| Black Mountain Lady |
Jay
Dyck
Dyck
Diary of a Goatherder January 23, 1980 (continued)
My partner is my old friend, Bob Cabler. He joined me here on Fugitive Creek around the
beginning of November.
My partner is my old friend, Bob Cabler. He joined me here on Fugitive Creek around the
beginning of November.
| Chapter Six PREDATOR |
So who is Vikor? Is it enough to say that he is the son of Cat One? Or is he really Diana's boy? Is he, in fact,
the grandson of Cat's imaginary sire, the third generation of warped heroes to replace the timid, traumatized
subjects of reality? Vikor has totally transcended normal human concepts of right and wrong. Vikor is a
full-on predator. He lives by killing victims and taking whatever he needs or wants from them, from their bank
accounts, their homes, their credit cards.
Vikor does not rob people, not the way he sees it. He preys on them. Robbery leaves people alive; robbery
takes people through hells of fear, intimidation and manipulation.
Slavery is a form of robbery to Vikor. So are crime and taxation. All of them are, to Vikor, forms of
parasitism. Predators kill their prey, he reasons. Parasites go ahead and start eating without bothering to kill
first. Sure, maybe eventually the host dies, from accumulations of weakness, malnutrition, or infection, but
then the parasite will most generally abandon the sinking ship for another, another that is still alive, that still
has blood coursing through veins, another that can still feed the demanding parasites.
The dead host is left for the scavengers to polish off.
To Vikor, scavengers filled a prettier role in life than did parasites. Scavengers cleaned the place up, disposed
of the wastes left behind both by predators and parasites. Vikor had no real problem with scavenging himself.
Recycling, he called it. But for parasites, even though he confessed to himself that he had at times performed
as one himself, Vikor had little respect.
This in spite of what some would call a total moral vacancy in the make-up of our man. It was not that Vikor
found parasites to be in the wrong, or evil. Vikor was conscious that he was not competent to judge the
rightness or wrongness of anything. He didn't need to be to despise them, he felt. He didn't need to know
anything about morality to find disgusting all leeches and ticks and fleas and tapeworms and all of the pests, in
general, that attached themselves to and sucked life from the valiant hosts.
In the same way, he needed no revelation of shalts and shalt nots to recognize the admiration that he felt for
the predators of the animal kingdom. Who isn't thrilled, he would ask himself, by the glorious moves of hawks
and eagles, owls and ospreys, wolves and lions and leopards and foxes and bears?
And who isn't repulsed by the critters that practice the parasitic lifestyle? Vikor would challenge the world with
the assertion that most would feel the same.
The only problem was that the huge dose of Judeo-Christian morality that all of us have had crammed down
our throats since infancy has made most humans unable to apply the same disgust to human parasites, nor
even to recognize the masses that have chosen such an eco-niche.
"Such as?" might come the voice of the mass in response.
Such as politicians, welfare recipients, bureaucrats, collectors of any sort of government handouts, industrial
deadwood and, of course, the criminals, most of them. In sum, Vikor had nothing but contempt for any slime
who, at the end of their "workday," accepted their pay and headed for home without having added in any
positive terms to the objectives of their group, company, community or eco-system.
Vikor was thinking of government workers who shuffle papers and make things harder for everyone. He was
referring to the vast slabs of population who live on their "entitlements", to the hordes of employed "workers"
who do no work in the sense that at day's end their efforts have not contributed to the production of one more
inch, ounce, pint or pound of their employers' output.
He meant members of the armed forces whose only concerns were their own pay, their own benefits, their own
time off, retirement, and power, and whose contribution to national defense and security was negative.
He meant police who interpreted the sensitive nature of their positions as opportunities for every form of graft
and corruption, protection and complicity.
Vikor included most of the criminals of the civilization in his indictment of contempt, the dope-dealers who fit
themselves into the filthy conspiracy that includes the laws (and those who passed them) that make it possible
to sell inexpensive herbs and potions at mind-boggling prices that go on to inspire every other variety of vice
and felony to make ends meet, from prostitution to armed robbery.
Vikor had a particular scorn for robbers and dealers both. The robbers of every description, blinded perhaps by
the dictionary, as well as by journalists, both of whom included any plundering activity within the category of
predation, were to Vikor no more than rough-natured wards of the state and the society at large.
Predators kill their prey! That was the closest that Vikor came to a commandment, but it was no
commandment. It was how it was. These upstart criminals irritated him, those who wrapped themselves in a
sort of cool glory, as though members of a warrior class. They walked the streets as though they bore the
magnificence of mountain lions, all claws and smiles. Yet, for most, the only killing they did was in anger, by
mistake, by accident, or, perhaps most below contempt, for hire.
the grandson of Cat's imaginary sire, the third generation of warped heroes to replace the timid, traumatized
subjects of reality? Vikor has totally transcended normal human concepts of right and wrong. Vikor is a
full-on predator. He lives by killing victims and taking whatever he needs or wants from them, from their bank
accounts, their homes, their credit cards.
Vikor does not rob people, not the way he sees it. He preys on them. Robbery leaves people alive; robbery
takes people through hells of fear, intimidation and manipulation.
Slavery is a form of robbery to Vikor. So are crime and taxation. All of them are, to Vikor, forms of
parasitism. Predators kill their prey, he reasons. Parasites go ahead and start eating without bothering to kill
first. Sure, maybe eventually the host dies, from accumulations of weakness, malnutrition, or infection, but
then the parasite will most generally abandon the sinking ship for another, another that is still alive, that still
has blood coursing through veins, another that can still feed the demanding parasites.
The dead host is left for the scavengers to polish off.
To Vikor, scavengers filled a prettier role in life than did parasites. Scavengers cleaned the place up, disposed
of the wastes left behind both by predators and parasites. Vikor had no real problem with scavenging himself.
Recycling, he called it. But for parasites, even though he confessed to himself that he had at times performed
as one himself, Vikor had little respect.
This in spite of what some would call a total moral vacancy in the make-up of our man. It was not that Vikor
found parasites to be in the wrong, or evil. Vikor was conscious that he was not competent to judge the
rightness or wrongness of anything. He didn't need to be to despise them, he felt. He didn't need to know
anything about morality to find disgusting all leeches and ticks and fleas and tapeworms and all of the pests, in
general, that attached themselves to and sucked life from the valiant hosts.
In the same way, he needed no revelation of shalts and shalt nots to recognize the admiration that he felt for
the predators of the animal kingdom. Who isn't thrilled, he would ask himself, by the glorious moves of hawks
and eagles, owls and ospreys, wolves and lions and leopards and foxes and bears?
And who isn't repulsed by the critters that practice the parasitic lifestyle? Vikor would challenge the world with
the assertion that most would feel the same.
The only problem was that the huge dose of Judeo-Christian morality that all of us have had crammed down
our throats since infancy has made most humans unable to apply the same disgust to human parasites, nor
even to recognize the masses that have chosen such an eco-niche.
"Such as?" might come the voice of the mass in response.
Such as politicians, welfare recipients, bureaucrats, collectors of any sort of government handouts, industrial
deadwood and, of course, the criminals, most of them. In sum, Vikor had nothing but contempt for any slime
who, at the end of their "workday," accepted their pay and headed for home without having added in any
positive terms to the objectives of their group, company, community or eco-system.
Vikor was thinking of government workers who shuffle papers and make things harder for everyone. He was
referring to the vast slabs of population who live on their "entitlements", to the hordes of employed "workers"
who do no work in the sense that at day's end their efforts have not contributed to the production of one more
inch, ounce, pint or pound of their employers' output.
He meant members of the armed forces whose only concerns were their own pay, their own benefits, their own
time off, retirement, and power, and whose contribution to national defense and security was negative.
He meant police who interpreted the sensitive nature of their positions as opportunities for every form of graft
and corruption, protection and complicity.
Vikor included most of the criminals of the civilization in his indictment of contempt, the dope-dealers who fit
themselves into the filthy conspiracy that includes the laws (and those who passed them) that make it possible
to sell inexpensive herbs and potions at mind-boggling prices that go on to inspire every other variety of vice
and felony to make ends meet, from prostitution to armed robbery.
Vikor had a particular scorn for robbers and dealers both. The robbers of every description, blinded perhaps by
the dictionary, as well as by journalists, both of whom included any plundering activity within the category of
predation, were to Vikor no more than rough-natured wards of the state and the society at large.
Predators kill their prey! That was the closest that Vikor came to a commandment, but it was no
commandment. It was how it was. These upstart criminals irritated him, those who wrapped themselves in a
sort of cool glory, as though members of a warrior class. They walked the streets as though they bore the
magnificence of mountain lions, all claws and smiles. Yet, for most, the only killing they did was in anger, by
mistake, by accident, or, perhaps most below contempt, for hire.
| * * * |
One morning in October, Michael Wertz gave Johnny Stream a new saddle. It happened this way. Wertz
wanted to sell the saddle. He had seen the old leather rag that Johnny was still using, and had figured that the
thrifty half-breed was probably saving money to buy a new seat. The big western job that Mike had stashed in
the Carmelite barn would certainly fill the bill.
It was used, but it was a beauty. The stamped leather was accented with lovely silver conchos, each complete
with a sturdy ring behind it so bedrolls and whatnot could be tied or clipped and secured without disturbing the
long leather fringes that hung from each medallion.
The leather and the silver were all polished to a hue. Mike Wertz had been working on it during his spare time.
He had patiently restored the old western saddle which he had found in one of the storerooms in the basement
of what was then the Sister's of Mercy convent, and would later be Spencer Harlan's ranch-house.
The nuns had him hauling the contents of the storeroom to the dump. Michael asked them did they mind if he
rescued the filthy old relic of another time. They didn't mind, so the saddle was his. Wertz had an eye for
value, and he saw at once that under the layers of grime and neglect was a treasure of leather and metal.
Everything still worked. Michael took off most of the metal and polished it with time and vigor before
reinstalling it. By then he had done the same to the saddle itself. First he cleaned it, got right down into the
poor thing's pores with soap and water and a scrub brush and scoured it clean! Then, at a mellower pace, he
oiled it, sitting patiently in his room in the barn and rubbing the neat’s-foot oil into every crevice while he
smoked his cigarettes and drank his beer and listened to the sound of his hands working the old leather.
What had it been through that left it so dirty, he often wondered. Probably some cowboy ended up in the mud
with some steer he was trying to rescue. Deep in the mud, for it was encrusted everywhere. Cinch, strap,
pommel and cantle, it had all been caked, everywhere but the stirrups and the seat which had each been
polished on the homeward ride by the cowboy's boots and the ass of his jeans.
"I wouldn't let it go for less than two hundred," said Wertz with a set to his jaw that Johnny could have
mistaken for anything. He went along with it. He had just completed his own quiet oohing and ahing, and he
could see the work that had gone into the saddle. He could smell the quality.
"Sounds fair," he agreed.
Wertz snorted. "Fair?" he grumbled. "It's worth twice that! Times are hard, that's all. I need the dough. "
Times were not all that hard, not in the winding down days of the war. Wertz just hadn't tried very hard to be a
part of the wartime boom. He was one of the tough 4-F's who were left behind to care for the nation's women
while weaker men went to war. Find'em, feel'em, fuck'em, forget'm was how he termed it, and he thought he
had made that up.
As for the saddle, he was finished with that as well. He would never again spend that much time with one hunk
of leather. He never so much as soaped another saddle.
It was Johnny's turn to snort. "I thought I was doing you a favor, man," he complained "payin' you twice what
it 'uz worth. Times are hard, my friend. "
Exasperated, Wertz stormed back, "You have no idea how much time I put in on this saddle, you ignorant
injun. " Mike and Johnny got along pretty well, and had tromped on all of each other's buttons before now.
"Oh, I'm sure you're slow," replied Johnny with a sly expression. "But it is a good saddle. Basically, it's a good
saddle. "
"Fuck you," said Wertz. He took a pull on his beer. Johnny did the same. Michael took a puff of tobacco
smoke. Johnny brought out his can of Copenhagen and took a dip. They were standing in the barn where the
saddle sat displayed over the wheel of a wagon. Johnny figured it must be okay to spit on the dirt floor, and in a
moment he did, a straight squirt of brown ejaculate that shot to the dirt and rolled itself into a ball of tobacco-
drenched dirt.
"You wouldn't like it; I'd just lay there," said Johnny, coming back with one of Bob Cabler's lines in response
to Wertz's witty fuck you.
At a barn dance one night, regaling a mixed gang that had gathered in one end of the Heinz barn, Mike Wertz
had announced that he himself was the crudest person there, probably the crudest person anyone there even
knew. He was immediately outdistanced on the crudity scale by Cabler who promptly asked him, "Oh, yeah?
How'd you like to fuck my dog?"
Wertz came back with a couple of lame shots, "Did you try it? Was it good?" But these went unheard in the
ruckus of laughter that followed Bob's question. Everyone felt that it had been a very funny put down. One for
the kid, none for the old ranch-hand, and none of them saw the arrow of murder that flew like a black bat from
the eyes of Michael Wertz to Bob Cabler, except for Johnny. He saw it and didn't give a damn.
But it was why, on the frosty morning in nineteen fifty-three, cold-hearted Michael drew the slightest grim
satisfaction from seeing Spot dead. The horses' bodies had been left over night in the ditch. As a matter of fact,
the reason Wertz was up and out there was because the sheriff's department had arranged with Spencer Harlan
late that previous evening to have the carcasses removed, and nowadays Mike was Harlan's hand.
He was there on the side of Carmel Valley Road with Harlan's winch truck. He smoked a cigarette. The smoke
mixed with his steaming breath in the cold air. He turned his attention from Spot (whom some kindly sheriff's
deputy had plugged) to the nameless mare that Johnny Stream had been riding, and there was the saddle.
I guess it was just a loan after all. Mike Wertz thought this in a matter of fact and cynical way as he uncinched
the saddle from the dead horse, wrestled it free of the fallen mountain of meat, and heaved it into the cab of
the truck, on the passenger side.
With Johnny's assessment of the saddle's worth down to one hundred dollars, and Wertz' expressed opinion
that the same saddle was worth four times that much, the deal that had begun with agreement appeared to be
rocketing away from itself in opposite directions.
"Maybe this saddle's too good for you," said Wertz. It was a good saddle, and Johnny Stream would have hated
to disparage it.
"Maybe my money's too good for you," he said, keeping it on the personal level.
"That's what it is," said Michael. "You don't even have the money. " This was delivered in an I-don't-know-
why-I'm-wasting-my-time style that included physical movements that meant to say that he was leaving now
with better things to do.
But he didn't have anything better to do than to stand in that old barn, open at each end, with the October
breeze drifting through, and the scent of turning sycamore leaves, and dicker with some half-ignorant 'breed
who happened to be his friend.
Johnny stopped him, before he could pretend to be leaving, with a new challenge. "How about this?" he
suggested. "We flip a coin, double or nothing. "
"What do you mean?" asked Wertz, intrigued.
"We flip a coin," said Johnny producing one, a shiny nineteen thirty-eight silver dollar. "Heads, I pay four
hundred for the saddle.
"Tails you give'er to me free," he concluded, lowering his voice a shade so Mike Wertz would know that he was
serious.
Emotional momentum carried Wertz into accepting the wager without a thought. "You're on," he snapped.
Then he did have a thought, and he added, "Put your money where your mouth is. " He had at least the sense
not to gamble away those weeks of work on an Indian with empty pockets. He wanted to see that Johnny really
had it.
Johnny pretended not to understand. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I'm good for it. " He stood poised with
the silver coin, ready to flip. He wore an impish air that left Wertz ever more dedicated to the idea that he had
to see the cash.
"Shit," said Mike, with a wave of his hand. "It's all talk. You don't have four hundred dollars. You probably
don't have forty bucks to your name. "
It happened that young John Stream did have four hundred dollars rolled tight in the pocket of his jeans. And
he had been saving up for a new saddle. There's only so much a sailor can spend on booze and broads, and
that's all of it and then some. Johnny made sure that his liberty stopped short of that. The navy was still paying
him, and he wanted to be sure it wasn't just women and liquor stores that were getting to keep all of the loot.
He wanted to make sure that he got some of his modest demands on life fulfilled, and one of those demands
was a new saddle.
That was all he had, and there wasn't no more. With a grin of innocent triumph he plunked it onto the polished
seat of the saddle.
Mike Wertz wasn't fazed; he had seen four C-notes before. He faced Johnny Stream with a zesty glare, and
Johnny flipped the dollar. The silver twinkled in chance rays of October sunshine as the coin hurtled high into
the dark overhead of bats and hay dust and then landed with a soft plunk in the cool dirt at the bottom of the
barn.
This is a dead end, thought Wertz eight years later, as he took back the lost saddle. And he was right. This
little story goes nowhere.
But later that day, before Johnny finally saddled up to ride over to Marilyn's barn, after several more beers and
several more dips of snuff, he carried his gleaming leather prize past the Sisters of Mercy, down the lane to
Carmel Valley Road, across to the cemetery and through the gate and up to the old pump house by the corral
where Widow waited with the eternal resignation of the horse, who never receives an explanation for anything
in its life, because none would ever be understood.
Could be that she did understand, when that polished and newly fleeced saddle settled on Widowmaker's back,
and the supple, strong leather cinch strap was tightened. She knew enough to be proud as she pranced through
the gate of the corral and back down through the cemetery to Carmel Valley Road. From there, eastward till
Bell Valley, it was like a parade, with only the red-leafed sycamores for an audience, them and the stately trees
of heaven, the eucalyptus up by the old red school-house and the line of mailboxes at the side of the road across
from the little wooden bridge.
Johnny was schnokkered. He and the horse proceeded at a walk in triumph through the drowsy, warm autumn
daylight. He felt pretty good, but he could see that bedroll stretched out in the near future, somewhere nearby.
It was a beautiful day.
The little parade had a couple of other watchers too. As Widowmaker held her horse head high and Johnny
Stream's own noggin wobbled on the brink of sleep, Mike Wertz took a pull on his cigarette in the cool shade of
the sisters' silo and kept his eyes on his friend with the borrowed horse and the prize saddle till they all
disappeared up the valley. The worn old saddle stayed on its rail inside of the old pump house, and far away, in
a cooler land, where time ran faster than a barley field, a little girl watched the whole procession, every bit of
it, in a fragment of clear quartz.
wanted to sell the saddle. He had seen the old leather rag that Johnny was still using, and had figured that the
thrifty half-breed was probably saving money to buy a new seat. The big western job that Mike had stashed in
the Carmelite barn would certainly fill the bill.
It was used, but it was a beauty. The stamped leather was accented with lovely silver conchos, each complete
with a sturdy ring behind it so bedrolls and whatnot could be tied or clipped and secured without disturbing the
long leather fringes that hung from each medallion.
The leather and the silver were all polished to a hue. Mike Wertz had been working on it during his spare time.
He had patiently restored the old western saddle which he had found in one of the storerooms in the basement
of what was then the Sister's of Mercy convent, and would later be Spencer Harlan's ranch-house.
The nuns had him hauling the contents of the storeroom to the dump. Michael asked them did they mind if he
rescued the filthy old relic of another time. They didn't mind, so the saddle was his. Wertz had an eye for
value, and he saw at once that under the layers of grime and neglect was a treasure of leather and metal.
Everything still worked. Michael took off most of the metal and polished it with time and vigor before
reinstalling it. By then he had done the same to the saddle itself. First he cleaned it, got right down into the
poor thing's pores with soap and water and a scrub brush and scoured it clean! Then, at a mellower pace, he
oiled it, sitting patiently in his room in the barn and rubbing the neat’s-foot oil into every crevice while he
smoked his cigarettes and drank his beer and listened to the sound of his hands working the old leather.
What had it been through that left it so dirty, he often wondered. Probably some cowboy ended up in the mud
with some steer he was trying to rescue. Deep in the mud, for it was encrusted everywhere. Cinch, strap,
pommel and cantle, it had all been caked, everywhere but the stirrups and the seat which had each been
polished on the homeward ride by the cowboy's boots and the ass of his jeans.
"I wouldn't let it go for less than two hundred," said Wertz with a set to his jaw that Johnny could have
mistaken for anything. He went along with it. He had just completed his own quiet oohing and ahing, and he
could see the work that had gone into the saddle. He could smell the quality.
"Sounds fair," he agreed.
Wertz snorted. "Fair?" he grumbled. "It's worth twice that! Times are hard, that's all. I need the dough. "
Times were not all that hard, not in the winding down days of the war. Wertz just hadn't tried very hard to be a
part of the wartime boom. He was one of the tough 4-F's who were left behind to care for the nation's women
while weaker men went to war. Find'em, feel'em, fuck'em, forget'm was how he termed it, and he thought he
had made that up.
As for the saddle, he was finished with that as well. He would never again spend that much time with one hunk
of leather. He never so much as soaped another saddle.
It was Johnny's turn to snort. "I thought I was doing you a favor, man," he complained "payin' you twice what
it 'uz worth. Times are hard, my friend. "
Exasperated, Wertz stormed back, "You have no idea how much time I put in on this saddle, you ignorant
injun. " Mike and Johnny got along pretty well, and had tromped on all of each other's buttons before now.
"Oh, I'm sure you're slow," replied Johnny with a sly expression. "But it is a good saddle. Basically, it's a good
saddle. "
"Fuck you," said Wertz. He took a pull on his beer. Johnny did the same. Michael took a puff of tobacco
smoke. Johnny brought out his can of Copenhagen and took a dip. They were standing in the barn where the
saddle sat displayed over the wheel of a wagon. Johnny figured it must be okay to spit on the dirt floor, and in a
moment he did, a straight squirt of brown ejaculate that shot to the dirt and rolled itself into a ball of tobacco-
drenched dirt.
"You wouldn't like it; I'd just lay there," said Johnny, coming back with one of Bob Cabler's lines in response
to Wertz's witty fuck you.
At a barn dance one night, regaling a mixed gang that had gathered in one end of the Heinz barn, Mike Wertz
had announced that he himself was the crudest person there, probably the crudest person anyone there even
knew. He was immediately outdistanced on the crudity scale by Cabler who promptly asked him, "Oh, yeah?
How'd you like to fuck my dog?"
Wertz came back with a couple of lame shots, "Did you try it? Was it good?" But these went unheard in the
ruckus of laughter that followed Bob's question. Everyone felt that it had been a very funny put down. One for
the kid, none for the old ranch-hand, and none of them saw the arrow of murder that flew like a black bat from
the eyes of Michael Wertz to Bob Cabler, except for Johnny. He saw it and didn't give a damn.
But it was why, on the frosty morning in nineteen fifty-three, cold-hearted Michael drew the slightest grim
satisfaction from seeing Spot dead. The horses' bodies had been left over night in the ditch. As a matter of fact,
the reason Wertz was up and out there was because the sheriff's department had arranged with Spencer Harlan
late that previous evening to have the carcasses removed, and nowadays Mike was Harlan's hand.
He was there on the side of Carmel Valley Road with Harlan's winch truck. He smoked a cigarette. The smoke
mixed with his steaming breath in the cold air. He turned his attention from Spot (whom some kindly sheriff's
deputy had plugged) to the nameless mare that Johnny Stream had been riding, and there was the saddle.
I guess it was just a loan after all. Mike Wertz thought this in a matter of fact and cynical way as he uncinched
the saddle from the dead horse, wrestled it free of the fallen mountain of meat, and heaved it into the cab of
the truck, on the passenger side.
With Johnny's assessment of the saddle's worth down to one hundred dollars, and Wertz' expressed opinion
that the same saddle was worth four times that much, the deal that had begun with agreement appeared to be
rocketing away from itself in opposite directions.
"Maybe this saddle's too good for you," said Wertz. It was a good saddle, and Johnny Stream would have hated
to disparage it.
"Maybe my money's too good for you," he said, keeping it on the personal level.
"That's what it is," said Michael. "You don't even have the money. " This was delivered in an I-don't-know-
why-I'm-wasting-my-time style that included physical movements that meant to say that he was leaving now
with better things to do.
But he didn't have anything better to do than to stand in that old barn, open at each end, with the October
breeze drifting through, and the scent of turning sycamore leaves, and dicker with some half-ignorant 'breed
who happened to be his friend.
Johnny stopped him, before he could pretend to be leaving, with a new challenge. "How about this?" he
suggested. "We flip a coin, double or nothing. "
"What do you mean?" asked Wertz, intrigued.
"We flip a coin," said Johnny producing one, a shiny nineteen thirty-eight silver dollar. "Heads, I pay four
hundred for the saddle.
"Tails you give'er to me free," he concluded, lowering his voice a shade so Mike Wertz would know that he was
serious.
Emotional momentum carried Wertz into accepting the wager without a thought. "You're on," he snapped.
Then he did have a thought, and he added, "Put your money where your mouth is. " He had at least the sense
not to gamble away those weeks of work on an Indian with empty pockets. He wanted to see that Johnny really
had it.
Johnny pretended not to understand. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I'm good for it. " He stood poised with
the silver coin, ready to flip. He wore an impish air that left Wertz ever more dedicated to the idea that he had
to see the cash.
"Shit," said Mike, with a wave of his hand. "It's all talk. You don't have four hundred dollars. You probably
don't have forty bucks to your name. "
It happened that young John Stream did have four hundred dollars rolled tight in the pocket of his jeans. And
he had been saving up for a new saddle. There's only so much a sailor can spend on booze and broads, and
that's all of it and then some. Johnny made sure that his liberty stopped short of that. The navy was still paying
him, and he wanted to be sure it wasn't just women and liquor stores that were getting to keep all of the loot.
He wanted to make sure that he got some of his modest demands on life fulfilled, and one of those demands
was a new saddle.
That was all he had, and there wasn't no more. With a grin of innocent triumph he plunked it onto the polished
seat of the saddle.
Mike Wertz wasn't fazed; he had seen four C-notes before. He faced Johnny Stream with a zesty glare, and
Johnny flipped the dollar. The silver twinkled in chance rays of October sunshine as the coin hurtled high into
the dark overhead of bats and hay dust and then landed with a soft plunk in the cool dirt at the bottom of the
barn.
This is a dead end, thought Wertz eight years later, as he took back the lost saddle. And he was right. This
little story goes nowhere.
But later that day, before Johnny finally saddled up to ride over to Marilyn's barn, after several more beers and
several more dips of snuff, he carried his gleaming leather prize past the Sisters of Mercy, down the lane to
Carmel Valley Road, across to the cemetery and through the gate and up to the old pump house by the corral
where Widow waited with the eternal resignation of the horse, who never receives an explanation for anything
in its life, because none would ever be understood.
Could be that she did understand, when that polished and newly fleeced saddle settled on Widowmaker's back,
and the supple, strong leather cinch strap was tightened. She knew enough to be proud as she pranced through
the gate of the corral and back down through the cemetery to Carmel Valley Road. From there, eastward till
Bell Valley, it was like a parade, with only the red-leafed sycamores for an audience, them and the stately trees
of heaven, the eucalyptus up by the old red school-house and the line of mailboxes at the side of the road across
from the little wooden bridge.
Johnny was schnokkered. He and the horse proceeded at a walk in triumph through the drowsy, warm autumn
daylight. He felt pretty good, but he could see that bedroll stretched out in the near future, somewhere nearby.
It was a beautiful day.
The little parade had a couple of other watchers too. As Widowmaker held her horse head high and Johnny
Stream's own noggin wobbled on the brink of sleep, Mike Wertz took a pull on his cigarette in the cool shade of
the sisters' silo and kept his eyes on his friend with the borrowed horse and the prize saddle till they all
disappeared up the valley. The worn old saddle stayed on its rail inside of the old pump house, and far away, in
a cooler land, where time ran faster than a barley field, a little girl watched the whole procession, every bit of
it, in a fragment of clear quartz.
