Andrew Valencia: Lord of California

Ellie, I said. Could you come in here, please?

Ramirez turned and watched Ellie appear from behind the wall with the rifle hanging low at her side. The safety was still on. She’d heard the same things I had.

Is Mr. Ramirez going to be taking the prisoner with him? she asked.

It’s not for us to decide by ourselves, I said. I need you to find our moms and the others and get them in here for a vote.

Ellie nodded. She handed me the rifle and smiled at me and left the kitchen at a quickening pace.

Come on, I said. You can see him now.

Ramirez followed me down the hallway. There were no sounds from the other side of the door. I kept both hands on the rifle with the safety on and my finger on the button.

He’s in bad shape right now, I said. There was an incident a few days ago that he started, and it could’ve turned out a lot worse. You’ll want to get him to a doctor right away.

I’m sure you handled him the best you could, he said. You mind if we have a moment alone?

Go ahead. I’ll be out here if you need me.

From where I was standing, just outside the door, I could’ve heard everything they said, except they didn’t seem to be saying anything. My worries swelled and solidified and seemed to be confirmed when he came out again and I saw the look on his face.

What happened?

Ramirez put his hand to his forehead and held it there. I was too late, he said. Now I’ll have to live with it forever.

He’s really gone?

See for yourself.

Ramirez stepped back from the doorway to make enough space for me to pass. The musty odor hit me in a single wave, followed by the shock of realizing what had happened in the room in the short time since I left it. The prisoner was mounted to the foot of the bed with his mouth open and saliva leaking down his chin. Seeing how he’d managed to carry it out, it was clear it had been a slow and terrible way to go. First he had to wrap the chain around the posts of the bedrail until it was as taut as possible. Then he must’ve crawled up onto the top of the rail and swung his feet over to the other side. As weak and feverish as he was, every step along the way had to be an ordeal. No energy left once he was dangling, though there were still scuffs in the carpet from his free foot’s thrashing. On account of the chain, one of his legs was twisted back, suspended in air. It made him look like a marionette, like a grotesque Pinocchio who chose to die rather than remain an imitation of a living boy. I walked back out of the room and closed the door and stood in the hallway facing Ramirez. His head was down.

I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, he said. I might have been able to reach him.

Don’t be sorry, I said. Whatever hell he’s in now can’t be worse than he hell he brought with him.

I tried to seem calm, but my head was spinning as we marched back down the hallway. When I finally took my eyes off the floor, I saw that Ellie, Mom, and the rest of the women were all seated in the kitchen, just as it had been weeks before when our lost brother first revealed himself to us. I looked around from one side of the table to the other, studying the individual faces of my family. Katie stood up from her seat. She was holding the new contract.

Are you men about ready to start talking business?

Father. My father. What did you do? What pearls did you lay before the swine who betrayed you? What pearls did you withhold from me? What blinded you from seeing me? The real me?

I only did half of what I promised. I buried him in the orchard with the evening sun blazing red across the sky. Will and Logan, me and Ellie, together we carried him out of the house wrapped in a sheet and dug him a final resting place in the soft earth between two rows of nectarine trees. We chose the younger trees so the roots wouldn’t take him right away. We dug deep so the coyotes and wild dogs couldn’t get at him. We covered him and smoothed out the soil and stood around the plot with our heads bowed. But I didn’t say a word to commemorate him or guide his soul in passing. No one else spoke either. He wouldn’t have wanted prayers, and it didn’t seem to matter one way or another. He was dead now, another branch of the family severed and gone forever. Whatever sins or secrets he took with him couldn’t trouble us, and those he left behind were already being washed away in the frenzied business of planning our next maneuver.

Ramirez left that same evening and couriered the contract to Russert on our behalf. A money order arrived two days later with four-fifths of the sales price all together in a lump sum. Mom had never had so much cash on hand at one time. None of us had. In our final nights at the farm, around the kitchen table where so much else had happened, we sat together and talked in measured voices about the Vandeman Act, about the direction the country was headed in, and about where we saw ourselves in this new world where the only money problem we had to worry about was how we were going to hold on to what we had already earned. Everyone had their own ideas about where we should go or what line of work we should get into next. But absent was the distrust that had plagued us when we first met at Katie’s barbeque. The change was subtle, but it was obvious. The mothers didn’t guard themselves like they used to. The children didn’t sit off by themselves with the siblings they’d been raised with originally. Instead Mom and Dawn traded jokes back and forth that got the whole kitchen shaking from our collective laughter. Beth held little Karina still on her lap while Sebastian practiced his boxing jabs on Logan’s open hands. Eventually it was decided that Fresno would be a good place to start at until we arrived at a more definite plan. But after the final vote was taken, no one seemed afraid of what was in store for us, at least compared to how we felt a year earlier when our world lay in pieces and we were all skeptical that we could put it back together, or find any better alternative.

On the morning we were scheduled to head out, I was loading boxes into the trunk when Ellie came out to the driveway. Her new clothes suited her well, not that she would go in for anything too flashy even with extra money to throw around. She sat down on the hood and put her foot up on the bumper. She was closer to fifteen now than fourteen, and a lifetime removed from where she was when we first talked in the orchards outside Katie’s.

Mom wants to know if you need more snacks for the drive up, she said. Way she’s been fussing over this trip, you’d think it was a ten-hour drive instead of one.

I closed the trunk and came around to the front and stood next to her. Glad she’s excited about the move, I said. She’s looked a lot happier in general lately.

Ellie smiled. She is happy, she said. That’s a new one for her.

Well. Things are starting to look up.

Yeah, they are. You nervous?

No. You?

A little bit. I’ve been wondering what your plans are for after we get settled. Whether you’re going to look for your own place or not.

Been thinking about it. I still got a few months before the Army’ll take me. Might see if Will and Logan need any help getting their business up and running.

That’d be a good way to spend your time. Better than getting shot at.

Yeah, I guess.

I asked her to get off the hood so I could wipe it down with a shammy. She watched me run the damp rag over the metal. I knew she was waiting for the chance to say something else.

A lot of things are going to change now, I said. But you know I’ll always be around to protect you.

She laughed. If that’s how you want to think of it, she said, then go ahead. But know this. I love you. You’re my brother and I love you. And I figured I might as well say so if you’re never going to.