The moment I mentioned the words gold dust, a funny look passed quickly over Corrie’s face. But just as quickly it was gone. My words seemed to arouse Corrie’s thoughts in new directions, but when she spoke again, it was to ask about what she’d detected on my face.
“You mentioned your father,” she said. “What was he like?” Again I was silent for a while.
“I’m afraid it’s too much to go into now,” I said. “I would like to tell you about him,” I said. “Very much, in fact. But when the time is right.”
She was satisfied. We rode on for quite some time in silence.
As we climbed, gradually the panorama of the view widened. A massive sea of outstretched grasslands rolled off below us for miles and miles, containing many small hills here and there that reminded me of waves on the ocean. Although I had never seen the wideness of the sea, I had heard it described enough times to imagine that on a clear day the waves must look something like these rolling hills that sprang up unevenly out of the earth.
“I had no idea all this was here so close to the farm,” said Corrie, clearly enjoying the view.
The sky stretched high above us with the usual cloud formations that children would call cotton-ball clouds. The sun shone brightly through the clouds despite the lingering winter’s chill. It was indeed the perfect day to celebrate the Savior’s birth, and for a long slow ride.
“How is your shoulder?” I asked. “Is it getting tired?”
“I seem to forget the pain altogether,” Corrie replied. “I think it is going to be fine in no time. It is really a wonderful feeling to be on the back of a horse again.”
“Again?” I questioned.
“Yes . . . I have the feeling I have been here before,” she said, gazing out over the horse’s uplifted head.
“Here?” I repeated.
“Not in this place,” she said. “But on the back of a horse. I feel suddenly very much at home riding along like this, as strange as that may sound.”
“It doesn’t sound strange at all,” I said.
“It’s hard to describe. Although in my mind I can’t remember that I’ve ever been riding before, my senses and even my body seem to remember.”
“Like when you think of something during the day but can’t remember where or when you heard the words before . . . or wonder if it was even from a dream.”
“Yes. And I even feel,” she went on, “almost like . . . oh, I can’t quite lay hold of it!—like this is where I was—riding I mean—when whatever happened to me happened.”
“That would account for the fall and the knock on your head.”
“Somehow it’s more than just that,” she added. “I don’t even know what it is I feel . . . it’s . . . it’s a feeling of . . . being at home—wherever that is . . . a feeling that goes down someplace inside me from a very long time ago. . . .”
I slowed my roan to a halt and signaled Corrie to follow my lead.
“I want you to hear something, Corrie,” I said. “Just listen.”
After a brief spell of silence she said, “I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “Have you ever heard such silence? Listen to the way our voices fade into the sea of quiet, like a raindrop into an ocean. However loud we may talk, how much louder is the silence. It is heard in very few places these days. When I was living in Richmond, although you could be all alone somewhere making no noise at all, there was always the background of the city. And even on the farm there are the chickens and pigs and cows. But out here, we have only silence as the background for our voices.”
We started our horses forward again.
“I love riding through this wide open stretch of land,” I said. “The land is so big and I am so small, it reminds me always of how huge God is.”
“Does the beauty of this land always inspire you to think like this when you come out here in the mornings?”
“Hardly ever does my mind not think at least some kind of thought, Corrie, though rarely the same ones. The freshness of the air and the hard breathing on the back of a galloping horse not only gets the blood pumping in one’s veins, but I find it pumps the energy into the mind that causes new mental surprises all the time. The measure with which we utilize the mind God gave us is also the measure with which our minds will grow and expand. Riding and breathing and exploring new places and thinking . . . it all mixes together for me. It is God’s creation that inspires my thoughts, and so I feel he is part of the process, too, and is constantly putting new thoughts within me.”
Corrie seemed to be thinking about all I’d said. But then without warning, suddenly she yelled at the gray, dug in her heels, and was off in a gallop. Before I could recover myself, she was thirty yards ahead.
I tore after her, caught up in the spirit of the race, even though I was fearful for what might happen should the horse stumble and fall.
But I needn’t have worried. That she was at home on the back of a horse was abundantly clear. I knew the roan to be a faster animal than the gray, yet try as I might, I could make up none of the ground between us. Across the pasture we galloped, if anything the distance between us widening. I saw Corrie glance back, her hair flying wildly out in all directions, a huge smile of sheer delight on her face. Then she turned forward again, slapped the reins, and made for the trail in the distance which wound up the ridge I had pointed out to her.
I was terrified lest something happen to her. Yet on she rode, as I did my best to keep pace, as smooth and secure in the saddle as anyone I had ever seen—man or woman. When I finally did catch up with her about ten minutes later, it was only because she had reined in the gray to wait for me. I galloped up and pulled alongside.
“What’s the idea?” I said, laughing.
“Oh, but that was wonderful!” she exclaimed. “I could have ridden and ridden like that forever!”
“Why didn’t you?” I said.
“I didn’t want to lose you.”
“Lose me!” I rejoined in mock annoyance. “You’re the stranger here, not me.”
“I felt so at home, so complete, so free! I haven’t felt like that in . . . in I don’t know how long!”
“You must have ridden a lot.”
“I . . . I think so,” she replied. “It felt so good to run like that, as if it was something I’ve missed. How much farther to the top?”
“It’s just there,” I said, pointing. “Only six or eight hundred yards.”
“Then let’s go!” shouted Corrie, and again I found myself looking at the retreating tail of the gray.
“I’m right behind you!” I yelled as I lurched the roan to a gallop. Yet still I could do nothing to overtake her. She was fifty yards ahead by the time she crested the ridge. I slowed to a canter and eased up beside her.
“Well, this is the spot,” I said, dismounting. “Let’s tie up the horses and go sit over there. I have a favorite rock where I sit and look down over the valley.”
I led Corrie to a tree, where we tied up the two horses, and then to the large boulder. I jumped up and stretched down my hand to her. She took it, and I helped her to the top where we sat and gazed out over the green Virginia countryside stretching out westward in one direction and to Richmond in the other. We sat there for a long time.
“It’s all so familiar,” Corrie said at length. “The feel of a horse under me, the ride, climbing a hill like this, a wide view, even the rock. It’s as if I’ve been here before too . . . or someplace just like this. Maybe I’ve done this before, ridden up a mountain to look out over a wide expanse. . . . I don’t even know what I’m feeling, other than . . .”
She didn’t finish. Her words drifted off, even as her gaze bore into the distance. Then suddenly she blurted out, as if to complete the sentence: “Oh, if only I could just remember!”
Leaving her where she was, I slowly climbed down from the rock and walked over to where the horses stood browsed in the low grass. I opened the saddlebag and pulled out the small wrapped packa
ge I had brought along. I walked back to the rock and sat down again beside her.
“I have a present for you,” I said softly.
She turned away from where she’d been looking off into the distance, then first saw the small gift in my hand.
“Merry Christmas, Corrie,” I said. “You are such a dear sister . . . may the Father bless you!”
I handed it to her.
She just stared into my eyes for a moment, speechless. Then she looked down, took the package, and tenderly began to remove the bow and white paper I had wrapped it in.
Slowly the paper fell from her hand onto the ground. For what must have been thirty or forty seconds, she stared at the book in her hands, then looked up slowly to me again. “What is it?” she asked.
“Open it,” I said.
She did so.
“It’s not a regular book,” she said. “It’s got writing in it— hand writing.”
“Open it further,” I said.
She turned more of the pages until she got past the writing.
“They’re just blank pages,” she said.
“It’s a journal, Corrie,” I said. “Blank pages . . . for you to write in, for you to keep your journal. Remember . . . like we talked about. You said you used to keep one.”
“Yes . . . a journal . . . yes . . . I remember . . .” As she spoke, her voice became very soft, almost inaudible. She was no longer looking at me but down at the book in her hands. I searched her face to find her eyes, but they had glazed over. Then slowly I saw tears begin to rise in them.
“. . . journal . . . horses . . . a long ride . . .”
Slowly and methodically her hands were turning the leaves of the book until she came again to the pages in front.
“That is my hand, Corrie,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind, or think it too bold of me, but when I bought the book for you, I decided to fill in the first part myself. I’ve been staying up nights to finish it before Christmas.”
I don’t know if she even heard my voice or not. Still she stared down, slowly turning the pages, but her tear-filled eyes seemed to focus on nothing.
“. . . it’s a beautiful journal,” she said, still very softly, “. . . just like the one Almeda gave me . . .”
“Since you didn’t remember and weren’t able to write,” I said, “I thought I would write down what happened to you since I found you. I know it won’t be in your own hand and in your own words, but—”
Suddenly I realized what I’d just heard.
“What did you say?” I exclaimed.
But Corrie continued to murmur to herself, heedless of my question and my sudden mounting excitement.
“. . . Almeda gave me one too,” she repeated. “. . . Pa says I write too much . . . but I told Zack that you have to tell both what happens and what you’re feeling . . . that’s what a journal’s for. Ma always told me I should keep a diary on account of not being the marrying sort. I don’t know about that, but Uncle Nick said—”
Suddenly she stopped. The book fell from her hands. The next instant her head jerked straight up and looked me dead-on full in the face. Her mouth hung open, the tears had vanished, and her two eyes were as huge as the plates on Mrs. Timms’ table.
All the glazed look of confusion was gone.
I knew she suddenly remembered everything!
Part Two
Back to Corrie’s Journal
When I opened my eyes and saw Christopher sitting there across the rock from me, the feelings and thoughts that passed through me were nothing like I could ever imagine! In two or three seconds, more flew through my brain than I could write about if it took ten years to do it!
To tell you that I “remembered” all of a sudden who I was and how I’d gotten there and what I was doing would only be the littlest part of it.
First I remembered my family and Miracle Springs and everything about California. For an instant I think I thought I was in California, up on top of Fall Creek Mountain where I’d ridden Raspberry on my twenty-first birthday. At first my brain confused this Christmas afternoon with that day six and a half years before. But that didn’t last long either, because there was Christopher sitting beside me. For a slight second I couldn’t figure out who he was. But then I remembered him too—how could I not!—and that it was Christmas.
Oh, it all suddenly came so fast! I felt as if I were standing in the way of a dam that had just burst, sending a huge river of water pouring over me.
In a way that’s exactly what was happening. My memory had been dammed up, and now suddenly it had given way and here came twenty-seven years of memories crashing back through me. Yes . . . twenty-seven—I even remembered how old I was!
I can’t imagine what I must have looked like! So many explosions were going off inside, I figured my face on the outside must have seemed strange too. But Christopher didn’t say a word, just sat there patiently, watching me trying to put all the missing pieces together.
It was like waking up, but different too. I’ve heard that before people die, their lives flash in front of them in just two or three seconds. That’s just what happened! There were fleeting thoughts of Ma and the early growing-up years . . . then the wagon trip west . . . Ma dying . . . getting to California . . . Pa, Alkali Jones, Uncle Nick, Almeda . . . then such rapid images of faces—Katie and my brothers and sisters and Franklin Royce. My newspaper writing and the elections . . . the evening at the Montgomery Hotel . . . Pa’s running for office . . .
It all flew through me, not like water from a dam but more like a wind blowing through my head. How can something seem to be in your brain for so long, when only an instant passes by in the real world? I felt as if I were reliving my whole life . . . but it took only a few seconds!
Then I remembered the letter from President Lincoln and my trip east . . . the stagecoach and boarding the train . . . meeting Sister Janette . . . the Convent of John Seventeen and the Sisters of Unity. Then suddenly the horrors of the Gettysburg battlefield came back to me, with more images and faces and awful sights and sounds and smells!
The war! Of course, the war was still on . . . and the election! My articles . . . President Lincoln!
“Mr. Lincoln . . . the election . . . what. . . ?” I stammered, suddenly very confused again.
“It’s Christmas Day, Corrie,” Christopher said, “you do remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes . . . yes, but . . . but what about the election?”
“This is December 25. The election was last month. President Lincoln defeated McClellan and was reelected.”
“Oh . . . oh, yes . . . I remember now . . . you told me that already. But . . . but the war?”
“The war is still going on. But it will not be much longer. Sherman has destroyed Atlanta and much of Georgia. He took Savannah just three days ago, yesterday’s paper said. Only Lee is left for the Confederacy, and with Sherman now free to march north to join Grant, there is no doubt—”
“Grant!” I repeated. “General Grant . . . that’s it . . . that’s what I’ve been trying to remember! General Grant’s in danger!”
Now I remembered everything—overhearing Cal and the others in Mrs. Surratt’s boardinghouse . . . my flight out of Washington by train . . . riding south into Virginia . . . warning General Grant . . . and then our daring entry into Richmond to kidnap Cal!
“What kind of danger, Corrie?”
“They’re trying to kill him . . . there’s a spy in his own command, a Confederate spy . . . I’ve got to warn him!”
I jumped down off the rock and ran to where the two horses were still tied. When I reached them, I looked back. Christopher was stooping down at the base of the rock where we’d been sitting. He picked something up and slowly walked toward me.
“Hurry,” I said. “We’ve got to get back . . . we’ve got to warn Mr. Grant!”
“Corrie,” he said calmly, “please . . . wait just a minute.”
“But you don’t understand,” I insisted. “There’s no
t a second to lose!”
He approached and put his hand on the back of mine to stop me from untying the gray.
“Corrie . . . please. Sit down with me for just a moment more. You’re still confused.”
I turned and looked into his face. Every feature was so familiar to me, and yet in that instant it was as if he was also a complete stranger. Caught up in the danger to General Grant, I suddenly thought it was no longer Christmas Day but sometime back in October.
I stared into his face, almost not knowing who he was, confusing him with Cal and with John Hay and even with Zack and Pa! A huge, sickening sense of bewilderment swept over me, and I felt as if I was about to forget everything all over again.
“Corrie.” I heard my name, but it sounded as if it were coming from so far away. “Corrie . . . that all happened over two months ago. You were shot, probably thrown from a horse, and left for dead. I don’t know what the danger to General Grant was, or what you were trying to do. But he was not killed . . . and you have been with me here for two months.”
I stared at him, still confused, trying to absorb the words and make them go into my ears in a way that made sense.
Then for the first time I felt a momentary twitch of pain in the back of my arm and shoulder. I moved my right arm and felt a slight tightening from the wound. With the pain came the remembrance of Winder Supply and Cal, of the anxious wagon ride out of Richmond, of being stopped by the Confederate soldiers, and then of John Surratt’s charging toward us, of gunshots and shouts. I remembered galloping off ahead to try to escape . . . being chased . . . more shouts. I heard Cal’s voice in the distance behind me . . . more shots . . . and then the sensation of drifting into a long and quiet dream. . . .
Land of the Brave and the Free Page 7