| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goat herder 5 June 1981
Rush of cold air in her face blows away her yelps. The lion's hunger gallops through the same
blackness that hides her fuzzy hide.
Slowly it gets light. Cold and damp. The herdsman calls and is near. She crawls meekly from the
rocks of refuge. It is safe. She is only a puppy. Cold and hungry. She will remember the lion.
Here is a kid; yesterday it nuzzled her. Now it is cold and still. Its side is open. Guts are spilled in a
chilled mass of organs. Death.
On the trail we are alert. We jump at sounds. We turn to danger. It is all shadows and rustling grass.
The wind is a gasp. The small branches of the trees squeak in terror and pain. The herd bolts, is
nervous to eat. The gun is handy. The air is combat.
Darkness comes again. With it comes the bound of hunger, breathtaking, in the midst of flesh and
warm hair, teeth. Dangling in pain, snatched by the neck, the baby screams over the fences, caught
now in the light of the lantern, drowned by the rapid gunfire, whistling bullets; the lion pants through
clenched teeth, effort of desperation, leaps again and strains into the mountain night.
The death is gone. Katy calls for her kid, but he is missing. The bullets whine on through the high
canyon and patter helplessly into the winter leaves above the waterfall.
Rush of cold air in her face blows away her yelps. The lion's hunger gallops through the same
blackness that hides her fuzzy hide.
Slowly it gets light. Cold and damp. The herdsman calls and is near. She crawls meekly from the
rocks of refuge. It is safe. She is only a puppy. Cold and hungry. She will remember the lion.
Here is a kid; yesterday it nuzzled her. Now it is cold and still. Its side is open. Guts are spilled in a
chilled mass of organs. Death.
On the trail we are alert. We jump at sounds. We turn to danger. It is all shadows and rustling grass.
The wind is a gasp. The small branches of the trees squeak in terror and pain. The herd bolts, is
nervous to eat. The gun is handy. The air is combat.
Darkness comes again. With it comes the bound of hunger, breathtaking, in the midst of flesh and
warm hair, teeth. Dangling in pain, snatched by the neck, the baby screams over the fences, caught
now in the light of the lantern, drowned by the rapid gunfire, whistling bullets; the lion pants through
clenched teeth, effort of desperation, leaps again and strains into the mountain night.
The death is gone. Katy calls for her kid, but he is missing. The bullets whine on through the high
canyon and patter helplessly into the winter leaves above the waterfall.
| Chapter Forty-six FUGITIVE CREEK |
| What is the monster That eats our children? What is the monster called That kills our wives? What is the monster called whose teeth Are steel, and glass, and fire? What is the monster called Who stalks our lives? Is it the traffic? Is it the highway? Is it the wailing of the sirens And the tires? Is it the endless, rubber-bellied snake That slides across the tar, The monster grim that quenches its desires On our blood, On our blood, On our blood, blood, blood, On our blood. |
When he penned that little ditty, Vikor Dolan was relatively new to the freeway. There were none in the
Dove Springs area. But when he and Cat would go to the city, then he would see them.
"The Romans would have been proud of us!" he exclaimed as they coursed over the Appian Ways of Los
Angeles in Cat's car in the middle of a bright morning. Several hours later when they had ground to a halt
during the evening commute, his mother turned to him with a patient smirk.
"Would the Romans still be proud of us?" she asked. They laughed, and they learned that self-indulgent
dilettanti should stay off of the mighty highway when the slaves are going home, if they want to keep the
Romans happy.
Cat One herself was more a fan of the Vikings and the wild Celts than she was of the Romans. But her son
had a yen for architecture. Cat had to admit that, without the Italian injection, the building style in the British
isles would probably have stayed at the log stockade level for another thousand years.
What a shame that would have been. Cat One was thinking sarcastically. She was climbing Clark's Hill,
looking for Agnes. She wanted to show her the poem. There were so many things that she wanted to ask the
crone, but for now her own thoughts were on Rome. For all she cared, western civilization could have done
without the arch. Big Ben could be a windmill tower, for all she cared, and the freeway could hobble along on
stilts. It would have been a small price to pay, to be free of four hundred years of domination by greasy but
orderly bullies.
Her acceptance of reality had no provision banning the mental mockery of the same. To be able to laugh at
existence itself makes it easier to bear. We all could have done it better. But we do not correct the slapstick
comedian; we laugh, and finally we applaud.
Agnes surprised her. She was sitting on a fallen log. Cat had drifted right past, lost in her thought, when she
heard the soft greeting.
"Hello! My goodness, I almost didn't see you in the fog," said the old woman. It was by then two in the
afternoon; the fog had lifted at ten.
Cat One turned with a smile. She understood that Agnes was making another of her own sarcastic stabs at
humor. She understood that Agnes Tawny did not care very much if her jibes were funny or not. To her, Cat
often suspected, everything must be funny.
"Hello, Agnes," she said. "How are you?"
"Never better," she cackled merrily. Cat was right. Agnes did think everything was funny. "You have
something to show me?" she asked.
"Yes, this," said Cat, producing the neatly folded sheet of lined paper. Agnes accepted the poem. Their hands
touched as the note was passed, and Cat One could feel how cold were the fingertips of the witch. Their eyes
met.
"Vikor wrote it," she added, as Agnes unfolded the paper. Cat waited while her mentor read the short lyric.
She watched her mouth and her eyes. When the reading stopped the eyes came back to the eyes of Catherine
Marie Dolan.
"Vikor wrote this?" she asked.
"Yes."
"How old is he now?"
"He'll be fifteen in the fall." Cat One herself was at the door to forty. She still blazed with girlhood, red
cheeks from climbing, blue eyes full of mountain vigor.
"My, my. The boy has insight."
"Does he?"
"What do you think?"
"I know what he thinks."
"What's that?"
"He thinks that the freeway is a creature all on its own."
"Go on."
"That's it. He thinks it's alive, like a giant snake or something. He thinks that when we drive we become a
part of it, like we've been consumed. It doesn't matter that we all still feel like independent beings with free
wills. He says we can do that and still be a part of this thing, this monster, that has a will of its own.
"He says there are things in our bodies like that. He says there are millions of these little creatures down
inside ourselves that don't know anything about Victor Dolan or Catherine Marie. They live their own lives by
their own laws, but still they are a part of us."
"I'm sure that is true," said Agnes Tawny. She loved to learn from the young, from Andrea Clare and
Catherine Marie, and now this young Victor William Dolan. Vikor. She wished she could meet him, someday…
Anyhow, he was always coming up with the damndest stuff, information which Cat would relay to her mentor.
The discoveries of the scientists of the millennia were pawed through like broken stones by her researchers,
and every now and then they came up with an arrowhead or a gem.
"Tell him it's just the trail," said Agnes Tawny.
"I told him that much already. He does not accept it."
"Well it is the trail; what else could it be?"
"He knows it's the trail! He knows that. It's the 'what else could it be?' that has him interested now. He
thinks there is more to it, that's all. He wonders if you know the answer."
The answer. Everyone was always wanting the answer from the old hag. She ignored the fact that 'everyone'
was Cat One and Vikor. For the time being, they were the extent of her society. Even at that, it was only Cat
One whom she allowed in her presence. Vikor had to petition her from afar.
But Andrea Clare Devlin had thought that Agnes might have the 'answer' too. And there were others before
her. But the answer itself kept receding as creation blossomed. Nobody ever liked the answers that Agnes came
up with. They were always too simple, too trite, too boring.
The 'trail.' To compare a freeway to a trail is too obvious, thought Vikor, upon receiving the message through
his mother. He thought about the little beings inside of his body. Was he himself no more than a network of
trails? Did that sum him up?
She saw him out walking on the mountain later by himself. It was closer to twilight, and he walked like one
deep in thought. There is so much to think about at fourteen. Agnes was perched on a rock, invisible. She
watched the young philosopher move slowly past the patch of pines. He paused to see the last of the sun twinkle
out of sight. He was as beautiful as the red sky that he watched, and she thought again to herself, the last lines
of his poem.
On our blood,
On our blood,
On our blood, blood, blood,
On our blood.
The dear boy.
Dove Springs area. But when he and Cat would go to the city, then he would see them.
"The Romans would have been proud of us!" he exclaimed as they coursed over the Appian Ways of Los
Angeles in Cat's car in the middle of a bright morning. Several hours later when they had ground to a halt
during the evening commute, his mother turned to him with a patient smirk.
"Would the Romans still be proud of us?" she asked. They laughed, and they learned that self-indulgent
dilettanti should stay off of the mighty highway when the slaves are going home, if they want to keep the
Romans happy.
Cat One herself was more a fan of the Vikings and the wild Celts than she was of the Romans. But her son
had a yen for architecture. Cat had to admit that, without the Italian injection, the building style in the British
isles would probably have stayed at the log stockade level for another thousand years.
What a shame that would have been. Cat One was thinking sarcastically. She was climbing Clark's Hill,
looking for Agnes. She wanted to show her the poem. There were so many things that she wanted to ask the
crone, but for now her own thoughts were on Rome. For all she cared, western civilization could have done
without the arch. Big Ben could be a windmill tower, for all she cared, and the freeway could hobble along on
stilts. It would have been a small price to pay, to be free of four hundred years of domination by greasy but
orderly bullies.
Her acceptance of reality had no provision banning the mental mockery of the same. To be able to laugh at
existence itself makes it easier to bear. We all could have done it better. But we do not correct the slapstick
comedian; we laugh, and finally we applaud.
Agnes surprised her. She was sitting on a fallen log. Cat had drifted right past, lost in her thought, when she
heard the soft greeting.
"Hello! My goodness, I almost didn't see you in the fog," said the old woman. It was by then two in the
afternoon; the fog had lifted at ten.
Cat One turned with a smile. She understood that Agnes was making another of her own sarcastic stabs at
humor. She understood that Agnes Tawny did not care very much if her jibes were funny or not. To her, Cat
often suspected, everything must be funny.
"Hello, Agnes," she said. "How are you?"
"Never better," she cackled merrily. Cat was right. Agnes did think everything was funny. "You have
something to show me?" she asked.
"Yes, this," said Cat, producing the neatly folded sheet of lined paper. Agnes accepted the poem. Their hands
touched as the note was passed, and Cat One could feel how cold were the fingertips of the witch. Their eyes
met.
"Vikor wrote it," she added, as Agnes unfolded the paper. Cat waited while her mentor read the short lyric.
She watched her mouth and her eyes. When the reading stopped the eyes came back to the eyes of Catherine
Marie Dolan.
"Vikor wrote this?" she asked.
"Yes."
"How old is he now?"
"He'll be fifteen in the fall." Cat One herself was at the door to forty. She still blazed with girlhood, red
cheeks from climbing, blue eyes full of mountain vigor.
"My, my. The boy has insight."
"Does he?"
"What do you think?"
"I know what he thinks."
"What's that?"
"He thinks that the freeway is a creature all on its own."
"Go on."
"That's it. He thinks it's alive, like a giant snake or something. He thinks that when we drive we become a
part of it, like we've been consumed. It doesn't matter that we all still feel like independent beings with free
wills. He says we can do that and still be a part of this thing, this monster, that has a will of its own.
"He says there are things in our bodies like that. He says there are millions of these little creatures down
inside ourselves that don't know anything about Victor Dolan or Catherine Marie. They live their own lives by
their own laws, but still they are a part of us."
"I'm sure that is true," said Agnes Tawny. She loved to learn from the young, from Andrea Clare and
Catherine Marie, and now this young Victor William Dolan. Vikor. She wished she could meet him, someday…
Anyhow, he was always coming up with the damndest stuff, information which Cat would relay to her mentor.
The discoveries of the scientists of the millennia were pawed through like broken stones by her researchers,
and every now and then they came up with an arrowhead or a gem.
"Tell him it's just the trail," said Agnes Tawny.
"I told him that much already. He does not accept it."
"Well it is the trail; what else could it be?"
"He knows it's the trail! He knows that. It's the 'what else could it be?' that has him interested now. He
thinks there is more to it, that's all. He wonders if you know the answer."
The answer. Everyone was always wanting the answer from the old hag. She ignored the fact that 'everyone'
was Cat One and Vikor. For the time being, they were the extent of her society. Even at that, it was only Cat
One whom she allowed in her presence. Vikor had to petition her from afar.
But Andrea Clare Devlin had thought that Agnes might have the 'answer' too. And there were others before
her. But the answer itself kept receding as creation blossomed. Nobody ever liked the answers that Agnes came
up with. They were always too simple, too trite, too boring.
The 'trail.' To compare a freeway to a trail is too obvious, thought Vikor, upon receiving the message through
his mother. He thought about the little beings inside of his body. Was he himself no more than a network of
trails? Did that sum him up?
She saw him out walking on the mountain later by himself. It was closer to twilight, and he walked like one
deep in thought. There is so much to think about at fourteen. Agnes was perched on a rock, invisible. She
watched the young philosopher move slowly past the patch of pines. He paused to see the last of the sun twinkle
out of sight. He was as beautiful as the red sky that he watched, and she thought again to herself, the last lines
of his poem.
On our blood,
On our blood,
On our blood, blood, blood,
On our blood.
The dear boy.
| * * * |
By the time Vikor reached the airport, he could remember seeing Ma by the waterfall. He was a sweaty mess.
He purchased a new shirt and undershirt at a little haberdashery on Rosecrans in Point Loma. After arriving at
Lindbergh Field and paying the taxi fare, he retreated to a men’s room. In front of a sink and a mirror, he
stripped off coat, tie and shirts. Abandoning the dirty white shirt, he used the undershirt as a wet rag to sponge
himself off from face to waist. Then he pitched the wet shirt and dried up with paper towels. He put on the new
shirts, refastened the necktie, combed his hair and donned the suit coat once more. Refreshed and looking
every inch the business man, he boarded the plane for Houston. As he sat back in the seat and waited for the
takeoff, he let his mind return to Peňasquitos Creek.
He had climbed through the tumble of huge boulders to the spot where the water descended a good twenty feet
over a series of falls. There were mirror-like pools at every level, winding in motionless balance through the
towering walls of stone. The water made a hollow roar from back in the crevices, where the path of least
resistance was a short drop to a frothing basin in a virtual cave of stream-carved monoliths. From there it
moved silently into the temple pool that sat poised like a glass lake, and then pulled itself fast and narrow into
the next falls.
As he saw it, he had remembered it all. It fell into place with a combination of nostalgia and déjà vu that gave
Vikor chills up his back. There was the smooth, level boulder on which he and his ma had lain and dried after a
cool plunge, must be thousands of times. He saw no sign of her now, so he continued on, after he had collected
himself.
So it was real. He made the rounds; place after place… this campsite on a ridge by a eucalyptus grove, this
tiny spring in the bottom of a brushy canyon, this dirt road angling up to where the old hermit had kept an egg
ranch, this view, this cliff, this patch of cholla, this old persimmon tree, this neglected and languishing grove of
walnuts, this old well casing sticking up six feet above ground where the topsoil had been stripped and sold…
was familiar. He remembered the well when it had been flush to the ground and abandoned. An agricultural
hole with an eight inch bore left uncovered for years, it was often a convenient place for Diana and her son to
get water.
It was less than twenty feet down. They had a narrow bucket on a rope stashed in the nearby sycamores.
Unlike many of the wells in the area, this one still flowed sweet and cold. There were so many in the area that
had begun sucking salt water, as a result of rancher Murphy's deep irrigation wells' lowering the water table.
The well in Gonzales Canyon had a precious little aquifer of its own, however.
Vikor had hoisted himself up onto the rusty casing and had looked at the little circle reflecting his head and
the sky. Still about twenty feet down, he realized, with some satisfaction.
He didn't think until later to cast about in the sycamores to see if he could turn up the old bucket, which was
really a length of six inch pipe, with a capped end and a wire handle.
That would have been pushing it, he reminded himself, as the jet lifted and turned its nose toward Texas. That
would have been pushing it. Whatever the nature of the weird hallucination that he was enjoying… memories
of himself as a child with another mother… it was not likely to include such tangibility as the iron bucket used
in imagination to draw water.
That Carmel Valley, and Gonzalez Canyon and Peňasquitos Creek were all real places could somehow be
explained, he told himself, settling back into the seat. He glanced out of the window and down, but there was
only dark clouds and night time. He closed his eyes.
He purchased a new shirt and undershirt at a little haberdashery on Rosecrans in Point Loma. After arriving at
Lindbergh Field and paying the taxi fare, he retreated to a men’s room. In front of a sink and a mirror, he
stripped off coat, tie and shirts. Abandoning the dirty white shirt, he used the undershirt as a wet rag to sponge
himself off from face to waist. Then he pitched the wet shirt and dried up with paper towels. He put on the new
shirts, refastened the necktie, combed his hair and donned the suit coat once more. Refreshed and looking
every inch the business man, he boarded the plane for Houston. As he sat back in the seat and waited for the
takeoff, he let his mind return to Peňasquitos Creek.
He had climbed through the tumble of huge boulders to the spot where the water descended a good twenty feet
over a series of falls. There were mirror-like pools at every level, winding in motionless balance through the
towering walls of stone. The water made a hollow roar from back in the crevices, where the path of least
resistance was a short drop to a frothing basin in a virtual cave of stream-carved monoliths. From there it
moved silently into the temple pool that sat poised like a glass lake, and then pulled itself fast and narrow into
the next falls.
As he saw it, he had remembered it all. It fell into place with a combination of nostalgia and déjà vu that gave
Vikor chills up his back. There was the smooth, level boulder on which he and his ma had lain and dried after a
cool plunge, must be thousands of times. He saw no sign of her now, so he continued on, after he had collected
himself.
So it was real. He made the rounds; place after place… this campsite on a ridge by a eucalyptus grove, this
tiny spring in the bottom of a brushy canyon, this dirt road angling up to where the old hermit had kept an egg
ranch, this view, this cliff, this patch of cholla, this old persimmon tree, this neglected and languishing grove of
walnuts, this old well casing sticking up six feet above ground where the topsoil had been stripped and sold…
was familiar. He remembered the well when it had been flush to the ground and abandoned. An agricultural
hole with an eight inch bore left uncovered for years, it was often a convenient place for Diana and her son to
get water.
It was less than twenty feet down. They had a narrow bucket on a rope stashed in the nearby sycamores.
Unlike many of the wells in the area, this one still flowed sweet and cold. There were so many in the area that
had begun sucking salt water, as a result of rancher Murphy's deep irrigation wells' lowering the water table.
The well in Gonzales Canyon had a precious little aquifer of its own, however.
Vikor had hoisted himself up onto the rusty casing and had looked at the little circle reflecting his head and
the sky. Still about twenty feet down, he realized, with some satisfaction.
He didn't think until later to cast about in the sycamores to see if he could turn up the old bucket, which was
really a length of six inch pipe, with a capped end and a wire handle.
That would have been pushing it, he reminded himself, as the jet lifted and turned its nose toward Texas. That
would have been pushing it. Whatever the nature of the weird hallucination that he was enjoying… memories
of himself as a child with another mother… it was not likely to include such tangibility as the iron bucket used
in imagination to draw water.
That Carmel Valley, and Gonzalez Canyon and Peňasquitos Creek were all real places could somehow be
explained, he told himself, settling back into the seat. He glanced out of the window and down, but there was
only dark clouds and night time. He closed his eyes.
| * * * |
It was not the first time that Spot and Widowmaker had been in harness together. They had pulled a fancy at
the Del Mar Fair one year. They had pulled a tractor out of the mud more than once on the Heinz ranch. Now
Johnny had the tongue of the travail suspended by a pair of loops from the two saddle horns. He judged it would
work well enough for a while without pulling the saddles back to the horses' hips. Positioning himself closely in
front of the two, Johnny led them in a wide sweep from the part of the grove where he had put together the
conveyance to a polite halt next to Carol and her patient.
Together they loaded Cabler onto the travail. Johnny returned to the bits and reins and led the horses away.
Carol walked behind the litter watching, that nothing fell off, and that Bob rode as comfortably as was possible.
the Del Mar Fair one year. They had pulled a tractor out of the mud more than once on the Heinz ranch. Now
Johnny had the tongue of the travail suspended by a pair of loops from the two saddle horns. He judged it would
work well enough for a while without pulling the saddles back to the horses' hips. Positioning himself closely in
front of the two, Johnny led them in a wide sweep from the part of the grove where he had put together the
conveyance to a polite halt next to Carol and her patient.
Together they loaded Cabler onto the travail. Johnny returned to the bits and reins and led the horses away.
Carol walked behind the litter watching, that nothing fell off, and that Bob rode as comfortably as was possible.
| * * * |
| * * * |
A whirlwind formed out on the pasture. It danced nervously out on the flat land, hovering like a helpless
guardian angel.
“Attention! This is the San Diego County Sheriff! I repeat! Attention! This is the San Diego County Sheriff!
We have you covered! Lay down your guns! I repeat, we have you covered! Lay down your guns!"
Deputy O'Farrell began to depart from his script at this point. His next line was to have instructed the
suspects to move away from their grounded guns, as prescribed in prior objective number two.
Deputy O'Farrell had thought to have a checkmark by now at the line in his script suggesting that the
varmints lay down their guns. This check would indicate compliance. He already had made several checks by
the items listed beneath the first priority, that of keeping safe the innocent. Communication by loudspeaker,
evacuation of surrounding fields and residences, evacuation of the little red school house that still stood on
Carmel Valley Road, interruption of the school bus route, witnesses in custody, provision for backdrops should
the inevitable fusillade really prove to be inevitable. Check, check, check, check, check, check.
The next instruction, inviting the young men to move away from their guns, seemed premature, since they
had yet to make any effort to shuck them as requested. Nor did the script detail whether the horses should be
led away from the weapons as well. Deputy Tim had failed to consider the horses in his monologue. Not only
were the fellows not dropping their weaponry, but they had drawn themselves into a fairly protective coil of
horse meat. With each man holding his mount's reins at the bit and standing close to his partner, with Spot
facing southwest while the mare faced northeast, the sharpshooters wouldn't have much to shoot at except
horses, at least not at first.
O'Farrell's pencil hovered over the spot where he wanted a checkmark to be. He considered speaking an
additional command into the bullhorn, that the two cowboys should also release their horses, presumably so
that the fickle cayuses could scamper out of range to safety. Somehow, such a suggestion, over a loudspeaker,
to these suspects, seemed comical.
Actually his whole script began to seem comical to Deputy O'Farrell. There was a paddy wagon warmed up and
waiting around the point of Mount Carmel, in the canyon right up behind the Harlan ranch house. Warrants
had been prepared; files had been pulled. Check, check, check. It had all been predicated on success. The
suspects would rapidly realize that resistance was impossible, since no targets could be seen for their
Winchesters and revolvers to lash out at. They would also recognize the level threat behind the voice in the
bullhorn that concealed shooters could gun them down.
"Move away from your horses," the voice now threatened. The deputy was more used to instructing folks to
move away from their automobiles. It was nineteen fifty-three. O'Farrell was ad libbing by now, but no check,
no check.
Now he realized that that something further was missing from his script, even though the emplaced gunners
had precise instructions which would serve well the apprehending officers who would accompany the paddy
wagon to the vicinity of the big sycamore, instructions that said, basically, that anything beyond statuesque
immobility should be interpreted as a threat against the deputies in the field, and constituted a command to
fire without further orders. The marksmen, for their part, assumed that this was exactly what would happen.
They merrily expected to cut the desperadoes to ribbons, to have them dancing in a four way hail of lead,
revolvers waving uselessly in the air.
If the suspects were innocent, of course, they would merely comply with the authority of the bullhorn, and be
subsequently taken into custody, questioned and released. This wouldn't happen, because every man on the
team was sure that he knew that this pair of suspects was indeed the infamous John Stream and Robert
Cabler, who had shot down a fireman for sure, and probably a rancher's daughter and a bunch of other people
as well.
The gun teams (there were two deputies at each position, one manning a scope-mounted Remington thirty-
aught-six, the other listening for instructions on a walkie-talkie) had also not been told about the horses. They
were expecting some sort of jalopy to arrive in the shade of the sycamore. Seeing that the school bus had not
yet arrived across the pasture by the mailboxes on Carmel Valley Road, the villains would probably get out to
stretch their legs and walk around smoking cigarettes. The bullhorn would shout its message, the outlaws
would put up a fight, and the sharpshooters would finish it.
guardian angel.
“Attention! This is the San Diego County Sheriff! I repeat! Attention! This is the San Diego County Sheriff!
We have you covered! Lay down your guns! I repeat, we have you covered! Lay down your guns!"
Deputy O'Farrell began to depart from his script at this point. His next line was to have instructed the
suspects to move away from their grounded guns, as prescribed in prior objective number two.
Deputy O'Farrell had thought to have a checkmark by now at the line in his script suggesting that the
varmints lay down their guns. This check would indicate compliance. He already had made several checks by
the items listed beneath the first priority, that of keeping safe the innocent. Communication by loudspeaker,
evacuation of surrounding fields and residences, evacuation of the little red school house that still stood on
Carmel Valley Road, interruption of the school bus route, witnesses in custody, provision for backdrops should
the inevitable fusillade really prove to be inevitable. Check, check, check, check, check, check.
The next instruction, inviting the young men to move away from their guns, seemed premature, since they
had yet to make any effort to shuck them as requested. Nor did the script detail whether the horses should be
led away from the weapons as well. Deputy Tim had failed to consider the horses in his monologue. Not only
were the fellows not dropping their weaponry, but they had drawn themselves into a fairly protective coil of
horse meat. With each man holding his mount's reins at the bit and standing close to his partner, with Spot
facing southwest while the mare faced northeast, the sharpshooters wouldn't have much to shoot at except
horses, at least not at first.
O'Farrell's pencil hovered over the spot where he wanted a checkmark to be. He considered speaking an
additional command into the bullhorn, that the two cowboys should also release their horses, presumably so
that the fickle cayuses could scamper out of range to safety. Somehow, such a suggestion, over a loudspeaker,
to these suspects, seemed comical.
Actually his whole script began to seem comical to Deputy O'Farrell. There was a paddy wagon warmed up and
waiting around the point of Mount Carmel, in the canyon right up behind the Harlan ranch house. Warrants
had been prepared; files had been pulled. Check, check, check. It had all been predicated on success. The
suspects would rapidly realize that resistance was impossible, since no targets could be seen for their
Winchesters and revolvers to lash out at. They would also recognize the level threat behind the voice in the
bullhorn that concealed shooters could gun them down.
"Move away from your horses," the voice now threatened. The deputy was more used to instructing folks to
move away from their automobiles. It was nineteen fifty-three. O'Farrell was ad libbing by now, but no check,
no check.
Now he realized that that something further was missing from his script, even though the emplaced gunners
had precise instructions which would serve well the apprehending officers who would accompany the paddy
wagon to the vicinity of the big sycamore, instructions that said, basically, that anything beyond statuesque
immobility should be interpreted as a threat against the deputies in the field, and constituted a command to
fire without further orders. The marksmen, for their part, assumed that this was exactly what would happen.
They merrily expected to cut the desperadoes to ribbons, to have them dancing in a four way hail of lead,
revolvers waving uselessly in the air.
If the suspects were innocent, of course, they would merely comply with the authority of the bullhorn, and be
subsequently taken into custody, questioned and released. This wouldn't happen, because every man on the
team was sure that he knew that this pair of suspects was indeed the infamous John Stream and Robert
Cabler, who had shot down a fireman for sure, and probably a rancher's daughter and a bunch of other people
as well.
The gun teams (there were two deputies at each position, one manning a scope-mounted Remington thirty-
aught-six, the other listening for instructions on a walkie-talkie) had also not been told about the horses. They
were expecting some sort of jalopy to arrive in the shade of the sycamore. Seeing that the school bus had not
yet arrived across the pasture by the mailboxes on Carmel Valley Road, the villains would probably get out to
stretch their legs and walk around smoking cigarettes. The bullhorn would shout its message, the outlaws
would put up a fight, and the sharpshooters would finish it.
Bob Cabler went swimming the night of the party, after the guests and Johnny bedded down. Cathy Carnahan
ended up sleeping by herself in her truck after all. When she saw the condition that Cabler had got himself
into with the whiskey by the time the singing was over, and the group had howled at the rise of the waning
moon, she realized that he was no threat to anyone but himself.
Bob never really remembered the frosty dip he took on the morning of January first in the light of the
half-moon. But he was aware of it at the time. As he stumbled down the trail to where Fugitive Creek rumbled
in the cold canyon, he thought, why am I doing this? I said I would, he reminded himself, and so he had.
Earlier, when the party was in full swing, he had suggested that an excursion of the polar bear club after
midnight would be a bold move. He had hoped for a general joining in on this wild idea, but he didn't get it.
Even Johnny, who bathed in the creek almost every day of the year, allowed that he believed the sack would be
more inviting than the brook.
Somewhat miffed, Cabler had declared that he would go alone, and no one tried to talk him out of that either,
which irritated him further, and left him feeling now, as he walked down the path to the water, that he had to
do it.
Fugitive Creek is the kind of mountain brook where you have to find a pool big enough to immerse yourself
in. None of the rocky puddles at the crossing really qualified. Bob and Johnny had found that a couple of
hundred yards upstream there was a series of waterfalls and smooth stone hollows that were excellent for
bathing. Some were large enough for several friends to share at once on a hot summer day. Others were more
like shallow granite bathtubs, long enough and just deep enough for one person to stretch out and lay back and
to be submerged in the icy water.
Even in the summer the water was cold, for the creek was spring-fed from a source not far away, a couple
thousand feet higher in the nook of the mountain. In the winter it was bone-chilling.
When Johnny had first come to this neck of the woods he had camped on wild land that was owned by a
relative whose concerns were down in the world of the city. The only source of water back then had been the
creek. Johnny found it less torturous to get right into the water, cold or not, than to monkey with a fire and a
pot and a cotton cloth to keep his body clean.
He would just as soon stay dirty.
But a dip in the creek was more than merely getting a bath. Especially in the winter, it was the highlight of
the day, if only because it was so intense. Usually the fellows took a break in the bright afternoon, before the
sun slipped behind the ridge that formed the south wall of the canyon. This insured sunlight and warm rocks to
console the living flesh after the madness of the cold plunge. Johnny regularly came up from the water
claiming to have "seen God," whatever that meant.
What it meant was that immersion in near-freezing water was a compelling experience. Moreover, the
aftermath of racing blood and warming skin was a miracle of sensation. No one argued that seeing God was not
an apt way to describe the adventure.
What Bob Cabler expected to see in the predawn new year is anyone's guess. That he made his way up the
trail through the woods to the falls without breaking his neck on rocks was miraculous in itself. He set the
bottle of whiskey on a rock in the moonlight and proceeded to undress.
Bob had gained a bit of weight since the old days in Carmel Valley. Where Johnny stayed lean as a fence rail,
his partner pooched out in every direction. From florid cheeks to jiggling belly, he was big everywhere, muscles
covered with a thick layer of fat like a seal. Oh, the water was still cold alright. Even so, he stayed in it for a
bit, letting the cold sink in. By contrast, with Johnny the cold was instantly at the bone. Except for the hottest
days of summer, when the hot rocks of a hundred waterfalls are warming the water, it was in and out for
Johnny.
Bob lolled. The blood deserted his skin, and the cold came after, numbing troops, working through the
neighborhood of fat. The blood rushed to the depths, loaded with alcohol and with oxygen from chilled
inspiration.
When it came back as heat and action, he exploded from the pool like an arching dolphin and howled like a
wolf whose brain was an angelic explosion. "Owoo-oo-oo-oo-oo!"
ended up sleeping by herself in her truck after all. When she saw the condition that Cabler had got himself
into with the whiskey by the time the singing was over, and the group had howled at the rise of the waning
moon, she realized that he was no threat to anyone but himself.
Bob never really remembered the frosty dip he took on the morning of January first in the light of the
half-moon. But he was aware of it at the time. As he stumbled down the trail to where Fugitive Creek rumbled
in the cold canyon, he thought, why am I doing this? I said I would, he reminded himself, and so he had.
Earlier, when the party was in full swing, he had suggested that an excursion of the polar bear club after
midnight would be a bold move. He had hoped for a general joining in on this wild idea, but he didn't get it.
Even Johnny, who bathed in the creek almost every day of the year, allowed that he believed the sack would be
more inviting than the brook.
Somewhat miffed, Cabler had declared that he would go alone, and no one tried to talk him out of that either,
which irritated him further, and left him feeling now, as he walked down the path to the water, that he had to
do it.
Fugitive Creek is the kind of mountain brook where you have to find a pool big enough to immerse yourself
in. None of the rocky puddles at the crossing really qualified. Bob and Johnny had found that a couple of
hundred yards upstream there was a series of waterfalls and smooth stone hollows that were excellent for
bathing. Some were large enough for several friends to share at once on a hot summer day. Others were more
like shallow granite bathtubs, long enough and just deep enough for one person to stretch out and lay back and
to be submerged in the icy water.
Even in the summer the water was cold, for the creek was spring-fed from a source not far away, a couple
thousand feet higher in the nook of the mountain. In the winter it was bone-chilling.
When Johnny had first come to this neck of the woods he had camped on wild land that was owned by a
relative whose concerns were down in the world of the city. The only source of water back then had been the
creek. Johnny found it less torturous to get right into the water, cold or not, than to monkey with a fire and a
pot and a cotton cloth to keep his body clean.
He would just as soon stay dirty.
But a dip in the creek was more than merely getting a bath. Especially in the winter, it was the highlight of
the day, if only because it was so intense. Usually the fellows took a break in the bright afternoon, before the
sun slipped behind the ridge that formed the south wall of the canyon. This insured sunlight and warm rocks to
console the living flesh after the madness of the cold plunge. Johnny regularly came up from the water
claiming to have "seen God," whatever that meant.
What it meant was that immersion in near-freezing water was a compelling experience. Moreover, the
aftermath of racing blood and warming skin was a miracle of sensation. No one argued that seeing God was not
an apt way to describe the adventure.
What Bob Cabler expected to see in the predawn new year is anyone's guess. That he made his way up the
trail through the woods to the falls without breaking his neck on rocks was miraculous in itself. He set the
bottle of whiskey on a rock in the moonlight and proceeded to undress.
Bob had gained a bit of weight since the old days in Carmel Valley. Where Johnny stayed lean as a fence rail,
his partner pooched out in every direction. From florid cheeks to jiggling belly, he was big everywhere, muscles
covered with a thick layer of fat like a seal. Oh, the water was still cold alright. Even so, he stayed in it for a
bit, letting the cold sink in. By contrast, with Johnny the cold was instantly at the bone. Except for the hottest
days of summer, when the hot rocks of a hundred waterfalls are warming the water, it was in and out for
Johnny.
Bob lolled. The blood deserted his skin, and the cold came after, numbing troops, working through the
neighborhood of fat. The blood rushed to the depths, loaded with alcohol and with oxygen from chilled
inspiration.
When it came back as heat and action, he exploded from the pool like an arching dolphin and howled like a
wolf whose brain was an angelic explosion. "Owoo-oo-oo-oo-oo!"
| Vikor, age fourteen |
Diary of a Goatherder 6 June 1981
My leadership usurped by a goat, I called and pleaded, but soon had no choice but to follow them
myself.
With Dolly in the lead, they sliced diagonally across the ten acres and through the fence onto
Boulder Creek Road. That was where I caught up to Dolly. I grabbed her collar and pulled her
around. Sure enough, the herd followed, and we made a wide circle around the ranch, avoiding the
fence, and back to the creek where I had wanted to go.
Once I would get them to the creek there was never any trouble, but getting them from the pen that
far continued to be a challenge that threatened to reduce me to tears of frustration. Each day I opened
the gate, and they would scatter. I resorted to threats and coaxing, but there were eighteen goats and
only one of me.
It was essential to get them out on the range to get them fed each day. I was beginning to wonder if it
would work.
Sometimes it did, and we would arrive in a group at the creek and skip across the rocks in single file.
One or two of them would pause for a short drink. Of course, they had plenty of fresh water in the pen.
I'll bet they would come directly to the creek if they were thirsty, I thought. And that was the
solution. After feeding and milking that evening, I drained their water trough and left it empty
through the night and the next morning. I couldn't bear to leave them too long without water, so I
took them out earlier than usual. We went about eleven and the herd made a beeline to the creek!
Everyone drank.
It was then that I began to have the first glimmer of awareness of something beyond myself or any of
the individual goats, the something called the herd. After a few days, the opening dash to the creek
became a habit, and I was able to resume keeping fresh water available in the pen at all times for their
comfort and optimum milk production.
It was the herd that was in the habit of going straight to the creek. On any particular day, Mazie
might be more interested in the lemonade bush near the top of the trail. Luke might want to stop and
nibble young acorns part way down. Two or three of the kids would start off to explore the thicket off
to the left. Lucy might drift off to the right, but the herd was going to the creek, and all members of the
herd were bound to follow, and that included the goatherder, myself.
My leadership usurped by a goat, I called and pleaded, but soon had no choice but to follow them
myself.
With Dolly in the lead, they sliced diagonally across the ten acres and through the fence onto
Boulder Creek Road. That was where I caught up to Dolly. I grabbed her collar and pulled her
around. Sure enough, the herd followed, and we made a wide circle around the ranch, avoiding the
fence, and back to the creek where I had wanted to go.
Once I would get them to the creek there was never any trouble, but getting them from the pen that
far continued to be a challenge that threatened to reduce me to tears of frustration. Each day I opened
the gate, and they would scatter. I resorted to threats and coaxing, but there were eighteen goats and
only one of me.
It was essential to get them out on the range to get them fed each day. I was beginning to wonder if it
would work.
Sometimes it did, and we would arrive in a group at the creek and skip across the rocks in single file.
One or two of them would pause for a short drink. Of course, they had plenty of fresh water in the pen.
I'll bet they would come directly to the creek if they were thirsty, I thought. And that was the
solution. After feeding and milking that evening, I drained their water trough and left it empty
through the night and the next morning. I couldn't bear to leave them too long without water, so I
took them out earlier than usual. We went about eleven and the herd made a beeline to the creek!
Everyone drank.
It was then that I began to have the first glimmer of awareness of something beyond myself or any of
the individual goats, the something called the herd. After a few days, the opening dash to the creek
became a habit, and I was able to resume keeping fresh water available in the pen at all times for their
comfort and optimum milk production.
It was the herd that was in the habit of going straight to the creek. On any particular day, Mazie
might be more interested in the lemonade bush near the top of the trail. Luke might want to stop and
nibble young acorns part way down. Two or three of the kids would start off to explore the thicket off
to the left. Lucy might drift off to the right, but the herd was going to the creek, and all members of the
herd were bound to follow, and that included the goatherder, myself.
| * * * |
| * * * |
| * * * |
Ma had been waiting for Vikor, there on the flat rock, patient and sad.
For Cat One, Vikor's real mother, if you will, it had only been four years since the spoiled country boy had hit
the outlaw trail. For Vikor himself it had been four years, and he had returned to Dove Springs four times
since. He had returned to see his mother and the farm and the mountain, to share loot, to bury treasure.
But for Diana, for Ma, it had been fourteen years since she had kissed her son goodbye and put him on the
Greyhound bus in Del Mar. Fourteen years without a visit. This near-thirty business type with coat over
shoulder, necktie loose, shirt unbuttoned and tails dangling, who clambered with mature grace, despite the silly
clothes, up and across the huge pink and blue rocks that formed the nest of grottos and waterfalls, was this the
same, lean fifteen-year-old who had kissed her goodbye?
Of course, it was. She had known from the moment he had entered the nature preserve that Peňasquitos
Rancho had become. Her heart had swelled with pride.
She arrived at the waterfalls ahead of him. She wanted him to be proud of his ma. She knew she had plenty of
time, so she stripped and bathed. She released her long, yellow hair from its braid and let it spread joyfully in
the clear deep water as she swam through the glassy corridors of her temple.
No one else ever saw Diana bathe in these pools. Once in a long spell strangers would come, alone, different
men at different times, young men with wild hearts, young men who had not yet doused the fever of romantic
magic that burns in each of us from birth until, at the urgings of society, we put it out, we grow up, we 'get a
life,' we get some sense. Once in a long spell such a one would come, and though he would not see the ghostly
princess of the hills, he would hear her singing.
He would hear the eerie mix of falling water, birdsong, tree-wind and feminine melody. Sometimes he might
be just a teenager, out for a hike or a hunt. Sometimes he might deny his own innocence and dismiss the voice
as an illusion, some beguiling harmony arising from the interaction between the water, and the rocks, and the
air. Who was it who said that childhood is wasted on the young? Here would be a strapping fellow, not so
different from the younger Vikor, on the bridge of puberty but still charmed by the fantasies of a child. His
own cool attitude would dismiss the aural enchantment. It could not be shared. Were he even to try, his
foolishness would lure the scorn of his peers, so he would deny it, and the haunting drift of song would be lost,
and he would grow up, and he would forget.
The next stranger might be an older man, a veteran of life, someone whose defenses were shredded or
shattered, whose denial was in pieces, who was vulnerable to the songs of sprites, or nymphs, or goddesses. He
might hear the song, and wonder if he was finally going mad. He might suspect that reality was not all that it
had been portrayed. If reality had been hard on him, if it had shattered dreams and goals, or if dreams and
goals had been achieved but at the cost of his own peace and balance, if life had become a taunting chimera of
beauty and betrayal, greed and loss, dedication and disillusionment, such a man may have allowed himself to
listen to the wild lyrics, not to understand, but only to absorb, like the summer-dry, California earth absorbs
the rain, to absorb, to expand, to heal, to grow rich with the tilth of loam, until finally full, the excess would
flow, as tears, promises, resolutions and thanksgiving.
Restored, such a man would go back to his life, with shields mended but heart ever wistfully attuned to the
memory of a song that he would never hear again.
Vikor was none of these. The activities of his life were too urgent to allow such foolery. Its threats too real,
its chances too wild, he was not disposed to idle in fanciful visions. He surged through the familiar rocks like an
ant on a mission, looking here and searching there, seeing nothing but trees and water and rock, and passing
briskly with senses flared, missing nothing, missing everything.
It wasn't until later that he remembered his visit at all. Nestled in the comfortless seat of the airliner, he
remembered how it had twisted his heart, to see her sitting in meager contentment on the warm, broad stone.
Her hair was combed and drying. Her wooden comb lay on the smooth, adamantine surface, next to the folds of
her gown.
Diana was dressed in a smock that must have once been white. Life in the open had brought it closer to its
original muslin color, nearly a match for the endless dirt roads that transected her tiny world.
She had grown old, as well. Like the muslin, life in the open had weathered her. The wind had sanded her
pores. The rain and the creek had eroded her lines. She was forty-six. She looked to be a hundred years old,
and at the same time, she was still the sixteen year old who had danced like a lost cloud through the Carmel
hills.
Now, even though she was immortal, even though she was as nonexistent as yesterday's dream, emotion
captured her, and she wept with joy. "Victor!" she exclaimed, rising to her feet.
They came together in an embrace, murdered mother and imaginary son, murderous son and imaginary
mother. Vikor stirred uneasily in the seat of the jet. Such displays of feeling had become somewhat foreign to
him, for he lived his days in such a deep disguise. Today he had cried. Today he had wept, but, but… hadn't he
returned to the car convinced that he had met no one, that he had seen nothing but trees and hills, rocks and
chaparral, rabbits and deer and quail?
Yet, now that same memory held the vision of the beautiful goddess who had claimed him for her own. And it
held, as well, the sound of her voice.
"Victor!" Diana had never called her son Vikor; that was an affectation of another family in another world,
hundreds of miles away, through warps of illusion.
"Ma," he answered, gathering the tiny being into his arms. "Ma." He barely breathed the word, for he was
also overcome by love and protective concern. He could feel the strength in her sturdy packet of muscle and
bone. He could sense the traces of all that she had borne, the hunger, the beauty, the miles, the heat and the
cold. He had never felt so strongly the urge to care, the need to gather and comfort, to guard his ma from the
cruelties of a world that had already had its way with her. "Ma, Ma, oh, Ma."
He was again the fifteen year old country boy. The sophistication of the city was gone. He caught his lip in his
teeth when she scolded him sorrowfully.
"Why have you been gone for so long?" she sobbed. He held her tighter, pinching shut his own tear-brimmed
eyes. Why indeed, he asked himself.
They sat on the rock, and she asked him about the hunt.
At one point she had asked him if he had ever made a kill, one of his kills, with an arrow. Her own bow and
quiver lay quite near, in the narrow shadow of a rock, blending like its wielder into the background.
Vikor, Victor, had killed with a bow, many a time, but not his main quarry, not humans. Nor did he recall just
then the hunts with his mother, Cat One, on the mountains of another world, another life. He only
remembered the desperate hunts he had shared with Ma, when they hunted and killed, not to sport, but to live.
The years he remembered were real years; the hunger he remembered was real hunger. Winter in Carmel
Valley, the isolation of wild things for whom warm, lighted windows were only additional stars in a galaxy of
unconcern. It was almost a repeat of the drama of her own mother, living with her baby as fugitives in the
caves and canyons, only this time with no Johnny, and no Bob.
The hunger had been real. The fear had been real. At an early age he had begun to shape his own bows, to
fletch his own shafts, and to fix to them the razor-sharp broad heads that his ma allowed him from her precious
collection.
He smiled to remember the hours he spent laboriously carving a conical hole deeper and deeper into the
trunk of a eucalyptus tree in order to free the arrowhead buried there by youthful indiscretion.
"Don't practice with your broad heads," Ma had told him. He knew better, but still she had reminded him, had
shown him how the bladed fore portion of the heads would unscrew, to be replaced by what she called "field
tips," heavy-shouldered target points that would pull free from a tree without surgery.
For Cat One, Vikor's real mother, if you will, it had only been four years since the spoiled country boy had hit
the outlaw trail. For Vikor himself it had been four years, and he had returned to Dove Springs four times
since. He had returned to see his mother and the farm and the mountain, to share loot, to bury treasure.
But for Diana, for Ma, it had been fourteen years since she had kissed her son goodbye and put him on the
Greyhound bus in Del Mar. Fourteen years without a visit. This near-thirty business type with coat over
shoulder, necktie loose, shirt unbuttoned and tails dangling, who clambered with mature grace, despite the silly
clothes, up and across the huge pink and blue rocks that formed the nest of grottos and waterfalls, was this the
same, lean fifteen-year-old who had kissed her goodbye?
Of course, it was. She had known from the moment he had entered the nature preserve that Peňasquitos
Rancho had become. Her heart had swelled with pride.
She arrived at the waterfalls ahead of him. She wanted him to be proud of his ma. She knew she had plenty of
time, so she stripped and bathed. She released her long, yellow hair from its braid and let it spread joyfully in
the clear deep water as she swam through the glassy corridors of her temple.
No one else ever saw Diana bathe in these pools. Once in a long spell strangers would come, alone, different
men at different times, young men with wild hearts, young men who had not yet doused the fever of romantic
magic that burns in each of us from birth until, at the urgings of society, we put it out, we grow up, we 'get a
life,' we get some sense. Once in a long spell such a one would come, and though he would not see the ghostly
princess of the hills, he would hear her singing.
He would hear the eerie mix of falling water, birdsong, tree-wind and feminine melody. Sometimes he might
be just a teenager, out for a hike or a hunt. Sometimes he might deny his own innocence and dismiss the voice
as an illusion, some beguiling harmony arising from the interaction between the water, and the rocks, and the
air. Who was it who said that childhood is wasted on the young? Here would be a strapping fellow, not so
different from the younger Vikor, on the bridge of puberty but still charmed by the fantasies of a child. His
own cool attitude would dismiss the aural enchantment. It could not be shared. Were he even to try, his
foolishness would lure the scorn of his peers, so he would deny it, and the haunting drift of song would be lost,
and he would grow up, and he would forget.
The next stranger might be an older man, a veteran of life, someone whose defenses were shredded or
shattered, whose denial was in pieces, who was vulnerable to the songs of sprites, or nymphs, or goddesses. He
might hear the song, and wonder if he was finally going mad. He might suspect that reality was not all that it
had been portrayed. If reality had been hard on him, if it had shattered dreams and goals, or if dreams and
goals had been achieved but at the cost of his own peace and balance, if life had become a taunting chimera of
beauty and betrayal, greed and loss, dedication and disillusionment, such a man may have allowed himself to
listen to the wild lyrics, not to understand, but only to absorb, like the summer-dry, California earth absorbs
the rain, to absorb, to expand, to heal, to grow rich with the tilth of loam, until finally full, the excess would
flow, as tears, promises, resolutions and thanksgiving.
Restored, such a man would go back to his life, with shields mended but heart ever wistfully attuned to the
memory of a song that he would never hear again.
Vikor was none of these. The activities of his life were too urgent to allow such foolery. Its threats too real,
its chances too wild, he was not disposed to idle in fanciful visions. He surged through the familiar rocks like an
ant on a mission, looking here and searching there, seeing nothing but trees and water and rock, and passing
briskly with senses flared, missing nothing, missing everything.
It wasn't until later that he remembered his visit at all. Nestled in the comfortless seat of the airliner, he
remembered how it had twisted his heart, to see her sitting in meager contentment on the warm, broad stone.
Her hair was combed and drying. Her wooden comb lay on the smooth, adamantine surface, next to the folds of
her gown.
Diana was dressed in a smock that must have once been white. Life in the open had brought it closer to its
original muslin color, nearly a match for the endless dirt roads that transected her tiny world.
She had grown old, as well. Like the muslin, life in the open had weathered her. The wind had sanded her
pores. The rain and the creek had eroded her lines. She was forty-six. She looked to be a hundred years old,
and at the same time, she was still the sixteen year old who had danced like a lost cloud through the Carmel
hills.
Now, even though she was immortal, even though she was as nonexistent as yesterday's dream, emotion
captured her, and she wept with joy. "Victor!" she exclaimed, rising to her feet.
They came together in an embrace, murdered mother and imaginary son, murderous son and imaginary
mother. Vikor stirred uneasily in the seat of the jet. Such displays of feeling had become somewhat foreign to
him, for he lived his days in such a deep disguise. Today he had cried. Today he had wept, but, but… hadn't he
returned to the car convinced that he had met no one, that he had seen nothing but trees and hills, rocks and
chaparral, rabbits and deer and quail?
Yet, now that same memory held the vision of the beautiful goddess who had claimed him for her own. And it
held, as well, the sound of her voice.
"Victor!" Diana had never called her son Vikor; that was an affectation of another family in another world,
hundreds of miles away, through warps of illusion.
"Ma," he answered, gathering the tiny being into his arms. "Ma." He barely breathed the word, for he was
also overcome by love and protective concern. He could feel the strength in her sturdy packet of muscle and
bone. He could sense the traces of all that she had borne, the hunger, the beauty, the miles, the heat and the
cold. He had never felt so strongly the urge to care, the need to gather and comfort, to guard his ma from the
cruelties of a world that had already had its way with her. "Ma, Ma, oh, Ma."
He was again the fifteen year old country boy. The sophistication of the city was gone. He caught his lip in his
teeth when she scolded him sorrowfully.
"Why have you been gone for so long?" she sobbed. He held her tighter, pinching shut his own tear-brimmed
eyes. Why indeed, he asked himself.
They sat on the rock, and she asked him about the hunt.
At one point she had asked him if he had ever made a kill, one of his kills, with an arrow. Her own bow and
quiver lay quite near, in the narrow shadow of a rock, blending like its wielder into the background.
Vikor, Victor, had killed with a bow, many a time, but not his main quarry, not humans. Nor did he recall just
then the hunts with his mother, Cat One, on the mountains of another world, another life. He only
remembered the desperate hunts he had shared with Ma, when they hunted and killed, not to sport, but to live.
The years he remembered were real years; the hunger he remembered was real hunger. Winter in Carmel
Valley, the isolation of wild things for whom warm, lighted windows were only additional stars in a galaxy of
unconcern. It was almost a repeat of the drama of her own mother, living with her baby as fugitives in the
caves and canyons, only this time with no Johnny, and no Bob.
The hunger had been real. The fear had been real. At an early age he had begun to shape his own bows, to
fletch his own shafts, and to fix to them the razor-sharp broad heads that his ma allowed him from her precious
collection.
He smiled to remember the hours he spent laboriously carving a conical hole deeper and deeper into the
trunk of a eucalyptus tree in order to free the arrowhead buried there by youthful indiscretion.
"Don't practice with your broad heads," Ma had told him. He knew better, but still she had reminded him, had
shown him how the bladed fore portion of the heads would unscrew, to be replaced by what she called "field
tips," heavy-shouldered target points that would pull free from a tree without surgery.
| * * * |
Diana had wanted to see Vikor's dagger. In other settings, the innuendo in such a declaration would certainly
be intended. Bonnie Parker's coy reach to actually touch Clyde's revolver as he held it low and furtive, like a
businessman's peeing at a bus stop. A pistol thrust cruelly into the mouth of a woman being raped. The phallic
interpretation of every weapon or toy from pool cues to swords and spears to cigarettes (and joints) to engine
hoods, motorcycles, dragons, broomsticks and daggers has been shared by society at large for generations,
perhaps many generations.
Hell, we may as well throw in telephone poles, lighthouses, bedposts, hot dogs, the number one, (the lower
case el?) the lightning, the river and fingers. Even the thumb can be used (Tom Thumb? …sorry, just being
frivolous).
The horse has been suggested as a phallic symbol. It may well be, at times, sprouting from a fourteen year old
girl's crotch like a stallion dong. These usages come from people who have no ordinary purpose for horses or
daggers.
Her own dagger she had received from her ma. It was an appropriate parting gift. Like an old superstition, the
unpaid-for blade changed hands. Carol Gallagher never noticed when it was that her daughter stopped being
home at the same time as herself. She wasn't aware of the last time she was ever to see Diana. But it was soon
after she gave her the old skinning knife that she had bought from Johnny for a quarter.
She had no further use for what she had fatuously called her dagger, and it had never reminded her of a hard
cock. She had used it for what it was, a skinning knife. She had skinned many a kill with the sharp tool.
Rabbits. Just a quick slip across the inside of the rear legs from paw to paw, and the knife was set aside. The
pelt would peel off inside out, like a t-shirt clear to the neck. She would rest the neck on a block of wood and
pick up the knife and sever the head.
With a deer or a steer (sometimes, sometimes) she would usually be working with Johnny or Bob. After an
initial incision down the middle that left intact the sack of guts, each would work the hide away from one side
of the hanging carcass, drawing the knife repeatedly along the line where flesh and skin join, watching the
smooth separation of each from each, until they met at the spine.
Each leg was similarly split along the inside from thigh to hoof, and then removed from its wrapping. Working
together, Carol and one of the men could remove the skin from a grown deer in less than ten minutes.
Cattle took longer, but the gang didn't always have permission, or inclination, to put up so much meat at
once. Without refrigeration, most of it had to be jerked. Sometimes the boys would help Bill Heinz with a
slaughter, and then share in the meat.
With deer, if the boys had to haul it a distance, it would be gutted already when Carol and Diana first saw it.
But, if wilderness and privacy allowed, it was not unusual for the little family to join at the sight of the kill with
the hunter. They had no desire to turn their sweet campsites into charnel pits of offal, focus points for
scavengers like vultures and flies. Over time, Johnny feared, that is what would have happened. It would have
violated his idea of low impact camping. It's hard to keep down with buzzards twirling like searchlights above
your hideout.
At these little gatherings was where little Diana learned her ways with the body of a beast. The family tried to
use everything, the meat, the hide, the brains and sinews. But the families of all of the heroes had lost the
ancient skills that used to be common in every race. They did their best, and they left the rest for the coyotes
and other scavengers to pick through, to apply the wisdom of their own families to make ends meet (leftovers
meat).
Once Carol and her daughter were rescued, once they had rejoined civilized society, Carol had no more use
for a skinning knife.
Vikor drew his dagger from its hiding place. She loved it at once. As a woman who did have a practical use for
a sharp knife, she admired the potential of the two gleaming edges, and the needle-sharp point.
"Here, take it," he suggested. He carefully handed it to her, holding it so that she could seize it by the handle.
He didn't touch the blade himself; it was sharp all over.
Diana took a careful look at her son's dagger. Experience had led him from one knife to another over the
years, and he had others, but this tiny sword had served him well as his weapon of choice for some time now.
The handle was rich, dark walnut. Vikor had carved it himself. (Some of his relationship to Johnny Dolan had
not been wasted.) More relevant to the actual function of the knife was the hand guard. Diana's skinning
knife, her dagger, did not have a hand guard. It would have got in the way of the primary functions of skinning
game, and butchering in general (secondary function: slicing throats).
The purpose of the guard on Vikor's dagger was to protect his fingers and his hand during a thrust. He used it
like a rapier, stabbing point first into the back or the front of a victim. Without a guard, there would have been
the danger of the stabber's hand slipping from the comfortable hardwood onto the hard steel.
Like an old-fashioned rapier, Vikor's handy little cutting tool had two sharp edges. Were the point to stop
against a sternum, rib or vertebra, a slipped grip might have the killer's fingers and palm sliced clear to his
own bones.
With the guard, milled steel with the ends curved and flattened to cradle the fingers and the thumb, our boy
could exert maximum force when he executed the stab. He was strong, and lithe, and coordinated, and he had
practiced every move a thousand times. Like cougar kittens playing in the front of a den, the growing boy had
played with his mother, Cat, the endless, innocent games of stab and slash. Later it was in the pit that they
sparred, both as warriors, for self-defense is always a consideration for a predator, and as hunter and prey.
For full force practice they had sacks of rags, hay bales, and even a couple of kapok dummies that the
developing killer ripped to shreds over time. Vikor would assault these targets from every direction, at every
height, high or low, fast and slow. Working out moves in slow motion was one of his mother's favorite methods
of training. Like martial arts, or dance, or guitar picking, it was gone over in fine detail, so that every
movement in the sequence was imprinted on the neural system before ever speed and strength were added to
the natural equation.
He had considered the utility of the rapier and the cutlass as he had matured. Cat had ordered up a couple of
sets of fencing suits, protection for the eyes and padding for the vitals, and a pair of foils. They both enjoyed it,
mother and son in Victorian duels, but it quickly became too formal, like karate, ballet, or flamenco. If they
wanted ballet, they could watch Vikor's grandmother, for she had abandoned the mountain for the floor. The
piano, the mirrors, the handrail… it was a small studio that she had made from one room in the house, with
polished wood floors free of carpets, and tall drapes to shield the mountain and the farm.
Andrea would practice there alone. Sometimes Heidi Westbocker and Mary Crowell and one or two other
women from Dove Springs would get together to work on their modern routines.
If Cat and Vikor wanted karate, they had that and judo right up to their necks. That phase of their training
had left the deeply engrained responses that are invaluable when there is no time to think. Is it right to aim a
thrust kick into the face of a middle aged man whose only excuse for seizing your wrist was that you had cut
him with your knife? Kick first, ask questions later. Better yet, let the world answer your question for you. Let
reality make the final call.
If they wanted flamenco, they had only to turn on the phonograph. In the end, the idea of using the rapier
was abandoned for two main reasons: one, the ease of concealment was just not there. Sure, how fun it would
be, to thrust across the sidewalk at a victim three feet beyond the reach of any dagger, but fun is fun, and this
is serious. Like a mountain lion in Times Square would be how Vikor would have felt, were he to carry a sword.
Reason number two was that, after considerable study of anatomy and physiology, as well as the daily news,
Cat and her son had concluded that the pointed thrust was not reliable by itself. People recover from the
darndest things, but not from a properly slashed throat. The blood pours out in seconds. The spirit is free, and
the damage is done. It had to be part of the repertoire of a killer who wished to leave no live victims, no
aggrieved accusers whose lives had been ruined, who had been stabbed and robbed and left to die.
Now the cutlass was more of a slashing weapon. How the heads must have rolled during those shipboard
melees! Hands and ears and noses must have fluttered like autumn leaves to the gory decks. It's fine to be a
pirate, to strut about with that deadly curve of steel stashed in the sash about the waist, along with a pistol and
a dagger. But pirates like that were all hanged a long time ago. They weren't fit to survive.
Vikor kept his dagger hidden on his person, tucked into the folds of his clothing like the claws of a cat. When
he flew he checked it with his suitcase, stowed inside in a padded pistol case, invisible as a lightning bolt in the
clear blue sky.
The edges of the dagger that Diana beheld were sharp enough to slide through the flesh of a desperate throat
like an obscene whisper.
But so was her own. She shuddered in spite of herself. She handed the gleaming piece of steel back to its
master. Vikor put it away. She had seen it; she had touched it. That was enough.
be intended. Bonnie Parker's coy reach to actually touch Clyde's revolver as he held it low and furtive, like a
businessman's peeing at a bus stop. A pistol thrust cruelly into the mouth of a woman being raped. The phallic
interpretation of every weapon or toy from pool cues to swords and spears to cigarettes (and joints) to engine
hoods, motorcycles, dragons, broomsticks and daggers has been shared by society at large for generations,
perhaps many generations.
Hell, we may as well throw in telephone poles, lighthouses, bedposts, hot dogs, the number one, (the lower
case el?) the lightning, the river and fingers. Even the thumb can be used (Tom Thumb? …sorry, just being
frivolous).
The horse has been suggested as a phallic symbol. It may well be, at times, sprouting from a fourteen year old
girl's crotch like a stallion dong. These usages come from people who have no ordinary purpose for horses or
daggers.
Her own dagger she had received from her ma. It was an appropriate parting gift. Like an old superstition, the
unpaid-for blade changed hands. Carol Gallagher never noticed when it was that her daughter stopped being
home at the same time as herself. She wasn't aware of the last time she was ever to see Diana. But it was soon
after she gave her the old skinning knife that she had bought from Johnny for a quarter.
She had no further use for what she had fatuously called her dagger, and it had never reminded her of a hard
cock. She had used it for what it was, a skinning knife. She had skinned many a kill with the sharp tool.
Rabbits. Just a quick slip across the inside of the rear legs from paw to paw, and the knife was set aside. The
pelt would peel off inside out, like a t-shirt clear to the neck. She would rest the neck on a block of wood and
pick up the knife and sever the head.
With a deer or a steer (sometimes, sometimes) she would usually be working with Johnny or Bob. After an
initial incision down the middle that left intact the sack of guts, each would work the hide away from one side
of the hanging carcass, drawing the knife repeatedly along the line where flesh and skin join, watching the
smooth separation of each from each, until they met at the spine.
Each leg was similarly split along the inside from thigh to hoof, and then removed from its wrapping. Working
together, Carol and one of the men could remove the skin from a grown deer in less than ten minutes.
Cattle took longer, but the gang didn't always have permission, or inclination, to put up so much meat at
once. Without refrigeration, most of it had to be jerked. Sometimes the boys would help Bill Heinz with a
slaughter, and then share in the meat.
With deer, if the boys had to haul it a distance, it would be gutted already when Carol and Diana first saw it.
But, if wilderness and privacy allowed, it was not unusual for the little family to join at the sight of the kill with
the hunter. They had no desire to turn their sweet campsites into charnel pits of offal, focus points for
scavengers like vultures and flies. Over time, Johnny feared, that is what would have happened. It would have
violated his idea of low impact camping. It's hard to keep down with buzzards twirling like searchlights above
your hideout.
At these little gatherings was where little Diana learned her ways with the body of a beast. The family tried to
use everything, the meat, the hide, the brains and sinews. But the families of all of the heroes had lost the
ancient skills that used to be common in every race. They did their best, and they left the rest for the coyotes
and other scavengers to pick through, to apply the wisdom of their own families to make ends meet (leftovers
meat).
Once Carol and her daughter were rescued, once they had rejoined civilized society, Carol had no more use
for a skinning knife.
Vikor drew his dagger from its hiding place. She loved it at once. As a woman who did have a practical use for
a sharp knife, she admired the potential of the two gleaming edges, and the needle-sharp point.
"Here, take it," he suggested. He carefully handed it to her, holding it so that she could seize it by the handle.
He didn't touch the blade himself; it was sharp all over.
Diana took a careful look at her son's dagger. Experience had led him from one knife to another over the
years, and he had others, but this tiny sword had served him well as his weapon of choice for some time now.
The handle was rich, dark walnut. Vikor had carved it himself. (Some of his relationship to Johnny Dolan had
not been wasted.) More relevant to the actual function of the knife was the hand guard. Diana's skinning
knife, her dagger, did not have a hand guard. It would have got in the way of the primary functions of skinning
game, and butchering in general (secondary function: slicing throats).
The purpose of the guard on Vikor's dagger was to protect his fingers and his hand during a thrust. He used it
like a rapier, stabbing point first into the back or the front of a victim. Without a guard, there would have been
the danger of the stabber's hand slipping from the comfortable hardwood onto the hard steel.
Like an old-fashioned rapier, Vikor's handy little cutting tool had two sharp edges. Were the point to stop
against a sternum, rib or vertebra, a slipped grip might have the killer's fingers and palm sliced clear to his
own bones.
With the guard, milled steel with the ends curved and flattened to cradle the fingers and the thumb, our boy
could exert maximum force when he executed the stab. He was strong, and lithe, and coordinated, and he had
practiced every move a thousand times. Like cougar kittens playing in the front of a den, the growing boy had
played with his mother, Cat, the endless, innocent games of stab and slash. Later it was in the pit that they
sparred, both as warriors, for self-defense is always a consideration for a predator, and as hunter and prey.
For full force practice they had sacks of rags, hay bales, and even a couple of kapok dummies that the
developing killer ripped to shreds over time. Vikor would assault these targets from every direction, at every
height, high or low, fast and slow. Working out moves in slow motion was one of his mother's favorite methods
of training. Like martial arts, or dance, or guitar picking, it was gone over in fine detail, so that every
movement in the sequence was imprinted on the neural system before ever speed and strength were added to
the natural equation.
He had considered the utility of the rapier and the cutlass as he had matured. Cat had ordered up a couple of
sets of fencing suits, protection for the eyes and padding for the vitals, and a pair of foils. They both enjoyed it,
mother and son in Victorian duels, but it quickly became too formal, like karate, ballet, or flamenco. If they
wanted ballet, they could watch Vikor's grandmother, for she had abandoned the mountain for the floor. The
piano, the mirrors, the handrail… it was a small studio that she had made from one room in the house, with
polished wood floors free of carpets, and tall drapes to shield the mountain and the farm.
Andrea would practice there alone. Sometimes Heidi Westbocker and Mary Crowell and one or two other
women from Dove Springs would get together to work on their modern routines.
If Cat and Vikor wanted karate, they had that and judo right up to their necks. That phase of their training
had left the deeply engrained responses that are invaluable when there is no time to think. Is it right to aim a
thrust kick into the face of a middle aged man whose only excuse for seizing your wrist was that you had cut
him with your knife? Kick first, ask questions later. Better yet, let the world answer your question for you. Let
reality make the final call.
If they wanted flamenco, they had only to turn on the phonograph. In the end, the idea of using the rapier
was abandoned for two main reasons: one, the ease of concealment was just not there. Sure, how fun it would
be, to thrust across the sidewalk at a victim three feet beyond the reach of any dagger, but fun is fun, and this
is serious. Like a mountain lion in Times Square would be how Vikor would have felt, were he to carry a sword.
Reason number two was that, after considerable study of anatomy and physiology, as well as the daily news,
Cat and her son had concluded that the pointed thrust was not reliable by itself. People recover from the
darndest things, but not from a properly slashed throat. The blood pours out in seconds. The spirit is free, and
the damage is done. It had to be part of the repertoire of a killer who wished to leave no live victims, no
aggrieved accusers whose lives had been ruined, who had been stabbed and robbed and left to die.
Now the cutlass was more of a slashing weapon. How the heads must have rolled during those shipboard
melees! Hands and ears and noses must have fluttered like autumn leaves to the gory decks. It's fine to be a
pirate, to strut about with that deadly curve of steel stashed in the sash about the waist, along with a pistol and
a dagger. But pirates like that were all hanged a long time ago. They weren't fit to survive.
Vikor kept his dagger hidden on his person, tucked into the folds of his clothing like the claws of a cat. When
he flew he checked it with his suitcase, stowed inside in a padded pistol case, invisible as a lightning bolt in the
clear blue sky.
The edges of the dagger that Diana beheld were sharp enough to slide through the flesh of a desperate throat
like an obscene whisper.
But so was her own. She shuddered in spite of herself. She handed the gleaming piece of steel back to its
master. Vikor put it away. She had seen it; she had touched it. That was enough.
