Run River by Joan Didion Page B

that it was necessary that she go to Davis, which was mainly an agricultural station, because her father wanted her to marry a rich rancher. And as a matter of fact so did she. Martha McClellan, Edith Knight had observed, was “a case.”
    “I know how old you are,” Everett said without looking at her.
    Lily pressed her forehead against the window, closed against the heat. Now in June the hops were starting up the strings, miles of them, ready to bear the thick green weight of the August vines. It was said to be a good year for the hops; because her father did not grow them she did not know why. She supposed that it had to do with when the rain had come. Everything else did.
    “The hops are pretty,” she said.
    “You think so?”
    “Yes, I do,” she said, rather at a loss. When it came to conversation, Everett McClellan was not one to give much away. “I think they’re very pretty and I’m glad I’m home.”
    They did not exchange another word until they reached the Labor Center in the West End, where Everett, getting out of the truck, ordered her to lock both doors from the inside and wait until he came back. As soon as he had entered the office, one of the Mexicans standing on the sidewalk outside made a face at Lily. She smiled, embarrassed, and then pretended to be reading a book in her lap. After Everett had recruited thirteen men, they started back out to the McClellan place; Everett looked once at her, when he had trouble starting the truck, and then neither looked at her nor spoke. Her eyes closed, she listened to the men in the back of the truck, singing Bing Crosby songs and passing around a bottle of dago red, and wondered why Everett had called her at all.
    Mr. McClellan met them at the ranch, flagging wildly when he caught sight of the truck, an unnecessary exertion since he was standing where the trucks were habitually parked. Lily could not remember ever having seen him calm: even years before, when he had brought Everett and Martha and Sarah to call, he had given the appearance of a man beset by his own energy, scrawny with tension. He would leap to his feet when Edith Knight entered the room, accidentally knock over a chair, institute a prolonged search for a handkerchief, bound across the room to collar one of the children. He had always spoken to them as if they were puppies. Down, Martha. Sit, Martha .
    “You should have got in there earlier,” he muttered now, leaning over Everett’s shoulder as Everett entered the names on the payroll ledger. “Nobody left come seven o’clock but high-school boys and drunken wetbacks. Here’s one fact you won’t learn in college, Miss Lily Knight: there’s nobody in God’s green world has less native intelligence than a goddamn wetback.” Everett had once explained that his father referred to all Mexicans and to most South Americans—including the President of Brazil, who had once been entertained on the river—as goddamn wetbacks, and to all Orientals as goddamn Filipinos. There was no use telling him that somebody was Chinese, or Malayan, or Madame Chiang Kai-shek; they were goddamn Filipinos to him. Easterners fell into two camps: goddamn pansies and goddamn Jews. On the whole, both categories had to do with attitudes, not facts, and occasionally they overlapped. His daughter Sarah had for example married a goddamn pansy and gone East to live, where she picked up those goddamn Jew ideas.
    Lily stood watching Everett, aware of the dust on his Levis and of her incongruously white dress. There was one thing about the McClellans not true of her father: they wouldn’t run their ranches out of an office in the Russ Building even if they could afford to.
    Everett looked up. “We could ride along the river when I’m finished.”
    “I don’t ride very well.”
    “Hah,” Mr. McClellan said. “I’ll say you don’t. She used to ride like she was sitting on a barbed-wire fence. I remember that much about Miss Lily Knight. Don’t be a fool,