The Garden of the World

3. Eye of the Mountain

< 19 = t h r e e # Eye of the Mountain It was in Salinas in 1926 that Gill met Lupita, and because of her began making whiskey with Big Boy, and because of him began the road back to the vineyard. Lupita was not the youngest woman at the Golden Staircase, but with her purpled lips and bruised, purple-looking eyes, she was still able to look vulnerable. She’d walked right up to him, didn’t seem to mind the thick scar tissue across his cheekbone and his crooked face. He’d liked her because of that, and because she made him believe that she needed him. She told him that her father had been a Villista and had been driven north of the border when the revolution failed, and even today refused to believe that Villa had been shot dead in his car. Her father sometimes claimed that Villa visited him at night, and then he was most awful. She had to run away, she said. Her mother was dead and her father worked her like a beast, kept her prisoner in whatever shack or common house they found to live in, and beat her if she even looked at a boy. She didn’t really belong working in a saloon, she said, and she cried on his shoulder the very first night they met. Gill moved her away from Salinas and found work in the canneries in San Jose, and they set up in a little flat in Goosetown. In November, the canneries laid off, and he ran into Big Boy while looking for work. They’d been on the canning line together a few years before, when Gill hooked on there right after the war. Big Boy had been carrying two hundred and fifty pounds even then, and so he had never been one of the pretty boys Gill resented. He’d listened to Gill chip away with his clipped voice at all those men who had gotten out of serving one way or another, at the women who wouldn’t look at him. Big Boy’s weight had kept him out of the war, and Gill seemed to forgive him this, because he offered an unfailing sympathetic ear. He found Big Boy in an alleyway beside the Goosetown Saloon, wrestling < 20 = a ten-gallon barrel of whiskey out of the rear of a Dodge sedan. “Hey, Big Boy,” he said. “Gill!” Big Boy stood up and wiped off his pinkish sweaty forehead with a large bandanna. His face was like a round moon, with a smooth sag under the chin, and his voice, when he spoke, came out high-pitched and scratchy. “How about giving an old pal a hand?” They rolled barrels together into the speak and hefted them together up behind the bar where the bartender could spigot them. While they worked, Big Boy asked what Gill had been doing, and Gill told him—haying, canneries , warehousing, this and that. “You should be doing something better, Gill,” Big Boy said. “Don’t I know it.” “You interested in making whiskey?” Gill paused. “I’ve made wine,” he said. “I could learn.” After they finished unloading, they each took a shot of whiskey and sat in one of the booths. Big Boy explained in a low voice that he was setting up a still in a new location, the dry hills back of Coyote, on land owned by a big guy with connections. It was easier when there were two men in on it. One could make deliveries, pick up supplies, while the other could tend the barrels of mash, keep the still running, keep a lookout. “Sometimes,” he said, “a man might have to spend three months or so up in the hills.” “Three months?” “The last guy I had was a rumdum,” Big Boy said. “You can’t have a rummy helping you make whiskey.” “I’ve got a girl. Okay if she comes along?” “A girl, eh?” Big Boy grinned knowingly. “Sure. Bring her along.” @ In December, they drove the Dodge on dirt roads into the eastern hills. The track they followed was rutted and overgrown by greening grasses, and they climbed gradually, following the roundness of the land. They were well out of direct sight of Coyote or any of the other valley towns when Big Boy wheeled the Dodge down into a small bowl beside a steep and wooded dry arroyo. Above them, on a knoll, stood a small, rude structure put together from oak beams and concrete, and cracked concrete steps led up to two closed doors about three feet high. Big Boy set the brake and eased his belly sideways out from behind the < 21 = steering wheel, while Gill and Lupita got out and stretched from the drive. They both looked at the strange little building above them. “What’s that?” Gill asked. “That’s the tomb of William Kingman, the first white man to own this land—’s why there’s a road.” Big Boy already had the back door of the Dodge open and was huffing out a sack of rye. “The coil and can are already here. Had to move them from the last place because we used up all the wood. And because that drunk might tell the Prohibition dicks where we were at.” Gill was still staring. “Why did he want to be buried here?” Big Boy shrugged. “He called this place Ojo de la Montaña. Eye of the mountain. Maybe he just wanted to keep an eye on things here.” “Ojo means spring also,” Lupita said. “Mountain spring.” “Spring, eye.” Big Boy shrugged again. “How about giving me a hand unloading the gear.” They first cleared the brush from the bowl and flattened out a site for the canvas tent Lupita and Gill would live in, a twelve-by-twelve tent with a large single center pole holding up the peak and a wooden smoke hole where a stove chimney could run through. Then Big Boy and Gill dug out a row on a south-facing slope for twenty mash barrels to stand upright and catch the sun, and a fire pit that the can could sit over, and they piped in spring water to cool the coil and condense the steam. Within three days, they were ready to set the mash. Big Boy explained that he had made sure he got irrigated rye with large, mature kernels, and that the rye had not been salted. Salt kept the mash from working. Lupita heated kettles of water over an open fire while Big Boy and Gill dumped forty pounds of rye into each fifty-gallon barrel. Then they mixed forty pounds of sugar into about twenty gallons of warm water and stirred it into a rich and bubbled syrup, and poured that into each barrel of rye. They topped off the barrels with more warm water to within three inches of the top and added half a cake of dry yeast, the size of a man’s hand. Finally, they covered each barrel with canvas torn from the sugar sacks and let the mash warm in the sun through the day, then covered all the barrels with a tarp at sunset to keep in the warmth and let the fermentation work through the night. As a precaution, Big Boy and Gill also rigged up a dry cell battery and a bell mounted on a post, and ran wire a quarter mile down the road, where they installed a switch with a spring trigger held open by a black thread stretched across the road. The mash quieted down at the end of a week into a clear and sour liquor, < 22 = and Big Boy told them it was time to run the still. Once it was running, he would leave for a few days and return with more barrels and supplies. Together, Gill and he poured in mash until the still was about three-quarters full, and built a fire with dry smokeless wood under the can. “You’ve got to get it boiling, and then cut back the fire,” Big Boy said. “Otherwise the mash will puke into the coil.” The copper can began to change color slowly over the fire as it heated, growing purer and brighter, as though glowing from within. Big Boy shrewdly poked at the burning logs to dampen the flame, and Gill watched the end of the coil. “Here it comes,” he said. A single drop crawled to the lip of the coil and hung there. Gill stretched out a finger and cropped the cooled and distilled liquid from the coil and tasted it. “Bitter,” he said. “It’ll mellow out on the oak,” Big Boy said. They each had one cup of the bitter, unaged whiskey that night as they sat around the fire burning low under the can. Big Boy wanted them to keep the fire going as long as one of them could tend it, as late into the night as possible. More hours meant more whiskey, and they could set mash again as soon as they had some empty barrels. Gill held his tin cup up, considered it, and took a sip. “I feel like a man of property.” Big Boy looked at him, then slowly began to chuckle. “If being a man of property is making hooch on someone else’s land.” “It’s more than I’ve had for a damned long time.” Gill turned to Lupita for confirmation. “Or Lupita either.” Lupita leaned up against him, and Gill stroked her hair. “Fair enough,” Big Boy said. “Your old man had property, though, didn’t he?” “Yeah, that he married into. And then saw my mother into an early grave.” “He still making wine, you think?” “Sure,” Gill said. “I heard, when he saw Prohibition coming, he suddenly got religion and is selling sacramental wines to the church. But I’ll bet he’s got his best wines still stashed back in those old Chinese caves cut into the hillside.” He looked around, a little dreamy, at the hills disappearing into darkness beyond the firelight. “I’ll bet you could grow good grapes right here, make fine wine right here.” < 23 = Big Boy laughed. “That won’t happen while the Volstead Act is in place.” “Maybe not. But someday.” Gill nudged Lupita until she smiled at him. “Well. It don’t hurt to dream, I guess,” Big Boy said. Gill bent down and kissed Lupita’s black hair, closing his eyes and thinking of his mother’s dark hair, while Big Boy watched with a lewd grin. @ The next morning, after Big Boy left, Gill emptied the distilled liquor from the previous night into an aging barrel, then bucketed mash into the can and screwed it shut while Lupita arranged kindling under the can. They built the fire together, Gill handing her larger pieces when she called for them, until the can was hot and the fire had to be flattened out. When the new whiskey began to trickle through the coil, he left camp with an axe and a canvas wood carrier and went up the arroyo to chop wood. He picked out a live oak and took off his shirt in the cool morning and began to swing his axe into the downhill side of the trunk. He worked steadily—not too fast, so that he would wear out, but fast enough to warm and sweat with the growing sun. He swung top and bottom, chopping out a bird’s mouth that wouldn’t bind his axe blade and would let the weight of the upper branches help the tree fall. When he was more than halfway through, he heard a creak and groan, and he stood back while the trunk cracked and its branches swished and whispered to the ground. It fell softly, recoiled a little bit before settling, and Gill smiled in satisfaction before he began to trim the branches from the main trunk. This tree would keep him busy a couple of days, and provide wood for a week at least. He came back with a load of wood rolled in canvas on his back, and he paused by the tomb of William Kingman and looked over the prospect. The smoothed hills of the eastern Santa Clara Valley fell away endlessly before him, leading down to the valley floor that now appeared to him to be of another time and place, utterly remote from where he stood. At the center of the rounded hills, he watched Lupita carefully tending the fire. And he tried to convince himself that he’d found a place, at the eye of the mountain, to be seen by no one but Lupita, whom he’d saved. He took the wood down and laid it out by Lupita’s side. She looked at the wood, approving. “Are you happy?” he asked. “¿Contenta?” “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” “Really?” She looked up from the wood and the fire. < 24 = “Yes,” she said. That night, he took Lupita’s body to him as though it were a part of him that had been missing, as though he could see in her eyes his own full and ageless face, made whole again, reflected back to him. He took her to convince himself that this was also a living place, that he didn’t miss his father’s vineyard, that he was home. It was a lie, because he knew that Lupita did not love him and was only with him because it was better than what she had left, but it was a lie he told himself, and then told himself to forget that it was a lie, so that he could live as though it were the truth. They worked the still every day, from early morning until late at night. Lupita tended the fire, boiled the syrup when it was time to set new mash, stirred the mash, made sure that the canvas sacking was tight over the barrels to keep out yellow jackets and flies, cooked. Gill cut wood, filled the can and the aging barrels, sealed some barrels with paraffin to store the whiskey in, hauled water. Once, they made charcoal, digging a pit and laying a length of corrugated metal over it, covering it all with dirt except two air holes, then lighting a slow fire. At least once a day, Gill asked Lupita if she was happy. He didn’t know he did this. He didn’t know how much he’d come to depend upon her simple affirmation that she was happy, how much of his own thought of himself as her good angel rested upon her telling him yes, she was happy. After a month, Big Boy arrived in the Dodge, bringing with him more sugar and rye, empty barrels, wheat and lard and beans, canned vegetables and bacon. He tested the whiskey in the barrels that had been aging longest, checking the alcohol content, holding it up to the light to see that it was taking on a reddish cast and that it was free of sediment, and finally tasting it. He declared it good, and they loaded up ten barrels in the back of the Dodge, which had the rear seats removed. He didn’t stay the night, but said he would be back in a week or less with some money. “We’ll be able to move all we make when it’s this good,” he said. “You all want anything special when I come back?” “No,” Gill said. “Got everything we need.” “I guess you do,” Big Boy said. A week later, he returned, with more empty barrels and dry goods, and food of a better kind than he’d brought before. He had some fresh-killed duck, and smoked salmon, and cans of oysters, and a bottle of wine. He also brought up an envelope of cash, which Gill looked at privately, then stuffed inside his shirt. < 25 = They feasted together that night on roast duck, sitting around the fire under the still while the liquor continued to trickle into the funnel. Big Boy uncorked the wine and poured it into three short mason jars, and Gill unconsciously swirled it around and looked at how it clung to the side of the glass, smelled it before he took a sip, rolled it around in his mouth before swallowing. Big Boy watched him, his mouth open. “Is that how you should drink wine?” “Not this wine,” Gill laughed. “It’s Alicante Bouschet. Cheap stuff.” “That’s all you can find to buy in San Jose,” Big Boy said. “Can’t find nothing better.” “I’ll bet people buying from my father have better,” Gill said. Before they all bedded down, Lupita noticed that the envelope of cash was missing from Gill’s shirt. She had tried to keep an eye on him, but at some point he must have managed to hide it. When Big Boy left the next day and Gill went to cut wood, Lupita searched the tent and the camp. She checked in the pile of empty duffel bags, in Gill’s pile of clothes, around the woodpiles. She scouted the perimeter of the camp and looked for any stones that had been overturned. She found nothing. Then she decided to look inside the tomb of William Kingman. One door of the tomb had been opened recently. Lupita could see a whitish scrape on the dull and broken concrete. She took note of how the doors were shut and latched, so that she could leave them just as she had found them, and then she creaked one open. The opening was less than three feet high, and it was dark inside. She peered in, saw the long oaken box that took up most of the space inside the tomb. The air smelled musty and cool, as though the body had long since turned to dust. Lupita turned and looked around once more, at the fire under the can, toward the grove of trees fed by the spring. Then she crawled half inside the tomb and reached around the coffin on both sides, groping in the dark for the envelope on the rough concrete floor. When she didn’t feel it, she squeezed her body all the way inside and leaned across the top of the coffin, feeling the smooth polished wood against her cheek. There, on top of the box, at about the length of Gill’s arm, she found the envelope. She slipped it carefully off the wood and brought it out into the light. She counted the cash, not disturbing the order of the bills, careful that the envelope didn’t crease or tear. When she finished, she counted it again. There was exactly two hundred dollars in the envelope. More than she had ever < 26 = seen in her life. More than her father could earn in six months, more than she would ever have gained at the Golden Staircase. More than she’d ever thought she’d hold in her hands at one time. Two hundred dollars. And half of it belonged to her. She did half the work, she tended the fire better than Gill would ever be able to, since she’d been tending woodfires since she was a girl. But she knew Gill would never give her any money, or admit that any of it was hers. She thought she knew Gill better than he knew himself. He wanted to think of himself as her savior , and he would never give her anything that might make her something more than the girl he’d saved from the life. He wanted her to be always grateful, and to love him, because of what she’d been in the past. She shut the flap of the envelope as it had been before and slipped it back on top of the coffin just where she had found it. Then she closed the doors of the tomb, latched them, and started back down to tend her fire. The still, and the barrels, and the tent nestled among the open and empty hills, now seemed to her like the walled-in room at the top of a tall and lonely tower. That night, while they ate dinner around the still fire, Gill smiled over at Lupita. “¿Contenta?” he asked. “Gill,” she said, “how much did Big Boy give you for the whiskey?” Gill looked at her mistrustfully. “What do you want to know for?” “Well, was it five hundred dollars?” “Five hundred dollars?” Gill laughed. “You think big. Five hundred bucks.” “Was it four hundred?” “It was enough. Now why do you want to know?” “It wasn’t even four hundred?” “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.” “Was it enough to buy a car?” “Ho, ho, ho,” Gill said. “Now you’re being silly.” “It’s not me who isn’t getting enough for the whiskey.” “How do you know it wasn’t enough?” Gill asked. “If it was enough you would tell me. And Big Boy has a nice car, and he isn’t doing any of the work. Shouldn’t we have a big car too?” “We will.” “How?” Lupita asked. “When you’re getting cheated.” Gill covered the left half of his face with his hand. “Why are you so anxious about getting a car?” < 27 = “We never talk about going anywhere, Gilberto. We never talk about doing anything. It’s as though you want to stay up here forever.” “You’re not happy here?” “You don’t really care if I’m happy or not. You only want me to be happy so you can be happy with yourself.” “So everything I did for you doesn’t mean anything anymore.” “You want me to care what I was. I don’t care what I was. Only what I’m going to be.” “You can’t stop carrying around everything you’ve been and done.” Lupita picked up a bucket of water. “You can’t. That’s why you only care about yourself and your dead mother. But I can.” She threw the bucket of water on the still fire, and sparks spit and hissed. Then she left Gill sitting there and went alone into the tent. @ When Big Boy arrived a week later, he brought fresh supplies, and an envelope of money for Gill. He also brought a cheap silver bracelet for Lupita. She instantly tried it on and held it up, flaunting it in the early sunlight. “It’s beautiful,” she said loudly. “So beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever been given. Thank you, Big Boy, muchísimas gracias, for thinking of a poor girl.” Big Boy grinned fatly. “Sure thing, Lupe,” he said. “Pretty girl like you deserves pretty things.” Gill in the meantime had turned his back on the both of them. He was counting the money in the envelope, finding that there was less this time than the last. In the grove of oak by the spring, both Gill and Big Boy shucked their coats and shirts to cut wood in just their undershirts. Even though it was still morning, Big Boy was sweating heavily, and his round face was turning pink, and the straps of his white undershirt cut into his softish shoulders. Gill’s body was dark and scant, and he didn’t perspire at all. They worked in silence except for the sounds of two axes on two separate trees. Gill felled his first, the old tree whispering down into the tall grasses, falling softly on a cushion of its own leafed branches with a whish. Then, before he began to trim off the limbs, he turned to Big Boy. “Why’d you bring the bracelet?” he asked. Big Boy stopped chopping and leaned on his axe. “She just seemed kind of unhappy last time I was up,” he said in a light tone. “I thought it might cheer her up.” < 28 = “You let me worry about whether she’s happy or not. It’s got nothing to do with you. Jake?” “You’re getting awful worked up over a little chippie,” Big Boy grinned. “You going soft over her?” Gill scowled and said nothing. He picked up his axe and began to chop at a thick lower limb but stopped after two blows. Big Boy was still resting on his axe handle, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “Less dough this time,” Gill said. “You know how it is, Gill. Prices go up and down, and sometimes you got to make payoffs.” “Yeah,” Gill said. “I know how it is. But I want to start going on runs with you. Lupita can run the still if we leave her enough wood.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. I’ve got a right.” “It’s risky. You don’t know.” “I know I want to do it.” Big Boy whistled between his teeth, thinking. “Okay. Not this run. They’re expecting me alone. But next time I’ll set up some big deliveries. We’ve got enough product ready.” “Good deal.” As soon as they got back to camp, Gill told Lupita he’d be heading down the hill next time with Big Boy. He didn’t tell her that he would be making more money. He expected her to understand that. “Good,” she said. “That’s good, Gill.” She smiled in a way he hadn’t seen for some time, and he noticed that she had taken off the bracelet. “I’ll buy you something while we’re down there,” he said. “Something nice. To make you happy.” “Good, Gill,” she said. Two weeks later, Big Boy drove up with a low farm trailer towed behind the Dodge, carrying some bales of hay. They loaded up the Dodge with ten barrels of whiskey and placed eight more in the trailer. Then they piled flakes of hay around and on top of the load in the trailer and tied a tarp over it. As the sun was setting, Gill kissed Lupita and told her he’d be home in a couple of days. “We’re leaving you plenty of wood,” Gill told her. “You’ll be okay, won’t you? You won’t get scared?” “I won’t get scared,” Lupita said. “Okay,” Big Boy said. “Let’s go make some money.” < 29 = They drove back down the grass-covered road, the grass yellowing into straw, springing back behind the car and trailer. It was the first time Gill had left the mountainside since he and Lupita had arrived there. He was in a good mood as they reached the gate before the light failed, and he jumped out to open it, let Big Boy ease the Dodge through, closed the gate, then hopped back in the open door. They drove the main ranch road toward the valley floor and were passing slowly through walnut groves just about to come into leaf as twilight ended. “Know what I’m going to do?” Gill said. “After a few more runs?” “What’s that?” Big Boy asked. “Get a car. Maybe a Dodge, like yours. This is a real powerhouse.” “That’s a good idea. You’ll be able to get one before too long, the way we’re going.” “Yeah.” Gill smiled at the walnut trees they were passing by. “Where’d you get yours?” Big Boy hesitated a moment, but Gill didn’t notice. “Beckwourth Motorcars ,” he finally said. “Only Dodge dealer in San Jose.” “Good,” Gill said. “Gill, you’re packing heat, aren’t you?” “Sure thing.” “Good. The guys we deliver to will be. But say we get caught, dead to rights. The prohi dicks have us with a load of liquor. What do you do?” “I was in the war,” Gill said. “I know what to do.” Big Boy shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. “You shoot a cop resisting arrest, you go to San Quentin. You kill him, you get the rope. You don’t want to do something simple.” “Okay,” Gill said. “What should you do?” “Maybe you talk to them,” Big Boy said. “Maybe they know somebody you know, and they’ll let you off for a price. At worst, maybe you go to the county pen. You ever done time?” “No,” Gill said. “Lots of guys have, and they’re no worse than me or you. Maybe they floated a bum check, or got caught sleeping with the wrong guy’s wife, or got in a fight. Lots of things can get you sent up besides bootlegging. As long as you don’t turn rat, you’ll make it through okay.” “You’ve done time, Big Boy?” Gill asked. “I guess I have,” Big Boy said. Big Boy first drove the Dodge down a dark lane to a high and silent barn. < 30 = The car bumped over the waves baked into the uneven earth in front of the barn while Big Boy maneuvered to line up the trailer with the closed barn door. Then they both worked to unhook the trailer and slide open the creaking door, and they rolled the trailer inside the barn. Some horses in their stalls stamped uneasily as they walked by, and a barn owl hooed. They left the trailer at the end of the building and unloaded the barrels into an empty stall. Then they walked back out quietly and slid the doors shut. Big Boy said he was glad to get that out of the way. Driving with a trailer made him nervous. It was too easy to get noticed. Once they were back on the main road, Gill asked how they were going to get paid for those eighty gallons. “Don’t worry,” Big Boy said. “The owner of that barn belongs to the Elks Club. It’s his trailer too. We’ll go by the club tomorrow and get paid cash.” They drove into San Jose and made two more deliveries. Five barrels went to a bootlegger near the railroad yards who would break the barrels into bottles and sell it with phony labels showing it to be Scotch. He showed them how he dipped a curling iron into each bottle to make it taste smoky, and where he buried new bottles out back, so that when he dug them up to fill them, they would look at least eight years old. Three more barrels went to a blind pig in Goosetown, like the one where Big Boy had run into Gill five months earlier. Each of these places paid with spot cash. Gill let Big Boy hold the money, but he noted very carefully how much it was each time. It was near midnight when they were returning to Coyote with two barrels left in the back. Big Boy said that he had one more bootlegger there who would always take product, and that they could flop in Gilroy afterward . They were at the edge of the walnut groves when Big Boy pulled onto the graveled earth in front of a dim building beside the railroad tracks. The building had an overhang covering a wooden porch in front of it, and a single lamp shone in one window. Above the overhang, Gill could read the words coyote feedlot on a sign, flanked by the checkerboard squares of Purina. Big Boy flashed his headlights at the building, two long and one short, and then cut them off. The lamp in the building switched off, then on again. Big Boy nodded. “Wait here,” he said. “They weren’t expecting anyone, but they know me.” “Okay,” Gill said. Big Boy got slowly out of the car with his hands in plain view. As Gill watched, he walked toward the building without speaking. Gill < 31 = expected him to say his name, call out to the people inside. But he just walked slowly to the porch. In the pale lamplight, Gill saw him turn the doorknob without knocking, open the door, and go in. Then, from behind where the Dodge sat, the headlights of several cars suddenly flashed on, pinning Gill from three different directions. He leaped out and crouched by the door, but there was no cover. Voices hit from everywhere , telling him freeze, don’t move, or we’ll blow your damned head off. Then he heard one voice shout clearly. “Prohibition Service. Sheriff’s here too. Now put ’em up.” Prohi dicks. Now Gill understood why Big Boy had told him how to act. Because he’d been set up, and Big Boy didn’t want him to pull his gun when he got caught. Gill stood up, left his pistol in his holster, put his hands in the air. He saw walking toward him between the shafts of headlights large men in uniform, with badges on their chests and guns drawn. Their leather belts and bullets were shining dully in the light, but their faces were still in shadow. Farther back, remaining near the car, he saw a couple of men wearing suits. One of them bent his head to light a cigarette, and Gill noted a gaunt face with high cheekbones, a trim black mustache, a thin-brimmed hat. Then the officers were on him, and he was turned around and handcuffed . He didn’t wonder whether they were going to go into the house, look for Big Boy, arrest anyone there, or whether they would ask where the still was operating. He knew they had exactly what they had come for. He knew Big Boy would be free to head back up to the mountainside tomorrow, find Lupita running the still, maybe take Gill’s own place with her. He knew he had been betrayed, again betrayed. ...