DISCLAIMER: JERICHO is copyright © by Junction Productions and CBS/Paramount productions, 2006-7. All rights to the characters in JERICHO belongs to the above. This is not meant to infringe upon rights held by others than myself. Comments are welcome.
This story is dedicated to Ms. Jennie Sword, known to Jericho fans as "Jennie the Humble Townperson." Ms. Sword was an extra in Season 1 & 2 of JERICHO, and is a source of inspiration for those of us who've her on Jeritopia. Jennie's story was never revealed in JERICHO, so I thought it was high time to correct that. Ms. Sword is a photographer, so what could be a more fitting tribute than to compare JERICHO's Jennie Towne to Mathew Brady? This one's for you, Jen.
PATTERNS OF LIGHT & SHADOW
Sunlight streams through the lace curtains, creating an interesting mosaic of light and shadow on the hardwood floor of what used to be her grandmother's upstairs parlor. The Victorian house is solid, withstanding weather and war with grace and aplomb like the venerable lady she is. A tribute, perhaps, to the hardy souls who built her, or sheer luck. Either way, the house belongs to Jennie, now; the rest of her family is gone, and she lives here alone. Being alone has never particularly bothered Jennie; alone is a condition an only child understands and accepts. Besides, she's lived there since her father died nearly three decades ago. Her mother and she moved in with Granny Towne when Jennie was six, and this was always her favorite room. Granny Towne had the most interesting things to satisfy the inquisitive nature of a child, or alleviate boredom on a rainy day. Things like old tin-types of stiff-necked ancestors, Bibles with flowers pressed between the pages, and faded, sepia-toned photographs with mysterious inscriptions on the back. Every time she came up here, there were always more photos to be seen, more inscriptions to be deciphered.
Maybe that's why I learned to love photography...
Jennie studies the lacy patterns with the eye of a artist, albeit one who captures the subtle shifts and changes with a lens not a paintbrush. No two patterns are alike, and neither will be the resulting images. Later, Jennie will download them onto her hard-drive, choosing specific photos to epitomize her mood. None will be discarded; they will be kept on her computer the same way as Granny Towne kept treasures in an old hatbox.
Of course, you won't get that scent of ancient talcum powder from a computer, either.
Jennie turned to the window, watching the billowing curtains. Family heirlooms, they are, made of Brussels lace. Granny Towne said they came to Kansas with Jennie's great-grandmother in a covered wagon. They were white, back then. Now, they're ecru, aged to a delicate shade of ivory. They've hung at that same window for as long as Jennie can remember—save when she took them down three years ago. She hid them in the cellar during the those latter days of the war, lest they be "liberated" by some light-fingered soldier or some J&R official who thought they might fetch a good price on Ebay. Now they again frame a window through which Jennie watches brilliant shafts of sunlight pierce thick leaves of the old oak outside. Different patterns, those, a play of light and dark as wind stirs the upper branches. Her camera lifts, poised, ready to capture that intricate dance of sunlight and shadow. Only when Jennie has preserved those ever-changing images does she lower her camera and look at them with her own eyes.
The upstairs window is open, the air outside redolent with autumn. Faint traces of smoke from burning leaves. Upturned earth from the harvest. The delicious aroma of baking bread. From next door comes childish shrieking, and deep-voiced scolding at the scattering of neatly raked leaves. A dog barks, and birds twitter as they build a nest. Five distinct chimes echo from the town clock as it marks the hour. The cough of an Stanley's old pick-up as it labors homeward. These are the sights, the sounds, the smells of a small town in Kansas.
Perhaps I'll call my next book Jericho: Patterns of Peace.
The thought of fame made Jennie smile. A year after the war with Cheyenne ended, some influential person in the art world happened across a series of photographs Jennie took during the conflict. She thought they were being overly magnanimous by comparing her work to that of Matthew Brady. She was naturally flattered; it's not every day an unknown "shutter bug" is mentioned in the same breath with the 19th Century father of photography. That kind of comparison might even give Alfred Eisenstaedt or Ansel Adams a swelled head. Imagine what it did for a woman whose only other brush with fame was playing Tatania in Jericho's Civic Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Unless you count second place in the Fillmore County Spelling Bee. I think I was ten...?
The critics were quick to point out how Jennie's chronicle of the conflict was reminiscent of Brady's dramatic depiction of the 1st American Civil War. The people who steered the latest trends in American art praised her as a "rising star." Publishers offered book deals for more money than any sane person could refuse. The editor at Simon & Schuster suggested she use a more professional-sounding name, and so Little Jennie Towne became Geneva Townsend. To Jericho, though, she'll always be Jennie Towne, Jen to her closest friends. Not a one of them, including herself, would've ever thought their Jennie could create such a stir in the art world. If she'd known then what she knew now, Jennie would've probably been even more enthusiastic about Granny Towne giving her an old .35mm Canon camera for her ninth birthday. All she did was take pictures, but taking pictures came as natural to Jennie as breathing.
In the aftermath of the 2nd American Civil War, Geneva Townsend is a celebrity. An artist. She's invited to appear on talk shows and at gala parties in New York City, San Antonio, Columbus. Her photographs of the war and reconstruction grace the cover of magazines like Time and Newsweek. Her pictures hang in the newly constructed National Gallery, ironically near a few of Brady's own Civil War derrogotypes salvaged from the ashes of Washington, D.C. She has two coffee-table books to her credit, with impressive titles like September Remembered: A Photographic Chronicle the 2nd American Civil War, and Aftermath: The Reconstruction of A Reunited America. The black and white portrait on the back the books is a study in contrasts, with intriguing patterns of light and dark. She appears an attractive, professional woman, with curly, light-colored hair that contrasts sharply with the black, turtleneck she wears. The "say cheese" smile makes her eyes sparkle against the quiet, dignified neutral background.
She can just see Granny Towne rocking in her favorite chair, cackling at the sheer pretense of it all, and hear that gravelly voice saying, "Whodda thunk it? Our Little Jennie hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Tsk!" Sadly, the Towne family matriarch succumbed to near-freezing temperatures in the winter of 2006 when Jericho was starving, and people froze to death in their beds. The elderly were particularly vulnerable that first year; only a few survived to see spring — which was a shame considering that come March, J&R and the A.S.A. arrived with food, medicine and salvation.
Poor Granny. She'd've loved lording my fame over Margie and Edna!
Newly reunited America loved Geneva Townsend, calling her work "heart rending, dramatic, and soul wrenching." She's met authors, actors and reporters who ask her about Robert Hawkins, Edward Beck, Trish Merrick and Heather Lisinski. They want to know things about Johnston Green, Eric and Jake, Gray Anderson, even Dale Turner because the people Jennie has known all her life are patriots, now. America's newest heroes—and Geneva Townsend is famous for capturing the images of their struggle to cast off the shackles of an oppressive puppet government run by Jennings & Rall.
Geneva Townsend took pictures of the Cheyenne traitors who set out to build a country from the ashes of 23 American cities using the bones of 30 million of her dead. A camera doesn't lie, and her photograph of John Tomarchio during his eloquent "God bless the Allied States of America" speech preserved forever his slimy, used car salesman smile. She caught John Goetz in an unguarded moment, revealing him as a calculating demagogue. Candid photographs of Ravenwood proved them brutal, Nazi-esque goons grinding Jericho's citizens beneath their heels. Pictures of the vapid, Barbie & Ken prep-school yuppies J&R employed epitomized them as merely trained performers doing little more than mindlessly parroting their masters' rules and regulations like good Pavlovian puppies.
Those photographs made Geneva Townsend a household name in post-war America, and earned her critical acclaim. The images are indelibly etched on the memory of Reconstruction America. Not a single photograph was staged; all are frozen moments depicting a nation at war with itself. Geneva Townsend gets the credit, but Jennie Towne is the one who suffered beside the rest of Jericho. She was no privileged reporter under Cheyenne's thumb. She was in the right place at the right time, and watched everything unfold through the eyes of her camera.
Not that I could've published them published before Cheyenne surrendered.
When it came time, it was Jennie Towne not Geneva Townsend who set aside the camera and picked up the rifle that once belonged to her father. It hadn't been fired in nearly 30 years, but more than one person in Jericho knew how to recondition an old gun. More than one basement became an armory overnight. Even her own cellar became part of a 21st Century "Underground Railroad" designed to help a subjugated populace escape Cheyenne's tyranny. Photographs of those tired, worn faces aided in reuniting families separated by more than just miles. She never knew what happened to most of them, but occasionally she gets a letter of gratitude.
Jennie turned away from the window, crossing to a bookcase. On one shelf sit black binders marked only by a neat, hand-written label. Month and year, nothing more. Inside are photographs not included in her books. Her fingertips trail across the spines, pausing at one dated June of 2008 that holds pictures of soldiers whose only difference is a flag patch on their shoulder. They wear the same camouflage patterned uniform, making them brothers and sisters in fabric if not race. Page after page of battle-weary, dirt-streaked faces. Men and woman who saw too much pain as America ripped herself in half. Again. Unaware that Jennie's camera is a solitary witness to their private moment of hell. Expressions reflect tears, rage, horror. Eyes filled with fear; even in their courage, they are afraid. There are few moments of joy amidst the blood and death. Each face is different, though there is an odd symmetry in their expressions. Jennie remembers them, though all too many now lie beneath a white cross in a cemetery somewhere in the reunited country.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row...
She had memorized that poem for a Veterans Day pageant in 6th grade. She was eleven, then, and Gail Green had said it made her cry, but it has never meant more to Jennie than it does today.
Another binder holds photographs of people who endured the same hardships as she did, sharing the nightmare Cheyenne euphemistically called the "Lawless Time." Ordinary people. Friends, neighbors, kids she grew up with. Some are heroes, now; others are buried in family plots. Her camera captured them as they fought side-by-side, old rivalries and grudges forgotten in the name of a greater cause. They weren't professional soldiers, nor did they possess modern weapons. They were farmers, ranchers, men and women who fought tyranny with the same passion as America's Founding Fathers. What they did, they did without question, some paying the ultimate price. Jennie's lens caught them in victory and defeat, showcasing their courage and their sacrifice.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world.
Another poem. Another pageant. Another memory. She was 16, and her dream was to either be a famous actress or a photographer at some well-known metropolitan newspaper. Her job at the Jericho Sentinel was only supposed to be for the summer, a single stepping stone toward loftier goals. She never left. She became a staff photographer by 18, taking night courses at Western Kansas Community College to enhance her skills and earn an AA degree. It was her job to chronicle the day-to-day life in Jericho, photographing weddings, social events, elections and even the occasional prize-winning hog at the county fair. She bought interest in Jerry Peterson's photo studio in 1998, expanding into family portraits. The little shop is gone ; like Jerry, it fell victim to the war.
Not all the binders hold photographs of the war. Some date back to when Jennie was young. Before the war, when history was something she studied in school. Back when there was laughter, Memorial Day parades, family reunions, and 4th of July picnics in the park. One of her favorites, a photo of old Mayor Green playing Santa Claus at the annual Jericho Christmas party in Town Hall. Another favorite, Sissy and Donna Olsen dressed as Southern Belles for their mother's annual rose garden party. The photo of her Sunday school class at Bass Lake, taken less than a month before the September attacks. Smiling faces, good times. Memories from a world not turned upside down by terrorists and bombs. Days gone, but not forgotten.
When Jennie turns back to the window, the sun is a blazing ball of fire hanging low on the horizon. The room is bathed in the warm, golden light of sunset. Shadows form behind the furniture and in the corners. The air has cooled, and it feels a lot like the day she watched a mushroom cloud rise over Denver. She was standing at this same window when that bomb heralded five years of death and destruction for Jericho. Like the 1st Civil War, life followed the same pattern of blood, sweat and tears. Kansas bled again, her wounds deep, though they are healing along with the rest of America. The patterns still exist. Jennie lifts her camera, aiming it at the red, western sky, capturing patterns of shadow and light, of war and peace for all time to come.