Down to a Soundless Sea (2 page)

In this short volume I have attempted to carry on the tradition of telling the old stories, informally of course, as family custom dictates. As in the past, the entertainment is best served with a home-cooked meal and in the company of like-minded listeners. But stories transmitted in an oral tradition have an aura of performance, a flavor of language, and a sense of period that is difficult to reproduce on the printed page. The vernacular of an anecdote being told by a person old enough to remember its origins is quite different from the language employed by those of later generations who retell it. Yet it is the mode and color of the original narration that contributes authenticity, historical bias, and tonality to such annals.

It is, therefore, always a painstaking maneuver to attempt duplication of language used by the original participants and make it ring true for the modern ear. Despite the improbability of success in this arena, I have nonetheless jumped into this linguistic pit armed only with a well-tutored ear and the knowledge that my critics are no better equipped to render judgment than I. There was also the matter of background particulars to be considered. When a story has been told and retold numberless times, the thorny problem of accuracy arises. The tangible
who, where, what
, and
when
of any specific account has a habit of getting mislaid in the excitement of the telling. This problem is often amplified by the number of different versions of the story in circulation.

Any competent police investigator will attest to the persistence of this problem. If there are ten witnesses to an incident, that investigator is more likely than not to be saddled with ten different accounts of that same event. Being a writer of historical fiction and not an officer of the law, I have invariably shown a shameless propensity for the most entertaining and morally illustrative narratives. But I also respect the underlying accuracy of detailed facts, and for those I have always gratefully depended upon the dedicated research of qualified regional historians.

I encourage my readers to pass along these stories in the spirit with which they came to me, for they belong to anyone who finds some small merit in the lessons they impart.

Eighteen fifty-nine was the devil’s own year for gales along the Sur coast, but their raucous zenith was registered near the end of April. Crashing up from the south-southwest with piratical ferocity, the cycle of gales unburdened enough water to send the Little and Big Sur Rivers four to six feet over their banks. The runoff from Pico Blanco alone kept the Little Sur at near flood for two weeks.

Sadly, every mortal creature that made the rugged coast a refuge suffered from the shattering blows of an outraged sea. Cresting rollers twenty feet high and two miles long mined into the impenetrable cliffs and rocks for days on end. Inevitably, every rookery, bower, haul-out, and nesting sight on the Monterey coast was swept away. The corpses of every known species of coastal life littered what shore there was left. The sharks enjoyed abundance for days after each gale.

The evidence of destruction was to be had from all quarters. Salmon Creek to Santa Cruz reported roads, byways, and trails strangled in mazes of uprooted and shattered trees. The prodigious rains, sometimes so heavy and horizontal that simple breathing became hazardous, drilled the soil so incessantly that broad landslides were abruptly carved from the mountainsides. Several large rockslides unalterably isolated the more remote mining claims.

It was during a blessed lull between the repetitive coastal tempests that Boy Bill Post moved his wife from Monterey to a newly purchased piece of land bordering Soberanes Creek. His land formed a part of the old San Jose y Sur Chiquito land grant, and he had fixed it in his mind that his acres would be prime for cattle. There appeared to be abundant grazing in the hills and pastures, and the splendid ocean views gave him constant pleasure.

Serious anxiety regarding the recent inclination of weather set Boy Bill Post to hurriedly construct a cabin to shelter his new family. This urgency was magnified by the impending birth of the Posts’ first child.

Boy Bill Post had married a handsome Rumsen Indian girl. Her name was Anselma Onesimo and her people had lived along Carmel Valley and its bountiful river for centuries. According to Anselma, her tribe had sprung from beneath the earth on the day of creation. The Rumsen people considered the Sur Mountains as spiritual ground and spoke of Mount Pico Blanco as the navel of the world.

The constraints of time were suddenly made more pertinent by the return of the southern gales. Bill’s plans for their cabin were instantly altered to accommodate present needs and it quickly became a slant-roofed, one-room hut near
Soberanes Creek. This proved not to be the most favorable of locations.

The expectant father desperately hand split cedar shakes by the hour without recourse to food or rest. Anselma’s lying-in time was uncomfortably close at hand, and Boy Bill Post raced his hammer against the lightning-rent tempest that momentarily threatened to descend upon their heads.

Anselma’s cries from within the rude shelter informed Bill Post that his firstborn and the gale might possibly arrive simultaneously. Then a sudden explosive crash of thunder heralded the initial, pelting pebbles of rain. It also proclaimed the welcome cries of his first child.

Post managed to secure the last few cedar shakes to the roof just in time to greet Charles Francis Post. Bill’s gift to his burgeoning family was a tight shelter and dry stores. Not much in the way of a defense against the wrath of God perhaps, but better than canvas and poles in those wilds.

March 1, 1859, the day the majestic gales attended the birth, also marked the sad loss of four sound ships. To seal the bargain, the coast of Monterey was sorrowfully altered by rock-grinding waves and carnivorous tides. There were other unique signs accompanying the birth, according to the mother, but it wasn’t for some time that anyone realized that young Frank was also the first child born in the high Sur under the American flag.

In any event, the child’s nativity was accredited as genuinely auspicious, and it was noted by family members that unusual events occurred on the anniversary of that particular date every year.

By the first of June that same year, Bill Post had built his new family a credible home higher up on the banks of the
Soberanes, and he had begun to move on a few head of livestock to see how they fared before establishing a larger herd.

Bill Post had grown into a man of relatively broad experience. He was the son of a successfully retired sea captain from New London, Connecticut, and the family counted itself honored to have had ancestors aboard the
Mayflower
. A typical Yankee, both innovative and practical, Bill always felt equal to any task he set for himself.

In 1858 Bill Post had had the good sense to marry Anselma, and though he appraised his life as rich in experience, nothing had quite prepared him for fatherhood. He found himself looking for direct reflections of his own instincts and manner in the person of the child. This seemed only natural to Anselma, though Bill’s observations took on an unsettling character the more he studied the matter. Baby Charles Francis Post seemed remarkably self-absorbed and uncommonly introspective for an infant.

Anselma quietly insisted there was absolutely no reason for concern. It was the child’s Rumsen Indian blood at play. Indian babies were rarely clamorous unless soiled or left without proper attention. Indeed, Anselma exhibited great interest in her child’s reflective temperament. She said it was a sign of great insight. This did little to assuage his father’s concern, however, and Bill continued focusing closely on his firstborn for signs of some subtle indisposition.

Bill never ascertained anything beyond his own overanxious concerns, for Frank bloomed quite normally, though he remained quiet when he had nothing of importance to say. The child retained information easily and brought a fixed and patient
concentration to every new experience. By the time the boy was three, Bill Post was forced to accept Anselma’s elementary appraisal of the situation. Little Frank assuredly perceived and understood more than most tykes his age, but he kept his insights to himself, as did all his mother’s people.

Little Frank loved to trail behind his mother as she drifted off into the barrens or high passes on one of her herb and medicine-gathering expeditions. Sometimes they would come across other parties of foraging Rumsen and happily move along together for a day or two exchanging news, gathering pine nuts and birds’ eggs, and hunting small game when the opportunity presented itself.

This singular practice made Bill Post extremely uncomfortable from the outset, and he voiced innumerable objections to the custom. But if he thought for a moment he might discourage his wife’s basic Indian compacts and traditions, he was pitifully mistaken. Anselma considered foraging as an important part of an ancient and magic family responsibility. The very process required vast knowledge and humble reverence, and heaven help anyone who interfered.

After a while Bill came to see that thorny point for himself and, with his usual Yankee practicality, let Anselma do as she pleased. He just got used to it, as he was meant to. He also became acclimated to little Frank, who sometimes looked at his father as though they had met somewhere else, in another time—a very disconcerting air when adopted by a child.

Bill also became accustomed to his son’s long, ruminative pauses when asked a question. Little Frank seemed to ponder every inquiry seriously, regardless of magnitude. He always answered with disarming simplicity and truthfulness. These were not qualities Bill Post necessarily wanted his son to disavow in
favor of thoughtless social spontaneity, so he adopted a circumspect manner when conversing with the child on any important subject.

From little Frank’s perspective the whole world made sense. A moment’s balanced reflection always served to place every reality on an even plane. The truth always made itself brightly evident to him. Even awash in a sea of distortion, the truth was easily defined and understood. His reluctance to speak about all he knew was bred in the bone, as his mother had always contended. The fixed symmetry evident in all things, spiritual and physical, was perfectly resolved to little Frank’s way of thinking.

It was with his mother that Frank shared the greatest and most diverse of dialogues. Oddly, much of it was nonverbal and needed little in the way of physical inflection to disclose infinite subtleties. The boy fairly exercised himself in all the languages at hand without showing much preference for any one in particular. English, Spanish, and Rumsen phrases were all the same to little Frank. He would happily express himself using elements of all three languages simultaneously.

Though he found it peculiar, it never disturbed the child when his father failed to hear or discern the more enchanted particulars that always appeared so obvious to the boy, but he possessed a native discretion and never discussed that part of his world with anyone but his mother and then only in their own special dialects. There could be little doubt of Frank’s Indian inheritance, but this was not to say that Bill Post had not left his mark. The child displayed evident qualities of ingenuity, endurance, and courage typical of a Connecticut Yankee. The boy even possessed the amiable aspect and rolling gait of a Grand Banks seaman as irrefutable proof of his father’s bloodline.

Little Frank also shared his father’s passion for birds and the broad vistas of the Pacific. Father and son spent many evenings watching the sunset beyond the opalescent horizon while the gulls wheeled and called overhead. Bill would try to explain what lay beyond the oceans, but his son focused only on what could be seen. It would have been all the same to the boy if nothing whatsoever lay over the horizon. He loved the beauty of the sea for its own sake and asked nothing more of it.

Bill noticed that prolonged contemplation of the bright ocean panoramas occasionally made his son almost giddy. It was then that little Frank would talk mysteriously of the
Ancients
who had once lived in these mountains, the humans who had stared out over those same bright waters before time was recorded. Bill Post often found his son’s manner of expression curious; the object of the boy’s focus was so unlike that of other children his age.

If Bill Post ever required valid proof of his son’s native predispositions, it materialized on a dangerous night in mid-March. It was a night rent with contrary gales, hazardous winds, and lightning that owned the skies for minutes on end. It was a night not unlike that of Frank’s birth, with its attendant natal pyrotechnics. The boy was a hardened veteran of tempests of equal ferocity since that auspicious night, but storms inspired curiosity rather than fear in the child. Indeed, little Frank rather enjoyed a really spirited southwester. He would ask his father to take him to watch the monstrous seas cleave themselves against the great rocks of the coast.