Jeremiah felt that he’d spent much of his life trying to understand things of light and dark, things of great beauty and awesome terror. The way a tree appears out of black nothing and slowly becomes real, a shadow captured by the heliographer’s art in silver nitrate. To the great trees his entire day might be the flicker of a rising and setting sun as they inhale and exhale one breath of life through their leaves.
The huge shade oak of the farm, round as a man’s brain, took depth and moved in the slightest breeze. Its toothed leaves trembled as the light grew. Jeremiah extracted pen and inkpot and deer-hide journal and placed them on the smooth plank that he customarily used as a portable desk. Then he remembered the special edition of the local news tucked into his satchel and reread the beginning by first light:
A GREAT DAY FOR SONOMA COUNTY
By Abner Stiles, Ed.
July 4, 1876
Folks, this is it! This is the glorious Centennial Fourth of July Edition of your own Sonoma Democrat, and this is the day we have been all anxiously awaiting! For California it’s been thirty years since the Papist Monarchial Yoke was lifted, right smack here in the heart of our county, and for American Freedom it’s been fivescore since King George’s shameful shackles were shed and the Liberty Bell boldly bellowed, “Independence!” The Bald Eagle spread his wings at Concord, and our fathers fostered Freedom ever Westward, culminating here where the mighty California Bear growled and raised his namesake flag in Sonoma’s courthouse square!
To-day is a Great Day to commemorate the selfless acts of Heroism that created this nation and this state, and there may be no better place in the entire U.S. of A. than right here, in Sonoma County, to celebrate our triumphs! Here in your own Sonoma Democrat you will find listed the many events and speakers slated for our glorious celebration. Take for example...
He chuckled and sighed with a little envy. Abner Stiles was the local poet laureate, read by scores of people each year and lauded for his prowess as a wordsmith. While Jeremiah contributed a few articles and editorials and tinkered with an epic poem of the West that never reached further than his porch, his old rival Abner, with all his alliterations and exclamations, spoke for the people of Sonoma.
Well, he knew this literary avocation was likely just some form of foolishness. When he tried to set his own thoughts down before farm and school work, before rousting his little boy for his dubious help in milking and feeding, before his wife made the stove clank, even before the cock’s crow, it was a fool’s errand, to be sure.
And yet the act of trying to write what had happened with clarity, or what a dream might mean to him, and the occasional turn of good words, was such a secret delight. He dipped the pen and made note of the dream of Teresa and the lynch mob and the way Lucinda’s cheek and the tree had looked in the darkness before dawn, and the way the geography of Lucinda’s body under the blanket seemed to blend with the world at first light. Then he set about listing the chores and events of the day on the margin of the newspaper and checked again on the speakers and events:
Take for example the exploits of one Mister John C. Fremont! World-renowned explorer, War Hero, Presidential Candidate, John Charles Fremont has made a special detour to join his old comrades in arms in our home town! Captain Fremont will be joined on the podium by celebrated statesmen, such as Senator Morris, local representatives of Old California, such as General Mariano Vallejo and Padre Ignacio, Various Heroes of the Bear War and the Civil War, as well as historians, scholars, soldiers and statesmen from across the nation as well as from our own Valley of the Moon.
Fellow free Americans, what a century for the Progress of Mankind this has been! We have mapped the mighty rivers, settled the wondrous wilderness, mined the majestic mountains, and crossed the colossal continent with the plenipotentiary locomotive! We have tamed the Savage and freed the Mexican and the Negro from bondage! We have brought light to the redwood forest and made cities of enterprise from dark backwater bogs! Our great nation has survived a War Between Its States, and whether your heart hails from South or North, we here in the West proudly proclaim Progress! Progress as we fulfill our destiny and survey this Pacific domain that the Good Lord has given us to have dominion over! From Sea to Shining Sea, from...
“HEY, BOY, what is it?”
Ezekiel growled, his half-bitten-off ears erect, his brow furrowed, and Jeremiah silenced him as he stepped into the house, snatched the shotgun from its rack, and pocketed the box of shells from its perch above the door. A dark shape emerged from the creek’s mist and entered the lane.
It looked to be one of those carriages hired out by the San Francisco line to take the dandies, arthritics, and drunks to the Springs Hotel, except that the team had been cut from six to two and the long wagon was empty save a driver and two passengers on the bench directly behind him. They wound their way among the new corn and stopped beside the barn, and Jeremiah noticed a third passenger now, a small redheaded child clinging to the mother. He leaned the shotgun against the door frame.
A young couple, perhaps half his own age, the gent in top hat and tails, the lady in a high-buttoned dress underpinched by a corset, stepped down from the bench. Peeking from behind the heavy folds of the woman’s dress was the freckled little boy, no more than five years old.
The teamster, a burly fellow in slouched hat and suspenders, set to unhitching the horses and leading them to the trough at a nod from Jeremiah, who recognized the wagon hand as the progeny of Badger Smith, an odious companion from his youth. It was always a little difficult to keep the Smith boys straight.
“Sir, hello, and I beg your pardon, sir,” the young man called out. His hand stretched out from his shoulder like the tip of a sword, the arm long and thin. By his dress and formality the fellow might have been a snake-oil salesman, but Jeremiah had never seen the lot travel with family and driver before. He could hear his own family now, the baby crying, the little boy calling out, and the footfalls of his wife on the puncheon floor, gathering the children up. Ezekiel gave the stranger a cursory sniff and sauntered over to the teamster at the trough.
“Beautiful place you have here, sir!”
Jeremiah felt a sudden flush of shame. His father, a pious man beset by misfortune, had taken a modest view of man’s dominion over the earth, and the earth had generally decomposed the works of his hands in quick fashion. He’d erected a series of simple, jerry-built structures based on notions of the land and people about him, the Californy cabin being his ultimate effort: here some lumpy adobe brick, there some logs and planks from a giant tree he and his son had felled; here a few curved sleeves of bark from that same redwood for a roof thatch, there two mismatched windows bartered from the local Spanish alcalde for a buggy wheel. “It’s a miracle that it’s still standing.”
“Well, the land itself. It’s a beautiful place!”
They shook hands. “Kind of you to say.”
“That old sign by the creek said, ‘Fin Hollow Glen’?”
“My father’s invention. One of many things he would never explain.”
“Fascinating.” The man had the rheumy eyes and florid complexion of a drinker, and in fact his breath exuded the bouquet of strong spirits. The woman’s eyes were large and frightened, and an auburn ringlet of her hair escaped from the bonnet and swept across her mouth. “I’m very sorry to intrude upon your privacy today, sir.”
The heavy redwood
