Andrew Valencia: Lord of California

You were a soldier?

He spat into his cup and nodded. I was never in any army, he said. But I served as a sort of soldier nonetheless. My war was here, in California.

What war was that?

The war that made this country into a nation.

I don’t know that one.

You wouldn’t. They don’t teach about it in school. It’s not the sort of founding myth they want to advertise.

You’re talking about the early days of the Republic.

I was spilling blood for this country before anyone thought of the Republic, he said. Nowadays people try to forget what a shitshow it was back then. After the US fell, years passed where California was just as lost and divided as the rest of the former states. San Francisco and L.A. were like Athens and Sparta, fighting to control as much of the land between them as possible, with Sacramento in the middle trying to hold it all together. Rich men in those days weren’t picky about who they depended on so long as we could get the job done. Student activists, Unionists, local secession movements. I killed a lot of people to protect the interests of a few, including some who really didn’t deserve it. They just got mixed up with powers greater than themselves.

I could hear the tone of his voice, and it seemed like he was sincere in his regret, but at the same time all I could think about was how badass it must’ve been for him to live like that from day to day, not knowing whether his next assignment would be his last, or if he would ever again have a country to call his own. The Israelites, too, were a violent bunch in the time of old Canaan, back when they had to carve out every inch of their promised land from the flesh of their enemies. Suppose that’s how a lot of nations get started, in blood and terror, rewriting their stories as they go along, leaving out the grizzly bits for the sake of posterity.

That’s all very interesting, Mr. Ramirez, I said. Seriously. I could listen to your war stories for days, but I’m not sure how it fits with what we’ve got going on here.

I’m getting to that, he said. First I wanted you to understand where I’m coming from. Sometimes that’s all a person can do to make themselves heard.

All right. Go on then.

He looked around the room like he was worried about someone listening in. To be fair, Ellie was listening from her blind behind the wall, but I had a feeling he knew she was there already and didn’t mind if she heard what he had to say. A lot of what he was telling me, in fact, seemed like it was spoken to the family as a whole.

That boy you’ve got locked up in there, he said. He’s a spoiled brat. Worse than that, he’s a brat who’s had to struggle and suffer some compared to the friends he grew up with, and so that makes him think he’s tougher than he really is. The whole time I was on the case for him, he looked at me like I had never existed separate from the job he was paying me to do, and like I would cease to exist in this world once the job was finished. The rest of the time he treated me like a dumb beaner, like all the things I’d seen and done in my life didn’t matter cause I wasn’t carrying a slip of paper from a university.

Know what you mean, I said. He has that way of looking at people.

So now it was out. He knew we had him. I watched his face for changes, holding my breath. He didn’t blink, though. Just tapped his finger against the side of the cup and continued from where he left off.

There’s boys like him all over the country. On the coast mainly, but in the capital also. Boys whose families were well-off before disbandment and whose parents used the crisis to cement their position as aristocrats. They grew up in the shadows of the sea walls, with phones in their pockets and gates around their neighborhoods, believing they’ve faced real hardship because their parents make them study all the time. I worked for those boys. I killed for them. I lost my faith in God and man in part because of them. So if anyone has a reason to despise them, and what they represent, it’s me.

And here you are trying to get me to set one of them free. You’re asking me to forgive him for all that he’s done. For all that he is.

Yes. I am.

Why?

Several reasons.

Name one.

Well. For starters, I decided he doesn’t deserve to die.

I laughed. You deciding on something doesn’t make it right.

No, but it’s good enough for me.

You just said you don’t have any faith in people.

That’s right.

But you’ve decided this person is worth trying to keep alive.

Yes. I have.

You don’t have faith in God either. You’re not a Christian.

I’m not.

So how can you say who deserves to live and who doesn’t?

Because I decided on it.

That’s no kind of answer.

You’re wrong. It’s the most important kind.

You’re not related to him. Not by blood.

I’ve already told you I’m not.

And there’s no higher power you answer to either.

Not in the way you mean.

Then what do you care if he lives or dies?

Because I decided on my own to look out for him, or at least to save him from himself. That’s important, the deciding part. Anyone can do the right thing when they believe they have to, because of family or because of faith. But when you make the choice to help someone else, even when there are no ties binding you together, you make the choice to step up and act more decently than most of the people who have ever lived or ever will. And then your life is your own canvas, and you become freer in the doing than you ever would have been if you’d held yourself back. You stop trying to live up to something and you start trying to live.

This is who you spend your time helping? A boy who’s already had more privilege than me and all of my brothers and sisters put together?

Ramirez cleared his throat. He looked at me and looked at the contract and warped his mouth into a pained grimace that frankly startled me. If we’re going to have any kind of country at all, he said, we can’t go around killing everyone who deserves it. There’s too much blame to go around. The whole of California would be a mass grave before the end.

You didn’t always think so, I said. All that time you were killing for the rich and powerful, you must’ve thought at least some of them deserved it.

I did. There were some bad ones for sure.

And some good ones also? Ones who didn’t deserve it?

I said so before.

Right. So how do you decide to kill all those people and then turn around years later and tell me I haven’t got the right to do what I need to do?

I didn’t decide. Not really, anyway. If I did make a decision, it was that following orders was a good enough excuse to get me by.

You were older than me then? You were older than me when you started to kill?

Yes. I was already grown.

But you expect me to be more mature than that. You expect me to turn the other cheek for no reason other than because it’s the right thing to do.

He shook his head. I don’t expect you to do anything unless you want to, he said. But I will say that you won’t like it. You won’t like living with yourself if you harm that boy. We all have to live with the decisions we make, even when we tell ourselves there was no other choice. Can you do that, son? Can you live to be as old as me and still feel regret in your heart for what you did when you were seventeen? Your brother did some awful things, and so did your father, but you don’t have to be like them. You can choose to be better.

Ramirez set his spit cup on the table and crossed his leg back over his knee. He was waiting for me to decide on how I could be better, but all I could think of was how much better he was at looking after Elliot than my father was at looking after me. He didn’t have to be here. He didn’t have to be working so hard and saying these things to try to get through to me. At church we learned about faith and duty. Honor thy father and thy mother, be your brother’s keeper until you just can’t keep him any longer. To see somebody go to such lengths over somebody he barely knew, and without the weight of heaven on his shoulders for incentive, was something I’d never had to puzzle out before. It gave me a strange feeling down inside, like a sadness over something I knew I’d lost but couldn’t remember having.