Theo of Golden

Prologue

Theo was in Golden for only a year, from springtime to springtime. He arrived just before Easter, when the Boughery and the Promenade were an ocean of dogwood blooms and azaleas. When pollen settled like a lemon patina on every exposed surface in the city.

Over time, his friends would learn that he had a great fondness for rivers.

Be it the Douro of his childhood, the Seine of his glory days, the Hudson of his retirement, or the half dozen others that flowed through his various hometowns, he had a riparian instinct that seemed to draw him toward moving water.

Growing up in a maritime nation might have had something to do with it.

Perhaps every son of Portugal has the sojourning spirit of Magellan in his blood.

Whatever the reason, it is not surprising that he chose to live beside the Oxbow when he was in Golden.

From his back window, facing west, he could see it at any hour of the day.

From just outside his back door, three stories up, he could hear it.

Or so he said. At every place or any hour, with his eyes closed, he could feel it, could sense its determined pursuit of the gulf, its winding journey south, its glad march to the Atlantic.

Only a year. Not so long. But long enough to create a current of his own and to catch others in it. Without knowing it, a whole cadre — Asher, Tony, Ellen, Basil, dozens of others — was being carried along by the vortex that was Theo.

Floating.

Sailing.

Gathering mass and momentum.

Running to an ocean they knew little about at the time.

And looking back, all would have said — in praise of that old Portuguese man with the lilt in his voice and the hint of a smile constantly on his lips — “our hearts,” to use the preacher’s words, “our hearts burned within us.”