Last Light in Paradise – Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The man and the horse moved out of the pine trees, crossed open meadow for a quarter mile, then took the old farm road down past the big boulders of the dry river and came up into orchard. His name was Creek. He was riding the black thoroughbred named Spinnaker and liked how the horse was learning trail. For a neurotic speedball, the horse was learning to pay attention to the hilly world, fitting trust into his high-wire flat-track mind. Coming out of orange groves, Creek led Spinnaker down into a long gorge, followed it until it hit a culvert, then came up at the big road, El Camino Real, and pulled up. Spinnaker held as Creek stared out at the coming storm, the dark sea, and the bench of land beside it, where his ranch lay. He had failed at everything he’d tried since coming home. Failed at lima beans, at goats, at forgetting Europe, at fitting in. He smiled at the idea that Spinnaker might be his one triumphant exception.

The horse didn’t flinch as the wind gusted up from the sea and across the grass flats and only tilted his ears as Creek waited by the side of the road for the ’32 Plymouth to speed out of the horizon and shoot by them. He watched a boy whip around in the back seat, staring hard from the rear window. Creek tipped his hat, and the boy wheeled to say something to the driver then swung back and waved timidly before the green coupe turned and disappeared from view.

They love a cowboy, Creek thought, like nothing else. Even if he wasn’t a boy, had no cows, and shot nobody anymore, and rarely ever had on a draw. No image in America lived shorter or lasted longer or stayed in a boy’s mind brighter, he thought. 

He looked back at the Remington 410 butt-up from its scabbard and wondered if the boy had seen it. Maybe that was it—a lone man on a horse made magnificent, maybe even noble in that high landscape, because of a shooter in a holster. 

And then, of course, the final folly of the cowboy myth pictured, a little north and across the two-lane road, on a towering billboard that announced the new movie Big Red Sunset, starring the glamorous Tom Horn. One hand gripped the mane of a white horse in full rear; the other embraced a soon-to-be-chosen starlet, fully pictured—except for her face. The movie would be the premier release out of the four-square-mile coastal theme park and production lot that would soon prove that Hollywood, in the year 1934, was not the only town that made the movies. 

The sign seemed monolithic in its Technicolor tints against the dun grass of so much empty land. You had to drive another ten miles north before a giant lodge pole gate invited you into “Big West Pictures—The Mecca of Movies,” the golden goose that had pissed off and paid off four hard-bitten land barons for the sake of a holy vision of movies and prosperity intended to lift Santa Barbara County out of the deepening Depression. 

Creek held a moment longer, looking north and then south along the El Camino Real. It was a road he’d always loved. If you turned right, you could head north and make for San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and still farther on into Canada. Go left, and you could travel south into Los Angeles, or past it into the lands of Mexico. All that without leaving the one road. As he had crossed this morning, heading into the high range, he had seen a car come out of the north and lurch into the dirt apron beneath the movie billboard. A man had leaned out the window, shouted something, and then fired a gun at the billboard before speeding off. Now, as Creek crossed back, he tipped his hat at the Long Island glove salesman–become–matinee cowboy idol with a bullet in his forehead, thinking famous and handsome had its enemies. 

He followed the shoulder south toward two large palms, both wild in the wind, then turned Spinnaker seaward, passed through a fence break and rode onto open land. It was high ground, and the view involved nearly all of his ranch and, on a clear day, a vista east to the Ventura Coast and seaward to the distant Channel Islands. As he rode, he studied a dark speck far out to sea. It was increasing in size, and he shifted against the wind, thinking a boat in this weather was an unforgiving place in this world. He hoped her captain
was seaworthy. 

He smiled to feel Spinnaker glide up a gear as they came into the trees that marked the broad slope of the sixty acres he had survived a war to come home to, make a life from, and step away from the policing world for. As they rode in, both man and horse felt the storm rising in the racket of branches and tin roofs and the hundred groans of old wire, nails, and dry wood that are the living system of any ranch. 

The road entered his land along the north border for half a mile, twisted through poplar, magnolia, and sycamore groves, then crossed a half dozen outbuildings, every one sun- and wind-wrecked and placed by the prior owner with a baffling logic Creek had yet to decipher. Finally, they turned for the main house below, nestled in a copse of trees facing the sea. 

The effect of it all gave both a ramshackle and an elegant introduction to his simple house, where the road finished in a roundabout. Towering above the house stood an ancient palm whose shadow, on sunny days, traveled the grounds like a sundial. In a strange moment, the sun broke from behind black clouds and the slight palm shadow flashed along his yard, and then it was gone. Many years later, whenever he thought of the Indian boy Pony and the events that followed, he saw that haunting shadow like an ominous scar creeping across his land. 

The house was set in a nest of eucalyptus and oak, with desert cactus and bougainvillea scattered around it and enough sun usually splashing through to make it a cheerful place. It had a plain, western elegance and felt like it could stand up to any southeaster that might blow in past the islands or wild Santa Ana howling down the Mission range behind it to the north. Its porch and windows looked out at a long, broad slope of open land that was hard soil—sometimes sparse, sometimes plush with golden oat grass—and tilted at about a railroad grade of seven percent a few hundred yards down to the sea.

His horse fed and watered, Creek took his Southern Comfort and a pair of binoculars to the porch. He positioned the big chair to face the ocean, put his boots to the wood rail, and took a deep drink, feeling fully entitled to the slow burn through chilled limbs as the liquor spread. This solace after returning home safely from storm, from Europe, from war—Norman called it the “Big Lazy.”

Now burrowed into the chair, Creek stared seaward at the small speck, still miles out but growing. Even with the field glasses, all he could make out was a rough idea of a boat. But the longer he looked, the more certain he was that he had found the only boat within an entire horizon’s worth of bad seas, and that it was heading straight for him. 

He watched as the speck grew. What he could see through the glasses was beamy, with a high freeboard, big water at the bow, and a trail of diesel-smudge following. Whitecaps were cresting from five- to ten-foot swells, and based on its approach, it was likely the island boat from Santa Rosa. 

He had a bad feeling in all this. It was Sunday. The stock boat only came on Fridays, when it came at all. And never in seas so large. 

He waited until he was certain it was the barge-wide cattle boat and that it was empty of men and livestock. He studied the sky. It still had storm in it, but the wind could change that. A bad business, he thought, and when he glassed John Penbrook standing in the bridge next to Harvey, he knew he was probably right. It took an act of Congress to get the old man off his sea-bound ranch.

Creek figured they were twenty minutes out, which gave him a moment to think on the nagging warning he felt building in his gut. Still, when a friend came calling, he would answer. So, he went inside and made coffee, filled two thermoses, put on his thick range coat and walked down to the dock to meet them.

He wondered if it was a cowboy who might have caught a hook from a hind shoe, or maybe one of the old women who had “kitchened” at the ranch since the last century. Creek wondered what they did with the bodies when someone died out there, thirty miles from the mainland. Penbrook was a good padrone, fair and kind and cared for by his people, which made for a happy lot. Creek couldn’t imagine there being any foul play. 

As the boat neared, Creek readied to take the lines. The steel-hulled tug rolled off its throttle, the props hit the water in reverse, and the pilot put the fenders next to Creek’s dock like a duck brushing up to its mate. Penbrook was now topside and threw the first line to Creek. 

“Only here for an hour or so,” the old man shouted above the engine. 

Creek studied the man’s face and nodded. He roped the cleat with enough slack to settle as the tide settled, a foot to the hour. He walked aft, took the second toss and fastened it off with the same leeway. He looked up at Harvey, the pilot, and showed him the thermos.

“You gonna hide out up there?” Creek yelled.

Harvey smiled and nodded, so Penbrook took the thermos and handed it up to him. At seventy, Penbrook was still fluid. No wasted moves, no hobble or hidden groans. He had loved the things of his life for a lot of years and so ruled his ranch from gentleness rather than bossiness. You wanted him to sit with you, smoke a pipe, and tell stories. You wanted to see that sun-wizened face come to smile at a good telling, a hallmark of his always dry humor when recounting the follies of the business.

But Creek saw the sadness in the old man’s eyes and silently offered his hand. Penbrook gripped it and stepped over the gate rail onto the dock. He nodded toward the main house, and the two men walked up in silence.

The inside of Creek’s home was plain, though the windows were large. Creek had brought very few things to fill it. The kitchen had a table with some red in it and a couple of chairs. The bedroom had a bed, a wood chair, a Hopi rug, and a single dresser. Not a mirror, painting, or suit in the place. The living room had two chairs designed for comfort, a couple of boxes for footrests, and little more. Norman had said Creek was slow to come home and just as slow to stay.

When they were seated, Creek said, “Looked cold out there, you want a bite of whiskey?”

Penbrook thought about it, moved his body to shift some kind of thought, and said, “Yup. I think I’d like that.”

When the old man had a couple of sips in him to settle the crossing, he looked up and into Creek’s eyes. The younger man could hear the blow outside rising and worried about the return crossing. Whatever had happened had taken something out of the old man.

“Goddamn, I don’t think I can do it.”

Creek let that sit for a bit, then asked, “Do what, John?”

“I came here to borrow your truck, but the steel just went out of me.”

“What do you need, old friend?”

“Damnedest thing,” Penbrook said. “Our boy come across last week to do his errands and didn’t come back. Not a phone call, not a message. Many years of, well, one way of doing things, then this. I figured something happened, Creek. So, I was gonna ask you to look for him. He always liked you.”

“This is Pony, the Indian boy?” Creek asked, and John nodded.

Creek said, “What ‘one way of doing things,’ John?”

“Well, about twice a month or so, he would ride over with some of the boys, pick up some garden things, play a little poker, do whatever else, I wouldn’t know. Mostly, come right back, even when the boys stayed on a day or two.”

“How long he been gone?”

“A week.”

“What’s the sheriff say?”

“Not much.”

“Why’s that?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Why’s that, John?”

“Well, the man’s Indian. It’s like asking if you seen an ant on the road to Frisco. Law has one love in this town: my wealthy fellows. Rest don’t even get seen, ’cept when they’re placing coffee on a table or weeding the begonias in the backyard.”

Creek looked out to sea, sensing what was coming.

The sky had darkened, and Creek knew Harvey would wish to stay aboard his ship, that neither man would wish to face the gathering squall on a dark night.

“Sonora know you’re here for the night?”

“We’ll see. I came more for her than for me. She raised that boy. Not knowing where he’s been—it’s got her bedridden.”

John stood then, but his knees threatened to buckle, so he sat again and put his head in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes had as much begging as hurt in them.

“I know some of what you did over there. You were a bigger damn deal than you’ve let on, Creek. I heard they offered you a bunch of money to come to Washington. Army don’t usually beg. President don’t usually ask personally. You must a been very good at what you did, young man. And, to the point, you must have had your fill of unpleasantness, to walk away from it all.”

He looked at Creek, and Creek couldn’t look back. He felt good and bad in the same moment. Good that someone knew part of the story, bad that by not explaining the rest he looked like a man who might have shirked his duty.

“Creek. Fix me another and let me tell you why I come. I know you’re gonna say yes because of Sonora, but it ain’t easy to ask.”

“You come to ask would I find your ranch hand.”

“No. I come for something worse.”

Creek stared at him, then went to the kitchen and poured a fat thimble of liquor, delivered it gently and watched John close his eyes, as if making some private resolve before taking a sip to help him say the thing that was stuck behind his watery eyes.

“He’s on a beach. Down in Montecito,” John said.

“He get drunk, then get rolled?”

“Sheriff said it was a fishing accident.”

“Don’t remember him being so fond of the ocean.”

“Well, he got himself a boat, I guess.”

“How bad is he?” Creek asked. “And how did you hear about it?”

“Chief Wade, he called. Few hours ago.”

“Why didn’t you just call me?”

“No. I come thinking I could do it, but I lost my courage on the crossing. Creek, that boy’s been as much son as if he had been born to us. Right from the day Sonora found him.”

Everybody remembered Charlie Russell, called only “Pony” because he was short and rode a pony his whole life. Tender of the lighthouse, tender of the garden, tender of every loose beast on the eighty square miles of wild island. Only Indian in a sea of raggedy whites and Mexicans and some island wives, he was mostly private, with warm eyes, a warm smile, a game leg, and the burden of very old heartache.

John cleared his throat. “Somehow,” he said, “he got tangled up in wires and his body’s down there.”

Creek tried to picture this and couldn’t. 

“Christ, John. What do you mean?”

“That’s what I know.”

“Is he cut bad, John, or is he cut dead?”

“He’s dead, Creek. All heaped up on the beach, they say. No shirt, just a heap in the sand. But this ain’t the reason I can’t go by myself.”

Creek waited, not wanting to hear. This was everything he had left behind, rushing back, carried into his house by a man he’d idolized since childhood. When John wouldn’t come back from his silence, Creek put his hand on his shoulder.

“His head,” John said, his voice suddenly feeble. “He’s on the beach but his head ain’t. They can’t find the boy’s head, for God’s sake.”

Creek watched as the old man’s shoulders began to quiver, his eyes looking up at Creek, imploring and baffled and innocent as a child’s because he could not imagine a thing so awful or evil. And, who better than this ambulance driver from the Great War to somehow explain it.

“You loved him, John,” Creek said. “You both loved him like a son.” 

“Yes.”

“So I got to ask: This was an accident? Someone said that?”

“Caught up in some rigging. A wire or something. He was never much at the cowboy part. Had every gift, but not the mechanical.”

“The police still there, at the beach?”

“Yes. Someone. Said they’d post a man.”

“I’ll go see him,” Creek said. “You don’t need to. It won’t do any good for you to do that. Just tell me, how do they know it’s Pony?”

“They know, Creek.”

“Okay.”

“They do.”

“But how?”

“Got a block of ink work on his back. Chinese art. When he heard you come back with one, he got one for himself. You know how he was. He worshipped you.” Creek stood and went into the bedroom. He pulled out the gun and holster and the old wallet from his desk. He went past John into the kitchen and took the big range coat back off the hook in the mudroom. He’d never known about the tattoo. He walked over to John and stood by him.

“That phone there,” Creek nodded toward it. “You call the precinct and tell Wade to keep people wide of the site. If I think it necessary, I will ask for an autopsy. There’s a few hours of daylight left. Will you do this, John?”

John shook his head vehemently. “Jesus Creek. No. It’s nothin’ like that. It’s just an accident, a bad one. Wade’s been a cop forever. Boat ain’t nothin’ but a basket full a trouble, full of knives and booms and haywire rigging. Pony just had a fucked-up bad spill is all. Boy never should have been out there. Not his world, the water. Everybody ever met him only loved him. Christ, Creek. Nobody born to woman could do such a thing. Just get him, Creek. Just bring him home.”

“All right. Then make a call, so we’ll have a wagon and some men. They might have to take the body, keep it until tomorrow.”

“Goddamn if I can’t make myself go with you.”

Creek stood at the door, hand to the knob, looking out at the late afternoon light. “Rain’s going to come hard when it comes,” he said.

John nodded, knowing.

“You and Harvey sleep here tonight. Leave the crossing till daylight.”

“Harvey won’t leave the boat.”

“Yup. But he ought to, if it blows.”

“Best boatman on the Pacific.”

“Sonora know any of this?”

“Lord no. I think I might go back tonight, Creek. You find the rest of him, maybe you could box him up and bring him over tomorrow or the next day.”

Creek thought it a madness to return in such seas but said instead, “Okay. You stay till I get back? See how the water looks then?”

John nodded, stared up at him as if to say something but couldn’t.

“What are you thinking, John?”

“I’m thinking I didn’t prepare little Pony for the world.”

Creek couldn’t find any more words, so he went out into the wind, closing the door softly behind him, sore everywhere at the sight of the old man’s heartache. 

He drove the sea road trying to fathom how a man might lose his head in sea rigging, how this was sliding toward something he never wanted to go near again. The sky darkened. A few drops hit the windshield. He wanted to turn around, go back and change what John had told him. He wanted to go back before that, back far enough to change that day in New England when he decided to go to war. He remembered every detail of it. All these years later, he still wished he could change it. So, he thought of it now hoping for a better outcome.

In the spring of 1916, Creek had quietly withdrawn his name from the registrar of Yale University and boarded the ninety-four-foot schooner Traveler from Boston, to sail for the European war some three thousand miles and two weeks distant. He was abandoning the only spoken expectation his parents had held for him—the triumph of an eastern education. He was heading instead for a place he felt certain would bring as much redemption and adventure as the summer he’d spent ranching out on Santa Rosa Island.

And then, of course, life had brought him life, and he had survived and managed—after long years in Europe with the military—to come home.

He had purchased the ranch two years ago and come to live upon it four months back, in April of ’34, time enough to fail at goats and lima beans and fence-mending, at making any kind of a social life. He took another swallow of his travel drink and nodded, thinking of the killers and turncoats and bullies and dead men, and the worst—politicians he’d run up against. No more. He meant to stay fast to the land and close to the living and the simple.

He would put Pony back together, lug him in a box out to the island, and put him in the ground. Maybe stick a sign on his property that said, “I’m quit. For good.”  

Read Chapter Two of Last Light in Paradise here.