Authors: Earlene Fowler
“Okay,” she said. “What’s going on?”
I leaned against the truck and kicked at the gravel with the heel of my boot. “This is really embarrassing.”
“Come on, Benni, we’ve been friends since knee socks. There isn’t anything you can’t tell me. Don’t forget, I remember your first kiss.”
“Alberto Cirrone, third grade,” I said and we both laughed.
“So what’s the problem and I want details.”
“You know, they’d hate me for saying this, but in some ways Gabe and Clay are a lot alike.”
“As in?”
“Moody, unpredictable, irritating to the point of obnoxious when they don’t get their way.”
She laughed. “We’ve already established the fact that they’re
men
.”
“You know, the last time I went through anything like this I was seventeen years old....”
“I remember. So, which one really curls your toes,
amiga?
”
“
That’s
sort of the problem ...”
“Why, you little pig. Most women would pull out their acrylic nails for one decent guy and you’ve gone and grabbed two. Not bad for someone whose idea of a beauty routine is splashing her face with cold water and polishing her boots.”
“Very funny. I’m really confused here. Gabe is ... well, you know. And Clay. There’s just something about him. We have a lot in common and there’s all these old memories but...”
“But what?”
“What if ...” I didn’t want to say it out loud. That gave it too much validity. But the question remained, What if Gabe was right about Clay?
She put her arm around me and gave me a little shake. “Look, take it from someone who has lived her entire life with more than her fair share of male hormones, it’s not the end of the world. Somehow, things will all work out.”
I snorted and gave the small hole I’d dug with my heel one last jab. “Yeah, good advice. Wish it was easier to take.”
“Get back to work,” she said. “That’s the best cure I know. Let Gabe find his killer and Clay take care of whatever it is he’s here to take care of and just get back to your own work. And don’t worry about it. Believe me, they certainly aren’t losing any sleep over it.”
Her advice was sound and reasonable and I knew she was right, so when I got home, the first thing I did after changing into warm sweats was open the trunks. Armed with a notebook and a cup of cocoa, heavy on miniature marshmallows, I started separating the items into three piles—personal articles, things to do with San Celina history and items pertaining to Mr. O’Hara’s store. I could see why Clay’s family wouldn’t want most of it. The letters and photographs were primarily of people and events that took place in the last sixty years in San Celina County. During the forties through the sixties, Mr. O’Hara belonged to almost every civic club and organization in town, was even president of two of them—the San Celina Farm Bureau and the San Celina Association of Retail Distributors.
Three cups of cocoa and four hours later, I had everything separated. The rain finally arrived with the eleven o’clock news. With both chattering softly in the background, I started looking at the first pile, the one I’d designated “personal.” Most of it was old photographs and postcards, a couple of old leather photo albums, a wooden book with two dogs carved on the front and the word “Scraps” that seemed to contain newspaper articles Mr. O’Hara found important. Most of the postcards were of his travels outside of San Celina—colorful photos of Irish castles and rolling green hills dotted with plump sheep, black and white photographs of men in long Western coats watching other men in stained, ragged chaps riding bulls at the 1915 Colorado-New Mexico Fair, one of a group of mariachis on “Ave Augustin Melger” in Mexicali, one of a bullfight, blood running down the bull’s side in a black trickle as the matador held the cape out in what appeared to be a welcoming embrace.
Fortunately for the Historical Society, Mr. O’Hara was a fanatical historian. All the photographs, Christmas cards and postcards were labeled and dated. There were envelopes of money, colorful, foreign bills that reminded me of play money—long red bills 100 Cien Pesos from Chile, faded multicolored bills from France with a picture of a woman in a kerchief holding a baby and a hoe, a series 1944 Deutschland Eine Mark that he must have bought or been given during World War II. The photographs that appeared to be of family I set aside for Clay. Though he didn’t think he’d want them, there might be someone in the next generation of O’Haras who might. Halfway through the personal pile, I grew tired of looking at photographs of people I didn’t know standing in front of old Model A’s or posed behind donkeys painted with zebra stripes in Tijuana, Mexico. I moved over to the San Celina pile. Here there were pictures and memorabilia I recognized, having seen many like them through the years of helping Dove catalog and store things for the Historical Society. There was a marvelous, clear picture of the old fire house which burned down shortly after World War II, showing the wooden bell tower that housed El Toro, the same siren that was such a big part of Mariko’s memories.
There were pictures of places that still existed—the original San Celina train depot built back in the late 1870’s, now a favorite restaurant of Gabe’s serving healthy “California Cuisine” that couldn’t stick to your ribs even if you drenched it in Krazy Glue, the old brick Safeway store with the block letters USO on the second floor, which was turned into an antique mall ten years ago, the mission-style San Celina Inn where Clay was currently staying.
Fatigue finally got the better of me about one A.M. The small, uneven print of the newspaper articles and faded old letters were becoming one big blur. I stood up and stretched, my eye catching a flat, unopened box at the bottom of the trunk. The heavy twine that was wound tightly around it was knotted and old. It took five minutes and a gold steak knife to free the box. It contained a small silky flag with tassels and a gold star in the middle. The kind that was displayed in the windows of homes where a member of the family was killed in combat. I studied it for a moment, thinking about what Thelma had told me about Mr. O’Hara’s brother. Was it his brother’s death that caused him to break up with Oralee? Grief did have a way of sometimes causing you to do things you later regret. I folded the flag back up and slipped it back into the box.
After a long, warm shower to loosen up my stiff neck, I picked up the wooden scrapbook and three ledgers from the “department store” pile, and went to bed. I flipped through the payroll ledger, mentally trying to convert the wages of fifty years ago to 1990’s dollars. Another of the ledgers listed the cost of office supplies and employee expenses. I set it aside to show to Elvia. She’d get a real kick out of it. The last one appeared to be a record of personal loans made throughout the years he owned the department store. I trailed a finger down the names looking for any I recognized. I stopped at the name Yoshimi Yamaoka and wondered if that was Mariko’s father. I continued to go through the ledger, and an odd pattern jumped out at me. Except for a scattered few Smiths, McGregors and Tripps, most of the names in the loan ledger were Japanese. I flipped through the ledger, trying to quickly calculate the amounts loaned. Beginning in late December 1941, Mr. O’Hara started loaning hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Japanese community, apparently, if I was reading the ledgers accurately, without any sort of interest at all. Many of the loans were paid back, which he meticulously noted, but many more of them weren’t. I skipped to the end of the ledger. The last loan was made in the early seventies right before the store officially closed. I set the record book down on the nightstand and turned out the light. Though I was exhausted and the lighted dial of the clock-radio read 1:54 A.M., I tossed and turned and stared at the dark ceiling, the incongruity of Mr. O’Hara’s hostile personality and his altruism as confusing to me as the two other men I was trying not to think about. I couldn’t do anything about Gabe and Clay, but I could certainly look deeper into Mr. O’Hara, though there was no doubt I’d have to do it as unobtrusively as possible.
The next morning I woke with a lighter feeling in my heart than I’d felt for days. No reason why, except that the sun streaming through my kitchen window was warm and bright and, as I drank my coffee, an orange and black monarch butterfly performed its elaborate fan dance on the wooden ledge just for me. I mulled over the ledger books while eating my Lucky Charms cereal. No more oatmeal for me, I decided, except where it belonged, in chocolate no-bake cookies. A thought occurred to me while reading through the lists of names again.
In my bedroom, the San Celina telephone books were still piled in front of the mirror. I started looking up the names in the ledger. Out of over a hundred and fifty people to whom loans were made since 1941, twenty-five of them were still listed in the San Celina phone book. Many more of them had matching last names that could indicate a descendant of the original borrowers. I copied down the names and addresses of the twenty-five, not exactly sure why. I wouldn’t have any trouble with having a reason to talk with them—the Historical Society interviews would help me there—but how in the world would I bring up something as personal as the money loaned to them by Mr. O’Hara? I suspected that the elderly Japanese, not being raised in the sometimes-too-open atmosphere of Western Culture, would probably be reticent about discussing such a private matter as a loan. Somehow I’d have to work it into the interview questions.
I drank my now lavender-colored milk straight out of the bowl and quickly changed into a pair of brown Levi’s and an antique-white tailored shirt. Scrounging up my old leather backpack, I threw in the ledger, my tape recorder, a steno pad and a couple of mechanical pencils. Right before I left, I phoned Ramon. He’d promised to meet me at the museum and accompany me on these interviews so he could get an idea of what I wanted him and Todd to do. A little voice inside me warned me to call and remind him. Señora Aragon answered in her soothing, caramel voice.
“
Buenos días, señora,
” I said. “It’s Benni.”
“
Buenos días, chiquita,
” she said. “
Como esta?
”
“
Muy bien, gracias
. Is Ramon there?”
I heard her click her tongue. “
Perro flojo!
That lazy dog! He is not even out of his bed.” Her tone was scolding, but affectionate. There wasn’t much Ramon could do wrong in his mother’s eyes.
“He’s supposed to go with me today on the Historical Society interviews. Please tell him I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” Only by picking him up could I guarantee I wouldn’t be sitting at the museum waiting for him to wander in whenever the mood struck him.
“I’ll tell him,
chiquita
,” she said, her voice doubtful, giving me the ominous feeling I’d be doing the interviews alone today.
The sky was a bright, hard blue that caused me to hunt around in my backpack and slip on my sunglasses. The leaves on the trees shimmered from the rain last night and the breeze was downright cold. It seeped in around the rotting rubber weatherstripping of the truck windows, and by the time I drove across town to pick up Ramon, I was ready for a cup of Señora Aragon’s strong hot coffee.
The cheerful yellow and white Aragon house sat on the corner lot of a neighborhood of older San Celina homes. Like many of its neighbors, it boasted a deep front yard, a couple of stark, towering walnut trees just starting to green, and a homemade swing set made of used truck tires and water-stained four-by-fours. The eclectically styled wood-frame house reflected the history and size of the Aragon family. They’d bought the house when Elvia was born and additional rooms had been tacked on as the family grew, the painted outside walls the same color, but the wood just dissimilar enough to give it an enthusiastic but slightly cockeyed look. Pulling up into the Aragons’ narrow, flower-lined driveway always made me feel like a little girl again. I’d spent so much of my childhood staying “in town” with Elvia so I could participate in some after-school activity that this house was as much a part of my sense of “home” as the Ramsey Ranch.
When I walked into the kitchen, Ramon slumped bleary-eyed at the round maple table in a pair of his older brother’s baggy green Army pants. He rested his head in his arms, his wavy hair tumbling around his bare, bony shoulders.
“You’re not going like that, I hope,” I said, helping myself to a cup of coffee and putting one of Señora Aragon’s sweet Mexican pastries on a plate. Licking the pink frosting off my thumb, I opened the huge refrigerator and peered in.
“The milk’s right here,” he said in a grumpy tone. “And I’m not going at all. I think I have the flu.”
“He has the lazy sickness,” Señora Aragon said, walking into the room carrying a handful of colorful flowers in her brown, dimpled hand. She raised thick black eyebrows at me in a mocking manner that reminded me so much of Elvia, I laughed.
“Ah, Mama,” he said, lifting his head. “I really am sick. I’m not even going to class today.”
“He comes in at three o’clock in the
mañana
and complains he is
enfermo
.” She slapped his smooth back. “I should tell your papa what time you get in and we’ll see how sick you are.”
“Mama,” he whined. “You promised. I said I’d call next time.”
She turned to me, shaking her head. “What do I do? He is
mocoso
but ...” An indulgent look softened the heaviness around her deep brown eyes. She held out the bouquet of flowers to me. “You go see Jack today,
sí?
He always likes my flowers.”
I glanced over at the Sav-on Drugstore calendar attached to the white refrigerator with two ladybug magnets made of pipecleaners and a grandchild’s love. A warm flood of guilt washed over me. Today was the anniversary of the day Jack was killed, and it had begun without me even remembering. I took the flowers grown in Señora Aragon’s small greenhouse and held them up to my face. The daisies, calla lilies, and pink roses gave off a clean, earthy scent that brought back a sharp memory of Jack. The first month we were married, to make the old Harper ranch house seem more like ours, we bought a hundred dollars worth of flowers to plant in the front window boxes and flower beds. As we removed them from the trays in the screened service porch of the house, we started a dirt fight that ended with us making love on the scratchy wooden floor, rolling among the empty plastic trays in a frenzied attempt to quench the fire that seemed to perpetually burn in our nineteen-year-old bodies.