Chapter Four:
The city charter required four days’ notice before a town meeting, but the prerequisite was waived because everyone other than Cyrus Dinkle knew about my ambergris by mid-morning. C. Herbert Judson the Lawyer was dispatched to inform Dinkle even though the old scoundrel routinely kept himself distant from community affairs. “If we notify him, he’ll ignore us. If we don’t, he’ll sue,” Mr. Judson explained to Miss Lizzie and Roger Johns the Banker. The remaining citizens of Tesoro headed for the town hall, a wood-frame building that also served as a church for both the Methodists and the Catholics, the only denominations with a foothold in our little village.
Across the street from the hall was Fremont Park. It boasted a gazebo donated by the Tesoro High Class of 1916 along with a smattering of benches and picnic tables, some playground equipment, a water fountain, and a rusting Spanish-American War-era cannon, its barrel opening covered with chicken wire to prevent birds from nesting inside. There wasn’t much else in town—a branch of the Sonoma State Bank, Fiona Littleleaf’s mercantile and adjacent Kittiwake Inn, a car lot, the Tesoro public school, a Sinclair gas station, a few shops catering to tourists, the Last Resort Bar & Grill, a cemetery. Miss Lizzie Fryberg, a pharmacist by trade, served as general medical officer as well as midwife and mortician, thus tending to the beginning, middle, and end of the life cycle. We had a lighthouse manned by Angus MacCallum and a somewhat ramshackle port where an occasional small cargo ship or fishing vessel still harbored. There was a marina, the slips occupied by dinghies, sunfish sailboats, and C. Herbert Judson’s sloop, the C. Breeze. One road accessed the town, leading both in and out, the western city limit demarcated by Cyrus Dinkle’s estate on the Pacific Ocean.
As the town hall began to fill up and the day grew warmer, there was talk of shifting the meeting to Fremont Park. However, Roger Johns the Banker, our usual moderator, liked to hear his deep voice resonating off the slightly curved aspect of the assembly room’s ceiling. “I believe our discussion will benefit from the dome’s acoustical enhancement,” he explained, and because he was habitually congenial and most didn’t know what he meant by “acoustical enhancement,” we all crammed ourselves into the hall’s central chamber with Mr. Johns, Miss Lizzie Fryberg, Fiona Littleleaf, Last Resort Bar & Grill proprietor James Throckmorton, Coach Wally Buford, and C. Herbert Judson taking low seats on the stage at the front.
Except for Coach Wally, who routinely jammed himself into town leadership positions as if vying for the last seat on a lifeboat, there was neither hubris nor expectation attached to the seating arrangements. Tesoro was unincorporated. We had no formal government and convened town meetings when an issue or dispute arose. We didn’t have many of either—most agenda items involving street repairs, beach cleanup, repeal or re-enactment of Blue Sundays, harbor regulation, and an occasional disagreement about whose fence was on whose property line. Our way of resolving things was pure democracy and surprisingly efficient. The six folks at the front of the room functioned as an unofficial town council—a practical arrangement as people in Tesoro routinely sought opinions from five of the six when a serious matter was before them and had long ago learned that it was impossible to escape Coach Wally Buford’s views, which he spat about town like tobacco juice.
When I entered the assembly room, Miss Lizzie motioned for me to take a seat on the stage, a vantage point I found exhilarating as it allowed me to touch beautiful Fiona Littleleaf’s elbow and catch the scent of her soap and the warmth of her breath. She wore high-waisted pants and her blouse was sleeveless, an outfit some considered scandalous at the time—a woman with her legs covered by slacks and her arms mostly not covered at all inexplicably salacious to some book-of-etiquette long-nose who likely possessed arms and legs no one had much interest in viewing, anyway. Her honey-colored hair was pulled back, her face free of makeup save a hint of lipstick. I thought her the most beautiful creature ever put on Earth.
“Hi, Connor,” she whispered, and I gave her the sort of goofy grin a fellow in love pastes on when the girl he worships is around. Some folks believe ten-year-old boys don’t have such feelings, but they do and I did.
Mr. Johns called the meeting to order, followed by a bit of disorder when Coach Wally Buford mounted his usual effort to shanghai the moderator’s gavel. Our village’s charter required that each town meeting begin with the election of a new moderator. Mr. Johns always won the election, despite Coach Buford’s indefatigable candidacies.
“I think we can all agree that Roger Johns has been a disaster as moderator,” the coach announced, his demeanor a cross between a bulldog ripping a hat to shreds and a bulldog that wants to rip a hat to shreds. “I’d like to offer myself as an alternative,” he went on. “I’ll do a tremendous job.”
The coach—forty years removed from his heyday as a star athlete for the junior college in Sonoma—taught industrial arts at Tesoro High, a consolidated institution drawing from our town and the surrounding area. He also coached the school’s football team, a forlorn program last victorious eight years earlier. Coach Wally was a fire hydrant of a man—a stubby, chronically red-faced fellow full of belly and opinions but lean on tact and self-awareness. These were ingredients for a recipe that would likely elect him to Congress in today’s world. However, in the Tesoro of 1934 he was rightfully considered to be both a dimwit and a loudmouth, his excessive fondness for fiery post-game speeches driving more than one player off the gridiron and into the less noisy folds of the marching band. Accordingly, no one at the meeting had any interest in handing him a gavel, especially when our regular moderator, Mr. Johns, was a waxily handsome sort who had been president of his college fraternity and was quite simply as inoffensive as a person can be.
“I nominate Roger Johns to be moderator,” Miss Lizzie called out.
“Second,” Mr. Judson added.
Coach Wally nominated himself, but as there was no second, his name was left off the ballot and Mr. Johns was elected by acclaim. Afterward, the coach huffed and snorted and conspiracy-theoried a bit, and because the day was growing hotter and the quarters of the packed room closer, some huffing and snorting and conspiracy-theorying arose from the congregation in response. Eventually, Mr. Johns settled everyone with a few knocks of his gavel on the podium and the meeting proceeded.
“We must begin by offering our thanks to the person responsible for our good luck,” Mr. Johns said.
He nodded for me to stand and I did.
“Let’s have three cheers for Connor O’Halloran! Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
“Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
“Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
With the hip hip hoorays out of the way, Mr. Johns then asked for a motion to divvy up the ambergris by household rather than person. A couple of Methodists were quick to offer the motion and its second, but in the discussion that followed, the Catholics were in a huff as their papal directive to propagate the human species like rabbits offered them an obvious advantage in a per person allotment. Mr. Johns gaveled them down and the vote carried as the Methodists in our town far outnumbered the Papists. Mr. Johns next asked Miss Lizzie to give a breakdown of the particulars. When the figure of $146,000 per household was given, a low hum rose up and hovered atop the congregation like fog over the beach at dawn.
“How you gonna break it up and make sure it’s even?” one man asked. “If Miss Lizzie is right, an ounce here or there will be a pretty big deal.”
Everyone thought this an excellent question and much discussion ensued, until it was decided to leave the ambergris in one piece with each household receiving a certificate allotting them just over five pounds of the precious stuff. Mr. Johns then successfully orchestrated a pooling of the ambergris shares in order to more effectively bargain with the perfumers.
“Wait a damned minute,” Milton Garwood the Misanthrope griped from the back of the room after the motion to pool the shares carried. “Nobody’s telling me what to do with my end.”
Milton, the town blacksmith and welder, was a whip-thin, leathery fellow with a thumb he’d hammered flat years before and permanent grime in the creases of his hands that made them nearly as black as his typical mood. Everyone in Tesoro was well aware that no one could tell him what to do, primarily because Milton was quick to remind us of it as often as possible.
“You all wanna trust your fortunes to one person,” he continued, flinging his words at the assembly like darts, “but who’s gonna be doing the bargaining? You, Roger? Ain’t you got enough of your damned fingerprints on our money already?”
“Now Milton,” Roger Johns began. He was a nice fellow who always seemed freshly shaved and showered to me, his fair hair and smooth face like polish on a shoe. Mr. Johns had a way of disarming people, a nice skill to have if one was in the business of reassuring depositors during the Great Depression. However, he was no match for a vinegary, old strip of hardtack like Milton Garwood, who had made a science out of being contrary, and the town blacksmith with the flat thumb easily interrupted Mr. Johns into submission, sputtering and complaining and accusing until Miss Lizzie invited Milton to shut up.
A number of names were subsequently forwarded as potential agents to broker a deal with the perfume companies, including car dealer Skitch Peterson the Hornswoggler, C. Herbert Judson the Lawyer, and Coach Wally Buford, who nominated himself. Buford was quickly dismissed as a nincompoop and Peterson’s choice of occupations was determined to render him irretrievably shady. That left Mr. Judson and Miss Lizzie Fryberg, whom many considered to be the ideal candidate as she was an expert on makeup and perfumes; indeed, she was always made up to the nines, even when delivering a baby. “Miss Lizzie has an entire room devoted to nothing but face creams and blushes and lipsticks and eye shadows, with another filled from floor to ceiling with perfumes from across the world,” folks around town often claimed. Even though I’d been in Miss Lizzie’s home many times and never seen such a room, I didn’t doubt its existence. Her eyebrows were always fastidiously plucked and penciled, her lips perfectly highlighted, the subtle fragrances she radiated rarely repeated.
“So, you wanna hitch your wagons to a damned lawyer or a woman? That’s what you want?” Milton Garwood snarled, randomly finger-pointing as he spoke. “I ain’t gonna be told what to do by them or anybody else. I’m taking my shares and leaving.”
“You can’t do that, Milton,” Roger Johns interjected. “There was a vote. We agreed to abide by it. You, too.”
“Oh yeah? Well, nobody tells me what to do. I can withdraw my vote if I want, and I’m withdrawing it as of right now.”
With that, Milton stomped out of the town hall and went across the street where he took a leak behind the gazebo before returning. By then, a little fresh air and an empty bladder had apparently softened his stance and he kept quiet when the vote went in favor of a team of negotiators to include C. Herbert Judson the Lawyer, Miss Lizzie Fryberg, and Roger Johns the Banker.