headed east on another state route, and finally into New Svenborg, the
closest town to Ironheart Farm.
, In the early nineteen hundreds, groups of Danish-Americans from the
Midwest had settled in the Santa Ynez Valley, many of them with the
intention of establishing communities that would preserve Danish folk
arts and customs and, in general, the ways of Danish life. The most
successful of these settlements was Solvang, about which Holly had once
written a story; it had become a major tourist attraction because of its
quaint Danish architecture, shops, and restaurants.
New Svenborg, with a population of fewer than two thousand, was not as
elaborately, thoroughly, authentically, insistently Danish as Solvang.
Depressing desert-style stucco buildings with white-rock roofs,
weathered clapboard buildings with unpainted front porches that reminded
Holly of parts of rural Texas, Craftsman bungalows, and white Victorian
houses with lots of gingerbread and wide front porches stood beside
structures that were distinctly Danish with half timbered walls and
thatched roofs and leaded-glass windows. Half a dozen windmills dotted
the town, their vanes silhouetted against the August sky. All in all,
it was one of those singular California mixes that sometimes resulted in
delightful and unexpected harmonies; but in New Svenborg, the mix did
not work, and the mood was discordancy.
“I spent the end of my childhood and my entire adolescence here,” Jim
said as he drove slowly down the quiet, shadowy main street.
She figured that his moodiness could be attributed as much to New
Svenborg as to his tragic family history.
To an extent, that was unfair. The streets were lined with big trees,
the charming streetlamps appeared to have been imported from the Old
Country, and most of the sidewalks were gracefully curved and time-worn
ribbons of well-worn brick. About twenty percent of the town came
straight from the nostalgic Midwest of a Bradbury novel, but the rest of
it still belonged in a David Lynch film.
“Let’s take a little tour of the old place,” he said.
“We should be getting to the farm.”
“It’s only a mile north of town, just a few minutes away.”
That was all the more reason to get there, as far as Holly was
concerned.
She was tired of being on the road.
But she sensed that for some reason he wanted to show her the town and
not merely to delay their arrival at Ironheart Farm. Holly acquiesced.
In fact she listened with interest to what he had to tell her. She had
learned that he found it difficult to talk about himself and that he
sometimes made personal revelations in an indirect or even casual
manner.
He drove past Handahl’s Pharmacy on the east end of Main Street, where
locals went to get a prescription filled, unless they preferred to drive
twenty miles to Solvang. Handahl’s was also one of only two restaurants
in town, with (according to Jim) “the best soda fountain this side of
1955.” It was also the post office and only newsstand. With its
multiply peaked roof, verdigris-copper cupola, and beveled-glass
windows, it was an appealing enterprise.
Without shutting the engine off, Jim parked across the street from the
library on Copenhagen Lane, which was quartered in one of the smaller
Victorian houses with considerably less gingerbread than most.
The building was freshly painted, with well-tended shrubbery, and both
the United States and California flags fluttered softly on a tall brass
pole along the front walkway. It looked like a small and sorry library
nonetheless.
“A town this size, it’s amazing to find a library at all,” Jim said.
“And thank God for it. I rode my bike to the library so often. .
. if you added up all the miles, I probably pedaled halfway around the
world. After my folks died, books were my friends, counselors,
psychiatrists. Books kept me sane. Mrs. Glynn, the librarian, was a
great lady, she knew just how to talk to a shy, mixed-up kid without
talking down to him. She was my guide to the most exotic regions of the
world and distant times-all without leaving her aisles of books.”
Holly had never heard him speak so lovingly or half so lyrically of
anything before. The Svenborg library and Mrs. Glynn had clearly been