the Lonesome Gods (1983) (21 page)

"A monster?

"A woman named Mary Shelley wrote the story. Her husband was a poet, I think. It was a story about a student named Frankenstein who made a man out of pieces of dead people. People thought the creature a monster, but he wasn't really. Mama always felt sorry for the monster. I thought he'd be kind of scary."

For a moment there was silence in the room, and then Aunt Elena changed the subject. "You lived in Kentucky, you said?"

"A man who met Papa at the livery stable gave him the job of training horses for racing. He liked the way Papa cared for the horses, and he said all the trainers he wanted were already employed and if Papa could produce a winning horse he would give him a share of the winnings." "Did he never talk of going to sea again?"

"Oh, no! By that time Mama was sick and Papa wanted to get out of the city where the air was better. Once when we were alone he said we must be very good to Mama because she was more ill than she believed. Papa would not take any kind of work where he could not look in upon Mama often.

"Once I heard him talk to Mr. Poe about it, for his wife was ill also. Both of them had consumption, and it was considered a kind of aristocratic illness, whatever that is. People became pale and frail and all the doctors did was prescribe fine wines and special foods.

"Papa said to Mama that he had no right to keep her where she was. He said, 'In California you would soon be well. We must go back.' But Mama would not go. She said Papa would be killed.

"He said, 'Do you think I would die so easily?'

" 'No,' she said, 'but you might kill him, and that would be just as bad.'

"Sometimes at night when they thought I was asleep they talked of me, worrying about what would become of me when they were gone, because by that time Papa was sick, too, and Mama knew it. After Mama died--"

"How long ago?"

"I was five, I think. I do not remember too well, but we lived in Kentucky then."

For several minutes I could not say anything, only remembering those last, long, lovely days when we could look out over the green pastures with their white fences and the beautiful horses running and playing there. Mama talked to me an awful lot then. I think she wanted to tell me everything, before ...

Aunt Elena had sat very still, reaching for every word I spoke. Sometimes her eyes filled with tears, sometimes her lips trembled, but she said nothing, and did not interrupt.

"Mr. Poe's wife died, too, someone said. I do not know, only that after Mama died two of the horses Papa had trained won their races and the owner gave Papa a share, as he had promised.

"It was a very damp, rainy year and Papa was worse, so he quit his job and we came west."

"I see." Aunt Elena sat very still; then she looked over at me. "Thank you, Johannes, for telling me. At least she was happy during those years. She had your father, and they had you."

She got to her feet. "I must go. Johannes, if you ever need me, please have Miss Nesselrode or Senor Finney come to me. In the meantime, you must be careful! About him there is nothing I can do. We have had words about this.

"As yet, he knows nothing. I would know if he did. He believes you dead. He even talks of returning to Spain. "You must keep out of trouble! It was because of talk among the women about a fight at school that I heard of a boy named Johannes who was living at the home of Miss Nesselrode. I knew she had come west in the wagon with your father, and that Senor Finney had worked for Senor Farley on the same trip."

She started for the door, but Jacob got up suddenly. "Wait, ma'am. I'll just take a look around outside first." He was gone only a minute. "It's all right, ma'am. A body can't be too careful."

At the door Aunt Elena stooped suddenly and kissed me on the forehead; then, embarrassed, she slipped out and disappeared in the darkness.

Miss Nesselrode came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder. "I believe she loves you very much, Johannes, just as she loved your mother."

"She does not know me."

"She sees your mother in you. Tia Elena has no children, and your mother was like a daughter to her. Now it is you of whom she thinks."

"She is a nice lady."

"Yes, she is. I am afraid she took a great risk in coming here tonight. If your grandfather should discover you are alive and that she came to see you, he would be furious. He might lock her up."

"He could do that?"

"He could and he would."

That night I did not sleep, but thought of Tia Elena. In some ways she was like Miss Nesselrode, yet different, and she spoke English amazingly well, although with an accent. I found I liked thinking of her, for she was a relative, of my own blood, and I knew of no others to whom I could speak.

Yet there was a restlessness in me, a longing for the desert and the mountains. Where was Francisco? Had he forgotten me?

A longing for the wild places was in me, and there was something else, too, some strange yearning, something that whispered to me on the wind, whispered words I could not hear, calling me back to where the lonely coyotes spoke to the moon and the great cacti would stretch agonized arms" toward the sky.

I could not go back. Not yet. My father would have wished me to go to school, and Miss Nesselrode had asked me what I wished to become. I suspected it was not only that she wished to know but that she wished to start me thinking of it. She wished me to be making up my mind.

When morning came, I walked to the bookstore with Miss Nesselrode, where I was to help her. Two handsome Californios rode past, splendid on their fine horses with silver-mounted saddles. They doffed their sombreros, bowing gracefully to Miss Nesselrode, and I watched them with envy.

Their fine horses almost danced as the riders went down the dusty street in their fine clothes and large-roweled spurs. Surely no one in the world could ride like the Californios!

"It is a pity," she said.

"What?" I was startled.

"Their world is going, going very fast, Johannes. They inherited large ranchos, they live well, they have no worries, they work a little at the roundups, they go to fandangos or bailes, they flirt with the girls, and they give no thought to tomorrow. It is enough that today the sun shines, that they have a splendid new suit trimmed in gold or silver, that they have handsome horses. They do not realize their world is gone."

"Gone
r
"Yes, Johannes, change was sure to occur, and now it has. The Boston men have come."

Chapter
24
d
o not understand," I said.

"It is very simple. The Californios are wonderful people. They are gracious, hospitable, and to those of their kind they are considerate. Yet in many ways they are like children. Most of them have never dealt with money. They have bartered for what they needed, with each other, with the Indians, and with the few traders.

"The Boston men, as they call them, are shrewd, hardworking Yankees, and they are going to change all this. I will not like it so well, although I am a part of it, but the change is inevitable. There is no malice in it. The Yankees are simply businessmen. When a Californio wants something, a silver-mounted saddle, a fine suit of clothes worked with gold and silver, he does not question the cost. If he does not have money, he borrows it, and all loans are at compound interest, compounded by the month.

"Those young men who passed us? The suits they wear would cost two thousand dollars each. The young man who saluted so gracefully? He used to have a rancho of forty thousand acres."

"Used to?"

"Yes, Johannes. He has not realized it yet, but twenty thousand acres of his rancho are mine. He has borrowed several times, and although he has been reminded that the interest is due, he just smiles. Most of those who loan the Californios money do not remind them when their notes fall due, and their land is lost to them."

We came to the store and I unlocked the door. Inside
,
Miss Nesselrode removed her hat and the mantilla that had covered her shoulders.

"Their world has changed, Johannes. The time for playing in the sun is over. If they wish to survive in this new world, they must work. They must plant orange or lemon trees as Mr. Wolfskill has been doing, or plant grain."

Two big boxes of books were dropped off at the door by a freighter, hauled from the harbor. My first job that morning was to unpack, list, and place them on the shelves where they could be seen.

As I placed the books on the shelves, I called off the titles to her so she could list them. Suddenly I came upon a copy of The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, published by Wiley & Putnam, in England. It had been previously published in this country but my father had not been able to find a copy.

With some pride I showed the book to Miss Nesselrode. "He was a friend of my father's," I explained. "He often talked with my father about the polar regions because of my father's experiences with icebergs."

"Maybe something of what he told Edgar Poe got into the story."

"I believe their talk was later, after the book was written, but I am not sure. It says here the book was published in 1838. I was just two years old then." I held it in my hands. "May I read it?"

"Of course."

There were still a few books to unpack, but as I worked, I wondered about Miss Nesselrode. Who was she? Where did she come from? On the way west when others talked of who they were and what they had done, she listened in silence. There had been rumors she had been a schoolteacher, but that was probably only a guess. The truth was that nobody knew, and the impression persisted that she had come west to find a husband. It was a natural supposition, but I did not believe it. She liked men and enjoyed their conversation but seemed to avoid the younger, more attractive men. Sometimes when I looked up I
w
ould see her staring out the window, her lips tight, her face like marble. Of what she was thinking, I had no idea. Yet I sensed some purpose, some intent, some driving urge, and it matched something I could feel arising within myself. One day when I had come from school to help in the shop, she voiced it herself.

"Thomas Fraser tells me you are doing well in school, Johannes. I like that." She paused a moment, and suddenly her voice was hard, almost angry. "I want you to show them, Johannes! They cast your father out, and your mother because she married him, and you because you are their son.

"Show them, Johannes! Become somebody! Do something! Make something of yourself!

"Listen to the men who come here. Listen well. Education is by no means confined to schools. Listen to such men talk, hear their philosophy, their ideas about the country, about business, trade, shipping, politics. Listen and learn.

"Some people only learn by reading, others by doing or seeing, some by hearing. Learn however you can, but learn!

"Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wolfskill, Mr. Workman, all of them. They are the men who will make this town into a city. They have ideas, but they do not merely have ideas, they put the ideas to work.

"You can become bigger, stronger, better than your enemies. You can defeat them by outreaching them, by becoming a more important man, but also by becoming a better one.

"All life is based on decisions. Decide now on what you'd like to become and what you would like to do. The two are not necessarily the same, although sometimes they can be."

As the months passed at school Rad kept his distance but he did not like me and I knew trouble between us was not finished. Meghan Laurel continued to sit beside me, but I was shy. I had little experience talking to girls.

We read better than the others, but Meghan was better at numbers than I.

Rad was smart enough, but disdainful of lessons. Because he was as large and perhaps stronger than Mr. Fraser, he was also disdainful of him, although he did well enough in school to get along. For my part, I avoided him. I wanted no more trouble, and although I had beaten him once, it would not be so easy another time, for he would be ready for me.

Miss Nesselrode, or perhaps Jacob Finney, must have spoken to him in private, for never did Thomas Fraser make any comment on having known me before and having known my father, nor did he speak of the trip across the mountains and desert from Santa Fe.

Often, when we had settled in our seats, he would talk to as very generally on some topic that he considered important or that occupied his mind at the moment. "Actually," he said one morning, "all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education.

"What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

"I hope, in these classes, to give you an idea of where you came from, how you got here, and what has been said about it."

When we started to leave the room, I found Meghan beside me. She looked around at me and said, "What do you think of him? Of Mr. Fraser?"

"I like him. I think he wants to be a writer."

"I wonder where he went to school?"

"In Scotland, I believe. He is Scottish," I said. Then, fearful of seeming to know too much about him, I added, "Fraser is a Scottish name."