Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

girls loved the roadster. Top down, they would shout over the wind as they motored along the open roads. Maggie was the daredevil, loving speed and urging Cal to go faster, faster, always faster, while Lizzie sat taking everything in and shouting questions to the chauffeur. You could already see the adult in both girls. Maggie could not resist a challenge or a dare. Lizzie would laugh at her sister and go back to making the mental notes she would later write in her diary. She started a diary at age six, and the time would come years later when they were auctioned off. She was as competitive as her sister, but in a different way. Maggie needed to test herself against others and dominate. Lizzie’s competition was with herself. The goal was to get down in writing the precise words that represented her precise thoughts, get them down before they flew away forever.

One day Cal decided to head home from the stables through Venice. Normally, he returned the way he’d come—east toward Culver City, north on Centinela, east again on Wilshire or Sunset to Bel Air, sometimes taking detours into the Santa Monica Mountains for excursions through the canyons. He knew about Venice because Eddie never stopped talking about it, explaining how he’d turned the canals built by Abbot Kinney into oil fields because that’s the price of progress, creative destruction he called it. Lawsuits brought against Mull Oil had been thrown out by every judge because oil was making everyone in Los Angeles rich, including the judges, including the people whose canal houses now looked out on muck and derricks, people happy to be sharing in the oil bonanza.

He took the bridge northward across Ballona Creek and turned off Pacific Avenue, the main north-south road through Venice to Santa Monica, onto a parallel access road running along the ocean, called, strangely enough, “Speedway.” Quickly the bright sunlight was gone, obscured by a forest of gigantic steel trees. They bounced along the potted, tar-splattered asphalt, listening for the crash of breakers but hearing only the sucking of pumps. There were no other cars, no other people. A mile or so along, he stopped by a “no trespassing” sign and glanced at the girls, both strangely quiet. Maggie was squirming. Lizzie had come up on her knees and was turning her head like a camera on a pivot. They got out to walk.

Deep in the spidering shadows as the sun fell to the ocean, they headed through the mucky fields. He tried to keep the car in view—so easy to get lost when everything looked the same. The derricks, some with little cabins attached, were densely packed, almost rubbing against each other. Underfoot, the earth was black, as was what little sand they could see, which once must have been white but now was dark and coated with gobs of tar. Cal felt Lizzie’s hand squeeze into his. The sound of pumping drowned out all else, and the smell of oil overpowered any scent of the sea. It puzzled him that each pump, each hole in the ground, would require its own giant steel framework; that the oil lagoon hiding beneath the sand could not be tapped by a single derrick or maybe a few rather than the dozens he saw. Only greed could explain it, the lust to get richer faster.

Why would Uncle Eddie, who already had everything, want more? Yes, oil to keep motors running was necessary, but why here? Why destroy miles of natural beauty, turning the sand black, rendering foul and useless white beach and blue ocean, not to mention the languid lagoons built by Abbot Kinney? Surely there were places to find oil without so much destruction. He felt Lizzie squeeze tighter.

“Hey, you kids!” shouted a man emerging from one of the cabins. “What the hell are you doing in here? Can’t you read the signs? Get out!”

Startled, Cal turned to see a hardhat closing in on them. Stifling a desire to shout, “these girls own this land,” he pulled Lizzie and turned back toward the car. Suddenly Maggie, quick as a cat, bolted away toward the nearest derrick. She was five rungs up the steel ladder before he reacted, and the hardhat, who’d stopped, began screaming. Maggie was like a spider flying up on its web. The Hardhat clumped toward the derrick but already knew he could never catch her.

“Get her down from there, boy!” he called. Other hardhats emerged from the cabin.

“Maggie, come down,” Cal shouted, knowing it was futile. She’d already reached the first metal platform.

The man grabbed him hard by the shoulder. “Get her down from there!”

“I’m trying.” He pushed the hand away. “Maggie, you know you can do it,” he shouted. “It’s not worth it! Come back down!”

“Mag . . . gie!” Lizzie was shouting, “Mag . . . gie!”

She’d already clamored halfway to the first catwalk, nimble despite her riding boots. The derrick looked to be five stories. Cal knew she would not stop. She never did.

“Better go after her, Bobby,” one of the men said.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Cal. “She’ll come down when she’s ready.”

“Let’s hope she don’t come down head first,” said a worker.

“Don’t worry.”

“Call the fire department,” said someone.

“The hell with that—I’ll call the police,” said Bobby, turning back.

He didn’t want to do it; didn’t want to tell the men that the girls were Eddie Mull’s daughters, heiresses of the land they were supposedly trespassing. The girls would hate it and so would he. But the police were a worse option.

“Hold on there,” Cal called to Bobby, who seemed in charge. “Let’s talk.”

With Lizzie leaning in making her mental notes, Cal explained who they were, all of them Mulls. “You go back inside, and I’ll get her down. We won’t come back. I promise you that. Better that way. Better for everyone.”

They listened. They would be blamed as much as the children and had more to lose.

♦ ♦ ♦

“How was riding today?” Nelly asked at