After a brief glance across the park, Ivan slipped the package into a pocket in his leather jacket and turned away from the memorial. He scurried over to the curb where he’d parked his motorcycle, mounted it, and sped off down the wet streets of Sonoma.
Chapter 39
THROUGH THE DELTA
INSIDE THE SANTA
Rosa broadcast booth, Will Spigot and Harry Carlin bent over a television screen showing shaky motorcycle footage of a group of riders crossing the flat delta outside of Davis.
The area lay in an active floodplain, so, despite the nearby population densities of both Sacramento and the Bay Area, the land was generally devoid of housing. Instead, fruit orchards dominated the landscape. Mimicking the exacting lines of the vineyard trellises to the west, rows of evenly spaced trees sank their roots into the delta’s damp, sandy soil.
After several hours of rain, the orchards had taken on more than a foot of water. The cyclists splashed along the puddle-strewn road surface, dodging ruts and dips filled with a dark, gritty soup, their once-colorful racing outfits blackened by the plumes of muddy brown spray that sloshed up from their tires.
Carlin turned to look sympathetically into the camera. “The rain is causing some difficulties for today’s broadcast. At present, our helicopters are grounded. We’re getting occasional video feed from the motorcycles, but, as you can imagine, they’re having a tough time keeping their lenses dry.”
Spigot’s mood had only soured as the rain intensified. “We think there’s a breakaway of eight or nine riders, but we’d be hard pressed to tell you who exactly is in that lead group.”
Carlin’s face contorted as he turned back to the video screen. “If you squint just right, you might be able to make out one or two of the riders there on our screen.”
The blurry video shot jumped as the motorcycle’s camera was suddenly knocked sideways, tossed through the air, and spun across the tarmac. It came to a stop focused on a soggy piece of furniture that had been discarded by the side of the road.
“Oh, look, there’s a couch,” Carlin said cheerfully. “It’s got a nice floral pattern on it. Suit’s your taste, doesn’t it, Will?”
“Hmm, yes,” Spigot said, feigning interest. “I quite like tulips.”
The corners of his mouth turned downward as he tilted his head, assessing the chair. “They could have left it turned upright for me.”
Chapter 40
SONOMA PLAZA
THE RAIN WAS
still coming down as I began pushing the cat-filled stroller across Sonoma’s central plaza. A block’s width on each side, the plaza was the focal point of the downtown area. A network of sidewalks crisscrossed the square, meeting in the center at City Hall’s rock-faced building. The park’s perimeter was ringed by a collection of locally owned businesses, including a wine shop, a couple of furniture boutiques, several eating establishments, and an all-purpose mercantile store. The homey small-town feel meshed with the unseen but ever-present influence of the surrounding wine country wealth to create a Mayberrymeets-Beverly-Hills atmosphere.
On a typical Monday, the innocuous downtown area would have been busy with shoppers and tourists, but the morning’s wet weather had chased everyone inside, leaving the place with an empty, forbidding air. Heavy sheets of clouds layered the sky, blocking out the sun’s warming light. Shivering, I turned the stroller onto one of the diagonal paths at the bottom southeast corner of the plaza and headed toward the Bear Flag Memorial on the opposite side.
The spreading foliage of the park’s tall oak trees blocked out a good portion of the rain, so I stopped to dry my glasses on the tail of my T-shirt. With the help of raindropfree magnification, I read a bold-lettered sign affixed to the side of a nearby trash canister. Dogs, it stated, were not allowed in the plaza.
“No mention of cats,” I reported down to the stroller. “For once, we’re not breaking the rules.”
A few yards past the trash bin, we encountered the probable rationale for the canine prohibition. A narrower side trail branched off from the main path to a series of small ponds. Clumps of tall grass edged the water, providing protective cover for visiting waterfowl.
Not more than twenty feet from the stroller, I spied a formidable-looking mother duck. She had heaped her brood of goslings into a downy pile, the single black offspring standing out amid the clutch of his bright yellow siblings. The mother bird eyed my stroller suspiciously before brusquely rousting her sleeping youngsters and ushering them away from the path. She, for one, was not fooled by the cats’ stroller disguise.
After watching the duck’s departure, I turned my head to survey the surrounding forest and suddenly realized the folly of my approach. The park’s numerous thick tree trunks were plenty wide enough for someone to hide behind. Walking along this secluded sidewalk, I was an easy target.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I said nervously to my charges in the stroller.
Rupert grumbled sleepily beneath the nylon cover, as if he’d already tried to communicate that message when I pulled him out of the van. With constant glances over my shoulder, I increased the pace of the stroller. It would be best if I reached the Bear Flag Memorial—and whatever clue Oscar might have left there—as quickly as possible.
BACK AT THE
Santa Rosa broadcast booth, Harry Carlin stared into the video monitor, trying to decipher the foggy motorcycle footage coming in from the field. Every so often, he turned his attention to the handheld computer in his lap and fiddled with its keys—to no avail. The riders were in a temporary media blackout. The television network had dropped its live coverage of the race, switching over to third-party infomercials until there was something of substance to report.
The only action in the broadcast booth involved an intense game of chess. Will Spigot and the producer sat on opposite sides of the board, fiercely concentrating on the small plastic figures spread out between them as the rain poured down on the street outside.
I APPROACHED THE
Bear Flag Memorial from the rear, warily searching the trees that surrounded its small clearing for any suspicious characters. Although I couldn’t shake the eerie sensation that I was being watched, the coast appeared to be clear as I stepped out from under the protection of the overhanging canopy of branches and pushed the stroller around the memorial’s massive boulder base.
An iron gray statue mounted on top of the boulder faced outward from the plaza, overlooking the street, the Sonoma Barracks, and, beyond, the restored mission. The statue depicted a youthful, clean-shaven settler carrying the pole of an enormous flag. The billowing stone cloth furled against his shoulders, evoking a dramatic patriotic image.
Beneath the feet of the flag-bearing statue, the front of the boulder featured a large bronze plaque. The top half of the rectangular tablet contained a relief carving of a grizzly bear, fiercely guarding the state shield of California. The creature menaced me with an openmouthed growl and stood, I noted, on all four of its large padded feet.
I wiped a layer of mist from my glasses and began to search the memorial for some hint to the next piece of Oscar’s puzzle. There was a small crevice on the side of the monument’s boulder base, but after examining its cache thoroughly, I found nothing inside. There had to be another toy bear—likely a wet one—somewhere nearby.
Having checked every available inch of the portion of the memorial I could access from the ground, I expanded my hunt to a few surrounding benches and a nearby cupola, but no toy bears were propped up against trees or tucked beneath bushes. Hands on my hips, I returned to the front of the monument and looked up at the statue.
I thought back to Clem’s presentation. I still hadn’t caught the last part of his act, but I had read enough from Oscar’s history books to fill in the next section of the story on my own.
“When we last left our Pathfinder,” I could imagine Clem saying in his light Southern drawl. “He had departed Monterey and was reluctantly headed north. With every step he took closer to Oregon, he got colder and wetter . . . and his socks got soggier . . . and the wounds to his precious ego grew more and more aggrieved.”
My holographic, ghostlike Clem popped open a longhandled umbrella and walked up to the boulder that formed the base of the monument. His wrinkled linen suit fluttered in the wet breeze.
“About a hundred miles north of Sutter’s Fort, Frémont’s snail-like march came to a full and complete stop. He could go no farther. He’d found the path to Oregon was absolutely blockaded by”—the imaginary Clem paused to pump his eyebrows at me—“a slight freeze and a light dusting of snow.”
My glasses smeared again as raindrops began to streak down my lenses. I slipped them off and tucked them into my coat pocket. If Frémont had been so opposed to the rain in Oregon, I mused, he couldn’t have been altogether pleased with spring weather here in the Bay Area.
“It was as he reached this moment of apparent impasse,” my self-created Clem continued with a twirl of his umbrella, “that a military courier named Gillespie caught up to our stagnated Pathfinder.
“About five months earlier, Gillespie had set out from Washington carrying correspondence for several West Coast dignitaries. Gillespie fancied himself something of an espionage specialist. He tried to slip across northern Mexico disguised—rather conspicuously—as a traveling salesman.”
Clem sighed disparagingly. “The costume didn’t fool any of the Mexicans Gillespie came across. Fearing capture, he decided to eat the paper the letters were written on to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Of course, before beginning this high-fiber meal, he diligently committed their contents to memory.”
Clem gummed his lips distastefully. “Now, you might wonder what valuable secrets were contained in these precious communiqués . . . so conscientiously carried across hostile enemy territory.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Seeing as most of these letters were not preserved for posterity”—he paused to make another sour contorted facial expression—“we’ll just have to speculate.”
Clearing his throat, Clem continued, “Gillespie delivered his first messages to the U.S. Navy’s Commodore Sloat, who picked him up at Mazatlan on Mexico’s southwest coast. Nothing in the regurgitated contents of Gillespie’s stomach appear to have altered Sloat’s standing orders, which were to maintain a conciliatory stance vis-à-vis the California Territory until he received clear information of a U.S. declaration of war with Mexico.
“Next,” Clem said, stroking his mustache, “Gillespie proceeded to Monterey and Yerba Buena to convey messages to Larkin and Leidesdorff. Once again, there is no evidence to indicate the Polk administration had changed its strategic stance on California. If anything, by the time Gillespie reached the Bay Area, the situation in Texas had become even more delicate. The two nations were approaching the brink of war. As a last-ditch effort to avoid a formal military conflict, the White House had sent a special envoy to the Mexican capital to make a final offer to purchase the land north of the Rio Grande.”
My Clem apparition strode back and forth in front of the boulder, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I reckon the White House’s message to Larkin and Leidesdorff went something like this: Stay the course, keep a lid on the pot, and for goodness’ sake, don’t start anything out there before we’re good and ready for it back here.”
Clem scratched his head of thinning hair with his free hand. “Frémont was Gillespie’s last courier stop in Northern California. The delivery of Frémont’s letters was more of a courtesy, really, to the powerful Senator Benton and his lovely daughter, Jessie.
“Only Frémont and Gillespie know the precise words that were conveyed that cold, wet Oregon night, but it seems unlikely Frémont’s wife or father-in-law had written to urge him to instigate an uprising in Northern California that would instantly destabilize the territory.”
Clem blew out a loud guffaw. “The Pathfinder, however, worked his own interpretation of the information he received from Gillespie. He was reading between the lines, so to speak—an interesting prospect when the words are floating around in someone else’s stomach.”
Glancing up at the statue, Clem shook his head. “Frémont was likely far more interested in pumping Gillespie for information about his travels through Mexico than the messages he brought from home. Regardless, after spending one night around his campfire with the, ahem, traveling salesman, Frémont immediately abandoned his Oregon mapmaking mission and reversed course to Sutter’s Fort. There was no need for further deliberation. Frémont knew exactly what he must do next.”
Clem returned his gaze back down to me. “His return to the Sacramento Valley would only serve to aggravate an already tense situation. It was a move that was calculated to do so.”
I sighed as my mental vision of Clem disappeared into the pattering raindrops. Sucking in my lower lip, my face puckered in frustration. Was there nothing more? Had I come to the end of the trail and found nothing?
With Clem gone, I was left staring at the grizzly bear on the plaque beneath the statue. Leaning forward, I peered into the bear’s bronze face and ran my fingers over the ridges of its feet.
If there were no further clues, all I had left to go on was the strange repositioning of the bear from the original flag and Oscar’s handwritten note in the DeVoto book:
Local Indians, passing through Sonoma after the revolt, ridiculed the animal on the flag, calling it a pig or a stoat.
Stoat, stoat, stoat, I pondered as water ran down my forehead and formed a rivulet off the tip of my nose. Without the help of my glasses, the world around me was a blurry wet haze. My thoughts turned inward to the crudely drawn image from my sketchbook.
I closed my eyes, picturing the upright bear and its long, thumping tail as the details of the Bear Flag story filtered through my head. Catching my breath, I suddenly recalled an image that had drifted into my dreams the previous evening.