Black
Mountain Lady
Mountain Lady
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder January 23, 1980 (continued)
He said my unemployment check had come, and a letter from Sheila. How nice!
He said my unemployment check had come, and a letter from Sheila. How nice!
| Chapter Eleven ANDREA CLARE |
One morning in fall, Andrea Clare lay in bed and peeped at the first dim, rosy light that was spreading from her
window through her room. It felt like cold weather had finally arrived. She snuggled in her bed, eyes closed. Then
suddenly she shook herself rudely, thrust all the blankets aside and stood up on the floor, all in one brisk motion.
From a pitcher and a basin she bathed her face and arms. She dressed quickly and warmly. Carrying her shoes, she
tiptoed through the house where her parents and brothers still slept. On the back step she sat and tied her shoes. A
few early rising chickens were gathered around her waiting to be fed.
She fed the chickens and went back inside with an armload of kindling. By the time Andrea's father and brothers
were up the coffee was hot, and cornbread was coming from the oven.
Andrea's mother was the last to rise. Her father and Tom and Joe had just left for work. She watched the pickup
truck roll out. The faded lettering on the sides said "Hank Devlin & Sons, Painting. " They were off to paint a house
in a town over on the coast.
Andrea's mother came in then from the bedroom. They sat down for coffee together. By now the sun had climbed
into the valley and was shining in on the small table in the front room. It was a bay window, of sorts. They sat there
for coffee. They did it every morning after the boys went to work.
Andrea was in that limbo in which young girls find themselves when they are suddenly on the brink of life. At the
moment Andrea was without prospects. She was not engaged. She had no job. She was not enrolled in school.
To a stern eye she would have appeared shiftless or lazy. True, she cooked often, and well, and regularly for the
family. And true she did many other chores. She cared for the chickens. But all this took but a fraction of her time.
Of the rest, she spent much of it on the gnarled mountain that rose out of the valley, close to the Devlin home.
But it was also her special delight to spend long mornings at coffee with her mother in the streaming sunshine.
"What do you find to keep you interested up there so long?" her mother would ask. She had seen her daughter grow
through countless pairs of dungarees and sweaters that had been soiled and torn by the rocks and brambles of Clark's
Hill, as the mountain was named.
"Oh," Andrea would say, "I don't know. Just everything. "
But her mother trusted her. Later, when she watched her walking out past the barn and letting herself past the gate to
the trail that led up through the north pasture and onto the mountain, she admired her sure step. The girl glowed with
self-reliance, the kind that's hard for a mother to acknowledge, because it signals independence. But Andrea had it.
She was a real mountain girl.
It was warmer in the afternoon. The chill of the morning had vanished. Her jacket was tied around her waist, her hair
tied back, her neck flushed and her blouse stained with sweat. She pulled herself onto the summit of Clark's Hill,
having climbed straight to the top. From there she could see the ocean.
The sun was low. It was late fall, nearly winter. The days were short. She was watching for a new moon.
And though the winds blew cooler, she stayed on. The rest of the afternoon slid rapidly away. The mountain exhaled
its sage fragrance to purple western shadows.
"But there was no moon," said Uncle William. He looked down at Cat One. She was still curled on the pillow, her
face and eyes glowing in the fire light. She was staring quietly into the flames. She had heard every word of the story
before, but still she loved to hear Uncle William tell it.
window through her room. It felt like cold weather had finally arrived. She snuggled in her bed, eyes closed. Then
suddenly she shook herself rudely, thrust all the blankets aside and stood up on the floor, all in one brisk motion.
From a pitcher and a basin she bathed her face and arms. She dressed quickly and warmly. Carrying her shoes, she
tiptoed through the house where her parents and brothers still slept. On the back step she sat and tied her shoes. A
few early rising chickens were gathered around her waiting to be fed.
She fed the chickens and went back inside with an armload of kindling. By the time Andrea's father and brothers
were up the coffee was hot, and cornbread was coming from the oven.
Andrea's mother was the last to rise. Her father and Tom and Joe had just left for work. She watched the pickup
truck roll out. The faded lettering on the sides said "Hank Devlin & Sons, Painting. " They were off to paint a house
in a town over on the coast.
Andrea's mother came in then from the bedroom. They sat down for coffee together. By now the sun had climbed
into the valley and was shining in on the small table in the front room. It was a bay window, of sorts. They sat there
for coffee. They did it every morning after the boys went to work.
Andrea was in that limbo in which young girls find themselves when they are suddenly on the brink of life. At the
moment Andrea was without prospects. She was not engaged. She had no job. She was not enrolled in school.
To a stern eye she would have appeared shiftless or lazy. True, she cooked often, and well, and regularly for the
family. And true she did many other chores. She cared for the chickens. But all this took but a fraction of her time.
Of the rest, she spent much of it on the gnarled mountain that rose out of the valley, close to the Devlin home.
But it was also her special delight to spend long mornings at coffee with her mother in the streaming sunshine.
"What do you find to keep you interested up there so long?" her mother would ask. She had seen her daughter grow
through countless pairs of dungarees and sweaters that had been soiled and torn by the rocks and brambles of Clark's
Hill, as the mountain was named.
"Oh," Andrea would say, "I don't know. Just everything. "
But her mother trusted her. Later, when she watched her walking out past the barn and letting herself past the gate to
the trail that led up through the north pasture and onto the mountain, she admired her sure step. The girl glowed with
self-reliance, the kind that's hard for a mother to acknowledge, because it signals independence. But Andrea had it.
She was a real mountain girl.
It was warmer in the afternoon. The chill of the morning had vanished. Her jacket was tied around her waist, her hair
tied back, her neck flushed and her blouse stained with sweat. She pulled herself onto the summit of Clark's Hill,
having climbed straight to the top. From there she could see the ocean.
The sun was low. It was late fall, nearly winter. The days were short. She was watching for a new moon.
And though the winds blew cooler, she stayed on. The rest of the afternoon slid rapidly away. The mountain exhaled
its sage fragrance to purple western shadows.
"But there was no moon," said Uncle William. He looked down at Cat One. She was still curled on the pillow, her
face and eyes glowing in the fire light. She was staring quietly into the flames. She had heard every word of the story
before, but still she loved to hear Uncle William tell it.
| * * * |
Moon or not, the magic was present, and Uncle William's voice disappeared once more in the crystal flash. Cat One
watched like omnipresence herself, as Diana made her way in the dark evening down through the maze of dirt roads
that led to the old gas station.
The Flying "A" was located at Weldy's Corners, which place amounted to nothing more than a crossroads. Sorrento
Valley Road came up from the south and made a dogleg to the east, before continuing north toward Rancho Santa Fe
as El Camino Real. El Kah-me-no Ray-ahl. The royal road of the Spanish explorers.
The road into Carmel Valley branched off to the east, while Arroyo Sorrento was down the little road that went south
from the dogleg, and then southwest. The ocean lay a mile or so farther to the west; the road that went that way
skirted the north shore of the slough and fronted on the settlement that called itself Del Mar Terrace. There was a
little store down there called the Driftwood Market, just before the sign that cautioned, "Slow to 20. " Beyond that
was Torrey Pines Bridge, the train tracks and the beach.
There was one home out near the crossroad, a big old wooden house off by itself on a rise to the northwest in the
shadow of a pair of towering cypress trees. The only other structure was an old barn on the south side of the road,
right across from the Flying "A".
The barn was abandoned, but it still held old, unbaled hay. Diana had sought shelter there from time to time,
snuggling down into the hay to escape the cold, listening to the rain pounding on the rusty roof.
Diana's ma lived two miles east on a dirt road leading south from Carmel Valley Road. Her home was on the hill, an
old red-painted wooden house. Sometimes Diana would walk down to the Flying "A" to get cigarettes for herself and
Carol, sometimes just for herself, if she had the coins. She had only been fourteen when she first met Joe.
"A loser in a dead-end job," had been Ma's disapproving snort. "An' you stay away from him, Diana. Hear me?"
She had heard her. Diana didn't even smoke anymore, but she still came by to say 'hi' to Joe once in a while.
"You should go home and see your ma sometimes," said Joe to Diana as she sat on the curb of the gas island and
watched him reset the pump prices. Come the morning and the Carmel Valley Flying "A" would be announcing
regular gas for 26.9 cents a gallon.
"I do go home sometimes," she pouted, and she did. She tried to get in and out without running into her ma at all on
these occasions, scurrying about in a quest for food, something different to wear, perhaps an extra blanket. The
house was poorly stocked, and most of that from local charity.
Carol Gallagher herself was often away. The community expected cooperation and service in exchange for its
castoffs and largesse. Carol was too mind-blown to resist the invasions of her time and energy that were visited on
her in the name of concern and fellowship. In fact, she doted on the attention; there was little enough left of her own
life to justify any other response. Her wayward daughter was the least of her distractions.
At first, as Diana had entered her teen years, her ma's inattention had allowed her to get off with vague tales on the
subject of where she had spent the nights just gone. It was easy for Carol to dismiss any residual maternal
providence by believing that her daughter was "spending the night up at Mrs. Heinz' place," or "staying a few days
with Kathy Schultz down the valley."
In reality, Diana hated all of the Shultz family and would not have stayed the night in their home unless they were all
away. She didn't hate Mrs. Heinz, nor her daughter Marilyn. That whole family had been so kind to her and her ma
at the time of the tragedy, and since.
In fact, Diana really had spent nights out at the Heinz homestead. She had a standing offer to come and stay any
time. But her world was out in the hills and the valleys, the mesas and the canyons of the land within sight of Black
Mountain, as well as the mountain itself.
Joe closed up the pump and walked back to the office of the little gas station. "Want some lunch?" he asked. It was
well into the dark of night, but for Joe Kelly it was lunch time; he would be there all night, until the boss came in
after sunrise and sent him home.
"Why do you keep this place open all night, Joe?" asked Diana. She was seated cross-legged on the little countertop
in the office, her dirty, bare feet curled beneath her, eating a half of one of her host's sandwiches. She had been at
the station for the better part of an hour, and there hadn't been a single customer. Now the fog was rolling in.
"Nobody's out tonight. "
"Trucks," said Joe around a mouthful of bread and salami. "Ron's got arrangements with a bunch of different guys,
independents mostly, a couple of companies. "
"So?"
"So," and he paused to finish chewing his food. Diana took another bite of her own sandwich. Joe swallowed and
said, "So, when they leave the highway and come hunting around out here in the middle of the night looking for gas
or diesel, they expect to find us open.
"And they do." He took another bite. "There ain't nothing open over on the coast past ten." His voice was muffled
with the new mouthful, and they both fell silent.
This was not an unusual ritual. While Diana did not depend on Joe, not for conversation, not for salami, and certainly
not for gas and diesel, she was, nevertheless, one of those who, when they came hunting for the lonesome pump
jockey, expected to find him at his post.
He was always there.
Joe Kelly had one love in his life, and that was surfing. He worked every night; he surfed every morning, and
sometimes again in the late afternoon. His board was a Hansen, just short of ten feet. He drove a Volkswagen bus,
one of the first to grow old in the kindly Southern California climate. He would have lived in it at the station, but for
that he shared a big house with four other people, where the rent was cheap, and one of the other people was his
wife.
This is not to belie the remark that surfing was his only passion. But he had married right out of high school. His
mate, Charlene, had dropped out of eleventh grade in order to be a homemaker, and so he had her, and so it
remained.
And so he got laid regularly, and just as regularly he found himself in the fights and quarrels of which matrimony is
made. Sometimes the arguments led to tender resolution in the bedroom. Other times saw Charlene roaring off down
the hill in her own Volkswagen, the dusty bug that had been Joe's until he acquired the bus.
Charlene was the reason that Diana never came to Joe's house; certainly she had no standing invitation to roll out her
sleeping bag in their front room.
The big, rambling ranch house that Joe and Charlene Kelly and friends rented was not that far from the home of
Carol Gallagher's own parents. In fact, the old, weathered house in the valley was on the same idle ranch property as
the hilltop hacienda, but they were worlds apart.
Joe and Charlene probably never knew that the Gallaghers were living rent-free in the unpainted, tumble-down
clapboard farmhouse at the bottom of the hill. When Rancho Santa Mesa was an active ranch it had probably been
home to a worker, perhaps the foreman and his family. It screamed white trash.
That was the house that the young Carol had set out from on mornings when she would link up with Maggie Murphy
and share a day in the hills. Those days were gone. Carol Gallagher never walked anywhere anymore. She had
grown fat and sour. Somewhere she had acquired an old, white Chrysler, and that was what she drove when she
went anywhere.
The house on the hill differed from the Gallagher's from start to finish. Built for size and comfort, the place had
views in every direction. To the north were the eucalyptus forested hills of Rancho Santa Fe. Directly south was a
peek down into Gonzalez Canyon at its nicest part, with a leafy grove of sycamores and an orchard of walnuts,
persimmons and apricots. East was Black Mountain, reigning over a kingdom of pastures, woods and chaparral.
To the west was the balance of the ranch's own long ridge, with a line of eucalyptus trees defining the headland, and
beyond that the long sweep of Murphy's pasture, and then the racetrack, and the sea.
Both the main residence and its accompanying guest house were built of a beautiful knotty cedar, examples of which
could be found in a number of fine homes built a generation earlier in Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.
"What the hell kind of a name is Rancho Santa Mesa?" wondered Joe when they first rented the place. They had
learned of the opportunity from Charlene's parents. The Adams had lived in the neighborhood since the forties.
Harold Adams, Charlene's father, was a local businessman with his hand in many affairs. He had no answer to Joe's
question.
"Doesn't that mean Saint Table Ranch?" Joe asked, referring again to the painted wooden sign at the entrance to the
property. From the gate that was never closed at El Camino Real it was nearly a mile to the house, and from there
the dusty road continued along the ridge, through another small holding, Rancho Medico, and on to the Heinz cattle
pastures, and the fields of barley and lima beans.
Rancho Santa Mesa. It meant nothing, a string of Spanish words put together by some nouveau riche Southern
Californian whose urge to live in the country had not lasted nearly so long as had the weathered wooden sign.
For Joe and the gang it was perfect. It was a natural party house; except for the aging Gallaghers in the valley, it was
out of earshot of any roads or habitations. Oft times when Joe would leave for his shift in the evening, he would
leave a houseful of revelry, but that was cool. Just so that when he came home in the late morning, after some hours
of surfing, tired and hungry and ready to eat and flop, he would find the place empty and quiet in the sunshine, it was
all okay with him.
The other roomies were gone by then to jobs or the beach. Sometimes Charlene might be waiting. Then it might be
eat and fuck before Joe could darken the room and sleep. Like as not Charlene would go scampering off down the
hill then in a cloud of dust, looking for the chummy gossip of people who didn't work all night.
Joe didn't mind missing the parties. Marijuana was not the big deal yet that it was soon to become in Southern Cal,
but it was usually present at Santa Mesa. Though Joe indulged in the herb himself, he preferred to shun the mystique
that surrounded its use. Party or no, his last couple of hours before reporting in to the Flying "A" were as likely to be
spent out walking the ridge with his dogs.
Diana found him the consummate listener.
"D'ja see the moon tonight?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," was the reply. Of course he had seen the moon As the pearly crescent had plunged toward the horizon,
Joe had made numerous short trips out from the office of the Flying "A" and over toward the barn so as to be able to
have an unobstructed view to the west. On this particular evening, the moon had settled between the highlands of
Torrey Pines to the south, and Del Mar to the north. It finally disappeared behind the northern slope. That, at any
rate, was the view from Weldy's Corners. Up on the mesa, Diana had seen the luminous satellite sink behind the
Torrey Pines.
"Wasn't it pretty?" asked Diana.
"Always. "
watched like omnipresence herself, as Diana made her way in the dark evening down through the maze of dirt roads
that led to the old gas station.
The Flying "A" was located at Weldy's Corners, which place amounted to nothing more than a crossroads. Sorrento
Valley Road came up from the south and made a dogleg to the east, before continuing north toward Rancho Santa Fe
as El Camino Real. El Kah-me-no Ray-ahl. The royal road of the Spanish explorers.
The road into Carmel Valley branched off to the east, while Arroyo Sorrento was down the little road that went south
from the dogleg, and then southwest. The ocean lay a mile or so farther to the west; the road that went that way
skirted the north shore of the slough and fronted on the settlement that called itself Del Mar Terrace. There was a
little store down there called the Driftwood Market, just before the sign that cautioned, "Slow to 20. " Beyond that
was Torrey Pines Bridge, the train tracks and the beach.
There was one home out near the crossroad, a big old wooden house off by itself on a rise to the northwest in the
shadow of a pair of towering cypress trees. The only other structure was an old barn on the south side of the road,
right across from the Flying "A".
The barn was abandoned, but it still held old, unbaled hay. Diana had sought shelter there from time to time,
snuggling down into the hay to escape the cold, listening to the rain pounding on the rusty roof.
Diana's ma lived two miles east on a dirt road leading south from Carmel Valley Road. Her home was on the hill, an
old red-painted wooden house. Sometimes Diana would walk down to the Flying "A" to get cigarettes for herself and
Carol, sometimes just for herself, if she had the coins. She had only been fourteen when she first met Joe.
"A loser in a dead-end job," had been Ma's disapproving snort. "An' you stay away from him, Diana. Hear me?"
She had heard her. Diana didn't even smoke anymore, but she still came by to say 'hi' to Joe once in a while.
"You should go home and see your ma sometimes," said Joe to Diana as she sat on the curb of the gas island and
watched him reset the pump prices. Come the morning and the Carmel Valley Flying "A" would be announcing
regular gas for 26.9 cents a gallon.
"I do go home sometimes," she pouted, and she did. She tried to get in and out without running into her ma at all on
these occasions, scurrying about in a quest for food, something different to wear, perhaps an extra blanket. The
house was poorly stocked, and most of that from local charity.
Carol Gallagher herself was often away. The community expected cooperation and service in exchange for its
castoffs and largesse. Carol was too mind-blown to resist the invasions of her time and energy that were visited on
her in the name of concern and fellowship. In fact, she doted on the attention; there was little enough left of her own
life to justify any other response. Her wayward daughter was the least of her distractions.
At first, as Diana had entered her teen years, her ma's inattention had allowed her to get off with vague tales on the
subject of where she had spent the nights just gone. It was easy for Carol to dismiss any residual maternal
providence by believing that her daughter was "spending the night up at Mrs. Heinz' place," or "staying a few days
with Kathy Schultz down the valley."
In reality, Diana hated all of the Shultz family and would not have stayed the night in their home unless they were all
away. She didn't hate Mrs. Heinz, nor her daughter Marilyn. That whole family had been so kind to her and her ma
at the time of the tragedy, and since.
In fact, Diana really had spent nights out at the Heinz homestead. She had a standing offer to come and stay any
time. But her world was out in the hills and the valleys, the mesas and the canyons of the land within sight of Black
Mountain, as well as the mountain itself.
Joe closed up the pump and walked back to the office of the little gas station. "Want some lunch?" he asked. It was
well into the dark of night, but for Joe Kelly it was lunch time; he would be there all night, until the boss came in
after sunrise and sent him home.
"Why do you keep this place open all night, Joe?" asked Diana. She was seated cross-legged on the little countertop
in the office, her dirty, bare feet curled beneath her, eating a half of one of her host's sandwiches. She had been at
the station for the better part of an hour, and there hadn't been a single customer. Now the fog was rolling in.
"Nobody's out tonight. "
"Trucks," said Joe around a mouthful of bread and salami. "Ron's got arrangements with a bunch of different guys,
independents mostly, a couple of companies. "
"So?"
"So," and he paused to finish chewing his food. Diana took another bite of her own sandwich. Joe swallowed and
said, "So, when they leave the highway and come hunting around out here in the middle of the night looking for gas
or diesel, they expect to find us open.
"And they do." He took another bite. "There ain't nothing open over on the coast past ten." His voice was muffled
with the new mouthful, and they both fell silent.
This was not an unusual ritual. While Diana did not depend on Joe, not for conversation, not for salami, and certainly
not for gas and diesel, she was, nevertheless, one of those who, when they came hunting for the lonesome pump
jockey, expected to find him at his post.
He was always there.
Joe Kelly had one love in his life, and that was surfing. He worked every night; he surfed every morning, and
sometimes again in the late afternoon. His board was a Hansen, just short of ten feet. He drove a Volkswagen bus,
one of the first to grow old in the kindly Southern California climate. He would have lived in it at the station, but for
that he shared a big house with four other people, where the rent was cheap, and one of the other people was his
wife.
This is not to belie the remark that surfing was his only passion. But he had married right out of high school. His
mate, Charlene, had dropped out of eleventh grade in order to be a homemaker, and so he had her, and so it
remained.
And so he got laid regularly, and just as regularly he found himself in the fights and quarrels of which matrimony is
made. Sometimes the arguments led to tender resolution in the bedroom. Other times saw Charlene roaring off down
the hill in her own Volkswagen, the dusty bug that had been Joe's until he acquired the bus.
Charlene was the reason that Diana never came to Joe's house; certainly she had no standing invitation to roll out her
sleeping bag in their front room.
The big, rambling ranch house that Joe and Charlene Kelly and friends rented was not that far from the home of
Carol Gallagher's own parents. In fact, the old, weathered house in the valley was on the same idle ranch property as
the hilltop hacienda, but they were worlds apart.
Joe and Charlene probably never knew that the Gallaghers were living rent-free in the unpainted, tumble-down
clapboard farmhouse at the bottom of the hill. When Rancho Santa Mesa was an active ranch it had probably been
home to a worker, perhaps the foreman and his family. It screamed white trash.
That was the house that the young Carol had set out from on mornings when she would link up with Maggie Murphy
and share a day in the hills. Those days were gone. Carol Gallagher never walked anywhere anymore. She had
grown fat and sour. Somewhere she had acquired an old, white Chrysler, and that was what she drove when she
went anywhere.
The house on the hill differed from the Gallagher's from start to finish. Built for size and comfort, the place had
views in every direction. To the north were the eucalyptus forested hills of Rancho Santa Fe. Directly south was a
peek down into Gonzalez Canyon at its nicest part, with a leafy grove of sycamores and an orchard of walnuts,
persimmons and apricots. East was Black Mountain, reigning over a kingdom of pastures, woods and chaparral.
To the west was the balance of the ranch's own long ridge, with a line of eucalyptus trees defining the headland, and
beyond that the long sweep of Murphy's pasture, and then the racetrack, and the sea.
Both the main residence and its accompanying guest house were built of a beautiful knotty cedar, examples of which
could be found in a number of fine homes built a generation earlier in Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.
"What the hell kind of a name is Rancho Santa Mesa?" wondered Joe when they first rented the place. They had
learned of the opportunity from Charlene's parents. The Adams had lived in the neighborhood since the forties.
Harold Adams, Charlene's father, was a local businessman with his hand in many affairs. He had no answer to Joe's
question.
"Doesn't that mean Saint Table Ranch?" Joe asked, referring again to the painted wooden sign at the entrance to the
property. From the gate that was never closed at El Camino Real it was nearly a mile to the house, and from there
the dusty road continued along the ridge, through another small holding, Rancho Medico, and on to the Heinz cattle
pastures, and the fields of barley and lima beans.
Rancho Santa Mesa. It meant nothing, a string of Spanish words put together by some nouveau riche Southern
Californian whose urge to live in the country had not lasted nearly so long as had the weathered wooden sign.
For Joe and the gang it was perfect. It was a natural party house; except for the aging Gallaghers in the valley, it was
out of earshot of any roads or habitations. Oft times when Joe would leave for his shift in the evening, he would
leave a houseful of revelry, but that was cool. Just so that when he came home in the late morning, after some hours
of surfing, tired and hungry and ready to eat and flop, he would find the place empty and quiet in the sunshine, it was
all okay with him.
The other roomies were gone by then to jobs or the beach. Sometimes Charlene might be waiting. Then it might be
eat and fuck before Joe could darken the room and sleep. Like as not Charlene would go scampering off down the
hill then in a cloud of dust, looking for the chummy gossip of people who didn't work all night.
Joe didn't mind missing the parties. Marijuana was not the big deal yet that it was soon to become in Southern Cal,
but it was usually present at Santa Mesa. Though Joe indulged in the herb himself, he preferred to shun the mystique
that surrounded its use. Party or no, his last couple of hours before reporting in to the Flying "A" were as likely to be
spent out walking the ridge with his dogs.
Diana found him the consummate listener.
"D'ja see the moon tonight?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," was the reply. Of course he had seen the moon As the pearly crescent had plunged toward the horizon,
Joe had made numerous short trips out from the office of the Flying "A" and over toward the barn so as to be able to
have an unobstructed view to the west. On this particular evening, the moon had settled between the highlands of
Torrey Pines to the south, and Del Mar to the north. It finally disappeared behind the northern slope. That, at any
rate, was the view from Weldy's Corners. Up on the mesa, Diana had seen the luminous satellite sink behind the
Torrey Pines.
"Wasn't it pretty?" asked Diana.
"Always. "
