The Veils of the Valley (Part One)

Freedom of Information Act: Request.

Memo:  United States Justice Department. Bureau of Prohibition

The declassified Reports of Agent Harold Tempt.

{Recovered with Permission from the San Joaquin State Hospital, Tempt family and the DOJ}

The Thirst of July was upon the land it would, Soon the first fruits of August would bloom and be offered for the Regent who would soon meet her brides at the altar. 

 The valley was kind to its tenants. But it asked for a tithe in kind.

 It had provided bounties during the dust bowls and recessions. obsidian currents sloshed alongside the concrete pathways, canals were the veins that turned the Valley to an oasis from a desert.

 The water nourished the roots, the hoofed beasts and the tiller. The ripples shifted from black to red alongside the night fires. Smoke and ash danced across the twilight. old almond groves had to be purged and returned to the soil. Dull towns always had dreaded secrets.

The hard shocks on the train rattled the bones. I shouldn’t complain much, my father and his friends lost a few toes in the western trenches during the great war. The cold seeped into his marrow. This was a vacation compared to those missions. My supervisor let me carry his revolver. The heavy steel and black grease mesh well with the wooden handle. The migrant workers and chain gangs work side by side.

The fires rage throughout the valley. The yellow fields catch the yellow rays. The sable ash blocks out the sun. I snagged a glimpse of the old church as the metal spokes grinded against the hot rails. The Saint from the courtyard greeted vagrants, vice lords and vanguards alike that hopped off the train.

The Local lawmen seem to be cordial enough. They all repeat the same line they have rarely pulled their six-shooters out on the job. It reeks of negligence or corruption. No no. That’s just the city bred cynicism.  But there’s that itch on the back of my neck when I stare into the endless fields.

The job I was assigned to, its like trying to trap the sea with a net. There were thousands of speakeasies and bootleggers across the continent. There were less than three thousand of us. A crusader, I wasn’t like those pearl cluchters in the pews. I didn’t believe in washing away gin with the sin. But I seen the way the black ash from the mines engulfed my father.

I watched the factory age my brothers. It was this or digging a ditch.

I size up the men in the squad car. Deputy Alvis has purple patterns around his knuckles. The faint hints of hooch on his breath indicates, like myself hes not a crusader for the Volstead act. Deputy Cartwright looks like a man who shoud have taken a desk job years ago. The gray streaks and neck scars tease of a career you hear about in radio plays. The first taste of greased guns and trauma were from the service. My old man gave off that smell too.

The weather conditions in The Golden State were similar to the Mediterranean. The climate is primed for conditions growth in produce for illicit sales and production. Fermented grapes used for religious purposes are exempted from scruteeny under the Amendment. However, we have received reports and rumors of organized crime dipping their hands out in the valley.

While attention has been sent to larger cities such as San Francisco and Los Angleses. The San Joaquin Valley has gone untouched. Sheriffs can double their salary and community leaders look the other way when the wineries keep small towns hit by the economic crisis afloat.

They were the lucky ones, at least they had a home left. The train passed hundreds of shanty towns across the valley. The oakies were refuges inside their own country. The wildfires of the west coast were camp fires compared to the dust bowls of the bible belts. Cars low on fuel stayed on the sides of the road.

The hunger and harrow followed the clan like a hazel tined specter. They were seen as a plague no different from locust as far as the good nature church folk were concerned. There was no angel of mercy watching over them.

The old motel wasn’t like the Grand Palace in the West Bay, I could watch the sun melt the fog in the late mornings during those assignments. Those operations were no longer offered to agents accused of taking bribes. No ones hands were clean.

The water blows frosty kisses on the white cream from the shaving kit. You learn to make due living out of hotels across the greater forty-eight states.

I placed the cleaning rags and solutions into the cylinder of the gun. Dad reminded be before I took the job that me if I took care of her, she would take care of me.

I was pretty good with my hands. I could tackle in a tussle, but the job was about brains not brawn. God made man and the colt made man equal.

Three frantic knocks on the door pulled me out of the comfort bubble of the routine.

Now who could that be at this time of night. Deputy Cartwright had seen his share of ghosts, both on the job and in the service. That night a ghost didn’t descend on the town, A wraith passed through as if it were the final plague of Exodus.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

I believed they contained a legion of lies. White explosions from the deputies cameras saturated the crime scene. The press were no different than jackals feeding off the leftovers of apex predators.

The imagine was a reminder of the marble saint that greeted the passengers at the train station.

 Splotches of maroon liquid soaked on the checkered shirts and weathered potato sack. The black sea of blood and feathers lay amongst the old vineyard. The farmers believed the days in the sun had cooked his brain. He spied the flock of birds fall from the sky.

The following is the The testimony of Juan Ramos (given with permission from this family):

“We bled and toil in the soil. It’s the only time we are accepted on their land. Heh, their land. Before the unjust war, it belonged to many tribes and tongues. After the white sails and white armies pushed us to the grave or to harsh lands. I witnessed a giant hand smack those birds from the sky.

Everyday my father had us boys shoo the crows away. We were paid just enough to get soda bottles and candy. I put enough away to enjoy the rides at the melon festival. I found the bodies strewn all about.

The lacerated bodies of the birds bled into the ground. Its as if the land was drinking it. A few that survived limped around in a green maze. Death would not take them and their wings would not avail them.

It was only a matter of time before the coyotes and wild dogs would finish the job soon enough. I found the man in the husk of the scarecrow. The land drank the blood from the altar. Of course I left that part out when I called my father and the boss,

who would believe the words of a frightened little boy.”

Agent Tempt Reports: "A pair of green bottles sat side by side next to the altar, a compliment to the sacrament. I never felt more naked than the revolver settled in the kit in the boarding room. We cut down the body, the stink escaped the rags and the sack as they put him in the ambulance.

I enrolled in few courses when the Department of Justice absorbed us from the Treasury. I attended classes with Hoover’s G-men. Would you look at that, a kid born in the fields working on the next generation of investigation guess work. I placed the wine bottles in a plastic bag.

I placed the date and location on the bags. The open cuts and wounds on the body revealed the war for dominion of the body between the flies and the crows. I found the kids scooping up the birds from the ground. The blood would attract more flies and rodents, it would cut into the profits of the harvest, it was a waste of time really, this was an active crime scene.

We combed the grounds for blood, blades and bullets. To no one surprise, we found none. The valley was a land of corpses. The bones of fowl and foragers littered the soil, there wasn’t a county wide investigation for them.

The laws of nature claimed them. Why did the body in the morgue get special treatment? We put meaning and value on human life, when a coyote digs its way into a chicken coop we believe the carnage is from hunger. When people are dug up underneath a chicken coop we never consider the hunger of the soul inside the killer.

The killing field was more akin to a sacrament than a classroom. My grandmother mentioned places on the earth were the curtain between this world and the next was no stronger than a paper curtain.

For the time being, I realized the vines kept the murder in my jurisdiction, but the death wasn’t over untaxed barrels of vino. Religious identity was strong. A declaration of faith usually was presented ina chapel or inside a hot tent on a traveling sideshow.

The New Testament shunned blood offerings in lieu of the blood of the lamb.  

The county clerk or barber didn’t appear to have the body type to post a body up on the perch. Unless the devil himself filled them with the spirit, this was done by a man of a hardy stock.

The Deputy passed me a shotgun. Fit for bird hunting not manhunting.

I shouldn’t complain, dad used to take-out machine-gun nests with way less. Heavy arms slow down a scouting party. The corners report would take days to relief itself. BY that time a thousand whispers would run for a hundred miles.

The press, pastors and pop pushers would be gawking at the altar. Men would use the terror to tighten their grip on their familes. Preachers would scream about the devil as a way to control their congregation.

All the while the people in charge would find a way to ease the fears of both. Years from now after the grey hairs and years of service had overcome my body this place would be the stuff of legend. Children would hold their breath as they walked by. Teens preparing to leave high school would dare each other to call out the boogyman. 

These crimes didn’t occur in my unit. Usually we got the jump on a few brothers loading up a couple of barrels of bath tub gin. They put their hands up without a fight. Sometimes you catch a desperate man who remembers the stale bird and endless hours in a state correctional facility, they’d rather go out in a blaze of glory instead of enjoying three hots and a cot.

 The crime echoed like of a classic painter decorating a chapel. He could have been a drifter, but not one that seen an unattached woman or unlocked door and went for it. The new revival of bible thumpers set up tents all across the fifty states in honor of their God.

The sacrament sitting in the county morgue was a testament to another entity, one that was much hungrier and malcontent with an unstained countryside. I wanted to remain on this case, until the Sheriff deemed this wasn’t a scare tactic to keep rival criminal enterprises from stealing grape bricks from each other, I would remain.

Tuesday July 20^th..

My eyelids felt like lead weights for the past three days. I felt like I was floating through the cosmos as the last hour of my shift beckoned home. The tip-line flooded with long winded false confessions and accusations against the stoners in the creeks.

I checked in my gun as the ink dried on the no-hostage waiver. Oh, no one ever talks about the no hostage clause in the fine print. In the event of a mass riot or attempted escape. No patient will be released by the sheriff's department. Of course, it made for great headlines when they tried.

The smile died down as the weightlessness on my hip sank in. That’s the second time I had to be without the revolver. The San Joaquin State Hospital was the last refuge of the wanton and the hidden stains on the nation.

Ernesto Castro avoided hard time at San Quentin and the soon to be christened island fortress of Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco by having seizures and delirium in his court proceedings. He managed to convince the judge that he was possessed by demons and a hospital stay instead of hard bars was just the cure for his affliction. Most days, he wished he took the hard time.

Castro had made connections with underground saloons and speakeasies off the ports of Oakland and San Francisco. Dock workers and soldiers needed there daily doses of sin and gin, no amount of threats from old men with brass tabs were going to interfere. The public defender met with the Hospital director to make a deal.

“Word travels fast I see.” I mentioned as I placed a pastry and some coffee on the table. “This place is only a few hours west of the fields but it might as well be on another planet.” He replied as he resisted the attempts to leer at the treats. Always be weary of Greeks bearing gifts.

“Be that as it may, we have the radio and newspapers. It keeps the patients docile.”

Funny, he refers to the other inmates as patients but never himself. We dispense with the usual, more like co-workers coming back to work after a short Sunday. I recall that foul ball on the bottom of the ninth, he swears it was a clean call I believe the ref was paid off. I mention how rich the pastry is and how I can take another bite.

“I came to you, not the other way around. But I understand it is custom to break bread when entering contracts.” He took a bite of the cream puff and nodded as I passed the coffee his direction. “I’ve lived in the valley my whole life. I’ve spilled more than enough blood on the vine to appease the soil and the sun.”

I propped a small canister from my pocket. I unclipped it and spread the dirt on his hands. Those summers put red marks on his skin from the unforgiving heat, but he found virtue in the violent rays.

The spores of dirt unlocked the vaults in his mind. The tension melted from his shoulders and for a brief moment in the chronos, he was back in the fields with his family. Well his partial family. Castro was told he was the secret spawn of Enrico Galini.

The Galini name began a rising star after congress passed the Volstead act, they pushed wine bricks to the masses under the guise of sacramental elixir. Enrico watched sat in awe of the statue of liberty when he arrived by boat. The man denied it, but I did my homework. Those two were a spitting image.

“I pulled up your paperwork, you didn’t have some baby-faced intern as your defense.”

The white around the knuckles expanded to the top of his hands. “Where were you pulling in for your associates to get that type of legal aide? The feds didn’t find much stashed in your flop house or the farm.

“I’d say you have a guardian angel.” I waited for the tension to build back up, I pressed too soon and the vaults were slowly shutting. “We are here to talk about the case, something for something.” Ernesto did try to go legit once, but the Galini estate had a bigger team of lawyers use an intellectual property cease and desist order.

“There are places in this world where the lines between here and there begin to muddle.” He reminded about small trinkets and offerings being placed before we entered the fields.

“Its hard to say if they brought it over the Atlantic, hidden from the priests on the boat, these things always need someone to bring it over water.” The hairs on his arms stood at attention while he spoke of the long dead convents of long dead truths.

 “The second belief the land was always insatiable.”

Before the Americans came to finish the job the Spanish wiped out thousands of native peoples and animals. Ernesto believed the ground drank its fill and slept. The devotion in the mans eyes ran not only the blood in my veins cold, but the coffee as well.

“The man your looking for I only passed him once. He has a taste for killing, got it during the war, he says the prime cuts in the trenches were second to none.” Ernesto looked around as if the walls had ears.

“Slaughter houses can only keep him at bay for so long.”

Ernesto described how his offenses crosses paths with the outliers of society. Most lived outside of the view of the tax collectors and census. Others lived as if they watched the stars crash into the earth and the seas turned red. “People like him are good at disposing bodies for bootlegging. They don’t ask how snitches and witnesses disappear.”

“The longer this heatwave refuses to break, he will take it as a sign to keep killing. The powers that be, they show up at the church and they sing the praises off the almighty, but they follow a darker calling.”