T. Parker - California Girl

HERE AND NOW

I DROVE PAST the old SunBlesst packinghouse today. Nothing left of it. Not one stick. Now theres a bedroom store, a pet emporium, and a supermarket. Big and new. Moms and dads and kids everywhere. Pretty people, especially the moms. Young, with time to dream, wake up, and dream again.

I still have a piece of the flooring I tore off the SunBlesst packinghouse back in sixty-eight. When I was young. When I thought that what had happened there shouldnt ever happen anywhere. When I thought it was up to me to put things right.

Im made of that place-of the old wood and the rusted conveyors and the pigeons in the eaves and the sunlight slanting through the cracks. Of Janelle Vonn. Of everything that went down, there in October, 1968. Even made of the wind that blew that month, dry and hot off the desert, huffing across Orange County to the sea.

I have a piece of the picket fence from the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza, too. And a piece of rock that came not far from where Mercury 1 lifted off. And one of Charlie Mansons guitar picks.

But those are different stories.

LATER I MET my brother Andy at the Fishermans Restaurant down in San Clemente. Late August. The day was bright as a brushfire, no clouds, sun flashing off the waves and tabletops. Andy looked at me like someone had hit him in the stomach.

Its about Janelle, he said.

Janelle Vonn in the SunBlesst orange packinghouse in Tustin.

Thirty-six years ago, two brothers who didnt look much alike, staring down at her and across at each other while the pigeons cooed and the wind blew through the old slats.

A different world then, different world now.

Same brothers. Andy stayed thin and wiry. Tough as a boiled owl. Me, Ive filled out some, though I can still shiver the heavy bag in the sheriffs gym.

San Clemente, and you have to think Nixon. The western White House, right up the road. I picture him walking down the beach with the Secret Service guys ahead and behind. Too many secrets and nobody but the seagulls to tell them to. Andys newspaper ran a cartoon of him once, after hed been chased out of office, and the cartoon showed him walking the beach with a metal detector, looking for coins. Thought that was a funny one. I kind of liked Dick Nixon. Grew up just over the hill from us. He was tight with my old man and his Bircher friends for a while, used to come to the house back in the fifties when he was vice president and in the early sixties when hed lost for governor. Theyd sit around, drink scotch, make plans. Nixon had a way of making you feel important. Its an old pols trick, I know. I even knew it then. In fifty-six I graduated from the L.A. Sheriffs Academy and Dick Nixon sent me a note. The vice president. Nice handwriting. Its still in my collection of things.

But thats a different story, too.

You dont look so good, Andy, I said.

Brothers and we still dont look much alike. An old cop and an old reporter. There used to be four of us Becker boys. Raised some hell. Just three now.

I looked at Andy and I could see something different in his face.

What gives? I asked.

Listen to me, Nick. Everything we thought about Janelle Vonn was wrong.

1954

BECAUSE THE VONNS are direct descendants of murderers, thats why, said David Becker. One of their relatives got hung in Texas. And I saw Lenny Vonn bust a brick with his bare hands once. One chop. Thats exactly what hell do to Nicks head. The Vonns are crazy.

The Becker brothers. Four of them, walking down Holt Avenue in Tustin for a rumble. June and still light out, the sun stalled high above the groves like it didnt want to come down. Air sweet and clean with the smell of oranges.

Nick was second oldest. He imagined Lenny Vonns hand crashing into his skull. Wondered how a skull compared to a brick. Nick was sixteen and strong, had played Tustin varsity football as a sophomore, started both ways. Not a talker.

Andy was the baby. Twelve, skinny, buck-toothed. He wasnt officially a part of the rumble but figured there was no way Lenny Vonn could crush Nicks skull. Nick was God.

David, the one who had seen Lenny Vonn break the brick with his hand, was eighteen. He was the oldest and smart but graceless and unformed.

Ill yank Casey Vonns head off and piss down his neck. This from Clay, fifteen. He smiled at each of his brothers in turn, a clean, straight-toothed grin that was both knowing and mean.

Clay had gotten them into this. Grabbed dumb Casey Vonns new baseball cap and tossed it over the fence to the German shepherd that snarled and snapped and threw himself at the chain link every time the school kids came past. Clay laughed while the dog tore it to shreds. Told Casey hed throw him over next time. Casey so dumb he believed it.

The next day at school Caseys big brother Lenny shoved David hard against the lockers and said it was rumble time for what happened to Caseys cap. Lenny was large and chinless, with an enormous Adams apple and sideburns like Elvis. Brothers, said Lenny, three-on-three, the packinghouse, no weapons. On Davids face, breath like coffee and cavities. David asked Lenny to forgive Clay, said hed pay for a new hat. Lenny spit in Davids face.

The Becker brothers angled into one of the grove rows, walking along the irrigation ditch, clods of earth throwing them off-balance and doves whisking through the sky above them. Nick led the way.

The Vonns got two sisters, said Clay.

Can they fight? asked Andy.

Maybe Ill make out with them when were done beating up their brothers, said Clay.

Theyre seven and five, said David. He knew right from wrong and wrong angered him. He was going off to college in September. He stopped and shook out a Lucky Strike and tapped it on the side of his lighter. Nick saw his hands shaking.

Gimme a cigarette, said Clay.

David gave Clay the pack and lighter. He lit one and put another behind his ear.

Me, too, said Andy.

No, said Nick.

I dont want to do this, said David. He coughed. Hed spent hours the night before praying for courage.

Fine, said Nick. Itll be me and Clay.

I can fight, said Andy.

No, Nick and David both said.

Clays cigarette looked good so Nick plucked it out of his mouth and took a puff.

Nick saw by the look on his face that David didnt want his baby brother to see him get his ass kicked.

Keep your hands high, Nick said. If we stay back-to-back well be all right. Like there was a science to this kind of thing.

The SunBlesst packinghouse sat behind the railroad tracks in the middle of the grove. The tracks marked the city limits but everyone thought of the packinghouse as being in Tustin. It was a big wooden building with a metal roof and twenty-foot-high metal sliding doors that let the conveyors swing out to the freight cars. The wood was black with creosote. On one of the doors was a giant painting of one of the SunBlesst orange box labels. It showed a raven-haired beauty holding out a perfect navel orange and smiling. Behind her were rows of orange trees. The sky above the trees was indigo blue and the words California Girl charged out of it in bright yellow letters. Once someone had left a flatcar of labels outside and the Becker boys threw them into a Santa Ana wind that blew them all over town, onto the lawns and streets and school yards, and everywhere he went for a week Nick saw that pretty woman offering him an orange.

The Vonns were waiting for them by the railroad tracks. Lenny had his T-shirt tucked in tight and his cigarettes rolled into his right shirtsleeve, Levis cuffs rolled into two-inchers, work boots. His brothers more or less the same. Black hair and big round ears. Lenny flicked his smoke into the gravel and stared at Nick.