Beyond This Point Are Monsters

Chapter Two

the two cars moved slowly along the dirt road, the dust rising in the air behind them like smoke signals.

In the lead was the station wagon driven by Estivar. He was nearly fifty now, but his hair was still dark and thick, and from a distance his quick wiry body looked like a boy’s. He had dressed for the occasion in the only suit he possessed, a dark blue gabardine which he kept for the yearly banquets of the Agricultural Association and for his appearances before the immigration authorities when some of his men were picked up by the border patrol for having entered the country illegally.

The blue suit, which was intended to make him appear respectable and, hopefully, beyond reproach, merely emphasized his uneasiness, his mistrust of this latest turn of events. If there was to be official recognition of Robert Osborne’s death, it should take place not in court but in church, with prayers and pleadings and long somber words intoned by gray-faced priests.

Estivar had brought his wife, Ysobel, with him for moral support and because she refused to stay home. She was a mestiza, half-Indian, with high red-bronze cheekbones and flat black eyes that looked blind and missed nothing. She held her neck rigid and her body erect, refusing to surrender to the motion of the car.

In the seat behind Ysobel, Dulzura sat sideways and stretched her legs out straight in front of her in order to save her stockings at the knees. She wore a giant of a dress, with dwarf horses galloping around the hem and across the pockets. She’d purchased the dress for a weekend trip to the races in Agua Caliente, but the man who proposed the trip failed to show up. The only time Dulzura felt bitter about his defection was when she thought of the money she might have won.

“Five hundred pesos, maybe,” she said aloud to no one in particular. “That’s forty dollars.”

Beside Dulzura sat Lum Wing, the elderly Chinese who cooked for the men. He never associated with them, he merely arrived when they did, carrying a bag with his clothes in it and a padlocked wooden case containing his collection of knives, his whetstone sharpener and a chess set; and when the men left, he left, but not with them or even in the same direction if he could help it.

Lum Wing sucked on the stem of an unlit corncob pipe, wondering what exactly was expected of him. A man in uniform had handed him a piece of paper and told him he’d better show up, by God, or else. He had a premonition, based on some facts he thought no one else knew, that he would end up in jail. And when a good cook landed in jail, no one was ever in a hurry to set him free, that much he’d learned from experience. Out of nervousness he’d been swallowing air all morning and every now and then the excess would escape in a long loud burp.

Ysobel spoke to her husband in Spanish. “Tell him to stop making those disgusting noises.”

“He can’t help it.”

“Do you suppose he’s sick?”

“No.”

“It seems to me he looks more yellow than the last time I saw him. Perhaps it’s contagious. I’m beginning not to feel so well myself.”

“Me too,” Dulzura said. “I think we should stop off at a place in Boca de Rio and have something to steady our nerves.”

“You know what she means by something. Not coffee, I can tell you. And wouldn’t it look splendid to have us walk into the courthouse with her reeling drunk.”

Estivar braked the car sharply and ordered them both to keep quiet, and the journey continued for a while in silence. Past the lemon groves sweet with the scent of blossoms, past the acres of stubble where the alfalfa had been cut, and the field of ripening pumpkins which Estivar’s youngest son, Jaime, had grown to take into Boca de Rio for Halloween jack-o’-lanterns and Thanksgiving pies.

Jaime was fourteen. He lay now on his stomach in the back of the station wagon, gnawing his right thumbnail and wondering if the kids at school knew where he was and what he had to do. Maybe they were already blowing it up into something wild like he was a friend of the fuzz. Word like that could put a guy down for the rest of his life.

It was the pumpkins that had done it to him. During the last week in October he had delivered some of them to school for the fair and the rest to a grocery store in Boca de Rio. The following Saturday Jaime was ordered by his father to take one of the small tractors and plow the pumpkin vines under. The machine turned up the butterfly knife in the southeast corner of the field. It was an elegant little knife with a double handle which opened like a pair of wings and folded back to reveal the blade in the middle. One of Jaime’s friends owned a butterfly knife. If you got the hang of it and practiced a lot in your spare time, the blade could be brought into striking position almost as fast as a switchblade, which was illegal.

Jaime was delighted with his find until he noticed the brownish crust around the hinges. He put the knife carefully down on the ground, wiped his hands on his jeans and went to tell his father.

South of Boca de Rio the road met the main highway that connected San Diego and Tijuana. The two cities, so dissimilar in sight and sound and atmosphere, were bound together by geography and economics, like stepsisters with completely different backgrounds forced to live together under the same roof.

Within a matter of minutes Estivar and the station wagon were lost in the heavy flow of traffic. Leo Bishop drove in the slow lane, both hands so tight on the steering wheel that his knuckle bones seemed ready to force their way out of his skin. He was a tall thin man in his early forties. There was about him an air of defeat and bewilderment, as though all the rules he’d learned in life were, one by one, being reversed.

If Dulzura’s youth was camouflaged by fat, Leo’s age was exaggerated by years of sun and wind. His red hair was bleached to the color of sand, his face was scarred over his cheekbones and across the bridge of his nose by repeated burns. He had light green eyes which he protected from the sun by squinting, so that when he moved into the shade and his facial muscles relaxed, fine white lines appeared below and at the corners of his eyes where the ultraviolet rays hadn’t reached. These lines gave him a curiously intense expression, which made some of the Mexicans whisper about mal ojo, evil eye, and azar, bad luck.

After his wife drowned in the river the whispers increased, he had trouble with his crews, equipment broke down, frost killed the grapefruit and damaged the date palms... mal ojo... demonios del muerte. He suspected Estivar of encouraging the rumors, but he never mentioned his suspicions to Devon. She would have trouble believing that evil eyes and demons were still part of Estivar’s world.

“Devon.”

“Yes?”

“It will soon be over.”

She stirred, unbelieving. “What time is it?”

“Ten after nine.”

“Mr. Ford said nothing would be settled today. Even if he manages to question all the witnesses, there’ll still be a delay while the judge goes over the evidence. He may not announce his decision for a week, it depends on how much other work he has.”

“At least your part will be over.”

She wasn’t sure what her part was going to be. The lawyer had instructed her not only to answer questions but to volunteer information whenever she felt like it, small personal things, homely things, that would help to show Robert as he really was. “We want to make him come alive,” Ford said. He did not apologize for the ill-chosen phrase; he seemed to be testing her composure to see if it would hold up in court.

The road had turned west toward San Diego Bay. Sail boats moved gently in the water like large white butterflies that had dipped down to drink. At the edge of the bay a thin strand of beach, wet from the ebbing tide and silvered by the sun, held back the open sea.

“You’d better let me off half a block or so from the courthouse,” Devon said. “Mrs. Osborne thinks we shouldn’t be seen together.”

“Why?”

“People might talk.”

“Would that matter?”

“It would to her.”

They drove for a while without speaking. In the bay the sailboats gave way to navy vessels, the white butterflies to gray steel waterbugs with ferocious-looking antennae and weird superstructures.

“After this is over,” Leo said, “you won’t have to be quite so concerned about Agnes Osborne’s opinions. She’ll be your ex-mother-in-law. Tomorrow, the day after, next week, you’ll be a free agent.”

She repeated the phrase to herself, liking the sound of it. Widow was a word of loss and sorrow. Free agent suggested the future. “And what do free agents do, Leo?”

“They make choices.”

For Devon it had been a year without choices, a year when all decisions were made by other people. She had paid the bills Estivar told her to, signed the papers the lawyer, Ford, put in front of her, answered the questions asked by Valenzuela, the policeman, eaten what Dulzura cooked, worn what Agnes Osborne suggested.

Soon the year would be officially over and the decisions would be hers. There would be no more brown sharkskin suits, no more chorizo and scrambled eggs hidden by chili powder; Valenzuela wasn’t even on the police force any longer; after the conclusion of probate there would be no reason to see Ford; she might sell the ranch, and then Estivar, too, would become part of the past.

Ysobel leaned forward to stare at the speedometer. “So we are in a race.” Her voice was heavy with irony. “It is news to me that they hold races on the highway.”

“The speed limit is sixty-five,” Estivar said. “I have to keep up with the traffic.”

“You’d think we were going to something nice like a fiesta the way you’re in such a hurry to arrive. Mr. Bishop has more sense. He is miles behind us, and why not? He knows there’s no prize waiting at the other end.”

Estivar, who’d been in a sour mood all morning, suddenly let out a harsh, brief laugh. “You could be wrong about that.”

“Hush. Someone might hear you and start putting two and two together.”

She was not worried about Jaime, who seemed most of the time to be stone-deaf, or about Lum Wing, whose only Spanish, as far as she knew, consisted of some dirty words and a few seldom-used amenities like buenos dias.

“You should be careful to guard your tongue when Dulzura is listening,” Ysobel added. “She is a born gossip.”

Dulzura opened her mouth in exaggerated amazement. It was not true she was a gossip, born or otherwise. She told nobody nothing, mainly because in such a godforsaken place there was nobody to tell except the people who already knew. She wondered what prize could be waiting for Mr. Bishop and how much it was worth and whether she should ask young Mrs. Osborne about it.

“The little Señora,” Ysobel said more softly. “Is that what you mean by prize?”

“What else?”

“She would never marry him. He is too old.”

“There isn’t exactly a line-up at her door.”

“Not yet. She is still by law a married woman and cultivated people are very particular about such things. Just wait, after today there will be men enough, young men, too. But she’ll have none of them. She’ll sell the ranch and go back to the city.”

“How do you know?”

“I dreamt it last night. In color. When I went to the fortune teller in Boca de Rio, she said to pay strict attention to all dreams in color because good or bad they would come true... Have you been dreaming in color, Estivar?”

“No.”

“Oh well, it’s no matter. This is how it will be: the little Señora will sell the ranch and return to her own part of the country.”

“What about me?”

“The new owner will naturally be delighted to get a foreman with nearly twenty-five years of experience.”

“Was that in the dream too, about the new owner?”

“No. But maybe I didn’t watch closely enough. Tonight I will keep a sharp lookout for him standing in some corner.”

“If he looks like Bishop,” Estivar said grimly, “wake up fast.”

“Bishop has no money to buy the ranch.”

“He can marry it.”

“No, no, no. The Señora is sick of the place. She will go back to the city, like in my dream. I saw her walking between tall gray buildings, wearing a purple dress and flowers in her hair.”

Estivar’s bad mood was aggravated by the exchange with his wife. The next time Lum Wing burped, Estivar shouted at him to stop making those damned noises or get out and walk.

Lum Wing would have preferred to get out and walk, but the car didn’t stop to allow him to leave, and besides, there was that ominous piece of paper in his shirt pocket, you better show up, by God, or else... The old man was well aware that he had no control over his own fate. When other people were around, they decided what he should do. It was only when he was by himself that he had choices: solitaire or chess, lime in his gin or lemon, or no gin at all but a dozen or so jimsen seeds. To ensure his privacy, and his times of choice, he had fixed up a corner of the building which was used as a mess hall when the workers were in residence. Between the stove and the cupboard he’d hung a double flannelette sheet borrowed from one of the bunks. After his day’s work was done he retired to his corner to play chess with imaginary partners who were very shrewd and merciless though not quite as shrewd and merciless as Lum Wing himself.

Half of the stove used butane as fuel, the other half used wood or coal. Even on warm nights Lum Wing kept a small fire going with bits of old lumber, or limbs pruned from the trees or blown off in windstorms. He liked the busy but impersonal noise of the burning wood. It helped cover what came out of the darkness on the other side of his flannelette wall — whispers, grunts, snatches of conversation, laughter.

Lum Wing tried to ignore these common sounds of common people and to keep his mind fixed on the ivory silence of kings and queens and knights. But there were times when in spite of himself he recognized a voice in the dark, and when this happened he made tiny plugs out of pieces of paper and pushed them as far into his ears as he could. He knew curiosity killed more men than cats.

He swallowed and regurgitated another mouthful of air.

“...probably his liver,” Ysobel said. “I have been told there are many contagious diseases of the liver.” She took a handkerchief out of her purse and held it tight against her nose and mouth. Her sharp voice was muffled: “Jaime! Do you hear me, Jaime? Answer your mother.”

“Answer your mother, Jaime,” Dulzura said obligingly. “Hey, wake up.”

Jaime’s eyelids twitched slightly. “I’m awake.”

“Well, answer your mother.”

“So I’m answering. What’s she want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask her.”

Dulzura leaned over the front seat. “He wants to know what do you want?”

“Tell him not to let that Chinaman breathe in his face.”

“She says don’t let the Chinaman breathe in your face.”

“He’s not breathing in my face.”

“Well, if he tries, don’t let him.”

Jaime closed his eyes again. The old lady was getting kookier every day. Personally, he hoped he’d be lucky like Mr. Osborne and die before he got senile.

On the courthouse steps pigeons preened in the sun and walked up and down, looking important like uniformed guards. Beside one of the colonnades Devon saw her lawyer, Franklin Ford, surrounded by half a dozen men. He caught her eye, gave her a quick warning glance and turned away again. As she went past she heard him speaking in his soft slow voice, enunciating each syllable very distinctly as though he were addressing a group of foreigners or idiots:

“...bear in mind that this is a non-adversary proceeding. It is not being opposed by an insurance company, for instance, with a large policy to pay out on Robert Osborne’s life, or by a relative who’s not satisfied with the disposition of Mr. Osborne’s estate. The amount of Mr. Osborne’s insurance is negligible, consisting of a small policy taken out by his parents when he was a child. The terms of his will are clearly stated and have not been challenged; and of his survivors, his wife petitioned the court for this hearing and his mother concurred. So our purpose in today’s hearing is to establish the fact of Robert Osborne’s death and to prove as conclusively as possible how and why and when and where it occurred. Nobody has been accused, nobody is on trial.”

As Devon went into the building she wondered which came closer to the truth, Ford’s “Nobody is on trial,” or Agnes Osborne’s “Of course we are on trial, all of us.”

The door of courtroom number five was open and the spectators’ benches were nearly full. On the right side near the windows Agnes Osborne sat by herself. She wore a blue hat that perched like a jay on her careful blond curls, and a ribbon knit dress the same dark gray as her eyes. If she felt that she was on trial, she gave no sign of it. Her face was expressionless except for one corner of her mouth fixed in a half-smile, as though she was mildly, even a little contemptuously, amused by the situation and the company she found herself in. It was her public face. Her private one was uncertain, disordered, often blotched with tears and mottled with rage.

She watched Devon walk toward her down the aisle, thinking how incongruous she looked in this place of violence and death. Devon should still be wandering around the halls of some college with other nice mousy girls and earnest pimply boys. I must be kinder to her, I must try harder to like her. It’s my fault she’s here.

Mrs. Osborne had thought that if she sent Robert away from the ranch for a couple of months, the scandal about Ruth Bishop’s death would blow over. It was a double error. His absence merely intensified the gossip, and when he returned he brought Devon with him as his wife. Agnes was shocked and hurt. She wanted her son to get married eventually, of course, but not at twenty-three, not to this odd little creature from another part of the world. “Robert, why? Why did you do it?” “Why not? The girl loves me, she thinks I’m great. How about that!”

Devon leaned over and the two women touched cheeks briefly. There was an air of finality about the cool embrace, as if both of them knew it would be one of the last.

At the back of the courtroom, sitting between his father and Dulzura, Jaime was like a patient coming out of an anesthetic and discovering that his moving parts could still move. He did a couple of secret isometric exercises, cleared his throat, hummed a few bars of a TV commercial — “Shut up,” Estivar said — stuck another piece of gum in his mouth, pulled up his socks, cracked his knuckles — “Stop that!” — scratched his ear, rubbed one side of his jaw, pushed the greasy stump of a comb through his hair — “For God’s sake, sit still, will you?”

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest and sat still except for the swinging of a foot against the bench in front and the practically inaudible grinding of his teeth. The scene was different from what he’d expected. He’d thought there would be a lot of fuzz hanging around. But in the whole courtroom only one cop was in sight, an old guy of thirty-five having a drink at the water cooler.

The judge’s bench and the jury box were both empty. Between them a large drawing had been set up on an easel. Even by narrowing his eyes to slits and using all his powers of concentration, Jaime couldn’t make out the contents of the drawing. Maybe it was left over from yesterday or last week and had nothing to do with Mr. Osborne. In spite of the cool act Jaime put on for his friends and the somnolent pose he assumed within the family circle, he still had the lively curiosity of a child.

He whispered to Dulzura, “Hey, move over so I can get out.”

“Where you going?”

“Out, is all.”

“You can get past.”

“I can’t. You’re too fat.”

“You’re one fresh little big-mouth kid,” Dulzura said and heaved herself up and into the aisle.

Casually, hands in pockets, Jaime walked to the front of the courtroom and sat down in the first row of benches. The cop had turned away from the water cooler and was watching him as though he suspected Jaime might pull a caper. Jaime tried to look like the kind of guy who could pull a caper if he wanted to but didn’t feel like it at the moment.

The drawing on the easel was a map. What had appeared from the back of the room to be a road was the riverbed which marked the east and southeast boundaries of the ranch. The little triangles were trees, indicating the lemon orchard on the west, on the northeast the avocado grove, and on the north the rows of date palms with grapefruit growing in the shade between. The circle showed the location of the reservoir; and the rectangles, each of them lettered, were buildings: the ranch house itself, the mess hall, the bunkhouse and storage sheds, the garage for all the mechanized equipment and, on the other side of the garage, the house where Jaime lived with his family.

“Are you looking for something, fellow?” the cop said.

“No. I mean, no, sir. I was just studying the map. It shows where I live. The square marked C, that’s my house.”

“No kidding.”

“I’m a witness in the case.”

“Is that a fact.”

“I was driving the tractor when suddenly I looked down on the ground and there was this knife lying there.”

“Well, well, well. You’d better go back to your seat. The judge is coming in and he likes things tidy.”

“Don’t you want to know what kind of knife it was?”

“I can wait. I have to sit through the whole thing anyway, I’m the bailiff.”

The clerk of the court, a young man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue serge suit, got up and made the first of his four daily announcements: “Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of San Diego is now in session, Judge Porter Gallagher presiding. Please be seated.”

The clerk took his place at the table he shared with the bailiff. The hearing of probate petitions was usually the dullest of all judicial procedures, but this one promised to be different. Before putting it aside to file, he read part of the petition again.