| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 16 February 1980
The next morning at first light I went out to find the lion, or at least the remains of
the (kid) carcass. My search was fruitless, and I returned home.
The night before, a couple of hours after the killing, I had been awakened by Ed
French who had arrived with his rifle, prepared to sit up all night and wait for the lion.
But he was too late. He seemed disappointed. I believe he is a conscientious public
servant.
So on Friday, yesterday, Bob and I did what we could. We took a quarter of the pen
and fenced it separately, and extended the woven steel wire over the whole area. All this
we stitched together tightly with steel wire, and supported it with posts and cross members.
In effect, we made that part of the pen into a cage. We stitched an additional course of
fence around the outside bottom of the cage, a sort of apron, flat on the ground. On this
we piled rocks. The result was a pen, or cage, that the lion could neither leap into nor
crawl into. We put all the goats in there at night, and although they were crowded, they
were safe.
Friday night passed with no visit from the lion. However, we were visited by Sidney
Moehler, Director of the National Predator Callers Association. Ed French had contacted
him. He and his friend, Hank, showed up with their guns and calls.
Bob and I sat with them in the back of their truck, next to the goat pen, while they
took turns blowing the most hair-raising cries of pain I had ever heard. This alternated
with sweeps of a blue searchlight. The goats were unperturbed, but Timothy the kitty cat
came right down, looking for the fun. And a screech owl came over and circled in the
light, but no lion.
After a time, Sidney and Hank called it quits, and after various conversation, they left
to hunt some chicken-killing dog.
On Saturday, Bob and I set the posts for his shack. A worthy accomplishment.
The next morning at first light I went out to find the lion, or at least the remains of
the (kid) carcass. My search was fruitless, and I returned home.
The night before, a couple of hours after the killing, I had been awakened by Ed
French who had arrived with his rifle, prepared to sit up all night and wait for the lion.
But he was too late. He seemed disappointed. I believe he is a conscientious public
servant.
So on Friday, yesterday, Bob and I did what we could. We took a quarter of the pen
and fenced it separately, and extended the woven steel wire over the whole area. All this
we stitched together tightly with steel wire, and supported it with posts and cross members.
In effect, we made that part of the pen into a cage. We stitched an additional course of
fence around the outside bottom of the cage, a sort of apron, flat on the ground. On this
we piled rocks. The result was a pen, or cage, that the lion could neither leap into nor
crawl into. We put all the goats in there at night, and although they were crowded, they
were safe.
Friday night passed with no visit from the lion. However, we were visited by Sidney
Moehler, Director of the National Predator Callers Association. Ed French had contacted
him. He and his friend, Hank, showed up with their guns and calls.
Bob and I sat with them in the back of their truck, next to the goat pen, while they
took turns blowing the most hair-raising cries of pain I had ever heard. This alternated
with sweeps of a blue searchlight. The goats were unperturbed, but Timothy the kitty cat
came right down, looking for the fun. And a screech owl came over and circled in the
light, but no lion.
After a time, Sidney and Hank called it quits, and after various conversation, they left
to hunt some chicken-killing dog.
On Saturday, Bob and I set the posts for his shack. A worthy accomplishment.
| Chapter Thirty-one HAIL OF LEAD |
Alas, she reminded him so of Mara. Although widely claiming descent from Genghis Khan, Selabjun
Kirkhaz' people were often blue-eyed blondes like Mara, and like this enchanting mountain doe who warily
regarded him as he pulled himself onto the lip of the ledge.
It was nineteen sixty-two, and Cat One was twenty-four.
Among the university crowd, the ones who had occasion to climb Clark's Hill from time to time, there was
an ongoing mischievous innuendo regarding the behavior of any two people, particularly of opposite sexes, who
chanced to spend time alone together in the stone nest that lay cozily out of sight on the peak.
Anyone would expect this to be so; there were always knowing winks and smirks passed between and
among the pairs and their friends who ventured the mountain. And among the numerous stories of new
arrivals discovering the incumbent couple sharing in simple innocence a bottle of wine, a joint or pure
relaxation and sky-high conversation, there was a sprinkling of anecdotes of other pairs who, swept away by the
Aeolian privacy of their eagle nest, were discovered at various stages of a variety of acts of love.
Those were sunny Sundays when bold hearts took wild chances, sometimes bolstered by remarkably
accurate seat of the pants calculations about the progression of other parties on the current day's ascent. But
these were not the hijinks prevailing on this windy, cloud-strewn day when Cat One and Selabjun confronted
one another on the last scrap of earth that projected into the celestial gulf.
"Hello," they said in turn, after he had gained his feet. There was nothing to be done before that. One of
the secret customs of Clark's Hill was to observe with feigned indifference the relative ease, or lack thereof,
with which a climber did the trick of climbing over the lip.
There was a certain danger. Truly, if one were to let go and give a little push off with both legs, he or she
could work up a pretty good velocity before initial recontact with the minerals of the mountain.
Most climbers were able to handle the danger. The muscular facility with which each new arrival launched
himself over was the noted and unremarked phenomenon.
No one said a thing, whether the act was a graceless sprawl after a desperate effort, or, on the other end of
the spectrum, a fluid gymnastic accomplishment.
Catherine Dolan, who herself had gained the precipice with the agility of a cat, now watched this wiry,
blonde stranger with the craggy, weathered visage as he effortlessly hopped onto the rock.
"Hello."
"Hello."
Cat One (so much like Mara, he thought) had grown up on one of the farms at the base of Clark's Hill. Her
grandfather, Hank Devlin, had ceded the easement for the tiny parking lot and access to the mountain. Her
uncles had climbed Clark's Hill before her, when they were alive, and her father and mother as well.
With the crystalline perfection that comes into being when the last crucial detail is locked into place, the
scene mesmerized Selabjun. The vision of Cat One standing on the concave wafer of stone as it hung suspended
in the sage-grey luminescence of the western American sky was to him miraculous in the attention to detail
which had apparently been paid in the creation of this entrancing reality.
"You're from the university," she said more than asked, for she had seen him before.
"Yes," he said. "And you're from the farm." He had seen her before as well.
"My name is Selabjun," he said, reprimanding himself while so doing. Shut up and let her leave, he told
himself, aware of the custom which directed that she should abandon the summit to him, the new arrival.
But this was not a crowded Sunday, and Cat One had a large thermos full of hot tea still in her pack.
"I'm Catherine," she said. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
And therewith she saved herself in the swoon of the plot and the afternoon. It was accurately presumed by
each that no further arrivals would mar the events to be. On this tiny rock floating in the clouds, events grew
in the familiar, heart-warming sequence that led eventually to the altar, and to warm acceptance by Cat One's
family of her exotic mountain man.
Ho, ho, but fortunately or unfortunately, it is time to push things around a little bit. We are, after all, very
interested in the turn out of some cloud-peaked romances. It could turn out any which way, we say, and we are
gathered by weightier thoughts.
Her free will that offered the tea, for instance… well, it was free will… could just as freely have gasped in
paranoid fright of this suspiciously alien character.
Mr. Kirkhaz could as freely have allowed or succumbed to the wrenching of his normal civilized habit into a
deranged impulse, by his heart-broken memory of Mara. Or he could freely stay innocent and undeserving of
her various responses, such as her martial artsy kick to the solar plexus that sent the astonished and not yet
grievously hurt scion of Genghis Khan arching to a silent, sad conclusion.
It was that or kids, and grand kids, and healthy hybrid vigor prospering in America.
The flick of a pen and sobs wrench the throat. Let him live, and marry him, we all cheer and beg, we
cheerily beg, we beg the cheer. Fine, fine, and we rejoice in thanksgiving, and their child, the precocious five-
year old Chris, named in a dim recollection of our mythical Savior, performs as mightily and as tragically when
he burns to death before their helpless eyes in an auto wreck on New Year's Eve within sight of Clark's Hill.
"Kill him, kill him," clamor the unanimous clones, who rise to standing ovation as her flying thrust flicks
him from the peak like a crumble of cheese.
And then, hardened reader, the wreck of her life, the interruption of her schooling, the mean-spirited
intuition of the district attorney, and finally her calamitous suicide from off of Clark's Hill, that leaves us
shaken with grief.
What's it to be? The slightest change sometimes sends ripples to the ultimate eons.
Kirkhaz' people were often blue-eyed blondes like Mara, and like this enchanting mountain doe who warily
regarded him as he pulled himself onto the lip of the ledge.
It was nineteen sixty-two, and Cat One was twenty-four.
Among the university crowd, the ones who had occasion to climb Clark's Hill from time to time, there was
an ongoing mischievous innuendo regarding the behavior of any two people, particularly of opposite sexes, who
chanced to spend time alone together in the stone nest that lay cozily out of sight on the peak.
Anyone would expect this to be so; there were always knowing winks and smirks passed between and
among the pairs and their friends who ventured the mountain. And among the numerous stories of new
arrivals discovering the incumbent couple sharing in simple innocence a bottle of wine, a joint or pure
relaxation and sky-high conversation, there was a sprinkling of anecdotes of other pairs who, swept away by the
Aeolian privacy of their eagle nest, were discovered at various stages of a variety of acts of love.
Those were sunny Sundays when bold hearts took wild chances, sometimes bolstered by remarkably
accurate seat of the pants calculations about the progression of other parties on the current day's ascent. But
these were not the hijinks prevailing on this windy, cloud-strewn day when Cat One and Selabjun confronted
one another on the last scrap of earth that projected into the celestial gulf.
"Hello," they said in turn, after he had gained his feet. There was nothing to be done before that. One of
the secret customs of Clark's Hill was to observe with feigned indifference the relative ease, or lack thereof,
with which a climber did the trick of climbing over the lip.
There was a certain danger. Truly, if one were to let go and give a little push off with both legs, he or she
could work up a pretty good velocity before initial recontact with the minerals of the mountain.
Most climbers were able to handle the danger. The muscular facility with which each new arrival launched
himself over was the noted and unremarked phenomenon.
No one said a thing, whether the act was a graceless sprawl after a desperate effort, or, on the other end of
the spectrum, a fluid gymnastic accomplishment.
Catherine Dolan, who herself had gained the precipice with the agility of a cat, now watched this wiry,
blonde stranger with the craggy, weathered visage as he effortlessly hopped onto the rock.
"Hello."
"Hello."
Cat One (so much like Mara, he thought) had grown up on one of the farms at the base of Clark's Hill. Her
grandfather, Hank Devlin, had ceded the easement for the tiny parking lot and access to the mountain. Her
uncles had climbed Clark's Hill before her, when they were alive, and her father and mother as well.
With the crystalline perfection that comes into being when the last crucial detail is locked into place, the
scene mesmerized Selabjun. The vision of Cat One standing on the concave wafer of stone as it hung suspended
in the sage-grey luminescence of the western American sky was to him miraculous in the attention to detail
which had apparently been paid in the creation of this entrancing reality.
"You're from the university," she said more than asked, for she had seen him before.
"Yes," he said. "And you're from the farm." He had seen her before as well.
"My name is Selabjun," he said, reprimanding himself while so doing. Shut up and let her leave, he told
himself, aware of the custom which directed that she should abandon the summit to him, the new arrival.
But this was not a crowded Sunday, and Cat One had a large thermos full of hot tea still in her pack.
"I'm Catherine," she said. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
And therewith she saved herself in the swoon of the plot and the afternoon. It was accurately presumed by
each that no further arrivals would mar the events to be. On this tiny rock floating in the clouds, events grew
in the familiar, heart-warming sequence that led eventually to the altar, and to warm acceptance by Cat One's
family of her exotic mountain man.
Ho, ho, but fortunately or unfortunately, it is time to push things around a little bit. We are, after all, very
interested in the turn out of some cloud-peaked romances. It could turn out any which way, we say, and we are
gathered by weightier thoughts.
Her free will that offered the tea, for instance… well, it was free will… could just as freely have gasped in
paranoid fright of this suspiciously alien character.
Mr. Kirkhaz could as freely have allowed or succumbed to the wrenching of his normal civilized habit into a
deranged impulse, by his heart-broken memory of Mara. Or he could freely stay innocent and undeserving of
her various responses, such as her martial artsy kick to the solar plexus that sent the astonished and not yet
grievously hurt scion of Genghis Khan arching to a silent, sad conclusion.
It was that or kids, and grand kids, and healthy hybrid vigor prospering in America.
The flick of a pen and sobs wrench the throat. Let him live, and marry him, we all cheer and beg, we
cheerily beg, we beg the cheer. Fine, fine, and we rejoice in thanksgiving, and their child, the precocious five-
year old Chris, named in a dim recollection of our mythical Savior, performs as mightily and as tragically when
he burns to death before their helpless eyes in an auto wreck on New Year's Eve within sight of Clark's Hill.
"Kill him, kill him," clamor the unanimous clones, who rise to standing ovation as her flying thrust flicks
him from the peak like a crumble of cheese.
And then, hardened reader, the wreck of her life, the interruption of her schooling, the mean-spirited
intuition of the district attorney, and finally her calamitous suicide from off of Clark's Hill, that leaves us
shaken with grief.
What's it to be? The slightest change sometimes sends ripples to the ultimate eons.
| * * * |
Bob Cabler had a lot of friends. He wasn't the type to be left out of activities like parties, barn dances,
barbecues and horseshoe throwing contests. He was good at that, with double ringers all the time. He was good at
drinking and partying too. He could out-work anyone but Johnny. He loved to eat; he was almost always in a
good mood, and he kept his sullen rages to himself.
He had a lot of friends, but guys that he was friendly with was all they were. It was all slap on the back, hale,
and hearty, laugh it up if yer ready to party and leave us alone if yer blue kind of friendship.
There was no one in that crowd who would sit and listen for hours, without interrupting or one upping, while
Cabler spun his woes. There were none who didn't grow uncomfortable if a few seconds of silence were to infect
the friendship. Two people talking at once was better for those friends than nobody talking at all.
With Johnny, he could talk till his nose turned blue, and no one would try to stop him; no one would
interfere. Nobody tried to change the subject. Johnny never got mad, or raised his voice (like Marilyn), or called
Bob to task for the things he said.
Bob could talk himself out, talk about his mother and what a bitch she was, about fucked up step-fathers
and child abuse and rejection. He had lived in a lot of places in a lot of low-down towns. He reminded Johnny of
his own childhood, when he himself was bounced around in white-man land, and it reminded him too of the chaos
at the reservation. I come from two bad lines, he would think to himself, but he stayed quiet and listened to Bob.
Then the kid would run out of grief and fall silent, and Johnny would say, "I know what you mean, man, I
know what you mean." Quiet would remain as they worked or clip-clopped down a dirt road. After a while,
Johnny would talk a little… not addressing the wounds of his young buddy… there was nothing he could do about
those… but he would talk of the life he had seen, the parts he liked. Even the ocean, sometimes, he would praise
for her sunrises and sunsets, her stars and her moons and her immensity.
More often he talked about the mountains, the creeks that he loved, the meadows where he had hobbled
Bucko before the war, and the trees, the oaks and pines and cedars, and the canyons of sycamore and willow.
barbecues and horseshoe throwing contests. He was good at that, with double ringers all the time. He was good at
drinking and partying too. He could out-work anyone but Johnny. He loved to eat; he was almost always in a
good mood, and he kept his sullen rages to himself.
He had a lot of friends, but guys that he was friendly with was all they were. It was all slap on the back, hale,
and hearty, laugh it up if yer ready to party and leave us alone if yer blue kind of friendship.
There was no one in that crowd who would sit and listen for hours, without interrupting or one upping, while
Cabler spun his woes. There were none who didn't grow uncomfortable if a few seconds of silence were to infect
the friendship. Two people talking at once was better for those friends than nobody talking at all.
With Johnny, he could talk till his nose turned blue, and no one would try to stop him; no one would
interfere. Nobody tried to change the subject. Johnny never got mad, or raised his voice (like Marilyn), or called
Bob to task for the things he said.
Bob could talk himself out, talk about his mother and what a bitch she was, about fucked up step-fathers
and child abuse and rejection. He had lived in a lot of places in a lot of low-down towns. He reminded Johnny of
his own childhood, when he himself was bounced around in white-man land, and it reminded him too of the chaos
at the reservation. I come from two bad lines, he would think to himself, but he stayed quiet and listened to Bob.
Then the kid would run out of grief and fall silent, and Johnny would say, "I know what you mean, man, I
know what you mean." Quiet would remain as they worked or clip-clopped down a dirt road. After a while,
Johnny would talk a little… not addressing the wounds of his young buddy… there was nothing he could do about
those… but he would talk of the life he had seen, the parts he liked. Even the ocean, sometimes, he would praise
for her sunrises and sunsets, her stars and her moons and her immensity.
More often he talked about the mountains, the creeks that he loved, the meadows where he had hobbled
Bucko before the war, and the trees, the oaks and pines and cedars, and the canyons of sycamore and willow.
| * * * |
By the time baby Victor came along, Diana had passed beyond the reach of life's dangers. She was immune, if
not to sorrow and loss and even to outrage and all of the emotional ransom that goes with motherhood, at least
then to harm, intimidation, and death.
For Vikor, she was the ideal mother, and for all of the pain of growing and healing and changing that he
forced himself to suffer, he never had to worry about Ma.
That was how he remembered it now. He wandered as if in a dream for the rest of the day. His business suit
grew frayed and rumpled from busting brush. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned the conservative blue shirt and let
the tails hang. He slung the coat over his shoulder and explored. He remembered all of it, the little spring in the
bottom of a willow thicket, the old homes that still remained, and with more clarity and intimacy, the ones that
were gone with no trace. A charred rock ring where Ma had roasted quail time after time. The ruins of an old
Packard still locked and rusted into the sand at the bottom of a steep-sided arroyo.
not to sorrow and loss and even to outrage and all of the emotional ransom that goes with motherhood, at least
then to harm, intimidation, and death.
For Vikor, she was the ideal mother, and for all of the pain of growing and healing and changing that he
forced himself to suffer, he never had to worry about Ma.
That was how he remembered it now. He wandered as if in a dream for the rest of the day. His business suit
grew frayed and rumpled from busting brush. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned the conservative blue shirt and let
the tails hang. He slung the coat over his shoulder and explored. He remembered all of it, the little spring in the
bottom of a willow thicket, the old homes that still remained, and with more clarity and intimacy, the ones that
were gone with no trace. A charred rock ring where Ma had roasted quail time after time. The ruins of an old
Packard still locked and rusted into the sand at the bottom of a steep-sided arroyo.
| * * * |
When Tawngness still held the denship that included Fugitive Creek, there were the years when Johnny
Malone had his herd of goats. Little is known of that time, but for a little while he kept the diary. He was hardly a
writer. Perhaps the journalist within him saw that he was performing in an experience that would become
increasingly rare as the modern world progressed.
The little composition on the typewriter in the barn of Marilyn Wells was something else. Even he saw it, a
spark, or who knew what. Once born it was born forever, so long as it could find a link. There was no forgetting
it. The loss of the main characters became more clamorous with time.
The real events of Johnny Malone's life became blurred and vanished till reference in later years to the words
in his diary. He would reflect on that when it happened. It was almost as if he had lived a secret from himself, but
that wasn't it either. He knew what he was doing all the time; it just amused him, to be found out by a pen and a
bound volume.
Meanwhile, the events of the lives of folks, like Carol Gallagher and Bob Cabler, stayed with him crystal clear.
Yep, they were in love, and they knew it all.
Malone had his herd of goats. Little is known of that time, but for a little while he kept the diary. He was hardly a
writer. Perhaps the journalist within him saw that he was performing in an experience that would become
increasingly rare as the modern world progressed.
The little composition on the typewriter in the barn of Marilyn Wells was something else. Even he saw it, a
spark, or who knew what. Once born it was born forever, so long as it could find a link. There was no forgetting
it. The loss of the main characters became more clamorous with time.
The real events of Johnny Malone's life became blurred and vanished till reference in later years to the words
in his diary. He would reflect on that when it happened. It was almost as if he had lived a secret from himself, but
that wasn't it either. He knew what he was doing all the time; it just amused him, to be found out by a pen and a
bound volume.
Meanwhile, the events of the lives of folks, like Carol Gallagher and Bob Cabler, stayed with him crystal clear.
Yep, they were in love, and they knew it all.
| * * * |
Ivan and Violeta were also in love, and they thought that they knew it all too. In time, it became clear that
there were a few things that they did not know. Violeta did not know that, with the exception of her sister, Chela,
the Ferrerra family would array itself in instant, unanimous opposition to the relationship. Her folks had
different plans for her, than that she should team up with some Podunk Jew from New Mexico. They were afraid
of him. They had come to see themselves as provincial aristocrats. They were afraid to confront Ivan with their
objection, but they let Violeta know how they felt, and the result was a rift that lasted for years.
Ivan was only amused by the snobbery of the Ferrerra clan. He imagined himself to be like the gypsy rover in
some old folk song that he had heard on campus. He doubted that the family of his beloved would ever understand
that his father was perhaps as rich as the bunch of them thrown together. His family had moved west from New
Jersey when Ivan was just a baby, so that Abraham Bertman could assume the position of controller for the big
mining concern, of which he was also a member of the board of directors, and a major stockholder to boot.
What Ivan did not know, was that his own family would snivel in rage at the thought that he might marry the
daughter of a Portuguese fisherman. Her name alone, Violeta Ferrerra, conjured for them a picture little
different from the run-of-the-mill Mexican.
They threatened to disinherit him, if he married her, so he didn't. But he was bold enough to live with her out
on the thousand acre patch of hills and pines that Abe had purchased as an investment. He was bold enough to
work at the mine like he planned. Despite the alienation of each of their families, the dreams of Ivan and Violeta
began to come true.
there were a few things that they did not know. Violeta did not know that, with the exception of her sister, Chela,
the Ferrerra family would array itself in instant, unanimous opposition to the relationship. Her folks had
different plans for her, than that she should team up with some Podunk Jew from New Mexico. They were afraid
of him. They had come to see themselves as provincial aristocrats. They were afraid to confront Ivan with their
objection, but they let Violeta know how they felt, and the result was a rift that lasted for years.
Ivan was only amused by the snobbery of the Ferrerra clan. He imagined himself to be like the gypsy rover in
some old folk song that he had heard on campus. He doubted that the family of his beloved would ever understand
that his father was perhaps as rich as the bunch of them thrown together. His family had moved west from New
Jersey when Ivan was just a baby, so that Abraham Bertman could assume the position of controller for the big
mining concern, of which he was also a member of the board of directors, and a major stockholder to boot.
What Ivan did not know, was that his own family would snivel in rage at the thought that he might marry the
daughter of a Portuguese fisherman. Her name alone, Violeta Ferrerra, conjured for them a picture little
different from the run-of-the-mill Mexican.
They threatened to disinherit him, if he married her, so he didn't. But he was bold enough to live with her out
on the thousand acre patch of hills and pines that Abe had purchased as an investment. He was bold enough to
work at the mine like he planned. Despite the alienation of each of their families, the dreams of Ivan and Violeta
began to come true.
| * * * |
Vikor ended with taking a blue-green taxi, Bill's Cab, all the way back to the industrial park in Sorrento
Valley, to recover his rental car. Once the taxi was out of sight, he took his bags from the vehicle and went to a
phone booth half a block away. This time he called Yellow Cab, and when the ride came, he had himself ferried
back to San Diego, to the airport.
On the hike he had been led on and on, and the hours fled. He could easily have walked back from the edge
of Rancho Santa Fe where he had ended his northward progression, but then he would have missed his flight.
Before making his way to a phone, Vikor stood on the hill where the old Rancho Santa Mesa ranch house had
stood. Now there was nothing, not even foundations. He stared northward, across the big valley of the San
Dieguito River, at the eucalyptus forest that was Rancho Santa Fe. The home of the rich, was how little Victor
had learned to think of the community hidden in elegant houses in the shade of the trees.
It was a separate world from that of the ranch families and hill rats to the south. Vikor smiled wryly to think
of how much less of a mystery the aristocrats were to him now. Now he was not a barefoot boy peering at the
homes of the lords from the cover of the humble chaparral.
Now he was Vikor. He had been in their homes, not these, to be sure, but other, secluded bastions of bastards.
He had drawn knives across their throats as they slept in their scented boudoirs.
And he had left them alone. Fantasies of revenge hatched in a nine year old mind played out and were
replaced by common sense. Even in the dramatic professions of piracy, brigandage and murder in general, the
sway of common sense prevailed. The big bulls of the herd are not the easiest to pull down.
Nor necessarily the most tender, or juicy. For Vikor, tender and juicy referred to after the kill. Tender was on
the scale of ease and difficulty in relieving the prey of his or her assets. How juicy meant, how much did the caper
net?
The son of Diana discovered, as did the bloody wolves of centuries past, that tender and juicy could also be
found among the weak, the slow, the left out, the blind, the sick and the crippled.
Even the poor.
Valley, to recover his rental car. Once the taxi was out of sight, he took his bags from the vehicle and went to a
phone booth half a block away. This time he called Yellow Cab, and when the ride came, he had himself ferried
back to San Diego, to the airport.
On the hike he had been led on and on, and the hours fled. He could easily have walked back from the edge
of Rancho Santa Fe where he had ended his northward progression, but then he would have missed his flight.
Before making his way to a phone, Vikor stood on the hill where the old Rancho Santa Mesa ranch house had
stood. Now there was nothing, not even foundations. He stared northward, across the big valley of the San
Dieguito River, at the eucalyptus forest that was Rancho Santa Fe. The home of the rich, was how little Victor
had learned to think of the community hidden in elegant houses in the shade of the trees.
It was a separate world from that of the ranch families and hill rats to the south. Vikor smiled wryly to think
of how much less of a mystery the aristocrats were to him now. Now he was not a barefoot boy peering at the
homes of the lords from the cover of the humble chaparral.
Now he was Vikor. He had been in their homes, not these, to be sure, but other, secluded bastions of bastards.
He had drawn knives across their throats as they slept in their scented boudoirs.
And he had left them alone. Fantasies of revenge hatched in a nine year old mind played out and were
replaced by common sense. Even in the dramatic professions of piracy, brigandage and murder in general, the
sway of common sense prevailed. The big bulls of the herd are not the easiest to pull down.
Nor necessarily the most tender, or juicy. For Vikor, tender and juicy referred to after the kill. Tender was on
the scale of ease and difficulty in relieving the prey of his or her assets. How juicy meant, how much did the caper
net?
The son of Diana discovered, as did the bloody wolves of centuries past, that tender and juicy could also be
found among the weak, the slow, the left out, the blind, the sick and the crippled.
Even the poor.
| * * * |
Uncle William was dead. Twenty-five years earlier, in nineteen thirty-seven, he had been Uncle Bill to Johnny
Dolan. After Johnny and Andrea Clare married and moved to the Devlin farm, Bill stayed on back in Collins
Cove.
He had been renting a house back on Patterson Street, but when his partner in carpentry, Arthur Randall
Fargo, Old Fargo, passed away, Bill grew restless. He no longer had any great love for "Lonesome Corners," as
he had come to call his neck of the cove. Johnny Dolan had moved to Dove Springs shortly after he carried
Andrea Clare Dolan across the threshold of his own rickety rental.
It only made sense. The Devlin's first house stood down beyond the apple orchard. Stood empty, save for the
parties that Tom and Joe, and sometimes Andrea, had arranged for their friends. That was over now.
For Johnny it made great sense, because the new job was near Dove Springs. That gave him an extra hour to
disentangle himself from the arms of his new bride and get his coffee down before joining Bill and Fargo at the
site.
The year passed. In nineteen thirty-eight three events changed Bill Casey's life. The current project was,
down to the last gingerbread on the mailbox post, completed.
Old Fargo died.
Catherine Marie Dolan was born to proud parents, Johnny and Andrea Clare.
The significance of these hit William Henry Casey in waves. The completion of the gingerbread stood like an
island, a beacon in an empty sea. There was no more work. It was as if all of the money had vanished from the
community to which Collins Cove and Dove Springs mutually belonged. All of the money, anyway, that could be
spared for a porch or a shed or a barn or a house. There weren't even any fences to be built for hire, and Bill and
Fargo went silently broke. Then Art Fargo died. Bill suddenly realized that he himself had grown old in the time
that had passed since he had called him Mr. Fargo.
Then Catherine was born. Prosperity still lurked over at the Devlin farm. Hank bore the heartbreak that
accompanied the loss of his two sons. They had also been his painting crew. Times were lean, but there was still
money and barter for painting. Hank and the boys had found themselves painting many a structure that would, in
more prosperous times, simply have been torn down and replaced.
As a farmer himself, Hank could easily make concessions toward barter. Thus a farmer with extra hay, but no
cash, or an extra hog, or three, or ten, or some tons of feed grain, could get some painting done. As often as not,
Hank Devlin's painting was itself being used as a barter chip by the farmer. After all, if he needed a fence or a
barn painted, he would durn well do it himself. But the guy with the store front down in Dove Springs wasn't going
to let Farmer Springbottom paint it for him. However, for a Devlin paint job on the front of Gerkins, a deal could
be reached about Farmer Springbottom's account at the general store.
Heartbreak or not, the jobs still came up one by one. Hank took on his new son-in-law for his crew. This
worked out great. Johnny was no stranger to painting. He had often painted the work that he and Uncle Bill and
Old Fargo did, if such was the deal. It was all work.
Now, should one of Hank Devlin's clients also need some carpentry before the paint job, Johnny was their
man.
Beyond the apple orchard, beyond the cozy cottage wherein Andrea Clare lay cuddled with her new baby, a
path developed and disappeared into the sage and chaparral. The trail followed a draw that opened from the side of
the mountain. A quarter of a mile along, rising softly at every step, it doubled back, escaping from the
watercourse into a smooth and level glade in a grove of live oaks.
Tom and Joe Devlin had built their own house there. Not a party house… none of their friends even knew of
its existence… it was, rather, a house in which to get away, a place to be comfortable in the woods, skeeter-free
behind the screens or warm and dry during the cold and wet contemplations of rain on a thatch roof.
Hauling cattail rushes from way down in the cow pond, Tom and Joe had built a roof that shed the raindrops of
November and which survived the winds of winter. The boys had been proud of the perfect success of their rain-
proof refuge. The following summer they had torn the structure half-down and rebuilt it complete with a fireplace
and chimney of stone.
This time, at their experienced ages of seventeen and fourteen, they took the prudence to install a roof of tin
before reapplying the lovely rushes.
Now they were dead. They had done too well. Their mother, the mother of Andrea Clare, feared that the little
cabin was all too inviting.
Certainly Tom and Joe would have burst with pride and generosity at the thought of half-lost hikers finding
such a blessing in a cloudburst. Their empathy and good nature was too well developed for them to fail to
appreciate such joy. They would have wanted to be remembered for it.
But Sarah Devlin was not concerned about lost hikers, so much as she was nervous about more permanent
squatting. Various drifters and alcoholics holing up in squalid, daytime silence was what she helplessly envisioned.
There was even mute evidence that this had happened already, once or twice.
Andrea's mother was traumatized by the cruel violence that had swept her family on that awful winter's day.
She needed the outposts manned, and so it was that Bill Casey came to move into the boys' cabin, and it was
never again called "the boys' cabin."
It became Uncle William's in time, as the world recrystalized itself about its new center, Catherine Marie
Dolan.
Cat learned early the baby steps that led into the cool loom of the mountain and up to Uncle William's cabin.
How she would say, "Cat!" in response to her parents' prompting to say Catherine, or at least Cathy, with her
little grin as she spit the words, "Cat! Cat! Cat!" was how she got her nickname, and why she never was a Cathy.
She was Catherine, or she was Cat. And when she felt a certain coming of age, something in her mind that
just precedes, perhaps, that becoming of a woman that is such a watershed where for men there is no counterpart,
she became Cat One. Rebellious teenager would do for a label, were it true, and were she a teen. After all, it was
nineteen fifty, and even though she was marooned on this farm, man, she was hip to the jive.
She was twelve.
Besides, there was the university. For such a small place as Dove Springs to have a university, tiny as the
school was, amounted to an existential coup for the village that it wore like a graceful feather in its cap. The
small flocks of scholars that were shepherded through "Ol' Grey," as the granite academy was invariably known,
were respectful of the local community, and were themselves a select group, and deserving of the respect that, by
and large, was returned to them by the people of the township.
Dolan. After Johnny and Andrea Clare married and moved to the Devlin farm, Bill stayed on back in Collins
Cove.
He had been renting a house back on Patterson Street, but when his partner in carpentry, Arthur Randall
Fargo, Old Fargo, passed away, Bill grew restless. He no longer had any great love for "Lonesome Corners," as
he had come to call his neck of the cove. Johnny Dolan had moved to Dove Springs shortly after he carried
Andrea Clare Dolan across the threshold of his own rickety rental.
It only made sense. The Devlin's first house stood down beyond the apple orchard. Stood empty, save for the
parties that Tom and Joe, and sometimes Andrea, had arranged for their friends. That was over now.
For Johnny it made great sense, because the new job was near Dove Springs. That gave him an extra hour to
disentangle himself from the arms of his new bride and get his coffee down before joining Bill and Fargo at the
site.
The year passed. In nineteen thirty-eight three events changed Bill Casey's life. The current project was,
down to the last gingerbread on the mailbox post, completed.
Old Fargo died.
Catherine Marie Dolan was born to proud parents, Johnny and Andrea Clare.
The significance of these hit William Henry Casey in waves. The completion of the gingerbread stood like an
island, a beacon in an empty sea. There was no more work. It was as if all of the money had vanished from the
community to which Collins Cove and Dove Springs mutually belonged. All of the money, anyway, that could be
spared for a porch or a shed or a barn or a house. There weren't even any fences to be built for hire, and Bill and
Fargo went silently broke. Then Art Fargo died. Bill suddenly realized that he himself had grown old in the time
that had passed since he had called him Mr. Fargo.
Then Catherine was born. Prosperity still lurked over at the Devlin farm. Hank bore the heartbreak that
accompanied the loss of his two sons. They had also been his painting crew. Times were lean, but there was still
money and barter for painting. Hank and the boys had found themselves painting many a structure that would, in
more prosperous times, simply have been torn down and replaced.
As a farmer himself, Hank could easily make concessions toward barter. Thus a farmer with extra hay, but no
cash, or an extra hog, or three, or ten, or some tons of feed grain, could get some painting done. As often as not,
Hank Devlin's painting was itself being used as a barter chip by the farmer. After all, if he needed a fence or a
barn painted, he would durn well do it himself. But the guy with the store front down in Dove Springs wasn't going
to let Farmer Springbottom paint it for him. However, for a Devlin paint job on the front of Gerkins, a deal could
be reached about Farmer Springbottom's account at the general store.
Heartbreak or not, the jobs still came up one by one. Hank took on his new son-in-law for his crew. This
worked out great. Johnny was no stranger to painting. He had often painted the work that he and Uncle Bill and
Old Fargo did, if such was the deal. It was all work.
Now, should one of Hank Devlin's clients also need some carpentry before the paint job, Johnny was their
man.
Beyond the apple orchard, beyond the cozy cottage wherein Andrea Clare lay cuddled with her new baby, a
path developed and disappeared into the sage and chaparral. The trail followed a draw that opened from the side of
the mountain. A quarter of a mile along, rising softly at every step, it doubled back, escaping from the
watercourse into a smooth and level glade in a grove of live oaks.
Tom and Joe Devlin had built their own house there. Not a party house… none of their friends even knew of
its existence… it was, rather, a house in which to get away, a place to be comfortable in the woods, skeeter-free
behind the screens or warm and dry during the cold and wet contemplations of rain on a thatch roof.
Hauling cattail rushes from way down in the cow pond, Tom and Joe had built a roof that shed the raindrops of
November and which survived the winds of winter. The boys had been proud of the perfect success of their rain-
proof refuge. The following summer they had torn the structure half-down and rebuilt it complete with a fireplace
and chimney of stone.
This time, at their experienced ages of seventeen and fourteen, they took the prudence to install a roof of tin
before reapplying the lovely rushes.
Now they were dead. They had done too well. Their mother, the mother of Andrea Clare, feared that the little
cabin was all too inviting.
Certainly Tom and Joe would have burst with pride and generosity at the thought of half-lost hikers finding
such a blessing in a cloudburst. Their empathy and good nature was too well developed for them to fail to
appreciate such joy. They would have wanted to be remembered for it.
But Sarah Devlin was not concerned about lost hikers, so much as she was nervous about more permanent
squatting. Various drifters and alcoholics holing up in squalid, daytime silence was what she helplessly envisioned.
There was even mute evidence that this had happened already, once or twice.
Andrea's mother was traumatized by the cruel violence that had swept her family on that awful winter's day.
She needed the outposts manned, and so it was that Bill Casey came to move into the boys' cabin, and it was
never again called "the boys' cabin."
It became Uncle William's in time, as the world recrystalized itself about its new center, Catherine Marie
Dolan.
Cat learned early the baby steps that led into the cool loom of the mountain and up to Uncle William's cabin.
How she would say, "Cat!" in response to her parents' prompting to say Catherine, or at least Cathy, with her
little grin as she spit the words, "Cat! Cat! Cat!" was how she got her nickname, and why she never was a Cathy.
She was Catherine, or she was Cat. And when she felt a certain coming of age, something in her mind that
just precedes, perhaps, that becoming of a woman that is such a watershed where for men there is no counterpart,
she became Cat One. Rebellious teenager would do for a label, were it true, and were she a teen. After all, it was
nineteen fifty, and even though she was marooned on this farm, man, she was hip to the jive.
She was twelve.
Besides, there was the university. For such a small place as Dove Springs to have a university, tiny as the
school was, amounted to an existential coup for the village that it wore like a graceful feather in its cap. The
small flocks of scholars that were shepherded through "Ol' Grey," as the granite academy was invariably known,
were respectful of the local community, and were themselves a select group, and deserving of the respect that, by
and large, was returned to them by the people of the township.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 19 February 1980
Sunday morning I drove down to the city, to my father's house. The whole family
gathered there to celebrate the birthdays of my sister, Betty, my brother, Grant, and Dad's
girlfriend, Flo.
My car was in the want-ads that day, and that evening I sold it for four hundred dollars.
The next day I delivered it down in National City and collected the money.
That night, Dad and I went to see Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in "The Electric
Horseman". What a neat movie!
On Tuesday, Dad and Flo brought me back to the mountains. We stopped by American
Tecate and picked up a new set of windmill blades from Harold Maloney. On the way to
Tecate we stopped by Jamul to see Cathy, and Dulzura to see Mike Feeney. Finally we got
back to the ranch. Everything was in order, and Bob was happy to see us.
Sunday morning I drove down to the city, to my father's house. The whole family
gathered there to celebrate the birthdays of my sister, Betty, my brother, Grant, and Dad's
girlfriend, Flo.
My car was in the want-ads that day, and that evening I sold it for four hundred dollars.
The next day I delivered it down in National City and collected the money.
That night, Dad and I went to see Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in "The Electric
Horseman". What a neat movie!
On Tuesday, Dad and Flo brought me back to the mountains. We stopped by American
Tecate and picked up a new set of windmill blades from Harold Maloney. On the way to
Tecate we stopped by Jamul to see Cathy, and Dulzura to see Mike Feeney. Finally we got
back to the ranch. Everything was in order, and Bob was happy to see us.
| * * * |
At the airport, Vikor moved with efficiency. He had patted his clothes to hopefully presentable, a briar snag
here, a carbon smudge, a wet cuff dried. He shook his head as if to clear off dreams upon awakening. Certainly
he had awakened that morning with no thoughts of taking a long hike out in the brush.
But then, a lot of his days turned out differently than he expected. He checked his bags, collected his boarding
pass, and proceeded directly to the gate. In the time it took to walk it, he was at his seat, and settling with
closed-eye weariness into the blessing of the cushions.
Around him, other passengers were doing likewise, empathetic to any expressions of weariness, frustration,
anxiety or exhaustion from their fellows. The plane taxied and lifted into the spring night air. Vikor was wide
awake. After all, he had just lived through a rather exciting day, and though tired, was not particularly troubled
himself by any frustration or anxiety. Nor was he exhausted. His mind spun with excitement at having seen at last
the hills and valleys of his childhood.
He remembered them, but he also remembered leaving them. He had only been fifteen. Nor had he gone to
any Collin's Cove, or Dove Springs. He went to Oceanside, then changed buses and continued east from there.
Away he went, over the mountains and into the desert.
He had disembarked in Banner at the junction of the two micro-climes. To the east was desert to the Colorado
river and beyond. Immediately to the west the mountains rose, the same dry and rocky wilderness range that had
for its crown the fir-clad summit known as Cuyamaca Peak.
From then until his conjugation with reality ten years later, Vikor lived a dream unshared. Somewhere
between fantasy and nightmare, he survived via broad strokes of serendipity. Foolish and ignorant jousts with
local realities of the desert, wild cards like heat and direction, thirst and hunger, savage sun and merciless winds
delivered him time and again to the almost jaws of death.
Sometimes it was only his own ability to suffer and to persist that saved him. Sometimes that was not enough,
and the future of humanity rocked on the tenuous hinges of luck and the kindness of strangers. He learned and
he grew, strong and wise and tough. Carmel Valley had been a paradise of survival, when contrasted with the
desert.
He worked on this ranch or that. He traded some winter furs for the old Springfield rifle, and he learned to
load his own ammunition. Sitting by his campfire at night, he would pop free the old primers from the empty
cases of the rounds he had fired. Beating each case into a die with a mallet, he resized the brass. He would trim
the ends, install a new primer in each base, and then carefully measure the powder and seat a new slug. The
character of Johnny was never far away.
here, a carbon smudge, a wet cuff dried. He shook his head as if to clear off dreams upon awakening. Certainly
he had awakened that morning with no thoughts of taking a long hike out in the brush.
But then, a lot of his days turned out differently than he expected. He checked his bags, collected his boarding
pass, and proceeded directly to the gate. In the time it took to walk it, he was at his seat, and settling with
closed-eye weariness into the blessing of the cushions.
Around him, other passengers were doing likewise, empathetic to any expressions of weariness, frustration,
anxiety or exhaustion from their fellows. The plane taxied and lifted into the spring night air. Vikor was wide
awake. After all, he had just lived through a rather exciting day, and though tired, was not particularly troubled
himself by any frustration or anxiety. Nor was he exhausted. His mind spun with excitement at having seen at last
the hills and valleys of his childhood.
He remembered them, but he also remembered leaving them. He had only been fifteen. Nor had he gone to
any Collin's Cove, or Dove Springs. He went to Oceanside, then changed buses and continued east from there.
Away he went, over the mountains and into the desert.
He had disembarked in Banner at the junction of the two micro-climes. To the east was desert to the Colorado
river and beyond. Immediately to the west the mountains rose, the same dry and rocky wilderness range that had
for its crown the fir-clad summit known as Cuyamaca Peak.
From then until his conjugation with reality ten years later, Vikor lived a dream unshared. Somewhere
between fantasy and nightmare, he survived via broad strokes of serendipity. Foolish and ignorant jousts with
local realities of the desert, wild cards like heat and direction, thirst and hunger, savage sun and merciless winds
delivered him time and again to the almost jaws of death.
Sometimes it was only his own ability to suffer and to persist that saved him. Sometimes that was not enough,
and the future of humanity rocked on the tenuous hinges of luck and the kindness of strangers. He learned and
he grew, strong and wise and tough. Carmel Valley had been a paradise of survival, when contrasted with the
desert.
He worked on this ranch or that. He traded some winter furs for the old Springfield rifle, and he learned to
load his own ammunition. Sitting by his campfire at night, he would pop free the old primers from the empty
cases of the rounds he had fired. Beating each case into a die with a mallet, he resized the brass. He would trim
the ends, install a new primer in each base, and then carefully measure the powder and seat a new slug. The
character of Johnny was never far away.
| * * * |
And nothing is that simple. For example. It is nineteen seventy-nine. Tawngness is failing. The last two years
have seen single-kitten litters, and those lost. Deer have grown scarce. There are cattle, but the fully grown,
horned muscle-tons are more than a match for the aged lion.
The cattle ranged widely, eating the sparse grass. Chaparral was far more plentiful. When Johnny would head
out with his herd of goats, they found bountiful nourishment in any direction. They were up to their necks in it,
and they ate to abandon, moving only for variety, coming up the trail to the ranch in the evenings with bellies
swaying like loaded freight cars. Over the years, the handful of dairy goats that Johnny cared for had attracted
the attention of the mountain lion from time to time, when game had fled, when times were hard.
This was the year that she struck.
She followed her nose.
have seen single-kitten litters, and those lost. Deer have grown scarce. There are cattle, but the fully grown,
horned muscle-tons are more than a match for the aged lion.
The cattle ranged widely, eating the sparse grass. Chaparral was far more plentiful. When Johnny would head
out with his herd of goats, they found bountiful nourishment in any direction. They were up to their necks in it,
and they ate to abandon, moving only for variety, coming up the trail to the ranch in the evenings with bellies
swaying like loaded freight cars. Over the years, the handful of dairy goats that Johnny cared for had attracted
the attention of the mountain lion from time to time, when game had fled, when times were hard.
This was the year that she struck.
She followed her nose.
| * * * |
So had Bob and Johnny, thirty-four years in the past already, and still nosing into the wind's drift, toward the
pond. Somewhere wild, a younger Tawngness nursed kits at midmorning. A tamer town saw seven-year old Cat
One Dolan come in from the farm with her mother and baskets of eggs. The wind was a trivial breeze, there. In
the high reach of Carmel Valley, it was not so trivial.
Had it been earlier, had it been dawn, our guys would have been coming from the west. From the cool of
evening until well after dawn, the thermal drift of the breezes down the ridges and canyons maintained a general
westward flow. West was down as canyons gathered into valleys, and ridges narrowed away and disappeared. By
sometime in the early morning, usually not long after sunrise, the winds would grow still, and then shift. The
warming air was rising, and also there was the reliable wind from the sea.
By now it was late enough into the morning that this thermal shift had occurred. Johnny and Bob would have
felt an unexplainable clumsiness with their motion, were they to be riding downwind toward the waterhole. They
would each have felt like some graceless brute lumbering through the boonies, sending the wind ahead of him
with messages about everything from the smell of his socks and his saddle to his real fragrance, the scent of a
human.
They would have found the pond deserted, most likely, napkins still on the tables under half-filled glasses,
where everyone from Mr. Ground Squirrel and Mr. Packrat to Mr. Buck and his doe had suddenly found
important reasons to be elsewhere. Coming upwind the boys saw these and more from time to time. Always
hunting, even when the prey was spared, Johnny and Bob watched for wildlife at all times. Their innocent
attention was like that of the housecat whose eyes and ears come alert when a mouse, a bobbin or a golf ball rolls
or scampers across the carpet.
They saw some wild life now. It may as well have been that the two women, whom they recognized, were being
mauled by grizzly bears, with more grizzlies on the way. Staying put while Maggie Murphy and the Gallagher girl
were being assaulted by any creature was not what Bob Cabler and Johnny Stream would ever have done. Their
instincts would have outrun their intellect every time. Not, when each had a forty-four on his hip, would they
hesitate for a second before charging in.
They charged in. The typewriter in the old stable fairly flew on a one finger rampage as "the afternoon
erupted in a hail of lead." Indeed.
Indeed.
pond. Somewhere wild, a younger Tawngness nursed kits at midmorning. A tamer town saw seven-year old Cat
One Dolan come in from the farm with her mother and baskets of eggs. The wind was a trivial breeze, there. In
the high reach of Carmel Valley, it was not so trivial.
Had it been earlier, had it been dawn, our guys would have been coming from the west. From the cool of
evening until well after dawn, the thermal drift of the breezes down the ridges and canyons maintained a general
westward flow. West was down as canyons gathered into valleys, and ridges narrowed away and disappeared. By
sometime in the early morning, usually not long after sunrise, the winds would grow still, and then shift. The
warming air was rising, and also there was the reliable wind from the sea.
By now it was late enough into the morning that this thermal shift had occurred. Johnny and Bob would have
felt an unexplainable clumsiness with their motion, were they to be riding downwind toward the waterhole. They
would each have felt like some graceless brute lumbering through the boonies, sending the wind ahead of him
with messages about everything from the smell of his socks and his saddle to his real fragrance, the scent of a
human.
They would have found the pond deserted, most likely, napkins still on the tables under half-filled glasses,
where everyone from Mr. Ground Squirrel and Mr. Packrat to Mr. Buck and his doe had suddenly found
important reasons to be elsewhere. Coming upwind the boys saw these and more from time to time. Always
hunting, even when the prey was spared, Johnny and Bob watched for wildlife at all times. Their innocent
attention was like that of the housecat whose eyes and ears come alert when a mouse, a bobbin or a golf ball rolls
or scampers across the carpet.
They saw some wild life now. It may as well have been that the two women, whom they recognized, were being
mauled by grizzly bears, with more grizzlies on the way. Staying put while Maggie Murphy and the Gallagher girl
were being assaulted by any creature was not what Bob Cabler and Johnny Stream would ever have done. Their
instincts would have outrun their intellect every time. Not, when each had a forty-four on his hip, would they
hesitate for a second before charging in.
They charged in. The typewriter in the old stable fairly flew on a one finger rampage as "the afternoon
erupted in a hail of lead." Indeed.
Indeed.
| * * * |
"The pickings are too slim," said Diana to her son. They sat alongside one another on a folded blanket and
stared into the fire at a pair of rabbits that broiled on a skewer of green eucalyptus.
He knew what she meant. Diana herself faced a giant dichotomy in her own application of common sense to
the challenges of her world. If she were a goddess, she was the most local of goddesses, a sprite, a wraith-like
vixen of tiny waterfalls and elfin forests, a chimerical sun dog seen only from one neck of the woods. Within
her own little dream she hunted her bunnies, she raised her son, and she bathed in the creeks and the ponds.
If she was worshipped, it was the humble care of a soft heart leaving matches on the top of an old pasture
post. It was peacefully forgetting to bring back a jacket from the rock by the falls. It was barley that fattened
deer. It was water kept clean. It was stands of trees, and rough spots left untilled.
"I like it here," said Victor. Ma smiled at him.
"I know you do," she replied. "So do I." She could see, though, the sparkle in his eyes. Like an arrow in a
drawn bow, he was held back by force equal to that which would cast him upon release into the inky depths of a
world which Ma could not imagine. It was not her need, to imagine that, for Victor could imagine his own life,
his own course, his own freedom, and though she had aimed, she had aimed at nothing.
He longed for release, and so she had released him. Of the time after that, Vikor only remembered Cat
One. So far as mothers went, she was it. Nor was it as if he had journeyed from the wing of Diana to the home
of Cat One, riding perhaps in a Greyhound bus up the coast. Nothing like that happened.
What happened was that when Cat One released her own arrow, when spoiled, young Vikor flew from the
Dolan home, arching at last at the age of twenty-five into that same deep void of possibilities, he trailed the
memory.
That was why he wanted to talk to his mother. He wanted to talk to Cat One, but first he had to go to
Houston.
That the two memories fitted together so neatly was part of the puzzle that kept Vikor so intrigued. He
clearly remembered going with his mother to the local bus stop and catching a ride to the big city, and then an
airliner to Birmingham, Alabama.
But he also remembered seeing Ma fade in the rear window of that Greyhound bus. She had relented, and
had come into town in her finest. That meant she had shoes on and was fully dressed, hair stuck into a severe
bun with polished sticks of hand-carved walnut. Nobody noticed her anyway. It was 1978. She could look awfully
old for thirty-two.
Then ten years vanished. When he reached the airport in the big city and boarded the flight to Alabama, it
was already 1988, and when he looked to his past, when he thought of those last ten years, and when he
wondered if he would miss his mother, it was Dove Springs and Cat One that populated his memory.
He did miss her. He took a room in an old hotel in Birmingham, old but nice, and he walked the streets like
he fancied a lion might do on the veldts of Africa, eyeing the herd. He walked by parks and churches. It was
spring, and he saw the young and the old, in strollers and wheelchairs, on monkey bars and park benches.
He remembered Cat One. He remembered Mother, and he looked for the sign that she said he would find, and
he did not find it, and so he broke. He knifed a dowager who sat alone by a fountain in a secluded maze of trees
in a park near one of the rivers. She was nursing her breath after a walk up the slight rise to where the park
bench was located.
He collected his luggage and returned to the airport. He was frustrated and depressed, and nearly broke.
The old lady had yielded nothing but costume jewelry and fake fur. The smell of her cheap perfume had
overpowered the fragrance of blood.
At the airport, Vikor had watched the planes depart. For a while he felt helpless. He felt marooned. He
could have flown to Montgomery; that was about it. But Montgomery was not the next stop on his list. He
calculated that he had the dough to get to Jackson, Mississippi by bus. But that depressed him even further. To
arrive, broke, in another southern city, having acquired nothing in the first but a case of the shakes (and a
notch in the dagger, so to speak)… he had no zest for that.
He was not unlike the lion scared away from its kill, the one that fled and left the baby goat lying on the
ground in the pen. He hadn't got what he had come for. Hours passed, and he sat and dozed, and when he came
alert he knew that he was going back into the city once more. That was all he knew, and all that he needed to
know. Signs? They would be plentiful. He would need only to follow the herd.
stared into the fire at a pair of rabbits that broiled on a skewer of green eucalyptus.
He knew what she meant. Diana herself faced a giant dichotomy in her own application of common sense to
the challenges of her world. If she were a goddess, she was the most local of goddesses, a sprite, a wraith-like
vixen of tiny waterfalls and elfin forests, a chimerical sun dog seen only from one neck of the woods. Within
her own little dream she hunted her bunnies, she raised her son, and she bathed in the creeks and the ponds.
If she was worshipped, it was the humble care of a soft heart leaving matches on the top of an old pasture
post. It was peacefully forgetting to bring back a jacket from the rock by the falls. It was barley that fattened
deer. It was water kept clean. It was stands of trees, and rough spots left untilled.
"I like it here," said Victor. Ma smiled at him.
"I know you do," she replied. "So do I." She could see, though, the sparkle in his eyes. Like an arrow in a
drawn bow, he was held back by force equal to that which would cast him upon release into the inky depths of a
world which Ma could not imagine. It was not her need, to imagine that, for Victor could imagine his own life,
his own course, his own freedom, and though she had aimed, she had aimed at nothing.
He longed for release, and so she had released him. Of the time after that, Vikor only remembered Cat
One. So far as mothers went, she was it. Nor was it as if he had journeyed from the wing of Diana to the home
of Cat One, riding perhaps in a Greyhound bus up the coast. Nothing like that happened.
What happened was that when Cat One released her own arrow, when spoiled, young Vikor flew from the
Dolan home, arching at last at the age of twenty-five into that same deep void of possibilities, he trailed the
memory.
That was why he wanted to talk to his mother. He wanted to talk to Cat One, but first he had to go to
Houston.
That the two memories fitted together so neatly was part of the puzzle that kept Vikor so intrigued. He
clearly remembered going with his mother to the local bus stop and catching a ride to the big city, and then an
airliner to Birmingham, Alabama.
But he also remembered seeing Ma fade in the rear window of that Greyhound bus. She had relented, and
had come into town in her finest. That meant she had shoes on and was fully dressed, hair stuck into a severe
bun with polished sticks of hand-carved walnut. Nobody noticed her anyway. It was 1978. She could look awfully
old for thirty-two.
Then ten years vanished. When he reached the airport in the big city and boarded the flight to Alabama, it
was already 1988, and when he looked to his past, when he thought of those last ten years, and when he
wondered if he would miss his mother, it was Dove Springs and Cat One that populated his memory.
He did miss her. He took a room in an old hotel in Birmingham, old but nice, and he walked the streets like
he fancied a lion might do on the veldts of Africa, eyeing the herd. He walked by parks and churches. It was
spring, and he saw the young and the old, in strollers and wheelchairs, on monkey bars and park benches.
He remembered Cat One. He remembered Mother, and he looked for the sign that she said he would find, and
he did not find it, and so he broke. He knifed a dowager who sat alone by a fountain in a secluded maze of trees
in a park near one of the rivers. She was nursing her breath after a walk up the slight rise to where the park
bench was located.
He collected his luggage and returned to the airport. He was frustrated and depressed, and nearly broke.
The old lady had yielded nothing but costume jewelry and fake fur. The smell of her cheap perfume had
overpowered the fragrance of blood.
At the airport, Vikor had watched the planes depart. For a while he felt helpless. He felt marooned. He
could have flown to Montgomery; that was about it. But Montgomery was not the next stop on his list. He
calculated that he had the dough to get to Jackson, Mississippi by bus. But that depressed him even further. To
arrive, broke, in another southern city, having acquired nothing in the first but a case of the shakes (and a
notch in the dagger, so to speak)… he had no zest for that.
He was not unlike the lion scared away from its kill, the one that fled and left the baby goat lying on the
ground in the pen. He hadn't got what he had come for. Hours passed, and he sat and dozed, and when he came
alert he knew that he was going back into the city once more. That was all he knew, and all that he needed to
know. Signs? They would be plentiful. He would need only to follow the herd.
| * * * |
Tawngness often watched the herd on the trail. There is a timelessness about life in the open world. Even
though time and flows and changes are very much a part of the wilderness creatures' lives, there are many
long spells when there is no marked progression. It is now, and it stays now, until something happens.
It could be argued that many or most of the myriad mammals are masters of meditation, mocking our handful
of adepts, saints and brain-damaged mystics. It could further be argued that among these packs and herds of
warm-blooded, four-legged contemplators, the cats shine. This, of course, would be in error, for who doubts that
a mouse can pose in twitchless serenity, or that a deer can stand in serene bliss so that its antlers might be
taken for tree branches?
Contrasted with humanity, the bulk of whom settle for little in the art and the indulgence of merely doing
nothing, all of the rest of life's fuzzy cousins are trance champions. The goats that Tawngness watched so
privately from her screen of thickets were forever pausing in their busy lives of eating and butting and fleeing.
The jaws would cease; the eyes would focus on nothing. The ears might automatically twitch for a fly. The goat
would stand in silence.
though time and flows and changes are very much a part of the wilderness creatures' lives, there are many
long spells when there is no marked progression. It is now, and it stays now, until something happens.
It could be argued that many or most of the myriad mammals are masters of meditation, mocking our handful
of adepts, saints and brain-damaged mystics. It could further be argued that among these packs and herds of
warm-blooded, four-legged contemplators, the cats shine. This, of course, would be in error, for who doubts that
a mouse can pose in twitchless serenity, or that a deer can stand in serene bliss so that its antlers might be
taken for tree branches?
Contrasted with humanity, the bulk of whom settle for little in the art and the indulgence of merely doing
nothing, all of the rest of life's fuzzy cousins are trance champions. The goats that Tawngness watched so
privately from her screen of thickets were forever pausing in their busy lives of eating and butting and fleeing.
The jaws would cease; the eyes would focus on nothing. The ears might automatically twitch for a fly. The goat
would stand in silence.
| * * * |
| * * * |
