| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goat herder: 9 June 1981
The sound of the kid crying, lasting a long time, moving in imagined bounds, down the
mountainside toward Fugitive Creek, deeper into the darkness, caught in the ivory fangs,
wet with his own blood, dangling in pain, no hope of salvation.
The next morning we built a smaller pen, a tighter pen within the pen, an inner keep to
the steel castle. A boulder stood like a fist by the inner gate. A double-latched web of wood
and steel.
Castles and prisons are so similar. The same steel can starve those on the inside, warm,
fuzzy loves with deep red insides, or those on the outside, also warm fuzzy loves, moving
and hollow alike. Body protected from body, heart from tooth, blood from tongue, care
from grief.
Vines are growing on the old fort now, fertile with droppings of ancient warriors.
Rustic, creaking in the wind, the mold of the abandoned farm, it fits so neatly into a warm
spot in the conscious-ness, that it's hard to see the underlying pattern of fear. The ghosts
of sleepless nights. The patient steel wrappings, wire by wire, too close for a cat's nose.
The sound of the kid crying, lasting a long time, moving in imagined bounds, down the
mountainside toward Fugitive Creek, deeper into the darkness, caught in the ivory fangs,
wet with his own blood, dangling in pain, no hope of salvation.
The next morning we built a smaller pen, a tighter pen within the pen, an inner keep to
the steel castle. A boulder stood like a fist by the inner gate. A double-latched web of wood
and steel.
Castles and prisons are so similar. The same steel can starve those on the inside, warm,
fuzzy loves with deep red insides, or those on the outside, also warm fuzzy loves, moving
and hollow alike. Body protected from body, heart from tooth, blood from tongue, care
from grief.
Vines are growing on the old fort now, fertile with droppings of ancient warriors.
Rustic, creaking in the wind, the mold of the abandoned farm, it fits so neatly into a warm
spot in the conscious-ness, that it's hard to see the underlying pattern of fear. The ghosts
of sleepless nights. The patient steel wrappings, wire by wire, too close for a cat's nose.
| Chapter Forty-nine SMOLDERING RUBY |
Nobody ever saw Agnes Tawny when she prowled the stony mountain. But Cat was different. She was
recognized as one of the constant climbers of Clark's Hill. In spite of that, nobody saw her very often either.
When they did, they saw another rock climber like themselves.
Agnes and Cat also spent time out on the mountain at night. Nobody ever saw them then.
Agnes Tawny had considered disposing of the body of Selabjun Kirkhaz herself. It was, as she had anticipated, a
full two days before it was discovered, the blood dried to a near black. There would have been, during the
darkness of the intervening nights, ample opportunity to move it, to drag it up into one of the several caves she
knew about that pocketed Clark's Hill.
She thought better of it. She was just an old lady addicted to the trail, but she was no more naive than Cat One.
She knew about other ways, had spent her time in the city and, for starters, had a healthy respect for the
hound that was Deputy John Barlow.
Barlow, for his part, had only heard of Agnes Tawny, and that had last been twenty-four years back, or maybe
it was twenty-five; he couldn't remember. But he could have looked it up. The incident that he recalled was the
fire that consumed the cottage way back out in the hills, the cottage that had been the home of Agnes Tawny.
There was a report on that, with data received primarily from the volunteer fire department.
John Barlow hadn't even gone to the site, relying instead on the fireman's report. He was pretty much
unconcerned about the former resident of what was now a black spot in a meadow. She was duly filed as a
missing person, but, thing was, nobody was really missing her. Barlow had even noted, at the time, that no one
was pestering him for information or progress reports, no one expected an investigation, and no one was
offering tips, hunches, background or evidence.
No one wanted to know what to do with a grocery bill, or a piece of dry cleaning. No one wanted to verify that
her electric power was to be permanently disconnected. No one supposed that probably she wouldn't need to buy
a cord of firewood for winter.
Agnes had always gathered her own wood, and she had never had the kind of power that you buy from the
utility.
She had other kinds.
Lack of interest in the Agnes Tawny case was fine with young Deputy Barlow. He was still up to his neck in
paperwork relating to the five people shot dead up at the crossroads the previous fall. He was brand new at his
job then. His predecessor, Deputy Fred Clark, was still at his post, and he remained John Barlow's senior for
the first five years of the younger man's career with the sheriff's department.
When Fred retired in nineteen forty-two, after serving as the law in Dove Springs, first as the elected marshal
prior to the turn of the century, and eventually as a county employee, he was not replaced. The Dove Springs
and surrounding environs returned to a one man complement. John Barlow had been assigned as Fred Clark's
reinforcement five years earlier. Before that, Fred had handled the job on his own for almost forty-five years.
Now it was all John's.
But he remembered how, in the aftermath of the shootings, there had suddenly been sheriff's deputies of every
rank and description, as well as state police and district attorneys. All of them required paperwork, and all of
the paperwork fell on John, who was junior to everyone.
Fred was almost illiterate. He wasn't much of a police officer, but he was tolerated because, to the people in
Dove Springs who had the influence, he was not any trouble either. But as the century marched on, into the
thirties, the New Deal meant paperwork. Eventually the county had assigned a new recruit to assist Deputy
Clark for the last few years before his retirement.
The trouble was John Barlow was not much more literate than Fred, and probably less methodical. His desk was
always piled with uncompleted forms and reports. Whenever he took time from his investigations and patrols,
he could be assured of finding, upon returning to his office, plenty to do with a cup of coffee in front of him and
a pencil behind his ear.
The only thing was that John didn't want to do it. He wanted to be out cruising, talking to people, watching the
lay of the land, and letting himself be seen. But the higher ups were putting pressure, in the form of telephone
calls to Fred Clark, so he did it.
Normally he would have gone to the site of a fire that involved a missing person, and possible arson. Maybe she
burned it herself for the insurance.
Not only did Agnes Tawny have no fire insurance on her little kindling shack, she didn't even own the land on
which it sat. It was up into the hills enough to where its location didn't interfere with the farming or grazing
activities in the open meadows below. No one had ever even figured out whose property it was on.
It was a thing about Agnes, that none were interested in her. Save for the tiniest few, Cat One Dolan, Andrea
Clare Devlin before her, and before Andrea… Agnes had been around for a long, long time. But she roosted at
the very fringe of society's awareness. After she was gone, nobody missed her.
So she considered hiding the body of Selabjun Kirkhaz. But she surmised that it would be herself coming out of
hiding that would be the more likely result of such bald, physical subterfuge. The kind of magic Agnes
practiced did not depend on hiding dead bodies in caves. Besides, anymore she was apt to be using this cave or
that some nights to hide her own, far from dead, body. Better to just have faith and let it lie. Anything was
possible. Perhaps the ravens would come and peck the eyes and the face from the corpse of the father of Cat's
child to be.
Perhaps the buzzards would eat the flesh and the coyotes would scatter the bones. That was ideally how she
wanted her own remains sorted when she died (whenever the hell that is supposed to be). One can hope.
Meanwhile, she was not surprised when the body was quickly, almost routinely, discovered. And she was not
surprised when John Barlow's nose went up.
John may not have known Agnes Tawny. But he knew Catherine Dolan. He had known Johnny Dolan before
the tragedy. He had known Hank Devlin. He had been at the wedding of Hank's daughter, Andrea Clare, to
Johnny.
He had taken a cigar when Catherine Marie showed up.
So he knew them. He wasn't tight with them; he wasn't tight with anyone on his beat. But he knew them. He
knew the students, knew who the climbers were, and he knew that Cat climbed.
When the general message was circulated that the sheriff would like any information about whereabouts and
anything else that the climbing community could offer with respect to the events of April 15th or 16th, and
when Cat One relayed this message to Agnes, that's how Agnes knew that John Barlow had caught a scent.
"The dog!" She was visiting Cat, who was lying abed on the eleventh day after the rape. Cat had just told Agnes
about the sheriff's call.
"I think," said Cat, "that I'd better tell someone what happened. I think I'd better tell Mother that I am
pregnant."
She watched Agnes for reaction. She was starting to wonder if the old dame was steering her right, during this
crisis. She kept reminding herself that Agnes never claimed to steer her. But, for someone as old as the hag
(that's what Agnes called herself, jokingly, to Cat, "the hag"), it seemed a trifle immature to apparently be
going along with such total procrastination so far as not informing sheriff or mother of anything for eleven
days.
Agnes was not surprised. Nor did she protest. Nor did she care if Cat One Dolan thought her behavior to be
immature or not. She had cared for her goddess child as she knew best. At twenty-four and more balanced than
many people want to be, Cat was still knocked sideways by the assault that she endured. Agnes sorrowed to
think how it must be for a girl who does not have a confidante, a non-judgmental listener who can mop her
brow and bring her tea and herbs and let the banshee howl to nothingness.
She sorrowed even more for the anguished damsel who not only does without the care of a friend in her time of
suffering, but who also finds herself being jerked about at the hands of the police. Now John Barlow was finding
his way to Cat, and Cat was right. It was time to confess.
recognized as one of the constant climbers of Clark's Hill. In spite of that, nobody saw her very often either.
When they did, they saw another rock climber like themselves.
Agnes and Cat also spent time out on the mountain at night. Nobody ever saw them then.
Agnes Tawny had considered disposing of the body of Selabjun Kirkhaz herself. It was, as she had anticipated, a
full two days before it was discovered, the blood dried to a near black. There would have been, during the
darkness of the intervening nights, ample opportunity to move it, to drag it up into one of the several caves she
knew about that pocketed Clark's Hill.
She thought better of it. She was just an old lady addicted to the trail, but she was no more naive than Cat One.
She knew about other ways, had spent her time in the city and, for starters, had a healthy respect for the
hound that was Deputy John Barlow.
Barlow, for his part, had only heard of Agnes Tawny, and that had last been twenty-four years back, or maybe
it was twenty-five; he couldn't remember. But he could have looked it up. The incident that he recalled was the
fire that consumed the cottage way back out in the hills, the cottage that had been the home of Agnes Tawny.
There was a report on that, with data received primarily from the volunteer fire department.
John Barlow hadn't even gone to the site, relying instead on the fireman's report. He was pretty much
unconcerned about the former resident of what was now a black spot in a meadow. She was duly filed as a
missing person, but, thing was, nobody was really missing her. Barlow had even noted, at the time, that no one
was pestering him for information or progress reports, no one expected an investigation, and no one was
offering tips, hunches, background or evidence.
No one wanted to know what to do with a grocery bill, or a piece of dry cleaning. No one wanted to verify that
her electric power was to be permanently disconnected. No one supposed that probably she wouldn't need to buy
a cord of firewood for winter.
Agnes had always gathered her own wood, and she had never had the kind of power that you buy from the
utility.
She had other kinds.
Lack of interest in the Agnes Tawny case was fine with young Deputy Barlow. He was still up to his neck in
paperwork relating to the five people shot dead up at the crossroads the previous fall. He was brand new at his
job then. His predecessor, Deputy Fred Clark, was still at his post, and he remained John Barlow's senior for
the first five years of the younger man's career with the sheriff's department.
When Fred retired in nineteen forty-two, after serving as the law in Dove Springs, first as the elected marshal
prior to the turn of the century, and eventually as a county employee, he was not replaced. The Dove Springs
and surrounding environs returned to a one man complement. John Barlow had been assigned as Fred Clark's
reinforcement five years earlier. Before that, Fred had handled the job on his own for almost forty-five years.
Now it was all John's.
But he remembered how, in the aftermath of the shootings, there had suddenly been sheriff's deputies of every
rank and description, as well as state police and district attorneys. All of them required paperwork, and all of
the paperwork fell on John, who was junior to everyone.
Fred was almost illiterate. He wasn't much of a police officer, but he was tolerated because, to the people in
Dove Springs who had the influence, he was not any trouble either. But as the century marched on, into the
thirties, the New Deal meant paperwork. Eventually the county had assigned a new recruit to assist Deputy
Clark for the last few years before his retirement.
The trouble was John Barlow was not much more literate than Fred, and probably less methodical. His desk was
always piled with uncompleted forms and reports. Whenever he took time from his investigations and patrols,
he could be assured of finding, upon returning to his office, plenty to do with a cup of coffee in front of him and
a pencil behind his ear.
The only thing was that John didn't want to do it. He wanted to be out cruising, talking to people, watching the
lay of the land, and letting himself be seen. But the higher ups were putting pressure, in the form of telephone
calls to Fred Clark, so he did it.
Normally he would have gone to the site of a fire that involved a missing person, and possible arson. Maybe she
burned it herself for the insurance.
Not only did Agnes Tawny have no fire insurance on her little kindling shack, she didn't even own the land on
which it sat. It was up into the hills enough to where its location didn't interfere with the farming or grazing
activities in the open meadows below. No one had ever even figured out whose property it was on.
It was a thing about Agnes, that none were interested in her. Save for the tiniest few, Cat One Dolan, Andrea
Clare Devlin before her, and before Andrea… Agnes had been around for a long, long time. But she roosted at
the very fringe of society's awareness. After she was gone, nobody missed her.
So she considered hiding the body of Selabjun Kirkhaz. But she surmised that it would be herself coming out of
hiding that would be the more likely result of such bald, physical subterfuge. The kind of magic Agnes
practiced did not depend on hiding dead bodies in caves. Besides, anymore she was apt to be using this cave or
that some nights to hide her own, far from dead, body. Better to just have faith and let it lie. Anything was
possible. Perhaps the ravens would come and peck the eyes and the face from the corpse of the father of Cat's
child to be.
Perhaps the buzzards would eat the flesh and the coyotes would scatter the bones. That was ideally how she
wanted her own remains sorted when she died (whenever the hell that is supposed to be). One can hope.
Meanwhile, she was not surprised when the body was quickly, almost routinely, discovered. And she was not
surprised when John Barlow's nose went up.
John may not have known Agnes Tawny. But he knew Catherine Dolan. He had known Johnny Dolan before
the tragedy. He had known Hank Devlin. He had been at the wedding of Hank's daughter, Andrea Clare, to
Johnny.
He had taken a cigar when Catherine Marie showed up.
So he knew them. He wasn't tight with them; he wasn't tight with anyone on his beat. But he knew them. He
knew the students, knew who the climbers were, and he knew that Cat climbed.
When the general message was circulated that the sheriff would like any information about whereabouts and
anything else that the climbing community could offer with respect to the events of April 15th or 16th, and
when Cat One relayed this message to Agnes, that's how Agnes knew that John Barlow had caught a scent.
"The dog!" She was visiting Cat, who was lying abed on the eleventh day after the rape. Cat had just told Agnes
about the sheriff's call.
"I think," said Cat, "that I'd better tell someone what happened. I think I'd better tell Mother that I am
pregnant."
She watched Agnes for reaction. She was starting to wonder if the old dame was steering her right, during this
crisis. She kept reminding herself that Agnes never claimed to steer her. But, for someone as old as the hag
(that's what Agnes called herself, jokingly, to Cat, "the hag"), it seemed a trifle immature to apparently be
going along with such total procrastination so far as not informing sheriff or mother of anything for eleven
days.
Agnes was not surprised. Nor did she protest. Nor did she care if Cat One Dolan thought her behavior to be
immature or not. She had cared for her goddess child as she knew best. At twenty-four and more balanced than
many people want to be, Cat was still knocked sideways by the assault that she endured. Agnes sorrowed to
think how it must be for a girl who does not have a confidante, a non-judgmental listener who can mop her
brow and bring her tea and herbs and let the banshee howl to nothingness.
She sorrowed even more for the anguished damsel who not only does without the care of a friend in her time of
suffering, but who also finds herself being jerked about at the hands of the police. Now John Barlow was finding
his way to Cat, and Cat was right. It was time to confess.
Agnes Tawny would have laughed had she heard Bob Cabler's weird little story about Dizzy and Sally and Star.
Had she ever had the opportunity, she would have been able to fill in Diana on the parts the ignorant cowboy
had left out. She could have told her that this griffin could only be a splashy metaphor for events that are
considerably grimmer than the spectacle of a flying golden lion descending to mangle devils in a righteous
triumph of good life.
Agnes could have told her that starvation ends when the starving die, and once again there is food enough, for
those that have survived. She could have told her that disease is gone when disease has run its course, and all
who might have been victim to her whim are dead or immune, and damn the scars.
She could have told her about the scary one, that slavery ends, not when the masters are smashed, but when
the slaves assume the will of the masters, when they do what they are told, and stay and come and fetch and
sweat and build and reap and defend because they believe in the cause of the master, the group, the new being
that is struggling painfully into life, into being, into unmistakable reality.
Some things, a lot of things, Diana had to work out for herself. She had to work them out without the benefit
of Agnes Tawny, and without the benefit of the host of philosophers and prophets that have gone before. She
had to figure out her understanding of life with only the superstitions of Johnny and Carol and Bob for a
starting point.
She soon saw through the imaginary parables about Dizzy and Sally and Star. She came to see that these mean
devils are only chisels in the hands of the goddess who carves us all.
Then there was her mother. Ma. Carol Gallagher had learned to fear the world. Strangers were enemies; she
taught that to her daughter, and there was no way for Diana to argue it down in her mind, for it was so
insistently true. Diana shrank from the civilization that hemmed her in more tightly every year. She kept to
the trails and the back roads of night. Even while her simple-minded mother was being reintroduced to the
world she had forfeited, even while Ma was taken, like a lost puppy in Marilyn Fiero's gentle hands, and molded
to be a part of Carmel Valley society, Diana slipped away.
Carol's little girl slipped away from school, away from society, away from slavery, away from the starvation of
her soul, away from the twisted illness that she held to blame for all the madness that she saw from behind her
screen of brush.
She didn't need television. She didn't read. She sat sometimes on the top of Black Mountain, and she watched.
She saw the monster that lay draped about her and the mountain and the hills and valleys that she called
home. She saw how it moved by itself, how it sent its quivering senses into every dusty canyon that had a power
line, a telephone wire, a pipe, a drain or a dirt road. She saw where its claws had left their scratches in fields of
barley and lima beans. She could sense lines of communication that stretched to Detroit and Chicago, though
she scarcely knew those cities by name.
Year by year and week by week, she saw its borders churn, this monster that gobbled today a valley, tomorrow
a ridge. Like a giant amoeba, it thrust its protrusions toward her from every angle, and everything that it
encountered was consumed.
Here would be a quiet frontier. Outside were chamise and tumbleweed; outside were birds and sycamores;
outside were oaks and grass and rabbits and deer; outside were springs and ponds and coyotes and mountain
lions. Inside was nothing. A step inside the boundary of the development, and Earth herself was scraped to her
raw minerals. Even the shape had been destroyed, flattened here, filled here, gone forever the shape that was
carved by the hands of God. Here today is the flat, packed dirt, level lots and steep sides, the geometry of the
designers. Here is endless vacancy, where every scrap of organic anything, every twig, every turd, every twist
of grass has been carted away. Now there are trucks and bulldozers rumbling like pulverizing bombs over the
land that used to be.
No worm or squirrel survives. The land is drenched with poison, and stabbed and riddled with wires and pipes.
Concrete and asphalt are poured into forms and patterns that were designed at a drawing table, far away.
Houses and buildings are raised, frame structures whose familiar styles were developed hundreds of years ago,
in lands that were rich in tall, straight timber.
The native wood, short and twisted and lovely, is scraped into piles and burned. Then, tall, straight timber…
stripped from distant forests and hauled hundreds or thousands of miles by trucks and freight trains… tall,
straight timber arrives to support the facade of the ages.
The local stones are crushed and buried in backfills. Then rock from Vermont and Italy is hauled in to decorate
the graves of a land that has died.
The local fibers are not woven, but are mulched. The local hands are not hired, but are driven away.
But, still, the hands of the goddess cannot be driven away. That was what Diana learned at last. When man is
done, for a spell, with his destruction and construction, she is there at once to smooth the wounds. She joins
hands with the gardeners, and she weaves circles of beauty about their pride. She smoothes the rough corners
with wind and rain and time.
As the years roll by, and that which is fit survives, and that which is not falls to change, it becomes obvious to
any who care to believe it, that the goddess conspired with the draughtsman at his table, and with the architect
in his dreams. No matter how bold the city-builders be, no matter how radical the technology, no matter how
sweeping the changes, a few years and a little decay are enough to focus the eye of the most hardened. Who
would deny that the stone shapes of Egypt and Rome, or the bridge at North Torrey Pines, or the lights of San
Diego as seen from the Cuyamacas are all not part of the divine touch?
Had she ever had the opportunity, she would have been able to fill in Diana on the parts the ignorant cowboy
had left out. She could have told her that this griffin could only be a splashy metaphor for events that are
considerably grimmer than the spectacle of a flying golden lion descending to mangle devils in a righteous
triumph of good life.
Agnes could have told her that starvation ends when the starving die, and once again there is food enough, for
those that have survived. She could have told her that disease is gone when disease has run its course, and all
who might have been victim to her whim are dead or immune, and damn the scars.
She could have told her about the scary one, that slavery ends, not when the masters are smashed, but when
the slaves assume the will of the masters, when they do what they are told, and stay and come and fetch and
sweat and build and reap and defend because they believe in the cause of the master, the group, the new being
that is struggling painfully into life, into being, into unmistakable reality.
Some things, a lot of things, Diana had to work out for herself. She had to work them out without the benefit
of Agnes Tawny, and without the benefit of the host of philosophers and prophets that have gone before. She
had to figure out her understanding of life with only the superstitions of Johnny and Carol and Bob for a
starting point.
She soon saw through the imaginary parables about Dizzy and Sally and Star. She came to see that these mean
devils are only chisels in the hands of the goddess who carves us all.
Then there was her mother. Ma. Carol Gallagher had learned to fear the world. Strangers were enemies; she
taught that to her daughter, and there was no way for Diana to argue it down in her mind, for it was so
insistently true. Diana shrank from the civilization that hemmed her in more tightly every year. She kept to
the trails and the back roads of night. Even while her simple-minded mother was being reintroduced to the
world she had forfeited, even while Ma was taken, like a lost puppy in Marilyn Fiero's gentle hands, and molded
to be a part of Carmel Valley society, Diana slipped away.
Carol's little girl slipped away from school, away from society, away from slavery, away from the starvation of
her soul, away from the twisted illness that she held to blame for all the madness that she saw from behind her
screen of brush.
She didn't need television. She didn't read. She sat sometimes on the top of Black Mountain, and she watched.
She saw the monster that lay draped about her and the mountain and the hills and valleys that she called
home. She saw how it moved by itself, how it sent its quivering senses into every dusty canyon that had a power
line, a telephone wire, a pipe, a drain or a dirt road. She saw where its claws had left their scratches in fields of
barley and lima beans. She could sense lines of communication that stretched to Detroit and Chicago, though
she scarcely knew those cities by name.
Year by year and week by week, she saw its borders churn, this monster that gobbled today a valley, tomorrow
a ridge. Like a giant amoeba, it thrust its protrusions toward her from every angle, and everything that it
encountered was consumed.
Here would be a quiet frontier. Outside were chamise and tumbleweed; outside were birds and sycamores;
outside were oaks and grass and rabbits and deer; outside were springs and ponds and coyotes and mountain
lions. Inside was nothing. A step inside the boundary of the development, and Earth herself was scraped to her
raw minerals. Even the shape had been destroyed, flattened here, filled here, gone forever the shape that was
carved by the hands of God. Here today is the flat, packed dirt, level lots and steep sides, the geometry of the
designers. Here is endless vacancy, where every scrap of organic anything, every twig, every turd, every twist
of grass has been carted away. Now there are trucks and bulldozers rumbling like pulverizing bombs over the
land that used to be.
No worm or squirrel survives. The land is drenched with poison, and stabbed and riddled with wires and pipes.
Concrete and asphalt are poured into forms and patterns that were designed at a drawing table, far away.
Houses and buildings are raised, frame structures whose familiar styles were developed hundreds of years ago,
in lands that were rich in tall, straight timber.
The native wood, short and twisted and lovely, is scraped into piles and burned. Then, tall, straight timber…
stripped from distant forests and hauled hundreds or thousands of miles by trucks and freight trains… tall,
straight timber arrives to support the facade of the ages.
The local stones are crushed and buried in backfills. Then rock from Vermont and Italy is hauled in to decorate
the graves of a land that has died.
The local fibers are not woven, but are mulched. The local hands are not hired, but are driven away.
But, still, the hands of the goddess cannot be driven away. That was what Diana learned at last. When man is
done, for a spell, with his destruction and construction, she is there at once to smooth the wounds. She joins
hands with the gardeners, and she weaves circles of beauty about their pride. She smoothes the rough corners
with wind and rain and time.
As the years roll by, and that which is fit survives, and that which is not falls to change, it becomes obvious to
any who care to believe it, that the goddess conspired with the draughtsman at his table, and with the architect
in his dreams. No matter how bold the city-builders be, no matter how radical the technology, no matter how
sweeping the changes, a few years and a little decay are enough to focus the eye of the most hardened. Who
would deny that the stone shapes of Egypt and Rome, or the bridge at North Torrey Pines, or the lights of San
Diego as seen from the Cuyamacas are all not part of the divine touch?
| * * * |
Johnny Stream had been absorbed in his sudden awareness of the blue moon in the late autumn sky. Bob
Cabler was lost in thoughts of teenaged pussy. The wind blew away the first volley of words from the bullhorn.
Sheriff's Deputy Timothy O'Farrell was operating the device from the observation post high on the side of the
steep hill, the abrupt western terminus of Del Mar Mesa. The boys heard the amplified sound that originated
somewhere above their heads, but they could only understand a few words, words like "Attention… Sheriff…
guns… horses."
They drew instinctively together, drawing the horses about them like covers. "Do you hear that?" asked
Johnny.
"Yeah," said Bob. "I wasn't gonna say anything; I thought I was flipping my gourd." They peered out across
the backs of their steeds. Bob's eyes swept the cornfield. Johnny looked up at the steep hill. Tim O'Farrell saw
him appear to look right at him, staring into the tubes of the deputy's binoculars. For a moment, he thought
the suspect had seen him, but then Johnny's eyes continued their mystified search. The wind settled to a
murmur.
"We have you surrounded." Deputy O'Farrell was making it up as he went along now, unaware that the
recipients of his speech only understood isolated fragments.
"…surrounded," came the breeze-blown remnant. Now the speaker was repeating the message from the start,
"Attention! This is the sheriff! I order you to lay down your guns!"
"Is he talking to us?" asked Bob.
"I don't know," said Johnny. "I don't see anyone."
"I think we're in trouble, man."
"Could be. Know what I think?"
"What?"
Cabler was lost in thoughts of teenaged pussy. The wind blew away the first volley of words from the bullhorn.
Sheriff's Deputy Timothy O'Farrell was operating the device from the observation post high on the side of the
steep hill, the abrupt western terminus of Del Mar Mesa. The boys heard the amplified sound that originated
somewhere above their heads, but they could only understand a few words, words like "Attention… Sheriff…
guns… horses."
They drew instinctively together, drawing the horses about them like covers. "Do you hear that?" asked
Johnny.
"Yeah," said Bob. "I wasn't gonna say anything; I thought I was flipping my gourd." They peered out across
the backs of their steeds. Bob's eyes swept the cornfield. Johnny looked up at the steep hill. Tim O'Farrell saw
him appear to look right at him, staring into the tubes of the deputy's binoculars. For a moment, he thought
the suspect had seen him, but then Johnny's eyes continued their mystified search. The wind settled to a
murmur.
"We have you surrounded." Deputy O'Farrell was making it up as he went along now, unaware that the
recipients of his speech only understood isolated fragments.
"…surrounded," came the breeze-blown remnant. Now the speaker was repeating the message from the start,
"Attention! This is the sheriff! I order you to lay down your guns!"
"Is he talking to us?" asked Bob.
"I don't know," said Johnny. "I don't see anyone."
"I think we're in trouble, man."
"Could be. Know what I think?"
"What?"
| * * * |
| * * * |
The confession took Deputy Barlow right back to the night when he had heard Old Fargo explain his actions to
himself and Fred Clark. This is a killish family, he thought to himself, putting a second mental check mark in
his file called loosely Devlin-Dolan. Arthur Fargo had been some kind of relative of Johnny Dolan. What
Deputy Barlow recalled most about Old Fargo's recounting of his exploit with his double-barreled, ten gauge
shotgun, was his coolness. He had seen other killers since then, and justified or not, right or wrong, they
usually were pretty shook up about what they had done. Fargo had described it the way he might tell about
changing a tire on his truck.
himself and Fred Clark. This is a killish family, he thought to himself, putting a second mental check mark in
his file called loosely Devlin-Dolan. Arthur Fargo had been some kind of relative of Johnny Dolan. What
Deputy Barlow recalled most about Old Fargo's recounting of his exploit with his double-barreled, ten gauge
shotgun, was his coolness. He had seen other killers since then, and justified or not, right or wrong, they
usually were pretty shook up about what they had done. Fargo had described it the way he might tell about
changing a tire on his truck.
| * * * |
Diary of a Goat herder 10 June 1981
Night eyes. The watch.
Judy, witness to it all. Branded in her heart with helpless pain, the loss of her little sisters.
Puppy fear pushed past tolerance… blood lion death.
A smoldering ruby forever behind her cool black breast. Winter grew into spring. Round
and fluffy grew into sleek and wiry.
You walk into the big pasture looking for the goats. They are out there somewhere, hidden
behind folds of rock, in lilac jungles, in oak shade. The first you find is Judy, always
between you and the herd, suddenly there from high speed coursing through the cover, a
surprise dog, close to you, and are you a predator, dog, lion or human?
A symbiosis with the goats, eyes, ears and noses tuned. The goats snort in alarm, and Judy
is there, ahead of them, between them and danger. And when she barks, that special bark
that echoes from the chamber of the ruby, the war drum of survival, the steel heart of the
red forge, defeat endured, total threat… the goats would in an instant be clustered behind
her, focused on her, aware that her nose was pointed at danger.
No bluff in Judy. She worked her way from the bottom of the herd bruise by horn to the
top, learning rough stuff from the rough, and the slicing awareness of red reality that cuts
through the rough stuff from a graceful, tawny wizard of the night. Aware how quick.
Aware how sudden and now and final it can be. With teeth.
A three-way symbiosis, we moved like a creature through the hills, all senses exchanged,
nerve currents of the herd. Control moves about like a center in chess, becomes an
illusion, an imagined entity. I fall in tune, create identity, follow the herd as I follow my
hand. The decision is mine. I win total autonomy from total obedience.
Night eyes. The watch.
Judy, witness to it all. Branded in her heart with helpless pain, the loss of her little sisters.
Puppy fear pushed past tolerance… blood lion death.
A smoldering ruby forever behind her cool black breast. Winter grew into spring. Round
and fluffy grew into sleek and wiry.
You walk into the big pasture looking for the goats. They are out there somewhere, hidden
behind folds of rock, in lilac jungles, in oak shade. The first you find is Judy, always
between you and the herd, suddenly there from high speed coursing through the cover, a
surprise dog, close to you, and are you a predator, dog, lion or human?
A symbiosis with the goats, eyes, ears and noses tuned. The goats snort in alarm, and Judy
is there, ahead of them, between them and danger. And when she barks, that special bark
that echoes from the chamber of the ruby, the war drum of survival, the steel heart of the
red forge, defeat endured, total threat… the goats would in an instant be clustered behind
her, focused on her, aware that her nose was pointed at danger.
No bluff in Judy. She worked her way from the bottom of the herd bruise by horn to the
top, learning rough stuff from the rough, and the slicing awareness of red reality that cuts
through the rough stuff from a graceful, tawny wizard of the night. Aware how quick.
Aware how sudden and now and final it can be. With teeth.
A three-way symbiosis, we moved like a creature through the hills, all senses exchanged,
nerve currents of the herd. Control moves about like a center in chess, becomes an
illusion, an imagined entity. I fall in tune, create identity, follow the herd as I follow my
hand. The decision is mine. I win total autonomy from total obedience.
| * * * |
Johnny focused again on the blue orb hanging now on the visible horizon. Her message was distinct, clear as
the outline of a dewdrop on the petal of a summer morning violet. You can still ride.
You cannot see to fight the foe; he is there whether you can see or understand. Throw down your guns and
abandon your horses, as the merciless voice demands, and then stand bareheaded in chains, and endure their
spittle and derision. Murphy will be there. Some of the guys from the fire station will come downtown to see
you and Bob, too.
Time's up Johnny Stream. Life's over. I'd like to see you commemorate all those miles you have ridden by my
light. Let this be your private night, yours and Bob's and mine, and the wind's. Let's ride with the wind!
Think no more of Carol. Be thankful. She was beautiful, and you are gone. Don't think of Diana. Don't think
of the creeks and mountains and sun showers and rainbows. Don't think about freedom or fun, or fucking or
food. Don't think about me, or Bob, or the wind, or the mare you ride.
the outline of a dewdrop on the petal of a summer morning violet. You can still ride.
You cannot see to fight the foe; he is there whether you can see or understand. Throw down your guns and
abandon your horses, as the merciless voice demands, and then stand bareheaded in chains, and endure their
spittle and derision. Murphy will be there. Some of the guys from the fire station will come downtown to see
you and Bob, too.
Time's up Johnny Stream. Life's over. I'd like to see you commemorate all those miles you have ridden by my
light. Let this be your private night, yours and Bob's and mine, and the wind's. Let's ride with the wind!
Think no more of Carol. Be thankful. She was beautiful, and you are gone. Don't think of Diana. Don't think
of the creeks and mountains and sun showers and rainbows. Don't think about freedom or fun, or fucking or
food. Don't think about me, or Bob, or the wind, or the mare you ride.
| * * * |
Diana was not naive. Though she lived wild, there had been the years, after Johnny and Bob had died, when she
had lived as a part of the community, with Carol her mother, and the grudging acceptance of the rest. She had
gone to school; she had learned to read. She knew of the struggles of the committed rebels of every age and
cause.
Rebellion. Rebel lion.
Sooner or later, this lion would have its hide tacked to the side of the barn. She knew that too. Even if the flag
of the cause is finally waving in victory, the true rebels will end up on the run once more, for there is a
difference between rebellion and revolution. Diana knew that too, and nursed a queasy sympathy for the fools
who were suckered into any party line, who revered the martyrs who had died for nothing, who used their
names as talismans to help to enforce the new order.
A revolution is a circle, like the revolutions of a wheel, the rise and fall of an iron rim, now pressed (oppressed)
into the passing earth, now rising, now reigning, now falling to the same hard road. When the smoke clears,
there once more are the government and the police, often the same people, turncoats now, who, sporting the
new badge in memory of the martyred lion, perform as before, with maybe a bit more bite with their bark,
hardened by the travesties of war, justified in their minds by the sanctity of the cause.
And away in the jungles, away in the Pennsylvania hills, the rebels persist until finally the real cause is
trampled. The whiskey farmers are defeated by their own comrades in arms. The contras are disarmed and
submit to orders that echo from the same pale halls as before. Warriors are slaughtered, their families
marooned on reservations. The North wins and slavery sweeps the nation, unbound and upgraded, so that all
sink further beneath its venal grasp.
And rebellion? Hah! She had once read the words of a Hungarian refugee, who commented on the fearless
self-sacrifice that arises in a citizen whose boundaries are crossed, who has lost everything, or at least enough
to feel he has nothing to lose. When wives and children are raped and killed, when homes are lost and
destroyed, when cultures are crushed and deformed by the boot of the oppressor, when favorite idolatries are
banned, and when whichever it is becomes too much, too painful, too awful, too humiliating or too anything,
then the person, man, woman, or child, rebels.
That point is different for different folks. Diana was no rebel.
She did not want her son, Victor, to turn out a rebel either. As she saw it, a rebel has already lost, because of
the ultimate, circular doom that waits for every movement and cause. The glory is undeniable, but it goes too
well with a tombstone, and she already had one of those.
(She lies to herself; she never had a grave, let alone a marker.)
Grace is what she taught her son, and how to go with the flow. Though she taught grace in the high brush,
Vikor practiced it eventually in the cities and on the highways of humanity. There was no call for a high
profile; the car that maintains the steady eighty mile per hour velocity of the herd at a given moment is
invisible to the traffic cop.
The aggressive driver striving to arrive at the front of an endless line, dodging and passing the other drivers
and doing eighty-five, stands out like a prize buck to the trophy-hunter on the motorcycle.
Love is what she taught her son, or at least she prayed that she did. Love thine enemy? That and more.
To love the enemy has always been easy, for in the wars that have racked the world, the warriors of the enemy
have always been so similar, in essence, to our own. Down through the centuries the heroes of history and
legend have recognized this, and have toasted one another's fame. The greater the enemy, the greater the
victory. Worthy opponent, brave knight of the opposition, fellow player in the game of battle, it has always
been easy to love the enemy.
To love the slaves has not been so easy, to love the master more difficult still. To love the victim has been the
greatest challenge. Just telling them apart is a teaser. Slaves and masters both can be frequently victims of the
same foul system. When the devotion to the master is voluntary, when the concern for the slave is generous,
when the need for oppression and rebellion is gone, wiped clean through some symbiotic grace, then love flows
free, the wind masters the clouds, and the river submits to the land.
And when the definition of victim is also cleansed of the tinge of bondage, then the victim can be loved as the
wolf loves the antelope or the bobcat loves the bunny.
That's how Diana hoped her son had turned out. She reached out and touched Vikor on the hand, and she
asked, "Is it hard, to kill a human?"
"No," he said, and the truth was calm as a pond at dawn and reflected all that she wondered and all that he was.
Then he had regaled her with a few short anecdotes, tales of his exploits, boasts and violent memories. He had
grown up a predator, a hunter with a shrinking range. He had needed to expand his hunting grounds; he had
gone in search of his prey.
Birmingham. He never would forget it.
had lived as a part of the community, with Carol her mother, and the grudging acceptance of the rest. She had
gone to school; she had learned to read. She knew of the struggles of the committed rebels of every age and
cause.
Rebellion. Rebel lion.
Sooner or later, this lion would have its hide tacked to the side of the barn. She knew that too. Even if the flag
of the cause is finally waving in victory, the true rebels will end up on the run once more, for there is a
difference between rebellion and revolution. Diana knew that too, and nursed a queasy sympathy for the fools
who were suckered into any party line, who revered the martyrs who had died for nothing, who used their
names as talismans to help to enforce the new order.
A revolution is a circle, like the revolutions of a wheel, the rise and fall of an iron rim, now pressed (oppressed)
into the passing earth, now rising, now reigning, now falling to the same hard road. When the smoke clears,
there once more are the government and the police, often the same people, turncoats now, who, sporting the
new badge in memory of the martyred lion, perform as before, with maybe a bit more bite with their bark,
hardened by the travesties of war, justified in their minds by the sanctity of the cause.
And away in the jungles, away in the Pennsylvania hills, the rebels persist until finally the real cause is
trampled. The whiskey farmers are defeated by their own comrades in arms. The contras are disarmed and
submit to orders that echo from the same pale halls as before. Warriors are slaughtered, their families
marooned on reservations. The North wins and slavery sweeps the nation, unbound and upgraded, so that all
sink further beneath its venal grasp.
And rebellion? Hah! She had once read the words of a Hungarian refugee, who commented on the fearless
self-sacrifice that arises in a citizen whose boundaries are crossed, who has lost everything, or at least enough
to feel he has nothing to lose. When wives and children are raped and killed, when homes are lost and
destroyed, when cultures are crushed and deformed by the boot of the oppressor, when favorite idolatries are
banned, and when whichever it is becomes too much, too painful, too awful, too humiliating or too anything,
then the person, man, woman, or child, rebels.
That point is different for different folks. Diana was no rebel.
She did not want her son, Victor, to turn out a rebel either. As she saw it, a rebel has already lost, because of
the ultimate, circular doom that waits for every movement and cause. The glory is undeniable, but it goes too
well with a tombstone, and she already had one of those.
(She lies to herself; she never had a grave, let alone a marker.)
Grace is what she taught her son, and how to go with the flow. Though she taught grace in the high brush,
Vikor practiced it eventually in the cities and on the highways of humanity. There was no call for a high
profile; the car that maintains the steady eighty mile per hour velocity of the herd at a given moment is
invisible to the traffic cop.
The aggressive driver striving to arrive at the front of an endless line, dodging and passing the other drivers
and doing eighty-five, stands out like a prize buck to the trophy-hunter on the motorcycle.
Love is what she taught her son, or at least she prayed that she did. Love thine enemy? That and more.
To love the enemy has always been easy, for in the wars that have racked the world, the warriors of the enemy
have always been so similar, in essence, to our own. Down through the centuries the heroes of history and
legend have recognized this, and have toasted one another's fame. The greater the enemy, the greater the
victory. Worthy opponent, brave knight of the opposition, fellow player in the game of battle, it has always
been easy to love the enemy.
To love the slaves has not been so easy, to love the master more difficult still. To love the victim has been the
greatest challenge. Just telling them apart is a teaser. Slaves and masters both can be frequently victims of the
same foul system. When the devotion to the master is voluntary, when the concern for the slave is generous,
when the need for oppression and rebellion is gone, wiped clean through some symbiotic grace, then love flows
free, the wind masters the clouds, and the river submits to the land.
And when the definition of victim is also cleansed of the tinge of bondage, then the victim can be loved as the
wolf loves the antelope or the bobcat loves the bunny.
That's how Diana hoped her son had turned out. She reached out and touched Vikor on the hand, and she
asked, "Is it hard, to kill a human?"
"No," he said, and the truth was calm as a pond at dawn and reflected all that she wondered and all that he was.
Then he had regaled her with a few short anecdotes, tales of his exploits, boasts and violent memories. He had
grown up a predator, a hunter with a shrinking range. He had needed to expand his hunting grounds; he had
gone in search of his prey.
Birmingham. He never would forget it.
| * * * |
"I think we should ride, me bucko," answered Johnny softly.
"No shit," said Bob in quiet confirmation. "Sh'we split up?"
"I don't think so," said Johnny. He had turned so that he was looking across the back of Bob's gelding, Spot.
He surveyed the road and the cornfield that lay beyond the sycamore. He imagined the truth when next he
spoke.
"I think they'll be expecting us to run up the valley," he said, referring not to Carmel Valley and the way they
had just come, but to Shaw Valley opening from the south. "Let's just go right down the road to the mailboxes,
turn left and then slice up through the open gates. We'll lose them."
"No shit," said Bob in quiet confirmation. "Sh'we split up?"
"I don't think so," said Johnny. He had turned so that he was looking across the back of Bob's gelding, Spot.
He surveyed the road and the cornfield that lay beyond the sycamore. He imagined the truth when next he
spoke.
"I think they'll be expecting us to run up the valley," he said, referring not to Carmel Valley and the way they
had just come, but to Shaw Valley opening from the south. "Let's just go right down the road to the mailboxes,
turn left and then slice up through the open gates. We'll lose them."
| * * * |
Diary of a Goat herder 11 June 1981
Lucy had a daughter, Nicki, a healthy young doe, brown like Lucy, with curving perfect
horns. She was fresh when I got her, with plenty of milk that flowed readily. She had a
spell of rebellion on the milk stand. She was stubborn. Patience bore the rebellion, and she
came to stand still. On the trail she slipped to the rear, hanging back farther day by day till
one evening she didn't come in with us. I went back alone into the deepening twilight and
found her standing alone in the path down the canyon a way, bleating softly, plaintive.
She seemed trembling, collapsed when I tried to lead her, and I held my arms about her
for comfort. After a moment she relaxed, stood up and walked home with me.
Lucy had a daughter, Nicki, a healthy young doe, brown like Lucy, with curving perfect
horns. She was fresh when I got her, with plenty of milk that flowed readily. She had a
spell of rebellion on the milk stand. She was stubborn. Patience bore the rebellion, and she
came to stand still. On the trail she slipped to the rear, hanging back farther day by day till
one evening she didn't come in with us. I went back alone into the deepening twilight and
found her standing alone in the path down the canyon a way, bleating softly, plaintive.
She seemed trembling, collapsed when I tried to lead her, and I held my arms about her
for comfort. After a moment she relaxed, stood up and walked home with me.
| * * * |
The message went on, improbably coded and compressed in the flowing, feline frequency of a loud snarl on a
cold winter night:
Jesus Christ was another of your breed with half a solution, like Darwin. The trouble is Darwin's contribution
did not turn out to be the other half. Put the two together, and we still don't get the whole solution.
What am I talking about? A major direction of Jesus' teaching, the teaching that has been relayed to humanity
as his, is toward a passive acceptance. Take his own example, enduring imprisonment, torture and execution as
free choices. Why in God's name would anyone do that? Remember, it truly was in 'God's name' that he made
these sacrifices. What if he really was God, as many of his followers proclaim? Could he not have weaseled out
of the less pleasant parts of the ordeal? Or, less subtly, could he not have called in a host of warrior angels to
defeat his persecutors? Couldn't he have just caused them all to suffer sudden hemorrhages? If he were God,
and his laws kept the blood in their veins, couldn't he have let it out, so that all of his tormentors would have
found themselves bleeding from every port? Couldn't he have hit them with meteorites?
Given for the moment that he does exist, God does do all of these things all of the time, and more. He has
given life feelings, so that it may suffer in its struggles and wrecks and destruction. He visits agony on the
young, the weak and the innocent; could he not have done the same to the ones who pressed thorns into his
forehead?
Sure, he could have. And what would we have learned from that? What would our savior have shown us that we
haven't seen endless examples of already, the effects of the performances of heroes and barbarians for ten
thousand years? Sure, Jesus could have been just another rough guy. His assault on the money-changers in the
temple showed that he had it in him.
But people who will fight and kill to save themselves or their loved ones from oppression, imprisonment,
torture and death are not that hard to find. They are the ones who are regularly seduced into that dance called
war.
Passive acceptance. You would ask me to define that, if I would let you speak. So ask. What is the definition of
passive acceptance? Does it mean that when you hear me marauding your nannies you turn to your other side
and go back to sleep?
Hah! Nothing is that simple. Does it mean that, when the wolf approaches the antelope on the daylight open
plain, the dimwit ungulate stands motionless, head high, and throat exposed? Does it mean that the deer hides
her fawn on a rocky altar, exposed to the wind and the lightning and me?
None of that, but it does mean that the bunny rabbit does not grow fangs and turn on the fox. The doves chase
no hawk to even scores. The lions of Africa gather for their feast in full sight of the grazing herd from which
the kill has come. Cows and steers chew their cuds in motionless tranquility while men hoist a slaughtered
member of the herd, suspend him from a derrick and bleed him from the throat. Even the bull aims only to
chase you away with his charge. He won't hunt you down for justice or revenge, if you take one of his steers
dead with you.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not moralizing, not if we're discussing human predators and human prey. I'm not
saying, because I don't know, that there is anything wrong with murder. If that were the excuse for passive
acceptance, it would be a feeble one. Go follow Jesus if you will. But follow him not because you think it wrong
to kill, or to steal.
We don't know that there would be anything wrong with the rabbit whirling to stand his ground, to surprise the
world with his bold incisors, and to slay the hapless fox. But we know what would happen if the rabbit let his
imagination carry him away into trying such a noble feat.
And we know what happens to the members of each generation of humans, who turn as youths to bare their
teeth, their switchblades and their insolence toward the system of beings that oppresses them. The prisons and
graveyards fill with the violent rebels; their lives are ruined.
It needs war to take on for real the forces that spew death and slavery. When simple rebellion becomes
revolution, then, sometimes, the castles fall. But 'revolution' describes a circular path as well, and the
torch-like principles of the rebels, however misguided they may be, are trampled into mockery by the rise of
the same tyrannous monster as before. The boys on the street become cannon fodder. Fierce veterans become
fierce convicts later on. If they repent early enough, they often become officers of the law, their hearts burning
with betrayal, and the oppressed of every stripe vulnerable to their pointless revenge.
cold winter night:
Jesus Christ was another of your breed with half a solution, like Darwin. The trouble is Darwin's contribution
did not turn out to be the other half. Put the two together, and we still don't get the whole solution.
What am I talking about? A major direction of Jesus' teaching, the teaching that has been relayed to humanity
as his, is toward a passive acceptance. Take his own example, enduring imprisonment, torture and execution as
free choices. Why in God's name would anyone do that? Remember, it truly was in 'God's name' that he made
these sacrifices. What if he really was God, as many of his followers proclaim? Could he not have weaseled out
of the less pleasant parts of the ordeal? Or, less subtly, could he not have called in a host of warrior angels to
defeat his persecutors? Couldn't he have just caused them all to suffer sudden hemorrhages? If he were God,
and his laws kept the blood in their veins, couldn't he have let it out, so that all of his tormentors would have
found themselves bleeding from every port? Couldn't he have hit them with meteorites?
Given for the moment that he does exist, God does do all of these things all of the time, and more. He has
given life feelings, so that it may suffer in its struggles and wrecks and destruction. He visits agony on the
young, the weak and the innocent; could he not have done the same to the ones who pressed thorns into his
forehead?
Sure, he could have. And what would we have learned from that? What would our savior have shown us that we
haven't seen endless examples of already, the effects of the performances of heroes and barbarians for ten
thousand years? Sure, Jesus could have been just another rough guy. His assault on the money-changers in the
temple showed that he had it in him.
But people who will fight and kill to save themselves or their loved ones from oppression, imprisonment,
torture and death are not that hard to find. They are the ones who are regularly seduced into that dance called
war.
Passive acceptance. You would ask me to define that, if I would let you speak. So ask. What is the definition of
passive acceptance? Does it mean that when you hear me marauding your nannies you turn to your other side
and go back to sleep?
Hah! Nothing is that simple. Does it mean that, when the wolf approaches the antelope on the daylight open
plain, the dimwit ungulate stands motionless, head high, and throat exposed? Does it mean that the deer hides
her fawn on a rocky altar, exposed to the wind and the lightning and me?
None of that, but it does mean that the bunny rabbit does not grow fangs and turn on the fox. The doves chase
no hawk to even scores. The lions of Africa gather for their feast in full sight of the grazing herd from which
the kill has come. Cows and steers chew their cuds in motionless tranquility while men hoist a slaughtered
member of the herd, suspend him from a derrick and bleed him from the throat. Even the bull aims only to
chase you away with his charge. He won't hunt you down for justice or revenge, if you take one of his steers
dead with you.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not moralizing, not if we're discussing human predators and human prey. I'm not
saying, because I don't know, that there is anything wrong with murder. If that were the excuse for passive
acceptance, it would be a feeble one. Go follow Jesus if you will. But follow him not because you think it wrong
to kill, or to steal.
We don't know that there would be anything wrong with the rabbit whirling to stand his ground, to surprise the
world with his bold incisors, and to slay the hapless fox. But we know what would happen if the rabbit let his
imagination carry him away into trying such a noble feat.
And we know what happens to the members of each generation of humans, who turn as youths to bare their
teeth, their switchblades and their insolence toward the system of beings that oppresses them. The prisons and
graveyards fill with the violent rebels; their lives are ruined.
It needs war to take on for real the forces that spew death and slavery. When simple rebellion becomes
revolution, then, sometimes, the castles fall. But 'revolution' describes a circular path as well, and the
torch-like principles of the rebels, however misguided they may be, are trampled into mockery by the rise of
the same tyrannous monster as before. The boys on the street become cannon fodder. Fierce veterans become
fierce convicts later on. If they repent early enough, they often become officers of the law, their hearts burning
with betrayal, and the oppressed of every stripe vulnerable to their pointless revenge.
| * * * |
Once we were many, and now we are few. Perhaps that is what they will say. Once we were as the sands that
flow in the floods of the flat crossing. Now we are as individual as polished stones.
Once our homes serried the landscape with patterns of endless, exponential magnitude. Now we are placed here
and there as carefully as rare bulbs in God's garden of survival.
Once we scraped bare the earth in our harvest of wealth, and our ships and trains poured with the minerals and
timbers and grains of a world whose very excess (every surplus) was consumed. Now we pick and pass; now we
dine in choice orchards. Now our caravans are packed with crafts and art; now our homes are creations that
spin like spider webs from the realities of here and now, and our clothes are the raiment of life.
Once we marched in proud ranks; our rhythms were the tramp of a thousand boots, the thud of steam and
diesel cylinders, the cycling shifts, the teeming streets, the give and take of politics, the resonant vibration of
authority, and now… now we talk in small groups. We go on our own time. Just to be here makes each of us
special. Who is to question our any move? We have proven ourselves by survival; moment to moment we draw
the evidence. We work and we play in harmony with all of life, nor do we fear to balance all the way to her
sharp, sweet end. Death is only the tip of the cat's tail.
flow in the floods of the flat crossing. Now we are as individual as polished stones.
Once our homes serried the landscape with patterns of endless, exponential magnitude. Now we are placed here
and there as carefully as rare bulbs in God's garden of survival.
Once we scraped bare the earth in our harvest of wealth, and our ships and trains poured with the minerals and
timbers and grains of a world whose very excess (every surplus) was consumed. Now we pick and pass; now we
dine in choice orchards. Now our caravans are packed with crafts and art; now our homes are creations that
spin like spider webs from the realities of here and now, and our clothes are the raiment of life.
Once we marched in proud ranks; our rhythms were the tramp of a thousand boots, the thud of steam and
diesel cylinders, the cycling shifts, the teeming streets, the give and take of politics, the resonant vibration of
authority, and now… now we talk in small groups. We go on our own time. Just to be here makes each of us
special. Who is to question our any move? We have proven ourselves by survival; moment to moment we draw
the evidence. We work and we play in harmony with all of life, nor do we fear to balance all the way to her
sharp, sweet end. Death is only the tip of the cat's tail.
| * * * |
It was two days before the search party found the remains of the project. A lot had happened in those two days.
Johnny and Carol had taken Bob less than a mile, at first, to a place that each of them knew that was screened
by hills and trees, and was close to a small, sweet spring. There they stopped. The travail would have needs
been reconstructed before continuing on with it, but that became unnecessary.
For the time being, they were away from the flies and the smell, and for a while, they knew, the people.
Eventually the people would pick up the trail, even though the leafy and twiggy ends of the saplings had
brushed away most of the signs of passage. Here there was a rock overturned, there a hoof print.
There had developed an odd link between Johnny and Carol. Each of them was, in his or her own way, living in
a dream world, traumatized. For Johnny, playing with guns had come true with awful complications.
For Carol, it was playing with Maggie Murphy that had left her alone and exposed. She was innocent, if
common, and there were questions she didn't want to have to try to answer. She didn't know who those men
were. She didn't know who shot Maggie. She didn't think any questions would bring her back. She didn't want
justice done.
Justice was done already.
Johnny had food in his saddlebags, as did Bob. She loved them for that. Bob was awake for a while in the
evening. Johnny had built a little fire, after darkness had come to conceal the smoke. Carol got Bob to sip a
little soup. His good humor came back. When he asked Carol for a date, Johnny almost laughed.
He only almost laughed, because he had been thinking the same thought. Left to normal events, Johnny
Stream never would have asked Carol Gallagher, not for a date, nor the time of day. Now he was respectful of
her trauma, as she was of his, and they handled one another's feelings with kid gloves. They were almost like a
young couple with a child, born of some odd collision and helpless in their hands.
It put them at one another's beck and call.
Neither of them ever mentioned contact with the authorities or Murphy. For that matter, neither suggested
that Marilyn Wells or the Gallaghers should be notified either.
When Carol had mentioned the doctor, both she and Johnny had let the words float away into the air without
really hearing them. Yet, when Johnny had mentioned that they must move away from the flies and the smell,
she was quick to cooperate.
He, in turn, took her suggestion at its word, and proceeded to lash together the saplings and branches.
Eventually he asked her to watch over his buddy while he rode, not for help, but for supplies. She agreed to do
that.
He had made a fire at her request, and he had come up with what food there was when she had asked. All there
was was hard tack and jerky and coffee, and a couple of cans of beans.
At the nook in the hillside where they camped, Carol asked Johnny for one of the bedrolls. Johnny got one
from behind his saddle, but then he realized it was for Bob Cabler. So he got the one from behind Bob's saddle
as well. Working together, they arranged the still unconscious Cabler on the quilts. Carol rearranged the
jacket under his head. As it grew cooler, she placed Johnny's blanket over him, and she shivered herself.
Johnny and Carol had taken Bob less than a mile, at first, to a place that each of them knew that was screened
by hills and trees, and was close to a small, sweet spring. There they stopped. The travail would have needs
been reconstructed before continuing on with it, but that became unnecessary.
For the time being, they were away from the flies and the smell, and for a while, they knew, the people.
Eventually the people would pick up the trail, even though the leafy and twiggy ends of the saplings had
brushed away most of the signs of passage. Here there was a rock overturned, there a hoof print.
There had developed an odd link between Johnny and Carol. Each of them was, in his or her own way, living in
a dream world, traumatized. For Johnny, playing with guns had come true with awful complications.
For Carol, it was playing with Maggie Murphy that had left her alone and exposed. She was innocent, if
common, and there were questions she didn't want to have to try to answer. She didn't know who those men
were. She didn't know who shot Maggie. She didn't think any questions would bring her back. She didn't want
justice done.
Justice was done already.
Johnny had food in his saddlebags, as did Bob. She loved them for that. Bob was awake for a while in the
evening. Johnny had built a little fire, after darkness had come to conceal the smoke. Carol got Bob to sip a
little soup. His good humor came back. When he asked Carol for a date, Johnny almost laughed.
He only almost laughed, because he had been thinking the same thought. Left to normal events, Johnny
Stream never would have asked Carol Gallagher, not for a date, nor the time of day. Now he was respectful of
her trauma, as she was of his, and they handled one another's feelings with kid gloves. They were almost like a
young couple with a child, born of some odd collision and helpless in their hands.
It put them at one another's beck and call.
Neither of them ever mentioned contact with the authorities or Murphy. For that matter, neither suggested
that Marilyn Wells or the Gallaghers should be notified either.
When Carol had mentioned the doctor, both she and Johnny had let the words float away into the air without
really hearing them. Yet, when Johnny had mentioned that they must move away from the flies and the smell,
she was quick to cooperate.
He, in turn, took her suggestion at its word, and proceeded to lash together the saplings and branches.
Eventually he asked her to watch over his buddy while he rode, not for help, but for supplies. She agreed to do
that.
He had made a fire at her request, and he had come up with what food there was when she had asked. All there
was was hard tack and jerky and coffee, and a couple of cans of beans.
At the nook in the hillside where they camped, Carol asked Johnny for one of the bedrolls. Johnny got one
from behind his saddle, but then he realized it was for Bob Cabler. So he got the one from behind Bob's saddle
as well. Working together, they arranged the still unconscious Cabler on the quilts. Carol rearranged the
jacket under his head. As it grew cooler, she placed Johnny's blanket over him, and she shivered herself.
| * * * |
"We'll lose them. We'll lose them." Johnny's words repeated themselves in Bob Cabler's head as they did their
little race. "Let's go!" he had cheered at Johnny Stream's suggestion, instantly fitting his left boot to the
stirrup of Spot's saddle and mounting up in undiscussed agreement. Johnny swept along with the momentum.
They hit the saddles in two quick slaps of denim on leather. Both horses were part quarter horse. They
broke into an instant gallop, mounts at the will of crazed riders and hopeless daring.
Like a whirlwind coming off at a tangent from its counter-clockwise spin, like a stone flung from a sling, the
horses and riders unwound into a smooth, fast vector.
It took the chief deputy by surprise. Tim O'Farrell almost dropped his binoculars. He still had not really solved
his problem. His inspiration was that words like, "Shoot to kill!" should have been a pre-announced option in
the instructions to the sharpshooters. Yet another powerful part of him insisted that such a command would be
wrong, and he was left in a dither.
little race. "Let's go!" he had cheered at Johnny Stream's suggestion, instantly fitting his left boot to the
stirrup of Spot's saddle and mounting up in undiscussed agreement. Johnny swept along with the momentum.
They hit the saddles in two quick slaps of denim on leather. Both horses were part quarter horse. They
broke into an instant gallop, mounts at the will of crazed riders and hopeless daring.
Like a whirlwind coming off at a tangent from its counter-clockwise spin, like a stone flung from a sling, the
horses and riders unwound into a smooth, fast vector.
It took the chief deputy by surprise. Tim O'Farrell almost dropped his binoculars. He still had not really solved
his problem. His inspiration was that words like, "Shoot to kill!" should have been a pre-announced option in
the instructions to the sharpshooters. Yet another powerful part of him insisted that such a command would be
wrong, and he was left in a dither.
