She shook her head humorlessly. “Wrong. This woman right here. That’s all we need.” She reached into her pocket to remove something, but before I could get a clear look she let go and it hit the boards with a thud and a series of short ricochets. Once it settled, I understood that something had gone terribly wrong. The satellite phone rested face-up, its screen as gray and listless as the eyes of a corpse. She appeared exceedingly proud of her accomplishment, and even struck a condescending grin to mark the occasion. “Your flunky isn’t here to help you make your case. Given what she tried to do to us, pulling the wool over our eyes, while conspiring to help you drive us out, it figures that she’s forfeited any right she had to a seat at the table. And since I’m the one who ran her off, I’m laying claim to her share myself.”
“Well. Isn’t that something? In two days’ time, you’ve managed to go from having no say to controlling the biggest share of the operation. Maybe when you finish school, you can come work for me as an associate of some sort. Assuming you know how to use a computer.”
“Whatever business we have to settle, it ends today. It ends with you ripping up your contract and walking away. But first, you’re gonna give me your word that you won’t tell the government or anyone else how we came by this farm. That’s the assurance you’re gonna give me before you leave.”
“Interesting. And why should I do any of those things? Why, pray tell, shouldn’t I head to Ag Bureau in Tulare and tell them everything I know?”
The screen door squealed open and a tall Hispanic boy with the wispy beginnings of a mustache stepped out onto the porch. He wore high-waisted, rodeo-style jeans and a plain red t-shirt that was at least a size too small. After a moment, I recognized him as one of Claudia’s boys, the eldest one, though his name escaped me despite Ramirez’s files and meeting him in person a week earlier. He said, “Because we share the same father. Because the same blood is in our veins that’s in yours, and that can’t count for nothing.”
I said, “It counts for whatever you want it to count for. Which, in my case, is nothing.”
They both looked at me for a while and then traded glances with each other. The whole scenario was Jennifer and Dale all over again: lightweight brains and lumbering brawn, conspiring together for mutual benefit, when on their own they would have been completely helpless, misfit animals waiting for natural selection to run its course. Ellie even surrendered her positional advantage by descending to the second lowest step of the small front stoop. Now we were facing each other eye to eye. She said, “I don’t believe that you could stand there, knowing what we both know about our father, about our family, and tell me it doesn’t mean a thing. There’s no way you could be so cold.”
“Why not? Because we’re kin? Is that what you’re supposed to be to me? My kinfolk?”
“I’m a fourteen-year-old girl with a very sick mother and two young sisters to look after. Think about that even if you don’t see us as family. What’ll happen to us without this place?”
“There are plenty of fourteen-year-old girls in this world who have it so much worse. You’ll still be doing better than them, even without a farm.”
“And you don’t mind putting me in that position? You have no problem with seeing us all out on the street?”
“You sound just like him.”
“Answer me. Say you could sleep at night if we wound up homeless on your account.”
“Don’t make this all about you. You were born and raised on one of his farms. Until he died, you never had to worry about anything. Me, I had to struggle and suffer through being that man’s son, and when he died I lost the only family I had left. You talk like I’m standing here with an eviction notice in one hand and a loaded gun in the other. But if the shoe were on the other foot, if you found out after he died that all his money was tied up with me in a business on the coast, wouldn’t you try to do whatever you could to get a piece of it? Wouldn’t you even say that you had earned it?”
The boy came up to the edge of the porch and stood with his fists clenched at his sides. There wasn’t much in the way of resemblance between him and Dad, and wouldn’t have been regardless of age, weight, or race. He said, “That money won’t do you any good. Not if you come by it like this.”
“That’s not how it works. Money, in my experience, tends to be fairly objective.”
He shook his head. “God will judge you. Even if you get your way and drive us off the land, He won’t let you find any happiness because of what you’ve done. Everything you touch will turn to shit in your hands. He’ll see to that.”
I watched the boy closely. There was no sarcasm to be found in his demeanor; the way he talked, it was obvious he believed what he was saying, that some paternal entity from on high was prepared to seek justice on their behalf, and on behalf of all the Temple women who continued to be hoodwinked long after Mr. Temple was gone. I couldn’t help but laugh.
But he clearly didn’t appreciate my levity. “What’s so funny? I’m talking about divine retribution here.”
I said, “I used to be like you. Back in high school, I got really into theology and western philosophy. Yes, I was that big of a nerd. I was looking for answers, and I thought I had found some writers who could lead me in the right direction. Thomas Aquinas. Kierkegaard. Saint Augustine, most of all. You ever hear of him?”
The boy adjusted his posture in a way that seemed oddly indignant. He said, “I’ve been raised in the Catholic Church my entire life. So, yeah, I’ve heard of Saint Augustine.”
“Well, then you must be familiar with his concept of the city of God.” I gave him an appropriate amount of time to respond, but he just stood there squinting and trying to look tough. And so I went on. “After the fall of Rome, most people, Christians and pagans alike, were baffled that God would let something like that happen. Rome had been a Christian nation for three hundred years, after all, so it didn’t make sense that God would let a bunch of heathen barbarians sack the place. Saint Augustine had a different idea, though. In his view, no city or nation on earth could encompass the entirety of God’s infinite grandeur. The real city of God, according to Augustine, was a spiritual place, without physical borders, abstract and immaterial. No vandals or barbarians could ever sack the city of God, and all real Christians, in his view, should pay no mind to earthly cities when building up the spiritual city is the most important thing we can do on Earth. Eventually, people started listening to him, which is one of the reasons so many intelligent men wound up sequestered in monasteries in the centuries that followed.”
While the boy stood pondering the ideas I had just unloaded on him, Ellie took the opportunity to interject with a few thoughts of her own. She said, “That’s some pretty deep stuff. But what are you trying to say? That we should hand over the farm and go live as nuns and monks in some far off monastery?”
“No. That’s not my point at all.”
“Well, then I don’t understand you.”
I set my hand on the railing to steady myself. The headache had subsided for the time being, but every so often a disorienting dizziness came over me, upsetting my sense of balance.
I said, “There’s no city of God because there is no God. There’s no retribution, no universal justice. There’s only what we do with ourselves and the one life that we’ve been given. In that sense, only the material matters, only what you can make for yourself with the time you have left. You’re an intelligent girl, Ellie. I can tell you don’t go in for your brother’s piety. But even you would have me forfeit my chance to make something of myself based on some vague, altruistic notion that I should care more about your sake than my own. All because your mother and my mother happened to get impregnated by the same man. I know it’s not a popular outlook, and it places me in the ethical minority of just about every society that’s ever existed, but I don’t care. As far as I can see, there’s nothing to connect me to you or anyone else on this farm. Nothing except for the transaction at hand.”