Т Паркер: The Room of White Fire

Oaks and sycamores, sage and grasses, and dramatic outcroppings of granite boulders. No neighbors for miles. It’s potentially good farmland — avocados and citrus do famously well in Fallbrook. But no one in the Timmerman clan, certainly not us newlyweds, could ever muster the time or energy to tame this place. Justine and I were much too busy being young and ambitious. She was five years younger than me, a public defender. She had a good moral compass, an impressive memory, and was born to argue. I was three years into private investigations after resigning from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. I had a gift for finding people and was doing well at it. She owned a Cessna 182 when we first met, which she had painted pink and named Hall Pass . She taught me to fly Hall Pass , too, and we soared all over the Southwest for that one perfect year we were married.

Our plan was to live forever or die trying, and we thought we could pull it off. We were bullish. Timmerman brains and Ford brawn. All four grandparents alive on both sides. Sky the limit and no end in sight.

We all make assumptions and that’s where we go wrong. Sometimes they crash. As did Hall Pass , with Justine alone at the controls. Into the Pacific, off Point Loma. Mechanical failure. She was celebrating a little plan we’d hatched, and I had stayed on the ground because I had work to do. Work. I could never say no to work back then. Still can’t. That day, I had been thinking of her up in the great blue, at just about the time Hall Pass went down. My thoughts had been pleasant ones — not a premonition among them. Picturing myself as a dad someday. I was a trusting soul back then. That day is the river that divides my life. A river, or a wall topped with broken glass. If it’s anywhere close, I can recognize the throaty rumble of a 182 in the sky.

A year after her death I bought another Cessna, same year and model as Justine’s plane, and christened it Hall Pass 2 . I fly it now and then for business but mostly for what is supposed to be pleasure. To remind me of her and those few fine days. Sometimes memory is a blessing and other times it’s a curse. On a given morning you won’t know which it will be.

The truth is that Rancho de los Robles was in need of serious work when we first moved in. Still is. Foundation splitting faultlike. Adobe bricks of the main house cracking and crumbling. The twice-updated electrical prone to overload. Plumbing startlingly loud and undependable. Roofs leaking. Outbuildings dilapidated. The drought had killed off most of our fruit trees and pretty much every species of plant that hadn’t been established here five hundred years ago. At certain times of the day, in certain light under certain skies, the property looks like it blew in from the Dust Bowl.

The main house is too big to keep clean. I barely even knock down the cobwebs. Lizards get in under the doors, but at least they eat some of the spiders. This home still contains much of its original, very old furniture — all vaguely Franciscan and not quite comfortable. There are rough-hewn oak tables, chairs, and trunks; crude wooden chandeliers; dark velvet drapes; heavy cushions. Dusty now, and hushed. You half expect Father Serra to come down the hallway with a tallow candle. Justine and I had happily romped and partied amid all this history, two randy cherubs making hasty plans to modernize our home when the excitement cooled a little, if it ever did. But how could it?

Sometimes I wander from room to room, each with its own history and climate. Outside I can see the rolling oak savanna and distant groves of oranges and avocados. By night I can see stars and the scattered lights of Fallbrook. But generally I leave the drapes drawn. Though it may have been a gift, this house feels assigned. Everywhere I look I see a wisp of Justine — a flash of red hair, the hem of a favorite dress vanishing around a corner. Never the whole her. And I hear her voice, its rhythm and timbre, hidden under the groan of the plumbing or the drone of the air conditioner or the rumble of the Camp Pendleton artillery in the distance. Never a whole sentence.

I try hard to remember, and to forget.

I locate people for a living, but the person I want to locate most is the one I will not find.

I work when I’m needed, but there’s not always enough work that pays. The six casitas: I rent them out to add to my unpredictable income. I haven’t touched Justine’s life insurance money. Like I haven’t touched the clothes in her closet. And the things on her dresser. Can’t touch, can’t let go.

Near the center of the property, in the large shaded barbecue area between the pond and the casitas, I’ve posted rules for my tenants:

Interesting crew. I call them the Irregulars.

In casita number one, Grandpa Dick Ford. On the opposite end of the pond, in casita number six, Grandma Elizabeth. Liz. They don’t get along often, but they raised three children and spoiled six grandkids to the best of their abilities. Their son — my father — is traveling the world with my mother now, in well-deserved retirement.

In casita number two is Lindsey Rakes, a former Air Force lieutenant and drone pilot. A Reaper sensor ball operator, to be exact, flying missions in the Middle East from a trailer at Creech AFB outside Las Vegas. CIA stuff, of course, secret missions, twelve-hour days, six days a week, both good and bad kills. Drove her bats. She’s unemployed just now, with a gambling problem and too many local Indian casinos for her health. The night I met her she was too drunk to drive so I offered her a ride to her home and on the way she broke the news that she didn’t really have a home. She’s trying to get shared custody of her young son from her ex-husband. The boy is five and I question the wisdom of her being more involved.

In casita number four is eighteen-year-old Wesley Gunn, scheduled for an eye surgery that might leave him blind. Tumors in both eyes — retinoblastoma. Six weeks from now his left eye will have to be removed. The doctor will try to spare the right eye as he removes the tumor that, if left untreated, will spread and kill Wesley. There’s a ten percent chance that the surgeon will need to take that right eye, too, but he won’t know until he gets inside. Wesley is a local kid, a high school senior and all-conference quarterback. Then the blurring vision and diagnosis. I offered casita four to him for free because that’s what you do for a young man who, it turns out, has a rotten home life and is facing blindness. He’s an outdoorsy guy, wants to spend his last few sighted weeks where he can watch nature. Plenty of birds, bobcats, coyotes, cottontails, ferrets, squirrels, reptiles in these hills. Right now — spring — is the time to see them. Wesley spends lots of his waking hours back in the arroyos with little more than water, binoculars, and a camera. I used to barely keep up with him when I tagged along. But he’s slowing down.

Casita five is Burt Short, a fifty-something man I know almost nothing about. He read my ad in the Fallbrook paper and filled out an application listing his occupation as “outside sales” and offered to pay rent in cash. Told me he grew up locally but told Lindsey Rakes he was raised in Alaska. Where he worked most of his life as a fishing guide. But I overheard him tell someone on his phone — sounds carry easily through the barbecue area because of the pond — that his arbitrage days are over. And Burt Short is short, and built like a bull. Top-heavy and powerful, a big head. Smile that shows bottom teeth on one side. Mischief or derangement. His hair is dark and cut close. He’s the only one who pays on time and in full, first of the month.