in April. I have already told my father I will return to the coast to supervise the harvest, and then we will see each other again. I have been making great progress with our plan.My father has desecrated this land so; I will make amends for him. You and I, together, will work to restore this land to its pristine state, not from a position of weakness and protest, but from a position of power. The deal is moving forward, and as long as I am able to stand a bow tie tight around my neck, I will prevail. I will be meeting Roosevelt in two weeks, and his man Pinchot. They will expect to meet someone who is like the others they have met: terrible, avaricious men. When they shake my hand, they will know the truth of it. They will know they have an ally who is richer than all the rest of them.
I will not be able to return before April, however; as much as I had hoped to ride down to see you for a few days, I’m afraid things are too busy here, and I must stand by Alice’s side always to ensure her complicity. But know, Harry—always know!—when I dream at night, I dream of you.
Until we meet again, I am,
Faithfully yours, Ben
I folded the letter and placed it back into the volume. Was it the letter that Grandpa Samuel remembered? Did he want to remind himself to read it again? (And yet it looked practically unread—as if it hadn’t been touched for decades.)
I’d heard of Ben. Serena said he was Elijah’s first son, who died tragically young. The only other time I’d heard his name was when Grandpa Samuel jumped up from the table at dinner on our first night and wrote the note: MUIR MTNS CA. “Ben is nervous,” Grandpa Samuel had said. And his note led me to this discovery.
Alice and Roosevelt and “his man Pinchot.” And Harry Lindsey, the subject of Ben’s dreams.
People didn’t really talk much about homosexuality when I was fourteen. At least not in Connecticut, where I had grown up. Except for the kids at school, of course, when they wanted to pick on someone. I remember being embarrassed and confused by what I had read: Did thisletter mean my great-granduncle was gay? And what was it even like to be gay in the early 1900s?
I closed the book with the letter still inside and replaced it on the shelf.
I headed up to my room, but, as I passed the front parlor, I stopped. I hesitated, then went inside. I stood before the giant portrait of Elijah and gazed into his powerful eyes and at his hand that reached out into the room as if it might pull me into another dimension. Next to the big portrait of Elijah was another oil painting, much smaller but large enough, with a small plate on the frame that read: BENJAMIN RIDDELL . It was a portrait of a young man with wavy black hair and nearly black eyes, smiling out of one side of his mouth as if he knew a secret.
– 10 –
BEN’S WORLD
I came to learn much later that the life of my great-granduncle Benjamin Riddell was steeped in contradiction. The heir to a timber fortune, he wanted nothing more than to be one with the trees. Enthusiastic and able, he held an idea of “proper work” that differed greatly from his father’s. Ben understood the need to attend to business dealings and negotiations; overseeing the daily operations of such a vast conglomeration of companies demanded an endless string of meetings and tedious conversations during which people talked around their true intentions. He understood the need. He simply didn’t think he needed to be the one doing these things. He was much more comfortable hiking around the forests of the Olympic Peninsula and the inland forests owned by Riddell Timber, experiencing the nature of the trees. And so he contrived to spend a great deal of time on the coast, surveying tracts of land designated for harvest.
Ben didn’t keep a diary, as far as I know, but he did write field notes,which he sent back to his father. These notes carried a tone of wonderment and fascination, and a belief that all things are
I will not be able to return before April, however; as much as I had hoped to ride down to see you for a few days, I’m afraid things are too busy here, and I must stand by Alice’s side always to ensure her complicity. But know, Harry—always know!—when I dream at night, I dream of you.
Until we meet again, I am,
Faithfully yours, Ben
I folded the letter and placed it back into the volume. Was it the letter that Grandpa Samuel remembered? Did he want to remind himself to read it again? (And yet it looked practically unread—as if it hadn’t been touched for decades.)
I’d heard of Ben. Serena said he was Elijah’s first son, who died tragically young. The only other time I’d heard his name was when Grandpa Samuel jumped up from the table at dinner on our first night and wrote the note: MUIR MTNS CA. “Ben is nervous,” Grandpa Samuel had said. And his note led me to this discovery.
Alice and Roosevelt and “his man Pinchot.” And Harry Lindsey, the subject of Ben’s dreams.
People didn’t really talk much about homosexuality when I was fourteen. At least not in Connecticut, where I had grown up. Except for the kids at school, of course, when they wanted to pick on someone. I remember being embarrassed and confused by what I had read: Did thisletter mean my great-granduncle was gay? And what was it even like to be gay in the early 1900s?
I closed the book with the letter still inside and replaced it on the shelf.
I headed up to my room, but, as I passed the front parlor, I stopped. I hesitated, then went inside. I stood before the giant portrait of Elijah and gazed into his powerful eyes and at his hand that reached out into the room as if it might pull me into another dimension. Next to the big portrait of Elijah was another oil painting, much smaller but large enough, with a small plate on the frame that read: BENJAMIN RIDDELL . It was a portrait of a young man with wavy black hair and nearly black eyes, smiling out of one side of his mouth as if he knew a secret.
– 10 –
BEN’S WORLD
I came to learn much later that the life of my great-granduncle Benjamin Riddell was steeped in contradiction. The heir to a timber fortune, he wanted nothing more than to be one with the trees. Enthusiastic and able, he held an idea of “proper work” that differed greatly from his father’s. Ben understood the need to attend to business dealings and negotiations; overseeing the daily operations of such a vast conglomeration of companies demanded an endless string of meetings and tedious conversations during which people talked around their true intentions. He understood the need. He simply didn’t think he needed to be the one doing these things. He was much more comfortable hiking around the forests of the Olympic Peninsula and the inland forests owned by Riddell Timber, experiencing the nature of the trees. And so he contrived to spend a great deal of time on the coast, surveying tracts of land designated for harvest.
Ben didn’t keep a diary, as far as I know, but he did write field notes,which he sent back to his father. These notes carried a tone of wonderment and fascination, and a belief that all things are
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