| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder 26 May 1981
It's been over a year since I last wrote in this book. Much has happened.
"Whatever happens will be fine, I'm sure." Those were the last words that I wrote.
And everything has been fine, ultimately. It all works out for the best.
Now, in late Spring of 1981, I'm working at my old job in the Carmel Valley Shell
Station in Del Mar. Working evenings, four till midnight, closing up the station, doing
some inventory, adding up the credit card invoices. Then I crawl into my Volkswagen bus,
parked behind the station, and go to sleep.
It's been over a year since I last wrote in this book. Much has happened.
"Whatever happens will be fine, I'm sure." Those were the last words that I wrote.
And everything has been fine, ultimately. It all works out for the best.
Now, in late Spring of 1981, I'm working at my old job in the Carmel Valley Shell
Station in Del Mar. Working evenings, four till midnight, closing up the station, doing
some inventory, adding up the credit card invoices. Then I crawl into my Volkswagen bus,
parked behind the station, and go to sleep.
| Chapter Forty-one CAROL |
Agnes accompanied Catherine Marie all the way to her room. She saw her safely to bed. Agnes' penchant
for secrecy was not much of a handicap for her; she traveled where she would, sometimes in disguise,
sometimes invisible, although anyone could see her, anyone who really wanted to.
So, she had the effect of rendering others invisible as well. Undetected, she conveyed the fainting Cat One to
her lair.
Agnes Tawny, wrong or right, felt herself to be medical authority. Her response would have been severe to
any imaginary suggestion that a doctor or a hospital be consulted. Cat was in good hands, and better than were
she at the center of an uproar.
By the next day, three things had become apparent. Three things had become apparent to three different
parties. Three separate revelations. The first of these was Cat One Dolan’s.
Cat had thought that the meeting with Selabjun Kirkhaz, the geology professor from hell, had been the
crossroad towards which she headed, but she had rocketed so quickly through love to rape that she naturally
identified that tragedy as her dared comeuppance.
Something new? Try this. After all, the crystal did not make predictions. No matter what anyone says, the
crystal does not tell what is going to happen. Not even Agnes knew. Nor was she immune to sorrow.
Now, as she drifted awake a rosy morning later, Cat One Dolan realized that the runaway train had hurtled
right through the rape crossing as well.
Folks, it looks like we'll be stopping at murder.
for secrecy was not much of a handicap for her; she traveled where she would, sometimes in disguise,
sometimes invisible, although anyone could see her, anyone who really wanted to.
So, she had the effect of rendering others invisible as well. Undetected, she conveyed the fainting Cat One to
her lair.
Agnes Tawny, wrong or right, felt herself to be medical authority. Her response would have been severe to
any imaginary suggestion that a doctor or a hospital be consulted. Cat was in good hands, and better than were
she at the center of an uproar.
By the next day, three things had become apparent. Three things had become apparent to three different
parties. Three separate revelations. The first of these was Cat One Dolan’s.
Cat had thought that the meeting with Selabjun Kirkhaz, the geology professor from hell, had been the
crossroad towards which she headed, but she had rocketed so quickly through love to rape that she naturally
identified that tragedy as her dared comeuppance.
Something new? Try this. After all, the crystal did not make predictions. No matter what anyone says, the
crystal does not tell what is going to happen. Not even Agnes knew. Nor was she immune to sorrow.
Now, as she drifted awake a rosy morning later, Cat One Dolan realized that the runaway train had hurtled
right through the rape crossing as well.
Folks, it looks like we'll be stopping at murder.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 27 May 1981
To the casual observer it may appear that I have slipped in terms of well-being, prosperity,
environment, freedom. Yet I continue to feel that I am in the right place at the right time.
For a while there, on the mountain, it wasn't that way.
To the casual observer it may appear that I have slipped in terms of well-being, prosperity,
environment, freedom. Yet I continue to feel that I am in the right place at the right time.
For a while there, on the mountain, it wasn't that way.
Tawngness wasn't smiling when the beam from Johnny's flashlight hit her on that winter night, but she had
just been. With another in a series of hot, bloody goats lying dead between her forepaws, life was becoming a
regular, juicy treat. Now this.
It might be more correct to say that her smile broadened. She turned and snarled into the brilliant sun that
suddenly had arisen with no twilight dawn in the middle of freezing night. She had been resignedly expecting
something weird to happen; she had already given up when she began to maraud. Domestics in pens were just
too easy; life was never so simple; there had to be a reason for the very existence of the taboo that she was
breaking, and she did it under a cower of guilt and defeat.
But she was expecting it, something weird, and she was ready for it. Snarling outrage and hissing threat are
as handy as guilt and defeat. If she was to go out, she was going out in defiance. She was scared shitless, but
she glared into the freezing beam and drew back her cat-lips to reveal her fangs and hissed the equivalent of
you goddamn better kill me you rude, cheese-eating motherfucker, or I am going to rip you and your impudent
light to bloody screams.
She didn't need to see him to know that the goatherder was there. Her nose gave her a perfect description
of Johnny standing naked in his own aura of loss and fear and rage and fuzzy dreams.
It was a pregnant moment.
just been. With another in a series of hot, bloody goats lying dead between her forepaws, life was becoming a
regular, juicy treat. Now this.
It might be more correct to say that her smile broadened. She turned and snarled into the brilliant sun that
suddenly had arisen with no twilight dawn in the middle of freezing night. She had been resignedly expecting
something weird to happen; she had already given up when she began to maraud. Domestics in pens were just
too easy; life was never so simple; there had to be a reason for the very existence of the taboo that she was
breaking, and she did it under a cower of guilt and defeat.
But she was expecting it, something weird, and she was ready for it. Snarling outrage and hissing threat are
as handy as guilt and defeat. If she was to go out, she was going out in defiance. She was scared shitless, but
she glared into the freezing beam and drew back her cat-lips to reveal her fangs and hissed the equivalent of
you goddamn better kill me you rude, cheese-eating motherfucker, or I am going to rip you and your impudent
light to bloody screams.
She didn't need to see him to know that the goatherder was there. Her nose gave her a perfect description
of Johnny standing naked in his own aura of loss and fear and rage and fuzzy dreams.
It was a pregnant moment.
| * * * |
| * * * |
The second revelation was to Agnes, who returned with herbs at dawn. When she laid her hands upon her
goddess child, she was right away aware that a real child lay curled in cellular potential.
Cat was pregnant!
goddess child, she was right away aware that a real child lay curled in cellular potential.
Cat was pregnant!
| * * * |
The moon circled. The oceans heaved in their swell. The tides raced and the winds hurried the weather.
Biological rhythms on the slopes of Cuyamaca shuffled the society of fugitives. Johnny, Bob and Carol…
The ovum slipped past. Once again, like an outlaw, she evaded the posse of sperm. Slipping through them
like one of their own, going against the flow, jarring against the column of dead-tired pilgrims who moved now
with the listless fervor of sleep-walking pollywogs, she made her escape.
She wandered the clean womb like a new moon, pressed in a soft, rosy firmament that allowed her infinity
and nothing. She waited, for how could she do else? She waited, drifting with the motion of her world.
Then the moon changed once more, and again the tide raged. Everything let go, and everything was swept
away. Cellular structures toppled. All that had been made ready for the young prince's coming, the moist,
caring layer whose threshold the two, now joined as one, would have crossed, came away in a soft, bloody wound.
The egg went too, flushed away in the same sad hemorrhage. What was it about her that had to be
discovered? Whatever it was had eluded the spermatozoa. Now she would go forever unjoined, and this was for
the best.
Events preceding this cataclysm became stormy on the surface. Carol was raised coarse trash. She
expressed irritation in a flash. She felt Bob's kiss push toward a fondle. "Give me a fucking break!" was her
sudden interjection. She accompanied her order with a push.
Bob was stung. Johnny saw the sting, and saw it go deep, and he winced for his young friend. Again he
watched him dash off into the twilight. Bob had hoped for an evening of bliss; now he would make a night of it.
He might even get laid, if he went down to Stallion Oaks. He had to consider this as he and Spot emerged from
cover onto Boulder Creek Road. The moon was full, and Bob felt the horse's muscles race with enthusiasm.The
road gleamed like a long strand of dragon drool, stretching either way into the darkness.
He had to consider it now that he had discovered that they would serve him down at the notorious bar that
was north of Descanso and south of Cuyamaca. Bob knew which way Johnny Stream would have gone, if it were
his choice, if he were out here alone to brood, if his heart was heavy and he had to decide, whether to seek his
peace on the dark, lonesome mountain side, or in the dim lit, warm crowd at Stallion Oaks. Well, Johnny was a
strange buck, thought Bob, and he turned Spot's head south, and he touched him with his spurs.
Meanwhile, back at the camp, Johnny Stream did by and by make his excuse and go saddle up to ride off by
himself. Carol Gallagher had become quite intolerable. Johnny reasoned that it meant that she wanted to be
alone, and that he had best fade away.
He did ride north, the direction away from towns and taverns, as Bob's hunch had him do. He never even got
onto the dirt road, however. The moonlight was enough to let him and the mare find their way on a trail, so
they moved off in a north-easterly direction, circling the mountain to the right, while falling to meet Boulder
Creek in its deep canyon to the left. Widowmaker made most of the decisions after that, for it was a familiar
trail, and horse sense was best in negotiating with the rocks, earth and gravity. Johnny was lost in random
thought, his head swaying beneath the stars in rhythm with the mare's deft steps, his eyes fixed on the big
moon, still low on the eastern horizon.
Bob Cabler was just then using the moon in a different way. The front brim of his battered straw cowboy hat
bent back against the crown as Spot raced with a steady lope into his own inertial wind. The road took its
curves, to the left around the brows of the ridges, painted white with bright moonbeams and dropping away to
distant vistas, to the right through brook-lined glades, dark with lunar dapples, and Bob and Spot curved with
it. The hypnosis of the patterned hoof-beats harmonized with flickering moon-shadows. The rider's jaw
maintained a set of determination, and the rider's mind was empty as a field of stars.
Carol Gallagher held her own at the campfire. She wasn't really in a bad mood. She suspected she was about
to get her period, but that was no news.
She just had to have some space and time to herself, without grabby hands and pushy hips. She gathered
her quilts about her so that she was snuggled right to her chin, and the fire died away as her face shone in
moonlit sleep.
Johnny Stream saw it just that way when he returned from his ride. He moved in silence, recovering his
own bedroll from the stash and rolling it out on the ground. He noticed that Bob's bedding lay still unused,
separate now from Carol's and hanging by itself in the net suspended from the low limb of an oak.
Johnny worried that Bob would stir unwelcome interest if he spent too much time down at the bar. He was
too attractive to go unnoticed. Down at that place, from what Johnny had always heard, a young buck might
draw attention from either sex.
Johnny wasn't worried about Bob's morality, for he was pretty sure that he had none in that area of
behavior. He wasn't particularly uneasy about his safety either, and not because he sensed that the lad was
safe. He had come to accept that Bob would always live at a level of danger that he himself would shun. He no
longer wasted worry over it. But he did grow restless if he imagined Bob's cavorting away from the hideout
calling attention in any way to the reality of three castaways hanging out up on Fugitive Creek.
He could only trust Bob. (Certainly he should not have trusted Donna Schultz. Even in that, he was only
trusting Cabler.) No harm had ever come of it. Nobody from Stallion Oaks ever came poking his or her nose
out to the little patch of land that Johnny's mother's family had fatuously called 'the ranch.'
Biological rhythms on the slopes of Cuyamaca shuffled the society of fugitives. Johnny, Bob and Carol…
The ovum slipped past. Once again, like an outlaw, she evaded the posse of sperm. Slipping through them
like one of their own, going against the flow, jarring against the column of dead-tired pilgrims who moved now
with the listless fervor of sleep-walking pollywogs, she made her escape.
She wandered the clean womb like a new moon, pressed in a soft, rosy firmament that allowed her infinity
and nothing. She waited, for how could she do else? She waited, drifting with the motion of her world.
Then the moon changed once more, and again the tide raged. Everything let go, and everything was swept
away. Cellular structures toppled. All that had been made ready for the young prince's coming, the moist,
caring layer whose threshold the two, now joined as one, would have crossed, came away in a soft, bloody wound.
The egg went too, flushed away in the same sad hemorrhage. What was it about her that had to be
discovered? Whatever it was had eluded the spermatozoa. Now she would go forever unjoined, and this was for
the best.
Events preceding this cataclysm became stormy on the surface. Carol was raised coarse trash. She
expressed irritation in a flash. She felt Bob's kiss push toward a fondle. "Give me a fucking break!" was her
sudden interjection. She accompanied her order with a push.
Bob was stung. Johnny saw the sting, and saw it go deep, and he winced for his young friend. Again he
watched him dash off into the twilight. Bob had hoped for an evening of bliss; now he would make a night of it.
He might even get laid, if he went down to Stallion Oaks. He had to consider this as he and Spot emerged from
cover onto Boulder Creek Road. The moon was full, and Bob felt the horse's muscles race with enthusiasm.The
road gleamed like a long strand of dragon drool, stretching either way into the darkness.
He had to consider it now that he had discovered that they would serve him down at the notorious bar that
was north of Descanso and south of Cuyamaca. Bob knew which way Johnny Stream would have gone, if it were
his choice, if he were out here alone to brood, if his heart was heavy and he had to decide, whether to seek his
peace on the dark, lonesome mountain side, or in the dim lit, warm crowd at Stallion Oaks. Well, Johnny was a
strange buck, thought Bob, and he turned Spot's head south, and he touched him with his spurs.
Meanwhile, back at the camp, Johnny Stream did by and by make his excuse and go saddle up to ride off by
himself. Carol Gallagher had become quite intolerable. Johnny reasoned that it meant that she wanted to be
alone, and that he had best fade away.
He did ride north, the direction away from towns and taverns, as Bob's hunch had him do. He never even got
onto the dirt road, however. The moonlight was enough to let him and the mare find their way on a trail, so
they moved off in a north-easterly direction, circling the mountain to the right, while falling to meet Boulder
Creek in its deep canyon to the left. Widowmaker made most of the decisions after that, for it was a familiar
trail, and horse sense was best in negotiating with the rocks, earth and gravity. Johnny was lost in random
thought, his head swaying beneath the stars in rhythm with the mare's deft steps, his eyes fixed on the big
moon, still low on the eastern horizon.
Bob Cabler was just then using the moon in a different way. The front brim of his battered straw cowboy hat
bent back against the crown as Spot raced with a steady lope into his own inertial wind. The road took its
curves, to the left around the brows of the ridges, painted white with bright moonbeams and dropping away to
distant vistas, to the right through brook-lined glades, dark with lunar dapples, and Bob and Spot curved with
it. The hypnosis of the patterned hoof-beats harmonized with flickering moon-shadows. The rider's jaw
maintained a set of determination, and the rider's mind was empty as a field of stars.
Carol Gallagher held her own at the campfire. She wasn't really in a bad mood. She suspected she was about
to get her period, but that was no news.
She just had to have some space and time to herself, without grabby hands and pushy hips. She gathered
her quilts about her so that she was snuggled right to her chin, and the fire died away as her face shone in
moonlit sleep.
Johnny Stream saw it just that way when he returned from his ride. He moved in silence, recovering his
own bedroll from the stash and rolling it out on the ground. He noticed that Bob's bedding lay still unused,
separate now from Carol's and hanging by itself in the net suspended from the low limb of an oak.
Johnny worried that Bob would stir unwelcome interest if he spent too much time down at the bar. He was
too attractive to go unnoticed. Down at that place, from what Johnny had always heard, a young buck might
draw attention from either sex.
Johnny wasn't worried about Bob's morality, for he was pretty sure that he had none in that area of
behavior. He wasn't particularly uneasy about his safety either, and not because he sensed that the lad was
safe. He had come to accept that Bob would always live at a level of danger that he himself would shun. He no
longer wasted worry over it. But he did grow restless if he imagined Bob's cavorting away from the hideout
calling attention in any way to the reality of three castaways hanging out up on Fugitive Creek.
He could only trust Bob. (Certainly he should not have trusted Donna Schultz. Even in that, he was only
trusting Cabler.) No harm had ever come of it. Nobody from Stallion Oaks ever came poking his or her nose
out to the little patch of land that Johnny's mother's family had fatuously called 'the ranch.'
| * * * |
Johnny Stream smiled to himself at these thoughts, and smiled again when he found himself thinking that
those were his only thoughts, and so they would have to do. Here he was moving along toward what he knew
could be an ambush or a trap, and his only thoughts were the nostalgia of a life he was never really allowed to
live.
"Do you really think anyone is still looking for us?" Bob had asked in the sneering tone that one uses when
consoling a paranoid. Johnny had let himself be consoled on the surface, but within he roiled with the trivia of
childhood, and he walked with his feet not touching the ground, leading the mare, and unbalanced from the
incongruity of it all.
those were his only thoughts, and so they would have to do. Here he was moving along toward what he knew
could be an ambush or a trap, and his only thoughts were the nostalgia of a life he was never really allowed to
live.
"Do you really think anyone is still looking for us?" Bob had asked in the sneering tone that one uses when
consoling a paranoid. Johnny had let himself be consoled on the surface, but within he roiled with the trivia of
childhood, and he walked with his feet not touching the ground, leading the mare, and unbalanced from the
incongruity of it all.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 27 May 1981
It was boring at first, and I would bring a book to alleviate the boredom. It was pleasant to relax in the long
summer grass on the mountainside, reading a Louis L'Amour western novel, always slightly aware of the tinkling goat
bells as they drifted farther away.
Other times I would bring along a notepad and knock off a couple of letters. To my daughter, Amelia, in Oregon. To
my brother, Grant, who owns the ranch but lives in Laguna Niguel and works for a corporation in Newport Beach. To
my sister, Betty, who has the stable home, husband and baby daughter in Ocean Beach. To my sister, Katie, a gypsy like
myself, working for a corporation in Del Mar, moving with every changing tide.
To Katie's husband, Ben, the notorious ex-con, dope smuggler, gypsy desperado, revolutionary.
To Steve Lane, old navy buddy, struggling through college, women, drugs, in San Luis Obisbo.
To all these and others, my far flung tribe of which I was the least, though perhaps the highest, at least
geographically, these letters would come. Letters from the fool on the hill, the black sheep with nothing better to do than
listen to goats chew.
Mercifully, I cannot recall what I may have said to them in those pastoral prosies. I fear that they all, in their unique
ways, thought me mad.
Ben in particular would chastise me, and liken my stay on the mountain to a prison sentence, self-imposed. The goats
were my ball and chain, the physical isolation of the mountain itself, my devil's island.
My brother, Grant, must have had mixed feelings. A hard-working money-saver himself, he would wince at the
poverty of my means, the futurelessness of my economy. (Futurelessness?)
On the other hand he was pleased to have someone working on the ranch, improving it and protecting it. And he knew
me well enough to have an inkling of how pleasant it really was for me out there.
It was pleasant. It was hard. There was much of making do and doing without. There was no electricity, but rather
kerosene, propane, candles, firewood.
For music there was a guitar. In the long winter evenings, with full belly and chest bare to the swelter of the wood
stove in the tiny trailer, whose doors and windows were flung wide to the freezing, rain-dark air, I would sit for hours
and pick and sing. "Goat herder’s Blues." "Black Mountain Lady."
When Bob was there, on a clear and windless night, we might have a campfire and drink a few warmish beers, after
which we would sing old songs from our teenage radio days, spit tobacco, get misty-eyed.
In the spring and summer of the year, Mike Wertz had stayed at the ranch for several moons. After he left and was
gone for several more moons, he returned for a visit. Another restless gypsy, he had in those months seen and done many
things, worked various jobs, endured many changes and a wide society. What impressed me most was that after all that
he came back to find life on the mountain virtually unchanged from the day he left. The ranch, the goats, and myself,
the Brown's, Danny and Stella and their kids in their adobe at Boulder Creek, and the dusty mile and a half of road that
connected us, the same as the day he had left. I gifted him with a couple of wheels of homemade cheese.
Cheese making occupied my evenings in the summer.
Around sundown I would return from the mountainside with the herd. I milked them during the beautiful twilight,
leaning my head against their soft bellies and gazing at the deep orange sky, and oak trees in silhouette.
Then when they were all tucked in their pen, safe and fed, I would carry the milk to the creek where I would filter it
into my stainless steel milk can and place it in the creek to chill.
The milk from the morning and the night before would come up with me then to the trailer.
Cheese making took about three hours, but much of that time was waiting for the lactobacilli to do their work. With
darkness coming as late as it does in the summer, it was after eleven each night before I would crawl into bed.
It was boring at first, and I would bring a book to alleviate the boredom. It was pleasant to relax in the long
summer grass on the mountainside, reading a Louis L'Amour western novel, always slightly aware of the tinkling goat
bells as they drifted farther away.
Other times I would bring along a notepad and knock off a couple of letters. To my daughter, Amelia, in Oregon. To
my brother, Grant, who owns the ranch but lives in Laguna Niguel and works for a corporation in Newport Beach. To
my sister, Betty, who has the stable home, husband and baby daughter in Ocean Beach. To my sister, Katie, a gypsy like
myself, working for a corporation in Del Mar, moving with every changing tide.
To Katie's husband, Ben, the notorious ex-con, dope smuggler, gypsy desperado, revolutionary.
To Steve Lane, old navy buddy, struggling through college, women, drugs, in San Luis Obisbo.
To all these and others, my far flung tribe of which I was the least, though perhaps the highest, at least
geographically, these letters would come. Letters from the fool on the hill, the black sheep with nothing better to do than
listen to goats chew.
Mercifully, I cannot recall what I may have said to them in those pastoral prosies. I fear that they all, in their unique
ways, thought me mad.
Ben in particular would chastise me, and liken my stay on the mountain to a prison sentence, self-imposed. The goats
were my ball and chain, the physical isolation of the mountain itself, my devil's island.
My brother, Grant, must have had mixed feelings. A hard-working money-saver himself, he would wince at the
poverty of my means, the futurelessness of my economy. (Futurelessness?)
On the other hand he was pleased to have someone working on the ranch, improving it and protecting it. And he knew
me well enough to have an inkling of how pleasant it really was for me out there.
It was pleasant. It was hard. There was much of making do and doing without. There was no electricity, but rather
kerosene, propane, candles, firewood.
For music there was a guitar. In the long winter evenings, with full belly and chest bare to the swelter of the wood
stove in the tiny trailer, whose doors and windows were flung wide to the freezing, rain-dark air, I would sit for hours
and pick and sing. "Goat herder’s Blues." "Black Mountain Lady."
When Bob was there, on a clear and windless night, we might have a campfire and drink a few warmish beers, after
which we would sing old songs from our teenage radio days, spit tobacco, get misty-eyed.
In the spring and summer of the year, Mike Wertz had stayed at the ranch for several moons. After he left and was
gone for several more moons, he returned for a visit. Another restless gypsy, he had in those months seen and done many
things, worked various jobs, endured many changes and a wide society. What impressed me most was that after all that
he came back to find life on the mountain virtually unchanged from the day he left. The ranch, the goats, and myself,
the Brown's, Danny and Stella and their kids in their adobe at Boulder Creek, and the dusty mile and a half of road that
connected us, the same as the day he had left. I gifted him with a couple of wheels of homemade cheese.
Cheese making occupied my evenings in the summer.
Around sundown I would return from the mountainside with the herd. I milked them during the beautiful twilight,
leaning my head against their soft bellies and gazing at the deep orange sky, and oak trees in silhouette.
Then when they were all tucked in their pen, safe and fed, I would carry the milk to the creek where I would filter it
into my stainless steel milk can and place it in the creek to chill.
The milk from the morning and the night before would come up with me then to the trailer.
Cheese making took about three hours, but much of that time was waiting for the lactobacilli to do their work. With
darkness coming as late as it does in the summer, it was after eleven each night before I would crawl into bed.
| * * * |
Revelation number three came to the party of hikers from the university who discovered the smash of
Kirkhaz. It's every rock climber's constant phantom, the sudden tilt, the loss of balance, the miss, the slip and
the fall. It's almost gratifying once in a while, perhaps once in a lifetime, to see the stark enemy sated. It was
like they came upon the mother monster, Gravity herself, and the prey she had pulled down and chewed and
excreted, all in one broad, swooping slash of merciless power.
It was as if to be reassured, that one's caution was not for nil, that one was not chicken or foolish or feeble,
to take second looks, to poise in analysis, and to be aware every moment of the yawning abyss. The danger was
real.
Following a proper time of respect, the hikers, many of whom knew Professor Kirkhaz, fashioned a litter
from madrona saplings and a climbing rope.
On Clark's hill it was the only use to which that climbing rope had ever been put. But it was there, in
somebody's daypack. Another climber contributed a shelter half in which they wrapped the body, which
threatened to fall apart in chunks on the trail down, if adequate provision were not made. Well indeed.
There were eight fellow students in that party that day, four boys and four girls, out to scale the ledge. Of
the eight, seven confirmed, among themselves and to the university hospital slash morgue personnel where he
was taken, that his penis was out of his pants at the time of the discovery. What a discovery!
The eighth hiker, a girl, Heidi Westbocker, clung to her own story when the police in Dove Springs had
them all down to the station for questioning, a day later.
"Heidi, you saw it the same as the rest of us," pleaded Paul Lake, her boyfriend. He spoke for the group.
There had been a general remarking on the professor's exposed condition, with the cold-bloodedness just short
of humor characteristic of college students. Although Heidi did not participate, no one noticed that, and she
herself could hardly have missed the exchange.
Kirkhaz. It's every rock climber's constant phantom, the sudden tilt, the loss of balance, the miss, the slip and
the fall. It's almost gratifying once in a while, perhaps once in a lifetime, to see the stark enemy sated. It was
like they came upon the mother monster, Gravity herself, and the prey she had pulled down and chewed and
excreted, all in one broad, swooping slash of merciless power.
It was as if to be reassured, that one's caution was not for nil, that one was not chicken or foolish or feeble,
to take second looks, to poise in analysis, and to be aware every moment of the yawning abyss. The danger was
real.
Following a proper time of respect, the hikers, many of whom knew Professor Kirkhaz, fashioned a litter
from madrona saplings and a climbing rope.
On Clark's hill it was the only use to which that climbing rope had ever been put. But it was there, in
somebody's daypack. Another climber contributed a shelter half in which they wrapped the body, which
threatened to fall apart in chunks on the trail down, if adequate provision were not made. Well indeed.
There were eight fellow students in that party that day, four boys and four girls, out to scale the ledge. Of
the eight, seven confirmed, among themselves and to the university hospital slash morgue personnel where he
was taken, that his penis was out of his pants at the time of the discovery. What a discovery!
The eighth hiker, a girl, Heidi Westbocker, clung to her own story when the police in Dove Springs had
them all down to the station for questioning, a day later.
"Heidi, you saw it the same as the rest of us," pleaded Paul Lake, her boyfriend. He spoke for the group.
There had been a general remarking on the professor's exposed condition, with the cold-bloodedness just short
of humor characteristic of college students. Although Heidi did not participate, no one noticed that, and she
herself could hardly have missed the exchange.
| * * * |
"I wonder why he had his dick out."
"Probably was taking a pee."
"Is that a pretty big one?"
"Jesus."
"You ought to see mine."
"Jesus."
"Why would he be peeing when he might fall?"
"He might fall any time."
"No, you know what I mean."
"I peed up in the chimney one time."
"You what?"
"You guys can do that."
"I did that before."
"You did?"
"Yeah. I just braced myself like this…"
"Jesus, you guys."
"Yeah, c'mon."
"Yeah. This ain't even under the chimney."
"Y'know, he could'a come right off the ledge."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Why would he be peeing on the ledge?"
"Where do you girls pee when you're up there?"
"I peed in the chimney once!"
"Shut up!"
"He probably wasn't peeing on the ledge; he was probably peeing off the ledge."
"Well, duh!"
"You guys are gross! What if you peed right on somebody's head?"
"Never happens."
"How do you know?"
"Ever get peed on?"
"Eww, no. Shut up."
"Always a first time."
"You shut up."
"Professor Kirkhaz wouldn't pee off the ledge! He isn't… wasn't a dork."
"Naw. He would'a held it."
"Maybe he was holding it." The smudge of innuendo in the last suggestion set off a ripple of laughter. Then
the students turned seriously back to the task.
"I still want to know, is that a pretty good size?"
"Yeah. It's a pretty big one."
"Probably was taking a pee."
"Is that a pretty big one?"
"Jesus."
"You ought to see mine."
"Jesus."
"Why would he be peeing when he might fall?"
"He might fall any time."
"No, you know what I mean."
"I peed up in the chimney one time."
"You what?"
"You guys can do that."
"I did that before."
"You did?"
"Yeah. I just braced myself like this…"
"Jesus, you guys."
"Yeah, c'mon."
"Yeah. This ain't even under the chimney."
"Y'know, he could'a come right off the ledge."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Why would he be peeing on the ledge?"
"Where do you girls pee when you're up there?"
"I peed in the chimney once!"
"Shut up!"
"He probably wasn't peeing on the ledge; he was probably peeing off the ledge."
"Well, duh!"
"You guys are gross! What if you peed right on somebody's head?"
"Never happens."
"How do you know?"
"Ever get peed on?"
"Eww, no. Shut up."
"Always a first time."
"You shut up."
"Professor Kirkhaz wouldn't pee off the ledge! He isn't… wasn't a dork."
"Naw. He would'a held it."
"Maybe he was holding it." The smudge of innuendo in the last suggestion set off a ripple of laughter. Then
the students turned seriously back to the task.
"I still want to know, is that a pretty good size?"
"Yeah. It's a pretty big one."
| * * * |
Johnny imagined, for an instant, that he could swing down off Widowmaker, and, in three strong strides, be
at the side of Carol Gallagher. He could ask her, are you all right? He rejected the thought in the same instant.
His boots hit the stony ground, and he ran to his bleeding buddy.
Johnny was no nonsense in emergencies and fast-moving situations. How could she possibly be all right?
Even if she hasn't a scratch on her, even if she was not raped but saved from rape, she is not all right.
And there's nothing I can do about it, he thought to himself. Meanwhile, Bob was hurt. The whole back of
his head was a rage of red. Johnny remembered later thinking, I don't see any brains; at least, I don't see any
brains.
He cradled the battered noggin, raising the face of his partner from the dirt. He made sure that Bob was
able to breathe despite the grind of earth that decorated his face.
Then Johnny turned his attention to the savaged back of the head. He favored Maggie Murphy with only a
two second close-up before announcing to himself that she was dead. Deeper thoughts on that subject would
have to wait as well.
Johnny Stream had been around injuries before. He quickly figured out that Bob, tough oaf that he was, was
not hurt as badly as might have been feared. He was hurt, alright. Most of the blood was coming from a long
gash that he had received from the open door of the panel truck. The blessing was that the three cracks from a
rock in the fist of Maggie Murphy had not cracked his skull.
As nearly as Johnny could tell, they had not. He winced as he probed the point of impact. It was as though
his fingers sensed the rude vibrations still emanating from the series of blows. Bob moaned.
Johnny felt suddenly helpless. She was dead did not want to wait for deeper thoughts. She was dead kept
clamoring into now. It was part of the stuff he had to rake through pretty quick. Bob was hurt. Maggie Murphy
was dead.
Carol Gallagher, meanwhile, shook herself out of her trance of terror after being so hastily sized up and
abandoned by her cowboy rescuer. She was no stranger to injury herself. She would have loved to be babied.
The rest of her life would be spent living down the changes and forces that were born of this morning's violence.
She gathered herself and hurried over to the truck.
Then she saw Maggie.
She saw Maggie flying spirit-free with a flock of birds. She saw her billowing in the clouds. She saw her
friend blooming in the wildflowers, dancing in the saplings, nodding in the smooth, golden grass. She saw her.
She heard her. She heard her voice sharing plans and wonders. She heard her say, "Carol."
She saw her lying face-up where she had tumbled at the push of the bullet. Carol reached for her; she
grasped; she saw and felt her friend disappearing into a million nooks and breezes. Her face was gone.
The bullet from Johnny's gun had entered the back of her head, and the exit wound had torn away most of
the features, leaving a bloody crater. Carol recoiled with a scream.
She looked at Johnny with horror. He was looking up at her, drawn by the scream, thinking again, there's
nothing I can do for you. And, do you even know that I am the one who shot your friend?
at the side of Carol Gallagher. He could ask her, are you all right? He rejected the thought in the same instant.
His boots hit the stony ground, and he ran to his bleeding buddy.
Johnny was no nonsense in emergencies and fast-moving situations. How could she possibly be all right?
Even if she hasn't a scratch on her, even if she was not raped but saved from rape, she is not all right.
And there's nothing I can do about it, he thought to himself. Meanwhile, Bob was hurt. The whole back of
his head was a rage of red. Johnny remembered later thinking, I don't see any brains; at least, I don't see any
brains.
He cradled the battered noggin, raising the face of his partner from the dirt. He made sure that Bob was
able to breathe despite the grind of earth that decorated his face.
Then Johnny turned his attention to the savaged back of the head. He favored Maggie Murphy with only a
two second close-up before announcing to himself that she was dead. Deeper thoughts on that subject would
have to wait as well.
Johnny Stream had been around injuries before. He quickly figured out that Bob, tough oaf that he was, was
not hurt as badly as might have been feared. He was hurt, alright. Most of the blood was coming from a long
gash that he had received from the open door of the panel truck. The blessing was that the three cracks from a
rock in the fist of Maggie Murphy had not cracked his skull.
As nearly as Johnny could tell, they had not. He winced as he probed the point of impact. It was as though
his fingers sensed the rude vibrations still emanating from the series of blows. Bob moaned.
Johnny felt suddenly helpless. She was dead did not want to wait for deeper thoughts. She was dead kept
clamoring into now. It was part of the stuff he had to rake through pretty quick. Bob was hurt. Maggie Murphy
was dead.
Carol Gallagher, meanwhile, shook herself out of her trance of terror after being so hastily sized up and
abandoned by her cowboy rescuer. She was no stranger to injury herself. She would have loved to be babied.
The rest of her life would be spent living down the changes and forces that were born of this morning's violence.
She gathered herself and hurried over to the truck.
Then she saw Maggie.
She saw Maggie flying spirit-free with a flock of birds. She saw her billowing in the clouds. She saw her
friend blooming in the wildflowers, dancing in the saplings, nodding in the smooth, golden grass. She saw her.
She heard her. She heard her voice sharing plans and wonders. She heard her say, "Carol."
She saw her lying face-up where she had tumbled at the push of the bullet. Carol reached for her; she
grasped; she saw and felt her friend disappearing into a million nooks and breezes. Her face was gone.
The bullet from Johnny's gun had entered the back of her head, and the exit wound had torn away most of
the features, leaving a bloody crater. Carol recoiled with a scream.
She looked at Johnny with horror. He was looking up at her, drawn by the scream, thinking again, there's
nothing I can do for you. And, do you even know that I am the one who shot your friend?
| * * * |
Tawngness, or a part of Tawngness, longed to flee, urged her legs to make the mighty bound, with or
without the kid. But Tawngness, or a part of Tawngness, crouched quailed in the goat pen, imprisoned in the
circle of light. This part was as paralyzed as a jackrabbit in a high-beam on a lonesome country road.
The part of Tawngness that was her nose gave her specific details. She knew right away who it was who held
the light. She had stalked Johnny and his herd every time she came through on her own circuit. But, until the
last time, when she finally broke down and polished off a couple of young does, she had always only looked.
Many a time, while Johnny had sat braiding a long chain of grass or flowers and the goats had browsed in
contentment, Tawngness had watched. Many a time she had circled and captured the wind that came from
Johnny to her.
How well she knew that wind! What a fascinating combination of fragrances, both alluring and repellent,
this goat boy Johnny was. She knew none of the names, but it was leather and denim, the human himself with
all his farts and sweats and horny dreams, and wool, and steel, and gun oil, and that faint trace of burned
powder from the last shots fired.
Tonight was different. Tonight it was just the goat boy.
Tonight there was no denim, and no wool, for even in the coldest weather Johnny slept in the raw. The
commotion in the pen had roused him, and he had leapt from his bed to grab the light and strike out into the
chill.
Tonight there was no leather, no steel, no oil and no whiffs of powder. Probably the old girl would not have
hung around as long as she did if she could have smelt the gun belt and the gun. Tawngness had made that
connection too. Her wisdom was multifold. She had scavenged prey that had fallen to gunshots. And she knew
as well what happens to proud young lions who cannot resist the lure to be the glowing center of attention that
morning sunlight, open space, a handy stump and golden fur can make of them. Bang!
Tonight there was no gun. Tonight the human spoke to her in a wordless snarl that she understood. She
understood the cry of the goat in that moment that lasted from her first footfall in the pen, through the short
dash, the bound, and the strong forelimbs' raking seizure, to the bite. The cry of the human was much more
than the squeak of fear from the kid had been. It was like her own hiss, like the growl of an angry mama bear,
or like the inchoate rage of dogs that do bite. (How do they eat?)
The panther bites too, cowboy. Maybe you should have stayed on a horse. She snarled back at him with
equal rage. The very tone of his voice made her vicious. The rude light… the awful authority… this was her
range… she had spared him… did he think he was Lightning?
Or did he think he was a bold buck? Still in her crouch, Tawngness cast her eyes to the left, seeing with
malignant glee that one of the mighty billies was climbing over the fence, and that the other, the one with the
horns, was nowhere to be seen.
And you have come out without your horns, have you not? That four foot fence between us is nothing to me,
mister. It matters not that I cannot see you; I've seen your ugly mug often enough.
I've seen your whole scrawny, hairless body when you lie on the rocks, wet from the creek. I could take you
on a cloudy night; I could take you with my eyes closed. Old and worn as I am, I'm still as many times stronger
than you as I have claws on both of my forepaws.
A deer is swifter than you, more alert, and more dangerous. You would be no more trouble for me than was
this gory little darlin' at my feet. You think I have offended you. You think I have violated you by coming here
in the night and catching what I can.
Who in the hell do you think you are, man? You make it so easy for me, bundling all of the darlings up in
this tiny pen; I don't even have to search for them, and when I find them, they cannot run away.
Another sidewise leer confirmed both that and its opposite. The goats were still bunched in terror across the
pen, unable to do more than push, but of the ones against the fence, some were actually being pushed up and
over by the surging herd.
Poor things. Tawngness surprised herself with her own sensitivity, and then wrote it off as sarcasm.
Sometimes I think I love them more than you do. They are so happy on the range, a joy for me to see,
certainly. Then every night I see you sucker them back into this little pen with a paltry handful of grain. They
are stupid, and you use their stupidity to manipulate them.
Why do you have them penned up all night in this little pen again? Is it because of me? Do you think that
by sleeping in that shack and holding them all in this cage right outside your window that you have them under
your wing somehow?
Who in the hell do you think you are, man? You interpose yourself between me and my natural prey.
Maybe we should play this like big fish, medium fish, little fish. You eat them. I eat you.
Except you don't even eat them, you goat cheese-sucking motherfucker. You keep them as slaves. Then
you interpose yourself between them and their children. I've been around at milking time. I've suckled my
own litters, but you… you are the species that nurses at the tits of its slaves.
It's funny how free I feel to communicate with you this way, for this moment that lasts until you remember
to flee back into your crumby shack to get your gun. And then, no pretending, I'll be gone. I'm not stupid.
For once I have your attention, and though I've nothing to lose by admitting that I am trembling in my very
bones, the fear is not in control just now. I can consider the wild trembles to be pleasure if I want; you know
what a roister pleasure can be for us cats.
But it's your attention that I am concerned with now. This is all happening so quickly that you are aware of
none of it. It will be up to you to unravel it later. Your own metaphor might have you reading a long facsimile
message which has come in at night and lies in a heap on the floor. I know nothing of that.
I do know that you will have to depend on your imagination to decipher what I have to say to you. Right now
I'm not even allowing you to respond to what I am telling you, unless you consider this raucous bellow that you
are making a response.
I have already got my response, and if you can't put your finger on it, I have no remorse. My deepest
sorrow about this whole evening is that I am about to conclude the interview by bolting into the darkness
without my fucking prey. That's what gripes me, and you can bet that I'll be back.
For now, though, our instant is still going on. And here's some of the stuff I want you to know. I'm going to
relay information to you that you will wonder how a simple puma knows. Well I'll give you 'knows,' if you
continue to interpret me that way; in fact, I'll bite off your nose!
Just hang onto that expression 'relay.' You suspect that it's Agnes Tawny talking. Okay. I am Agnes
Tawny. But now I have a question. How do you know about Agnes Tawny? (I'm not going to ask you what you
know about Agnes Tawny; I can get my knowledge of her from elsewhere. Thank you.)
You don't have to answer the question, either; you could ask me if I was Cat One Dolan, and I would
probably say yes, but I'd be flattered. You might even think you know who she is, but I guarantee you that
Johnny Stream doesn't. Didn't.
without the kid. But Tawngness, or a part of Tawngness, crouched quailed in the goat pen, imprisoned in the
circle of light. This part was as paralyzed as a jackrabbit in a high-beam on a lonesome country road.
The part of Tawngness that was her nose gave her specific details. She knew right away who it was who held
the light. She had stalked Johnny and his herd every time she came through on her own circuit. But, until the
last time, when she finally broke down and polished off a couple of young does, she had always only looked.
Many a time, while Johnny had sat braiding a long chain of grass or flowers and the goats had browsed in
contentment, Tawngness had watched. Many a time she had circled and captured the wind that came from
Johnny to her.
How well she knew that wind! What a fascinating combination of fragrances, both alluring and repellent,
this goat boy Johnny was. She knew none of the names, but it was leather and denim, the human himself with
all his farts and sweats and horny dreams, and wool, and steel, and gun oil, and that faint trace of burned
powder from the last shots fired.
Tonight was different. Tonight it was just the goat boy.
Tonight there was no denim, and no wool, for even in the coldest weather Johnny slept in the raw. The
commotion in the pen had roused him, and he had leapt from his bed to grab the light and strike out into the
chill.
Tonight there was no leather, no steel, no oil and no whiffs of powder. Probably the old girl would not have
hung around as long as she did if she could have smelt the gun belt and the gun. Tawngness had made that
connection too. Her wisdom was multifold. She had scavenged prey that had fallen to gunshots. And she knew
as well what happens to proud young lions who cannot resist the lure to be the glowing center of attention that
morning sunlight, open space, a handy stump and golden fur can make of them. Bang!
Tonight there was no gun. Tonight the human spoke to her in a wordless snarl that she understood. She
understood the cry of the goat in that moment that lasted from her first footfall in the pen, through the short
dash, the bound, and the strong forelimbs' raking seizure, to the bite. The cry of the human was much more
than the squeak of fear from the kid had been. It was like her own hiss, like the growl of an angry mama bear,
or like the inchoate rage of dogs that do bite. (How do they eat?)
The panther bites too, cowboy. Maybe you should have stayed on a horse. She snarled back at him with
equal rage. The very tone of his voice made her vicious. The rude light… the awful authority… this was her
range… she had spared him… did he think he was Lightning?
Or did he think he was a bold buck? Still in her crouch, Tawngness cast her eyes to the left, seeing with
malignant glee that one of the mighty billies was climbing over the fence, and that the other, the one with the
horns, was nowhere to be seen.
And you have come out without your horns, have you not? That four foot fence between us is nothing to me,
mister. It matters not that I cannot see you; I've seen your ugly mug often enough.
I've seen your whole scrawny, hairless body when you lie on the rocks, wet from the creek. I could take you
on a cloudy night; I could take you with my eyes closed. Old and worn as I am, I'm still as many times stronger
than you as I have claws on both of my forepaws.
A deer is swifter than you, more alert, and more dangerous. You would be no more trouble for me than was
this gory little darlin' at my feet. You think I have offended you. You think I have violated you by coming here
in the night and catching what I can.
Who in the hell do you think you are, man? You make it so easy for me, bundling all of the darlings up in
this tiny pen; I don't even have to search for them, and when I find them, they cannot run away.
Another sidewise leer confirmed both that and its opposite. The goats were still bunched in terror across the
pen, unable to do more than push, but of the ones against the fence, some were actually being pushed up and
over by the surging herd.
Poor things. Tawngness surprised herself with her own sensitivity, and then wrote it off as sarcasm.
Sometimes I think I love them more than you do. They are so happy on the range, a joy for me to see,
certainly. Then every night I see you sucker them back into this little pen with a paltry handful of grain. They
are stupid, and you use their stupidity to manipulate them.
Why do you have them penned up all night in this little pen again? Is it because of me? Do you think that
by sleeping in that shack and holding them all in this cage right outside your window that you have them under
your wing somehow?
Who in the hell do you think you are, man? You interpose yourself between me and my natural prey.
Maybe we should play this like big fish, medium fish, little fish. You eat them. I eat you.
Except you don't even eat them, you goat cheese-sucking motherfucker. You keep them as slaves. Then
you interpose yourself between them and their children. I've been around at milking time. I've suckled my
own litters, but you… you are the species that nurses at the tits of its slaves.
It's funny how free I feel to communicate with you this way, for this moment that lasts until you remember
to flee back into your crumby shack to get your gun. And then, no pretending, I'll be gone. I'm not stupid.
For once I have your attention, and though I've nothing to lose by admitting that I am trembling in my very
bones, the fear is not in control just now. I can consider the wild trembles to be pleasure if I want; you know
what a roister pleasure can be for us cats.
But it's your attention that I am concerned with now. This is all happening so quickly that you are aware of
none of it. It will be up to you to unravel it later. Your own metaphor might have you reading a long facsimile
message which has come in at night and lies in a heap on the floor. I know nothing of that.
I do know that you will have to depend on your imagination to decipher what I have to say to you. Right now
I'm not even allowing you to respond to what I am telling you, unless you consider this raucous bellow that you
are making a response.
I have already got my response, and if you can't put your finger on it, I have no remorse. My deepest
sorrow about this whole evening is that I am about to conclude the interview by bolting into the darkness
without my fucking prey. That's what gripes me, and you can bet that I'll be back.
For now, though, our instant is still going on. And here's some of the stuff I want you to know. I'm going to
relay information to you that you will wonder how a simple puma knows. Well I'll give you 'knows,' if you
continue to interpret me that way; in fact, I'll bite off your nose!
Just hang onto that expression 'relay.' You suspect that it's Agnes Tawny talking. Okay. I am Agnes
Tawny. But now I have a question. How do you know about Agnes Tawny? (I'm not going to ask you what you
know about Agnes Tawny; I can get my knowledge of her from elsewhere. Thank you.)
You don't have to answer the question, either; you could ask me if I was Cat One Dolan, and I would
probably say yes, but I'd be flattered. You might even think you know who she is, but I guarantee you that
Johnny Stream doesn't. Didn't.
| * * * |
Rico was a loser. Sad to say it, but he was. He was, however, groping for a solution when he would make wild
remarks, such as, that he would rob banks if times grew lean… lean enough, that is.
Something in his pride, something in his guts told him that he didn't need to go back into that hole, to slave
for rich gringos. He would look at himself in the mirror and see that here was no docile beast of burden. Here
was the glory of creation! Here was the descendent of warriors and vaqueros! His ancestors were the dons of
Iberia, the centurions of Rome!
The howls in the roof of his brain, in the dreams that left him tossed and alone, in the dark hours after
midnight, the wild mares that left his wits trampled, the pulse and the racing eyes of cold fire, all of it promised
him something, tempted him with fragile idols of freedom and manhood.
Defeated by his imagination… for it failed him; it was unfit; it could not dress the future in furs of fitness…
he stayed the pawn of stories and legends, and catechism warnings, admonitions of friends, and the memory of
his father's belt.
The two sides warred within him. The dominant, brown-eyed female said, be good; the hunted blue-eyes
blazed from hiding, darted left and right in crouched rage, and longed for the pitiless focus of their own hunt.
The harnessed horse held her own whip, and the dog at her feet was muzzled into silence. Be good, was the
edict, and it came with a definition of all that good was, and the dog frothed madly, and whimpered at the desert
moon.
remarks, such as, that he would rob banks if times grew lean… lean enough, that is.
Something in his pride, something in his guts told him that he didn't need to go back into that hole, to slave
for rich gringos. He would look at himself in the mirror and see that here was no docile beast of burden. Here
was the glory of creation! Here was the descendent of warriors and vaqueros! His ancestors were the dons of
Iberia, the centurions of Rome!
The howls in the roof of his brain, in the dreams that left him tossed and alone, in the dark hours after
midnight, the wild mares that left his wits trampled, the pulse and the racing eyes of cold fire, all of it promised
him something, tempted him with fragile idols of freedom and manhood.
Defeated by his imagination… for it failed him; it was unfit; it could not dress the future in furs of fitness…
he stayed the pawn of stories and legends, and catechism warnings, admonitions of friends, and the memory of
his father's belt.
The two sides warred within him. The dominant, brown-eyed female said, be good; the hunted blue-eyes
blazed from hiding, darted left and right in crouched rage, and longed for the pitiless focus of their own hunt.
The harnessed horse held her own whip, and the dog at her feet was muzzled into silence. Be good, was the
edict, and it came with a definition of all that good was, and the dog frothed madly, and whimpered at the desert
moon.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goatherder 28 May 1981
There has been much about the goat trip that I have wanted to write about. but I wonder who cares? Who wants to
know? Possibly no one.
These days it is my delight to spend long mornings in a coffee shop, drinking coffee laced with heavy cream and
saccharin. Very decadent. Maybe the cream reminds me of the rich goat's milk of days gone by.
I've been eating a lot of cheese too.
This is maddening. I want to write about goat herding, but all I do is diddle around with these pointless remarks
about my present status. And who cares about that either?
I begin to see why people write fiction. The truth is usually so boring as to be not worth reading.
But fiction? Of what use is that? A nice word for lies, and people love to be entertained. Maybe the whole world is
mere entertainment, existence a lie. The ultimate truth, I suspect, is a point of absolute nothingness, a cosmic boredom,
the infinite necessity, mother of creation.
I learned something from the goats. At first it was boring, so maybe what I learned, I created, made it up. No matter.
Maybe all learning is made up.
There has been much about the goat trip that I have wanted to write about. but I wonder who cares? Who wants to
know? Possibly no one.
These days it is my delight to spend long mornings in a coffee shop, drinking coffee laced with heavy cream and
saccharin. Very decadent. Maybe the cream reminds me of the rich goat's milk of days gone by.
I've been eating a lot of cheese too.
This is maddening. I want to write about goat herding, but all I do is diddle around with these pointless remarks
about my present status. And who cares about that either?
I begin to see why people write fiction. The truth is usually so boring as to be not worth reading.
But fiction? Of what use is that? A nice word for lies, and people love to be entertained. Maybe the whole world is
mere entertainment, existence a lie. The ultimate truth, I suspect, is a point of absolute nothingness, a cosmic boredom,
the infinite necessity, mother of creation.
I learned something from the goats. At first it was boring, so maybe what I learned, I created, made it up. No matter.
Maybe all learning is made up.
| * * * |
That afternoon Heidi Westbocker had gone during an empty hour to the raised and shielded sunlight patio.
This feature of the library building had masonry stairs to a roof level deck with a solid block parapet
surrounding it.
In nice weather, the sunlight patio was a favorite spot at times with the scholars, shielded from the wind as
it was. Today was not windy. When she arrived at two o'clock there was nobody else present, and she sat on one
of the many benches and opened a textbook. For a moment she registered a slight, disquieting distraction as
far as what was to happen next, but then she quickly became absorbed in translating to herself the exploits of
an old French hero.
"You are special," was all that her professor had said, after he had caught his breath, "and you really can
help me with handling my own load. And this," and here he had gestured to the bottom line of the spreadsheet
that still lay with its fine graphite twinkling of A's. "This can be true, for you, and you will deserve it. You are
a fine student, Heidi Westbocker," he added a couple of seconds later. "You won't even have to come to class
anymore, unless you want to.
"Are you interested?" He left it on such an upbeat, cheerful note, that she could not resist a positive reply.
"Well, sure," she almost blushed. "Who wouldn't be?"
"Good," he said briskly. "Now there is no time to continue right now. We both have to be other places soon.
Can you meet me at the sunlight patio at two o'clock this afternoon?" He looked directly at her as he asked.
He knew her schedule, and he knew she was free at that hour.
"Yes, sure," she said, consulting her own mental timetable.
"Bring something to study," he said as she moved toward the door of his office a moment later. "If I'm not
there yet, be studying. Let's keep this a bit of a secret, shall we?"
"Okay," said Heidi. Her grades were certainly worth a little subterfuge. She had wondered how she would be
helping out with Professor Kirkhaz' burdens. Grading tests and papers, probably, she thought.
In the eighteenth century novel that she was reading, a clandestine meeting between a lady and a cavalier
has been arranged in a walled garden in Brittany. Heidi allowed herself to muse. The pair in the book were
looking for more than fudging grades. Could Professor Kirkhaz be in love with her?
She had news for him, although she could clearly see that he was a dreamboat, especially in the body
department. But the part she could not get past was somewhere else, in the eyes perhaps.
She had to be aware of the signal in order to respond to it, but she did not have to understand it. Keep away,
the genes cried. And Godspeed. All that Heidi Westbocker knew was that this man was not for her. She
discounted the idea that he might be in love with her, put it off to her own teenage vanity. She was not the
woman for him. She sensed that like an intuitive reciprocal of the genetic signal.
And Godspeed. And goddess speed. So they would make a deal. She would see. She had a feeling it would
work out good.
Perhaps by ten years later, having coffee with Andrea Clare, or maybe by sixteen years later, seeing Vikor
Dolan in the alley between the barn and the tractor shed, Heidi would be able to add up the accounts and
conclude that, yes, it did all work out good, or at least alright, that at least she had broken even. But by later
that afternoon, and for a long time after that, she was deep in the hole.
A characteristic of the sun patio was that a person standing alongside the southern parapet could observe
for a long time the approach of anyone, singles or crowds, who essayed to come up and join them on the roof.
There was no other approach.
When Selabjun Kirkhaz reached the sun patio he looked around and saw only Heidi. There were no bends or
nooks in the perimeter. In fact, the area was a square, about forty feet by forty feet. There were a couple of
potted trees, and a dozen or so picnic style tables with benches attached.
Selabjun walked purposefully around each potted tree so as to insure privacy. Then he strode as
purposefully back to the south wall, passing by where Heidi sat with her open book and a stack of others on the
table beside her. She was disarmingly cute in her autumn plaid, her sweater and her saddle shoes. As he passed
he said, "Come over and talk with me. Keep down. Don't let anyone see you over the wall."
Heidi had sat in the approximate center of the square. "Leave your books at the table," he added, and had
continued over to the wall, where he proceeded to rest his arms upon the top of the four foot support. From
there he observed the campus below in obvious contemplation.
Heidi had not had time to acknowledge or offer any comment. Now she arose and headed across the redwood
decking to join him.
The library building rested upon a knoll. It was the highest point on the campus. The sun patio was the
highest part of the building. From where she had been sitting, the only feature of the landscape that could be
seen was Clark's Hill, a few miles to the west. The rest was sky.
As Heidi Westbocker walked a few steps closer to the wall, however, she quickly began to stoop. The parapet
was a solid screen of slump block. As she drew near the edge, the campus and the town began to appear over
the top of the wall, forcing her to stoop. When she arrived at the side of her teacher, she was hidden to all but
him, but she had assumed a virtual crouch. It was uncomfortable.
"Go ahead and kneel down," he said, and she sank to her knees with a sigh of relief. (The honor of
kneeling before you.) (Call me Heidi, call me…)
Startled enough to yelp a faint, "Oh," she realized, as she rocked back onto her oxfords, that the erect
penis of her physical science instructor was bobbing in her face!
She had knelt to his right. Now Selabjun turned slightly to adjust his frame. He leaned on one arm, with a
clear view of the stairs and the campus lawn below.
"Do you know what to do?" he asked.
Strangely enough she did, this sheltered virgin from the warm arms of America. Her mind whirled, for she
wondered how she had failed to see this turn. With a sense of shameful irony, she realized that to express
herself now would be to reveal how stupid she had been not to have realized earlier what sort of a deal she had
got herself involved in. This was her own self-accusation. Professor Kirkhaz' approach might have "suckered"
many an intelligent young lady into such an error. But, upon realizing at such a late moment the true nature of
the tryst, it was, unfortunately, her fearful pride that forced her to feel that she had a reason to hide.
She had to hide from him; she had to hide from the community. Even to turn the accuser would be to
convict herself of rash foolishness in the eyes of the other students, the teachers, her friends and her parents.
As for Professor Kirkhaz, there was no advantage in having him think she was any stupider than he already
did. Call me Heidi, call me… her mind fairly drooled with self-pity.
What was the question? Did she know what to do?
"Yes, sir," she said.
This feature of the library building had masonry stairs to a roof level deck with a solid block parapet
surrounding it.
In nice weather, the sunlight patio was a favorite spot at times with the scholars, shielded from the wind as
it was. Today was not windy. When she arrived at two o'clock there was nobody else present, and she sat on one
of the many benches and opened a textbook. For a moment she registered a slight, disquieting distraction as
far as what was to happen next, but then she quickly became absorbed in translating to herself the exploits of
an old French hero.
"You are special," was all that her professor had said, after he had caught his breath, "and you really can
help me with handling my own load. And this," and here he had gestured to the bottom line of the spreadsheet
that still lay with its fine graphite twinkling of A's. "This can be true, for you, and you will deserve it. You are
a fine student, Heidi Westbocker," he added a couple of seconds later. "You won't even have to come to class
anymore, unless you want to.
"Are you interested?" He left it on such an upbeat, cheerful note, that she could not resist a positive reply.
"Well, sure," she almost blushed. "Who wouldn't be?"
"Good," he said briskly. "Now there is no time to continue right now. We both have to be other places soon.
Can you meet me at the sunlight patio at two o'clock this afternoon?" He looked directly at her as he asked.
He knew her schedule, and he knew she was free at that hour.
"Yes, sure," she said, consulting her own mental timetable.
"Bring something to study," he said as she moved toward the door of his office a moment later. "If I'm not
there yet, be studying. Let's keep this a bit of a secret, shall we?"
"Okay," said Heidi. Her grades were certainly worth a little subterfuge. She had wondered how she would be
helping out with Professor Kirkhaz' burdens. Grading tests and papers, probably, she thought.
In the eighteenth century novel that she was reading, a clandestine meeting between a lady and a cavalier
has been arranged in a walled garden in Brittany. Heidi allowed herself to muse. The pair in the book were
looking for more than fudging grades. Could Professor Kirkhaz be in love with her?
She had news for him, although she could clearly see that he was a dreamboat, especially in the body
department. But the part she could not get past was somewhere else, in the eyes perhaps.
She had to be aware of the signal in order to respond to it, but she did not have to understand it. Keep away,
the genes cried. And Godspeed. All that Heidi Westbocker knew was that this man was not for her. She
discounted the idea that he might be in love with her, put it off to her own teenage vanity. She was not the
woman for him. She sensed that like an intuitive reciprocal of the genetic signal.
And Godspeed. And goddess speed. So they would make a deal. She would see. She had a feeling it would
work out good.
Perhaps by ten years later, having coffee with Andrea Clare, or maybe by sixteen years later, seeing Vikor
Dolan in the alley between the barn and the tractor shed, Heidi would be able to add up the accounts and
conclude that, yes, it did all work out good, or at least alright, that at least she had broken even. But by later
that afternoon, and for a long time after that, she was deep in the hole.
A characteristic of the sun patio was that a person standing alongside the southern parapet could observe
for a long time the approach of anyone, singles or crowds, who essayed to come up and join them on the roof.
There was no other approach.
When Selabjun Kirkhaz reached the sun patio he looked around and saw only Heidi. There were no bends or
nooks in the perimeter. In fact, the area was a square, about forty feet by forty feet. There were a couple of
potted trees, and a dozen or so picnic style tables with benches attached.
Selabjun walked purposefully around each potted tree so as to insure privacy. Then he strode as
purposefully back to the south wall, passing by where Heidi sat with her open book and a stack of others on the
table beside her. She was disarmingly cute in her autumn plaid, her sweater and her saddle shoes. As he passed
he said, "Come over and talk with me. Keep down. Don't let anyone see you over the wall."
Heidi had sat in the approximate center of the square. "Leave your books at the table," he added, and had
continued over to the wall, where he proceeded to rest his arms upon the top of the four foot support. From
there he observed the campus below in obvious contemplation.
Heidi had not had time to acknowledge or offer any comment. Now she arose and headed across the redwood
decking to join him.
The library building rested upon a knoll. It was the highest point on the campus. The sun patio was the
highest part of the building. From where she had been sitting, the only feature of the landscape that could be
seen was Clark's Hill, a few miles to the west. The rest was sky.
As Heidi Westbocker walked a few steps closer to the wall, however, she quickly began to stoop. The parapet
was a solid screen of slump block. As she drew near the edge, the campus and the town began to appear over
the top of the wall, forcing her to stoop. When she arrived at the side of her teacher, she was hidden to all but
him, but she had assumed a virtual crouch. It was uncomfortable.
"Go ahead and kneel down," he said, and she sank to her knees with a sigh of relief. (The honor of
kneeling before you.) (Call me Heidi, call me…)
Startled enough to yelp a faint, "Oh," she realized, as she rocked back onto her oxfords, that the erect
penis of her physical science instructor was bobbing in her face!
She had knelt to his right. Now Selabjun turned slightly to adjust his frame. He leaned on one arm, with a
clear view of the stairs and the campus lawn below.
"Do you know what to do?" he asked.
Strangely enough she did, this sheltered virgin from the warm arms of America. Her mind whirled, for she
wondered how she had failed to see this turn. With a sense of shameful irony, she realized that to express
herself now would be to reveal how stupid she had been not to have realized earlier what sort of a deal she had
got herself involved in. This was her own self-accusation. Professor Kirkhaz' approach might have "suckered"
many an intelligent young lady into such an error. But, upon realizing at such a late moment the true nature of
the tryst, it was, unfortunately, her fearful pride that forced her to feel that she had a reason to hide.
She had to hide from him; she had to hide from the community. Even to turn the accuser would be to
convict herself of rash foolishness in the eyes of the other students, the teachers, her friends and her parents.
As for Professor Kirkhaz, there was no advantage in having him think she was any stupider than he already
did. Call me Heidi, call me… her mind fairly drooled with self-pity.
What was the question? Did she know what to do?
"Yes, sir," she said.
| * * * |
Johnny remembered the sidewalks from those sporadic times when he lived in his mother's end of the
world. He recalled how there were so many children, how there were so many other kids, how they were always
excited and looked like their faces had just been scrubbed. He felt like an angel pleading to be born, bouncing
against the edge of the bubble of life that held all the scrub-faced playmates.
As children will, they accepted Johnny as one of them, but he was not one of them, and so they never knew
him. His was the lonesome little face that watched from up the street.
"Johnny, come play!" they would cry, and he would turn and run in shyness. Sometimes he did come. He
could not remember their names. As he was bounced about from neighborhood to neighborhood, from the
home of this aunt to that, it all would look the same, the same square streets, the same trees and lawns and
houses in endless rows, and kids in merry profusion, always happy, always a Kathy, a Tommy, a Billy, a Suzy, a
Joey. Always a fat kid, a red head, a sissy, a bossy girl, a bully, an athlete, a retard. He couldn't remember
their names, but they remembered his.
When he would venture out into a neighborhood again, the kids would call, "Hey, Johnny, where have you
been?" He couldn't answer, really, for how would he tell the other toddlers that there is a world just twenty
blocks away that is just like theirs, but with a different Debbie and Jimmy? The grownups are all the same, and
the yards are all the same; the sidewalks are the same, and so are the cars, but it's not the same place, and the
kids are different kids even though they look just like you.
Then he would learn their names, and the names of the streets, and the names of the games like kickball,
and hide-go-seek, and tag.
And then he would come out some morning, and it all would be different, but still it would be the same. The
kids would smile and yell, "Johnny! Where have you been?" and they would claim him like a prize, and he
would grow silent with embarrassment, for he didn't know their names.
Or he would wake up on the reservation. There too, it was much the same, from shanty house to shanty
house that put up with him. There were no kids shouting, "Johnny, Johnny." There were kids, but they all
were shy, and they would retreat and become invisible and gather in sullen groups.
At meals he was begrudged, another mouth to feed, another competitor for a share of the sugar and starch.
Little by little he got to know them all by name, the desperate little guys of his generation. Come or go, this
shack or that, the neighborhood here remained the same, and eventually Johnny remained as well.
Now he remembered the cheerful corner store down in the city where he had often tagged after a flock of
kids, each with his penny. Each neighborhood had such a store, and the man or woman behind the counter was
always a bundle of cheer when dealing with such a mob of scrub-faced penny-clenchers. Everybody got candy;
even Johnny got a piece, handing over his polished cent and pointing with silent, polite hopefulness at his
choice, and then fleeing with the prize.
Up at the res', the only store was just outside the boundary, and miles from the center of the village.
Sometimes Johnny was along for the ride when this or that adult drove down there. Inside was a grim-faced
clerk who hated his job and his customers. The grownups would buy beer and tobacco; the kids would stay
outside. The loudest or closest would be cuffed by the adult leaving the store, then all would load up and ride
back with the kids in the bed of the pickup truck, hollow with thoughts of candy.
Memories of city life were sad because they were so unreal. Memories of the life on the reservation were
sad because they were so real, almost too real to ever be memories, for memory is made of little to nothing,
and hardly differs from the imagination save for the quailing excuse that these events, these words or this face
somehow once were real. Had he stayed long enough in the city, he would eventually have found it as boring
and as sterile as the quasi-life in the rat-infested village in the mountains.
It was only its insubstantiality that kept it a charming enigma for the little half-breed. Candy stores and
playgrounds never became familiar, and then the whole mirage disappeared altogether.
world. He recalled how there were so many children, how there were so many other kids, how they were always
excited and looked like their faces had just been scrubbed. He felt like an angel pleading to be born, bouncing
against the edge of the bubble of life that held all the scrub-faced playmates.
As children will, they accepted Johnny as one of them, but he was not one of them, and so they never knew
him. His was the lonesome little face that watched from up the street.
"Johnny, come play!" they would cry, and he would turn and run in shyness. Sometimes he did come. He
could not remember their names. As he was bounced about from neighborhood to neighborhood, from the
home of this aunt to that, it all would look the same, the same square streets, the same trees and lawns and
houses in endless rows, and kids in merry profusion, always happy, always a Kathy, a Tommy, a Billy, a Suzy, a
Joey. Always a fat kid, a red head, a sissy, a bossy girl, a bully, an athlete, a retard. He couldn't remember
their names, but they remembered his.
When he would venture out into a neighborhood again, the kids would call, "Hey, Johnny, where have you
been?" He couldn't answer, really, for how would he tell the other toddlers that there is a world just twenty
blocks away that is just like theirs, but with a different Debbie and Jimmy? The grownups are all the same, and
the yards are all the same; the sidewalks are the same, and so are the cars, but it's not the same place, and the
kids are different kids even though they look just like you.
Then he would learn their names, and the names of the streets, and the names of the games like kickball,
and hide-go-seek, and tag.
And then he would come out some morning, and it all would be different, but still it would be the same. The
kids would smile and yell, "Johnny! Where have you been?" and they would claim him like a prize, and he
would grow silent with embarrassment, for he didn't know their names.
Or he would wake up on the reservation. There too, it was much the same, from shanty house to shanty
house that put up with him. There were no kids shouting, "Johnny, Johnny." There were kids, but they all
were shy, and they would retreat and become invisible and gather in sullen groups.
At meals he was begrudged, another mouth to feed, another competitor for a share of the sugar and starch.
Little by little he got to know them all by name, the desperate little guys of his generation. Come or go, this
shack or that, the neighborhood here remained the same, and eventually Johnny remained as well.
Now he remembered the cheerful corner store down in the city where he had often tagged after a flock of
kids, each with his penny. Each neighborhood had such a store, and the man or woman behind the counter was
always a bundle of cheer when dealing with such a mob of scrub-faced penny-clenchers. Everybody got candy;
even Johnny got a piece, handing over his polished cent and pointing with silent, polite hopefulness at his
choice, and then fleeing with the prize.
Up at the res', the only store was just outside the boundary, and miles from the center of the village.
Sometimes Johnny was along for the ride when this or that adult drove down there. Inside was a grim-faced
clerk who hated his job and his customers. The grownups would buy beer and tobacco; the kids would stay
outside. The loudest or closest would be cuffed by the adult leaving the store, then all would load up and ride
back with the kids in the bed of the pickup truck, hollow with thoughts of candy.
Memories of city life were sad because they were so unreal. Memories of the life on the reservation were
sad because they were so real, almost too real to ever be memories, for memory is made of little to nothing,
and hardly differs from the imagination save for the quailing excuse that these events, these words or this face
somehow once were real. Had he stayed long enough in the city, he would eventually have found it as boring
and as sterile as the quasi-life in the rat-infested village in the mountains.
It was only its insubstantiality that kept it a charming enigma for the little half-breed. Candy stores and
playgrounds never became familiar, and then the whole mirage disappeared altogether.
| * * * |
Mankind's three-way symbiosis, himself, the goat, and the lactobacillus, made memorials of the summer's
crop of oak leaves and yucca pods. The memorials were in the form of little wheels of cheese, one for each day,
that represented the accumulated product of the wild enterprise.
Johnny was living on the milk, to be sure. He drank a creek-chilled mayonnaise jar full every day, filling in
the amino acids with rice from a sack. The goats had their own grain, oats or barley, little rewards for being
milked, or later, for returning to the pen from the trail.
Most of their nutrition came from the trailside, from the dozens of trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses on
which they nibbled. Their bellies could be plump with this fare, swaying from side to side in the beat of the
homeward trudge, yet they would break into an eager charge across the last several dozen yards into the pen to
find each her pile of grain. It amounted to no more than a dollop of their daily calories, but the girls, and
Jacques and Luke, would have killed for it.
Sitting on his mountain with his bowl of rice and his jar of milk, Johnny was sure that he would have killed
for it as well. Far away, down in the valleys of Northern California, that rice was raised. The oats and barley
may have come from right in San Diego county.
The milk alone was not enough. The chaparral and barbed wire were not enough either. Man and goat and
place were bonded by the traded grains of other places. The little wheels of cheese represented the exchange,
the balancing factor that kept the intercourse peaceful, although in reality, it was Johnny's unemployment
check that subsidized the whole performance.
crop of oak leaves and yucca pods. The memorials were in the form of little wheels of cheese, one for each day,
that represented the accumulated product of the wild enterprise.
Johnny was living on the milk, to be sure. He drank a creek-chilled mayonnaise jar full every day, filling in
the amino acids with rice from a sack. The goats had their own grain, oats or barley, little rewards for being
milked, or later, for returning to the pen from the trail.
Most of their nutrition came from the trailside, from the dozens of trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses on
which they nibbled. Their bellies could be plump with this fare, swaying from side to side in the beat of the
homeward trudge, yet they would break into an eager charge across the last several dozen yards into the pen to
find each her pile of grain. It amounted to no more than a dollop of their daily calories, but the girls, and
Jacques and Luke, would have killed for it.
Sitting on his mountain with his bowl of rice and his jar of milk, Johnny was sure that he would have killed
for it as well. Far away, down in the valleys of Northern California, that rice was raised. The oats and barley
may have come from right in San Diego county.
The milk alone was not enough. The chaparral and barbed wire were not enough either. Man and goat and
place were bonded by the traded grains of other places. The little wheels of cheese represented the exchange,
the balancing factor that kept the intercourse peaceful, although in reality, it was Johnny's unemployment
check that subsidized the whole performance.
