Shaun loaded up a day pack with two loaves of French bread and a bottle of rare, old pinot noir from a winery not far from Guerneville. Before the two hopped in their cars for the winding drive inland to the redwood park, Shaun told Bobby to stop in Guerneville so they could grab a block of cheese. The town was nestled five miles downstream from the upland redwood grove.
When Bobby reached Guerneville and the small health food store tucked into part of the town’s commercial district, Shaun was emerging from the store.
“I didn’t know this was going to be a road rally to the redwoods.”
“I know that stretch of road like the back of my hand. Ready to go?”
“I want to run in and get a mineral water.”
“Meet you at the park. I’ll have everything ready.”
Bobby came out of the store, his bottle of mint-flavored geyser water in hand. When he threw back his head to pour the cold, sparkling water down his throat, he saw one of Guerneville’s firefighters high up on the utility company’s cherry picker. The fireman was carefully placing one of several dozen Christmas decorations on a light pole. Bobby gazed at the little ceremony, then walked across the street to join a group of bystanders whose attention had been drawn to the rite. At the base of the pole an elderly woman was placing a wooden sign naming the civic organization responsible for the decoration. The decoration wasn’t one of those sets of red and white lighted plastic bells that adorn many of urban America’s main streets, for it was of nature, the top of a local fir tree that had been trimmed and decorated by a local group. Bobby looked down the street at the other decorations. The ornaments were clusters of wild holly berries, or small bells and stars shaped from tin foil, or red bows tied into interesting shapes. Each decoration was different, each unique.
Bobby’s gaze was diverted by the singing of carolers down the street in front of the town’s bookstore. It so contradicted Bobby’s conceptualization of this odd little town – carolers in Guerneville? – that he found himself drawn to the music like a magnet. Bobby joined the multitude gathered to hear a band of twelve disciples from a local church sing what were for him the first Holiday carols of the season.
In the group of a dozen singers was what he believed to be the perfect cross-section of that crazy town. There was the choral director, a woman in a rust-colored, double-knit pantsuit, who would have had white hair except that she dyed it red. From her animated way of playing the guitar while she cajoled her group to belt out another verse, it seemed obvious to Bobby that she was the aging third-grade teacher at the Guerneville school. He could be wrong.
In the choral group were the other slices of the Guerneville pie. There was the young earthy woman in homemade clothes, with no make-up on and a cute baby in her stroller, representing many of the women who had created homes and families up in the surrounding isolated forest hills. There was the short, white-haired grandmother, hair pulled back tightly in a bun held by a band of real holly berries, who reminded Bobby of a smaller version of his late grandmother. There was the heavy-set Chicano woman in an authentic peasant dress who strummed along on her family-heirloom guitar.
And there was the rather ordinary middle-aged man with moustache, one of those big, bushy moustaches that so many men who have them hide behind, whom Bobby hypothesized was one of the many who escaped The City by being washed up on the shores of the town beach. There were the two gays with the required close-cropped hair, obviously partners, who must have enjoyed church as youngsters when they grew up in a small town like Wally and The Beave’s, but who had fled to The City to avoid the fate of leading a double life – or half a life. Then they discovered Guerneville with its pace so much slower than that of The City, and it became the substitute for the hometowns they had left. The shorter of the two, the Jerry-Mathers look-alike, sang with an unmatched, uncapped effervescence, as if he hadn’t sung Christmas carols for some time.
Bobby turned and looked at the faces of the audience. There were more canyon ladies, in town to make their sporadic forays for essential food items that they couldn’t grow up on the hills. Their babies were held tight to their breasts in canvas papooses. At their sides were their bearded and spectacled husbands, escaped physicists or some such, with their hands callous from chopping wood for their cast-iron stoves.
Bobby examined the people on the periphery of the crowd. There was a portly red-faced man with a neat Van Dyke beard and in his grip were the handlebars of an ancient bright-red bicycle. Far behind the man, alone, was an attractive woman leaning against an old VW, her chin resting on its discolored roof. Unknown to Bobby, she was the woman who ran the herb and stationary shop out of the tiny house behind the hardware store. She held her place well behind the rest of the audience, and on her face was the most distant smile Bobby had ever seen. He wondered what was going through that mind: Were they clear thoughts of childhood – as virgin as her clear, makeup-free complexion – or were they muddled as she tried to reason how those naïve childhood days of Christmas bliss could have faded into such obscure memories? No matter what, she appeared to be on the verge of tears, causing Bobby to continue his secret study of her.
He wondered if she wished for a return to those simple days of adolescence when she would bake Christmas cookies with her mother as they listened to the Perry Como Singers harmonize on those same tunes. Or was she sad because of all the unfortunate experiences that had occurred in the post-adolescent years, those years when the growing pains were almost unbearable, when life suddenly became so complicated as to be unthinkable, and how those events were like fallen trees now that blocked her from ever returning to the days when she was a happy, albeit naïve suburban child in LA or St. Louis or wherever? If only he could see into her mind and live just that fraction of her life that she was flashing before her eyes, then he would surely be able to cry with her, or hold her as she released those feelings that only she knew about. But he knew that her sharing with him what she was reliving was not meant to be; he just couldn’t walk up to her and say, “Explain.” So he removed his eyes from her and looked above the decorations and Main Street and up into the ever-present hills.
It was a brisk, cool afternoon by then, and low, pink patches of fog were moving in from the west. Sunset was still more than two hours off, yet the sun already had hidden itself behind a redwood-lined ridge of one of the hills that stood over Guerneville and made it such a reclusive, odd little speck on the earth. As he walked back to his car, he tried to pigeon-hole the scene in his memory. He momentarily stopped and turned for a final look at the carolers. He was being serenaded with the song, “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.” He felt very warm inside. And the thought occurred to him: Living back here in The Valley on the ranch, first at Daniel’s place and now alone in Janie’s house, he had turned into something of a recluse. He hadn’t had a television in his home since his move back, so he hadn’t seen the Budweiser beer wagon being pulled through the snow by Clydesdales once that holiday season. Yet to him as he stood there on the sidewalk in Guerneville, it still felt – perhaps it had never felt – so much like Christmas.
