CHAPTER ONE: SONNY
Three years out of law school I was sitting behind a desk in my uncle’s law firm, Ingalls and Pratt in New York City, doing all their research and courier work, and I’d come to see that it was only a secretary’s job no matter how you looked at it. I was bored and desperate for change. Then out of nowhere my old law professor at Columbia sent me a note suggesting I apply to the U.S. Secretary of State’s office for a job he knew about from a friend in that office. Travel to far places. A bit of secrecy involved. Probable adventure. Yes, that was just what I’d been dreaming of. I applied. There were lots of interviews, lots of very personal questions. Strings were pulled for me and I got the job. It was the spring of 1846.
I had grown up in Manhattan and had gone to the best schools. My parents paid for all of it of course. After four lazy, aimless years as an undergraduate, I suddenly thought I knew what I wanted. My uncle and his friends were lawyers and I’d always admired their confidence, even the cockiness they all seemed to possess. To me lawyers seemed like the American aristocracy, and I wanted to be part of that royalty. But at the same time–though I didn’t like to admit it to anyone–I had a gnawing hunger to experience the other side of that too, to live among the shadows, the primitive and lawless, to know the life that scorned the law. So the day I heard about the job opening, both sides of my fractured personality saw the perfect joy of it. I would be practicing law, but in the wild west of California, where the nearest outpost of justice and sophistication would be two thousand miles away up the long, lonely Missouri River in St. Louis.
So it was I made the six-month sail around Cape Horn to Monterey, Alta California, territory of the Republic of Mexico. The man in New York who hired me told me that our government had just one representative in California, Thomas Oliver Larkin, who would be my superior, and he would give me all the details of my job. Those instructions were in fact part of a thick envelope given to me by the State Department. The packet was triply sealed and I was ordered not to open it under any circumstances, but to carry it with me and give it to no one except Mr. Larkin. I was advised that it would be best if the packet were secured to my body during that long voyage, and they suggested several ways I might try. Mr. Larkin had been for several years the appointed Consul of the United States for California, and I could at least be told that the sudden war with Mexico had complicated Mr. Larkin’s job considerably, and I was to go there to assist him in whatever way he directed me. I guarded that triple-sealed letter day and night for all the long, monotonous sail around Cape Horn. With a roll of surgical wrap I secured the packet to my chest. I unwrapped it at night to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep for worrying
about it, and from then on I wore the wrap and the packet even when I slept.
I did meet lots of the people making the same trip, including a group of soldiers who were on their way to the same place, Artillery Company F.
One lieutenant in particular fascinated me and I’ll say much more about him in a little bit. Still, considering it was six months and
nowhere else to go but round and round those decks, the social life wasn’t much. There were a couple of families traveling,
but I’ve never been comfortable with children or their parents. That one officer interested me, but he mostly kept with the
other soldiers. He and I spoke a few times though. We were both going to Monterey. He was reporting to a military commander,
I of course to the consul. We acknowledged that we would no doubt see each other in Monterey. And so it was to be.
His name was William T. Sherman, army lieutenant. The Lexington disembarked us at Monterey the twenty-eighth day of January, 1847. I got off that ship at last, ready to report for duty, and finally to relieve myself of the burden of that miserable sealed packet. To my surprise, I was told by the custom house officer that Consul Thomas Larkin had been imprisoned for two months, kidnapped by the Mexican insurgents who had taken back Los Angeles and San Diego from the American soldiers last fall. They had held Larkin hostage two months. Fortunately the combined armies of Commodore Stockton’s sailors, Kearney’s long-traveled soldiers and Fremont’s ragtag bunch of volunteers, about six hundred soldiers in all, had returned to Los Angeles and forced the insurgents to surrender. Then Larkin had been released. That had been a couple weeks ago. Just three days ago Larkin had returned by ship to Monterey to resume his life.
Thomas Oliver Larkin, when he first greeted me in the foyer of his large two story adobe home in Monterey, did not look as if he were a just-released prisoner. He came into the foyer, neat and tailored like any east coast business man. His skin was darker than I’d imagined and his hair was receding, a definite European look to him. A little under average height and slight build. But don’t think fragile, not about Mr. Larkin. He was Boston wily and tough. He greeted me warmly and said he’d heard I had arrived on the Lexington. He invited me to sit and offered me tea or coffee. All I wanted was to get rid of that damn confidential document strapped to my body. Before leaving the ship that morning I had unwound the last wrap of the surgical tape that had been stuck to me for half a year, like it had bound up some incurable disease that I had to redress twice a week. I had clutched the packet in my hand while I walked from the ship to Consul Larkin’s house, which had been pointed out to me as the biggest one on the plaza.
So here at last, and before I even accepted coffee or tea, I was able to hand the document to its intended recipient. He surprised me by opening the packet marked Top Secret right there in front of me and reading it, even mumbling some of the words, as if it were meaningless gossip anyone might know. From time to time, once or so per page, he would shake his head. Twice he guffawed. When he’d finished he looked at me as if I also knew every word he’d read, and he said, “Virtually the whole damn thing is obsolete. You are already obsolete, Mr. Wells.” I stood there, suddenly disconnected from all of it, utterly confused, with not a word to speak.
Consul Larkin went on. “The war for California is over, Mr. Wells. Your friend and mine, Mr. Fellows at the State Department, doesn’t know that yet, and will not find out for another six months. No doubt, within Mexico a war still goes on, though it will probably end soon too, and we here in California will not hear about that for another six months. You see, we all live in our own little worlds and so far apart, so immensely miscalculating when we try to help our faraway friends. Mr. Fellows, no doubt by direction of our good President Polk, has been concerned about the state of California and our American interests here. No doubt that is why they have sent you, to help me in my work as consul, who am supposed to be the eyes and ears, the conscience and the helping hand of all Americans in this land that is ruled by the unfortunate Mexican government. However, Mr. Wells, as I said, the war is over. Mexico is in process of forfeiting her beloved California to the United States, and so California is no longer a foreign country, and therefore she is in no need of a consul to represent her to Mexico. Do you get me, Mr. Wells? I am no longer a consul. The office has been closed and will not reopen.”