“There’s a storm coming,” he said to the tree. “I know I can’t escape it. But you, sir, you might know how to protect us from the storm.”
For a long time he stood, moving his fingers nervously on the black bark. “This thing is growing strong,” he thought. “I began it because it comforted me when my father was dead, and now it is grown so strong that it overtops nearly everything. And still it comforts me.”
He walked to the barbecue pit and brought back a piece of meat that remained on the grate. “There,” he said, and reaching high up, laid the meat in the crotch of the tree. “Protect us if you can,” he begged. “The thing that’s coming may destroy us all.” He was startled by footsteps near to him.
Burton’s voice said, “Joseph, is it you?”
“Yes. It’s late. What do you want?”
Burton advanced and stood close. “I want to talk to you, Joseph. I want to warn you.”
“This is no time,” Joseph said sullenly. “Talk to me tomorrow. I’ve been out to look at the horses.”
Burton did not move. “You are lying, Joseph. You think you have been secret, but I have watched you. I’ve seen you make offerings to the tree. I’ve seen the pagan growth in you, and I come to warn you.” Burton was excited and his breath came quick. “You saw the wrath of God this afternoon warning the idolaters. It was only a warning, Joseph. The lightning will strike next time. I’ve seen you creeping out to the tree, Joseph, and I’ve remembered Isaiah’s words. You have left God, and His wrath will strike you down.” He paused, breathless from the torrent of emotion, and the anger died out of him. “Joseph,” he begged, “come to the barn and pray with me. Christ will receive you back. Let us cut down the tree.”
But Joseph swung away from him and shook off the hand that was put out to restrain him. “Save yourself, Burton,” he laughed shortly. “You’re too serious, Burton. Now go to bed. Don’t interfere with my games. Keep to your own.” He left his brother standing there, and crept back into the house.
17
THE spring came richly, and the hills lay deep in grass— emerald green, the rank thick grass; the slopes were sleek and fat with it. Under the constant rains the river ran sturdily on, and its sheltering trees bowed under the weight of leaves and joined their branches over the river so that it ran for miles in a dim cavern. The farm buildings took a deep ‘weathering in the wet winter; the pale moss started on the northerly roofs; the manure piles were crowned with forced grass.
The stock, sensing a great quantity of food shooting up on the sidehills, increased the bearing of young. Rarely did so many cows have two calves as during that spring. The pigs littered and there were no runts. In the barn only a few horses were tied, for the grass was too sweet to waste.
When April came, and warm grass-scented days, the flowers burdened the hills with color, the poppies gold and the lupines blue, in spreads and comforters. Each variety kept to itself and splashed the land with its color. And still the rain fell often, until the earth was spongy with moisture. Every depression in the ground became a spring, and every hole a well. The sleek little calves grew fat and were hardly weaned before their mothers received the bulls again.
Alice went home to Nuestra Señora and bore her son and brought it back to the ranch with her.
In May the steady summer breeze blew in from the sea, with salt and the faint smell of kelp. It was a springtime of work for the men. All the flat lands about the houses grew black under the plows, and the orderly, domestic seed sprouted the barley and the wheat. The vegetable-flat bore so copiously that only the finest fattest vegetables were taken for the kitchens, the pigs received every turnip of questionable shape and every imperfect carrot. The ground squirrels came out to squeak in their doorways, and they were fatter in the spring than fall usually found them. Out on the hills the foals tried practice leaps and fought among themselves while their dams looked on amusedly. When the warm rains fell, the horses and cows no longer sought the protection of the trees, but continued eating while the water streamed down their sides and made them as glossy as lacquer.
In Joseph’s house there was a quiet preparation for the birth. Elizabeth worked on the layette for her baby, and the other women, well-knowing that this would be the chief child of the ranch and the inheritor of power, came to sit with her and to help. They lined a wash basket with quilted satin, and Joseph set it on rockers. They hemmed more rough diapers than one child could ever use. They made long baby-dresses and embroidered them. They told Elizabeth that she was having an easy time, for she was rarely ill; in fact, she grew more robust and happy as the time went by. Rama taught her how to quilt the cover for the lying-in bed, and Elizabeth made it as carefully as though it were to last her life, instead of being burned immediately after the child was born. Because this was Joseph’s child, Rama added an unheard-of elegance. She made a thick velvet rope, with a loop on either end, to slip over the bed-posts. No other woman had pulled on anything but a twisted sheet during the bearing pains.
When warm weather came the women sat on the porch in the warm sun and went on with the sewing. They prepared everything months too soon. The heavy piece of unbleached muslin that was to bind Elizabeth’s hips was made, and fringed and laid away. The small pillows stuffed with duck feathers and all the quilted coverlets were ready by the first of June.
And there was endless talk of babies—how they were born, and all the accidents that might occur, and how the memory of the pain fades from a woman’s mind, and how boys differ from girls in their earliest habits. There was endless anecdote. Rama could recount stories of children born with tails, with extra limbs, with mouths in the middle of their backs; but these were not frightening because Rama knew why such things were. Some were the results of drink, and some of disease, but the worst, the very worst monstrosities came of conception during a menstrual period.
Joseph walked in sometimes with grass-blades in the laces of his shoes and green grass stains on the knees of his jeans and sweat still shining on his forehead. He stood stroking his beard and listening to the talk. Rama appealed to him occasionally for corroboration.
Joseph was working tremendously in the prodigal spring. He cut the bull calves, moved rocks out of the flowers way, and went out with his new branding-iron to burn his “JW” into the skins of the stock. Thomas and Joseph worked silently together, stringing the barbed-wire fences out around the land, for it was easy to dig post-holes in a wet spring. Two more vaqueros were hired to take care of the increasing stock.
In June the first heat struck heavily and the grass responded and added a foot to its growth. But with the breathless days, Elizabeth grew sick and irritable. She made a list of things needed for the birth and gave it to Joseph. One morning before the sun was up he drove away in the buckboard to buy the things for her in San Luis Obispo. The trip and return required three days of traveling.
The moment he was gone, fears began to fall upon Elizabeth: Maybe he would be killed. The most unreasonable things seemed to possess verity. He might meet another woman and run off with her. The wagon might overturn in the white pass and throw him into the river.
She had not got up to see him off, but when the sun was up she dressed and went to sit on the porch. Everything irritated her, the noise of grasshoppers ticking as they flew, the pieces of rusty baling wire lying on the ground. The smell of ammonia from the barns nearly nauseated her. When she had seen and hated all the things close to her, she raised her eyes to the hills for more prey, and the first thing she saw was the pine grove on the ridge. Immediately a sharp nostalgia for Monterey assailed her, a homesickness for the dark trees of the peninsula, and for the little sunny streets and for the white houses and for the blue bay with colored fishing boats; but more than anything for the pines. The resinous odor of the needles seemed the most delicious thing in the world. She longed to smell it until her body ached with desire. And all the time she looked at the black pine grove on the ridge.