Contents Part One Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Part Two Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Part Three Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Part Four Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Coda Acknowledgments To Miss Winters Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo —“Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens Part One Chapter 1 It began on an ordinary morning at the rancho, of which there’d been too many lately. Maria served him in the breakfast room before she took the buggy into Salinas. It was Sunday, and she attended church with her Mexican family before returning for work Monday. For Eddie, Sundays were no different. After breakfast he would saddle up and start his rounds. Eva, his mother, took breakfast in bed, though Maria set two places for lunch and dinner during the week. Sundays, Eva stayed upstairs in the sitting room off her bedroom to take tea when Father Ignacio came to pray with her and receive alms for the church. Eddie made the tea and set out the fruit and nut empanadas Maria made every Saturday. Eva didn’t go to mass in Salinas anymore. Eddie Mull was a creature of routine, a routine that started each day with coffee, eggs and toast in the breakfast room looking out on Tesoro’s five thousand acres. Summer or winter, the room was filled with bright flowers gathered around the rancho. He was used to taking breakfast alone, which he’d done since his mother’s descent into invalidity. He was a sociable person, but running a large rancho five miles from town didn’t give him much time for society. His usual company at breakfast was his newspaper, the Salinas Index, delivered by bicycle each morning by one of Maria’s nephews. Eddie was twenty-seven years old and still living alone with his mother in the house where he was born. He’d been thinking a lot about that lately. Normally, he skimmed the newspaper, looking for the usual things that interest farmers and ranchers: produce and animal prices; weather; the latest ships arriving in Monterey and San Francisco, where they were from and what they were carrying. Local miscellany didn’t interest him. The Index didn’t carry much news from the rest of the state, let alone the nation, but that morning an article about the aqueduct being built to Los Angeles caught his attention. TheIndex was not known for its prose, but the reporter held nothing back, gushing on about “an aqueduct to rival the Romans, the greatest engineering feat in California history, transforming the arid plain of Los Angeles into the new Jerusalem.” He read the story, drank some coffee and read it again. He’d heard of the aqueduct but never thought much about it. Water interests every rancher and farmer, but Los Angeles is a long way from Salinas. This time, for some reason, it stuck. He set the paper aside to take up with him that night. Sitting back, he stared out at the ranch for as long as he ever had at breakfast, maybe a full half hour, a long time for a busy man with a big ranch to look after. The aqueduct stayed with him all day, in the barns, in the sugar beet fields, on the range with the cattle, back at the house taking coffee with his Mexican foreman after Celestino returned with his family from church. I think I should go and have a look, he thought. After Father Ignacio left, Eddie brought the tea service and plates down and put them in the sink for Maria. Sometimes Eva took soup before retiring, but Father Ignacio remarked that she wasn’t feeling good, and when Eddie looked in she said she wasn’t hungry. He warmed the dinner of enchiladas and rice Maria left for him, went over Tesoro accounts for a while, took the Sunday newspaper and headed upstairs, falling asleep reading about the aqueduct. He was awakened by the clanking of the cow bell Eva kept by her bed, the signal to Maria, who slept at the end of the upstairs hallway. But Maria wasn’t there. Eddie couldn’t remember hearing the bell before on a Sunday night. He threw on his robe and headed down the hall. The grandfather clock on the landing said one o’clock. In her room, he picked the bell up and set it back on the night table. He didn’t like going into her bedroom, never had. His mother lay on her back, one arm dangling where she’d dropped the bell. Her eyes didn’t see him. Like her mother and her mother before, Eva had a bad heart, but out on her horses when she was younger you’d never know a thing was wrong. She’d lived her life as she wanted, always had. Seeing her like this, sickly, frail, covers pulled up to her neck, was bad. Parchment skin and china bones. It was the women’s damn Latin blood, not like the Mull men, tough stock bred on that desolate Scottish island. Hearts don’t give out on Mull, just hope. He picked up her arm and felt for a pulse, the faint throbs that tell us we’re still alive. He looked closely into eyes that seemed more annoyed than scared. “Mamá?” He thought he’d try Spanish, but she didn’t respond, just looked out with empty eyes, so maybe it wasn’t the heart. If it was, he should get her coughing, so he sat her up and told her to cough, but she didn’t. Or wouldn’t. Her medicines were on the night table, and he gave her two aspirins, which she managed to get down with his help. He knew he should get her down to the car but waited to see
