A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  “John Muir,” she said immediately. “M-U-I-R?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. John Muir was a famous Scotsman. He did great work in the field of environmentalism; he essentially began the conservation movement. The Mountains of California was one of his books. M-T-N-S space C-A. Maybe your grandfather read it years ago and thought of something he wanted to look at again so he jotted down a note to himself.”

  “Maybe,” I said, wheels spinning in my head. “How did you do that? How did you just know?”

  “Well, I haven’t read much John Muir, but I’ve read about him. It’s one of those facts that sticks in your head.”

  “Sticks in your head.”

  “Yes, well. And how’s Dad?”

  I didn’t know what to say. How’s Dad? How should I answer? It occurred to me that my mother wasn’t only calling with birthday wishes. That was her gambit, of course. But she was also calling to check up on my father. I saw an opening.

  “Dad’s doing really well,” I said, in a brazen attempt to sound cheerful. “I mean, despite missing you.”

  “He misses me?”

  “Are you kidding?” I boasted. I felt the need to create a myth. Get her hooked, then get my father hooked. A parent trap. “It’s crazy; he talks about you all the time. And he shaved his beard.”

  “Did he?”

  “He’s got a face, you know,” I said, and I was pleased to hear my mother’s laugh. “And it’s pretty thin. I guess I can see why you were attracted to him. You know, a long time ago. Back in the beginning.”

  “He was very charming as well as being good looking,” she said.

  “Overall, he seems healthier,” I assured her. “I think it’s the air or something. And he seems happy, too. I mean, as happy as he could be under the circumstances. You know, because of his business and all, and you not being around.”

  “That’s terrific, Trevor. Thanks for telling me. I was worried that going back to Riddell House would dredge up some pretty painful things that might push him in the opposite direction.”

  “No way,” I said, getting carried away. “He and Serena get along great. And he and Grandpa Samuel are like best friends. I practically expect them to go outside and toss a baseball back and forth. You know, like it was thirty years ago.”

  There was a long pause, and I realized I might have overplayed my hand. Toss a baseball? What was I thinking?

  “Your father never had a good relationship with Grandpa Samuel,” she said. “Even thirty years ago.”

  Crap. Just because my father hadn’t told me about the animosity between Grandpa Samuel and him didn’t mean he hadn’t told my mother.

  “I mean, they seem happy together,” I offered.

  “Is that so?” my mother wondered after a moment. “I’m glad to hear it, if it’s true. Is Dad around? I’d like to check in, if he has a moment.”

  I panicked. Of course she would like to check in. But where was my father? Where was anybody?

  “Um. Let me see if I can find him.”

  “It’s all right—”

  I set down the phone and quickly ran down the hallway to the front door, looking in the rooms I passed. I ran up the stairs and checked my father’s bedroom. Nothing.

  “Dad?” I called out down the hallway. Desperate, I ran up to the ballroom. Empty. Back down the stairs to the first floor, I hurried along the corridor to the south wing, calling out for my father. But my father was nowhere to be found. I returned to the phone, breathless.

  “I don’t think he’s in the house,” I said to my mother, panting.

  “I’ll call another time, then—”

  “Maybe he’s in the barn. Hold on.”

  I ran out of the kitchen and noticed that the car was gone, which did not bode well. I cut the corner of the meadow and sprinted down the hill to the barn. I threw open the door.

  “Dad!”

  Grandpa Samuel looked up from his workbench. “Son!”

  “No, Grandpa. It’s me, Trevor. Do you know where Dad is?”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “Never mind.”

  I ran back up the hill, angry with my father. This was his chance. She had called. She was showing an interest. She wanted to talk to her husband. She cared. But he wasn’t there. An opportunity missed.

  I picked up the phone from the table.

  “I can’t find him,” I told her, dejected.

  The only response I got was a dial tone. She had hung up. My eyes burned with tears as I placed the handset in the cradle.

  * * *

  The library was impressive. Dark mahogany everywhere, and a ladder that climbed about ten feet to a catwalk for the second tier of books. A giant table stood in the middle of the room, rooted and oaken, surrounded by heavy chairs with brass studs affixing the leather upholstery to the wood, and adorned with beautiful brass lamps with green glass shades.

  I could smell the must of a million decaying pages, books that had been unopened for years. Decades. So many books pushed so tightly together. They just wanted to be opened and read! I walked the perimeter and looked at the spines. Anderson, Andrews, Andreyev. Burroughs, Burton, Butler. They were alphabetized, separated by fiction and nonfiction. In fact, the nonfiction titles were grouped in such a way . . . The Dewey decimal system, but without the decimals. This library had been carefully curated and cared for at one time.

  It was not hard to find the natural sciences. It was easy to find Muir, John, in the natural sciences.

  Everyone knew who John Muir was. Even my mother, who was from England. He was the founder of the Sierra Club. The creator of the national park movement. The guy who ruled Yosemite in the name of white Europeans everywhere. He wrote a lot of books. They were lined up right there on the shelf. Travels in Alaska, The Yosemite, Our National Parks. And a slender edition entitled The Mountains of California.

  I slipped the book from the shelf. It was clothbound with gilded edges and an image of leaves embossed in gold on the cover. I blew the dust off and cracked the cover. First edition, first printing, 1894. It was signed on the title page: “To Harry Lindsey, a great lover of the mountains, John Muir.” I flipped to the overleaf and found an additional inscription: “Harry, I hope this keeps you warm this winter, when I cannot be there to warm you myself. I hold you in my heart, though I cannot hold you in my arms. You are forever mine as I am forever yours. Love, Ben.”

  A ribbon trailed from the binding to use as a bookmark, like they had in old books. I flipped to the marked page. I found an essay entitled “A Wind-storm in the Forests.” It began, “The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. . . .” I wanted to read it. As I settled back in a club chair and flicked on a reading light, a yellowed envelope slipped out of the back cover of the book. It was addressed in black handwriting, curly script in India ink that had been ghosted where the ink had shrunk away from the paper fibers: “Harry Lindsey, Esq., in the care of Riddell Timber Mill, Aberdeen, Washington.” The “from” address simply read, “B. Riddell, Seattle.” I opened the envelope and removed the enclosed letter. The creases were so crisp and the letter so unblemished, it seemed as if it had never been read at all. Or maybe just once.

  January 17, 1902

  My dear Harry,

  I can only assume my letters and packages are getting to you, or will get to you eventually when you check in with the mill, so I am not worried. I had a chance to meet Muir last month and so cajoled him into inscribing this volume to you. He’s quite a quirky fellow and objected strenuously, but I prevailed. When pledging money for his cause didn’t work, I pledged him my father’s senators, which was more than agreeable to him. So we have turned old Elijah to the cause of conservation! Bully on him!

  The essay on the windstorm—which I have marked for you—is quite remarkable. He knows of which he writes, this Muir. You can’t bluff that, can you, Harry? I’m sure those stunted little
firs in Yosemite are nothing compared to what you and I have climbed together on the coast. But perhaps I say that only because I am feeling trapped by this earth. Alice is always around, and I am constantly forced into the stiffest clothes and made to sit like a Turkish bear, not allowed to doze at a dinner party when the conversation is so tedious I have to pinch myself to stay awake. Oh, Harry. Harry! Simply writing your name makes me feel better and allows me to feel comfort in knowing you are there for me. How I long for a journey with you into the mountains and to set a camp by a river, just the two of us. A trout to roast, or a rabbit we have snared. A hot fire and a bottle of whiskey and the night around us.

  The season will begin in April. I have already told my father I will return to the coast to supervise the harvest, and then we will see each other again. I have been making great progress with our plan. My father has desecrated this land so; I will make amends for him. You and I, together, will work to restore this land to its pristine state, not from a position of weakness and protest, but from a position of power. The deal is moving forward, and as long as I am able to stand a bow tie tight around my neck, I will prevail. I will be meeting Roosevelt in two weeks, and his man Pinchot. They will expect to meet someone who is like the others they have met: terrible, avaricious men. When they shake my hand, they will know the truth of it. They will know they have an ally who is richer than all the rest of them.

  I will not be able to return before April, however; as much as I had hoped to ride down to see you for a few days, I’m afraid things are too busy here, and I must stand by Alice’s side always to ensure her complicity. But know, Harry—always know!—when I dream at night, I dream of you.

  Until we meet again, I am,

  Faithfully yours, Ben

  I folded the letter and placed it back into the volume. Was it the letter that Grandpa Samuel remembered? Did he want to remind himself to read it again? (And yet it looked practically unread—as if it hadn’t been touched for decades.)

  I’d heard of Ben. Serena said he was Elijah’s first son, who died tragically young. The only other time I’d heard his name was when Grandpa Samuel jumped up from the table at dinner on our first night and wrote the note: MUIR MTNS CA. “Ben is nervous,” Grandpa Samuel had said. And his note led me to this discovery.

  Alice and Roosevelt and “his man Pinchot.” And Harry Lindsey, the subject of Ben’s dreams.

  People didn’t really talk much about homosexuality when I was fourteen. At least not in Connecticut, where I had grown up. Except for the kids at school, of course, when they wanted to pick on someone. I remember being embarrassed and confused by what I had read: Did this letter mean my great-granduncle was gay? And what was it even like to be gay in the early 1900s?

  I closed the book with the letter still inside and replaced it on the shelf.

  I headed up to my room, but, as I passed the front parlor, I stopped. I hesitated, then went inside. I stood before the giant portrait of Elijah and gazed into his powerful eyes and at his hand that reached out into the room as if it might pull me into another dimension. Next to the big portrait of Elijah was another oil painting, much smaller but large enough, with a small plate on the frame that read: BENJAMIN RIDDELL. It was a portrait of a young man with wavy black hair and nearly black eyes, smiling out of one side of his mouth as if he knew a secret.

  – 10 –

  BEN’S WORLD

  I came to learn much later that the life of my great-granduncle Benjamin Riddell was steeped in contradiction. The heir to a timber fortune, he wanted nothing more than to be one with the trees. Enthusiastic and able, he held an idea of “proper work” that differed greatly from his father’s. Ben understood the need to attend to business dealings and negotiations; overseeing the daily operations of such a vast conglomeration of companies demanded an endless string of meetings and tedious conversations during which people talked around their true intentions. He understood the need. He simply didn’t think he needed to be the one doing these things. He was much more comfortable hiking around the forests of the Olympic Peninsula and the inland forests owned by Riddell Timber, experiencing the nature of the trees. And so he contrived to spend a great deal of time on the coast, surveying tracts of land designated for harvest.

  Ben didn’t keep a diary, as far as I know, but he did write field notes, which he sent back to his father. These notes carried a tone of wonderment and fascination, and a belief that all things are connected in ways we can barely fathom, as if he were trying to convince Elijah of something. I know that Ben spent much of his time at Yale studying the work of the Transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller—and he was quite taken by the poems of Walt Whitman as well as the early writings of John Muir. This was a fashionable thing of the times: the young elite pondering nature and our connection with it.

  The first forestry school in the United States was the Biltmore School of Forestry, established in 1898 under the patronage of George Vanderbilt. It was followed quickly by forestry schools at Cornell and Yale Universities, backed largely by very wealthy families, such as the Riddells. For those who made their fortunes through the exploitation of forests, the management of those forests made practical business sense. For those who saw the health of the forests as a reflection of the health of the human soul, conservation was equally important.

  But Ben’s enlightenment came at a great price. He couldn’t reconcile the philosophies of the Transcendentalists and the new breed of conservationism with his father’s mission, which, as far as he could tell, was to destroy nature for profit. Ben’s relationship with his father was complex to say the least. Ben had faith that his father was a good man and loved the forest as much as he did, yet while Ben felt compelled to save nature, Elijah felt compelled to consume it. Ben’s struggle to reconcile their differences was the central conflict of his life.

  “The rain has been incessant. It feeds my soul. I feel that it washes over my body, and a part of me drips into the soil with the rain, and a part of me becomes the soil and is drank into the roots of these trees and I have become one with them.”

  That note was written by Ben on a ledger page that estimated 700,000 board feet would be harvested from a certain tract and sent to San Francisco to build the young city.

  “All good wood,” another note said. “Finest quality possible. A person living in a house built with these trees will prosper and remain in good health, for the wood will keep him well.”

  Curious, indeed, is the idea that a good tree will produce lumber that will make a house that is good, a house that will nurture its tenants. A house that does not merely serve as shelter from a passing storm but actually and actively promotes the good health of those who reside within its energetic realm. That the life and personality and soul of a tree continue, even beyond its felling, milling, drying, and utilization. These were the tenets of Ben’s philosophy, with which he felt he could save his father’s soul.

  It only makes sense that like-minded spirits tend to find each other. Which explains why Elijah found himself attracted to J. J. Jordan, the railroad tycoon, and together they discovered more efficient ways to shake money from the trees. It explains also why Ben found himself attracted to a young cutter on the coast by the name of Harry Lindsey. For it seems that being intimate with the forest wasn’t the only reason Ben spent so much time on the coast; there was intimacy of a more carnal nature being explored as well.

  The passions that inspire two young, idealistic men when they are alone in the woods do not need to be subjected to the approval or disapproval of others. But they do make the landscape a bit more complicated when decisions about love and business intersect, as was the case in this situation. For Elijah Riddell and J. J. Jordan had conspired that the best way for them to grow their empires was to form a merger. Not only of their companies but of their children as well. The timber industry of the late nineteenth century was notorious for such couplings. And so it was decided that Benjamin Riddell would marry
the lovely and sophisticated Alice Jordan.

  Riddell and Jordan shook on the arrangement over a cordial and a fine cigar. The deal was done.

  Still, Benjamin Riddell had entirely different feelings on the matter.

  – 11 –

  BIRTHDAY DINNER

  I anxiously awaited my father’s return. I hadn’t seen him all day and I wanted to tell him of my mother’s phone call—that she had asked after him and cared about him and wanted to talk to him. I went downstairs at dinnertime, figuring the time change in my head. He couldn’t call her back now—it was the middle of the night in England—but he could call her first thing in the morning.

  “Is my dad here?” I asked Serena.

  She was busily making dinner, still dressed for work, though with bare feet.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “And I don’t know when to expect him, so I hope you don’t mind if we start without him.”

  I shrugged and took my seat, relying on an air of indifference to mask my disappointment. Grandpa Samuel was already sitting docilely at the table. Serena took the medicine bottle and put three tablets in front of him. When she saw that I had noticed the transaction, she said: “His Alzheimer’s medication.”

  She shuttled plates of food to the table.

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “You sit, Birthday Boy,” she said with deliberate cheer. “I have it under control.”

  She presented the last of the food, a wooden bowl of salad, and took her seat.

  “Do you have a car?” I asked as we served ourselves.

  “We do have a car,” she replied. “It’s behind the barn. Why do you ask?”

  “I never see you drive it. How do you get to work?”