Junipero Serra, The Serra Society, Drake's Plate of Brass, California fiction, Moors, California history, Junipero Serra, California missions, Old Spanish Days Festival, Annual California parades

      “Oooooooooohhh!”
      — El Fornio High School student
      looking at Junipero Serra’s heart in its jar
      at the El Fornio Historical Society

THE THIEF ENTERED THROUGH BACK DOOR of the El Fornio Historical Society and took Father Junipero Serra’s heart in a jar from the alcove where it had been for seventy-six years. The heart was quickly slipped into a black bag and shuttled out the open door, across the parking lot, down the sidewalk and into the light of downtown El Fornio’s annual “Old Spanish Days,” the two hundred and fifty year old ticker knocking back and forth against the sides of the glass.
     The heart and its liberateur headed into a crowd of partygoers checking the wooden stalls of tamales, apples, tri-trip, ice cream and margaritas printed with brown bears set between the red and green of the Bear Republic flag. The old padre’s pumper passed the apple-smoked sausage and chorizo stall put on by the local Jaycees, floating by the Aliso-Kennedy farm brand tomatillo salsa stall (where if it could have seen, the heart would have winked). Through the streams of Friday night festival goers the heart made its way up the avenue in rhythm with the bandit’s stride. Together they passed children in red, yellow, black and green uniforms, dresses and vests ironed for the parade. A skyrocket whistled into the air from behind a fence and beer bottles broke with drunken laughter as the rocket cracked at the top, sending sparks flying down. A man in a pelican costume sauntered waist-high amongst the crowd, waving to the crew on the patio at the Spotty Pelican, deep into their fourth round of Rob Roys.
     “Hey, Sean!” one leaned over the rail, waving.
   The sun fell and shadows began to move amongst candlepower and lanterns. Depending upon age and ethnicity, everyone was high on some combination of sugar, protein, alcohol, or datura. Chanting Fornay Indian elders carried on a song line at the far end of the assembly where one gave a nod to the latest owner of the noted heart. The robber waved back, only to break away and head down a side street. The sound of Indians, Mariachis, the El Fornio High School Moor marching band, banging pots and pans, revelers and costumed horses’ hooves collected in the street, a dusty midden rising above downtown.
   Every year, in the first week of August, the town threw its annual “Old Spanish Days” (known for a brief time at the turn of the century as “Halcyon Days”), drawing tourists up and down the coast in the hopes that they would spend their time on paper lamps, plastic hats, grilled fauna and the narrative fantasies of adjacent history. Protesters to the event claimed the scene to be “White people dressed up like the Mexicans they displaced, dancing on the graves of the Indians,” which was in part true. But a lot people at the annual festival were rich in melanin and a lot of Indians who lived up in the Pass had never died, and some people, the tour guide proclaimed to a camera’s flash, were “dressed in the manner of the great days of the Spanish Californios, right down to the silver belt buckles.”
   Any attempts to define the area were always incomplete as it was a slippery business to begin with—born out of a slippery history. Just as winter mudslides had continually changed the topography of the adolescent geology, a moving in and out of peoples had continually changed the face of the local story.
   Around 1200 A.D., a sudden migration of Shoshone speaking great basin Indians had come into the area and, until they were convinced to settle farther south—around contemporary Los Angeles and Orange County—there had been at least a half generation of dust-ups. The Shoshone had been nudged by aggressive tribes rising up out of Mexico at the time, as each was reacting to the upheaval of the next. The theory is that this was what caused the sudden disappearance of Anastazi who up and left, it would seem, a successful series of cities, religious sites and trade routes. The Shoshone moved towards the coast, encountering tribes who themselves had settled the area in preceding centuries. After some fight over land and food and passage, the Shoshone ended up with parts of the L.A. basin, Orange County and the islands of Catalina and San Clemente.
   As they tell the story, the local Fornay—from where the name El Fornio had been pried—had learned to mix, methodically, with interlopers through the years, reinforced by the influx of Shoshone and fifteenth century Chinese, although the tradition can be traced further back. By the time of the arrival of the Spanish Europeans, the Fornay were picking and choosing people. The Spanish explorer Juan Baptista de Anza had come to the area in 1776 and his asserted liaison with a Fornay Indian woman had created an ancestry that, in 2001, was finally proved to be true through DNA testing performed by Spencer Wells and the Genographic Project. The Fornay would “host” the occasional marooned or over-explored mariner, Spanish soldier and even friar, and it is from this and other mixed stock that the Fornay based their lineage today.
   Unlike many tribes with creation myths, the Fornay have never claimed to be the original inhabitants of the area. Instead, they have kept active a nearly infinite line of storytellers whose narrative is shadowed by another set of storytellers. The Fornay claim to be able to recount the narrative of their original members traveling across what is now India, and submerged shores, heading north and coming over the straights. Some of their ancestors headed south to become the Aboriginals of Australia (some Fornay children have golden hair, even those without European blood) and, indeed, at the time of Mayor Librado’s DNA test, a large part of the Fornay, numbering in the ranks of about 4500 (they have never allowed a real count), lined up for their mouths to be swabbed by scientists looking for genetic markers. They are indeed related to the Aborigines of Australia. The Fornay are, for the most part, Australoids, but then they are also a little Spanish, certainly Chinese, of course Mexican, a little Irish, African, Moorish . . . Homo sapiens sapiens. People, generally.
   Additionally, the Fornay hold a special place for those in their culture who are short of stature. This is not unusual. The Egyptians, the Maya and other past civilizations maintain a place of good fortune for small people in their hierarchies. But storytelling experts within the tribe suggest a more ancient time as the origin of this practice: when the Fornay were traveling, and this is some twelve- to fourteen-thousand years ago, they encountered smaller peoples who lived in groups. Anthropologists conjecture that the Fornay had encountered organized bands of Homo erectus along their journey and even, as current archaeology in the Indonesian islands is suggesting, the so-called and lately discovered Homo florensis who dwelled on at least one island called Florens in the Indonesian archipelago. Today the Fornay refer to them as mono’loq.
   . . . Which might be why there was a guy in a pelican suit ambling through El Fornio’s “Old Spanish Days.” Sean Heaney had always felt the sea bird get-up should be at least “a two gig costume.” The first was his bit as the North High School Pelicans mascot. Throughout the year he would show up around the county doing school events. Once a year he trotted into town for the annual game with the El Fornio High Moors, strutting his stuff, swinging his wings and ruffling his feathers while leading a cheer or two. To some, Sean was thought of as a bit of a traitor—he had graduated from EFHS and the sacrilege of cheering for North High was not lost on him.
   “It’s a business,” he would throw it back in their faces. “And I’m a businessman.”
   By the time the Spotty Pelican opened up on the wharf, Sean was able to add weekend work during the off-season to his full-time stint during summer.
   In his favor, the area had a long history of people wearing pelican costumes. With the Fornay, it was a position of some esteem. To support the story, Sean and the owners of the Spotty Pelican had pulled together a nicely placed glass kiosk with a written history, maps, diagrams, and even photos of certain cave paintings that helped to plump the Pelican’s coffers.
   Next to this paraphernalia was a dilapidated and seemingly ancient pelican robe that the Fornay had allowed to be exhibited as a kind of cultural shingle to the world. With a few photos of the robe in hand, and about three weeks work, Sean put the outfit in order, turning the act into a living. In the process of taking odd jobs here and there—on contract, for check, cash or trade—Sean Heaney’s pelican act had contributed to a few local legends . . . One of whom he was waddling up to now.
   “Jack!” Sean shouted out of his bill. “Janet!”
   Appearing out of the crowd was lanky Jack Kennedy, his girlfriend Janet Librado, high school seniors Mike Goodman and buddy Darby Hipper (“Hipper than thee but not hipper than thou”)—all old friends by now who had tangled with the pelican one way or another over the years.
   “Hello, Pelican Man,” Jack smiled. “What’re you doing? Spreadin’ feathers everywhere?”
   At that, Darby, bag over shoulder, tossed a wad of ladyfingers, sparked up and firing, at the pelican’s feet.
   Everyone jumped at the unexpected burst of the firecrackers, their faces turned away, fingers in their ears.

ii.

THE STORY OF JUNIPERO SERRA’S HEART and how it ended up in a jar at the El Fornio Historical Society is basic history.
   Born Miguel Jose Serra on the Spanish Island of Mallorca, Father Serra is probably the most well known of the Franciscan missionaries. His statues can be found throughout California. There may be more statues of Fray Serra in California than any other historic figure. Some are bronze and well-made, while others are made of rusty steal and clumsy proportion, no fault to the good padre.
   One example is the massively over-sized hobbit of an onward pointing mission padre looming above Highway 280 near Woodside, California—probably the most audacious of Serra’s likenesses. The madness of sculpture is only reinforced knowing that a man of some eccentricity, who lived in a trailer, was the site’s unofficial keeper for a number of years. Unfortunately, old age, years of marginalization and questions of territorial sovereignty led to a few decisive run-ins with the law. Although he was led away in handcuffs some years ago, it was likely a change in times that brought an end to the keeper’s reign and not a flaw in his character. Men must continually reinvent the place they are in or reinvent themselves, neither of which was occurring at the site of Iron Giant Serra.
   The real Padre Serra was described as a small man (only 5 feet, 2 inches tall) and it was said that he made up for his lack of stature with an enormous heart.
   In 1771, at the age of 58, the good padre moved into Mission Carmel, having traveled on foot more miles than Lewis and Clark. Fray Serra had overseen much of the missionization of California through his high ideals and pragmatic nature. An asthmatic all of his life, and in his last years suffering a unhealable, ulcerated wound on his leg—Neosporin some twenty decades away—Serra’s love of the California Indians was legendary. When many of his fellow priests would have resorted immediately to strict and formal punishment in the face of neophyte opposition, Father Serra was known to administer the whip only when all else failed. In fact, Father Serra may have administered the whip to himself more than he did to the locals. As a practitioner of self-flagellation, Fray Serra was known to burn and punish his flesh in an effort to deny himself any number of modernly accepted physical pleasures.
   By August of 1784, Padre Serra was ill—the infection of his chronic wound spreading to the chest—and he saw the end coming. He sent for his good friend Padre Francisco Palou. Father Palou prepared him for passing. The Indians gathered outside his room. On August 28, 1784 Father Serra died. As Padre Palou arranged the body for burial, he came and went from the room. Upon returning in the evening, Padre Palou was horrified to see that Padre Serra’s heart had been removed from his body. Fearing that greater harm would come should others know of the deed, Padre Palou quickly dressed the body and arranged for internment the next day.
   The fate of Padre Serra’s heart of was not unique to him. Within the next twenty years, nearly fifty-percent of the padres who passed had their hearts removed from their bodies. Through some investigation, the Franciscans were able to surmise the cause of such radical acts: an element of the Mission Indians, it was revealed, had established a secret network throughout the system whose very charter was the removal of as many of the hearts of the deceased padres as possible. Knowing that a body that was not intact would be restless in the afterlife, the Indians removed and hid the hearts from the padres. To this day, many missions and historical museums in California are full of the cut-out hearts of mission padres, on display for visitors to peruse, although, by calculation, a noteworthy amount have never been accounted for.
   In the case of Serra’s heart, a farmhouse auction in 1928 produced the relic preserved in a jar of brandy. After some negotiations between the family who “owned” the heart and the El Fornio Historical Society—with the Fornay Indian tribe just an hour from nabbing it themselves—the padre’s ticker was given over and its housing changed out for a better jar and solution of formaldehyde. Not wanting to disturb what had been already disturbed for so many years, the heart in the jar sat in the same place for nearly six decades unmolested, save a monthly dusting. Now, ten minutes after having been lifted from its spot in the museum, it sat in the trunk of a car as two thousand revelers hooted it up at the festival under the light of the rocket’s red glare.

iii.

“Alright, funny enough!” Sean retreated from the firecrackers, his feathery wings in the air.
   “Not very nice,” Janet scolded Darby.
   “Oops,” he retorted, the lot of them laughing.
   “Yeah, jeez’, Darb,” Sean back at him. “You tell me what you would do if this dang pelican suit caught on fire.”
   “Ummm,” Darby looked around for a water fountain.
   “Yeah!” Sean sounded.
   “Alright,” Jack put a hand on Darb. “It’s all fun and games until somebody in a pelican suit goes up in flames.”
   Mike pointed, “There’s only one guy walking around in a pelican suit anymore these days, Darby.”
   “Dang right,” Sean said, readjusting. “Man, a guy just tries to make a living and you wanna blow him up.” He pulled at the loose back of the costume. “Can’t a man . . .” fading.
   Jack smiled. “Sometimes a man can’t, Pelican man. Avoid head on resistance at all costs.”
   Sean held the wings of his costume out to each side. “There—back to square. Now, I gotta keep making the rounds, so thanks for the witty petard, surfer boy.”
   “Are you going to come by the booth tomorrow?” Mike asked. “Darb and I are manning the historical society with Hank Peabody. They’re going to take Junipero Serra’s heart out and Darb and I will be fielding questions with him.”
   “I believe we will be docenting tomorrow,” Darb drawled. “For extra credit. Pelican man would be cool.”
   “Isn’t that going to be kind of squishy?”
   “They’re not taking it out of the jar, guy. They’re just taking the whole set-up, the heart in the jar, some t-shirts, out of the building.”
   “Sure,” Sean flapped. “I’ll wander by and look at that sick thing.”
   “Later, Pelican Man.”
   They watched him wander off, wings high into the crowd.
   Janet looked at Mike. “So Abby is going let you out of busboy duty at Alfalfa Charlie’s?”
   “Charlie’s has plenty of people in the summer. And my mom knows that I want to declare history next fall, so a little docent work looks a lot better than another summer working at her restaurant.”
   “What’s the extra credit part?”
   Mike pointed to the smiling Darby.
   “Well, I’m not going to graduate perfectly next June,” Darb fessed. “They said they’d let me walk if I do a little extra on the side.”
   Jack poked at him. “Kind of deficient on the final units, senior?”
   “Kinda, yeah, Señor.”
   “Too much swimming with the dolphins.”
   “Hey, that’s my job,” Darby defended. “I pay the mortgage on my mom’s house with that.”
   “Better than me,” Jack laughed.
   “You’re too busy looking for your next bowl of Lucky Charms.”
   “Wherever I can find them,” Jack replied. “Supermarkets, back alleys, distant canyons.”
   “My kitchen,” Janet reminded.
   “Jan’s kitchen.”
   “Hey,” Mike said. “Pretty soon you can get them at Alfalfa Charlie’s. Mom says she’s working on the ‘Jack Special’—something having to do with the Charms blended into a protein drink.”
   “Wow. That sounds yummy,” Darby replied, bending over with a finger in his throat.
   Janet looked Darby over, turning her head to listen. “What’s that sound you have coming out of your bag, Darb?”
   “Oh, check this out.” He took the bag off his shoulder and put it on the ground. The others came closer. “It washed up the other day.” Darby took down the sides of the bag and lifted the gallon jar up to see. Inside was a small, hairless animal floating in formaldehyde, its short nose against the glass and tail curved slightly to fit in the space.
   Jack laughed. “Jesus.”
   “Nope.”
   “Targuman found it on the beach near White Hills yesterday.”
   “Of course Targuman did.”
   “Is it a baby dolphin?” Janet asked.
   “A fetus, I think. It’s perfect. Not a mark on it. It could be the offspring of a mother killed by locals. Or I’m also thinking a swordfish might have done her in. They’re starting to run. I don’t think it’s any of our dolphins.”
   Jack looked closer at the creature in the jar. “So this goes right into your collection?”
   “` Think so.” Darb put the jar back in the bag and hoisted it over his shoulder, sloshing. “It’s a keeper, don’t you think?”
   Darby had quite a collection. Local snakes, fish, rays, El Fornio iguanas (now extinct), embryos of vertebrates and invertebrates—even the heart of a convicted criminal he had picked up on Ebay—all were nicely held in jars of preservatives with notations and sourcing. He made no bones about his collecting hobby, and let anyone come and see the shelves he kept neatly dusted and tidy. Some had names, as if they were pets, like Henry the Green Rock Crab or Dahlila who was a moray eel he had bought off of a fisherman.
   That particular afternoon, Darby wrestled the muscular beast home in a pillowcase, still alive, before convincing it of its new home. Dahlila wasn’t a random name but one born of affectionate memory. As Darby forced the moray into the jar from the sack, Tom Jones was working his way through the song on the radio. The sight of the moray in the jar was encoded with the hook of the tune and every time Darby looked at the eel peering back at him the song would play in his head. “That’s Dahlila,” he would say to people, and the name stuck.
   “One more for the shelf,” Janet finished.
   Jack looked up at Janet. “Well, I think we’re gonna shuffle, boys.”
   “Alright. See you tomorrow.”
   “Yep.”
   Jack and Janet walked into the crowd. At thirty-two, they were the same age. Jack was nearly a head taller than Janet, though, and today looked rather pale compared to her chestnut skin. With a complexion as light as ivory, Jack’s tattoos of colored fish, green shamrock, an iguana, olive vines and lavender datura blossoms were all the more apparent. His denim pants, dusted black boots and “I Saw Junipero Serra’s Heart in a Jar” t-shirt looked like hired help to Janet’s slacks, blazer and collared shirt. Jack put his arm around her.
   “I like that bag you got there. Anne Tyler?” he asked.
   “Good try.”
   “What?”
   “It’s Taylor,” she shook her head. “Anne Taylor. Will you ever remember the right words for things.”
   “Well, I do every once in awhile. Then they change them around.”
   “Anne Taylor is the name of a designer. Anne Tyler is a writer. But this bag,” she tucked it under her arm. “This bag is just a lame old Gap bag I picked up on my trip to New York.”
   “It’ll do.”
   “I expect the seams to start going any time now.”
   “The Gap guarantees the seams on their product for up to three days from the date of purchase.”
   “Wow,” Janet nodded. “That long?”
   Smoke from a barbeque pit blew past them. “My only issue with your non-Anne Tyler bag, Jan, is that it’s kinda pleather.”
   “It does seem like some secret industrial formula.”
   “Genuine imitation?”
   “Fakely fake.”
   A figure in heavy clothing, beard and hat came out of the crowd and grabbed Jack’s hand.
   “Targuman!” Jack pulled back and found a folded piece of paper in his hand.
   “Something’s up,” he told them. Jack unfolded the paper and looked it over. It was written in code.
   “Which coding system today, Targ?”
   “Second generation, Jack. With third generation descriptors.”
   “Hmmm,” Jack took a moment. “You know, Targ, my notes for the second generation coding system are at home.”
   “I figured you weren’t keeping up,” Targuman looked him over. “It doesn’t matter anyway. By the time you get home, you’re gonna know.”
   “Gonna know?”
   “There’s been some changes. Bits and pieces moving around.”
   “Any hints?” Jack looked back at the scrap of paper.
   Targuman held a finger up. “One bit and one piece.”
   “Okay,” Jack turned the paper upside-down, tilting his head. “And?”
   “One glass, one flesh,” Targuman said.
   “The specimen!” Janet said. “The one you found for Darby.”
   Targuman looked at Janet. “Well, yeah . . .”
   “That was a nice specimen.”
   “Quite a creature.” Targ’s head swiveled about as he kept an eye on the crowd surrounding them. “Not often you come upon something like that. Nearly perfect.”
   Jack folded the paper up and put it in his pocket. “You filling in for Mike at Alfalfa Charlie’s this weekend?”
   “Only at the first of the week. I only work on Mondays and Tuesdays.”
   “They’re closed on Mondays,” Jack reminded Janet. “So Targ gets most of his work done then.”
   “I work up diagrams for Abby, based on our theories. And I do the Zodiac for the staff. On Tuesdays I’m the assistant maitre’d.”
   Jack looked at Janet. “Remember the Topsider shoes we got for Targ last week? They’re making their debut at the restaurant next week.”
   “We’ll have to stop by,” Janet followed.
   “Until then, there’s plenty to do,” Targuman said, with a glance to the crowd around them. “With the festival this time of year, I got to keep an eye on things, take a look out.” He looked at Jack. “I might find another one in the crowd just like Jack.” Curling his hands in front of one eye to make a telescope, he panned around. “Is that Heaney I see down there?”
   “Pelican Man?” Jack asked. “He’s about five minutes ahead of you.”
   “Five minutes? Those little legs? I’m a traveler of both time and space to be where I have been. I’ll catch him in two.” Targuman turned took into the crowd.
   Janet looked at Jack. “Is that--?”
   “Yeah. A quote—he likes to quote stuff. Plus all the people and noise. Add to that he’s convinced he is partly invisible.”
   Janet looked into the crowd. “He is invisible to these people.”
   “Now you see him now you don’t.”
   Many recognized Janet as she passed by and they greeted her with the civic nod reserved for the daughters or sons of well-known leaders. Although Janet had done well enough herself working as a lawyer for the county, she would always be known as Abraham Librado’s daughter.
   Librado was El Fornio’s favorite son, the three-time mayor and head of the Fornay Indian tribe. It is said that there can be no modern El Fornio without Mayor Librado.
   Born in what is known only as The Pass—the tall, long and cavernous sandstone mountain range above the coast, extending nearly twenty miles inland—Abraham Librado was the son of a long line of Fornay royalty claiming in their lineage, among other things, heredity to explorer Juan Baptista de Anza. Although Anza never claimed this “son” of his, spawned from the liaison with a Fornay woman in 1776, the Librado family has never wavered from the claim. In fact, it is common knowledge that the Fornay abducted a handful of Spanish soldiers during the Spanish expedition’s second journey up through California. These men disappeared into The Pass—impenetrable to all but the tribe—only to return later with their Fornay wives and children. While Anza spent just under two weeks in the Pass, “hosted” by the Fornay, the tactic of strategically intermarrying with the European outsiders—and others—was key to their survival.
   Although born with one leg shorter than the other (which earned him the nickname of “The Gallo” because of the idiosyncratic way in which he walked), the young Abraham served in World War I as an ambulance driver.
   Returning after the war, Librado attended college at Stanford University, where he obtained a Bachelor’s in History. In 1925, he studied for and passed his exams to become a lawyer with the state of California, a legacy of higher education that would become a Fornay tradition: eighty-percent of all Fornioleno children obtain degrees in higher education. Nearly evangelical in lending their skills to causes, at any given moment in the last forty years, there are Fornay doctors, soldiers, and care workers somewhere in the world.
   In the 1930s, Abraham Librado made a national name for his community and himself by opposing U.S. government logging and oil claims on Fornay land. Through a series of often violent but successful strikes and demonstrations, the young lawyer and community leader was able to negotiate greater tribal control of Fornay homelands, including the island of Sirenas just off of the coast where all Fornay, according to tradition, are to be buried—but these achievements eventually came at a cost. Librado was blamed for the deaths of both Fornay and local, non-Fornay youth involved in the burning of an abandoned barn that had served as a kind of fort and play area for the children. He was convicted of manslaughter and inciting a riot. While enjoying great local and state political support in his efforts to secure Fornioleno autonomy, the government saw its chance to get their man. In 1937, Abraham Librado was sentenced to ten years in prison.
   Prison time only fortified the young Librado. Living at the complex at Three Hills, ten miles to the south of the city, Librado’s wife, Maria, would visit daily with their young son, Peter, bringing him his favorite food (ironically, the rather progressive Librado still partook of dolphin at a time when the practice was dying out). Other notable visitors at the time included John Steinbeck, Clark Gable and William Randolph Hearst.
   Then came the disastrous Flood of 1939. Ten inches of rain fell in a three hour period. The Pass was inundated. Ancestral Fornay dwellings and spiritual sites were swept down the canyons. Of a community numbering only a few thousand, nine hundred men, women and children died in a thirty minute time period, pulled out of the Pass and spread upon the short alluvial plain before the ocean. Some seventy non-Fornay died in the city below when the torrent of rocks, building and bodies washed through the streets of downtown El Fornio. President Franklin Roosevelt, never satisfied with the handling of the Librado trial and conviction, signed an executive order releasing Librado so that he might lead the efforts to rebuild the community.
   Two years later, when the war in the Pacific broke out, Librado headed up the civil defense forces in El Fornio. Many Fornioleno young men volunteered and were drafted for the war effort. For the first time, Abraham Librado allowed federal government agencies to the outskirts of the Pass, where they laid plans for armaments against enemy invasion. To this day, one can look up from the city and see the huge concrete bunkers that were to house the large guns in case of enemy attack. Librado’s only restriction on these gun emplacements was that they face West, unable to rotate towards Fornay lands and homes.
   After the war, Abraham Librado was elected mayor of the city, a title he held off and on for the next thirty years. He was an idiosyncratic leader, once appointing a dog to replace him for a day when he was fed up with legislation moving slowly through the Board of Supervisors.
   In 1952, Hollywood came to town when John Ford decided to shoot Mark Twain’s “The Trails of El Fornio.” Mayor Librado got along famously with its stars Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner. Vittorio Gassman played the part of Mayor Librado and his wife, Maria, was portrayed by Katy Jurado. The real Librado can be seen in several downtown cameos with native Fornioleno and the local population mixing it up as extras. In the early 1990s, Disney’s animated version of Twain’s story featured the voice of Ricardo Monteblan as Mayor Librado.
   During the Viet Nam war, a conflict in which his son Peter, a journalist (and now head of the tribe), served, he sent a letter to Ho Chi Minh asking if he would like to vacation with his family up in the Pass. In 1973, he allowed a group of Cuban hijackers to land at the airport so that he might see for himself what they wanted. After visiting with the Cubans, he pronounced them “on the wrong track” and told them to leave immediately. In the confusion, Fornay agents, dressed as drifters and non-chalants, stormed the plane, capturing the hijackers.
   Just before his death, Librado gained the ire of then-governor Ronald Reagan by asking Mr. Reagan to reenact Librado’s favorite scene from “Hellcats of the Navy.” When Reagan refused, Librado was reported to have said, “What kind of a politician are you?”
   In 1984, “The Gallo” died. He left behind his wife, four children and six grandchildren. He was buried, like his forebears, on the Island of Sirenas. His funeral was attended by world and community leaders, celebrities, writers and nearly all of the county of El Fornio, California. President Ronald Reagan did not attend. He was not invited.
   Janet and Jack continued through the crowd.
   “Oh, god. There he is,” Janet looked down, trying to pass unseen.
   “Of course,” Jack replied. “What would the event be without Mr. Mission photos and his coffee table books.” Jack darkened.
   “Hey, Janet!” Gerry Danskin, wide-eyed and ebullient, blond highlights in his sandy hair, extended a hand although Janet was still about twenty paces away. “Did the committee get my letter?” he reached.
   “They did, Gerry.” Jack stood behind, fading.
   “And?”
   “Gerry,” she said. “No company business during happy hour. You know that.”
   Danskin pepped, “How about cultural business, Jan? Look at the setting. Locale people, local food, local traditions,” a hand passing over his books. “I just thought you might give me a little nudge as to the committee’s attitude.”
   She stared him down as he tilted his head trying to get a read on her. Jack disappeared completely, whispering, “Local schmocal.”
   By all accounts, Gerry Danskin was a success. His photos had appeared in all the major travel magazines like Islands and Travel Pro. His series on the California Missions had appeared in Sunset (and was subsequently turned into his first book, The Modern Missions: Recipe for Romance). He was skilled at both color and black-and-white photography, aging contemporary photographs to look vintage, hand-tinting color photos to look aged. With his success publishing the mission photos, he became one of the members of the local cabal who, as they had at least twice every decade, called for the rebuilding of Mission El Fornio.
   “Good for tourism. Good for the city,” they shook hands. “And good for business.”
   In 1984, he walked the grounds with Nancy Reagan, arm in arm, talking about California’s past and posing for photos. Gerry was pretty certain that with enough effort—and some great photos—the mission could be rebuilt. And that, Gerry knew, would certainly add to his legacy.
   But like a lot of ambitious people, the “G Man,” as his detractors called him, wasn’t necessarily satisfied with his resume. While his mission book had started soft cover, perfect bound, coffee table, and gone on in its second printing to be hardcover, coffee table—a process that usually goes the other direction—Danskin’s biggest complaint came with his failure to get any of his work into National Geographic.
   The man had sent unsolicited photos and proposals for stories. He connected with an agent for a couple of years for the sole purpose of getting his work into the Geographic. He lobbied for a story on the missions, Anza, Serra (Gerry was a member of SCOFS or “The Society to Canonize Father Serra”). He pushed for pieces on the Spanish, Mexicans, Yankees, Chinese, Basque sheep herders, local cliff dwelling voles, and old rusty nails of the pioneers—whatever it took to get an article and its accompanying photos into the Geographic, still to no avail.
   “You can work hard, concentrate, be diligent, even change friends and restaurants,” he once confided. “But you just can’t get into National Geographic.”
   He wasn’t the first El Fornio photographer to make the local area the basis of his career. Danskin was up against the legendary Barclay Combs whose photos were used in the August 1976 issue of the Geographic.
   Combs, a ball turret gunner in World War Two, was known for his black-and-white photos of the area and is often referred to as “The Ansel Adams of El Fornio.” Mayor Librado granted Combs unprecedented access to the Fornay Indians to shoot archival work for the tribe (he was the first outsider allowed into the Pass in two decades). Combs shot landscapes and portraits for the Fornay. While some of the images are on display at the historical society and in the tribe’s official museum at the north base of the Pass, a large part of the work is available only to the tribal members and has not been seen by any outsider. Ironically, Combs, primarily a black and white photographer, became best known for the color photo that ended up on the cover of the 1976 issue of the Geographic.
   As the head of his own design studio, Combs once created a rendering of Mission El Fornio simply for academic and archival reasons—not for any romantic or commercial Jones. (The mission had been completely destroyed and then dismantled by the Fornay in 1806). As a member of the committee to rebuild the mission, Gerry Danskin became a kind of anti-Combs simply by picking up a camera and pulling the shutter.
   Barclay Combs clearly understood that remembering local history wasn’t about manufacturing salsa with images of the padres and mission Indians on the label. He was possessed with an instinctual pedigree, like white Burgundy, full of earth, his notes minerally and acidic. As a red wine, Combs would be all body, less fruit, more tar, tannic, and challenging enough to stand up a decade down the line.
   Danskin was all craft and stencil, over-oaked urine-gold butter, full of malolactic excreta. As a red, he was all fruit, the Merlin of merlot, mixing grape trying to be the standard, candied notes of an overripe lozenge covered with ants.
   His mission photos might have sold well but they were the work of a real bullshitter—trestles full of vines and petals cast in front of bell towers that never even existed in the time of Serra or his cronies. Janet saw he was Hallmark card in the history department right away.
   “Alright, Gerry,” she pulled away.
   “Ah,” he chided her. “You know you’ve always got a signed copy waiting for you. Just let me know.”
   “Call my office,” Janet headed back into the crowd, Jack returning.
   “Did you notice?” he asked.
   “Notice what?”
   “Old Gerry there. He’s got the same bag as you.”
   “Huh?” looking around.
   “Yeah, he’s got one of those pleathor things.“
   “Your point?” she stopped.
   “Just that you and Gerry Danskin have something in common.”
   “Ha,” walking. “Never.”
   “That a girl.”
   Janet bent back. A plume of smoke bellowed directly into their faces. “How much barbeque do they need here?”
   “People like that stuff, Jan.” He ran his nose through the air. “Western cologne.”
   Pushing through the oily haze hissing from the pits, they came upon Helen and Nat, the proprietors of “Fool’s Gold,” whose antiques and collectibles were at the festival every year. Their base shop was located outside of the city, about five miles up the coast near the San Luis Obispo county line, but some weekends they tooled out some of their wares and attended the festivals. Like many Fornay, Janet liked to check in on local antiquers like Helen and her husband.
   The desire to recover Fornay religious and cultural objects put many of the tribe through the front doors of most of the antique and collectible shops in the state. By the 1930s, the Fornay had created an entire department of lawyers and investigators whose very charter was the recovery of Fornay property. Janet herself had originally become an attorney with just this task in mind and recovered a couple dozen artifacts for the tribe until she was seduced by the Clean Water Act, squeezing the pure wet rag of environmental law into polluters’ faces.
   If Fornay agents weren’t finding something stolen, sold off or dug up when no one was looking, then they were finding something important to other tribes. A beautiful, black steatite Chumash whale pipe had been found by Fornay agents at a garage sale in 1982. The owners thought it was an African object carved for the tourist trade. They had obtained it from their grandfather, a traveler, who had long since passed. The pipe, the story goes, had bounced around on the floor of the husband’s pick-up truck for most of the 1970s and served as a mighty and authentic receptacle for marijuana consumption. “Those days are over,” he confided, “And for a buck I figured to clean out the garage. Hell, our kids are nearly fifteen. How do I explain a damn, resin-filled pipe to them?”
   For a buck, a local citizen could clean out his garage and for a buck the Fornay could return a valuable object to their neighbors to the south.
   This tactic became enormously important after the flood of 1939. All kinds of objects were showing up in shops up and down the coast, found and sold by beachcombers in the spring months after the flood. Through litigation and basic power of purchase, the Fornay recovered a couple hundred artifacts and objects. Sometimes the merchants had no idea what they were holding. Other times, pure larceny, hoping to go undetected, was at work. Janet’s brother, Peter, found an old teak pulley at a place down south in Santa Barbara on Ortega Street. Its context was completely lost in the shop. The proprietor, notorious for selling Indian stuff, got the pulley in a lot at an auction, mixed in with Chumash and Fornioleno artifacts. It wasn’t stone or chert or any of the materials that usually connote Native American collectibles, so he was selling the piece as “an old Spanish galleon winch.” But Peter had seen it before. Not this exact one, but he had run his hands around a piece exactly the same as this when he was a kid growing up. It was one of Zhou Man’s pulleys from his 1423 fleet. They came to El Fornio where two of their junks beached off the southern tip of Sirenas Island. The vessel had been collected and partially restored by the Fornay the following season, its crew joining the tribe, waiting for the fleets to return. Peter bought the dense mechanism for forty bucks, making a survey of the remaining items at the shop. The following Monday, the place was shut down buy the FBI.
   But Helen and Nat were some of the good ones. Five years ago, Helen had come into possession of Chinese jade carving brought to her by the son of an old El Fornio family. She was a little suspicious of the piece and ran it by Hank Peabody, the director at the historical society. He, in turn, showed it to some Fornay elders and historians. Comparing it to three other pieces—one at the historical society and two up in the Pass, in the possession of the Fornay—it was evident that the newly discovered fourth carving was part of the group of effigies discovered under the Banyan tree located in what is now Librado park in downtown El Fornio. These jade offerings had been placed there, at the ceremonial planting of the Banyan tree, by mariners from Zhou Man’s fleet in 1423. That effigy is now at the historical society, making it two at the society and two in the Pass—the goal of balance sustained.
   “Helen,” Jack and Janet shook hands with her.
   “Janet,” she smiled. “Jack.”
   “Where’s the Nat Man?” Jack asked.
   “You know, all this smoky barbeque smell, he wandered off to get something to eat.”
   “The comfort food gene takes over.”
   “Things look great,” Janet congratulated her. “What do you have?”
   Helen looked over her wares. “I’m not sure about you, Jan. But, Jack, I think I got something you might like.”
   She walked to the other side of the tables and brought back an ashtray. It was rectangular and charcoal glass-colored, about four inches wide and three inches tall, with yellow lettering and an image imprinted on it.
   “Take a look at this,” she said, handing it to him.
   Jack looked it over. “Oh, yeah” he let, colors subtlety changing in him like an excited squid.
   “You see it?” she asked. “It’s a bank promotion using the Drake’s Plate of Brass story.”
   Janet looked it over as Jack held it up. “It’s from before the ruse was up, isn’t it?”
   “Yep.”
   Jack passed it in front of an electric light to see if there were cracks in the glass. It looked pretty unscathed.
   Jack read, “`Drake’s Plate of Brass. Presented by Citizen’s Federal Savings’ . . . How cool.” He looked up at Helen. “I’ll take it.”
   “Five bucks,” said Helen.
   “Five bucks? I’ll give you six.”
   Janet shook her head. “He’s so good with money.”
   Jack read aloud the inscription, hamming it up with an old English accent, growing slight lamb chops as he did:

   “Nice recitation, Jack,” Helen laughed.
   “Believe me,” Janet went on. “I get plenty of them.”
   He kept looking the plate over. “If these people were so English, how come they couldn’t spell? And for something that’s supposed to be so official, it sure looks like some kid did it with crayons and construction paper. You got to be a little suspicious when grown men write in all caps,’ he said. “But it’s a great story.”
   In 1579, Drake’s ship, the Golden Hinde, hauled out onto a beach in what is now Marin county. One Francis Pretty, an individual onboard and keeping a journal, mentions Drake leaving a “plate of brasse,” (he couldn’t spell either) granting “her majesties and successors right and title to that kingdome.” That much is known in the record, but the plate itself was lost to history, never found nor turned up.
   Along comes Herbert E. Bolton, director of the Brancroft Library and an educator. Bolton loved telling the story of the brass plate to his students and convinced of its existence, gave directions as to where one might encounter it should they manage a picnic and gallivant about the area in search.
   Lo and behold, in 1936, two members of the California Historical Society—Leon Bocqueraz and Anson Stiles Blake—were up in the area hunting with their chauffeur. Mind you, they were not average Joes, but members of the California Historical Society, so the tale they were about to christen could not have been ordained by citizens any better placed than these dupes.
   While kicking around the area, waiting for the other two to come back from the hunt, the chauffer, William Caldeira, came upon the plate. What that means, “came upon the plate,” is hard to know. Did he sneak off for a leak and pee on it? Did he bend over to tie his shoelace and rest a foot on it? Did he spy it from afar and investigate? Like anything, unless you were there . . .
   When the other two returned, Caldeira showed the plate to them. Bocqueraz and Blake took a look at the piece and decided to throw it in the trunk—they were obviously older and had never had Bolton as a teacher. Weeks later, chauffeur Caldeira found the plate again while cleaning out his employer’s automobile and decided to simply throw it off to the side of the road, up around San Rafael, which is about twenty miles from the original spot the piece was located.
   There the plate sat in the dust and weeds and garbage, winter rains and summer sun until it was rediscovered in 1936 by Beryle Shinn, described in records as a “shop clerk.” On a very rainy day, he showed it to a friend at Berkeley who brought it to Bolton. By this time it was 1937 and Bolton, after years of telling the story and sending enquiring minds up the coast in search of weekend treasures, must have thought that his quest was finished.
   Professor Bolton and his cronies at the California Historical Society and, by this time, the University of California, offered twenty-five hundred dollars to Shinn to take possession of the plate. At first Shinn agreed, but wanted to show it to his uncle before parting with his discovery. Shinn disappeared for four days with the plate. These four days are lost to history. What Uncle Shinn had to say or not say has never been documented. Although someone in the family might know, no scholar or journalist has ever contacted them.
   By this time, Bolton and lot freaked and the financial reward for the plate was increased to thirty-five hundred dollars. Shinn drove a hard bargain without even knowing it. The plate was taken by Bolton and immediately given as a donation to the Brancroft Library. Bolton then offered up his entire professional career on April 6, 1937 at the California Historical Society. Looking from the podium he proclaimed, “One of the world's long-lost historical treasures apparently has been found! . . . The authenticity of the tablet seems to me beyond all reasonable doubt."
   As Moses and Joseph Smith can tell you, tablets can make you feel a certain way.
   Early on there were doubters. A spoof of the plate was produced to simply prove that a fake was possible. Bolton wouldn’t budge. Then E Clampus Vitus published a book, “Ye Preposturous Booke of Brasse,” telling the reader what to look for that would prove the whole thing to be a hoax. The fact that they could spell about as well as Drake’s people should have been a clue.
   ECV or the “Clampers,” as they are called, are “dedicated to the erection of historical plaques, the protection of widows and orphans, especially the widows, and having a grand time while accomplishing these purposes.” A regular part of the group’s activities was the undoing of their own members through hoaxes and overripe activities.
   All of this counter narrative did nothing to calm Bolton’s earnestness. He believed. In 1938, Robert Gordon Sproul, the president of the University of California, and one of Bolton’s friends and original supporters, began to cast doubt on the plate himself. He obtained the professional services of one Cohn Fink, a professor of Electrochemistry at Columbia University, to authenticate the plate once and for all. Fink, it seemed, had not read the ECV booklet or even knew about its existence, and went on to authenticate the piece quickly. It is “our opinions that the brass plate examined by us is the genuine Drake Plate.”
   Fireworks, marching band and majorettes all filed into the room.
   From that moment on, forty years of textbooks, postcards, souvenirs, ashtrays, balloons, secret decoder rings and even a ceremonial gift to Queen Elizabeth II were produced using the likeness of Drake’s Plate of Brasse. Spelling remains the same.
   The quadricentennial of Drake’s landing arrived in 1977. Aside from college Toga parties and lead-lined aqueducts that continue to poison the populace, words like “quadricentennial” are one way the Romans let us know that they still have a large influence on ou world. To commemorate the four hundred years since the discovery of the plate, James Hart, now the director of the Bancroft Library (Bolton had died in 1953 at the age of 82), had it tested at Berkeley by Helen Michel and Frank Asara using neutron activation analysis. The test was to be but a formality and all Hart asked for was a four-page letter of authenticity that he could quote from for the speech and accompanying brochure.
   Instead of corroded material when they drilled, they found strips of metal. And the thickness of the plate was too constant for something that was supposed to have been hammered, as it would have been by a blacksmith aboard the Golden Hinde. Then the neutron analysis revealed too much zinc in the plate (zinc hadn’t been discovered or in use at the time of Drake). Further texts were conducted until eventually Hart, who was looking for a short letter of authenticity, ended up getting a forty-five page letter of declamation.
   Whoops.
   Years later, after some research and piecing together of events, a press conference was held—February 13, 2003—some sixty-six years after Bolton’s declaration of authenticity. Drake’s Plate of Brass, it was divulged, was simply a practical joke organized by friends of Herbert E. Bolton.
   Researchers discovered that what was supposed to be a clever trick amongst friends flew out of control by the time the plate was at first discovered and then tossed to the side of the road in San Rafael. It turns out that the leader of ECV, Ezra Dane, initiated the hoax to entertain Bolton. But on the fine line between perpetrating the hoax and subtly calling attention to the plate’s inauthenticity, their own declarations became frozen out by the momentum of the narrative. Some people will always want to believe in faeries. Like Jack Lemmon in drag at the end of “Some Like It Hot,” no matter how many clues his character gave to Joe E. Brown as to the likelihood of his gender, Brown, like Bolton, was going to motor sweetly into the sunset of his desire.
   To be accurate, the co-conspirators in the hoax were Albert Dressler, Lorenz Noll, George Clark and George Barron. Researchers figured that the plaque was created by the lot in 1933. They bought the brass from a local shipyard, banged the inscription into it, even painting “ECV” on the back of the plate with paint only visible under ultraviolet rays. What was supposed to amount to the weekend stealing of the other team’s mascot turned into sixty-odd years of reputation-breaking “history” turned upside-down and backwards in a mirror. Or as Mike Goodman, the son of Alfalfa Charlie’s owner Abby Goodman, liked to say, “Your basic bullshit.”
   It was Mike, who thought this whole heart in a jar business was a hoax. Sure, the historical society could say that they had Junipero Serra’s heart in a jar, but how could they authenticate it? Who was there when the event occurred and could say, “Yeah, that’s really his heart. I cut it out myself.”
   Not that Mike wasn’t happy to tell the story of the heart and its history to any weekend festival-goer. The junior historian in him knew that the discussion of the heart was a great discussion. The words would surround the jar and its contents and the words would make people interested even if the heart wasn’t real. As for Darby, his buddy and partner, Mike was pretty convinced that he just liked the idea of something off-kilter and pickled in a jar, whether it was Junipero Serra’s heart, a juvenile dolphin or Paris Hilton’s dog.
   Mike’s standard line to tourists was, “The question is not whether it’s Junipero Serra’s heart, or if it really is a heart. The question is why do we have Junipero Serra’s heart in a jar?”
   “Like the Jackalope,” Darby replied.
   “Like the what?”
   “The Jackalope, dude. Half antelope and half rabbit. You’ve seen the postcard. People think they’re real at first just cause they’re on a postcard. But if you have half a brain and think about it, rabbits don’t have antlers. The postcard makes it real.”
   Mike scratched his head. “Is that like Jessica Simpson thinking that buffalo wings came from buffalos.”
   “Pretty much,” Darb reckoned. “Pretty much.”
   “Like when you eat dolphin burgers. Is it dolphin meat or mahi mahi, the dolphin fish?”
   “Right on, bro,” Darby backed him up. “My mom always used to ask, `Why do they call it a dolphin fish anyway? If you take a good look at it, it looks more like Hubert Humphrey than a dolphin.’ “
   “Hubert Humphrey? The president?”
   “Yeah,” Darb said. “Hubert Humphrey, the president of the United States. I believe it was 1929 to 1933 to be exact.”
   Jack and Janet came out of the crowd and approached Abby’s Alfalfa Charlie’s booth. Abby and her boyfriend Ed Mister had put together an even more spectacular booth this year than last, with the image of a peg-legged old sailor, eye patch and parrot on the shoulder, standing knee deep in wheat grass. The sailor held a hearty shot of the green liqueur in one hand with a black lettered “Arrrgh!” ballooning from his mouth. “Wheatgrass: The New Age Shooter.”
   A crowd had gathered around the booth, listening to Abby as she poured little sample tasters from a blender into outstretched paper cups. Mike, Darby, Targuman and Sean Heaney were there. Sean had taken his pelican mask off and situated it under a wing as he sipped from the cup.
   “Hey, Jack,” Mike spotted them. “Here’s the `Jack Special’ I was telling you about.”
   “It’s like childhood in a cup,” Darby remarked after shooting the elixir with a groan, then tossing the cup into the trash.
   “Yeah,” Sean piped. “Miniature blue and green marshmallows mixed up in a blender. Yum.”
   “How about I start with a shot of wheat grass,” Jack nodded.
   “You’re gonna need a shot of reality, son,” Ed advised.
   “I can get him a shot of reality,” Targuman offered.
   “Not that kind, Targ.”
   Jack put a hand on Targuman’s shoulder, noticing that Targ had found two more jackets to wear since they’d last seen each other ten minutes ago.
   “You guys didn’t hear, did you?” Abby asked.
   “What’s up?” Janet asked.
   “Someone stole Junipero Serra’s heart in a jar.”
   “Huh?” Jack laughed.
   “Yeah, Hank Peabody just came by to tell me that when they went to prepare it for tomorrow’s part of the festival, it was gone.”
   Targuman looked up at Jack. “That was in my communiqué to you, Jack. The second generation code.”
   “Who the hell would want to steal the heart in the jar?” Sean growled.
   “What would you do with it?” Jack turned to Janet.
   .“Maybe you would give it back to Father Serra,” Targ offered.
   “Or,” Janet thought. “You could . . .”
   Everyone waited for her to speak, but Janet just folded her arms and continued thinking.
   Then Darby let out. “Well, it’s looks like I’m not going to graduate, that’s for sure.”

The Opening Chapter from

“Who Stole Junipero Serra’s
     Heart in a Jar?”
     by
     John Graham

The Opening Chapter from

“Who Stole Junipero Serra’s Heart in a Jar?” by John Graham

“Who Stole Junipero Serra’s
Heart in a Jar?”
by
John Graham