He'd let Styachowski know where to find him.
"Seen much of the celebration?" the sergeant asked.
"Just got in".
"Take a walk out to Union Rock. It's a sight to see".
Valentine saw the Lifeweavers comfortably installed in the Wolves' covered supply wagon, under constant guard thanks to the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms stored inside.
He wandered through the festival. A hundred or more separate parties seemed to be going on around a central broadway of trader stalls. Bikers congregated on their machines; black belts gave exhibitions of ice breaking for the kids. Ice cream was sold alongside bourbon and tequila. Teetotalers kept a distance from the stalls, and Valentine saw black-coated folk he guessed to be Mennonites, or maybe Amish. Games of baseball and basketball were in full swing on cleared patches of ground with equipment ranging from crude to commercial quality. Lively fiddles and bagpipes competed with accordion and tuba, but the biggest crowd was gathered around a pair of young, shaved-headed black boys creating an astonishingly complex rhythm with plastic produce buckets and drumsticks, with a few cowbells thrown in for gongs. When they finished, a preacher stepped forward and started an energetic sermon. Valentine listened to the mixture of oratory, showmanship, and gospel for a few minutes, then wandered off.
There was the profane keeping a discreet distance from the sacred. A little ways away from the rest of the camp some enterprising
prostitutes had set up their tents under a sign advertising gentlemen's entertainments, though their camp looked quiet for the moment.
Union Rock would be difficult to miss. It dominated the campsite like an unevenly risen bread loaf. A drum circle in tie-dyed shirts played, and passed around a joint, in its shade while a trio of barefoot girls festooned with beads danced.
There were any number of tourists walking around the rocks or climbing the more accessible parts. Valentine read an old pre-2022 landmark that mentioned this prominence as a popular stop on the westward-traveling Oregon Trail, which visitors often climbed to carve their names.
Someone had been hard at work since. A little path wound around the rock, traveled by families helping their children sound out the letters carved into the rock.
It was rather like a picture gallery, but the frames were shadow boxes, carved a forefinger's depth into the rock. Expertly crafted metal plaques were set into the boxes. Valentine moved down the line, reading with a little tingle running up his spine. The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord's Prayer, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, portraits of presidents and the postman Franklin, the Gettysburg Address, and an inaugural speech by Kennedy.
It wasn't limited to politicians. Valentine saw a young man busy making a rubbing of Shakespeare's Hamlet quartos, and Irving Berlin had sheets of music. Robert Frost had a poem about some woods on a snowy evening, and Valentine recognized O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" in its terse perfection. Someone went to a lot of trouble to reproduce Whistler's Mother and a study of a troubled-looking Lincoln in bronze plate.
Above the gallery, in letters big and deep enough to be read from hundreds of feet away, some crammed between others, some in a single line and others in a block of text, there in a glorious hodgepodge stood phrases freshly whitewashed so they might even be read under a bright moon. In fact, the work continued - Valentine saw limber and energetic young boys and girls among the rocks with paint and brushes, cleaning and recoating so the words might gleam under the fireworks. Too many for Valentine to take in all at once, he had to move from quote to quote with care.
"WE MUST HANG TOGETHER OR WE SHALL SURELY HANG SEPARATELY".
"GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH".
"I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT".
"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND...".
"THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF".
"WE SHALL FIGHT THEM ON THE BEACHES AND IN THE FIELDS...".
"NO MAN IS AN ISLAND...".
"EVIL CAN NEVER SURVIVE, THOUGH IT MAY SEEM TO TRIUMPH.
IT IS ONLY A QUESTION OF PATIENCE AND ENDURANCE".
"I HAVE A DREAM THAT MY FOUR LITTLE CHILDREN
WILL ONE DAY LIVE IN A NATION WHERE THEY WILL NOT
BE JUDGED BY THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN BUT BY THE CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER".
"DOUBT NOT YOURSELVES, ONLY THE LIES OF TYRANTS WHO HOLD BUT A PROMISE IN ONE HAND AND
A WHIP IN THE OTHER".
"NO POWER FROM OUR POOR EARTH OR ANY OTHER WORLD CAN STRIKE DOWN THE GOLDEN LADDER BETWEEN YOUR SOUL AND GOD,
WHO IS RIGHTLY CALLED THE ALMIGHTY".