AN EXHAUSTED STIV WILKINS found a bench under a dwarf palm tree in Dolores Park and sprawled on it. The park sat on a hill and commanded an excellent view of the city. The only things Stiv recognized in the skyline were the General Hospital and the jail at the Hall of Justice on 850 Bryant Street. The mean-spirited felony tank windows were discernible from miles away.
On the other side of the park were the copper-faceted dome of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, and a row of apartment houses. One of the buildings had been the home of Emma Goldman, the Russian-born anarchist orator and writer. In the summer of 1916 she was taken to jail after the arrests of Warren Billings and Tom Mooney. Later she was deported to Russia in the aftermath of the Palmer Raids of 1919.
Stiv’s half a year in the city prison had been enough. Eating baloney sandwiches three times a day—the dogs on death row at the SPCA had a better diet. Wiping your privates with last week’s newspapers on a broken toilet. Sleeping with one eye open to make sure a cellmate didn’t steal your shoes. Taking a shower once a week with ten other guys. Stiv had outgrown the routine.
Unearthing an overripe orange from his pants, a memento from a restaurant dumpster, Stiv peeled the fruit with his switchblade and ate it. He rearranged the Colt revolver in his belt and put the knife back in his boot. Then he doffed his motorcycle jacket, rolled it into a pillow, and stretched out on the bench.
He’d fucked up at the post office, which had been predictable. Robbery had never been his forte. Neither was using or selling guns. But the real issue was this: What was he good at? He was twenty-five years old with no job or nothing. So what was wrong with him? Maybe he just wasn’t meant for great things. It was hard to accept that. He had dreams, little ones.
The highlight of Stiv’s career had been his band’s last show at a club on Geary Street. The venue was a deconsecrated synagogue with stained glass windows and a hardwood dance floor that could hold a thousand people. Before that it was the former headquarters of the People’s Temple, the church founded by Jim Jones, the charismatic preacher who’d led his flock into mass suicide in Guyana.
Stiv had been drunk on vodka because he was self-conscious, and speeding on crystal for the energy. He was shirtless and had slashed himself in the chest with a broken Budweiser beer bottle. The microphone was in his mouth; the cord was tied around his neck. He was screeching at the top of his lungs, trying to hear himself over the guitars, the feedback, the drummer who wasn’t keeping time, and the bass that threatened to blow out the monitors.
The lead guitarist went into a repetitive one-note solo that ended when he broke a string and smashed his Gibson against an amplifier—the guitar’s neck splintered and Stiv caught a sliver in the thigh. All the kids roared at the sight of his blood. Holding the mike stand over his head, he flung it into the crowd. Other kids were climbing onto the stage; a fan had his arms around Stiv’s boots and was kissing them.
Maybe he had something to offer the world. If a moth could turn into a butterfly, he could too. And, he mimicked himself, if he lived long enough, Norbert Deflass would put him back on Haldol. San Francisco had thousands of crazy people in the streets. California had closed a large percentage of its mental institutions in the 1970s and the city had become an open-air insane asylum. But that wasn’t going to be Stiv’s fate. “No way,” he vowed.
It was a false promise. With a hallucination’s unrelenting logic, Stiv Wilkins was slowly divided in two. His body was moored to the bench, but his spirit zipped out of his head in a slew of unfamiliar voices and he fainted.
Beating a retreat from the brown-robe’s corpse, José Reyna and Two-Fingered Tom and the two Ohlone walked into a stand of Ponderosa pine. Skirting the Dolores lagoon, a marshy body of water that several creeks bled into, they evaded a quartet of Indian slaves fishing on the shore.
Two-Fingered kept his crippled hand on the squirrel gun’s trigger. Blue jays, robins, starlings, and sparrows dithered in the trees. It was getting on his nerves. His soft-soled riding boots were making footprints in the mud. If the pinche gringos wanted to find them, it wouldn’t be too hard. A blind man could see their tracks.
On the south side of the lagoon were a general store, a blacksmith’s shop, a saloon with a hotel, and a barbershop. The sad-faced wood shingled buildings abutted a two-way dirt road. The Ohlone guides motioned José and Two-Fingered toward a rise behind the saloon, a low hill that was dotted with weeping willows. The outlaws secured cover behind the willows and looked at the bay. The masts of British frigates and U.S. warships blackwashed the piers at the Embarcadero. To the north were the chimneys on Telegraph Hill.
“I need to get hold of some goddamn opium,” Two-Fingered said.
Below them was a courthouse with a rude log cabin jail. Three Miwok Indian women were sitting on the courthouse steps begging for food. A mangy dog was gnawing on a steer bone at their feet. Two-Fingered Tom slapped José on the leg and said in an undertone, “Mira, over yonder.”
A dozen gringos in low-heeled cowboy boots, flannel shirts, and denim jeans were assembled under a gigantic oak tree with a priest. In front of them was a Mexican with his hands tied behind his back. His white linen shirt was torn; his pants were undone. His left eye was swollen. Blood dripped from his shoulder-length black hair onto his bronzed shoulders. The cleric was holding a crucifix.
One of the cowboys, a man with a blonde mustache and piercing blue eyes, threw a rope over the oak’s upper branches. He gave the rope a tug and constructed a hangman’s noose from it. Another cowboy took a Sharps rifle and smacked the Mexican in the head with the weapon’s butt; two other cowboys placed the noose around his neck.
The local magistrate, a tall, potbellied white man in a gray pinstriped suit, mud-splattered spats, and a beaver skin top hat, addressed the Mexican. “You are Antonio Valencia?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“You want to live?”
“What do you think, pendejo?”
“Then you’d better tell us where José Reyna is.”
The Mexican said nothing and the cowboys heaved the rope. The prisoner was lifted three feet off the ground; his face turned a violent shade of green. The magistrate made a signal with his thumb; the cowboys holding the rope let it go slack and the Mexican fell in the dirt. He coughed up blood and rolled over on his back, foaming at the mouth. The priest waved the crucifix over him and said a few words in Latin.
Two-Fingered Tom tapped the squirrel gun’s walnut stock. “Pinche maricones. Where the fuck do they get off with this foolishness?” He said to José, “Do you know the vato they’re lynching? They’re making like the motherfucker rides with us.”
José Reyna saw the seeds of death in Two-Fingered’s coal black eyes, and knew he had the same look in his own eyes. When you were close to muerte, ghosts came out of no place. José’s dead wife haunted him and brought sorrow. He replied, “I’ve never seen the ese before.”
A cowboy got the Mexican to his feet, and the noose was placed around the prisoner’s neck again. His mestizo face, more Indian than Spanish, was becalmed, as if he’d made peace with his demise. He turned to the sun and saw a heron fly over the lagoon. Crickets chirped in the tule reeds. The man in the top hat snapped his fingers, prompting the cowboys—and the Mexican went up in the air. He gyrated, fighting the noose, using his chin to keep it from strangling him. His feet went up and down, as if he were pedaling a bicycle.
“That’s enough,” the magistrate said.
The Mexican slammed into the ground. The judge stood over him and bellowed, “This is your last chance. Where’s that goddamn horse thief?”
The dearth of oxygen in the condemned man’s brain had muted his tongue. Too groggy to talk, he struggled with his bonds. The white men were staring at him while the brown-robe gave him last rites. The rope was positioned around the prisoner’s abraded neck for the third time. The birds in the tree’s branches made a frightful racket. The judge cried, “Heave ho!” and the Mexican was strung up. He did a mazurka in mid-air, his feet seeking the earth.
Two-Fingered Tom let loose with all six barrels of the squirrel gun. Designed to hunt small game, the carbine was accurate. The fusillade cleaved through the judge’s hat and wounded three cowboys. The gringos returned the fire, pulverizing the weeping willows. With bullets flying everywhere, the Ohlone led Two-Fingered and José Reyna into a thicket. California’s most wanted criminals retraced their steps back to Warm Water Cove. They got in the skiff and crossed the bay to the friendlier shores of Oakland.
A hysterical car horn on Dolores Street jolted Stiv out of his swoon. He opened his eyes and saw the horizon had deepened from aqua blue into indigo. The bald hills of Berkeley and Oakland were lampblack. The skies over the oil refineries in Richmond were marigold yellow. The Bay Bridge was gridlocked with rush hour commuters. An unmarked twin-prop military intelligence plane and a full moon were poised over Market Street. Sitting up, he put on his motorcycle jacket.
He wanted nothing more than to sit on the bench and savor the evening’s breeze, to let it be a barrier between him and what was coming, but the clock was ticking away. The rent had to be paid. Securing the gun in his belt, Stiv levitated to his feet and made his way down a slope to the park’s water fountain for a drink.