The Golden State: A Novel Read online

  Honey is the only small child here except for a very young baby sleeping in a Snugli, and Honey is starting to rustle and moan. I do my customary calculation of suffering whereas X is the suffering of those around me and Y is the suffering of Honey and Z is the suffering of me, and I assess each component suffering as it is affected by the available scenarios, where A is taking her out and wheeling her back to the house toward the looming dark to sit on the porch under the enormous purple sky with her morose mother drinking screwdrivers, and B is staying here and observing democracy taking place as is her and my constitutional right. I find yes, another string cheese in my bag, and peel it open and give it to her and pick her up and bounce her and together we cast an eye at the Board of Supervisors.

  The Board is six people, four men and two women, white like the assemblage of people filling the space in front of them. One of the supervisors I recognize; she was in Rodney’s class in school I think and then went down below to get a business degree and start some kind of import-export thing with her husband in one of Sacramento’s sprawling suburbs. At some point she came back up home and took up residence on her family’s ancient ranch, where she breeds border collies. I am considering what might have compelled her to leave her Granite Bay McMansion her local-interest fundraisers her cardiobarre to come back to Altavista to live. Her name is Cheryl Clabbers and I only know anything about her because Mom used to get the Paiute Recorder even in Sacramento and they ran a profile thing when Clabbers came back, wherein Clabbers said she was “born Republican” and talked about her dog-breeding concern. For some reason these tidbits killed us. All the way up until Mom died I could say “Seen Clabbers lately?” and she’d laugh helplessly.

  There is a lot of shuffling and clearing of throats and one of the male supervisors ventures a modest joke. “I wonder what the big crowd’s here for,” he says, and everyone laughs but particularly Clabbers, who has a laugh like a brass bell being struck. “So let’s go ahead and get started,” he says. “I’m sure we’re all eager to get to the main event.

  “First I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak. We’re going to do things the right way here and everyone is going to get a chance. If you do want to speak you got to fill out one of the comment cards. Everyone has three minutes and we do have the clock here to keep track.” Honey is grabbing at my thumb and pulling it up to her mouth as though to kiss it. I smooch back on her and she hugs my neck and there’s some preliminaries I miss and then Bruce McNamara strides up. He’s a nice-looking man, a man’s man, the upper end of middle age with trim hips and a slight paunch and aquiline nose bristly hair and jeans and plaid shirt impeccably tucked. He says “I was born here in the North State in the forties and anyone who was here knows it was a paradise back then. There was no better place in the entire world to live. We had booming industries. We had wonderful schools. We minded our own business.” Honey, who has been rapt since he began speaking in his big rich voice, starts pointing and saying “Hey! Hey! Hey!” and the room looks at me and I do a little wave and try to appear worthy of a modicum of indulgence and pity.

  Clabbers is sitting up at the podium with her fake smile, very coiffed, very white teeth and power suit along with her colleagues, who are all over fifty and don’t seem to be suffering from the general physical and spiritual malaise as the other residents of Altavista I’ve seen here and there on the streets. Maybe they live out of town, in big spreads out in one of the valleys where the grasses are green and the air is sweet. They drive down below to Reno once a month to do their big shop at the Costco and they go over the border to Oregon for their above-standard health care and they have life insurance and homeowner’s insurance and boats to put on the lakes and snowmobiles to put on the winter snows, and they are rooted and prosperous and friendly but apparently mad as hell about something.

  Based on the quality of her noises which are calm but rising in volume I feel that Honey is in the vanishingly rare frame of mind and body when she might actually go to sleep in the stroller rather than just lying there gaping up through the stroller window at the sky or the fluorescent light until she panics and screams and struggles to get out. And people have been flowing into the room and the crowd has actually become so large as to encroach on our patch of territory at the back. So I take her off my knee where she is still “hey hey hey”ing and put her back in the stroller, and while another man is at the podium saying “We are an island now, controlled by a foreign government” I wheel her out whispering “’Scuze me ’scuze me sorry pardon me” and the people shuffle aside and smile at the baby and we wheel down the accessible ramp to the side of the courthouse stairs which is hey a federal intervention from which I am now benefitting.

  We go three circles around the courthouse which lets me admire what a beautiful little building it really is—they’ve painted the dome an odd bronze color but the rest is white and polished, probably some kind of veneer because underneath I’m guessing it’s that porous volcanic Paiute stone. And it’s got nice lines, neoclassical, short without being squat. Just the right size to stand out of the high desert as an edifice of colonial law and order. Things take a turn for the worse in its immediate environs with those too-wide streets. Somehow up here we missed the narrow Victorian niceties of the gold country, we’ve got no cozy saloons and our main street is so wide you can see two tumbleweeds ambling down it at the same time. The land is always trying to reassert itself or the people always trying to spread out.

  I have done one loop looking at the wide streets listening to something that is probably a frog and feeling the waning heat of the day but I see that Honey has her eyes closed and we head back to the ramp and haul open the big door of the courthouse and stand just outside of the meeting room from where a woman’s voice has slipped out to echo around in the dim hush of the rotunda.

  I see it’s an older woman, classic Altavista, short hair western shirt nice white pants, she could actually be my grandmother back from the dead, except that my grandmother loved being a Californian, loved going down to the cities, loved eating Crab Louie in San Francisco and tacos in San Diego and going to Los Angeles to visit her cowboy friends in the film lots. I can’t in my bones believe that she would support any of this but then again she was a Republican her whole life and maybe this is where that ends up now. I’d also like to think my grandmother wouldn’t say “Barack Hussein Obama” like a curse. I realize it’s a luxury, not to know.

  This lady says “We’re just having a terrible time up here. Our economy is hurting. My husband and I were looking at property recently and the number of foreclosures—we just couldn’t believe it. Like the gentleman said, we’ve lived here all our lives and this was just a paradise. We had all the industries we needed and we were providing food to the whole nation. Something has to change, I don’t know what but it seems like this is the closest thing to an answer we’re going to find. I just hope we can do it in time.” In time for what? She leaves the podium very straight back very fine paper skin on her hands and her forearms and makes her way slowly to her husband who is older and has a walker in front of him, darker skin like he might be Native although why a Native American would support this movement is a mystery and is I guess unlikely. I wonder how many people here in Paiute County can say they are Paiute let alone in this room. The old-timers’ accounts in the historical pamphlets sometimes have some loyal character named e.g. Indian John who helped out at the ranch and was like a brother to them in all ways but the most important one. Maybe the malaise, all the rotting homes and sagging enterprise, are punishment for taking the land. Maybe nothing good is ever happening on this land again for anybody.

  There is a very young woman making her way to the microphone, she is beech-tree slim fair-skinned straight strawberry blond hair and can’t be more than fifteen I think, and how awful that her parents are trotting her out like this when she can’t even vote etc. etc., and she begins speaking. “I’m not even from Paiute County,” she says confidingly. “I live down in Sh
asta, but I wanted to come up here to tell you that we are with you. Other counties are with you. The next generation is with you. I’ve lived in the North State my whole life, all twenty-three years, and I tell you now as a wife and mother myself”—impossible, I think to myself—“the State of Jefferson is the kind of place I want to raise my baby son now.” A hooting sound, and a blur of happy motions around a sturdy good-looking man with a beard, who is wearing the Snugli with the infant. “We didn’t have the problems of the rest of the state,” she is saying. “We didn’t have drugs, or gang violence, or those types of urban problems.” There it is, I think. Suddenly I have a vivid memory of someone at my grandfather’s funeral cornering a pregnant blonde near me and asking apropos of nothing if she was “gonna give it one of those names like Sharniqua,” an interaction I didn’t quite grasp. Maybe this is about Urban Problems. But she is going on. “We don’t need to pay a tax for a water tunnel or a bullet train we’re never gonna use, we don’t need to send our water down south, and we know we’ve got everything we need right here. Anyway, we’re with you,” she says, so confident. She heads back to her little tribe and cups her baby’s head in her hand and her husband puts his arm around her. Bitch, I think. Clabbers leans forward into the microphone and says “I’m not supposed to say anything but I just have to tell you it’s so nice to see a young person in here today,” and there’s more quiet hoots and affirmations from the audience and I want to throttle this smug interloping teen with her intact family and her burly husband and her white panic. Until now I have regarded the proceedings as something of a sideshow because obviously the fucking Union is not going to get a fifty-first state and obviously California is not going to accept being split in two, not to mention part of Oregon, but Clabbers who is an actual elected official appears to be affirming everything that’s being said here.

  The supervisor who called the proceedings to order leans forward into his microphone again and says, “Like I said we’re gonna do this the right way, so anyone who still wants to say anything, I really encourage you to come up to the podium. You’ll have to fill out a comment card, but you can do that after you speak—we don’t always need to follow the rules just exactly as they’re spelled out! So come on up, folks.” I have a brief insane thought that I will go up and say something about, I don’t know, my grandma and how she was in the historical society and how she ate Crab Louie and bled California gold but the impulse dies in its cradle. From the doorway between the cool dark air of the rotunda and the fluorescent buzz of the room I see the Cunt stand. I look over at Cindy and feel a little wave of almost fondness for her as she shifts in her seat and turns down the corners of her mouth with admirable economy of expression.

  “Hi everyone,” the Cunt says, looking around the room like a beauty queen, flicking her braid from her front to her back. Her skin is flawless ivory. “I know a lot of you in the room already, and I’m so honored for this opportunity to address the Board of Supervisors. I’ve been working with the North State counties now for, let’s see, my whole life.” She laughs. “Five generations of my family have ranched and lived off and enjoyed and stewarded the land,” she says. She looks like she would be cool to the touch, with languid veins peeking through thin skin. “I don’t need to tell you all that the state of California has lost touch, and that the Federal Government is imposing policies on us that are actively harmful to our way of life. This is the same government that wants to tell you how to educate and take care of your children, who are your property.” I have never thought about Honey being my property, it’s such an odd way to put it. Do I feel like Honey is my property? I ask myself, and the answer comes back yes and no. The Cunt continues. “You want to talk specifics and facts and figures I’ll tell you that the Federal Government is currently in the process of taking away four good dams that are providing water for our agricultural lands in the North State by the border. These are good, clean, renewable energy dams, folks, and they’re replacing them to ‘steward Coho salmon’”—this with her long fingers forming air quotes—“that you can, this very day, buy in Whole Foods for eight ninety-five a pound. An allegedly endangered fish that the government needs to save by taking away the sources of water for families and farms. I know I’ve only got a little time here, but I want to encourage you all to watch one of my presentations on the UN Agenda 21, which is so tied up with the future of our state and our country. Not if, but when, these reforms take place, we are going to wish we took action, if we don’t take action now, while we can. And that means supporting that State of Jefferson.” She looks around again. Something is crackling in the room. “In conclusion I want to leave you with one of my favorite passages from the Bible” which, what the fuck happened to Church and State I wonder. “‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.’” I roll my eyes all the way back into my head. “This is our land, that we love, folks,” she says. “We’ve got to do what it takes to protect it. Thank you.” Mad applause and she waves at everyone and swishes her braid again and sits down with Cindy’s group, who put hands on her shoulders and she puts her hands on top of their hands and whispers things I can’t hear.

  A last guy gets up, probably in his fifties, camouflage baseball hat, tucked-in polo shirt in a nice currant color. “I’m Larry Elkins,” he says, “and that’s a tough act to follow.” Everyone laughs. I wonder if there is anyone in this room who felt the crazy emanating off the Cunt besides me and apparently Cindy. This is California, I think, feeling a little hysterical. “I’ve got a quote that I wanted to read too, from our greatest president. And that’s President Lincoln. ‘You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred … You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money…’” What a fucking pedant I think but the room collapses into whoops. Honey wakes with a cry and furiously struggles against the restraints keeping her in the stroller. The noise in the rotunda is tremendous. I bend to free her and put her on her feet, where she is immediately charmed by the novel sound of her small shoes slapping unctuously on the marble floor and starts running in ragged little circles.

  I peer back into the room, where a small, soft, be-sweatered woman gets up to speak. “I’m Cathy Lindstrom and I just want to say in my opinion any elected official in Paiute County who publicly supports the State of Jefferson is violating the oath of office he or she took to uphold the Constitution of the state of California and the Constitution of the United States of America.” There are some boos here and a man’s voice calls out “The Federal Government is violating the Constitution of the United States of America” and a supervisor intervenes. “Everyone gets their three minutes, Bert.” I want to whoop for the woman but I’m too anxious to draw attention to myself and while I’m standing there equivocating Honey falls flat onto her face and unleashes a ghastly howl. I run to her and pick her up and cradle her and I see that everyone in the room has turned their face toward the door. I see Cindy’s eyebrows arch and I wave at the room and with one hand steer the stroller out the door into the afternoon, doomed not to hear the rest of rebellious Cathy’s three minutes or the vote itself.

  We maneuver down the ramp and by the time we are at the sidewalk Honey has recovered her equilibrium and I see that it is nearly five o’clock so time for dinner bath milk book brush teeth bed since we need to preserve the sanctity of our routine. I think it would be so nice to go somewhere else to eat, but not the Golden Spike obviously, where I never want to go again, just somewhere where I don’t have to try and make the most of whatever pitiful shit we have on hand. I have the same or better tools as my grandmother but for some reason I can’t re-create any of her efforts. “Fix,” she would say, instead of “make,” as in, “I’ll fix us some tuna fish sandwiches,” and the sandwiches were tidy lit
tle squares on white bread I would never buy, with a lot of mayonnaise I would never buy, and a piece of iceberg lettuce I would never buy, but I loved them loved them loved them, with chips on the side and a glass of sun tea, everything so tidy and symmetrical on the plate. At night she would make tuna noodle casserole, or side-of-the-box lasagna, or steaks she would do in the frying pan with lard, and afterward a bowl of yellow vanilla ice cream from the box, with Hershey’s sauce on top.

  We get to Main Street and look up the road in the slanting sun. I think well we could go to the Frosty but Honey shouldn’t eat burgers and fries and besides last time we were here I learned the new owner is an evangelical with a stack of unsettling magazines about the Holy Land. There’s a Chinese place in a big drafty room that was once a Curves gym which closed after two months, and there’s a diner past the Holiday Market that as far as I can tell is never open, and a pizza place that for some reason I just feel too sad to go into. Last, and I mean literally, it’s the only other place, there’s Reynaldo’s which is actually just about fine, and which my grandmother liked, “Mexikun,” she pronounced it, and I’m thinking about her tonight so that’s where we go. It is five minutes up Main Street in what I think was once a Black Bear diner and has the advantage of being sort of warmly lit and the slightest bit cozy and sometimes has real live groups of people eating there and I say, “That’s what we’ll do, Honey, we’ll have tacos and rice and beans and guacamole and Mama will have one beer.” And I push the stroller and Honey seems soothed by the cooling night air and the sound of the bugs which have started up sometime without my noticing.

  We arrive at Reynaldo’s and I’m disappointed to see it’s almost empty and only one car in the parking lot. But I wheel in the stroller, which catches in the door since there’s no one to hold it and Honey says “Uh-oh” which she has just this month started to say, adorably, when something isn’t right. A young woman with piteous acne, who is not white, maybe a daughter of the eponymous Reynaldo, slouches over a podium looking at her phone and she rallies and shows us to a table. Before I get Honey out of her stroller I see the crone, no, must call her Alice, in a booth in the corner of the empty restaurant. I’m so desperate to sit at a table with someone that I wheel over. “Hi there!” I say. “Well hi,” she says, like she’s not surprised to see us. She’s tucking into a giant trough of rice and beans. “You can join me if you like,” she says. And I say “We’ll do that, thanks!” And I take the high chair from the hostess and I say “We’ll sit right here” and lug it over and arrange Honey in it. Alice reaches over to my surprise and chucks her under the chin with a gnarled finger and Honey looks shy and moves her chin into her shoulder and looks up at Alice through lashes, and then smiles her coy little ray-of-light smile and I want to die with pride again.