Mystics of the Tuolumne

Reclamation #

Dahlia wept as she tried to read her textbooks.  Marie Therese knocked on Dahlia's open door.  "Come in, please."  Dahlia's voice cracked.  Dahlia sobbed and wiped her eyes. Marie Therese hurried over and threw her arms around Dahlia and pulled Dahlia toward her bosom.  Dahlia broke down and started crying.

"What is wrong, my little sister?  You are in so much pain, I've never seen you like this."  Marie was disconcerted at seeing Dahlia this distraught.  

"Albert is drinking again.  He is supposed to become my husband in a couple of months.  My father was a drunk and he beat my mother."  Dahlia cried as she spoke.

"You have been holding this in all this time?"  Marie wet a cloth in the commode and dabbed Dahlia's flushed tear stained face."My poor dear.  What are we going to do?"  

Dahlia was touched by the sisterly bond Marie was showing.  "I won't call it off, yet.  I keep hoping.  My heart is broken.  He is supposed to be thinking about becoming a husband and father."  Dahlia was starting to calm down.  She had always been the strong one.  The big sister.  But now she needed Marie's strength.

Albert silently shambled by the open door he sneaked a peek inside but kept moving to his room and quietly closed his door.

"Do you see how different he is acting?"  Dahlia presented her case to Marie Therese.

"I see.  We'll talk again after supper."  Marie went downstairs to her rooms after checking on the house staff.  She didn't know what Dahlia knew.

Dahlia wondered at her decision not to say anything.  Either way, Marie Therese would be crushed.  This fairy tale family was turning into a night terror.  Dahlia started retreating into herself.

At supper, only Dahlia and Marie spoke at all. The two men were somber at non-communicative.  After supper, Robert Jr. claimed work in his office, Albert reading his assignments.  Marie Therese was exhausted from her travel, and Dahlia had veterinary pharmacology to commit to memory. 

It was obvious to Marie Therese that something had serious had taken place in her absence.  She was an intellectual of no little weight in this house full of scholars.  The most obvious odd man out was Robert Jr.  What had happened? 

Robert Jr.was needed in the state capitol in Sacramento.  He would be there the entire week.  At the end of that week, they would meet in Modesto for a family gathering.  Dahlias had been the transmitter in automatic writing for Robert Sr.'s Chicago Wheat Exchange prices.  

Dahlia was in a much better mood when she returned home from school.  "Marie, will you come upstairs with me?"  Dahlia continued into the shared study. "Look at these dried paints and the half finished sketch on the canvas.  Albert hasn't painted in months."

"That is unusual.  I am glad you share this with me.  I sensed something very wrong ever since returning home."  Marie walked over to Albert's workspace and touched some of the dried and cracked blobs of paint.  She ran her hand softly over the unfinished canvas.  Tears welled up in her eyes. "In all the years that I have known Albert, I have never known him to be anything but a painter."

"Marie, he has been drinking.  I will not allow myself, nor will he allow me into his thoughts."  Dahlia sat with a frown and her shoulders hung.  "I am afraid we are lost to one another."

Oh Dahlia, please don't think that way.  I have never seen you accept defeat."  Marie rushed over to put her hands on Dahlia's slumped shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes.  "You are not going to give up.  You are going to fight against his demons.  He can't lick them by himself."

"I don't know how to fight this devil, alcohol."  Dahlia shook her head and wept.

"You need to think. What need is alcohol filling in his life that you stopped giving him?"   Marie was only five years older than Dahlia but was wiser to the ways of the mud mired world.  "You'll think of something."

After four more incidents of drunkenness, Dahlia came up with a plan.  After supper, as they sat in their study absorbed in their own books and worlds, "Albert, I would like for you to go on a little viaje so we can be alone for a while."

"That sounds wonderful.  We haven't been alone since Christmas.  Where do you want to go?"  Albert was excited.  He knew that Dahlia was slipping away because of his drunken rowdiness.

"I want to go to The old mission of San Juan Bautista where Fra. Serra made slaves of my people and murdered them with backbreaking labor."  Dahlia had something significant in mind.

After crossing the bay on a ferry, they took the train to Monterey that stopped in San Juan Bautista.  Dahlia and Albert rode in a hack to the only hotel in town.  "Shal I get two rooms?"  Albert was hesitant but hopeful.

"Just one.  If you stay sober that is all we'll ever need."  Dahlia started unfolding her plan.

After depositing their baggage in their room, they freshened up and ate a lunch of stewed borrego with tortillas at the local restaurant and cantina.   On the short walk to the old mission, Albert started seeing horrors in every field of spring blossoms.  He saw death in the blooming plum trees.  He was shaken.  Dahlia knew he would be.

"Who will ever tell the story of these pobrecitan?"  She looked Albert dead in his tearing eyes.

"I will"  Tears welled up in his eyes and his voice was shaking.  He kept walking slowly and seeing the repugnance behind all the superficial beauty.  "Everything built by slaves in this country should be torn down."

"Then you would tear down everything the Yankees have.  I think it is best to thank their descendants and compensate their descendants."    Dahlia was more realistic than Albert.

They walked through the small dusty pueblecito admiring the small well-kept casitas.  They ate  a supper of roast chicken and garden vegetables at the hotel.  It was a peaceful and restful trip so far.

In  bed that evening, Dahlia held a trembling Albert in her arms.  "For the first time in almost a year, this afternoon I saw what you were seeing."  

"I have been a fool.  I wanted to be one of the regular guys.  I wanted to be accepted by the boys in the Volunteers.  I lost my way.  That was not who I was."   Albert was just whispering as he said these things.  

"I know."  She kissed him so deeply on his lips that it made him shudder.

The following day on the ride back, Albert told Dahlia that he was going to talk thing over with one of his professors that he trusted.