Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  I was quiet for a minute or so, thinking about what Pa’d said.

  “But how do I know if it’s the right thing?” I asked after a bit.

  “You mean whether Lincoln’s the right man to be president?” said Pa.

  “That too, but mainly whether it’s the right thing for me to do. I mean, just because something’s there to do, and just because somebody else thinks I ought to do it, that doesn’t necessarily make it right, does it?”

  I paused. Pa didn’t say anything but just kept looking over at me, and then I continued.

  “I knew for a long time that I wanted to write. It was something I wanted to do inside myself, whether anybody else cared, or whether anybody else ever read anything I wrote. But then when something like this comes along, from the outside, so to speak, and not from inside myself, it’s an altogether different thing. I just can’t do something because somebody wants me to. There’s got to be a rightness about it.”

  “I hadn’t given a thought myself to the idea of running for mayor until Almeda and Avery and Nick and the rest of you all talked me into it.”

  “But after a bit, didn’t you start thinking it was the right thing for you to do too, no matter what we thought?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  “That’s what I mean, Pa. Even if Mr. Lincoln is the right man, I can’t do it because anyone else thinks I should. It’s still got to be right for me.”

  “Well, then, do you think Mr. Lincoln’s the man who ought to be the country’s president?”

  “I don’t guess there’s any doubt about that. Slavery’s no good, and like the man said, it’s time the southern states didn’t control things as they have for so long.”

  “So then, there’s your place to start thinking about it. At least you’re in agreement with the cause they’re talking about. You sure couldn’t do it if that weren’t true. Now all you have to do is decide if it’s something you want to do, that you feel is right for you to do.”

  “Sometimes that’s not an easy thing to know.”

  We were both silent a while. Finally Pa reached over and took my hand, then bowed his head and closed his eyes right there on the steamer.

  “God,” he prayed out loud, “me and Corrie here, we’ve got some things to decide about our future, and about what we ought to do about some things. And we ain’t altogether sure in our own minds what’s best. So we ask you right now to help us, and to guide us in what we do. We need your help, God, to keep us walkin’ right along the path you want us on. Neither of us want to be anywhere else but right where you’d have us. So show us where that is.”

  He looked up and opened his eyes. “Amen,” I added.

  Again we sat in silence for a while as we floated along.

  “You just never know where something’s going to lead you,” I said at length.

  Pa nodded.

  “Just like starting to write and getting that first article published in the Alta, or walking into the Gold Nugget, looking for Uncle Nick that day and having you walk out instead. Things have a way of piling onto each other. Something you do today can change the whole direction of your life.”

  “Makes you think about being careful before you jump into something new, don’t it?” said Pa. “Whether it’s writing or mayoring or anything else.”

  “Yeah, I reckon that’s what I’m thinking now. If I say that I’ll write and maybe even talk to some folks about voting for Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, who can tell what it might mean in my life a year from now, or even five years from now? It might change things as much as writing that first article did.”

  “You heard what all them men in San Francisco were saying,” said Pa. “This year of 1860 is just about the most important year this country’s ever faced. So I reckon you’re right. If this election’s the most important in a long spell, then it’s bound to have some effect on your life too.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, Pa. But how do you know what to do when you can’t see up ahead what that effect might be?”

  “You can’t see into the future, that’s for sure, Corrie.”

  “I know,” I laughed. “Sometimes I’d like to, though.”

  “Well, look at it this way—if this election is gonna help decide which direction the nation’s going from now on, maybe you can’t see into the future, but you might have a hand in helping decide it.”

  “But electing either Lincoln or Douglas could change my life as much as it’s sure to change the country one way or the other.”

  “Yep, I figure it could.”

  I let out a sigh. “I don’t suppose there’s much else to do but wait for God to show me something,” I said finally.

  “I reckon he will,” said Pa.

  “I hope so.”

  “If you’re looking for it, he won’t leave you in doubt for too long a spell about what to do.”

  Chapter 5

  The Rock of Changing Circumstances

  We rode along for fifteen or twenty minutes without saying anything more. Outside, the rolling landscape passed slowly, reminding me of the time I’d first made the leisurely trip down the river with Almeda.

  It seemed so long ago now!

  The country was shrinking; California was shrinking. Stagecoaches ran daily to most places north from Sacramento. The Pony Express delivered mail in record time; rail lines were being laid down all over the country, and the national election seemed so much closer and important than ever before! I felt I was being stretched, so that the whole country was part of my life, my world.

  Just the thought that my writing went all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic was enough to make me stop and wonder what God was doing with me. Nobody paid any attention to what a woman did, and yet people were reading my words all the way back there in the East, as well as at home in Miracle Springs. It was sometimes more than I could imagine!

  “You know, Corrie,” Pa said after a while, “I’ve got a future to be thinking about too.”

  I looked up from the midst of my daydreaming. “You mean whether to keep being mayor?”

  “There’s that too,” answered Pa. “But plenty more besides.”

  “What, Pa? You sound as if it’s something serious.”

  Pa sighed and looked out the window thoughtfully.

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked.

  He gave a little laugh, although there wasn’t anything comical in the sound of it.

  “Wrong, Corrie?” he said wistfully. “No. I was just reflecting on all the changes that come even when you’re not looking for them. Life has a way of bringing things to you and plopping them smack in your way so there’s no way you can avoid them. You may be thinking you’re heading down one road toward somewhere, but then all of a sudden a giant rock falls in the middle of your path. And you figure, that’s okay, you’ll just walk around it. But in getting past it, without realizing it, you change directions, and then all of a sudden you’re going along a different path toward someplace different. You never knew there was someplace different to go, but you’re headed there, and you never set foot on the first road you was on again.”

  “You’re going to have to try again, Pa,” I said. “I don’t suppose I’m used to hearing you philosophize about life quite like that.”

  Pa burst out laughing so hard he couldn’t stop. Several of the other people in the boat turned their heads to see what the joke was.

  “I must’ve been around you and Almeda and Avery too much,” he said finally, still half laughing. “Or too long trying to make sense of being mayor to that town of miners, farmers, ranchers, and kids!”

  “But I still want to know what you meant by the road with the big rock falling in the middle of it.”

  “Well, for example, Nick and I coming west, we didn’t plan on all that trouble we got into. I always figured on farming my land and raising my family in what you’d call a normal way. Then all of a sudden, the rock of circumstances fell—the robbery, the shooting
. Suddenly Nick and I were running from the law and heading west.

  “That’s what I mean, Corrie. There we were on a new path toward someplace we never figured on going. We never set foot on the first road again. I’ve been out West ever since, never saw your ma again. It was a long time before I could even think about Aggie without getting pretty stirred up inside. You know that, ’cause I shed my share of tears with you after finding out she was gone. You understand? A change comes out of nowhere—you don’t see it coming, you don’t expect it, you ain’t done nothing to plan for it . . . but your life will never be the same again.”

  “Now I see, Pa.”

  “Same thing that day you and the rest of the kids showed up in Miracle. I stumbled out of the Gold Nugget and there the five of you was standing there, with Almeda wagging her tongue at me. And wham—my life took off in a new direction!

  “I guess we get blindsided by circumstances every now and then. So when one of them big boulders slams down in front of you, it makes pretty good sense to look things over a spell before you start off either moving around it or in a new direction. You never know what tomorrow’s gonna bring, and you just might never get back to the same place again.”

  “Like that man asking me if I’d help with the election?”

  “Exactly like that. You see, that’s a big rock in your path. It’s not anything bad, like me and Nick’s getting into trouble. Why, it’s a real opportunity for you—might be the best thing that ever came along. But you just can’t ever know ahead of time what might come next on account of it. That’s why you gotta stop and take a good look at things and at the decisions you make. If you say yes to the man, it might change everything for you, Corrie. It might not . . . but then it might. You just can’t know for sure.”

  As I watched Pa and listened to him, I realized that his being a father and a husband for the second time in his life, the mayor of a growing community, and a man who took his faith in God more seriously than most men did—all that had changed Pa inside more than even he realized. Just to hear him talk amazed me when I thought back to those first couple of years after the kids and I came to California. He might talk about the boulder and his and Uncle Nick’s coming out West and being mayor, but I could see that the most important new path Drummond Hollister was walking along was deep inside his heart and mind, and maybe didn’t have as much to do with all those other things as he might think.

  “It’s the same with the country, Corrie,” Pa went on, “or with a town, a community, a family. Things come up, and then things change. Everything around here for two hundred miles is the way it is because a man named Marshall found a pretty little rock in a mountain stream up in the hills. And Miracle Springs became what it did ’cause our friend Alkali Jones found a piece of the same kind of rock in the creek up behind our place.”

  “According to him, at least,” I said with a smile.

  “You’re right there, Corrie!” laughed Pa. “But somebody found gold there anyhow, including Tad when he was just a little runt. And then all of a sudden everything’s changed.

  “And this election—all those men back there were saying how important it is for the future of the country. Why, who can tell, we might look back someday and say that the election of 1860, and whoever becomes the new president next year, steered the whole country off in a new direction. You just never know what might be around the corner, and so you oughta be watching and paying attention as best you can.”

  Again he fell silent and gazed out the window for a while.

  “I see what you are saying, Pa,” I said. “And I’m sure going to take your advice and try to think carefully through what’s best for me to do. If it’s going to change the direction of my future, it can’t be something I do without thinking and praying. But I don’t think you were really talking about my decision, were you, Pa, when you first said it? There’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?”

  He sighed, then and turned his head back and looked at me.

  “Can’t ever fool you, can I?”

  “You said you had your future to be thinking about,” I said, “more than just mayoring.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. So, what is it you’ve been beating around the bush to try to tell me about?”

  Pa took a deep breath. “Do you know who that man was who asked you about helping out with the election?” he asked.

  “I got introduced to him,” I answered, “but I forgot his name.”

  “His name’s Alexander Dalton.”

  “That’s right, now I remember. But I’d never heard of him, Pa.”

  “He’s not the kind of man people do hear of. Crocker and Hopkins and Stanford and Fremont—they’re the public men, the famous, the names folks hear about. Lincoln and Douglas—they’re the ones running for president. But back behind men like that there are always other folks making things happen that nobody ever sees. Kingmakers, they’re called. They’ll never be kings themselves, but they hold power to make kings. You see what I mean?”

  I nodded. “So, is Mr. Dalton like that—a kingmaker?”

  “That’s exactly what he is,” replied Pa. “He’s just about one of the most important men in all the West, even though he’s practically unknown except by the people who need to know him. Fremont, Stanford—he’s helped make them the important men they are.”

  “So that’s why he was the one talking to me about getting involved.”

  “He’s the top Republican in California, Corrie—the chairman of the Republican party for all of California and Oregon. It’s his job to make sure Lincoln carries the state.”

  “Is that all he does?”

  Pa chuckled. “Not by a long shot, Corrie! He’s got to see to all kinds of business besides just presidential politics.”

  “Like what?”

  “California politics, the state’s future, all the kinds of things politicians think about. He’s got to raise money for the party, he’s got to see to the state’s growth, he’s got to make decisions about who does what, who’s in charge of what. He’s the one more than anyone else who has power to get people elected to committees and even to the Congress in Washington. Leastways, if the Republican party keeps growing like it has, he’ll be doing all those things. The way I hear it, he’s just about the second most influential man in Sacramento behind Governor Downey.”

  “You sound like you know him, Pa.”

  “I’ve met him a time or two. He’s always at the mayors’ conferences I got to go to. He knows everybody. He’s made speeches to us about all the plans to get California split up into different states.”

  “So what does it all have to do with us, Pa?”

  “It’s got to do with you ’cause he asked you to help with the election, Corrie. He’s trying to get Lincoln elected.”

  “But what about you?”

  “Well, daughter of mine, you weren’t the only Hollister that Dalton talked to last night,” said Pa.

  “I didn’t see you with him,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a long conversation,” Pa replied. “And it was private. He took me outside for a minute.”

  “It sounds secretive—why, Pa?”

  “Some things are best not made public until the right time, Corrie. You know how fellas like Royce can twist and turn things to their own advantage if you’re not careful.”

  “Now you’ve got me dying of curiosity, Pa! What did Dalton say?”

  “Well . . . he asked me to run for the state legislature in Sacramento come November.”

  Chapter 6

  A Surprise in Sacramento

  “Pa, that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed. “Are you going to do it?”

  “I don’t know, Corrie. I’ve got lots to think about, just like you. God’s bound to cause a heap of changes, like I was saying, we can’t see now. It’s not something you can do lightly. Naturally I gotta talk and pray with Almeda about it.”

  “Would you have to move to Sacramen
to, Pa?”

  “I reckon most of the men do, but there ain’t no way I’d leave Miracle. I’m not about to pack up everyone to go live in a city. And there’s sure no way I’d move there myself or with just me and Almeda, and leave everyone.”

  “I could take care of the kids, Pa. Zack and I are adults. With Emily and Mike married and down in Auburn, that only leaves Becky and Tad. They’re fifteen and seventeen. We can take care of ourselves. You and Almeda can take little Ruth with you to Sacramento and you can become a famous politician. If we have any problems, there’s Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie across the stream.”

  “No, I’m not gonna split up my family for nobody, not for Alexander Dalton, not for my own future, not even for California. Besides, what if you decide to do what he wants you to do? Then you’d be gone a lot, too.”

  “Zack’s twenty-one. He’s a grown man.”

  “You know as well as I do that he’s itching to be off wherever a horse’ll carry him. He and Little Wolf are gone half the time as it is. No, Corrie, if I decide to run, and even if I win, then they’ll just have to settle for a congressman who represents his people as best he can by staying with those people and going into Sacramento whenever he has to.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll be before the train comes up that far?”

  “I doubt if that’ll be for years. There’s lots of other places in California growing faster than us. I’m sure I’d have to travel by horse or stagecoach for a good while yet.”

  “Did Mr. Dalton say why he wanted you to run?” I asked.

  A sheepish look came over Pa’s face. I’d never seen anything quite like it in his expression before.

  “Aw, he did, but you know them politicians—they’re always saying things that aren’t true to get things how they want them.”

  “What did he say, Pa?”

  “Aw, he just said he and other folks in Sacramento’d been keeping their eyes on me ever since I got elected mayor, and some of them figured I was the kind of man they needed in the capitol to help set the direction for the state in the coming years.”