Not all of us have to possess earthshaking talent. Just common sense and love will do.
Myrtle Auvil
ePub
A4Chương 13
C
hapter 131
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it
growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of
the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its
beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world
glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him
dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And
then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his
nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and
yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality
and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all
creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.
I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the
world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us,
perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is
true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and
better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and
clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get
into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has
entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the
idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world,
tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.
At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe
in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual
mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations,
whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has
taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness
lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of
extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions,
forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being
pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing
in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes,
undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys
the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a
pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a
system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing
that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
2
Adam Trask grew up in grayness, and the curtains of his life were like dusty cobwebs, and his days a
slow file of half-sorrows and sick dissatisfactions, and then, through Cathy, the glory came to him.
It doesn’t matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy,
but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins.
And who in his mind has not probed the black water?
Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But
this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the
dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would
not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water? It would be absurd
if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
Whatever Cathy may have been, she set off the glory in Adam. His spirit rose flying and released
him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories. The glory lights up the world and changes it the
way a star shell changes a battleground. Perhaps Adam did not see Cathy at all, so lighted was she by
his eyes. Burned in his mind was an image of beauty and tenderness, a sweet and holy girl, precious
beyond thinking, clean and loving, and that image was Cathy to her husband, and nothing Cathy did or
said could warp Adam’s Cathy.
She said she did not want to go to California and he did not listen, because his Cathy took his arm
and started first. So bright was his glory that he did not notice the sullen pain in his brother, did not
see the glinting in his brother’s eyes. He sold his share of the farm to Charles, for less than it was
worth, and with that and his half of his father’s money he was free and rich.
The brothers were strangers now. They shook hands at the station, and Charles watched the train
pull out and rubbed his scar. He went to the inn, drank four quick whiskies, and climbed the stairs to
the top floor. He paid the girl and then could not perform. He cried in her arms until she put him out.
He raged at his farm, forced it, added to it, drilled and trimmed, and his boundaries extended. He took
no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.
Adam stopped in New York long enough to buy clothes for himself and Cathy before they climbed
on the train which bore them across the continent. How they happened to go to the Salinas Valley is
very easy to understand.
In that day the railroads—growing, fighting among themselves, striving to increase and to
dominate—used every means to increase their traffic. The companies not only advertised in the
newspapers, they issued booklets and broadsides describing and picturing the beauty and richness of
the West. No claim was too extravagant—wealth was unlimited. The Southern Pacific Railroad,
headed by the wild energy of Leland Stanford, had begun to dominate the Pacific Coast not only in
transportation but in politics. Its rails extended down the valleys. New towns sprang up, new sections
were opened and populated, for the company had to create customers to get custom.
The long Salinas Valley was part of the exploitation. Adam had seen and studied a fine color
broadside which set forth the valley as that region which heaven unsuccessfully imitated. After
reading the literature, anyone who did not want to settle in the Salinas Valley was crazy.
Adam did not rush at his purchase. He bought a rig and drove around, meeting the earlier comers,
talking of soil and water, climate and crops, prices and facilities. It was not speculation with Adam.
He was here to settle, to found a home, a family, perhaps a dynasty.
Adam drove exuberantly from farm to farm, picked up dirt and crumbled it in his fingers, talked
and planned and dreamed. The people of the valley liked him and were glad he had come to live there,
for they recognized a man of substance.
He had only one worry, and that was for Cathy. She was not well. She rode around the country with
him, but she was listless. One morning she complained of feeling ill and stayed in her room in the
King City hotel while Adam drove into the country. He returned at about five in the afternoon to find
her nearly dead from loss of blood. Luckily Adam found Dr. Tilson at his supper and dragged him
from his roast beef. The doctor made a quick examination, inserted a packing, and turned to Adam.
“Why don’t you wait downstairs?” he suggested.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. I’ll call you pretty soon.”
Adam patted Cathy’s shoulder, and she smiled up at him.
Dr. Tilson closed the door behind him and came back to the bed. His face was red with anger.
“Why did you do it?”
Cathy’s mouth was a thin tight line.
“Does your husband know you are pregnant?”
Her head moved slowly from side to side.
“What did you do it with?”
She stared up at him.
He looked around the room. He stepped to the bureau and picked up a knitting needle. He shook it
in her face. “The old offender—the old criminal,” he said. “You’re a fool. You’ve nearly killed
yourself and you haven’t lost your baby. I suppose you took things too, poisoned yourself, inserted
camphor, kerosene, red pepper. My God! Some of the things you women do!”
Her eyes were as cold as glass.
He pulled a chair up beside her bed. “Why don’t you want to have the baby?” he asked softly.
“You’ve got a good husband. Don’t you love him? Don’t you intend to speak to me at all? Tell me,
damn it! Don’t turn mulish.”
Her lips did not move and her eyes did not flicker.
“My dear,” he said, “can’t you see? You must not destroy life. That’s the one thing gets me crazy.
God knows I lose patients because I don’t know enough. But I try—I always try. And then I see a
deliberate killing.” He talked rapidly on. He dreaded the sick silence between his sentences. This
woman puzzled him. There was something inhuman about her. “Have you met Mrs. Laurel? She’s
wasting and crying for a baby. Everything she has or can get she would give to have a baby, and you—
you try to stab yours with a knitting needle. All right,” he cried, “you won’t speak—you don’t have to.
But I’m going to tell you. The baby is safe. Your aim was bad. And I’m telling you this—you’re going
to have that baby. Do you know what the law in this state has to say about abortion? You don’t have to
answer, but you listen to me! If this happens again, if you lose this baby and I have any reason to
suspect monkey business, I will charge you, I will testify against you, and I will see you punished.
Now I hope you have sense enough to believe me, because I mean it.”
Cathy moistened her lips with a little pointed tongue. The cold went out of her eyes and a weak
sadness took its place. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you don’t understand.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?” His anger disappeared like mist. “Tell me, my dear.”
“It’s hard to tell. Adam is so good, so strong. I am—well, I’m tainted. Epilepsy.”
“Not you!”
“No, but my grandfather and my father—and my brother.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I
couldn’t bring that to my husband.”
“Poor child,” he said. “My poor child. You can’t be certain. It’s more than probable that your baby
will be fine and healthy. Will you promise me not to try any more tricks?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. I won’t tell your husband what you did. Now lie back and let me see if the
bleeding’s stopped.”
In a few minutes he closed his satchel and put the knitting needle in his pocket. “I’ll look in
tomorrow morning,” he said.
Adam swarmed on him as he came down the narrow stairs into the lobby. Dr. Tilson warded off a
flurry of “How is she? Is she all right? What caused it? Can I go up?”
“Whoa, hold up—hold up.” And he used his trick, his standard joke. “Your wife is sick.”
“Doctor—”
“She has the only good sickness there is—”
“Doctor—”
“Your wife is going to have a baby.” He brushed past Adam and left him staring. Three men sitting
around the stove grinned at him. One of them observed dryly, “If it was me now—why, I’d invite a
few, maybe three, friends to have a drink.” His hint was wasted. Adam bolted clumsily up the narrow
stairs.
Adam’s attention narrowed to the Bordoni ranch a few miles south of King City, almost
equidistant, in fact, between San Lucas and King City.
The Bordonis had nine hundred acres left of a grant of ten thousand acres which had come to Mrs.
Bordoni’s great-grandfather from the Spanish crown. The Bordonis were Swiss, but Mrs. Bordoni was
the daughter and heiress of a Spanish family that had settled in the Salinas Valley in very early times.
And as happened with most of the old families, the land slipped away. Some was lost in gambling,
some chipped off for taxes, and some acres torn off like coupons to buy luxuries—a horse, a diamond,
or a pretty woman. The nine hundred remaining acres were the core of the original Sanchez grant, and
the best of it too. They straddled the river and tucked into the foothills on both sides, for at this point
the valley narrows and then opens out again. The original Sanchez house was still usable. Built of
adobe, it stood in a tiny opening in the foothills, a miniature valley fed by a precious ever-running
spring of sweet water. That of course was why the first Sanchez had built his seat there. Huge live
oaks shaded the valley, and the earth had a richness and a greenness foreign to this part of the country.
The walls of the low house were four feet thick, and the round pole rafters were tied on with rawhide
ropes which had been put on wet. The hide shrank and pulled joist and rafter tight together, and the
leather ropes became hard as iron and nearly imperishable. There is only one drawback to this
building method. Rats will gnaw at the hide if they are let.
The old house seemed to have grown out of the earth, and it was lovely. Bordoni used it for a cow
barn. He was a Swiss, an immigrant, with his national passion for cleanliness. He distrusted the thick
mud walls and built a frame house some distance away, and his cows put their heads out the deep
recessed windows of the old Sanchez house.
The Bordonis were childless, and when the wife died in ripe years a lonely longing for his Alpine
past fell on her husband. He wanted to sell the ranch and go home. Adam Trask refused to buy in a
hurry, and Bordoni was asking a big price and using the selling method of pretending not to care
whether he sold or not. Bordoni knew Adam was going to buy his land long before Adam knew it.
Where Adam settled he intended to stay and to have his unborn children stay. He was afraid he
might buy one place and then see another he liked better, and all the time the Sanchez place was
drawing him. With the advent of Cathy, his life extended long and pleasantly ahead of him. But he
went through all the motions of carefulness. He drove and rode and walked over every foot of the land.
He put a post-hole auger down through the subsoil to test and feel and smell the under earth. He
inquired about the small wild plants of field and riverside and hill. In damp places he knelt down and
examined the game tracks in the mud, mountain lion and deer, coyote and wild cat, skunk and raccoon,
weasel and rabbit, all overlaid with the pattern of quail tracks. He threaded among willows and
sycamores and wild blackberry vines in the riverbed, patted the trunks of live oak and scrub oak,
madrone, laurel, toyon.
Bordoni watched him with squinting eyes and poured tumblers of red wine squeezed from the
grapes of his small hillside vineyard. It was Bordoni’s pleasure to get a little drunk every afternoon.
And Adam, who had never tasted wine, began to like it.
Over and over he asked Cathy’s opinion of the place. Did she like it? Would she be happy there?
And he didn’t listen to her noncommittal answers. He thought that she linked arms with his
enthusiasm. In the lobby of the King City hotel he talked to the men who gathered around the stove
and read the papers sent down from San Francisco.
“It’s water I think about,” he said one evening. “I wonder how deep you’d have to go to bring in a
well.”
A rancher crossed his denim knees. “You ought to go see Sam Hamilton,” he said. “He knows
more about water than anybody around here. He’s a water witch and a well-digger too. He’ll tell you.
He’s put down half the wells in this part of the valley.”
His companion chuckled. “Sam’s got a real legitimate reason to be interested in water. Hasn’t got
a goddam drop of it on his own place.”
“How do I find him?” Adam asked.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m going out to have him make some angle irons. I’ll take you with me if you
want. You’ll like Mr. Hamilton. He’s a fine man.”
“Kind of a comical genius,” his companion said.
3
They went to the Hamilton ranch in Louis Lippo’s buckboard—Louis and Adam Trask. The iron straps
rattled around in the box, and a leg of venison, wrapped in wet burlap to keep it cool, jumped around
on top of the iron. It was customary in that day to take some substantial lump of food as a present
when you went calling on a man, for you had to stay to dinner unless you wished to insult his house.
But a few guests could set back the feeding plans for the week if you did not build up what you
destroyed. A quarter of pork or a rump of beef would do. Louis had cut down the venison and Adam
provided a bottle of whisky.
“Now I’ll have to tell you,” Louis said. “Mr. Hamilton will like that, but Mrs. Hamilton has got a
skunner on it. If I was you I’d leave it under the seat, and when we drive around to the shop, why, then
you can get it out. That’s what we always do.”
“Doesn’t she let her husband take a drink?”
“No bigger than a bird,” said Louis. “But she’s got brassbound opinions. Just you leave the bottle
under the seat.”
They left the valley road and drove into the worn and rutted hills over a set of wheel tracks
gulleyed by the winter rains. The horses strained into their collars and the buckboard rocked and
swayed. The year had not been kind to the hills, and already in June they were dry and the stones
showed through the short, burned feed. The wild oats had headed out barely six inches above the
ground, as though with knowledge that if they didn’t make seed quickly they wouldn’t get to seed at
all.
“It’s not likely looking country,” Adam said.
“Likely? Why, Mr. Trask, it’s country that will break a man’s heart and eat him up. Likely! Mr.
Hamilton has a sizable piece and he’d of starved to death on it with all those children. The ranch don’t
feed them. He does all kinds of jobs, and his boys are starting to bring in something now. It’s a fine
family.”
Adam stared at a line of dark mesquite that peeked out of a draw. “Why in the world would he
settle on a place like this?”
Louis Lippo, as does every man, loved to interpret, to a stranger particularly, if no native was
present to put up an argument. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Take me—my father was Italian. Came here
after the trouble but he brought a little money. My place isn’t very big but it’s nice. My father bought
it. He picked it out. And take you—I don’t know how you’re fixed and wouldn’t ask, but they say
you’re trying to buy the old Sanchez place and Bordoni never gave anything away. You’re pretty well
fixed or you couldn’t even ask about it.”
“I’m comfortably off,” said Adam modestly.
“I’m talking the long way around,” said Louis. “When Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton came into the valley
they didn’t have a pot to piss in. They had to take what was left—government land that nobody else
wanted. Twenty-five acres of it won’t keep a cow alive even in good years, and they say the coyotes
move away in bad years. There’s people say they don’t know how the Hamiltons lived. But of course
Mr. Hamilton went right to work—that’s how they lived. Worked as a hired hand till he got his
threshing machine built.”
“Must have made a go of it. I hear of him all over.”
“He made a go of it all right. Raised nine children. I’ll bet he hasn’t got four bits laid away. How
could he?”
One side of the buckboard leaped up, rolled over a big round stone, and dropped down again. The
horses were dark with sweat and lathered under the collar and britching.
“I’ll be glad to talk to him,” said Adam.
“Well, sir, he raised one fine crop—he had good children and he raised them fine. All doing well
—maybe except Joe. Joe—he’s the youngest—they’re talking about sending him to college, but all the
rest are doing fine. Mr. Hamilton can be proud. The house is just on the other side of the next rise.
Don’t forget and bring out that whisky—she’ll freeze you to the ground.”
The dry earth was ticking under the sun and the crickets rasped. “It’s real godforsaken country,”
said Louis.
“Makes me feel mean,” said Adam.
“How’s that?”
“Well, I’m fixed so I don’t have to live on a place like this.”
“Me too, and I don’t feel mean. I’m just goddam glad.”
When the buckboard topped the rise Adam could look down on the little cluster of buildings which
composed the Hamilton seat—a house with many lean-tos, a cow shed, a shop, and a wagon shed. It
was a dry and sun-eaten sight—no big trees and a small hand-watered garden.
Louis turned to Adam, and there was just a hint of hostility in his tone. “I want to put you straight
on one or two things, Mr. Trask. There’s people that when they see Samuel Hamilton the first time
might get the idea he’s full of bull. He don’t talk like other people. He’s an Irishman. And he’s all full
of plans—a hundred plans a day. And he’s all full of hope. My Christ, he’d have to be to live on this
land! But you remember this—he’s a fine worker, a good blacksmith, and some of his plans work out.
And I’ve heard him talk about things that were going to happen and they did.”
Adam was alarmed at the hint of threat. “I’m not a man to run another man down,” he said, and he
felt that suddenly Louis thought of him as a stranger and an enemy.
“I just wanted you to get it straight. There’s some people come in from the East and they think if a
man hasn’t got a lot of money he’s no good.”
“I wouldn’t think of—”
“Mr. Hamilton maybe hasn’t got four bits put away, but he’s our people and he’s as good as we
got. And he’s raised the nicest family you’re likely to see. I just want you to remember that.”
Adam was on the point of defending himself and then he said, “I’ll remember. Thanks for telling
me.”
Louis faced around front again. “There he is—see, out by the shop? He must of heard us.”
“Has he got a beard?” Adam asked, peering.
“Yes, got a nice beard. It’s turning white fast, beginning to grizzle up.”
They drove past the frame house and saw Mrs. Hamilton looking out the window at them, and they
drew up in front of the shop where Samuel stood waiting for them.
Adam saw a big man, bearded like a patriarch, his graying hair stirring in the air like thistledown.
His cheeks above his beard were pink where the sun had burned his Irish skin. He wore a clean blue
shirt, overalls, and a leather apron. His sleeves were rolled up, and his muscular arms were clean too.
Only his hands were blackened from the forge. After a quick glance Adam came back to the eyes, light
blue and filled with a young delight. The wrinkles around them were drawn in radial lines inward by
laughter.
“Louis,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. Even in the sweetness of our little heaven here, we like to
see our friends.” He smiled at Adam, and Louis said, “I brought Mr. Adam Trask to see you. He’s a
stranger from down east, come to settle.”
“I’m glad,” said Samuel. “We’ll shake another time. I wouldn’t soil your hand with these forge
hooks.”
“I brought some strap iron, Mr. Hamilton. Would you make some angles for me? The whole frame
of my header bed is fallen to hell.”
“Sure I will, Louis. Get down, get down. We’ll put the horses to the shade.”
“There’s a piece of venison behind, and Mr. Trask brought a little something.”
Samuel glanced toward the house. “Maybe we’ll get out the ‘little something’ when we’ve got the
rig behind the shed.”
Adam could hear the singing lilt of his speech and yet could detect no word pronounced in a
strange manner except perhaps in sharpened i’s and l’s held high on the tongue.
“Louis, will you out-span your team? I’ll take the vension in. Liza will be glad. She likes a venison
stew.”
“Any of the young ones home?”
“Well, no, they aren’t. George and Will came home for the week-end, and they all went last night
to a dance up Wild Horse Canyon at the Peach Tree school-house. They’ll come trooping back by
dusk. We lack a sofa because of that. I’ll tell you later—Liza will have a vengeance on them—it was
Tom did it. I’ll tell you later.” He laughed and started toward the house, carrying the wrapped deer’s
haunch. “If you want you can bring the ‘little something’ into the shop, so you don’t let the sun glint
on it.”
They heard him calling as he came near the house. “Liza, you’ll never guess. Louis Lippo has
brought a piece of venison bigger than you.”
Louis drove in back of the shed, and Adam helped him take the horses out, tie up the tugs, and
halter them in the shade. “He meant that about the sun shining on the bottle,” said Louis.
“She must be a holy terror.”
“No bigger than a bird but she’s brassbound.”
“ ‘Out-span,’ ” Adam said. “I think I’ve heard it said that way, or read it.”
Samuel rejoined them in the shop. “Liza will be happy if you will stay to dinner,” he said.
“She didn’t expect us,” Adam protested.
“Hush, man. She’ll make some extra dumplings for the stew. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Give
me your straps, Louis, and let’s see how you want them.”
He built a chip fire in the black square of the forge and pulled a bellows breeze on it and then fed
wet coke over with his fingers until it glowed. “Here, Louis,” he said, “wave your wing on my fire.
Slow, man, slow and even.” He laid the strips of iron on the glowing coke. “No, sir, Mr. Trask, Liza’s
used to cooking for nine starving children. Nothing can startle her.” He tongued the iron to more
advantageous heat, and he laughed. “I’ll take that last back as a holy lie,” he said. “My wife is
rumbling like round stones in the surf. And I’ll caution the both of you not to mention the word ‘sofa.’
It’s a word of anger and sorrow to Liza.”
“You said something about it,” Adam said.
“If you knew my boy Tom, you’d understand it better, Mr. Trask. Louis knows him.”
“Sure I know him,” Louis said.
Samuel went on, “My Tom is a hell-bent boy. Always takes more on his plate than he can eat.
Always plants more than he can harvest. Pleasures too much, sorrows too much. Some people are like
that. Liza thinks I’m like that. I don’t know what will come to Tom. Maybe greatness, maybe the
noose—well, Hamiltons have been hanged before. And I’ll tell you about that sometime.”
“The sofa,” Adam suggested politely.
“You’re right. I do, and Liza says I do, shepherd my words like rebellious sheep. Well, came the
dance at the Peach Tree school and the boys, George, Tom, Will, and Joe, all decided to go. And of
course the girls were asked. George and Will and Joe, poor simple boys, each asked one lady friend,
but Tom—he took too big a helping as usual. He asked two Williams sisters, Jennie and Belle. How
many screw holes do you want, Louis?”
“Five,” said Louis.
“All right. Now I must tell you, Mr. Trask, that my Tom has all the egotism and self-love of a boy
who thinks he’s ugly. Mostly lets himself go fallow, but comes a celebration and he garlands himself
like a maypole, and he glories like spring flowers. This takes him quite a piece of time. You notice the
wagon house was empty? George and Will and Joe started early and not so beautiful as Tom. George
took the rig, Will had the buggy, and Joe got the little two-wheeled cart.” Samuel’s blue eyes shone
with pleasure. “Well then, Tom came out as shy and shining as a Roman emperor and the only thing
left with wheels was a hay rake, and you can’t take even one Williams sister on that. For good or bad,
Liza was taking her nap. Tom sat on the steps and thought it out. Then I saw him go to the shed and
hitch up two horses and take the doubletree off the hay rake. He wrestled the sofa out of the house and
ran a fifth-chain under the legs—the fine goose-neck horsehair sofa that Liza loves better than
anything. I gave it to her to rest on before George was born. The last I saw, Tom went dragging up the
hill, reclining at his ease on the sofa to get the Williams girls. And, oh, Lord, it’ll be worn thin as a
wafer from scraping by the time he gets it back.” Samuel put down his tongs and placed his hands on
his hips the better to laugh. “And Liza has the smoke of brimstone coming out her nostrils. Poor
Tom.”
Adam said, smiling, “Would you like to take a little something?”
“That I would,” said Samuel. He accepted the bottle and took a quick swallow of whisky and
passed it back.
“Uisquebaugh—it’s an Irish word—whisky, water of life—and so it is.”
He took the red straps to his anvil and punched screw holes in them and bent the angles with his
hammer and the forked sparks leaped out. Then he dipped the iron hissing into his half-barrel of black
water. “There you are,” he said and threw them on the ground.
“I thank you,” said Louis. “How much will that be?”
“The pleasure of your company.”
“It’s always like that,” Louis said helplessly.
“No, when I put your new well down you paid my price.”
“That reminds me—Mr. Trask here is thinking of buying the Bordoni place—the old Sanchez
grant—you remember?”
“I know it well,” said Samuel. “It’s a fine piece.”
“He was asking about water, and I told him you knew more about that than anybody around here.”
Adam passed the bottle, and Samuel took a delicate sip and wiped his mouth on his forearm above
the soot.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” said Adam. “I’m just asking some questions.”
“Oh, Lord, man, now you’ve put your foot in it. They say it’s a dangerous thing to question an
Irishman because he’ll tell you. I hope you know what you’re doing when you issue me a license to
talk. I’ve heard two ways of looking at it. One says the silent man is the wise man and the other that a
man without words is a man without thought. Naturally I favor the second—Liza says to a fault. What
do you want to know?”
“Well, take the Bordoni place. How deep would you have to go to get water?”
“I’d have to see the spot—some places thirty feet, some places a hundred and fifty, and in some
places clear to the center of the world.”
“But you could develop water?”
“Nearly every place except my own.”
“I’ve heard you have a lack here.”
“Heard? Why, God in heaven must have heard! I’ve screamed it loud enough.”
“There’s a four-hundred-acre piece beside the river. Would there be water under it?”
“I’d have to look. It seems to me it’s an odd valley. If you’ll hold your patience close, maybe I can
tell you a little bit about it, for I’ve looked at it and poked my stinger down into it. A hungry man
gorges with his mind—he does indeed.”
Louis Lippo said, “Mr. Trask is from New England. He plans to settle here. He’s been west before
though—in the army, fighting Indians.”
“Were you now? Then it’s you should talk and let me learn.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not? God help my family and my neighbors if I had fought the Indians!”
“I didn’t want to fight them, sir.” The “sir” crept in without his knowing it.
“Yes, I can understand that. It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don’t know and don’t hate.”
“Maybe that makes it easier,” said Louis.
“You have a point, Louis. But some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there
are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.”
“I’d rather you told me about this land,” Adam said uneasily, for a sick picture of piled-up bodies
came into his mind.
“What time is it?”
Louis stepped out and looked at the sun. “Not past ten o’clock.”
“If I get started I have no self-control. My son Will says I talk to trees when I can’t find a human
vegetable.” He sighed and sat down on a nail keg. “I said it was a strange valley, but maybe that’s
because I was born in a green place. Do you find it strange, Louis?”
“No, I never been out of it.”
“I’ve dug into it plenty,” Samuel said. “Something went on under it—maybe still is going on.
There’s an ocean bed underneath, and below that another world. But that needn’t bother a farming
man. Now, on top is good soil, particularly on the flats. In the upper valley it is light and sandy, but
mixed in with that, the top sweetness of the hills that washed down on it in the winters. As you go
north the valley widens out, and the soil gets blacker and heavier and perhaps richer. It’s my belief
that marshes were there once, and the roots of centuries rotted into the soil and made it black and
fertilized it. And when you turn it up, a little greasy clay mixes and holds it together. That’s from
about Gonzales north to the river mouth. Off to the sides, around Salinas and Blanco and Castroville
and Moss Landing, the marshes are still there. And when one day those marshes are drained off, that
will be the richest of all land in this red world.”
“He always tells what it will be like someday,” Louis threw in.
“Well, a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does.”
“If I’m going to settle here I need to know about how and what will be,” said Adam. “My children,
when I have them, will be on it.”
Samuel’s eyes looked over the heads of his friends, out of the dark forge to the yellow sunlight.
“You’ll have to know that under a good part of the valley, some places deep and others pretty near the
surface, there’s a layer called hard-pan. It’s a clay, hard-packed, and it feels greasy too. Some places it
is only a foot thick, and more in others. And this hard-pan resists water. If it were not there the winter
rains would go soaking down and dampen the earth, and in the summer it would rise up to the roots
again. But when the earth above the hard-pan is soaked full, the rest runs fresheting off or stands
rotting on top. And that’s one of the main curses of our valley.”
“Well, it’s a pretty good place to live, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, but a man can’t entirely rest when he knows it could be richer. I’ve thought that if you
could drive thousands of holes through it to let the water in, it might solve it. And then I tried
something with a few sticks of dynamite. I punched a hole through the hard-pan and blasted. That
broke it up and the water could get down. But, God in heaven, think of the amount of dynamite! I’ve
read that a Swede—the same man who invented dynamite—has got a new explosive stronger and safer
Maybe that might be the answer.”
Louis said half derisively and half with admiration, “He’s always thinking about how to change
things. He’s never satisfied with the way they are.”
Samuel smiled at him. “They say men lived in trees one time. Somebody had to get dissatisfied
with a high limb or your feet would not be touching flat ground now.” And then he laughed again. “I
can see myself sitting on my dust heap making a world in my mind as surely as God created this one.
But God saw this world. I’ll never see mine except—this way. This will be a valley of great richness
one day. It could feed the world, and maybe it will. And happy people will live here, thousands and
thousands—” A cloud seemed to come over his eyes and his face set in sadness and he was silent.
“You make it sound like a good place to settle,” Adam said. “Where else could I raise my children
with that coming?”
Samuel went on, “There’s one thing I don’t understand. There’s a blackness on this valley. I don’t
know what it is, but I can feel it. Sometimes on a white blinding day I can feel it cutting off the sun
and squeezing the light out of it like a sponge.” His voice rose. “There’s a black violence on this
valley. I don’t know—I don’t know. It’s as though some old ghost haunted it out of the dead ocean
below and troubled the air with unhappiness. It’s as secret as hidden sorrow. I don’t know what it is,
but I see it and feel it in the people here.”
Adam shivered. “I just remembered I promised to get back early. Cathy, my wife, is going to have
a baby.”
“But Liza’s getting ready.”
“She’ll understand when you tell her about the baby. My wife is feeling poorly. And I thank you
for telling me about the water.”
“Have I depressed you with my rambling?”
“No, not at all—not at all. It’s Cathy’s first baby and she’s miserable.”
Adam struggled all night with his thoughts and the next day he drove out and shook hands with
Bordoni and the Sanchez place was his.
