The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (12 page)

The jail in Auburn wasn't the worst he had seen. But it was a jail, and that made it
bad enough.

“Hey, deputy,” he called out, “when's
lunch?”

“Shut up, you!” replied a voice from the other
end of the small wood and brick building. “Lunch is
when it comes, and you're lucky to get any at all.”

“When's the sheriff gettin' back? I gotta
get outta this hole.”

No reply came. A moment later
booted footsteps sauntered toward the three bare cells, two of which were empty and the third of which contained the
troublemaker who had shot up half the town the night before. The deputy stopped a yard or two in front
of the occupied cell and stared at his prisoner with considerably less fear than he would have had the bars
not stood between them.

“You ain't going nowhere anytime
soon,” he said in the haughty tone of one who
enjoyed lording his position over another.

“I want to talk
to the sheriff. I gotta get outta here—got business
t' tend to.”

“Business! Ha, ha, ha,” laughed the deputy. “
What kind of business could the likes of you possibly have?”

“My own business, that's what kind!” the prisoner
shot back.

“You tell me your business, and I'll
see what I can do,” baited the deputy, who had
not the slightest intention of doing anything.

“Let's just
say I got business in the gold country.”

“Don't
you know the gold's all gone?”

“My business ain'
t got to do with gold, but lead,” said the
prisoner, the hint of a grin revealing not as many teeth as it should have.

“Well, the sheriff ain't
gonna be back for a few days,” rejoined the deputy,
tiring of the pointless banter, “so you just get used
to your new quarters. 'Sides, he said you might be
our guest here for a coupla months.”

“Months! On what
charge?”

“That's what comes of losing your head over
a poker game and shooting up a saloon. Unless you
can pay the three hundred dollars in damages, you might as well get used to that cell of yours. Ha,
ha!”

“I ain't gettin' used to nothing. I gotta
get north, I tell ya.”

“Well, you're a blamed
fool if you think you're gonna talk me out of the key to that door. And you're even
a bigger fool if you think you're gonna bust out.”

The deputy turned to walk back to the office.

In May Mr. Henderson died.

None of us had known him too well. An elderly widower, he was one of the many newcomers to Miracle Springs during the years of growth after the gold rush. He'd arrived shortly after I left for the East during the war, come from New York alone to spend his last days in the booming new state of California. How or why he wound up in Miracle Springs I didn't know. But he did wind up here, and from what everyone said he had loved every minute of his last few years.

People said he was wealthy, though he didn't look it or act it. Books, he said, had always been his passion, and his collection of three or four thousand titles was one of the few things of value he had crated up and brought with him through Panama by ship. The town gossips had had a wonderful time speculating about what was in all those boxes he arrived with!

No one knew if he had any relatives, but the whole town found out soon enough right after he died. Mr. Henderson had left almost everything he owned to the town of Miracle Springs—especially his books!

The books of theology, about two or three hundred of them, went to Rev. Rutledge. All the rest went to the town for the establishment of the Miracle Springs Library, along with five thousand dollars to build a new wing on our small town hall to house the books. If any money was left over, which Pa said there surely would be, it was to be placed in a fund for the purchasing of additional volumes.

Miracle Springs was all abuzz when the news came out. Nobody'd even ever thought about a library, and now we would have the nicest one north of Sacramento.

“I doubt the church cost us more than a couple hundred in materials,” Pa said when we were talking about it after the church service where Rev. Rutledge had made the surprise announcement. “If all the men chip in and do the work, why, I can't imagine there'd be less than four and a half thousand left over!”

“It will no doubt be the finest library in northern California outside of San Francisco and Sacramento,” Almeda had remarked. “Quite a thing for a little place like Miracle Springs.”

“I can't wait to see the books!” I said.

“Nor can I!” added Christopher, his mouth watering at the thought of it.

A ground breaking was scheduled to coincide with the July fourth celebration.

Pa and Rev. Rutledge and some of the other men got together and made plans. The annual town picnic was moved up from early fall so it could all happen together.

They would break the ground, we'd have a picnic feast and fireworks, and construction on the new library wing would begin the following week.

It was too bad it took a death to do it, but the news about what Mr. Henderson had done sent an excitement through the whole community. Nobody talked about anything else, it seemed, for weeks.

“It makes you realize, though,” Christopher reflected when we were alone together one evening in June, “how easy it is to take people for granted. Every day I pray that the Lord will open my eyes to those around me. Yet here was this man living among us that, now that he is gone, we realize we hardly knew.”

“I know,” I said. “Just think what kind of a man he must have been to love books so. Yet now it is too late to find out. It's sad in a way.”

“We won't be able to know him more personally. But it may not be altogether too late.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I find it intriguing how much you can learn about an individual by the kinds of books he or she reads,” said Christopher. “I'm already anticipating the chance to pore through the Henderson treasure trove—not just for the books and the authors themselves, as much as I will love that, but also to learn more about our loving benefactor.”

July fourth came and everyone was in high spirits.

Rev. Rutledge had pretty much recovered from his spring illness and, while moving more slowly than he used to, presided over the events with a great smile on his face. Who could have appreciated the formation of a library more than a minister or a teacher? He and Christopher and Mrs. Nilson the schoolteacher could hardly wait to see the library completed so as to get all the rest of the books out and onto the shelves that would be their new homes. Rev. Rutledge, of course, had already seen most of them because Mr. Henderson had named him executor of his estate.

“Just like old times, isn't it, Drum?” Rev. Rutledge called out to my father as we all arrived. “Who'd have thought we'd still be raising buildings together after all this time?”

“I doubt they'll let either you or me up on the roof like we were on the new church back in '53,” rejoined Pa with a laugh. “We're getting too old for that kind of thing!”

“Well, I'm at least going to pound as many nails as I can,” said the aging minister. “For me, a library will be
almost
as good as a church.”

“Amen to that!” added Christopher, jumping out of the wagon and then helping me down.

Everyone who came brought a shovel from home. As wagons rolled in you could hear the clunking and clattering of shovels bouncing around in back. By the time everything was ready, there must have been three or four hundred shovels!

We got the tables all set up with the food spread out first, then everyone moved to the south side of the town hall where the new wing was planned. Rev. Rutledge gave a short speech, then everyone crowded in with all their shovels. I don't think there was an inch of ground that wasn't about to be broken into.

Rev. Rutledge gave the signal, and with hundreds of shouts and hollers everyone dug into the ground to try to scoop up a piece of the dry earth to turn over.

The ground was hard and hot, but that didn't stop the shouts and the enthusiastic digging. Then followed a great cheer from everyone, and we stood back to look at what we had done.

All of us working together had barely managed to scoop two or three inches off the top. But the ground had been broken and the brown grass and weeds scraped off—the new library begun!

We all retired to the tables for our Fourth of July feast. All the women had outdone themselves—there were almost as many full plates and platters as there had been shovels!

After we were through eating, I excused myself, walked to the wagon, got my sketchbook, and began walking up the slope east of the church building.

“Hey, where you going?” Christopher called out, running after me.

“For a little walk,” I answered.

“Want some company?” he said as he reached my side.

“If you don't mind, Christopher, let me have ten minutes to myself. Then come up and join me, and I'll show you why.”

“Ten minutes, then,” he said, leaning down to kiss me, “but not a minute more!”

I continued on up the hill, then took my seat on a familiar rock and began my drawing.

It had been my tradition, every year at the town picnic since the very first one when I was only sixteen, to climb up this hill overlooking the town and draw a sketch of what I saw. I now had more than ten of those sketches, and every year you could see how Miracle Springs was changing and growing.

Now I drew in a long breath and gazed out over the scene with contentment and satisfaction. How it had changed since Zack, Emily, Becky, Tad, and I had arrived here with Mr. Dixon, young and bewildered, not knowing a soul and having no idea what was going to become of us.

Not only had the town changed. So had all the people.

Most of all, I thought, how I had myself grown and changed!

I could hardly believe it—
I was a married woman!

Would I ever get used to the thought?

Looking out over the town like this always reminded me of so many things that had happened over the years. I suppose that was one of the reasons I kept doing it—I liked to rekindle the memories. I never wanted to forget a thing I had experienced in my life, good or bad. Everything goes in to contribute to the people we are—a character stew, Zack said his friend Hawk had called it—and I didn't want to forget what the Lord had put into mine.

I laughed to myself as I heard one of Alkali Jones' high
“hee
, hee, hee
” laughs! It might not have been quite as energetic as it once was, but he sure had been happy lately since giving his heart to the Lord. When they weren't talking about the new library, folks in town were talking about that.

I took out a pencil and began to sketch the town and its surroundings, beginning with the church as I always did. Not really so much had changed since last year. There were no new buildings, nothing that would appear on my paper. The biggest change was within
me
. I wondered if those kinds of things made a difference in the way a person drew.

The ten minutes passed quickly. Before I knew it, I glanced up, and there was Christopher striding toward me with a smile on his face.

“I told you—ten minutes!” he said. “What have you been up to?”

He knelt beside me and looked at my paper, then I flipped back the pages and showed him all the rest, starting with the one where down at the bottom, in my sixteen-year-old hand, were the words:
Church Dedication, Miracle Springs, 1853
.

Christopher gazed and pondered each one in order, nodding and smiling occasionally.

“This is wonderful, Corrie,” he said at length, after he had gone through them all. “It's a whole visual history of Miracle Springs.”

“They're only sketches,” I said.

“But don't you see? They capture a moment of time that will never come back, and all together . . . what a story they tell!”

Suddenly his eyes shot open wide.

“I have just had the greatest idea!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“What would you think,” said Christopher excitedly, “of making frames for each one of these and then displaying them on a wall in the new library? I can see it now—
A History of Miracle Springs As Seen Through the Eyes of Corrie Belle Hollister
.”

I laughed.

“I might agree,” I said, “as long as there is one small change made.”

“What's that?”

“As seen through the eyes of Corrie Hollister
Braxton!
” I said.

Now Christopher laughed.

“I don't suppose I'm thoroughly accustomed to the change yet, either!”

I put aside my sketch pad and we talked for five or ten minutes more. Then suddenly it came to me how today's scene was most different from all those that had come before. Whether it would be suitable to hang in the new library, I suppose Christopher would have to decide. But my yearly drawings were first of all for me, not anyone else, and so I would draw it as I saw it.

“Sit here, Christopher, right on my rock,” I said, getting up and taking my sketch pad with me further up the hill about fifteen or twenty feet. “Just gaze out over the town like I was and tell me what you see.”

Christopher did exactly as I'd said while I sat down and resumed my drawing. As he spoke, with his back turned to me, I did my best to reflect what
Christopher
saw.

Thirty minutes later I was done.

I got up and brought it down to show Christopher. I handed him the pad to inspect my work. There was the town spread out in the background. And in the foreground, on my rock with his back turned, sat Christopher himself. It was a drawing of
him
looking down upon the picnic scene below.

“I finally realized what is new about the town this year,” I said. “It's that
you are now in the picture
 . . . and I am learning to see through your eyes as well as my own.”