The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  Rescuing him from the dilemma of his jumbled thoughts, Catherine took Douglas’s large gloved hands in her own. “I can’t believe how tall you’ve grown,” she said, swinging his arms. “You must be over six feet now!”

  “Six-two,” he said proudly. “And I’m still growin’.”

  “You’re almost a foot taller than I am!” Catherine felt unaccountably shy herself. There was something in his restrained manner that was new. They both felt it. Douglas wanted to say more; his thoughts and feelings piled up against one another. But the harder he tried to articulate what he was feeling, the more constricting his silence became. Still swinging his arms, Catherine felt her smile stiffening. This is ridiculous. It’s Douglas, for heaven’s sake!

  Just then Lucille hurried up, drying her hands on her apron. “Hi, girl—we’ve been expecting you!” Her smile had the same huskiness as her voice somehow, the same aged quality, the same easy warmth through long use. Both Catherine and Douglas turned to her, and Catherine dropped his hands to embrace her.

  “Oh, Lucille, this place looks so good to me. You can’t imagine.”

  “Well…maybe I can,” she said, her head cocked in a loving inspection of the young woman. They’d talked a couple of times on the phone recently, and the anxiety and depression she’d heard in Catherine’s voice Lucille saw now in her face despite the joy it radiated at the moment. She pulled her close again, her heart overflowing with love as her mind emptied of extraneous thought. Lucille brought into it the conviction that the summer would erase these signs of a troubled soul. She held this conviction in the clarity of her mind and made it glow until it burned with transcendent force in her heart.

  Then she was briskly all-business again. “What do you think of this boy here? Grown a little, hasn’t he?” Douglas was hovering over them like an American-Gothic genii.

  “He sure has!”

  “I’m so glad you come, Cathrun!” he exploded, unable to contain himself any longer. “I know someone else that’s glad too,” he added slyly, grinning over her head at his aunt. Catherine glanced toward the barn, where Normund had appeared, wiping his hands on an oil-soaked rag. He answered Catherine’s energetic wave with just a dip of his head. That was Normund’s way, she wasn’t offended. But where was…? Then Ram walked out into the fading sunlight from the dark recess of the barn. “It ain’t Ram neither!” Douglas said.

  Catherine’s arm shot up and she dashed over to the Indian, leaving her feet to fling her arms around his neck. Ram caught her about the waist. His immense dignity and strength absorbed the leap with a grace that seemed to surround and sanctify them, to enclose them from the world. Catherine felt as though she had been lifted into space. She couldn’t speak. But her eyes were eloquent, appearing to seek out something deep in his—while to Lucille, watching from a distance, Ram seemed to be communicating with a part of Catherine that asked no questions, knew all answers.

  “…So good to be back,” she said finally through tears.

  Smiling, he replied: “You have been anticipated.”

  What does he mean by that? There was certainly more to it than the words alone conveyed. Curiosity put a glint in her eyes, but she knew Ram would say more when he was ready. Besides, she could wait no longer. “Is he…? She nodded toward the barn.

  “He is there.” Ram chuckled through his intense, clear dark eyes, and Catherine squirmed on the look with the delight of a child. With a half-laugh, half-shriek, she was off to the barn.

  Bursting through the door, she stopped abruptly, her mouth open, to savor the gorgeous picture of her stallion, back-lit as in a movie by late afternoon sunlight as thick and amber as honey. Jebel Druze snorted at her sudden entrance, ears erect, nostrils flaring. Where the sun caught his coat, it turned gray to gold. Even dust motes in the slanting sunlight seemed calculated to exhibit him in the most dramatic manner possible, forming around the stallion’s slender neck an aureole like the mantle of roses adorning Derby winners although incomparably finer.

  “Jebel!” Catherine crooned to him without thinking, walking toward him with her arms outstretched and the long tapering fingers of her right hand extended to touch his fluted Arabian muzzle. “Jebel Baby,” she sang. Feigning wildness, he arched his neck over the door of the stall, his ears now back and his eyes rolling. “Je-bel…” Laughter colored the sound of her voice though she tried to restrain herself to keep from either startling or offending him. Her hand was on his sleek head now and then up into his mane. Her left hand was flat and alive against his chest. The stallion nickered deep in his throat and she buried her head against his neck.

  “Maybe she won’t bring him out now,” Douglas said, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. The Indian gestured gently for patience, and a moment later Catherine led Jebel Druze from the barn. “She’s got a bridle on him!”

  Ram tensed slightly, as if it were he who held the stallion in. “Be alert! He is wild from pasture this morning!” Catherine led the haughty animal over to them with immense pride and the selfless humility which allows us to experience, rather than merely observing, beauty. It would never have occurred to her to think of owning such a creature. To control him, however, was another matter.

  Ram made a step for her with his hand and Catherine vaulted fluidly onto the stallion’s back. Pulling the reins taut, using all her strength to hold him, she looked down at them, her eyes mad with excitement. “We’ll be back!” She wheeled the trembling horse around and already she had left them for another world. Released at last, the stallion exploded from the paddock, with Catherine bent over him as though they were now fused in body and will. As the others looked on intently, they galloped across the drive, through the trees and into the open meadow.

  Chapter 10

  Gasolina par la maquina—tequila par el chofer. (Gasoline for the machine—tequila for the driver.)”

  “Si, Don Viejo. They both make a fire in the engine.”

  Eugene licked the raw ring the salt, lemon and tequila had burned against his lips. The old man sitting beside him at the bar grunted appreciatively. He had materialized an hour or so earlier, lengthening what had been planned as a one-beer pit-stop into a leisurely and enjoyable dialogue. Eugene wasn’t that given to easy conversation, bar talk or otherwise, but the old man said so much without opening his mouth that words followed almost as afterthought. Eugene’s Spanish was adequate.

  “So you travel with the seasons, like the birds? …Or the tourists?”

  Eugene smiled. “Maybe a little of both. I like to get to know a place though.”

  Again the old man grunted, almost musically the way light danced in his eyes. There wasn’t much of it in the sad little cafe. The plate glass window in front hadn’t seen any water but rain for some time and was so dusty, fly- and water-specked it filtered the late afternoon sun like the translucent glass in an old office building. What light there was lazed around among the glasses behind the bar and fired this old man’s clear deep eyes. “To know a place, you should know all of its seasons.”

  “I guess time forces some compromises,” Eugene replied.

  “Summer in Mexico sweats the foolishness out of a man.”

  “But winter…you can still find beaches here without a soul on them. Sometimes the wind’s swept them so clean you hate to leave your footprints. It has a bite to it. You feel challenged.”

  The old man laughed good-naturedly. “To feel challenged you come south for the winter?”

  Eugene joined him, lifting his glass in acknowledgment. “You got a point there, amigo.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “California. On my way up to Mt. Shasta.”

  “You’ve heard the tales they tell of Shasta?”

  Eugene nodded. “Everything from Indian legends to flying saucer stories. There’s a secret entrance in the mountain to an underground world—that’s where all the UFO’s come from.” He shook his head. “But a friend of mine camped out up there a couple a summers ago and had some rea
l interesting experiences.”

  “What kind of experiences?” asked the old man.

  “Well, like this pack of dogs showed up and hung out with him for a couple of days. I guess they caught what they needed for food.

  “On the second night he woke up, and it sounded like some big animal was crashing through the brush. But he said if that’s really what it was, it would had to’ve been huge—bigger than anything he could imagine. Then he noticed the dogs—they hadn’t made a sound. The hair on every one of them was standing straight up. They took off and never came back.”

  “Probably only a bear or moose,” said the old man, unimpressed. “Maybe a loose boulder.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it was. There were some other things that happened too though. Anyway, I’d heard about how Shasta’s supposed to be a spiritual landmark or something, so I got curious enough to do a little reading. That only made me more curious.”

  “And you are looking for adventure.”

  “Right.” Eugene grinned self-mockingly, holding his glass high. “Goin’ on a quest to the sacred mountain.”

  “How fortunate for you so early in life to be undertaking such a journey!” The old man caught the ironic tone perfectly and Eugene, embracing the tequila in his veins like a lover, found himself marveling at the brotherhood of man hidden beneath the guises of culture, nationality, and language. “Your family…they will be able to manage while you are on this ‘quest’?”

  Now that took him back. How in the hell could anyone get the impression he had a family? So much for rapport and brotherhood—or was the old man playing with him? Look at the laughter in his eyes.

  “The only family I have is sittin’ out there in the street,” he said, wincing at how phony the remark sounded. The old man had thrown him so far off guard he was beginning to sober up. Time to be leaving anyway.

  “No woman, no children…and you’re off to learn the secrets of the universe. Another lone wolf, howling at the moon.”

  “Vaya, amigo! What the hell does havin’ a woman have to do with…”

  “A quest? In our culture it is customary for a man to learn something of himself before seeking to know the universe.”

  Eugene’s eyes narrowed. You know the feeling: you’re in the middle of an elaborate dialogue with someone—soaring, perfectly in sync—when suddenly it veers off into an entirely different direction. You didn’t even see it coming, and now it’s like the two of you are speaking different languages. You stammer or bullshit your way back into a semblance of composure, your eyes never leaving the other’s. Because you don’t want to admit you’ve lost your poise—but also because of your fascination with what has just taken place.

  In this primitive little town where he’d intended to stay only long enough to quench his thirst, an old man appears, sits down beside him smelling of dust and leather, and before long they’re talking together almost without words. Then all at once, out of nowhere, there’s this talk of his family. Christ, did the old fart think he was selling insurance too?

  “I’ll go along with the last part of that,” Eugene finally replied. “But as far as I’m concerned, any man who has to find his way through a woman hasn’t been born yet. I’m not really plannin’ to study the universe up there anyway. I don’t think Shasta gets much over 14,000 feet—hardly high enough to go pokin’ around in space. I’ll be satisfied just to get above the tree line once in a while.”

  The old man’s eyes had lost none of their sparkle. “May your journey be fruitful,” he said, raising his own glass now.

  Eugene walked out into the dusty street, empty but for a boy and girl approaching him from the center of town. They were momentarily lost to everything but each other, and their matched swinging stride was that of a couple who had obviously walked a great deal together. They were astonishingly beautiful for such humble surroundings—or was their beauty merely the reflection of their youthful and passionate intensity? In any case, they were oblivious to him. He imagined them walking this way along dusty Baja roads under the moon. He saw them swimming nude in the moonlight and making love in the tall grass hot and dry against their skin. A part of him was gladdened by the lovers; another part was disquieted and envious.

  There was such tranquility here. The time of day was his favorite. The breeze that turns afternoon into evening bathed his face and flowed through the T-shirt beneath his open leather jacket. The lovers were an exquisite personification of the time of day, this raw village so little removed from the land and the afternoon around it. Yet like the breeze they took him from afternoon into evening, from tranquility to unease.

  Unconsciously he reached up and ripped off the red bandanna holding back his long hair, walking over to the Harley in a kind of reverie. The horizon had got hold of his heart again. Running his hand over the sleek plump gas tank, he mounted and kicked the gleaming machine into life, then wheeled the bike out into the middle of the street. The lovers were gone now. The street was straight and empty.

  A familiar exultation arose in his breast and, with it, the impulse to hurl himself upon highway, landscape, evening. But he abstained from calling forth such power; knowing it was there was enough. What lay out there was more immense than any power he could command—and as subtle as it was vast and mighty. To surrender to the raw power at hand was to lose the sense of the greater and finer power which drew him onward. So he took to the road rather as if entering the swift current of a river, a river he had been following for a long time.

  Dusk found him making camp beside a small stream off the highway. He took a pot and vegetables purchased in town from his saddlebags, thoroughly rinsed carrots, broccoli and cauliflower in the clear cold water and put an inch or so in the pot. He cut up the vegetables for steaming with his pocketknife and set them on a lightweight butane burner without lighting it, then gathered firewood and stones for a fire pit. As the night closed in around him, he found a place to meditate. A piece of branch three or four inches thick would serve as a seat cushion. Curling his legs into a half lotus, the right above the left, his feet tucked back near his hips, he moved the branch around until it comfortably supported his left butt cheek. In this position he could sit for an hour without discomfort or fatigue, his spine straight, his breathing unrestricted.

  When he closed his eyes he became aware of the night’s insect chorus. It expanded from a few soloists close at hand to a vast unseen choir, chanting a primeval plainsong in multitudinous unison. The nocturnal hymn pulsated like a high-pitched engine, until it seemed to him that his own pulse had become entrained and the blood beat against his temples in the same rhythm. He felt a throb in his fingertips, as if an energy exchange were taking place there, a sensation familiar to him in meditation.

  Gradually the throb in his fingertips and temples expanded, and he felt his heart beating. The heartbeat and the pulsation in his extremities merged, as did feeling and sound; his mind made no distinction between what he was hearing and what he was feeling. The point now was to experience, not to discriminate. Boundaries, thresholds were to come down, to dissolve. In his best meditations Eugene experienced not only an infusion of energy but a flushing of anger, resentment, depression or fatigue. This afternoon in the village he had experienced a darkness within himself; he hadn’t the slightest idea why. Tonight if he opened himself sufficiently in his meditation, darkness would flow into darkness, as stagnant water is cleansed by a flood.

  …He stirred and opened his eyes. A quarter moon was covered by a solitary cloud, and night had drawn its cloak about him. The sky was a black the urban world has forgotten; in their dazzling profusion the stars would have stunned the city dweller he’d once been into silent awe. He straightened his stiff legs and leaned back on his arms to look up at them. The exultation that had gripped him earlier returned.

  What did it matter how screwed up your life got if you could always come back to this? He wondered again at the encounter this afternoon…his response to the old man’s needling. The more h
e thought about it the stranger it seemed. Not his reaction, that was an old unresolved story. But the man’s appearance like that, the almost immediate rapport between them—and then that comment out of left field, as if he’d been trying to provoke a reaction.

  It was clear to him now that he had been too defensive to question seriously the old man’s insistence on the primacy of a wife and family. When was he going to get this ambivalence about the place of women in his life cleared up? When occasionally he fooled himself into believing he’d worked it out, something like this always occurred to show him he hadn’t. Three years earlier he had chosen between a woman and the journey he had undertaken. He trusted that decision, but must it remain binding and irrevocable?

  And who was that old guy? It was almost as if he had somehow divined Eugene’s conflict and chosen to be the instrument of revelation. Right. But things like this were always happening in his life, like signposts along the way. Only they could never be read until after he’d passed them. Was he supposed to learn to travel with his back to the future, looking always behind him at the mistakes he’d made and the lessons he’d learned for direction.

  Enough. The moon had reappeared and he could see to start his fire and his dinner. The dry wood blazed up immediately and he was soon sitting before a crackling fire, eating the vegetables from the pot. They’d have tasted better with a little butter but they were sweet and tender. After the utensils had been washed and put away and the flames burned lower, Eugene laid out his bedroll and climbed inside to lie there looking at the stars again.

  There was Mars. He followed the three stars of Orion’s belt in a straight line out to Aldebaran on the right, as red as the planet. Extending in an equally straight line to the left was Sirius, the dog star. Odd that the brightest star in the heavens should be tied to a black dwarf. Without this invisible companion the star would fall apart, wouldn’t it—or lose its way in space? Was the dark star its other, secret self? He was getting drowsy. The fire’s incandescent embers murmured and the leaves in the cottonwoods whispered back. While on the very threshold of the animal kingdom, in its insistent reassuring descant, the insect choir proclaimed life’s nightly revelation. Lulled by this gentle nocturne, he slept.