Hers the Kingdom (49 page)

     "Oh, Willa," I started, "how could you . . ." But she could, of course. She busied herself making a map, to show me exactly where the "hidden nest" was positioned. I sank back on the settee and considered my sister. I was angry with us both; and I was afraid and I was excited. I knew that I would go.

     I did not take notes for Willa. Neither did I tell her that Soong had known she was there, the day before. I did not hide in her nest, I could not . . . not from myself, or from Soong, or from what he had become to me . . . someone steady, and true. A brother, a teacher, and a friend. Above all, a friend.

     That summer, near the falls in Soston Canyon, he became more than a friend.

     I followed Soong and I waited until he was bathing in the shallow pool at the foot of the falls. Sunlight scattered through
the leaves; squirrels scampered on the rocks above. One by one, I pushed away the low branches that hid me from view until I was standing by the edge of the pool, looking down at him.

     For a moment I thought I had lost the power to speak. Then I said, "My back is twisted."

     He said, "I should like to see it."

     I unbuttoned the bodice of my summer dress; my fingers would not seem to work properly. Soong only watched, waited.

     I stepped out of my underdress and stood, naked, before him.

     He stood, took my hand, looking at me so steadily that I was not afraid. He led me gently into the pool. The water was cold, but I did not shiver. It rose to the place between my legs, to my belly.

     Sunlight dappled our bodies and made us glow. He held me away from him, looking at me, and then carefully, ever so carefully, he turned me around so that he could see my back.

     I felt his hands, firm and soft, moving along my spine, touching, rubbing. And then I felt his lips on the small of my back. He pulled me to him, close against him, and he said, "It is beautiful, Lena. Everything about your body is as beautiful as I had imagined." And there, in the pool in Soston Canyon, Soong helped me discover the pleasures of the body that I thought would be forever denied me.

     I never told anyone. I did not repeat to a living soul how Soong worked for the revolution. I did not say that Wing Soong had become a follower of the man Sun Yat-sen. We had our own society, and it was as secret as it was sweet, and there was never any need that anyone should know, not then. Not for a long time.

That September the very air crackled with the drought. Everything was dusty and dry and even the ocean seemed flaccid. Then the
Santana
started blowing hot out of the desert, playing on our tempers.

     Only Trinidad's children could sleep through the night. The shrieks of a puma—wild and sharp—cut into the thick night, echoing and reverberating inside one, making sleep impossible. The young steers that had been penned in the north corral milled and bawled, made uneasy by the cat's cry. The men slept with their guns nearby.

     It was only one very large cat—Ignacio and Owen found its footprints near the pump where the ground was soft. We had heard the shrieks of the puma before, but not when a
Santana
had been blowing for two days, making us raw.

     We were tired, mindless, and lethargic, as if the hot wind had sapped us of all energy.

     "No coffee," Owen said as Trinidad approached him with a steaming cup, "lemonade is what I would like."

     Trinidad only looked at him. Lemonade. She would have to go to the family orchard, pick them, and the juice would be warm, so she would have to send one of the children to the cold spring.
Aiii
, the attitude of her shoulders seemed to say, it is too hot for such nonsense. She lifted her hands in a gesture of futility, but before she could get to the door we heard the sound. We heard it because it was different. We strained to catch the sound as the winds whipped it away.

     Hooves, galloping. A horse, moving fast. Too fast for such heat, no one would ride a horse so hard in such heat. So it was important. Owen frowned. We followed him out the door, where we stood, shading our eyes against the glare, watching a lone rider move toward us through heat waves that rose from the valley floor.

     "It's Carlos," Ignacio said, squinting, "from Zuma."

     Owen nodded, his face grim.

     Then we heard what the man was shouting.

     
Fuego!

     Fire.

     "Where?" Owen demanded as the man pounded into the courtyard, raising a cloud of dust, his horse lathered and heaving.

     
"Norte,"
the man gasped, "over the mountains."

     "By Shurz' place?" Willa shouted.

     
"Sí,"
Carlos answered, "he got out, but now the wind changes direction, it turns and it is coming . . ."

     We looked to the northeast and there it was, a line of smoke. It would not be long; soon we would see the rim of fire. It was traveling fast, fast, Carlos told us.

     Ignacio and Owen barked directions. I caught a glimpse of Wing Soong, running with a crew to the place where the firebreak was prepared. The animals were turned loose and headed toward the beach. The beach was the only safety, should it come to that. But the wind could change. It did that, it jumped over houses and whole canyons. It might change.

     Willa shouted her own orders. "The silver, Josie," she directed. "And you, Anna, get our picture books."

     "I'm glad the boys left for school," I told Willa as we ran for the house. We stopped when we saw Trinidad walking at a languid pace away from the house.

     "Where are you going?" Willa shouted at her.

     "To the orchard," she answered calmly, "for the lemons."

     Willa ran to overtake her, then she held her by the shoulders and looked into Trinidad's eyes, which were glazed.

     Willa held her by the shoulders and shook her.

     "Wake up!" she shouted. "You wake up and do exactly what I tell you, do you hear me?" She shook her again, so violently that Trinidad's teeth rattled. "Get the children and count them. Don't forget Carlotta's baby. Get them all and bring them to me."

     At that, the life returned to Trinidad's eyes. She was afraid, but she could move and talk. She began the incantation of saints' names that was to pour out of her all that day.

     Willa and I made two trips into the house. There was no time for a third. The acrid smell of burning oak and eucalyptus filled our nostrils and made our eyes sting. The children cried, complaining of scratchy throats. The heat was oppressive, breathing was difficult.
We loaded the children on top of the few household things we had managed to save, and started for the beach. All I had been able to save of my own were my daybooks; I cannot remember making a choice. It was what I brought.

     Willa shouted the team on. "Move out, Maud," she said, "Step up there, you Nell." Behind us Pablito—a sturdy eight now—herded the family pets. We could hear the fire; there was a crackling, and an awful, angry animal sound as it moved through the low chaparral, like some monstrous, living thing. The heat flared. Sumac bushes, filled with oil, exploded. It was as if we were picking our way through a mine field.

     The old team ran through the long avenue of eucalyptus. We were no sooner clear than one of the giant trees exploded. For an instant, its shadow seemed to hold against the conflagration.

     "Pablito," I screamed, "hurry." He was running, keeping up, but the fire now was only sixty feet or so behind us. We were almost there. The children were wailing with the heat and the fear. Trinidad was wild, hysterical. I tried to hold her, to control her.

     Then the goat Sunshine, Thad's favorite, broke loose and, terrified, ran the wrong way, into the fire. Pablito let out a screech that was as wild as the puma's.

     "Let him go," I shouted, even as the fire caught the little goat and set it ablaze.

     There is no way to describe the awful, acrid stench . . . of animals burning, of hair and scorched flesh. Tiny animals of the field, caught.

     We reached the sea, and safety. I jumped out of the wagon, somehow, and found my way to Pablito, who was sitting in the center of the little coterie of pets, his face blackened and streaked with tears. I dropped one of my books in a pool of sea water. He picked it up.

     
"Gracias
, Pablito," I said, as gently as I could.

     "She was a good goat, Sunshine," he answered. "I told Thad I would care for his goat."

     "Thad will understand," I tried to tell him.

     But he said that Thad would not understand, not ever.

     Sunshine was a good goat, the house was a good house, the barn a good barn. But all were gone, lost in the worst fire in living memory. We sat there on the beach and watched it burn. The soot fell like black snow, the heat assaulted our faces.

     Most of the animals were safe; all of the men accounted for. Willa moved with determination among the stragglers on the beach, taking account, making sure.

     "It's as if the earth itself is angry," she said to me in passing, "I've never seen such wrath."

     I found Owen sitting on a carton, his shoulders hunched, staring at his hands. He did not look up when I said his name.

     The sun, obliterated by the torrents of smoke, cast an orangegray light over us all. It might have been, I thought, a scene from the
Inferno
.

OWEN RUBBED THE coin between his thumb and forefinger, as if to polish it, now and then pausing to examine it, the look on his face one of strained amazement. He had been probing through the charred ruins of the main house for fully an hour and the single Spanish coin was all he had been able to recover of the collections he had spent so many years accumulating, so many long hours poring over.

     Willa walked at a brisk clip through the burned stubble that had been the arbor, her step determined, so preoccupied with her own assessment of the damage that, for a moment, she was at odds to explain her husband's distress. She stopped to watch him and felt a sudden, sweeping tenderness. His face, the whole attitude of his body, told her that he was staggering still from the crushing blow the fire had delivered. He had lost more than she could fathom. For a second she understood, then it was gone, leaving her with an almost mystical understanding that he was as near defeat as she had ever seen him.

     "Owen," she called softly, "perhaps we should call in a man just to sift through it all, to see what else . . ."

     He shook his head, not looking up. His eyes were wet, she could see. "No," he murmured, "it's no use. Nothing could have survived the heat . . . I don't understand how this coin . . ." His voice trailed off as he turned to look about him, disconsolate.

     There was nothing to say, she knew, that could ease his sense of loss. She wondered why she, too, was not decimated, why, in fact, she felt a surge of energy, of excitement. What was she excited about? Starting over. Rebuilding, the enormous time and energy it would require. That was what she had understood, in that fleeting instant; it was what Owen could not face.

     "I wonder," she started, tentatively, knowing now what she must do, "you have so many things to attend to in town—and you can't put off the trip East, we know that. Would you . . ." She hesitated, giving him time to catch up, aware that she was manipulating. "That is, if you think I could . . ." She did not want to go too far, but she knew what she would do, what he needed her to do if only she could make him agree. She cleared her throat, as if nervous. "I believe I could take charge of the rebuilding. That would leave you free to concentrate on the business . . . I feel sure I could do it. . ."

     He looked at her, unsure. "Build it all back?"

     "Not like it was," she answered carefully, "simpler, a smaller house. But rebuild, yes."

     She had said it; now she waited. She watched him struggle with the idea. Feeling the pulse pounding in her temples, she made herself be still.

     "Where would you be?" he asked, and she knew she had done it, that he was going to let her put their lives on the Malibu together again.

     Most of each week she spent in Santa Monica, with Owen, setting things in motion. She was in and out of the beach house several times, nonetheless, giving orders and making plans. I was in nominal command at the little cottage which had escaped the fire. Around it, a tent city had sprung up to house the servants and
cowhands. It looked for all the world like some great chautauqua meeting, tents pitched close to the beach, an air of holiday about it all. The Spanish
vaqueros
got along surprisingly well with the Chinese; many of the usual barriers seemed to ease. Wing Soong's tent was pitched only a few feet from the cottage; he was our protector, Aleja's and mine.

     Trinidad had gone into Santa Monica to run the house there, leaving her eldest daughter to supervise our small beach household. Aleja was a younger version of her mother, at eleven she was "early ripened," as Willa had observed, with rising young breasts and rounding hips. She was a pleasant girl, devout and hard-working like her mother, and silent like her father. The attention some of the
vaqueros
had begun to pay had not escaped Ignacio and Trinidad. They kept a close watch on their eldest. She was a good girl and she would marry well. The Spanish had a hierarchy of their own.