Ch 11 The Bow

[dalby2020]

Just throwing this out there:

"He conquered the iron" might be the gridiron = football field.
"and his fanfare will receive the time-tested bronze reward" might reference the Heisman trophy, that is forged in bronze.

The mention of reporters and fans ( people mesmirized) indicate that Cal might be an athlete.

Perhaps reference to Bo Jackson?  The first and only athlete to be named an all-star in football and baseball.

Baseball reference:
"Not once did I see him unwilling to field ..."

His last season of baseball, he played for the CALifornia Angels and wore jersey #22.

[Jenny]

Very nice find and connections....

This of course is the chapter where taking the first letter of each sentence spelled out: Bare the cross, leave the center, find the fruit.

The FIRST of things seem a definite theme.... Is it possible we would find 'missing firsts' (like the missing page 11 (missing 1's)), and then align them by years to take the first letter of each to decode a message or something (just throwing that idea out there in the field too )

[ILLUMINATINPS]

I dont't have my book in front of me, but i got a huge Cal Ripken vibe from this chapter. "Conquered the iron" could be a hint to Ripken's nickname "the Iron Man". The bronze reward may be a hint to the bust that you receive when inducted into the Hall of Fame. Lastly, the author is from Maryland, home of the Baltimore Orioles

[theo]

The interesting thing about this chapter is that it seems to be describing a rainbow, and yet it never comes out and explicitly says so.

"Rain" appears exactly once, on page 76.  "Bow" appears exactly once, on page 77.  But "rainbow" never appears, and the author seems to go to great lengths to avoid saying exactly what "strange occurrence" was taking place in the sky. 

And why would a rainbow be a "strange occurrence" anyway? Why would it defy attempts to provide "a worthy explanation"?  Why would a rainbow ever be called an "urban legend"?

My guess (and it's just a guess at this point) is that the author wants us to realize that the "rich bands of color" were perpendicular to the curve of the arch, rather than parallel to it as we would see in a normal rainbow.  If this is correct, it means that the visible light spectrum would be acting like a protractor for a person facing west.  Red would be south.  Violet would be north.  Everything in between would be some degree of southwest, west, or northwest.

If true, this turns Black Heart Cherry into an orienteering challenge.  That chapter is heavy on colors and heavy on numbers.  The colors could provide the compass heading and the numbers could provide the distance.  And the Backword does advise us to move "into the light."

The main problem I see is that orienteering requires a specific compass heading and the names of colors tend to be very inventive and vague.  How would one assign a specific wavelength to "cerise," for example?  And there are other problems as well.  "Black" is the most common color mentioned in the book, but it's not part of the visible spectrum.  (Maybe it means "east"?)  In any case, it's a theory I'm kicking around.

[theo]

Another interesting thing about this chapter is that it seems to give us a hint about how to find its hidden message.

This is the chapter where we can take the first letter of every sentence to get: BARE THE CROSS, LEAVE THE CENTER, FIND THE FRUIT
And the story gives us a nudge in that direction by saying "Especially when one examined the big picture - aligning all the firsts - only then could one visualize the whole realm of the accomplishment."

So maybe every story has a similar nudge, telling us what we need to do?

The first possibility that comes to mind is the final sentence of Cork: "Line up the bottles and wait for the big train." Sure enough, the next story (Forty-Eight States) is the only one that has more than two uses of the word "bottle." (Three uses on page 57 and two on page 59.) But how do we line them up? And will we see TRAIN somehow as a confirmation? That final sentence of Cork is the only place "train" appears in the book.