| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 8 February 1980
I spent the morning pulling nails out of salvaged wood and stacking it neatly. Bob went
to town, to the Employment Office. When he returned I was bathing at the creek, and he
joined me there. It was cold and refreshing. After lunch I finished up the wood, then
helped Bob finish the exercise bars he was building. They turned out nice. Now we have a
handy place to do chin-ups and dips.
I was expecting more kids today, as several of the does were nervous and crying. At
dusk, three of them stayed in the big pasture. We penned up the rest and gave them their
grain. Then we went out looking. We found Dolly with two doe kids, Jody with a buck and
a doe, and Lucy with one doe kid. Five in one day!
We carried the kids to the pen with the mamas right behind, bleating.
Dolly wasn't quite done with her afterbirth, so we left her and her kids out. After
supper the full moon came over the mountain. By its light we went back out onto the
rocky reef that she had chosen for her maternity. All was well and we carried them in.
Now there's seven new kids in the pen, bouncing around in the moonlight. Cute
enough to take your breath away.
I spent the morning pulling nails out of salvaged wood and stacking it neatly. Bob went
to town, to the Employment Office. When he returned I was bathing at the creek, and he
joined me there. It was cold and refreshing. After lunch I finished up the wood, then
helped Bob finish the exercise bars he was building. They turned out nice. Now we have a
handy place to do chin-ups and dips.
I was expecting more kids today, as several of the does were nervous and crying. At
dusk, three of them stayed in the big pasture. We penned up the rest and gave them their
grain. Then we went out looking. We found Dolly with two doe kids, Jody with a buck and
a doe, and Lucy with one doe kid. Five in one day!
We carried the kids to the pen with the mamas right behind, bleating.
Dolly wasn't quite done with her afterbirth, so we left her and her kids out. After
supper the full moon came over the mountain. By its light we went back out onto the
rocky reef that she had chosen for her maternity. All was well and we carried them in.
Now there's seven new kids in the pen, bouncing around in the moonlight. Cute
enough to take your breath away.
| Chapter Twenty-four SHAW VALLEY |
Sometimes he got romantic. After all, Johnny fancied himself to be a writer, and the hardbound quality of his
diary insured that he was published indeed, in a quantity of one.
But to a greater extent, he considered it to be merely an artless collection, a reminder of the things that stood
out about the goat herding days.
diary insured that he was published indeed, in a quantity of one.
But to a greater extent, he considered it to be merely an artless collection, a reminder of the things that stood
out about the goat herding days.
| * * * |
Together in the imagination of an insane goddess, Cat and Johnny watched the world hatch.
| * * * |
Oh, yes, abortion had been suggested. Old Fargo would have voiced the idea, but he was already dead for
years, so it fell to Uncle William to talk to Johnny Dolan.
He found him at his shop. Johnny had long since focused his carpentry skills on more intense wood-working
ventures that involved lathes and jointers and band saws and planers and all the rest. Besides the usual demands
of a cabinet shop, there was sculpture. Had Vikor known more about this facet of Johnny Dolan's life, he would
have found more to admire in his grandfather. But for years it was only something he knew about the old bore,
that he shaped wood.
Big deal.
On this day, Vikor was only an embryo, Johnny Dolan was still young at forty-seven, and it was Uncle
William's turn to play the wise elder. He let himself into the shop and waited patiently for his nephew to finish
the task at hand.
The task at hand was not sculpture this time. Rather it was custom oak molding for another job down in
Collin's Cove. A rack alongside of Johnny and the roaring mill that he was feeding testified to the hours of
dedicated monotony already performed. Yards and yards of completed crown molding lay in even stacks. Johnny
flipped a switch and straightened, relaxed, and pushed the green plastic safety glasses onto his forehead.
The machine hummed down into silence.
"Uncle Bill!" he exclaimed. It was only Cat who called Bill Casey Uncle William.
"Hello, Johnny," said Bill Casey. He had watched his sister's boy grow, and then he had watched the boy's
daughter grow, and turn strange, and now…
"What's up?" asked Johnny with a curious sniff, interrupting Uncle William's thoughts before they slid too
far off the slope into the snowy abyss of outrage and disappointment. Mostly disappointment.
Nobody ever said Johnny Dolan was stupid, but he was, although certainly he had admirable traits.
But, then, nobody ever said that Cat One was crazy. For William Henry Casey, the burden of disappointment
became too much to bear. From what Vikor heard, he didn't know whether to lament or to rejoice at having
missed his advice.
"Johnny, have you thought what's to be done about Catherine?"
"What is there to be done?" asked Johnny. "We love her," he said with the keen edge of stupidity that always
cuts so decisively the arguments of the smart.
"I'm sure you do, Johnny. We all love her. I'm thinking in terms of her… her well-being.
"But, now, you and Andrea have confided in us about Cat… Catherine's, uh, condition …"
"You mean about how she's with child?" asked Johnny in an archaic phrasing that was like one of his new
carvings that reeked with antiquity.
"Yeah, uh, Johnny," and here Bill put his hand across to rest lightly on Johnny's work shirt, on Johnny's
shoulder.
Johnny Stream had once pulled a knife on a man who dared at a gathering to be so familiar. This Johnny
tensed merely, and listened. Bill was his uncle, after all.
"Have you thought about an abortion?"
Johnny jerked away from the uncley hand. "No!" he exclaimed, realizing while he said it that he lied. He had
thought of it, and so had Andrea Clare, and he had thought of discussing it with her, as she had with him, and,
like her, he had decided it was not to be mentioned.
Now, here was Uncle Bill bringing it up!
"No," he repeated, but this time he was saying 'Yes, I have thought about it, we have thought about it, and
the answer is no!'
"But, think of Cat," said Uncle Bill, giving over to disappointment, and opting instead for a hopeless squabble.
Hank Devlin and his wife were too senile to be concerned. Johnny and Andrea Clare were running the farm now,
as well as the woodshop. There was no longer a painting business, but there really hadn't been much of one since
Tom and Joe… died.
Bill had come along as willing baggage, by and by. He wanted to at least be thought useful; he had a pretty
good deal with his cabin. Tom and Joe had built it in their youth; it was snug and private. As Bill Casey mellowed
into Uncle William, it became his place to worry, his burden to feel disappointment, as first one, then another
random blow struck the battered family. Dolans, Devlins and Casey shrunk together in a new alliance.
Even Old Fargo had been in on it. Though he never moved to the Devlin farm, it seemed like he was there all the
time, until he died.
Sometimes it seemed to Bill Casey as though Old Fargo was still there all the time. But he wasn't, so it was up
to Uncle William to fret at the unmistakable signs that accompanied Catherine's puberty.
He had seen it right away when he met Andrea Clare Devlin, this thing that he spotted again, thirteen years
later, in Cat One. By then he knew what it was, and though he dismissed it as imaginary fu-furoodle, he knew
what name belonged with it.
Agnes Tawny.
If ever a man had a nemesis, Bill thought to himself. And there's no end to it. Why, here she's even infected
my nephew in her devious way.
Actually, the Catholic church had been quite enough to infect both Johnny Dolan and Andrea Clare with an
unreasonable attitude about abortion. But Bill, Uncle William, was not wrong in assuming that Agnes Tawny
would vote for a go-ahead on the birth of Cat One's miscreant heir.
He was not wrong in identifying the same attitude in Cat One that he had seen years before, on that
horrifying night when he had first met Johnny's wife to be. What he perhaps, almost certainly, did not perceive,
was that Andrea Clare Devlin had just then terminated her apprenticeship, if that was what it was, her tutelage
with Agnes. In the years since that night, she had become more normal, more… ordinary.
She became Mrs. Dolan. She became Mother. She became seen at the bake sales, quilting bees and square
dances with her contemporaries. She was no more seen on the rocky pinnacles of Clark's Hill, though none had
ever seen her there before, save Agnes.
She had come back to us, thought everyone. And then Agnes Tawny's cottage had burned.
And then there was Catherine.
And now this.
years, so it fell to Uncle William to talk to Johnny Dolan.
He found him at his shop. Johnny had long since focused his carpentry skills on more intense wood-working
ventures that involved lathes and jointers and band saws and planers and all the rest. Besides the usual demands
of a cabinet shop, there was sculpture. Had Vikor known more about this facet of Johnny Dolan's life, he would
have found more to admire in his grandfather. But for years it was only something he knew about the old bore,
that he shaped wood.
Big deal.
On this day, Vikor was only an embryo, Johnny Dolan was still young at forty-seven, and it was Uncle
William's turn to play the wise elder. He let himself into the shop and waited patiently for his nephew to finish
the task at hand.
The task at hand was not sculpture this time. Rather it was custom oak molding for another job down in
Collin's Cove. A rack alongside of Johnny and the roaring mill that he was feeding testified to the hours of
dedicated monotony already performed. Yards and yards of completed crown molding lay in even stacks. Johnny
flipped a switch and straightened, relaxed, and pushed the green plastic safety glasses onto his forehead.
The machine hummed down into silence.
"Uncle Bill!" he exclaimed. It was only Cat who called Bill Casey Uncle William.
"Hello, Johnny," said Bill Casey. He had watched his sister's boy grow, and then he had watched the boy's
daughter grow, and turn strange, and now…
"What's up?" asked Johnny with a curious sniff, interrupting Uncle William's thoughts before they slid too
far off the slope into the snowy abyss of outrage and disappointment. Mostly disappointment.
Nobody ever said Johnny Dolan was stupid, but he was, although certainly he had admirable traits.
But, then, nobody ever said that Cat One was crazy. For William Henry Casey, the burden of disappointment
became too much to bear. From what Vikor heard, he didn't know whether to lament or to rejoice at having
missed his advice.
"Johnny, have you thought what's to be done about Catherine?"
"What is there to be done?" asked Johnny. "We love her," he said with the keen edge of stupidity that always
cuts so decisively the arguments of the smart.
"I'm sure you do, Johnny. We all love her. I'm thinking in terms of her… her well-being.
"But, now, you and Andrea have confided in us about Cat… Catherine's, uh, condition …"
"You mean about how she's with child?" asked Johnny in an archaic phrasing that was like one of his new
carvings that reeked with antiquity.
"Yeah, uh, Johnny," and here Bill put his hand across to rest lightly on Johnny's work shirt, on Johnny's
shoulder.
Johnny Stream had once pulled a knife on a man who dared at a gathering to be so familiar. This Johnny
tensed merely, and listened. Bill was his uncle, after all.
"Have you thought about an abortion?"
Johnny jerked away from the uncley hand. "No!" he exclaimed, realizing while he said it that he lied. He had
thought of it, and so had Andrea Clare, and he had thought of discussing it with her, as she had with him, and,
like her, he had decided it was not to be mentioned.
Now, here was Uncle Bill bringing it up!
"No," he repeated, but this time he was saying 'Yes, I have thought about it, we have thought about it, and
the answer is no!'
"But, think of Cat," said Uncle Bill, giving over to disappointment, and opting instead for a hopeless squabble.
Hank Devlin and his wife were too senile to be concerned. Johnny and Andrea Clare were running the farm now,
as well as the woodshop. There was no longer a painting business, but there really hadn't been much of one since
Tom and Joe… died.
Bill had come along as willing baggage, by and by. He wanted to at least be thought useful; he had a pretty
good deal with his cabin. Tom and Joe had built it in their youth; it was snug and private. As Bill Casey mellowed
into Uncle William, it became his place to worry, his burden to feel disappointment, as first one, then another
random blow struck the battered family. Dolans, Devlins and Casey shrunk together in a new alliance.
Even Old Fargo had been in on it. Though he never moved to the Devlin farm, it seemed like he was there all the
time, until he died.
Sometimes it seemed to Bill Casey as though Old Fargo was still there all the time. But he wasn't, so it was up
to Uncle William to fret at the unmistakable signs that accompanied Catherine's puberty.
He had seen it right away when he met Andrea Clare Devlin, this thing that he spotted again, thirteen years
later, in Cat One. By then he knew what it was, and though he dismissed it as imaginary fu-furoodle, he knew
what name belonged with it.
Agnes Tawny.
If ever a man had a nemesis, Bill thought to himself. And there's no end to it. Why, here she's even infected
my nephew in her devious way.
Actually, the Catholic church had been quite enough to infect both Johnny Dolan and Andrea Clare with an
unreasonable attitude about abortion. But Bill, Uncle William, was not wrong in assuming that Agnes Tawny
would vote for a go-ahead on the birth of Cat One's miscreant heir.
He was not wrong in identifying the same attitude in Cat One that he had seen years before, on that
horrifying night when he had first met Johnny's wife to be. What he perhaps, almost certainly, did not perceive,
was that Andrea Clare Devlin had just then terminated her apprenticeship, if that was what it was, her tutelage
with Agnes. In the years since that night, she had become more normal, more… ordinary.
She became Mrs. Dolan. She became Mother. She became seen at the bake sales, quilting bees and square
dances with her contemporaries. She was no more seen on the rocky pinnacles of Clark's Hill, though none had
ever seen her there before, save Agnes.
She had come back to us, thought everyone. And then Agnes Tawny's cottage had burned.
And then there was Catherine.
And now this.
| * * * |
Bucko was a couple of years older, and a couple of years more worn, when he laid down one night, in his corral
at Marilyn's barn, and died. Johnny was sailing on the ocean blue, with never a thought in his mind for the poor
cayuse. But Marilyn Wells knew by then the stock he put in the animal. When Bucko slipped away, she felt it for
his owner, and she sorrowed as the knacker hauled away the carcass.
When Johnny came marching home again, hurrah, hurrah, the stretcher bearers were doing all the footwork.
It was months before he was upright again and feeling his way back out to the ranch lands on crutches. He
took the bus to Del Mar, and then he rang up the Heinz household on the party line that ran out Black Mountain
Road.
Fortunately, Marilyn was there at her ma's when Mrs. Heinz answered the phone. She turned the receiver
over to her daughter.
"Hello?"
"Howdy! It's Johnny Stream."
"Johnny! Where are you?" Oh, my goodness!
"I'm at the Parlay Room."
"Sit tight; we'll come and get you."
Johnny had exchanged letters with Marilyn and her nephew a time or two over the course of the war. And,
they had come to see him once down at the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.
He had been duly informed of Bucko's demise by mail. He had at first been chagrined, but he was riding the
ocean swell. He was distracted by the excitement of war, and there was nothing he could do for a dead horse back
in the States but to mourn a little when the watch grew long.
He could only shrug with honest apathy when Marilyn reminded him of the loss that day in the hospital.
"I'm so sorry about Bucko dying like that," she said, when the topic of conversation reached horses.
Still sad from the pain of his wound, Johnny could only manage a wry grin. "It's okay," he said. "I got a
busted hip; what would I want with a horse?"
He mended quickly. Bob and Marilyn came and picked him up from the bar in Del Mar. Bob was at the wheel,
a licensed driver at last! Johnny rode in the back of the Chevy pickup on a mound of straw behind the cab. With
his right leg stretched straight on the bed of the truck and his right arm resting on the side for stability, he
watched the scenery flow away from him as Bob drove the roads back to the Heinz ranch.
Starting on Fifteenth street, where the Parlay Room was located, between Highway 101 and the tracks, they
drove up the hill, staying on Fifteenth as it curved and swayed through the pines and cedars of the rich village. In
moments Johnny could see the ocean.
The blue Pacific had startled him earlier when the bus had breached the gap at the top of the Torrey Pines
grade. He had lived on that salty prairie for three years, but he had seen her last in the black and red and pain of
battle. She was as pretty as ever, once again, but Johnny's thoughts turned inland. He wanted to ride.
As the truck climbed, he watched the ocean behind growing larger and larger, till at last it filled the horizon
and half of the world was the broad, blue, boring sea. Then Cabler turned south, onto Crest, and green valleys and
meandering hilltops replaced the distant brine.
After that the ocean could only be seen here and there in breaks through the foliage. Johnny was looking the
other way, over his right shoulder at the succession of views that lay to the east. Once the rumbling truck cleared
the last of the town, it was all there for a moment, the ridge tops and Black Mountain itself, like a queen in her
robes. He resolved to ride to the top again, when he was well. There would always be another horse.
at Marilyn's barn, and died. Johnny was sailing on the ocean blue, with never a thought in his mind for the poor
cayuse. But Marilyn Wells knew by then the stock he put in the animal. When Bucko slipped away, she felt it for
his owner, and she sorrowed as the knacker hauled away the carcass.
When Johnny came marching home again, hurrah, hurrah, the stretcher bearers were doing all the footwork.
It was months before he was upright again and feeling his way back out to the ranch lands on crutches. He
took the bus to Del Mar, and then he rang up the Heinz household on the party line that ran out Black Mountain
Road.
Fortunately, Marilyn was there at her ma's when Mrs. Heinz answered the phone. She turned the receiver
over to her daughter.
"Hello?"
"Howdy! It's Johnny Stream."
"Johnny! Where are you?" Oh, my goodness!
"I'm at the Parlay Room."
"Sit tight; we'll come and get you."
Johnny had exchanged letters with Marilyn and her nephew a time or two over the course of the war. And,
they had come to see him once down at the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.
He had been duly informed of Bucko's demise by mail. He had at first been chagrined, but he was riding the
ocean swell. He was distracted by the excitement of war, and there was nothing he could do for a dead horse back
in the States but to mourn a little when the watch grew long.
He could only shrug with honest apathy when Marilyn reminded him of the loss that day in the hospital.
"I'm so sorry about Bucko dying like that," she said, when the topic of conversation reached horses.
Still sad from the pain of his wound, Johnny could only manage a wry grin. "It's okay," he said. "I got a
busted hip; what would I want with a horse?"
He mended quickly. Bob and Marilyn came and picked him up from the bar in Del Mar. Bob was at the wheel,
a licensed driver at last! Johnny rode in the back of the Chevy pickup on a mound of straw behind the cab. With
his right leg stretched straight on the bed of the truck and his right arm resting on the side for stability, he
watched the scenery flow away from him as Bob drove the roads back to the Heinz ranch.
Starting on Fifteenth street, where the Parlay Room was located, between Highway 101 and the tracks, they
drove up the hill, staying on Fifteenth as it curved and swayed through the pines and cedars of the rich village. In
moments Johnny could see the ocean.
The blue Pacific had startled him earlier when the bus had breached the gap at the top of the Torrey Pines
grade. He had lived on that salty prairie for three years, but he had seen her last in the black and red and pain of
battle. She was as pretty as ever, once again, but Johnny's thoughts turned inland. He wanted to ride.
As the truck climbed, he watched the ocean behind growing larger and larger, till at last it filled the horizon
and half of the world was the broad, blue, boring sea. Then Cabler turned south, onto Crest, and green valleys and
meandering hilltops replaced the distant brine.
After that the ocean could only be seen here and there in breaks through the foliage. Johnny was looking the
other way, over his right shoulder at the succession of views that lay to the east. Once the rumbling truck cleared
the last of the town, it was all there for a moment, the ridge tops and Black Mountain itself, like a queen in her
robes. He resolved to ride to the top again, when he was well. There would always be another horse.
| * * * |
Glow turned on the radio in Johnny's truck. "I wish," she said, "that we could get something besides country
music on this radio."
"Sure," mused Johnny. By now he was having to peer intently through the blur of snowflakes. He began to
wish he hadn't let Bill and Fargo talk him into another pitcher of beer. The rear end of the truck fishtailed a
little as he steered through another curve. Ahead the lights of the village twinkled.
"You should slow down, Johnny," said Glow.
"I keep trying," laughed Johnny. "Old truck just wants to go fast."
"Old beer just wants to go fast," she replied. "Old truck's gonna be in the ditch."
After a moment she said, "I'm glad Uncle Bill and Old Fargo are coming along behind us."
music on this radio."
"Sure," mused Johnny. By now he was having to peer intently through the blur of snowflakes. He began to
wish he hadn't let Bill and Fargo talk him into another pitcher of beer. The rear end of the truck fishtailed a
little as he steered through another curve. Ahead the lights of the village twinkled.
"You should slow down, Johnny," said Glow.
"I keep trying," laughed Johnny. "Old truck just wants to go fast."
"Old beer just wants to go fast," she replied. "Old truck's gonna be in the ditch."
After a moment she said, "I'm glad Uncle Bill and Old Fargo are coming along behind us."
| * * * |
It was hard for Diana to believe that her being the daughter of Carol Gallagher had led to such a life of wild,
humble freedom. To see the aging, fat slouch go by on Carmel Valley Road in her rattle-trap Chrysler was
vaguely nauseating. To herself she confessed the misery of acknowledging that this woman was her mother. This
was Ma.
Diana felt that Ma herself would have been better off had they remained in the lifestyle that Carol herself
scarcely remembered at all, anymore, the fugitive lifestyle, always running, always hiding, but curiously happy
and healthy.
Of course, that had been impossible. With Bob and Johnny gone there had been no way for Ma to imagine
survival with a youngster.
Diana was seven by then. Three years had passed since the fire that had destroyed the abandoned house that
the little family of renegades had taken for their own.
At first the girl and her ma did not even know what had happened, only that Johnny and Bob had failed to
return from the hunt. It was not unusual that they be gone overnight; hunting required such hardships. By the
second sunset, the young mother began to fret.
She was thirty then, and eight years of poverty and alienation were beginning to take their toll. Later in life
she would recall little of the joy of those years. She would forget the patience and loyalty that had borne them
through hardship after tragedy again and again.
She remembered that she had loved Johnny Stream and Bob Cabler, but it was as if it had been told to her;
the love itself was gone from her heart and her mind. But she still loved Diana. Huddled beneath the corridor of
stars that showed above the canyon that contained the arsenic mine, the two females waited, the little girl in the
arms of her mother. Neither of them could dispel the loneliness of the night, but they clung to one another, and
they hoped.
The toll taken was larger than Carol reckoned by then. It had seemed somehow natural that both of the men
should become the lovers of the country girl. This had happened, and when the happy triangle had become a
happy square, both men reveled in the thrills and responsibilities of fatherhood.
By the time the daughter was eight, however, each of the men had outlived his own sexual attraction to her
mother. Reverting to the basic, male meat-heads that they had originally been, they began to philander.
Worse than only that, but true to their asocial, rebellious natures, the style of messing around that Johnny
and Bob turned to on their "hunts" was the kind that in some circles might be labeled child molestation, or
statutory rape.
For Donna Schultz and Wendy Ward it was adventure and romance. Cabler and Stream were legends in
Carmel Valley by the time the two pairs met by chance in Shaw Valley, out on Harlan's back pasture.
Spencer Harlan was not descended from any of the families that had settled the land around Black Mountain
once the Mexican propriety was done away with. With the exception of Murphys to the north, they were mostly
Germans from the Midwest with names like Mecklenseck, Schweitzer, Knebel, Zurber and Heinz. Harlan had
purchased some of his land after the second world war from the children of the Schweitzers, the aged couple who
had both perished in yet another fire. They had been old, and they had slept right through it, dying side by side
of smoke inhalation before the flames reduced their little house at the bottom of Mecklenseck's ridge to ash.
The neighbors had slept through the conflagration as well, discovering only a day later the tragic remains.
Mike Wertz reported his discovery to the convent of Carmelite nuns for whom he worked as an all-around
handyman and milk truck driver.
The Carmelites, who gave their name to Carmel Valley, were already in the process of selling their land, and
the big house that served as a convent. When Mr. Harlan learned from them that the land in Shaw Valley was
suddenly available as well, he purchased it too as a matter of course. The nuns had already been leasing the
pasture land from the old folks. Spencer Harlan had only to replace the Holsteins with Herefords, and his dream
of being a western cattle rancher was complete.
The dream of his wife had been more along the lines of moving to Rancho Santa Fe and being a western snob,
but she took it in stride. The Harlans moved into the old convent; the nuns abandoned the dairy business and
rejoined the Carmelites in San Diego. Mike Wertz went to work for Harlans as a natural course.
He was fond of saying that he came with the land.
Wertz was as coarse a character as Cabler and Stream. He himself had already engaged in heartless trysts
with the Schultz and Ward girls. It was probably him that they were looking for when the two young sluts ran
into Johnny and Bob skinning a deer at the end of the dirt road that penetrated Shaw Valley.
For the gals, it was fresh meat and not venison either. The fellows were quick to pick up the cues, and it was
their undoing.
The shared relationship with Carol Gallagher had been one of love and concern. They were a family, strange
as that family may have been. In many ways they were as traditional as could be. Never mind that this marriage
had two husbands; when the four members joined hands and bowed their heads before their simple meal, they
were just as wholesome as apricot pie.
But just like in many a marriage, the spice had lost its tang. The two still-young cowboys were not prepared
for the temptation of two wanton crumpets whose ideas of getting to know someone included behavior that
involved kneeling in the dirt or standing bent over a fallen log.
It was nineteen fifty-three. Diana had learned somewhere the little chant that went:
humble freedom. To see the aging, fat slouch go by on Carmel Valley Road in her rattle-trap Chrysler was
vaguely nauseating. To herself she confessed the misery of acknowledging that this woman was her mother. This
was Ma.
Diana felt that Ma herself would have been better off had they remained in the lifestyle that Carol herself
scarcely remembered at all, anymore, the fugitive lifestyle, always running, always hiding, but curiously happy
and healthy.
Of course, that had been impossible. With Bob and Johnny gone there had been no way for Ma to imagine
survival with a youngster.
Diana was seven by then. Three years had passed since the fire that had destroyed the abandoned house that
the little family of renegades had taken for their own.
At first the girl and her ma did not even know what had happened, only that Johnny and Bob had failed to
return from the hunt. It was not unusual that they be gone overnight; hunting required such hardships. By the
second sunset, the young mother began to fret.
She was thirty then, and eight years of poverty and alienation were beginning to take their toll. Later in life
she would recall little of the joy of those years. She would forget the patience and loyalty that had borne them
through hardship after tragedy again and again.
She remembered that she had loved Johnny Stream and Bob Cabler, but it was as if it had been told to her;
the love itself was gone from her heart and her mind. But she still loved Diana. Huddled beneath the corridor of
stars that showed above the canyon that contained the arsenic mine, the two females waited, the little girl in the
arms of her mother. Neither of them could dispel the loneliness of the night, but they clung to one another, and
they hoped.
The toll taken was larger than Carol reckoned by then. It had seemed somehow natural that both of the men
should become the lovers of the country girl. This had happened, and when the happy triangle had become a
happy square, both men reveled in the thrills and responsibilities of fatherhood.
By the time the daughter was eight, however, each of the men had outlived his own sexual attraction to her
mother. Reverting to the basic, male meat-heads that they had originally been, they began to philander.
Worse than only that, but true to their asocial, rebellious natures, the style of messing around that Johnny
and Bob turned to on their "hunts" was the kind that in some circles might be labeled child molestation, or
statutory rape.
For Donna Schultz and Wendy Ward it was adventure and romance. Cabler and Stream were legends in
Carmel Valley by the time the two pairs met by chance in Shaw Valley, out on Harlan's back pasture.
Spencer Harlan was not descended from any of the families that had settled the land around Black Mountain
once the Mexican propriety was done away with. With the exception of Murphys to the north, they were mostly
Germans from the Midwest with names like Mecklenseck, Schweitzer, Knebel, Zurber and Heinz. Harlan had
purchased some of his land after the second world war from the children of the Schweitzers, the aged couple who
had both perished in yet another fire. They had been old, and they had slept right through it, dying side by side
of smoke inhalation before the flames reduced their little house at the bottom of Mecklenseck's ridge to ash.
The neighbors had slept through the conflagration as well, discovering only a day later the tragic remains.
Mike Wertz reported his discovery to the convent of Carmelite nuns for whom he worked as an all-around
handyman and milk truck driver.
The Carmelites, who gave their name to Carmel Valley, were already in the process of selling their land, and
the big house that served as a convent. When Mr. Harlan learned from them that the land in Shaw Valley was
suddenly available as well, he purchased it too as a matter of course. The nuns had already been leasing the
pasture land from the old folks. Spencer Harlan had only to replace the Holsteins with Herefords, and his dream
of being a western cattle rancher was complete.
The dream of his wife had been more along the lines of moving to Rancho Santa Fe and being a western snob,
but she took it in stride. The Harlans moved into the old convent; the nuns abandoned the dairy business and
rejoined the Carmelites in San Diego. Mike Wertz went to work for Harlans as a natural course.
He was fond of saying that he came with the land.
Wertz was as coarse a character as Cabler and Stream. He himself had already engaged in heartless trysts
with the Schultz and Ward girls. It was probably him that they were looking for when the two young sluts ran
into Johnny and Bob skinning a deer at the end of the dirt road that penetrated Shaw Valley.
For the gals, it was fresh meat and not venison either. The fellows were quick to pick up the cues, and it was
their undoing.
The shared relationship with Carol Gallagher had been one of love and concern. They were a family, strange
as that family may have been. In many ways they were as traditional as could be. Never mind that this marriage
had two husbands; when the four members joined hands and bowed their heads before their simple meal, they
were just as wholesome as apricot pie.
But just like in many a marriage, the spice had lost its tang. The two still-young cowboys were not prepared
for the temptation of two wanton crumpets whose ideas of getting to know someone included behavior that
involved kneeling in the dirt or standing bent over a fallen log.
It was nineteen fifty-three. Diana had learned somewhere the little chant that went:
| In nineteen fifty-three The monkey climbed a tree. The tree split, And the monkey shit, In nineteen fifty-three. |
