seemed intent on speaking to him today, he mused. And he wondered what the professor would say to all of this, beyond calling it mystical claptrap.
As he thought of the imminent arrival of Elijah Applewood, a man known to Lucinda and a dozen others of their generation as nothing more or less than the professor, his son cried in jubilation at having found seven eggs. The little fellow ran across the field with his treasure held precariously in shirttails, Ezekiel barking at his heels, and Jeremiah started to warn the boy against dropping their breakfast when he realized that the dog’s call had another aim.
“Jake, you hold those close,” he said, scooping the boy into his other arm and carrying both children to the doorway at a trot. One egg fell and splattered, but Ezekiel was so intent on invasion that he didn’t tarry to lick it up. A little dust came up from among the willows where the lane met the road. He could see it from the doorway. Lucinda bent over the cookstove as he set the children on the floor. The box of shells was still in his pocket, the shotgun leaning by the door.
It looked to be a lone horseman in wide sombrero and flapping poncho. Fifty yards off he shrank from a man on a stallion to a mere boy on a donkey. Jeremiah met him down the lane, shotgun breached, and saw that the messenger was unarmed and trembling with fear, a Digger boy he’d never seen before, holding nothing more perilous than an envelope. “Disculpame,” Jeremiah said, putting the gun down. “Zeke! Ezekiel Hornblower, get over here!” he shouted to the dog. “Excuse me. Habla usted español? Inglés?”
“Little bit,” the boy whispered, arm extended. “For you?”
It was a telegram addressed to him and his wife, but the writer had reverted to her old surname. In his forty-six years Jeremiah had received but two personal telegrams, so he held the document gingerly and leaned the firearm less cautiously against a fence post. The Indian boy started to leave, and Jeremiah thanked him absently as he walked back to his father’s house reading the missive.
He set the envelope on the table beside the platter of fried eggs. When Lucinda sat he presented the message to her. She gasped and immediately read it aloud, exactly as it appeared on paper:
MCKINLEY URGENT MATTER STOP MEET TODAY SUNUP NEWS OFFICE STOP ASI.
She laughed just as the baby shrieked. “Who or what is ASI?”
“I have absolutely no idea, my darling. I was hoping you did.”
“Is he an old Californio? Asi?” She turned the document and examined each side of it. “Somebody from the old mission days, husband?”
He pulled one strand of silver-and-chestnut mustache. “It’s a common Spanish word, but it makes no sense, and I don’t know anybody by that name. And why should a local send us a telegram? About to give us a heart attack, by God.”
“Oh! The historical society!” she yelped.
“I thought you were the historical society.” His wry tone made five-year-old Jacob laugh.
“Mama, I thought you were the hysterical society,” he said. His mispronunciation made the parents laugh as well.
“No, the main charter. The Pioneer Society of California headquarters is quite set on the mission. You know, their office is in San Francisco, and they send an occasional wire to the railroad, I suppose, but...” She touched Jeremiah’s hand. To Jacob she said, “And I don’t think I’m the hysterical society all by myself when your father is twice the worrywart that I am.”
“A-S-I,” he said each letter separately. “Abner Stiles... the First?”
“By telegram? From Santa Rosa?”
“Something to do with the senator, or Fremont. Maybe I’m expected to do something by Abner. By God, what a day,” Jeremiah muttered. “That boy. What do you suppose about him, Lucy?”
“When do we see the fireworks?” Jacob asked.
“First that boy,” Lucinda said, “and then this telegram! What’s next?”
“Are the fireworks at sunup?”
“Jake, the fireworks begin soon as it gets nice and dark.” He set the boy on his lap. “This is a big day, as you know.” He brushed the boy’s hair from his forehead and thought of his first son, Miguel, and sighed. “Your pap has to give a little speech to introduce some dignitaries, and your ma has the local history exposition. Old friends and bigwigs will come by train and speak as well.”
“Can I watch the train come in with you?”
“I reckon you can. As if the valley didn’t have enough steam spewing up from the geysers and the new locomotive station, a bunch of us will create a cloud of hot air in Santa Rosa to rival that in Washington, D.C.”
The boy scrunched his features thoughtfully. “Why you want to do that for, Pap?”
Lucinda laughed and, with the babe balanced on a hip, stacked the dirty dishes in the washbasin. “We’re all doing this to celebrate a very special birthday,” she said.
“Somebody’s got a birthday party today, too? On the Fourth?” he asked his father. “Who is it? A famous fellow comin’ by the train?”
“Very famous,” Jeremiah said.
“The United States of America,” Lucinda said. “Husband, will you milk that cow before you get the team ready?”
“Yes, but mightn’t I ride to the office for this urgent matter from Abner first?”
“And leave our poor cow high and dry?”
“Is it a old fellow or a kid?” the boy asked, and the parents exchanged a look and laughed, and Jeremiah was struck by the radiance of his wife’s smile.
“Officially he’s a centenarian, one hundred years of age, but I’d say he’s still a child in many ways,” he replied. “Wouldn’t you, wife?”
“An infant.” She held their daughter and the pail of dishes and smiled as man and son walked out toward the bellowing cow, and Jeremiah thought, as he often had, of the nation as a babe, a noisy, squalling infant filled with every human defect and blessing, a greedy, hungry child grasping and demanding succor, blindly clawing and drinking of the treasure of the wide earth’s breast. He thought of how oft he’d loved and scolded this bawling infant nation, this child of the mothering wide and sinuous rivers and the rigid fathering steeples of church and courthouse, of how precious were the scales in the hands of Sister Justice as we tried to live as men of law and principle in a wilderness of emotion and superstition. He helped his son draw the milk from the rotund udder in the rich smell of manure and straw and thought of the professor’s many pronouncements about America and California, this Eden stolen from Mexicans and Indians, this experiment in the creation of a new world. And as the boy and he lugged the milk pail he saw Lucinda set the babe in the grass a moment among dandelion fluff and commence pumping water. She bent over the long handle from the spring pipe and, as if aware of his glance upon her, turned and smiled, and he smiled back and remembered their first encounter, in the wilderness of Kansas. Three days after the Missouri jump, across Walkarusa Creek and the Kansas River by Papin’s Ferry, the spring rain abated, and a shaft of
