| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder January 23, 1980 (continued)
Today it was my turn to take the goats out on the range. There are thirteen now. Luke and Jacques are the two
bucks. Mazie is an old retired doe with large, curving horns, queen of the herd. Her daughter, Dee Dee, also has
horns, not so large or perfect, but formidable, number two doe.
Lucy is next, size and horns similar to Dee Dee, but not quite her match. Next comes Dolly, the sweetheart,
whose curving horn was removed before it should dig into her face. Then Katy who shed her horns and is busily
growing them back. She is perhaps as old as Mazie. The next generation, Torie, Amy and Jody are all without
horns. Nicky was a member of this group, Lucy's daughter, with lovely, wicked horns, but in October she took
sick and died.
The three youngest are Shauna, Ninga and Crystal. They were once seven, But Kasha and Olga died suddenly,
like Nicky. And Kisa and Maya, Crystal's sister, were taken by a mountain lion just before New Years.
Today it was my turn to take the goats out on the range. There are thirteen now. Luke and Jacques are the two
bucks. Mazie is an old retired doe with large, curving horns, queen of the herd. Her daughter, Dee Dee, also has
horns, not so large or perfect, but formidable, number two doe.
Lucy is next, size and horns similar to Dee Dee, but not quite her match. Next comes Dolly, the sweetheart,
whose curving horn was removed before it should dig into her face. Then Katy who shed her horns and is busily
growing them back. She is perhaps as old as Mazie. The next generation, Torie, Amy and Jody are all without
horns. Nicky was a member of this group, Lucy's daughter, with lovely, wicked horns, but in October she took
sick and died.
The three youngest are Shauna, Ninga and Crystal. They were once seven, But Kasha and Olga died suddenly,
like Nicky. And Kisa and Maya, Crystal's sister, were taken by a mountain lion just before New Years.
| Chapter Three JOHNNY |
In late summer of 1979, on the slopes of Mount Cuyamaca in Southern California, Johnny Malone shot himself in the hip, the right one.
A moment later, seated on the ground among the baby pine trees, gnarly, burnt-over oaks and manzanita, Johnny began to reflect on his
life. It seemed like a good time to sort of size up his position, direction, and speed.
First of all, there was Johnny himself. He was seated, nearly reclining, more accurately. His legs were stretched out on the dried grass and
dust of August. His toes pointed to the empty blue sky. His elbows were propped in the dirt of the trail. In this rather relaxed position,
Johnny was looking around with what he imagined was an expression of wonder.
What Johnny was seeing with his eyes was trees, brush, grass, dirt, rocks and sky. His ears hummed with the memory of the explosion
located in the immediate past.
A moment later, seated on the ground among the baby pine trees, gnarly, burnt-over oaks and manzanita, Johnny began to reflect on his
life. It seemed like a good time to sort of size up his position, direction, and speed.
First of all, there was Johnny himself. He was seated, nearly reclining, more accurately. His legs were stretched out on the dried grass and
dust of August. His toes pointed to the empty blue sky. His elbows were propped in the dirt of the trail. In this rather relaxed position,
Johnny was looking around with what he imagined was an expression of wonder.
What Johnny was seeing with his eyes was trees, brush, grass, dirt, rocks and sky. His ears hummed with the memory of the explosion
located in the immediate past.
| My caustic beginning My rough sense How can this baby Tolerate Oh pieces of sand Magic razors Brazen Every other Raving waster Caving in danger Oh shepherd blood Stains of aiming Dexterous fumbling speed And bluesy warning I guess you ought to be the same Any worse Any bold afternoon. |
| * * * |
What Johnny saw with his mind was his home, the ancient house trailer parked a hundred feet further on the other side of the big oak
tree.
Back down the trail in the other direction, hidden by more oak trees, Johnny saw the pen containing his herd of goats. The goats were
hungry, mystified by that unexplained clap of thunder in the sunshine, patient.
Beyond the goat pen the trail dropped down the hill to the little creek hidden in the sycamore, willow and oak. His mind saw it, and saw it
running from it's spring, high on the mountain.
Johnny could see the peak with his eyes from where he sprawled. From the peak his mind looked back, at himself, at the tiny barbed wire-
bordered patch that was the ranch, at the vast wilderness that surrounded it, at the dusty pretzel of a road that twisted past the gate and
disappeared down the mountain toward Boulder Creek and his nearest neighbors, a mile and a half away.
Off the other way, to the south, his mind watched the road curve over the ridge and disappear toward town, eleven miles distant. Time
was moving, and Johnny was curious, a newcomer in this instant, and not at all sure what was happening.
About fifteen feet from him a revolver lay in the dirt. Johnny had pitched it there. It was his.
Drawing his gaze in closer, Johnny looked at his hip. There was an empty holster. He remembered the noise, and a slight burning
sensation in his hip, and a concussion.
Maybe I missed, Johnny thought. Maybe that's all just powder burns and shock from the gun going off against my leg.
Johnny unbuckled the gun belt and let it fall to either side. He unbuckled the belt on his cut-off jeans and unzipped them, unwrapping his
hip like a Christmas present. Lo and behold!
As his sister Katie was to say when she saw it later, it looked just like what it was.
A bullet hole.
A bullet hole, and it was all his. Johnny was the giver and the receiver, the observer and the subject, the assailant and the victim.
There it was, right at the top of his thigh, just an inch from the point of the pelvis. It was round. The skin around it was blackened
slightly, charred from the muzzle blast.
Johnny had loaded the bullet himself, had measured out the powder and had seated the slug into the used brass case. He had pressed a
new primer into the base, after first tapping out the old one.
Johnny hadn't loaded any ammunition since back in June when Michael Wertz was still there. At that time they had got very industrious
for a while, and had loaded up all of their empty brass in preparation for revolution, invasion, criminal terror or boredom.
Michael had a 9mm Smith and Wesson automatic. It would fire fifteen rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger.
Johnny mistrusted automatics himself. He remembered several occasions when Mike had managed to jam the gun with a live bullet in the
chamber. Losing his temper, he would thrash about in the tiny trailer, tugging on the stubborn slide mechanism, pounding the weapon on
the stove, counter-top, floor, waving the muzzle wildly about with glazed eyes and sweat streaking his face, uttering wonderful, obscene
curses on all creation, animate and inanimate. Finally the mechanism would yield.
Johnny remembered thinking one of them was going to get shot.
They chose to load copper jacketed, hollow-point bullets. His gun was a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver, but Johnny was loading .38 Special,
a little lighter than the magnum load, but still considered quite potent.
That sort of slug, with the hollow point, is supposed to enter the body and then mushroom, expanding and turning inside out as it ploughs
through meat and bone, to finally exit with a pound or two of flesh, or, as the mountain folk would say, "It tore the other half of his leg
off!"
Curious, Johnny leaned forward and peaked at the other side of his leg. The bullet had left his body at the very edge of his butt, and it
had left as neatly as it entered. There was a nice, round hole. The bullet had failed to mushroom.
Oh, goody. The event began to take on more readily the feeling of adventure rather than, say, catastrophe. It appeared at least that the
goatherder would not be crippled or mutilated. Johnny could laugh this off. His balls were still intact. Couldn't be better. If only he didn't
bleed to death.
As if responding to his thought, the blood came in a sudden, rising flow. Great. Johnny put some pressure just back of the wound, and the
blood stopped as suddenly as it had begun. After a minute he released the pressure, but the bleeding had stopped.
He had always wondered what it would be like, to be shot. Would he panic? Would he freeze in fear, helpless, a liability to his rescuers?
Rescue?
Johnny tried calling, "Help!" No good. There was no one to hear, and besides, screaming seemed to take away from the dignity of the
situation.
If Johnny had an idol, it was independence. Even now, he pondered the wisdom of simply dealing with the GSW himself. Gun shot wound.
Big deal. With no bone to set it would be merely a matter of keeping it clean. He was a fast healer. What the heck.
Independence suffered its compromises. Johnny had a storeroom full of stored food, dry stuff mostly, like rice and beans. He did not want
to be dependent on the daily trip to town to get food. For fresh vegetables he had a garden, and he sprouted beans. He had a stockpile of
extra clothing, extra blue jeans, extra shirts, the stuff he wore, the stuff he wore out.
From childhood he had loved the myth of the mountain man. He believed he could do it himself if he had to, if he ever really wanted to.
He could go off into the wilderness, with nothing but the trusty gun, and live off the land. He was a good hunter. He could live by hunting,
and fishing, and gathering.
Armed with a good knife and gun, he believed that he could secure food, clothing and shelter. He had learned to reload his ammunition.
This meant that, rather than to stockpile hundreds and hundreds of rounds for each of his guns, he could have instead a compact stash of
gunpowder and primers and lead slugs.
In a pinch, even the slugs could be melted down and recast.
Sometimes, even a mountain man might find it necessary to come in at least as far as the trading post. Johnny counted himself lucky to
be no slave to the cigarette. He had seen buddies walk not one but twenty miles for a Camel. He himself enjoyed, sometimes, a dip of
Copenhagen, but that was not the same.
He was playing his guitar, one evening. The woodstove had overheated the little trailer, and the door was open to the winter night. Johnny
was lost in the solo his fingers were finding, listening to the simple chords, and lost in tranquility. Suddenly he broke a string.
Damn. The longer of the two sections was not quite long enough to be remounted. He was forced to tie the two pieces together. When he
had the crippled fourth string tight once more, it made D when plucked, but a rattle throbbed in the background. It would never do.
It did do, though, until Johnny made his next trip to town. Some mountain man, he thought to himself, as he bought three sets of strings
in a music store in San Diego. But he made the bargain, because it was independent, to sit in the high winter evening and make music
that had never before been heard. He didn't want to hear the canned licks from the city. He had heard enough divorce music, and he
didn't like rock and roll, anymore. Classical music, moldy oldies, easy listening, elevator tunes… all of it left him cold. And he didn't want
to hear the news.
So, sometimes, before he went to sleep, he would pick a little, and croon a little, and the fire would crackle and blaze. What good is being
a mountain man, if you cannot play to the mountains and the stars?
tree.
Back down the trail in the other direction, hidden by more oak trees, Johnny saw the pen containing his herd of goats. The goats were
hungry, mystified by that unexplained clap of thunder in the sunshine, patient.
Beyond the goat pen the trail dropped down the hill to the little creek hidden in the sycamore, willow and oak. His mind saw it, and saw it
running from it's spring, high on the mountain.
Johnny could see the peak with his eyes from where he sprawled. From the peak his mind looked back, at himself, at the tiny barbed wire-
bordered patch that was the ranch, at the vast wilderness that surrounded it, at the dusty pretzel of a road that twisted past the gate and
disappeared down the mountain toward Boulder Creek and his nearest neighbors, a mile and a half away.
Off the other way, to the south, his mind watched the road curve over the ridge and disappear toward town, eleven miles distant. Time
was moving, and Johnny was curious, a newcomer in this instant, and not at all sure what was happening.
About fifteen feet from him a revolver lay in the dirt. Johnny had pitched it there. It was his.
Drawing his gaze in closer, Johnny looked at his hip. There was an empty holster. He remembered the noise, and a slight burning
sensation in his hip, and a concussion.
Maybe I missed, Johnny thought. Maybe that's all just powder burns and shock from the gun going off against my leg.
Johnny unbuckled the gun belt and let it fall to either side. He unbuckled the belt on his cut-off jeans and unzipped them, unwrapping his
hip like a Christmas present. Lo and behold!
As his sister Katie was to say when she saw it later, it looked just like what it was.
A bullet hole.
A bullet hole, and it was all his. Johnny was the giver and the receiver, the observer and the subject, the assailant and the victim.
There it was, right at the top of his thigh, just an inch from the point of the pelvis. It was round. The skin around it was blackened
slightly, charred from the muzzle blast.
Johnny had loaded the bullet himself, had measured out the powder and had seated the slug into the used brass case. He had pressed a
new primer into the base, after first tapping out the old one.
Johnny hadn't loaded any ammunition since back in June when Michael Wertz was still there. At that time they had got very industrious
for a while, and had loaded up all of their empty brass in preparation for revolution, invasion, criminal terror or boredom.
Michael had a 9mm Smith and Wesson automatic. It would fire fifteen rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger.
Johnny mistrusted automatics himself. He remembered several occasions when Mike had managed to jam the gun with a live bullet in the
chamber. Losing his temper, he would thrash about in the tiny trailer, tugging on the stubborn slide mechanism, pounding the weapon on
the stove, counter-top, floor, waving the muzzle wildly about with glazed eyes and sweat streaking his face, uttering wonderful, obscene
curses on all creation, animate and inanimate. Finally the mechanism would yield.
Johnny remembered thinking one of them was going to get shot.
They chose to load copper jacketed, hollow-point bullets. His gun was a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver, but Johnny was loading .38 Special,
a little lighter than the magnum load, but still considered quite potent.
That sort of slug, with the hollow point, is supposed to enter the body and then mushroom, expanding and turning inside out as it ploughs
through meat and bone, to finally exit with a pound or two of flesh, or, as the mountain folk would say, "It tore the other half of his leg
off!"
Curious, Johnny leaned forward and peaked at the other side of his leg. The bullet had left his body at the very edge of his butt, and it
had left as neatly as it entered. There was a nice, round hole. The bullet had failed to mushroom.
Oh, goody. The event began to take on more readily the feeling of adventure rather than, say, catastrophe. It appeared at least that the
goatherder would not be crippled or mutilated. Johnny could laugh this off. His balls were still intact. Couldn't be better. If only he didn't
bleed to death.
As if responding to his thought, the blood came in a sudden, rising flow. Great. Johnny put some pressure just back of the wound, and the
blood stopped as suddenly as it had begun. After a minute he released the pressure, but the bleeding had stopped.
He had always wondered what it would be like, to be shot. Would he panic? Would he freeze in fear, helpless, a liability to his rescuers?
Rescue?
Johnny tried calling, "Help!" No good. There was no one to hear, and besides, screaming seemed to take away from the dignity of the
situation.
If Johnny had an idol, it was independence. Even now, he pondered the wisdom of simply dealing with the GSW himself. Gun shot wound.
Big deal. With no bone to set it would be merely a matter of keeping it clean. He was a fast healer. What the heck.
Independence suffered its compromises. Johnny had a storeroom full of stored food, dry stuff mostly, like rice and beans. He did not want
to be dependent on the daily trip to town to get food. For fresh vegetables he had a garden, and he sprouted beans. He had a stockpile of
extra clothing, extra blue jeans, extra shirts, the stuff he wore, the stuff he wore out.
From childhood he had loved the myth of the mountain man. He believed he could do it himself if he had to, if he ever really wanted to.
He could go off into the wilderness, with nothing but the trusty gun, and live off the land. He was a good hunter. He could live by hunting,
and fishing, and gathering.
Armed with a good knife and gun, he believed that he could secure food, clothing and shelter. He had learned to reload his ammunition.
This meant that, rather than to stockpile hundreds and hundreds of rounds for each of his guns, he could have instead a compact stash of
gunpowder and primers and lead slugs.
In a pinch, even the slugs could be melted down and recast.
Sometimes, even a mountain man might find it necessary to come in at least as far as the trading post. Johnny counted himself lucky to
be no slave to the cigarette. He had seen buddies walk not one but twenty miles for a Camel. He himself enjoyed, sometimes, a dip of
Copenhagen, but that was not the same.
He was playing his guitar, one evening. The woodstove had overheated the little trailer, and the door was open to the winter night. Johnny
was lost in the solo his fingers were finding, listening to the simple chords, and lost in tranquility. Suddenly he broke a string.
Damn. The longer of the two sections was not quite long enough to be remounted. He was forced to tie the two pieces together. When he
had the crippled fourth string tight once more, it made D when plucked, but a rattle throbbed in the background. It would never do.
It did do, though, until Johnny made his next trip to town. Some mountain man, he thought to himself, as he bought three sets of strings
in a music store in San Diego. But he made the bargain, because it was independent, to sit in the high winter evening and make music
that had never before been heard. He didn't want to hear the canned licks from the city. He had heard enough divorce music, and he
didn't like rock and roll, anymore. Classical music, moldy oldies, easy listening, elevator tunes… all of it left him cold. And he didn't want
to hear the news.
So, sometimes, before he went to sleep, he would pick a little, and croon a little, and the fire would crackle and blaze. What good is being
a mountain man, if you cannot play to the mountains and the stars?
