Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  “Oh, Pa, don’t remind me!” I said. “Mr. Burton probably thinks I’m a complete ninny!”

  “Don’t bet on it, Corrie. I walked him out to his buggy last night and we chatted awhile. He thinks a lot of you. Seems like all them high-up fellas in Sacramento do.”

  “No more than they think of you, Pa,” I said.

  “Naw, Corrie. A man like me ain’t that unusual. If I turn down their offer, they’ll just get someone else. Who knows, maybe Franklin Royce’ll run instead of me! But you—that’s different! If you turn them down, who else are they going to get? Ain’t too many young women like my daughter Corrie Belle around!”

  “Cut it out, Pa,” I said. “I was a complete fool yesterday, and you know it.”

  “Doesn’t make me love you any less, or make me any less proud of you. So . . . you decided yet?”

  “I don’t know, Pa.”

  “Seems to me that Cal’s coming with a direct invitation like he brought—seems like that’s just exactly the sign from the Lord you were waiting for.”

  I glanced over at Almeda.

  “An open door?” I suggested.

  “Looks like one to me,” said Pa, taking another drink of his coffee. “If you ask me, I say you oughta do it!”

  Chapter 20

  My Decision

  I took Pa’s advice.

  I may have been twenty-three, but I still figured my pa was about as dependable a man as there could be. Even if he hadn’t been my pa, I would have heeded his words. His being my father made it all the more important to listen to him and obey him as fully as I could. I’d had plenty of independence at times in the past, but the older I got, the more I found myself wanting to trust his way of looking at things.

  Besides, I wanted to do it. I was interested in politics. I knew by now that I was against slavery, and that I did want Mr. Lincoln to win the election—maybe not as much as I had Mr. Fremont four years earlier, but enough to be able to speak out and tell folks that’s how I felt.

  So Pa’s words gave me the nudge forward I needed—a nudge, as it turned out, that would make a mighty big difference in my life.

  I left the next day on the midmorning stage south to Sacramento. Pa and Almeda and Becky and Tad took me to town to see me off. I was dressed in the traveling suit Almeda had Mrs. Gianni make for me. She said it would help to save my two fancy dresses for special occasions if I had something just to travel in. It was of dark brown patterned wool on the bottom, with a loose white muslin blouse with a short wool wraparound cape if it should be chilly.

  When Cal Burton took my hand to help me up into the stage, I nearly wilted, even though my heart was pounding rapidly inside my chest. I tried not to show anything on my face, but sat down, then looked out at my family while Mr. Burton took the seat next to me. They were all smiling and waving and saying their farewells to me as if I were going to be gone a month instead of just four or five days.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Hollister,” Mr. Burton said through the open window. “I’ll make sure your daughter is well taken care of.”

  “We stopped worrying about Corrie four years ago,” laughed Pa, “when she took to gallivanting off all over California by herself on horseback!”

  “What’s this?” he said, glancing over at me.

  “A long story,” I answered.

  “I want to hear about it. What is your father talking about?”

  “The last time I got mixed up in an election,” I said, laughing. “I hope this one turns out better than that.”

  The stage jerked into motion. I leaned outside again, and they all waved. I kept looking back, waving as we picked up speed down the main street of Miracle Springs. Something about this departure was different than any other before, even though I had gone a lot farther than Sacramento in the past. Probably the difference had something to do with the man sitting next to me inside the stagecoach.

  As we pulled out of town and headed south, I could not keep from thinking of the awful scene after Aunt Katie discovered me outside her window, and wondering if Cal Burton would say something about it. I didn’t know what I was going to talk to him about the whole way!

  I shouldn’t have worried. He treated me with complete respect and kindness, never referred to the incident at Uncle Nick’s, and was so easy to talk with I soon forgot my nervousness and began to converse more freely than I imagined possible with a relative stranger. He asked me about my involvement with the Fremont-Buchanan election, and I told him about my adventures in Sonora and Mariposa, and what had happened with my story in the end.

  “I never could help feeling less important than the other people around whenever I was in the city,” I said. “And everything that happened back then only made it worse.”

  “From what I’ve heard, you’ve stood your ground against Kemble more than once, and even made him back down a time or two.”

  I couldn’t keep from smiling at the memory.

  “That doesn’t sound like a timid country girl to me.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I did do that. But down inside, someone like me still can’t help feeling kind of out of place in a big city and around important goings-on. Like that gathering in San Francisco that Pa and I went to in June.”

  “You seemed perfectly at ease to me.”

  “Oh no—I was so nervous!”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because I’m not used to all the big-city fancy ways. I’m more at home on the back of a horse than in a frilly dress.”

  “You could have fooled me. You looked as elegant that evening as any young woman I could imagine.”

  I blushed and glanced down at my lap. Nobody had ever used the word elegant about me before! The very thought of me being elegant would have made me laugh if I hadn’t been so embarrassed at the words.

  “So tell me, did you ever get to meet the Fremonts after all you tried to do on their behalf?” Mr. Burton asked.

  “Yes. Ankelita Carter arranged for me to meet them when they came to California after the election.”

  “I imagine they were very appreciative of your efforts.”

  “They were very nice to me,” I said. “Jessie Fremont’s a writer too, and so she seemed interested in all I was doing.”

  “And Colonel Fremont?”

  “He said he had mentioned my name to some of his friends as someone to ‘get on your side when the chips are down.’ I laughed at first, and didn’t think anything more about it. But now I find myself wondering if it might be true, after all.”

  “I imagine if Colonel Fremont said he told people about Corrie Hollister, then he probably did exactly that. He and Lincoln were talked about in connection with each other for a while. You can never tell where your name might be getting around. Kemble told me that just about everything you write nowadays finds its way into print in the East. It must make you very proud to have accomplished so much as a woman, especially at such a young age.”

  “I guess I never really stopped to think about it,” I said. “It never crossed my mind to think that I had accomplished anything.”

  “The women of this country would likely disagree. Someday they’ll look back on you as a pioneer of a different kind than Daniel Boone, and John Fremont when he first explored the West.”

  “Me, a pioneer?” I said.

  “Of course. You mark my words, the day will come when people will remember your name and be proud of you for what you did.”

  “Mr. Burton,” I asked after a minute, “do you think it is because of something Mr. Fremont may have said that Mr. Dalton asked me to help with the election?”

  “I never heard anything to that effect. It’s possible, of course. But as influential as he was in helping to form the Republican party and make it a viable alternative to the southern Democrats, the party has begun to move in different directions than those of John Fremont himself. He does not have the influence he once did, as fond as you may be of him. Although you may not know it, your edi
tor, Ed Kemble, thinks more highly of you than he probably lets on in your hearing. Word about Corrie Hollister has gotten around San Francisco and Sacramento without any help from John Fremont.”

  He paused, then looked over at me earnestly. “There is one other thing I have to reply to about your question,” he said. “If we are going to be friends, as I hope we will, you are going to have to call me Cal. I’m only twenty-five. That can’t be more than a year or two older than you. If I’ve taken the liberty to call you Corrie instead of Miss Hollister, the least you can do is drop the Mister.”

  “I’ll try,” I said shyly.

  “If you ever meet my father, you can use Mr. Burton again. But not until then . . . agreed?”

  “Agreed.” I nodded with a smile.

  Chapter 21

  A Ride Not to Forget

  We rode for some time without talking again. Cal spoke to a man and woman in the opposite seat, who were on their way from Reno to Sacramento. They, too, had spent the night in Miracle Springs.

  When he turned to me again, he seemed to have returned to the subject we had been discussing earlier. “Do you really feel ill at ease in the city, Corrie?” he asked.

  “Just when I have to pretend I’m something I’m not,” I answered.

  “Why would you want to be other than you are?”

  “I don’t suppose I do. But when you’re in the city, around people in fancy clothes who know how the city works and are doing important things, a country person like me can’t help but feel that Robin O’Flaridy had it right all along when he said I was just a bumpkin from the sticks.”

  “O’Flaridy?”

  “Never mind,” I laughed.

  “He really had the nerve to call you that?”

  “Robin had enough nerve to do plenty more besides that! Yet sometimes that’s exactly how I do feel—especially around important people. When I’m at home and can be all by myself and write, I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of me. I can be free with my thoughts and let them flow out onto the paper. But something like what we’re going to Sacramento to do—that makes me real nervous. It makes me wish I was more used to the city and its ways so I didn’t feel like a bumpkin.”

  “Let me tell you something, Corrie,” he said seriously. “Don’t ever wish to be something different than exactly the person you are. I’ve been in a lot of cities, and I’ve known many city people. But I don’t know that I’ve ever met a family quite like yours, or a young lady quite like you, or a man quite like your father.”

  He stopped, then turned and looked out the window at the passing scenery. The silence lasted a long time. When he finally turned back toward me, I could see a wistfulness in his eyes, a far-off look—almost longing for something or a painful memory out of his past. I knew he’d gone somewhere far away and was now struggling to bring his mind back to the present.

  Until that moment, Cal Burton had seemed so high above me, so confident and sure of himself, mingling with important people, a friend of politicians and assistant to Mr. Stanford, one of California’s most influential men. All of a sudden, in the brief second when he turned back from the window and his eyes met mine, he was an ordinary person just like me, and in that instant I momentarily forgot about all of the things that made us so different. All of a sudden he did seem to be Cal to me rather than Mister Burton.

  “No, Corrie,” he said with a sigh, “don’t ever leave Miracle Springs, or your family. It’s too special a treasure. Wherever you go, whatever you do, however many people you meet, and however many big cities you visit, don’t change. Don’t let Miracle Springs and the country and that homestead by the creek you love so much—don’t let it get away from you. You can stand tall alongside anybody, no matter how big or important they may seem to you. You’ve got something just as important down inside, whether anybody sees it right off or not.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I kept quiet.

  “So you’ve got nothing to be nervous about,” he added after a moment. “When we get to Sacramento, you just be who you are, and that will be enough for anybody.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied.

  “So tell me,” Cal said, brightening up again with that wide smile of his, “what’s it like to write? How do you do it? How’d you ever get started writing for the Alta, anyway?”

  “I started out just keeping a journal,” I said. “I wrote down things I felt, things I thought about. I just did it for myself at first.”

  “How’d you start writing for the newspaper, then?”

  I told him about the blizzard of ’55 and the story I wrote about it. “After that,” I said, “I just kept doing it a little more, thinking of things to write about, getting braver about sending things to Mr. Kemble.”

  “And getting braver about facing him and speaking up to him, too, from what I understand.”

  “What do you mean—how do you know about that?”

  “Dalton had me do some checking up on you,” Cal answered. “Kemble was half mad, half proud of you when he told me about your facing him down and arm-twisting him into paying you eight dollars for an article he wanted to buy for a dollar.”

  I laughed. “How I could have been so brash back then?” I said. “At nineteen, to think I should get paid what a man did. I don’t know whether it was bravery or stupidity!”

  “It must have worked. You made a name for yourself. You’ve written a lot of articles, Kemble likes you, and you’ve made a little money at it, I would imagine.”

  “Forty-three dollars, altogether,” I said.

  “Is that all?” exclaimed Cal. “I would have thought it would be hundreds!”

  “I got only eight dollars that once. Most of the time Mr. Kemble still pays me between two and six dollars an article, and I’ve written only fourteen or fifteen articles he’s published. Some of them are so short I get only a dollar.”

  “Then you must not write for the money.”

  “Oh no, it’s not that at all.”

  “What then?”

  I had to stop and think a minute. “It’s a lot of things,” I said finally. “People, nature, thoughts, ideas, feelings . . . I don’t know if I could really explain it, but what’s inside me has to come out in words. When I think something or notice something or have some kind of an insight about the world, to be able to communicate that to someone else is the greatest feeling on earth.”

  “Are you an intellectual, Corrie Hollister?” Cal asked, with a serious and pensive look on his face. For an instant I thought he might be poking fun at me, but then I realized he honestly was trying to figure out more about me.

  “An intellectual?” I repeated in surprise. “You must be joking!”

  “You’re certainly a thinker, almost a philosopher in a way.”

  “A philosopher! That’s even more strange to hear you say. Didn’t you hear me a few minutes ago—some people think I’m a bumpkin from nowhere.”

  “Ah, but they don’t know you like I am beginning to,” replied Cal, his eyes open wide in a knowing expression. “But you don’t deny that you’re a thinker, do you?”

  “I don’t suppose I could be a writer without being a thinker at the same time,” I answered finally.

  “There—you see . . . a philosopher! A philosopher is just someone who thinks and has his own way of looking at things and then writes them down for other people to think about too. Isn’t that what you do, in your own personal Corrie-Belle-Hollister-from-Miracle-Springs sort of way?”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I don’t think of it like that. I just look at things, at the world, to observe people. Then I write about what I see, describe it, and maybe try to figure out what it means.”

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  “Maybe it’s just from living in the country. But I have this feeling that everything is supposed to mean something. There are two ways we can look at something—just as it is on the surface or on two levels at once—what it looks like and what it is saying about life
and the world. Do you know what I mean? Don’t you have the feeling that the whole world is talking to you all the time if you just had sharp enough hearing to listen?”

  “I’ve never thought of it before.”

  “Oh, but it is!”

  “Give me an example.”

  I thought for a minute. “There’s the creek outside our house. Sometimes I lie awake in my bed at night and just listen to it singing and babbling away down the hill toward the town in the dark. Or sometimes I sit beside it on a sunny day, with my feet in the water, watching for an hour as the clear water tumbles and splashes over the rocks. I love that creek! And don’t you see why? It’s so much more than just water. Its splashy, wet noises are constantly bringing messages down from the mountains—telling tales of snow and winter, of secret places where it has been, under the hills where huge vaults of gold exist that no man has ever seen, telling about falls it has cascaded over and about the fish and otters that play in its deep pools. Oh, it’s got so much to tell if you only stop and listen to its voice. But best of all, when you kneel down and put your lips to it in the early spring when it’s icy cold, and you drink in a mouthful, then it tells about life itself and how God made it, such a simple thing to look at, as the very sustainer of everything that lives and grows. The water that comes down that creek is nothing short of a miracle.”

  Cal laughed. “You are indeed able to see a great deal in things that most people look right past.”

  “But that’s not nearly all,” I said enthusiastically. “If there has been a heavy snow up in the mountains and then a week of warm weather comes, the stream will grow and grow, almost hourly, until it thunders and roars and rushes down with foamy swiftness. Then the stream can tell stories about the science of water itself—how it is gathered up into the sky from the ocean, to wait and accumulate together in clouds, finally to descend back to the earth in snows and rains, hitting the earth and soaking into it and wandering to and fro in streams and springs, sometimes pausing in lakes, until it finds its way back to the ocean again. I sometimes think of all these mysteries as I sit and watch and listen to the water as I did yesterday.”