands poking out of stiff-boiled cuffs. Slant recognized him with hand-rubbing relish. It was Brannan.