| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 22 February 1980
It has rained for three days. Nothing exciting. Yesterday Bob and I walked to Brown's,
but no one was home. We left some letters for Danny to mail. Getting across Boulder
Creek was tricky.
Today Bob built shelves in the trailer, and I built a big sprouter: wooden rack and clay
flower pots. Sprouts are becoming an important part of our diet.
The manzanita is blooming like crazy. Bob has been pruning some of it in the area
where the little pines are. It sure is pretty.
It has rained for three days. Nothing exciting. Yesterday Bob and I walked to Brown's,
but no one was home. We left some letters for Danny to mail. Getting across Boulder
Creek was tricky.
Today Bob built shelves in the trailer, and I built a big sprouter: wooden rack and clay
flower pots. Sprouts are becoming an important part of our diet.
The manzanita is blooming like crazy. Bob has been pruning some of it in the area
where the little pines are. It sure is pretty.
| Chapter Thirty-two BANG |
Where was the connection? Certainly the boy who left Black Mountain in seventy-eight was not dressed in a
grey business suit. But the young man who left Dove Springs ten years later was. Cat had helped him to purchase
the suit and the black shoes.
Her folks knew nothing of that. Vikor already had one suit, for even in Dove Springs, there are funerals,
sometimes weddings, or job interviews, perhaps.
Just like his mother, Vikor had kept himself free of job interviews. There was no getting around being
drafted for chores on the Devlin/Dolan farm, as well as the occasional stint as painter's helper. He had done his
share of cutting firewood and tending cows.
The awkwardness of his genesis was a hurdle that his grandparents never really found their way over. John
and Andrea Dolan forever treated little Victor as a part of Catherine's trauma. From them, hearts of warmth as
they were, that meant eternal solicitation and concern, without pester and fuss. They were really good at allowing
their child and their grandchild to live freely. To "sponge off of them," was how some would have labeled it, were
they so invited.
Johnny and Andrea did not look at it like that, however. For his part, John Dolan grew more and more to be a
part of his woodshop. He could always be found hunching slightly over a bench or a vise, patiently working details
with a chisel, or he would be operating a band saw, or a sanding belt. Whenever he saw his grandson his heart
would surge with a flame that had once been rage, but with no outlet (like revenge), the emotion had grown like a
vine, had twisted and leafed and borne flowers and fruit.
Andrea had retreated to a womb of her own, and was equally graceful in her solicitude of Catherine and
Victor. She tiptoed through the years, bringing food and drink, kind concern, love, and compassion that bordered
on pity for her daughter and her grandson.
In a lot of ways, Andrea Dolan's treatment of Cat had not materially changed, after the event of nineteen
sixty-two, from how it had been for all of the girl's life. She herself had been kept like a grain of sand in an
oyster since her own trauma, that snowy autumn night.
She didn't get raped, at least not completely raped. Nor did she become pregnant. But she did endure violence
of profound obscenity.
She also witnessed justice and revenge, hurling from the twin barrels of Old Fargo's shotgun and bearing her
salvation. Andrea Clare was left with dead to hate and dead to mourn.
Thank heaven, as she whispered in her prayers every night, that she also was left with Johnny. It was he who
held her while she hated and mourned, and when winter passed and Andrea Clare saw the sun again, she saw it
sparkling on his hair and in his eyes. And then she had Catherine Marie, and pools of hate and sorrow overflowed
into cascades of love and concern.
The way she raised her daughter was filled with human irony. The gem cupped in sheltering hands so quickly
sprouted wings and flew. Over-protection gave way helplessly to over-indulgence. The child not allowed to stray
from sight, became the twelve year old who went alone to the peak, who walked in unknown woods, who prowled
her own world with authority. The authority loomed from her strength, and her strength was nurtured by the
same hands that could only wave hope and joy when Andrea's strong daughter went on her own into the world of
steep rock and all out gravity.
She was too strong to stop, and who would want to?
In the early years Andrea catered to her every whim like any mother, a falcon-gentle to her falconet. Like
many of their country-men, the Devlins schooled their children in the home. Johnny Dolan, when confronted with
this expectation by Andrea still with child, consulted his memory, and found no easy reason to protest.
School had not been the wonder years for Johnny Dolan. The wonder years were squeezed in between four in
the afternoon and nine in the morning, and even then there was the homework, and repression. Nine in the
morning meant nine at night.
He did not excel, but he passed, and though he learned to read and write and to do some arithmetic, he always
had the feeling that these skills, to the degree that he held them, could maybe have been learned quicker and
easier, some other way.
As for the rest of it, whatever it was had done little for Johnny Dolan, that he could perceive, other than to
dull his wild points and make him fit the plodding mass. The Devlins were different. Johnny had noticed it right
away, when he had met Hank and the boys on that job back in Collins Cove.
Despite the tragedy that took Tom and Joe along with Johnny's sister, Glow, he was enchanted by what he saw
as a wilder way to live. It wasn't something he could put his finger on.
"Johnny Dolan was wild," was how Agnes Tawny had put it to Cat. Strange as it sounded to the girl who had
always seen her father as the paragon of domesticity, she was right. For his own sake, it was probably best that
his wings were clipped by his education; otherwise, he would probably have ended in prison.
If his own culture had let him down, the one he stepped into, when he added his name to the progeny of the
Devlins, was a resurrection. He had found the world he had been searching for when he had left his home. The
little shack he had been renting had been his jumping off point to a new life.
Carpentry grew from a way to make a living, to a way of life. Arithmetic became meaningful. And to soothe
the other side of his brain, he had Andrea. The concern that flowered for her made himself more fully a man. His
arms, which had already been strong, now grew graceful and gentle as well. Suddenly he was the fulfillment of
someone's needs. Firewood, food and furniture flew from his fingers. It could be said that putting the Devlin
Johnny Dolan made him feel like a god.
It's fortunate for gods that they do not depend on their worshippers for satisfaction. They may, like Kipling's
Puck, slip into imaginary nonexistence, but they neither notice, nor care. It was fortunate for Johnny, because,
while the Devlins may have had their deifying effect on the young carpenter who married their daughter and
moved in with them, they retained the position of the average agnostic toward their son-in-law.
Agnostics are usually a warm-hearted sort. They love gods and goddesses; they just don't know whether or
not to believe in them. This clouds their lives a little, and they just as regularly overcome this with humor.
They loved him, but they thought he was a bit of a goof. Their tolerance of his goofiness depended a lot on the
expectation that he would learn and improve as a direct result of his affiliation with the Devlin family.
Johnny fit right in. With a little guidance, he was the consummate Devlin in months. If they saw goofiness, they
were only seeing their own reflection. Johnny was already hard-working and talented. Now he had all of the rest
of the descriptives that went into that kind of person. A combination of common sense, thrift, perseverance,
patience, of course, but more especially the adherence to good, time-worn trails, not through repression, but
through attraction. The ways were pleasant that Johnny Dolan adopted, and the years were happy.
If adjectives are employed to define these trails, neat is one that suggests itself, neat as in the rows of tools
on the wall of Johnny's woodshop, as in the dust-free sacks of grain and equipment in Andrea's feed room, or in
the laboratory-precision that operated, just below the paint-encrusted pickup facade, as Hank Devlin's painting
enterprise.
It all looked a little better than it was, which weirdly made it a little better than it was, which is as close a
justification for hypocrisy as needed.
Besides neat, one might choose clean, for another adjective. Orderly, functional, methodic, habitual are all
pokes toward deeper understanding of the tribe. Conservative, tame and boring are more of the same, with bias.
Smug and serene.
grey business suit. But the young man who left Dove Springs ten years later was. Cat had helped him to purchase
the suit and the black shoes.
Her folks knew nothing of that. Vikor already had one suit, for even in Dove Springs, there are funerals,
sometimes weddings, or job interviews, perhaps.
Just like his mother, Vikor had kept himself free of job interviews. There was no getting around being
drafted for chores on the Devlin/Dolan farm, as well as the occasional stint as painter's helper. He had done his
share of cutting firewood and tending cows.
The awkwardness of his genesis was a hurdle that his grandparents never really found their way over. John
and Andrea Dolan forever treated little Victor as a part of Catherine's trauma. From them, hearts of warmth as
they were, that meant eternal solicitation and concern, without pester and fuss. They were really good at allowing
their child and their grandchild to live freely. To "sponge off of them," was how some would have labeled it, were
they so invited.
Johnny and Andrea did not look at it like that, however. For his part, John Dolan grew more and more to be a
part of his woodshop. He could always be found hunching slightly over a bench or a vise, patiently working details
with a chisel, or he would be operating a band saw, or a sanding belt. Whenever he saw his grandson his heart
would surge with a flame that had once been rage, but with no outlet (like revenge), the emotion had grown like a
vine, had twisted and leafed and borne flowers and fruit.
Andrea had retreated to a womb of her own, and was equally graceful in her solicitude of Catherine and
Victor. She tiptoed through the years, bringing food and drink, kind concern, love, and compassion that bordered
on pity for her daughter and her grandson.
In a lot of ways, Andrea Dolan's treatment of Cat had not materially changed, after the event of nineteen
sixty-two, from how it had been for all of the girl's life. She herself had been kept like a grain of sand in an
oyster since her own trauma, that snowy autumn night.
She didn't get raped, at least not completely raped. Nor did she become pregnant. But she did endure violence
of profound obscenity.
She also witnessed justice and revenge, hurling from the twin barrels of Old Fargo's shotgun and bearing her
salvation. Andrea Clare was left with dead to hate and dead to mourn.
Thank heaven, as she whispered in her prayers every night, that she also was left with Johnny. It was he who
held her while she hated and mourned, and when winter passed and Andrea Clare saw the sun again, she saw it
sparkling on his hair and in his eyes. And then she had Catherine Marie, and pools of hate and sorrow overflowed
into cascades of love and concern.
The way she raised her daughter was filled with human irony. The gem cupped in sheltering hands so quickly
sprouted wings and flew. Over-protection gave way helplessly to over-indulgence. The child not allowed to stray
from sight, became the twelve year old who went alone to the peak, who walked in unknown woods, who prowled
her own world with authority. The authority loomed from her strength, and her strength was nurtured by the
same hands that could only wave hope and joy when Andrea's strong daughter went on her own into the world of
steep rock and all out gravity.
She was too strong to stop, and who would want to?
In the early years Andrea catered to her every whim like any mother, a falcon-gentle to her falconet. Like
many of their country-men, the Devlins schooled their children in the home. Johnny Dolan, when confronted with
this expectation by Andrea still with child, consulted his memory, and found no easy reason to protest.
School had not been the wonder years for Johnny Dolan. The wonder years were squeezed in between four in
the afternoon and nine in the morning, and even then there was the homework, and repression. Nine in the
morning meant nine at night.
He did not excel, but he passed, and though he learned to read and write and to do some arithmetic, he always
had the feeling that these skills, to the degree that he held them, could maybe have been learned quicker and
easier, some other way.
As for the rest of it, whatever it was had done little for Johnny Dolan, that he could perceive, other than to
dull his wild points and make him fit the plodding mass. The Devlins were different. Johnny had noticed it right
away, when he had met Hank and the boys on that job back in Collins Cove.
Despite the tragedy that took Tom and Joe along with Johnny's sister, Glow, he was enchanted by what he saw
as a wilder way to live. It wasn't something he could put his finger on.
"Johnny Dolan was wild," was how Agnes Tawny had put it to Cat. Strange as it sounded to the girl who had
always seen her father as the paragon of domesticity, she was right. For his own sake, it was probably best that
his wings were clipped by his education; otherwise, he would probably have ended in prison.
If his own culture had let him down, the one he stepped into, when he added his name to the progeny of the
Devlins, was a resurrection. He had found the world he had been searching for when he had left his home. The
little shack he had been renting had been his jumping off point to a new life.
Carpentry grew from a way to make a living, to a way of life. Arithmetic became meaningful. And to soothe
the other side of his brain, he had Andrea. The concern that flowered for her made himself more fully a man. His
arms, which had already been strong, now grew graceful and gentle as well. Suddenly he was the fulfillment of
someone's needs. Firewood, food and furniture flew from his fingers. It could be said that putting the Devlin
Johnny Dolan made him feel like a god.
It's fortunate for gods that they do not depend on their worshippers for satisfaction. They may, like Kipling's
Puck, slip into imaginary nonexistence, but they neither notice, nor care. It was fortunate for Johnny, because,
while the Devlins may have had their deifying effect on the young carpenter who married their daughter and
moved in with them, they retained the position of the average agnostic toward their son-in-law.
Agnostics are usually a warm-hearted sort. They love gods and goddesses; they just don't know whether or
not to believe in them. This clouds their lives a little, and they just as regularly overcome this with humor.
They loved him, but they thought he was a bit of a goof. Their tolerance of his goofiness depended a lot on the
expectation that he would learn and improve as a direct result of his affiliation with the Devlin family.
Johnny fit right in. With a little guidance, he was the consummate Devlin in months. If they saw goofiness, they
were only seeing their own reflection. Johnny was already hard-working and talented. Now he had all of the rest
of the descriptives that went into that kind of person. A combination of common sense, thrift, perseverance,
patience, of course, but more especially the adherence to good, time-worn trails, not through repression, but
through attraction. The ways were pleasant that Johnny Dolan adopted, and the years were happy.
If adjectives are employed to define these trails, neat is one that suggests itself, neat as in the rows of tools
on the wall of Johnny's woodshop, as in the dust-free sacks of grain and equipment in Andrea's feed room, or in
the laboratory-precision that operated, just below the paint-encrusted pickup facade, as Hank Devlin's painting
enterprise.
It all looked a little better than it was, which weirdly made it a little better than it was, which is as close a
justification for hypocrisy as needed.
Besides neat, one might choose clean, for another adjective. Orderly, functional, methodic, habitual are all
pokes toward deeper understanding of the tribe. Conservative, tame and boring are more of the same, with bias.
Smug and serene.
Vikor ate his dinner in a restaurant called "Texan Tommy's" that evening in Birmingham. He didn't know it,
but he had four more kills ahead of him before he would get on the train to Albuquerque.
He did know he was headed to Albuquerque. In later years, he would reflect on the serendipity that had his
pockets so full, when he reached the city in New Mexico, that he could afford to spare the inhabitants. Like some
ancient warlord with a twinge of homesickness, he let them live, the ones who might have fallen to his dagger.
On a sudden impulse he took a taxi to the airport and flew to San Francisco, then took the train home.
He missed his mom. But he stayed clean in New Mexico. And he had the ghosts of the Wilson family to thank
for the full pockets.
Vikor had accumulated close to eleven hundred dollars from eleven kills. He ordered a slice of pecan pie and
coffee. It averaged one hundred dollars per victim, plus, shall we say, travel expenses paid via VISA, the room,
the meals, now some clothes.
He stirred the restaurant's heavy cream into his coffee. It was less than he had hoped for, the hundred bucks,
but more than he had expected. Had they all paid off like Baxter Blake, Vikor would have had over four thousand
dollars, the jewelry and eleven credit cards by now. He had taken nothing from the four thugs.
Mugging the old guy in the alley had been another zip. But, whereas fighting four guys on the street was a
pastime he hoped to eschew, preying on the homeless still promised rewards. It sure wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at
all. He had read accounts of street people who actually received monthly checks for disability, pensions, money
from home, or wages.
Rather than spend the money to rent a slum, they spent it on food or alcohol. Rather than keep it in a bank,
they kept it on their person, in a pocket, a shoe or a lining.
Sometimes they hid it, but most hiding places were not safe either. It might be found, by children exploring
every nook of their urban terrain, by cruisers who had grown up in the neighborhood, who knew every wrinkle
and nook of their range, and who, at a lazy tempo, looked in on each from time to time in hopes of being the one
to find that, once again, some fool has stashed his or her guns, drugs or cash.
It wasn't fair, but it was safer to keep the money in the shoe and have it punched away. It wasn't fair, but
Vikor had no more than a dim empathy for his own victims, a sort of hey, life is rough commonality that he really
felt. To allow the feeling to hinder his achieving his survival objectives would be a weakness that would render
him unfit.
He would have had to go into a different line of work.
but he had four more kills ahead of him before he would get on the train to Albuquerque.
He did know he was headed to Albuquerque. In later years, he would reflect on the serendipity that had his
pockets so full, when he reached the city in New Mexico, that he could afford to spare the inhabitants. Like some
ancient warlord with a twinge of homesickness, he let them live, the ones who might have fallen to his dagger.
On a sudden impulse he took a taxi to the airport and flew to San Francisco, then took the train home.
He missed his mom. But he stayed clean in New Mexico. And he had the ghosts of the Wilson family to thank
for the full pockets.
Vikor had accumulated close to eleven hundred dollars from eleven kills. He ordered a slice of pecan pie and
coffee. It averaged one hundred dollars per victim, plus, shall we say, travel expenses paid via VISA, the room,
the meals, now some clothes.
He stirred the restaurant's heavy cream into his coffee. It was less than he had hoped for, the hundred bucks,
but more than he had expected. Had they all paid off like Baxter Blake, Vikor would have had over four thousand
dollars, the jewelry and eleven credit cards by now. He had taken nothing from the four thugs.
Mugging the old guy in the alley had been another zip. But, whereas fighting four guys on the street was a
pastime he hoped to eschew, preying on the homeless still promised rewards. It sure wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at
all. He had read accounts of street people who actually received monthly checks for disability, pensions, money
from home, or wages.
Rather than spend the money to rent a slum, they spent it on food or alcohol. Rather than keep it in a bank,
they kept it on their person, in a pocket, a shoe or a lining.
Sometimes they hid it, but most hiding places were not safe either. It might be found, by children exploring
every nook of their urban terrain, by cruisers who had grown up in the neighborhood, who knew every wrinkle
and nook of their range, and who, at a lazy tempo, looked in on each from time to time in hopes of being the one
to find that, once again, some fool has stashed his or her guns, drugs or cash.
It wasn't fair, but it was safer to keep the money in the shoe and have it punched away. It wasn't fair, but
Vikor had no more than a dim empathy for his own victims, a sort of hey, life is rough commonality that he really
felt. To allow the feeling to hinder his achieving his survival objectives would be a weakness that would render
him unfit.
He would have had to go into a different line of work.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 23 February, 1980
Rained all day today. We worked on Bob's shack today and got the floor joisted and sheeted with plywood, but we
have to put another layer of plywood on it.
Also I made nifty latches for all of our gates, five. So now we don't have to fumble with chains and harness snaps.
Ed French, the game warden, stopped by today to see how we were doing.
Rained all day today. We worked on Bob's shack today and got the floor joisted and sheeted with plywood, but we
have to put another layer of plywood on it.
Also I made nifty latches for all of our gates, five. So now we don't have to fumble with chains and harness snaps.
Ed French, the game warden, stopped by today to see how we were doing.
| * * * |
The reason for the second layer of plywood, on the floor of the new, little shack at Fugitive Creek, was that
Bob's weight was so ponderous that the half inch sheet of CDX that was available bowed beneath his steps.
It did not bow beneath Johnny's steps.
Bob's weight was so ponderous that the half inch sheet of CDX that was available bowed beneath his steps.
It did not bow beneath Johnny's steps.
| * * * |
A mile or so east and moonbeams beyond the little house where the snake was dying, a canyon slendered its
way into a hill. It narrowed into a steep-sided arroyo, a cathedral of pinnacle erosion, tons of undercut clay, and
poison grottos.
On the hill above, a man and a woman stood barely watching the last of the sunset. The man held a pistol.
From across the valley one could see his arm raised at an angle. One could see the licks of flame jab into the
canyon, and hear the bang, bang, bang.
The woman was beautiful, with long dark hair, slim and modern, with boots and feathers. Each of them held a
glass. In the glasses were ice cubes, lime and traces of gin.
Behind them, unnoticed and silent, the moon arose. It was red. In the canyon the echoes of gunfire died away.
A rattle of dirt trailed from a bullet scar in the gully wall. Sand, clay and pebbles rained onto the dark path of
wash sand. In the growing moonlight were tracks of reptiles and mammals. Some of the mammal tracks were
human.
Bang! A man protects his home from canyon creatures. Sparrows laugh in the manzanita.
Bang! His children from the wolves. A happy summer coyote tilts his ears; how close he was, he and his
friends, curled in the prickly pear.
Bang! His woman is safe with him. This is the boast of the advertising executive, with the gun. His woman is
safe from murderers, rapists and wetbacks. Safe from the suburban rejects who spew from the city into the hills.
Bang! Where was he… at work… when she chased away the greasy low-riders herself with a shotgun?
Bang! His territory! His locked gate! His road!
The moon turned white. Whose road was this, gleaming like a strand of saliva through the trees and long
grass? Whose dusty shadow? Whose bare foot prints? (Whose barefoot prince?)
Bang.
way into a hill. It narrowed into a steep-sided arroyo, a cathedral of pinnacle erosion, tons of undercut clay, and
poison grottos.
On the hill above, a man and a woman stood barely watching the last of the sunset. The man held a pistol.
From across the valley one could see his arm raised at an angle. One could see the licks of flame jab into the
canyon, and hear the bang, bang, bang.
The woman was beautiful, with long dark hair, slim and modern, with boots and feathers. Each of them held a
glass. In the glasses were ice cubes, lime and traces of gin.
Behind them, unnoticed and silent, the moon arose. It was red. In the canyon the echoes of gunfire died away.
A rattle of dirt trailed from a bullet scar in the gully wall. Sand, clay and pebbles rained onto the dark path of
wash sand. In the growing moonlight were tracks of reptiles and mammals. Some of the mammal tracks were
human.
Bang! A man protects his home from canyon creatures. Sparrows laugh in the manzanita.
Bang! His children from the wolves. A happy summer coyote tilts his ears; how close he was, he and his
friends, curled in the prickly pear.
Bang! His woman is safe with him. This is the boast of the advertising executive, with the gun. His woman is
safe from murderers, rapists and wetbacks. Safe from the suburban rejects who spew from the city into the hills.
Bang! Where was he… at work… when she chased away the greasy low-riders herself with a shotgun?
Bang! His territory! His locked gate! His road!
The moon turned white. Whose road was this, gleaming like a strand of saliva through the trees and long
grass? Whose dusty shadow? Whose bare foot prints? (Whose barefoot prince?)
Bang.
| * * * |
Tawngness observed the goatherder as well. He was usually doing something. He was always watching the herd.
He was always counting the members of his herd. Numbers and math eluded Tawngness, but there is a
non-analytical aspect to a count that she did grasp. She had counted many a litter with neither the use of
numbers, nor any understanding of their relationships with one another. The kittens were either all there, or
they were not.
There were times when the goats were not all there, and then Johnny would immediately seek out the
missing member of the herd. He would find her behind a boulder or a bush, or sometimes just over a rise. As
often as not the doe would never know herself that she had been missing. Having drifted out of sight of the
goatherder did not mean to her that she was not still in the herd, if only on the periphery.
Heck, she might be the leader of the next march.
Tawngness watched. Were a succulent kid or a plump doe really to get lost, to fall behind, to lose the herd and
to not be missed, and to be abandoned, she would have noticed, would have waited till the herd and the man
moved safely away, and Tawngness would have pounced and killed.
Simple as that. But it never happened. One night in late fall, she cruised by the little rancho in the moonlight.
She padded softly through the dead leaves that formed a thick layer under the chaparral, manzanita, mountain
lilac, and scrub oak. She moved along the slope, angling away from Fugitive Creek so that she arrived at the top
of the ridge where it intersected with Johnny's fence line.
She knew about the hot wire, the thin strand of baby barbs that ran along the top of the fence. She hopped
over and settled like a silent fairy onto a stretch of bare rock.
Now she moved around to her right, easing softly along the inside of the fence, circling to a more directly
downwind angle from the nested herd, somewhere in the depths of the pasture. This was the smaller of two areas
that Johnny had surrounded with wire. In addition to the barbed wire, which followed the boundary of the entire
ten acres, and in addition to the hot wire, the goat pastures were bound by four foot high hog wire.
Tawngness could not get through or under any of this steel tangle. She had been shocked once on the nose by
the sober little top strand. She had hissed and farted at the same time, and had gone in scampering bounds down
the side of the mountain ridge, hurtling from boulder to boulder and skimming through the brush in her
desperate escape.
But she was fine. It took one more jolt, just to be sure, and then never again. She could clear the barrier with
an easy jump. One just does not touch the electric fence.
Now she crouched on the lee side of the sleeping herd. Earlier she had circled the entire property, from
outside the barbed wire, and had roughly assessed the situation to be as follows. There was a human present,
probably asleep. The goats were asleep in the small pasture. There were no dogs. There was a cluster of structures
toward the center of the ranch. There was another building, a tiny shack, right at the fence line where both
pastures came together on the east side of the property, at a gate leading onto the open range.
By crossing the fence at a point on the eastern boundary, south of the shack where she suspected the
herdsman slept, she landed herself right in the enclosure with the goats. She avoided having to leap two other
fences and then to pass between the shack and the cluster. She also avoided the dirt road that skirted the eastern
half of the southern perimeter.
By drifting around to the northern edge of the pasture itself, Tawngness increased her distance from the
sleeping human, while simultaneously putting herself more squarely down wind in the current of air, blowing
through from the saddle north of the peak, that swept the ridge on which the ranch was located. Then, inch by
inch, she closed the distance between the somnolent goats and her own twitching nose. Presently she could make
them out in the silvery moonlight.
The pasture was about two acres in size. It had once been solid chaparral save for grassy meadows around
each of the three big oaks. The goats had made many inroads on this, over time, for they were constantly eating
brush. There were still thick mounds of buck brush and chamise, mazes of scrub oak and holly, patches of sage
and stands of sugar bush and manzanita.
He was always counting the members of his herd. Numbers and math eluded Tawngness, but there is a
non-analytical aspect to a count that she did grasp. She had counted many a litter with neither the use of
numbers, nor any understanding of their relationships with one another. The kittens were either all there, or
they were not.
There were times when the goats were not all there, and then Johnny would immediately seek out the
missing member of the herd. He would find her behind a boulder or a bush, or sometimes just over a rise. As
often as not the doe would never know herself that she had been missing. Having drifted out of sight of the
goatherder did not mean to her that she was not still in the herd, if only on the periphery.
Heck, she might be the leader of the next march.
Tawngness watched. Were a succulent kid or a plump doe really to get lost, to fall behind, to lose the herd and
to not be missed, and to be abandoned, she would have noticed, would have waited till the herd and the man
moved safely away, and Tawngness would have pounced and killed.
Simple as that. But it never happened. One night in late fall, she cruised by the little rancho in the moonlight.
She padded softly through the dead leaves that formed a thick layer under the chaparral, manzanita, mountain
lilac, and scrub oak. She moved along the slope, angling away from Fugitive Creek so that she arrived at the top
of the ridge where it intersected with Johnny's fence line.
She knew about the hot wire, the thin strand of baby barbs that ran along the top of the fence. She hopped
over and settled like a silent fairy onto a stretch of bare rock.
Now she moved around to her right, easing softly along the inside of the fence, circling to a more directly
downwind angle from the nested herd, somewhere in the depths of the pasture. This was the smaller of two areas
that Johnny had surrounded with wire. In addition to the barbed wire, which followed the boundary of the entire
ten acres, and in addition to the hot wire, the goat pastures were bound by four foot high hog wire.
Tawngness could not get through or under any of this steel tangle. She had been shocked once on the nose by
the sober little top strand. She had hissed and farted at the same time, and had gone in scampering bounds down
the side of the mountain ridge, hurtling from boulder to boulder and skimming through the brush in her
desperate escape.
But she was fine. It took one more jolt, just to be sure, and then never again. She could clear the barrier with
an easy jump. One just does not touch the electric fence.
Now she crouched on the lee side of the sleeping herd. Earlier she had circled the entire property, from
outside the barbed wire, and had roughly assessed the situation to be as follows. There was a human present,
probably asleep. The goats were asleep in the small pasture. There were no dogs. There was a cluster of structures
toward the center of the ranch. There was another building, a tiny shack, right at the fence line where both
pastures came together on the east side of the property, at a gate leading onto the open range.
By crossing the fence at a point on the eastern boundary, south of the shack where she suspected the
herdsman slept, she landed herself right in the enclosure with the goats. She avoided having to leap two other
fences and then to pass between the shack and the cluster. She also avoided the dirt road that skirted the eastern
half of the southern perimeter.
By drifting around to the northern edge of the pasture itself, Tawngness increased her distance from the
sleeping human, while simultaneously putting herself more squarely down wind in the current of air, blowing
through from the saddle north of the peak, that swept the ridge on which the ranch was located. Then, inch by
inch, she closed the distance between the somnolent goats and her own twitching nose. Presently she could make
them out in the silvery moonlight.
The pasture was about two acres in size. It had once been solid chaparral save for grassy meadows around
each of the three big oaks. The goats had made many inroads on this, over time, for they were constantly eating
brush. There were still thick mounds of buck brush and chamise, mazes of scrub oak and holly, patches of sage
and stands of sugar bush and manzanita.
Violeta Ferrerra and her mate didn't know that four years after they got together, with a three year old son,
and another on the way, Ivan would die, trapped with six of his co-workers, suffocated a mile below the surface of
the world, as a result of a cave-in down in the dark labyrinth of mineral trails.
Chela had gone to her sister then, to support her in the tragedy. Violeta was pregnant. She was broke and
isolated out on the land.
Having not been married to Ivan, she was not entitled to any survivor's benefits from the mine.
Nor did the Bertmans offer any assistance. Violeta had contacted them once, by phone, right after Ivan's
death.
"Hello."
"Hello, Mrs. Bertman?"
"Yes?"
"I… um, this is… my name is Violeta (here she longed to say Bertman, for she had used that name within
the small community where she and her man had lived. Of course, that would not work on the one who had, in
effect, denied her that name)…" She was forced to clear her throat, a polite 'ahem.' She began again.
"My name… this is Violeta Ferrerra," she declared, her pride tiring of this deferential cringing.
"Yes?" came again the arch response.
"Yes, I, well…" began Violeta, left hanging. "I guess I should… that is… I want to tell you how sorry I am
that your son… that Ivan…" Here she was, trying to console the bitch, when it was she, Violeta, who needed to
be…
"Thank you for your sympathy," came the icy interruption. The silence that followed said, enough of that!
Are we finished?
Violeta almost said, you're welcome, but she didn't. She was left hanging once again. She sensed what a kick
was coming, as she searched for words to reach the heart.
"I have our, Ivan's and mine, kids," she began.
"Well, enough of this," the older woman spat, putting it into words this time. "I am in the middle of a
private, family tragedy. I have no time for this. Nor will I tolerate it!"
"But I… we…"
"You!" snapped Mrs. Bertman. "Listen to me, Senorita Ferria, If you have problems that our lawyer would be
interested in, it's Marvin Shamsky in Santa Fe. Good day!"
Butt out.
"Well I'm just letting you fucking shitheads know that me and my kids are fine, and that you can all just…
piss off!" Violeta screamed into the borrowed phone, but the line had already gone dead. Mrs. Bertman had hung
up.
She slammed the receiver into the cradle, then apologized. "I'm sorry, Millie," she said to her neighbor, who
sat at her kitchen table with a look of concern. "I'm gonna break your phone."
Millie's home was out by the highway, so she had telephone and electricity, for the lines went right by. Now
she said, "That's okay, Vi. Do it again, if it feels good."
"Aw, Millie, nothing feels good right now," she sighed in resignation. She rested her cheek on her palm, her
head tilted sideways in a sad attitude of frustration, or despair. Her long hair flowed over the edge of the table.
Her flowery smock bulged with a belly full of baby.
Millie came around the table then, to give her sad neighbor a hug.
The next day, when Chela arrived, she hugged her sister, and both of them wept with abandon. They had
never hidden their sorrows from one another. Now they clung to one another for a long time, the better part of
half an hour, and sobbed and howled. After that they found that they could talk, and laugh.
and another on the way, Ivan would die, trapped with six of his co-workers, suffocated a mile below the surface of
the world, as a result of a cave-in down in the dark labyrinth of mineral trails.
Chela had gone to her sister then, to support her in the tragedy. Violeta was pregnant. She was broke and
isolated out on the land.
Having not been married to Ivan, she was not entitled to any survivor's benefits from the mine.
Nor did the Bertmans offer any assistance. Violeta had contacted them once, by phone, right after Ivan's
death.
"Hello."
"Hello, Mrs. Bertman?"
"Yes?"
"I… um, this is… my name is Violeta (here she longed to say Bertman, for she had used that name within
the small community where she and her man had lived. Of course, that would not work on the one who had, in
effect, denied her that name)…" She was forced to clear her throat, a polite 'ahem.' She began again.
"My name… this is Violeta Ferrerra," she declared, her pride tiring of this deferential cringing.
"Yes?" came again the arch response.
"Yes, I, well…" began Violeta, left hanging. "I guess I should… that is… I want to tell you how sorry I am
that your son… that Ivan…" Here she was, trying to console the bitch, when it was she, Violeta, who needed to
be…
"Thank you for your sympathy," came the icy interruption. The silence that followed said, enough of that!
Are we finished?
Violeta almost said, you're welcome, but she didn't. She was left hanging once again. She sensed what a kick
was coming, as she searched for words to reach the heart.
"I have our, Ivan's and mine, kids," she began.
"Well, enough of this," the older woman spat, putting it into words this time. "I am in the middle of a
private, family tragedy. I have no time for this. Nor will I tolerate it!"
"But I… we…"
"You!" snapped Mrs. Bertman. "Listen to me, Senorita Ferria, If you have problems that our lawyer would be
interested in, it's Marvin Shamsky in Santa Fe. Good day!"
Butt out.
"Well I'm just letting you fucking shitheads know that me and my kids are fine, and that you can all just…
piss off!" Violeta screamed into the borrowed phone, but the line had already gone dead. Mrs. Bertman had hung
up.
She slammed the receiver into the cradle, then apologized. "I'm sorry, Millie," she said to her neighbor, who
sat at her kitchen table with a look of concern. "I'm gonna break your phone."
Millie's home was out by the highway, so she had telephone and electricity, for the lines went right by. Now
she said, "That's okay, Vi. Do it again, if it feels good."
"Aw, Millie, nothing feels good right now," she sighed in resignation. She rested her cheek on her palm, her
head tilted sideways in a sad attitude of frustration, or despair. Her long hair flowed over the edge of the table.
Her flowery smock bulged with a belly full of baby.
Millie came around the table then, to give her sad neighbor a hug.
The next day, when Chela arrived, she hugged her sister, and both of them wept with abandon. They had
never hidden their sorrows from one another. Now they clung to one another for a long time, the better part of
half an hour, and sobbed and howled. After that they found that they could talk, and laugh.
| * * * |
| * * * |
