Black Mountain
Lady
Lady
| Jay Dyck |
Diary of a Goatherder January 23, 1980 (continued)
I drove home. Today is Wednesday. I fast on Wednesday, as does Bob. So, no supper. I
checked on the herd and jumped into bed after visiting for a while with Timothy, our
Siamese cat, who is our newest addition.
I drove home. Today is Wednesday. I fast on Wednesday, as does Bob. So, no supper. I
checked on the herd and jumped into bed after visiting for a while with Timothy, our
Siamese cat, who is our newest addition.
| Chapter Thirteen PRACTICAL CATEGORIES |
That evening in San Diego, in a business suit once again, he boarded an airliner heading for
Houston. Vikor had ended with leaving the checkbook, credit cards and I. D. on the desk in
Ms Henderson's room. Counting the eight hundred from the purse, the little adventure had
netted him some forty-three thousand bucks. He resisted whatever greed might inspire him to
try, this time, to parlay it into anymore. It was enough. There was no reason to leave any
kind of trail whatsoever. The untraceable cash was enough.
Thank you to the droves of dopers and guys who like to pay for sex, or who think they have
to. Next stop Houston, and then he would head for home. He stowed his carry-on luggage
above the seat. It was all he had with him, and it was all new, and he was going to abandon it
the following day, anyhow. That included the outfit he was wearing, a few changes of shirts,
ties, socks and underwear. He had purchased all of it, not in San Diego, but in the stop just
prior, St. Louis.
Whether such precautions made any difference whatsoever was something that Vikor did not
know. He took them nevertheless. It was all part of his constant practice of leaving as little a
trail as possible, and of being unpredictable by moving randomly. He varied his style as well,
but not as much. There are only so many ways of killing people so far as practical categories
are concerned. Stab, slash, shoot, bomb, strangle, poison, beat… beat. Now there's a
barnyard tactic, thought Vikor.
He had never beaten anyone to death. He would no more consider it than would a weasel,
who was entirely capable of bleeding his fat bird to death without resorting to pounding.
Death from impact. It seemed more, to Vikor, like the arm of heavy muscle and dim wits.
Dangerous grazers were all the bulls and buffalos of the world ever were to the sharp edged
predators that circled their herds.
But he would if ever he had to.
He had never poisoned anyone. Had nothing against it, just had never employed the tactic. If
pressed he would have found that he did have opinions against it. Too wide of an aim, he
would protest. Too easy to miss the mark, to hit the unintended. And too painful. It was the
kill of a microbe, an insect or a serpent. It was messy.
Again, if he had to…
Vikor had often considered the vulnerability of his prey to strangulation. His imagination
always conjured up pictures of such athletic desperation that he shied from them. Again, he
would if he had to. He was certainly wiry and martial artsy enough to overcome the
resistance of the suffocating victim. This would include the classic knee to the testicles, were
the assailant crazy enough to be attacking said victim from the front in the classic two
thumbs to the throat and balls pasted to pelvis position. From behind, he had always
reasoned, the use of a garrote would far and away be the safest and most efficient approach,
although it still leaves the would-be killer exposed to various elbow strikes and general
wrestling ability.
There had been one incident in his career as a serial killer (He really hated that one, for he
saw himself as nothing like the brain-damaged mutants that roamed neighborhoods in
patterns bold enough to be reflected on the front page of newspapers, making hits in
irrational, not understood responses to a host of organ failures.) that had taught him with
deep permanence.
His victim had been a man on that occasion. Vikor had been younger, and much less
experienced. One might think that seven successful killings would constitute a serious body
of "experience", particularly for a young man of twenty-five. Vikor was twenty-nine now,
and had learned how little in contrast to his current knowledge (and wisdom?) he had known
then. He had learned a lot.
The man was stronger than kid Vikor had suspected, perhaps younger. More than that, he
was more alert, and he surprised the smug, young killer-grown-careless by seizing Vikor by
the wrist that supported the fist that gripped the knife. The attack had turned to a scuffle.
Vikor responded with an arch of muscular wrestling that hurled the two to the ground. The
older fellow could hardly be faulted for resisting what was intended to be a fatal attack. So
he shall not be held to answer for any miscalculations that he may have made, so far as his
ability to out fight the young hoodlum. Besides, he is dead; Vikor killed him.
Vikor himself, on the other hand, stayed forever branded with culpability. He answered only
to himself, but he was a cruel master. Perhaps it is more metaphysically accurate to say he
answered, as does any free being, to nothing. It doesn't change the urgency with which he
held himself accountable, and he was resilient to demands that it not be allowed to happen
again.
He didn't want to wrestle his prey. He wanted to be like the electrician, who prefers to avoid
shocks rather than to survive them.
Strangling took time. Time meant wrestling. Wrestling's potential outcomes varied too much
for Vikor to accept. So, leave suffocation to the movies.
Leave bombs there as well, he would think with a grimace and a shudder, when
contemplating an action. So many drawbacks, including physical danger to the bomber,
unintended injury, prize damage (another whole subject), noise (another whole subject), and,
like poison, messy.
There is virtue in every craft, Vikor would think to himself when he pretended to be the
voice of divine inspiration. For the killer, a painless experience for the victims was an
important score. Painless and fearless as well, along with every adjective that bespoke the
most orderly, well-mannered if you will, assassination, leaving the briefest of ripples in the
pond, and attracting minimum attention.
Vikor would pray and believe that his victim's day was a good one, marred only, perhaps, by
the most fleeting awareness that the jig was up, an awareness growing ever more clear and
precise, even as it vanished with the rest of the prey's consciousness, divided and lost against
the edge of his, Vikor's, steel blade.
Oh, certainly our man had gone through his gun phase. Guns. Guns are just too easy. Also,
they are a little loud. Users whose main ambition is manipulation, rather than pure predation,
find their attention span prolonged by these nasty little intimidators. It's easy to scare people
with guns. Threats and extortion work better with scared people. These chambered bombs
that can send little flicks of mineral death winging almost at random through the atmosphere,
have won the respect, or fear, of sensible folk everywhere.
With the result that sensible folk everywhere live under a complex net of oppression. Vikor
had no wish to be oppressive. But he could not evade the experience of being himself one of
the oppressed. Failure to come to grips with the reality of this landed healthy young men in
prison.
Vikor would remind himself that the magnificent fox was merely another bug-ridden, fur-
covered vermin, like a rat, to the farmer whose hen dangled from her triumphant jaws. The
glory and triumph are lost on the farmer as they are lost on the policeman whose job it is to
respond to the crimes of man.
There were times when Vikor carried a gun for protection. Those were particularly times
spent living in the country, or the wilderness. But when on a "cruise", as he had come to call
his Viking shifts, there were places and times when to be armed with a favorite Betsy of any
design would be useless extra jeopardy. Airlines were the primary environment for such
caution.
Acquisition of firearms in any newly arrived-in city, consequently, became problematic. To
be precise, Vikor had identified three solutions to the problem, each of which was attended
by serious deficiencies.
The first alternative of course, was legal acquisition, outright purchase at either a sporting
goods store or a pawnshop. In many states and cities, this procedure left a trail a mile wide,
required identification and waiting periods, and prompted searches for criminal histories, and
fingerprints. When completed, the society was graced with an ironclad connection
between purchaser and firearm, a connection that led right up to the first occasion when the
weapon was stolen, which usually coincided with the start of its life as a criminal's piece.
No self-respecting criminal would go through such an elaborate and traceable ritual in order
to get a gun to do a job. Not even Vikor. For most professional criminals, this brought into
existence the illegal gun market. This market varied all the way from innocuous, "between
friends" exchanges of rifles, pistols and shotguns, to the well-developed, high-priced
underground, stocked almost exclusively with stolen and smuggled arms.
This latter market represented commerce that Vikor felt almost prissy about soiling his hands
with. He thought of the trade with the same pattern of attitudes that he applied to drug
dealing, that is, that it was mean-spirited and parasitic, taking advantage of a law that created
artificially high prices and a phony monopoly restricted to those who are bold enough, or
stupid enough, or careless enough, or well-enough connected to flout it.
There was nothing moralistic about his attitude, Vikor would tell himself. He would also
remind himself not to make it a cause, another sure route to the martyrdom of prison.
No, his scorn of black-market gun dealers stemmed straight from his heart. Jinxed as they
might be, Vikor had grown up with a love for guns, and he had hated the slimy creeps who
capitalized on that love for years before he had formulated any rational justification for his
derision.
It left the third avenue for gun acquisition, stealing them, or as Vikor preferred to define it,
killing the owners and inheriting their weapons. This would have been particularly attractive
if the prey happened to be a gun dealer.
Beyond the action needs of the moment, however, there were severe limits as to how far
Vikor could profit from a haul of guns, without becoming a gun dealer himself. He had
walked away from fortunes in guns, drugs, and automobiles.
Take cars, for instance. Better it was by far, he reasoned, that the trail of the missing car
should end with the vehicle abandoned by the side of the road, rather than in the hands of an
alive and aggrieved party (victim, witness) who has shelled out a couple thou' on a slightly
irregular deal, and who must now pay the price for his or her parsimony and would be only
too eager to see justice done, if for no purpose but to share the misery.
So it was with guns, plus they were loud and smoky and left chemical, traceable residue on
the user. Not that anyone had ever subjected Vikor to any chemical analysis. In fact, he had
never been the subject of any suspicion or investigation whatsoever, which was as he
continually planned. He was generally in another city, usually in another state, by the time his
latest merry series of crimes had been discovered. He used them when he started, however,
when, in fact, he was just another Southwest drifter, when he "traveled by car and guitar," as
he put it, and times got tough, and he turned the sights of his old Springfield rifle past the
jackrabbit to Jack himself.
Houston. Vikor had ended with leaving the checkbook, credit cards and I. D. on the desk in
Ms Henderson's room. Counting the eight hundred from the purse, the little adventure had
netted him some forty-three thousand bucks. He resisted whatever greed might inspire him to
try, this time, to parlay it into anymore. It was enough. There was no reason to leave any
kind of trail whatsoever. The untraceable cash was enough.
Thank you to the droves of dopers and guys who like to pay for sex, or who think they have
to. Next stop Houston, and then he would head for home. He stowed his carry-on luggage
above the seat. It was all he had with him, and it was all new, and he was going to abandon it
the following day, anyhow. That included the outfit he was wearing, a few changes of shirts,
ties, socks and underwear. He had purchased all of it, not in San Diego, but in the stop just
prior, St. Louis.
Whether such precautions made any difference whatsoever was something that Vikor did not
know. He took them nevertheless. It was all part of his constant practice of leaving as little a
trail as possible, and of being unpredictable by moving randomly. He varied his style as well,
but not as much. There are only so many ways of killing people so far as practical categories
are concerned. Stab, slash, shoot, bomb, strangle, poison, beat… beat. Now there's a
barnyard tactic, thought Vikor.
He had never beaten anyone to death. He would no more consider it than would a weasel,
who was entirely capable of bleeding his fat bird to death without resorting to pounding.
Death from impact. It seemed more, to Vikor, like the arm of heavy muscle and dim wits.
Dangerous grazers were all the bulls and buffalos of the world ever were to the sharp edged
predators that circled their herds.
But he would if ever he had to.
He had never poisoned anyone. Had nothing against it, just had never employed the tactic. If
pressed he would have found that he did have opinions against it. Too wide of an aim, he
would protest. Too easy to miss the mark, to hit the unintended. And too painful. It was the
kill of a microbe, an insect or a serpent. It was messy.
Again, if he had to…
Vikor had often considered the vulnerability of his prey to strangulation. His imagination
always conjured up pictures of such athletic desperation that he shied from them. Again, he
would if he had to. He was certainly wiry and martial artsy enough to overcome the
resistance of the suffocating victim. This would include the classic knee to the testicles, were
the assailant crazy enough to be attacking said victim from the front in the classic two
thumbs to the throat and balls pasted to pelvis position. From behind, he had always
reasoned, the use of a garrote would far and away be the safest and most efficient approach,
although it still leaves the would-be killer exposed to various elbow strikes and general
wrestling ability.
There had been one incident in his career as a serial killer (He really hated that one, for he
saw himself as nothing like the brain-damaged mutants that roamed neighborhoods in
patterns bold enough to be reflected on the front page of newspapers, making hits in
irrational, not understood responses to a host of organ failures.) that had taught him with
deep permanence.
His victim had been a man on that occasion. Vikor had been younger, and much less
experienced. One might think that seven successful killings would constitute a serious body
of "experience", particularly for a young man of twenty-five. Vikor was twenty-nine now,
and had learned how little in contrast to his current knowledge (and wisdom?) he had known
then. He had learned a lot.
The man was stronger than kid Vikor had suspected, perhaps younger. More than that, he
was more alert, and he surprised the smug, young killer-grown-careless by seizing Vikor by
the wrist that supported the fist that gripped the knife. The attack had turned to a scuffle.
Vikor responded with an arch of muscular wrestling that hurled the two to the ground. The
older fellow could hardly be faulted for resisting what was intended to be a fatal attack. So
he shall not be held to answer for any miscalculations that he may have made, so far as his
ability to out fight the young hoodlum. Besides, he is dead; Vikor killed him.
Vikor himself, on the other hand, stayed forever branded with culpability. He answered only
to himself, but he was a cruel master. Perhaps it is more metaphysically accurate to say he
answered, as does any free being, to nothing. It doesn't change the urgency with which he
held himself accountable, and he was resilient to demands that it not be allowed to happen
again.
He didn't want to wrestle his prey. He wanted to be like the electrician, who prefers to avoid
shocks rather than to survive them.
Strangling took time. Time meant wrestling. Wrestling's potential outcomes varied too much
for Vikor to accept. So, leave suffocation to the movies.
Leave bombs there as well, he would think with a grimace and a shudder, when
contemplating an action. So many drawbacks, including physical danger to the bomber,
unintended injury, prize damage (another whole subject), noise (another whole subject), and,
like poison, messy.
There is virtue in every craft, Vikor would think to himself when he pretended to be the
voice of divine inspiration. For the killer, a painless experience for the victims was an
important score. Painless and fearless as well, along with every adjective that bespoke the
most orderly, well-mannered if you will, assassination, leaving the briefest of ripples in the
pond, and attracting minimum attention.
Vikor would pray and believe that his victim's day was a good one, marred only, perhaps, by
the most fleeting awareness that the jig was up, an awareness growing ever more clear and
precise, even as it vanished with the rest of the prey's consciousness, divided and lost against
the edge of his, Vikor's, steel blade.
Oh, certainly our man had gone through his gun phase. Guns. Guns are just too easy. Also,
they are a little loud. Users whose main ambition is manipulation, rather than pure predation,
find their attention span prolonged by these nasty little intimidators. It's easy to scare people
with guns. Threats and extortion work better with scared people. These chambered bombs
that can send little flicks of mineral death winging almost at random through the atmosphere,
have won the respect, or fear, of sensible folk everywhere.
With the result that sensible folk everywhere live under a complex net of oppression. Vikor
had no wish to be oppressive. But he could not evade the experience of being himself one of
the oppressed. Failure to come to grips with the reality of this landed healthy young men in
prison.
Vikor would remind himself that the magnificent fox was merely another bug-ridden, fur-
covered vermin, like a rat, to the farmer whose hen dangled from her triumphant jaws. The
glory and triumph are lost on the farmer as they are lost on the policeman whose job it is to
respond to the crimes of man.
There were times when Vikor carried a gun for protection. Those were particularly times
spent living in the country, or the wilderness. But when on a "cruise", as he had come to call
his Viking shifts, there were places and times when to be armed with a favorite Betsy of any
design would be useless extra jeopardy. Airlines were the primary environment for such
caution.
Acquisition of firearms in any newly arrived-in city, consequently, became problematic. To
be precise, Vikor had identified three solutions to the problem, each of which was attended
by serious deficiencies.
The first alternative of course, was legal acquisition, outright purchase at either a sporting
goods store or a pawnshop. In many states and cities, this procedure left a trail a mile wide,
required identification and waiting periods, and prompted searches for criminal histories, and
fingerprints. When completed, the society was graced with an ironclad connection
between purchaser and firearm, a connection that led right up to the first occasion when the
weapon was stolen, which usually coincided with the start of its life as a criminal's piece.
No self-respecting criminal would go through such an elaborate and traceable ritual in order
to get a gun to do a job. Not even Vikor. For most professional criminals, this brought into
existence the illegal gun market. This market varied all the way from innocuous, "between
friends" exchanges of rifles, pistols and shotguns, to the well-developed, high-priced
underground, stocked almost exclusively with stolen and smuggled arms.
This latter market represented commerce that Vikor felt almost prissy about soiling his hands
with. He thought of the trade with the same pattern of attitudes that he applied to drug
dealing, that is, that it was mean-spirited and parasitic, taking advantage of a law that created
artificially high prices and a phony monopoly restricted to those who are bold enough, or
stupid enough, or careless enough, or well-enough connected to flout it.
There was nothing moralistic about his attitude, Vikor would tell himself. He would also
remind himself not to make it a cause, another sure route to the martyrdom of prison.
No, his scorn of black-market gun dealers stemmed straight from his heart. Jinxed as they
might be, Vikor had grown up with a love for guns, and he had hated the slimy creeps who
capitalized on that love for years before he had formulated any rational justification for his
derision.
It left the third avenue for gun acquisition, stealing them, or as Vikor preferred to define it,
killing the owners and inheriting their weapons. This would have been particularly attractive
if the prey happened to be a gun dealer.
Beyond the action needs of the moment, however, there were severe limits as to how far
Vikor could profit from a haul of guns, without becoming a gun dealer himself. He had
walked away from fortunes in guns, drugs, and automobiles.
Take cars, for instance. Better it was by far, he reasoned, that the trail of the missing car
should end with the vehicle abandoned by the side of the road, rather than in the hands of an
alive and aggrieved party (victim, witness) who has shelled out a couple thou' on a slightly
irregular deal, and who must now pay the price for his or her parsimony and would be only
too eager to see justice done, if for no purpose but to share the misery.
So it was with guns, plus they were loud and smoky and left chemical, traceable residue on
the user. Not that anyone had ever subjected Vikor to any chemical analysis. In fact, he had
never been the subject of any suspicion or investigation whatsoever, which was as he
continually planned. He was generally in another city, usually in another state, by the time his
latest merry series of crimes had been discovered. He used them when he started, however,
when, in fact, he was just another Southwest drifter, when he "traveled by car and guitar," as
he put it, and times got tough, and he turned the sights of his old Springfield rifle past the
jackrabbit to Jack himself.
* * *
Johnny Malone had done his own share of jackrabbit hunting in his youth. He had left
dozens and dozens of the tough hares blown to ribbons at the sides of dirt roads and
pastures. Now here he was fumbling about inside the trailer, bleeding himself, and in shock,
sweat dripping from his forehead, looking for his first aid kit while death lay rejected in the
trunk of his car.
He found the shopping bag full of bandages and dumped it onto the bed. He remembered the
day, a couple of years before, when he had bought this assortment of sterile pads, gauze
strips, and adhesive tape. He had just finished buying a lot of hand tools for the farm,
replacing what had been stolen. He had bought an axe, a hatchet, several saws, a hammer, a
chisel, a crowbar, a pick, a shovel and so on. Then he had the thought that, if he was buying
all these tools with which he might cut himself, he had better also buy something to patch
himself up. So he got the bagful of bandages, and they had stayed up on a shelf in a closet,
overlooked by all the burglars, for over two years.
Johnny was tough, but his mind was limber enough to know that tough has its limits. It made
him think back to that day at the pond, near the foot of Black Mountain.
dozens and dozens of the tough hares blown to ribbons at the sides of dirt roads and
pastures. Now here he was fumbling about inside the trailer, bleeding himself, and in shock,
sweat dripping from his forehead, looking for his first aid kit while death lay rejected in the
trunk of his car.
He found the shopping bag full of bandages and dumped it onto the bed. He remembered the
day, a couple of years before, when he had bought this assortment of sterile pads, gauze
strips, and adhesive tape. He had just finished buying a lot of hand tools for the farm,
replacing what had been stolen. He had bought an axe, a hatchet, several saws, a hammer, a
chisel, a crowbar, a pick, a shovel and so on. Then he had the thought that, if he was buying
all these tools with which he might cut himself, he had better also buy something to patch
himself up. So he got the bagful of bandages, and they had stayed up on a shelf in a closet,
overlooked by all the burglars, for over two years.
Johnny was tough, but his mind was limber enough to know that tough has its limits. It made
him think back to that day at the pond, near the foot of Black Mountain.
* * *
Maggie and Carol had been on one of their walks. There was more time, now that the war
was over. For a while, the two gals had even been working in one of the munitions plants
down in San Diego.
A little closer to home, Marilyn Wells had spearheaded a local drive to raise surplus goods
from canned opossum to baby doll pajamas, for the refugees, and that had taken up a good
chunk of their time. Maggie and Carol had become a familiar sight, cruising in the spiffy,
white, nineteen thirty-seven pickup truck along the winding roads of Rancho Santa Fe and
Del Mar over on the coast, collecting discards and donations.
Maggie was always at the wheel on these sorties. She knew the way, and she was a good
driver. Carol Gallagher hardly drove at all. She could drive alright, but she had seldom had
much opportunity to do so. Not yet.
Maggie's father had milk routes in each of these towns. While the Sister's of Mercy over in
Carmel Valley sold their milk to the sailors in San Diego, Clinton Murphy sold his to the
families of Del Mar and Rancho. Maggie often accompanied him when he would go out to
verify the location of a new customer.
Murphy would draw a little map for the delivery men. He had three of these, and for so
much of the territory, street addresses meant little. Even with the maps, Murphy sometimes
had to come out and lead one of the milkmen by the nose down the obscure, winding way to
another hidden, backwoods mansion or close-to-the-ocean chalet.
was over. For a while, the two gals had even been working in one of the munitions plants
down in San Diego.
A little closer to home, Marilyn Wells had spearheaded a local drive to raise surplus goods
from canned opossum to baby doll pajamas, for the refugees, and that had taken up a good
chunk of their time. Maggie and Carol had become a familiar sight, cruising in the spiffy,
white, nineteen thirty-seven pickup truck along the winding roads of Rancho Santa Fe and
Del Mar over on the coast, collecting discards and donations.
Maggie was always at the wheel on these sorties. She knew the way, and she was a good
driver. Carol Gallagher hardly drove at all. She could drive alright, but she had seldom had
much opportunity to do so. Not yet.
Maggie's father had milk routes in each of these towns. While the Sister's of Mercy over in
Carmel Valley sold their milk to the sailors in San Diego, Clinton Murphy sold his to the
families of Del Mar and Rancho. Maggie often accompanied him when he would go out to
verify the location of a new customer.
Murphy would draw a little map for the delivery men. He had three of these, and for so
much of the territory, street addresses meant little. Even with the maps, Murphy sometimes
had to come out and lead one of the milkmen by the nose down the obscure, winding way to
another hidden, backwoods mansion or close-to-the-ocean chalet.
* * *
There was a big contrast between those stoutly armored palaces of the rich, many of them
with guards at the gate and more to patrol the scenery, and the ratty little trailer in the
mountains where the wounded goatherder spilled bandages and blood. Comfort and security
were the highlights of this disparity. Still, there was nothing for it but to get used to it.
Johnny had developed a philosophical attitude toward the experience of coming back to the
little home after a period of absence to find the door hanging open, the lock broken, and
things missing. He used to feel differently.
The first time it happened he had been away in Oregon for a few weeks. He came into the
trailer to find that his drawer full of rejection slips had been dumped onto the floor.
It needs to be pointed out here that Johnny was a writer. The drawer held rejection slips
from poetry journals. Rejection slips rejecting most of his poems had been sent to him in
response to his campaign to be published, during which Johnny had actually sat at a
typewriter for hours and had transcribed, one to a page, the poems that had been stored until
then in the hand-kept, hardbound journal. And he got published. In spite of rejection of their
five poem selections by each of the other poetry journals, one editor had been charmed.
"Sweet angel drifter," Johnny had written.
with guards at the gate and more to patrol the scenery, and the ratty little trailer in the
mountains where the wounded goatherder spilled bandages and blood. Comfort and security
were the highlights of this disparity. Still, there was nothing for it but to get used to it.
Johnny had developed a philosophical attitude toward the experience of coming back to the
little home after a period of absence to find the door hanging open, the lock broken, and
things missing. He used to feel differently.
The first time it happened he had been away in Oregon for a few weeks. He came into the
trailer to find that his drawer full of rejection slips had been dumped onto the floor.
It needs to be pointed out here that Johnny was a writer. The drawer held rejection slips
from poetry journals. Rejection slips rejecting most of his poems had been sent to him in
response to his campaign to be published, during which Johnny had actually sat at a
typewriter for hours and had transcribed, one to a page, the poems that had been stored until
then in the hand-kept, hardbound journal. And he got published. In spite of rejection of their
five poem selections by each of the other poetry journals, one editor had been charmed.
"Sweet angel drifter," Johnny had written.
| * * * |
| Sweet angel drifter Your home is a highway A rainy adventure You move with the day Falling night will discover You wrapped in wet shadowy Blankets of loneliness Traveling Lost on your way. |
| * * * |
Years later when Joe Kelly chanced to read the poem in an old anthology, it reminded him of
Diana. He liked it. He was never to know what had become of the homeless waif, but his heart
was stirred at the image of her wrapped in blankets of loneliness. He felt like a brother to her,
the same kinship that he shared in his own lost way with the travelers, the wandering clans in
the sad, soft songs of Ireland, who had never abandoned the restless lifestyle of the ancient
Celts, who had never embraced the comfort and security of those whom they called the "settled
ones."
Joe surfed. There were warm days when he almost lived in the ocean, days when the east wind
blew and held up the face of the breaking waves. On such days, the surf did not become 'blown
out' by late morning. Instead, it would remain glassy, keeping its form so that a good wave
presented an ever more vertical face, till at last gravity toppled it. Depending then on the shape
of the bottom, the presence of reefs, rocks or wrecks, the wave would break, starting
sometimes at a point and curling steadily to the south, a 'right', or to the north, a 'left'.
Sometimes it would peak and curl off in both directions, offering the surfers both a left or a right
for which to stroke.
Sometimes, some places, the whole wall of water would come over at once in long sections,
'closed out'. On such a wave the surfer either 'kicked out', steering his board up and over to the
backside of the swell in hopes of a better wave to follow, or he let it crash about him and then
rode the 'soup' to shore.
At North Torrey, the rising wind from offshore by mid to late morning usually resulted in all of
the waves closing out and the surface growing choppy. But when the east wind blew… the
same hot wind from the desert that Mike Wertz had christened the 'hell wind' up on Fugitive
Creek, but which most of Southern California called the Santa Ana… then the surf stood high
and glassy all day. If the swell was large, the effects of the wind could be dramatic, forcing the
break to form the perfect curls, the steep and hollow faces, the tubes. To be 'locked in', that is,
to be slicing left or right across the face of a breaker with the crest coming over in an arching
cascade, foam blowing back from the frothing top toward the open sea, and the surfer himself
enveloped in a thundering cylinder of brine, was to appreciate for eternal seconds the feeling of
divinity.
But those were special days; those were the perfect days, days when Joe Kelly might forgo
sleep altogether, surfing from dawn till dusk, returning to the Flying "A" with salt crusted in little
rings on his shoulders, his nose burned, and his mind high with the exercise and the thrill.
Those were special days alright, but Joe surfed everyday, if it wasn't pouring rain. If the waves
were blown out at North Torrey Pines, he could always head up the coast, to places that were
more consistent. Each place was prized, and defended, by its locals, but Joe was a local, at least
as far north as Leucadia.
South was a mystery. He didn't surf La Jolla; he didn't surf Wind'n'sea. But on the northern
route he had ample spots from which to select, places to cruise in the old VW, to check out the
waves. There was Del Mar itself at Eighth Street, or Fifteenth Street; in Solana Beach there
were 'Pillbox,' the Cove, and Seaside. Next came South Cardiff, then 'Pipes. ‘Into Encinitas he
could check on 'Swami's,' 'Stone Steps,' Moonlight Beach, and all the way to 'Beacons' in
Leucadia.
Very often, again depending on the local bottom and the size of the swell, one or more of these
spots would be breaking well while the others could be mediocre, closed out, blown out, small,
chopped, or generally fucked over.
But there was another factor that went into the ocean's mood, and that was the tide. Joe was no
tidal expert, but he usually knew what the tide would be on the morning to come. At North
Torrey Pines, low tide was best for good waves, so he noticed; he observed. He bobbed in the
swells as he watched west for the biggie, and he had the tide in his blood.
He observed. He couldn't have told with mathematical precision the relationship of the lustrous
moon to the seasons of his lady ocean; he would have been laughed out of class down at the
Scripps Institute, in La Jolla, were he to try to explain. But he knew it in the heave of his guts;
he knew it in a way that the physicist at Scripps might never.
He knew that the seas of earth responded to the gravity of the moon. He knew that the moon
came later each day, and that the tides followed the same synchrony.
He knew all that, and sometimes he wondered what response the moon itself made to the pull of
her fair, blue sister.
"Always," he said, in reply to the shy question from the backcountry virgin sitting on his
counter. Always, he whispered to himself, for who ever heard of an ugly moon? Even on nights
of coarse winds and scudding clouds, weather that some folks label nasty or ugly, with the sea
hurling itself in destructive fits against the beaches and cliffs, the sudden appearance of the cruel
mistress of it all, flashing luminous through the grey pillars of her fortress, sweeping her beams
like robes about her with the haughty grandeur of a queen mounted on steeds of glory, brought
nothing to the mind of an observer such as Joe but words like beautiful, wonderful, magical and
divine.
Diana. He liked it. He was never to know what had become of the homeless waif, but his heart
was stirred at the image of her wrapped in blankets of loneliness. He felt like a brother to her,
the same kinship that he shared in his own lost way with the travelers, the wandering clans in
the sad, soft songs of Ireland, who had never abandoned the restless lifestyle of the ancient
Celts, who had never embraced the comfort and security of those whom they called the "settled
ones."
Joe surfed. There were warm days when he almost lived in the ocean, days when the east wind
blew and held up the face of the breaking waves. On such days, the surf did not become 'blown
out' by late morning. Instead, it would remain glassy, keeping its form so that a good wave
presented an ever more vertical face, till at last gravity toppled it. Depending then on the shape
of the bottom, the presence of reefs, rocks or wrecks, the wave would break, starting
sometimes at a point and curling steadily to the south, a 'right', or to the north, a 'left'.
Sometimes it would peak and curl off in both directions, offering the surfers both a left or a right
for which to stroke.
Sometimes, some places, the whole wall of water would come over at once in long sections,
'closed out'. On such a wave the surfer either 'kicked out', steering his board up and over to the
backside of the swell in hopes of a better wave to follow, or he let it crash about him and then
rode the 'soup' to shore.
At North Torrey, the rising wind from offshore by mid to late morning usually resulted in all of
the waves closing out and the surface growing choppy. But when the east wind blew… the
same hot wind from the desert that Mike Wertz had christened the 'hell wind' up on Fugitive
Creek, but which most of Southern California called the Santa Ana… then the surf stood high
and glassy all day. If the swell was large, the effects of the wind could be dramatic, forcing the
break to form the perfect curls, the steep and hollow faces, the tubes. To be 'locked in', that is,
to be slicing left or right across the face of a breaker with the crest coming over in an arching
cascade, foam blowing back from the frothing top toward the open sea, and the surfer himself
enveloped in a thundering cylinder of brine, was to appreciate for eternal seconds the feeling of
divinity.
But those were special days; those were the perfect days, days when Joe Kelly might forgo
sleep altogether, surfing from dawn till dusk, returning to the Flying "A" with salt crusted in little
rings on his shoulders, his nose burned, and his mind high with the exercise and the thrill.
Those were special days alright, but Joe surfed everyday, if it wasn't pouring rain. If the waves
were blown out at North Torrey Pines, he could always head up the coast, to places that were
more consistent. Each place was prized, and defended, by its locals, but Joe was a local, at least
as far north as Leucadia.
South was a mystery. He didn't surf La Jolla; he didn't surf Wind'n'sea. But on the northern
route he had ample spots from which to select, places to cruise in the old VW, to check out the
waves. There was Del Mar itself at Eighth Street, or Fifteenth Street; in Solana Beach there
were 'Pillbox,' the Cove, and Seaside. Next came South Cardiff, then 'Pipes. ‘Into Encinitas he
could check on 'Swami's,' 'Stone Steps,' Moonlight Beach, and all the way to 'Beacons' in
Leucadia.
Very often, again depending on the local bottom and the size of the swell, one or more of these
spots would be breaking well while the others could be mediocre, closed out, blown out, small,
chopped, or generally fucked over.
But there was another factor that went into the ocean's mood, and that was the tide. Joe was no
tidal expert, but he usually knew what the tide would be on the morning to come. At North
Torrey Pines, low tide was best for good waves, so he noticed; he observed. He bobbed in the
swells as he watched west for the biggie, and he had the tide in his blood.
He observed. He couldn't have told with mathematical precision the relationship of the lustrous
moon to the seasons of his lady ocean; he would have been laughed out of class down at the
Scripps Institute, in La Jolla, were he to try to explain. But he knew it in the heave of his guts;
he knew it in a way that the physicist at Scripps might never.
He knew that the seas of earth responded to the gravity of the moon. He knew that the moon
came later each day, and that the tides followed the same synchrony.
He knew all that, and sometimes he wondered what response the moon itself made to the pull of
her fair, blue sister.
"Always," he said, in reply to the shy question from the backcountry virgin sitting on his
counter. Always, he whispered to himself, for who ever heard of an ugly moon? Even on nights
of coarse winds and scudding clouds, weather that some folks label nasty or ugly, with the sea
hurling itself in destructive fits against the beaches and cliffs, the sudden appearance of the cruel
mistress of it all, flashing luminous through the grey pillars of her fortress, sweeping her beams
like robes about her with the haughty grandeur of a queen mounted on steeds of glory, brought
nothing to the mind of an observer such as Joe but words like beautiful, wonderful, magical and
divine.
