Pasadena (3 page)

“Ten and a half acres.”

“Ten and a half, is it?” Blackwood scanned the property; he wondered if the arroyo behind the barn would make subdivision difficult. Probably not, what with the way they’re putting up houses in the canyons. All you need is a pair of stilts and a concrete mixer. Easy enough these days. Or maybe Blackwood could dam up the arroyo and create a little green pond; people would like that, people would pay more for that. It’d be easy enough: throw a wall of soil across the arroyo’s mouth and catch the winter runoff. He’d have to be careful about flash-flooding, but Blackwood knew what he was doing. On closer inspection, it appeared that perhaps once someone had tried this: the foundation of a collapsed dam remained in place. He thought to ask, “You ever think about closing it up? Make yourself a nice little casting pond?”

Then for the first time the man’s hard face softened. “How much is it worth, Mr. Blackwood?”

“The arroyo?”

“The whole farm.”

Blackwood hesitated, thinking that this might be some sort of test.
“I’m sure you’ll understand when I say I don’t go around tossing out numbers if the other party’s not interested.” He added, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Bruder.”

“Bruder? A pleasure, Mr. Bruder.” Blackwood moved to tip his hat, but then he realized that it was gone and he ran his hand through his hair, which was so fine it parted randomly when the wind blew upon it. The hat sat overturned in the dirt, a sagebrush lizard inching toward it, and Blackwood felt the sun burning his ears and his neck. His skin was more sensitive than most people’s. Whenever he appeared in a terry bundle at poolside or on the beach, he would say he had a northerner’s complexion, careful not to be any more specific than that; he knew that some people thought he was from Canada, and that was fine with Andrew Jackson Blackwood.

He went to retrieve his hat when Bruder said, “Would you like to come inside, Mr. Blackwood?”

In the middle cottage were two rooms, a kitchen with a coil-handled stove and an alcove hidden by a rose-petal sheet strung along a wire. There was a terrible bareness to the place. Dark kerosene smoke painted the walls, and Blackwood took this as a sign that he was dealing with an unsophisticated man. He supposed that Bruder was one of those farmers who could no longer make a go of it; and something in Blackwood wondered why Bruder would even try. Bruder opened a cupboard that held nothing but a tin of sugar, three white onions, a jar of apple butter, and a hard round loaf of bread. Blackwood sensed things turning his way, and that was what he had learned over the years: to keep a wet finger in the wind.

“Coffee, Mr. Blackwood?” Bruder lit the stove.

A few minutes later, Blackwood took the cup of coffee and Bruder poured himself a jelly jar of jug wine. “There’s a long history at Condor’s Nest,” Bruder said. “I can’t think of anything that would convince me to sell it off.”

“There’s always a history, Mr. Bruder.”

“A lot has happened here.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“I’ve never wanted to sell this land.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to think about.” All those years ago, it had been so easy for Blackwood to don a developer’s hide. The trick was to look
them in the eye once, and never again. A few months ago, he’d read an article in the
Star-News
about a tennis champion who was asked about the key to winning Wimbledon, and the man—there was a photograph of him in his white sweater-vest—had replied, “Just keep moving forward.” Blackwood couldn’t agree more. He looked forward to reporting to Stinky about the ten and a half acres and the strange man, who had a blue-black scar at his temple that eerily darkened and lightened like the shifting winter ocean. “It was like stepping back in time,” Blackwood would say on the telephone. “Like meeting a forty-niner in person.”

“Do you live alone, Mr. Bruder?”

Bruder sat up, and Blackwood could see that once he’d been handsome. Could’ve been in pictures, thought Blackwood, with those heavy lids and that nose, long but not fleshy, like John Gilbert’s; it was Blackwood’s one vice: Saturday night at Grauman’s Egyptian, staring up into Gable’s huge, mattress-size eyes. That, and reading the
American Weekly
insert and the
Star-News
society page for the latest breeze. Blackwood took perhaps a little too much pleasure in the misfortune of others, but he had no reason—at least not yet—to believe that he would come to regret this glee.

“I have a family,” said Bruder, standing and taking Blackwood’s cup. “Now you’ll have to leave.”

Bruder walked Blackwood outside, and a pride rose in Blackwood’s swift and lean heart as he saw the yellow car sitting in the sun, the ocean reflecting in the gleam of its hood. He expected Bruder to say that she was a hell of an automobile: every now and then that’s what strangers said on Colorado Street—not that the Imperial Victoria was the fanciest car running around Pasadena, heavens no, Blackwood wasn’t one to waste his dough. But the car was the first substantial item Blackwood had ever bought for himself, and he loved her as another man might love his dog, or his wife. Its wheels were white, and its yellow skin was as bright as a Model’s banana, and every now and then he would click his heels when he realized she was his. It’s because Blackwood had never thought he would one day own an Imperial Victoria. Certainly he’d never thought he’d be sizing up ten and a half acres of subdividable farmland. You never know where a dirt road will take you in life; that’s what he had told himself back in muddy Maine, and now look at Andrew J. Blackwood.

“Why don’t you think about it, Mr. Bruder?”

“I’ll never sell my land. Not at Condor’s Nest.”

“Never’s a long time, Mr. Bruder. I can stop by another day and we can continue our chat.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But I could if you wanted.”

“No thank you, Mr. Blackwood.”

“Is that your daughter tending the farm stand, Mr. Bruder?”

“Drive carefully, Mr. Blackwood. A lot of rocks round here. One might fly up and dent your hood.”

Andrew Jackson Blackwood climbed into his car and turned it around and drove down the long dirt lane. In his mirror, Bruder and Condor’s Nest fell away, the dust and the dead mayweed blossoms rising, and the endless ocean. When he reached the road he waved to the girl, who was busy shifting the box of flyingfish into the tulip tree’s moving shadow. “What’s your name?” he called.

“Sieglinde!”

“
What
is it?”

“I’d get out of here if I were you!”

Blackwood waved again and then drove on to the convention in San Diego, certain that Mr. Bruder would be glad to see him when he returned on his way home in a few days.

The trip to San Diego
turned out to be a waste of time. Blackwood met with men from City Hall whose minds were clogged with regulation, and chatted with halfhearted developers who feared “the uncertain times.” A lady developer declared that she was sitting things out for the time being. It had been a sorry bunch indeed. But one young man from Ocean Park, who turned out to be nothing more than an ambitious bookkeeper with a keen eye, tipped off Blackwood about the values along the farmland coast north of San Diego. This conversation had proved so interesting that Blackwood bought the man a second bourbon, and then a third, while Blackwood nursed a golden beer, and eventually the young man spilled to Blackwood everything he knew about North County. He said that the place to look was around a tiny village called Baden-Baden-by-the-Sea. “Never heard of it,” said Blackwood. “That’s the point,” said the young man. “No one has. Long ago it was known for its mineral spring. People would come from all over to drink its water and to bathe. But the spring dried up in the Great Drought way back when, and the hotels closed and most of the farms collapsed. The village was almost forgotten.”

The conversation proved invaluable, but it kept Blackwood from hitting the road until nightfall. He hoped Bruder wouldn’t mind his late arrival, but why should he? Thanks to the honest-faced young bookkeeper, Blackwood had calculated a modest but fair offer for Condor’s Nest. It did not occur to him that Bruder would turn him down; after all, what did Bruder have to hold out for? Not nostalgia, for Blackwood was certain Bruder was a man with little worth remembering.

It was raining when the Imperial Victoria reached the farm. A dense
fog hid the ocean, and the mud sucked on Blackwood’s shoes as he stepped out of the car. He heard the waves thrashing angrily, the high tide throwing rocks and kelp and limpets. Miserable spot in a winter storm, thought Blackwood, and he knocked on the cottage door. There was a light in the window, but no answer came. Blackwood peered inside and saw a small bulb—one he hadn’t noticed before—burning dimly above the kitchen table, and a gentle disappointment touched him: Condor’s Nest wasn’t trapped as far back in history as he had first believed. Even so, he rapped the glass, and nothing in the cottage stirred except the fire dying in the stove. He wondered where Bruder would go on such a night, and whether the girl was with him. The salty rain slanted down, falling sharply on Blackwood’s neck and face, and he pulled his hat over his ears. He feared that perhaps he’d left the Imperial Victoria’s window cracked, but such carelessness wasn’t like Blackwood, and he assured himself he was anxious only because of the night and the rain, which just now hardened to hail.

Blackwood was certain that Bruder would return sometime soon, and so he thought about perhaps waiting at the kitchen table. He had a feeling about Condor’s Nest, something he could describe only as a sense of possession, as if the process of transferring the property from Bruder to himself had already begun. He turned the doorknob, but found it locked.

“Looking for someone?” came a voice.

“Mr. Bruder,” Blackwood began, but when he turned around he discovered it was someone else.

There stood a young man, locks of dark hair pasted to his throat. His cheeks were red, as if he’d been running. He was coatless, and the rain ran off his shoulders and down his overalls, which were oddly patched in the hem and seam and had a red satin heart sewn on the bib. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and his feet were so huge and white they were like lanterns on a path. “He didn’t invite you back,” the young man said.

“Are you Mr. Bruder’s son?”

The young man shook his head and told Blackwood to follow him. They walked round the cottage to the back, where the wind off the ocean snapped the clothesline and bent the digger pines. The young man said something, and Blackwood had to shout “Sorry?” but the young man shook his head again. Blackwood moved to the edge of the
cliff, peering over. The waves heaved and exploded against the bluff, which was sixty or seventy feet high, Blackwood guessed. He saw the ghost of a wooden staircase leading to the beach. An image of a falling man quickly entered and left Blackwood’s mind, and he chided himself for staring into this pool of fear. “Wouldn’t want to be at sea tonight,” Blackwood called, but the young man ignored him.

He led Blackwood to the second cottage, into a room dark except for the glow in the fireplace. When the door closed behind them, the howling in Blackwood’s ears died. The room was more pleasant than the first cottage; there was a mantel carved with blue whales, a shelf displaying books and abalone shells, and two bentwood rockers atop an oval braided rug. Someone had hung a baleen above the door like a strip of bunting. It was a handsome-enough place, but certainly not worth saving from the clearing crew. Blackwood imagined the bungalow with the detached garage that would replace it; this alone would return the price of all of Condor’s Nest. But Blackwood was getting ahead of himself. And so he offered his hand in introduction.

“I know who you are,” said the young man.

“Do you?”

“Bruder told me.”

“That was kind of him. But I don’t know who you are.”

“Me? I’m Palomar Stamp.” He said this gently, as if the name required care in delivery.

“Palomar Stamp?”

“They call me Pal.” He sank into one of the rockers, and as he dried by the fire, steam rose from his thighs. He said, “Did you meet Sieglinde?”

Pal pointed behind Blackwood. On a bench by the window, the girl from the stand was busy sharpening knives. As she scraped a blade over a disk of sandstone, her curls fell into her face. Blackwood couldn’t be sure, but he thought he recognized the deer-footed hunting knife. Half a dozen knives waited for her whetting stone, sharkskin handles and double-blades and a crescent-shaped handsaw, rusty at the tip.

“Did you manage to sell all your flyingfish the other day?”

“He won’t want to see you,” she said. She was a strong-limbed, dreamy-faced girl of nineteen or twenty, and her voice was surprisingly low, like that of an adolescent boy.

“Are you two brother and sister?”

Pal shook his head.

“But Mr. Bruder is the father of one of you, yes?”

The girl’s chin moved from side to side. “You’ll have to find out for yourself, Mr. Blackwood.” She returned to her knife-carving, the delicate, circling
shhhhhhhhh
of the grinding competing with the roar of the storm. Pal unhooked the bib of his overalls and let the flap hang down, the satin heart upside down and hidden in his lap. He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. The rain had soaked his thin cotton work shirt tight to his chest, and even in the dim room Blackwood could see Pal’s small pricked nipples and the two mats of hair beneath his arms.

Blackwood remained standing in his coat, and an uncertainty approached him: perhaps he should leave? The drive to Pasadena would take several hours, and he had an early-morning appointment out at the old orange ranch. He had failed to replace the Automobile Club map, but this didn’t particularly concern him. He did, however, want to speak to Bruder—get the offer on the table, at the least. The young bookkeeper, whose face had flared candy-pink as he plunged into his fifth and sixth bourbons, had described North County as the last bargain around, and said that if he himself had the cash he’d buy up a farm or two. “Untouched” was the word the bookkeeper had used, and it stuck with Blackwood; there was so little left in the Southland one could describe that way, so little left in the world. The advertisement in the
Star-News
had called the ranch in Pasadena and its abandoned groves
untouched
as well. It was a word that could cause a developer’s heart to swell, the freedom it implied. Nothing better than starting from scratch, transforming the pale scrubland into neighborhood. Since arriving in California, Blackwood had played a part in a number of developments that had begun with the untouched—dividing up the remains of the Rancho San Pasqual, and the old homesteads above Santa Anita and at the head of Eaton Canyon, and the buckwheat hill around the burned-down Hotel Raymond. He knew that some people thought he was crazy, running a road into a canyon where only the coyotes lived. What precisely did he enjoy in real-estate development? He couldn’t articulate it exactly, and liked to believe it was something more than the money; perhaps it was the flattering custom of naming a street after the developer. He could already imagine the street sign at Condor’s Nest: Blackwood Lane, a road dead-ending at the ocean and leading fifteen or
twenty G.I.s and their families (maybe more, depending on how that arroyo checked out) to their bungalows. Blackwood wasn’t just any old developer, oh no; he set strict guidelines for design, in Pasadena often emphasizing the Spanish: red tile roofs and tinkle-fountain patios and climbing bougainvillea. He had learned that, for whatever reason, people liked a delicate whiff of the past. Blackwood also felt that he respected the land more than most developers, and this despite the fact that he wasn’t born on California soil—but then, really, who was? Thinking of Condor’s Nest, he wondered if it might be best if Blackwood Lane were set up to resemble a village road on the moors of England, thatched cottages with Tudor beams—not that he’d been to England himself, but in his youth Blackwood had been a reader. A reader and a collector of postcards.