The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  “Hey man, let me take care a that!” shouted the Fool. “It’s my score t’ settle!”

  The Leader waved him away. “You had your chance, and that boy sold you two acres of mountain real estate!”

  The Fool balled his big hands into fists and raised one of them defiantly, but the gesture was all but lost in the Gang’s impatience to be off. The Leader had as good as promised them they’d find their quarry before the morning was over.

  “You go on, hoss!” Pretty Boy called over to the Fool. “I’ll bring you back another one a them cakes you was eatin’!”

  “Sit on yer fuckin’ cakes, shithook!”

  “Course I will, hoss—’at’s the way you like ‘em ain’t it?”

  The Fool shot him the bird, like some man-eating pterodactyl perched on his vibrating middle finger, while Jerry reached around from behind him and punctuated the gesture with a couple of mean twists of the throttle.

  “Haw haw—that’s good, kid!” boomed the big fella. He reached back over his shoulders with both hands and lifted the boy right over his head, then plunked him down on the seat in front of him. “Here—you drive.”

  Jerry was more than obliging. With the Fool working the gearshift, he put the bike on the road before the others had even started their engines. He and the big man beat the rest of them down the mountain a good quarter of a mile.

  * * *

  Catherine’s brain was behaving strangely. One minute her senses were perceiving everything around her with a vivid clarity far greater than normal; the next she was caught up again in that eruption of emotion so long repressed and found herself completely closed off from her physical surroundings. She had to keep reliving the excruciating pain, as if only in doing so could she hope to understand and thus exorcise it. She walked compulsively for more than a mile in this all-or-nothing, inner/outer state of heightened awareness, gradually becoming accustomed to the congealing pain, and confident that she could withstand it. Her panic spent, she turned around finally, surprised at how far up the trail she had come. Now what? She definitely needed to be alone.

  As she retraced her steps, she decided to return to the ranch. Maybe she’d see Eugene later, maybe she wouldn’t; what was going on with her now demanded the solitude she’d come up here for in the first place....But hadn’t he played some part in what was happening to her now? Perhaps she should stay with him after all—for a while anyway.

  She hadn’t arrived at a decision by the time she got back to their camp. As it always did, her indecisiveness made her irritable. Eugene had packed everything and was nowhere to be seen. She found him on a rock beside the stream and was unable to tell whether he was meditating or simply enjoying the warmth of the sun with his eyes closed. He heard her approach and opened them. His gaze was penetrating but calm. He seemed ready to listen, if she had anything to say, without seeking any answers. Good. “I’m ready to go if you are,” she said.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the trail, the silence between them was palpable and strained. There was no question in her mind now about returning to the ranch alone; she was just waiting for the right moment to tell him. She didn’t want to antagonize or hurt him. Since he obviously was involved in all of this, she might want to see him again when things got sorted out in her mind.

  As they approached the camouflaged bike, her eyes were captured by a vivid spot of red on the handlebars. At the same instant Eugene exclaimed: “Damn! That’s a cardinal!”

  They both stopped in their tracks—although she asked herself why and decided it was because he had. She wondered why they had suddenly become bird-watchers but she was reluctant to be the one to scare it away. “So it’s a cardinal,” she said, waiting to hear the significance of this amazing piece of information.

  “I didn’t know they were native to this part of the country,” Eugene replied. “I don’t think they are.”

  “Well, this one must be, if that’s what it is,” she said impatiently. “Unless it escaped from an aviary somewhere.”

  Eugene ignored her sarcastic tone. What the hell was a cardinal doing here—perched on the handlebars of his motorcycle?

  Catherine picked up some of what he was feeling. You’d have thought it would have flown away by now, with both of them gawking at it like this. It just sat there staring back at them. It was beginning to give her the creeps. “I guess he’s guarding the bike,” Eugene said.

  “Well then you can fly away, bird—cardinal or whatever you are! It belongs to him.” Neither of them had moved, nor had she appreciably raised her voice—but the bird did just as she suggested. It flew right over their heads, circled once, and darted away.

  “I knew you could talk to horses, but you never said anything about birds.”

  “I’ve talked to them before,” said Catherine, “but I didn’t know they were listening.”

  “I told you we have powers we haven’t tapped yet.” Seeing that he was kidding, she broke out from behind her dark cloud for a moment in spite of herself.

  * * *

  The Gang hadn’t taken the circuitous back way to the waterfall that Catherine and Eugene had. Like a perfect bunt down the third-base line, their more direct route took them only a short way up Highway 97 from the interstate, to a dirt road which ran straight toward the mountain from the west. Half a mile from the highway it crossed the Southern Pacific tracks and just a few hundred yards beyond, intersected with the rutted road that Catherine and Eugene had used. The gang was leaving the highway now, less than five minutes from where Catherine and Eugene were removing the branches concealing his motorcycle. In no hurry, he folded the thin plastic cover and stuck it in his saddlebags. The heavy labor of an approaching train drowned out any sound of the bikes.

  The Leader felt good, even though he couldn’t remember a detour that had lasted this long or taken the gang so far out of their way, while being as fruitless as this one had been. Up till now. To the rest it never would be anything but a wild goose chase. Wasting another biker and enjoying his girlfriend wouldn’t make up for this trip.

  But in a few minutes it was all going to have been worthwhile, as far as he was concerned. The loner’s appointment with destiny, sealed on that empty stretch of Mexican highway, was about to be fulfilled. Who knew the mysterious and inarguable ways of fate? The Leader was just carrying out the role he’d known from the very beginning to be his, one of the prerogatives of leadership.

  Lost in these thoughts, he was a split second late in reacting to the bird. It was right in his face before he swerved. And it stayed there, shrill and strident, its wings a blood-red blur. He had no choice but to put the bike down. Hard.

  The gang almost piled up in their amazement. Most of them had seen the brief, bizarre attack, and watched with their mouths open as the cardinal swooped away, but they were at a loss for protocol here. How do you react when your leader’s been put down, literally, by a bird?

  While they were trying to figure that one out, with their fallen leader skewered on the opposite horn of the same dilemma, the long multi-engine freight rumbled past in front of them. They’d easily have made it across if not for the Leader’s...accident. Now they’d have to wait for this endless fucking train to pass. It went on forever; where the caboose should have been, there were only more engines, with dozens of cars still behind them. And it wasn’t exactly high-ballin’ it up this steep grade.

  While the gang waited, Eugene and Catherine came out onto the road on the other side of the tracks. Hidden from view, they turned onto the road paralleling the rails rather than waiting to cross; Catherine knew another road back to the highway. By the time the train had passed, they were gone. Only their dust still hung faintly in the air.

  Chapter 30

  It hadn’t been so hard telling him she needed to be alone for a while. Eugene seemed to understand and agreed to call her in a week or so if he felt like it. Catherine would have no way of contacting him, and she felt they should stay in touch. But when he said he’d take her ba
ck to the ranch, something in his tone of voice made her decline. She told him Ram or Normund could pick her up. Since then he’d been awfully quiet, but she didn’t feel like talking either.

  They stopped at a coffee shop where she called the ranch. Ram still wasn’t back, and Normund and Douglas had taken a yearling up to Klamath Falls. Lucille didn’t expect them for another couple of hours. “Are you all right?” the older woman asked, unable—and not trying terribly hard—to conceal her disapproval of this whole adventure.

  “I’m fine—I’m just ready to come back to the ranch for a while. And I’d rather not ask Eugene to bring me. Do you think Normund would mind picking me up?”

  “Not at all. But what are you going to do in the meantime?”

  “I don’t know—a little shopping I guess. I’ll call back around noon.”

  “I expect they’ll be back by then. You’re sure everything’s all right?”

  “Of course it is, ‘Cille. See you soon.” She hung up feeling good about Lucille’s concern. But then she was back in the coffee shop again, right in the midst of everything that was screwed up about her life. The man sitting there in the booth was no more the ideal lover than anyone else she had ever known. Why was she so hard to please? Why did the men she met always turn out to be so much less than her initial impressions of them? Here was Eugene, rushing off tonight to sit at the knee of some phony-baloney Mt. Shasta guruess, some overweight lady with a cat and a porch swing.

  He’d ordered coffee for both of them. This was one of those times a cigarette would have been a lifeline, when she was still smoking. She got a jelly doughnut instead and had to restrain herself from wolfing it down. They talked desultorily about the things around them that didn’t matter. Finally even the mundane became difficult.

  “So...you gonna wait here for him, or what?”

  “No—I think I’ll do some shopping. I need a few things.”

  “...Okay. I’ll call you.”

  “Please do, Gene. Really.” She held her hand out to him and he squeezed it and faked a smile. Her own was expressed more in the wrinkles on her brow than with her mouth. Their hands came apart. Any observer would have recognized what was taking place.

  Eugene got up and paid the bill. When he looked over at her she smiled and fluttered her hand. He lifted his eyebrows, his face otherwise impassive. She watched him walk out the door, then picked up her cup in both hands, letting her eyes go out of focus as she raised it absently to her lips. She looked up at the sound of the motorcycle starting and listened to it fade quickly away. Then she plunged into her teeming thoughts, grateful to be alone at last.

  * * *

  So he’d ended up in a bar—didn’t mean he’d be spending the rest of the day. Nevertheless, he grumbled at himself for being here at all. He couldn’t believe the upwelling of anger still occurring, compressing his chest as if he were lying at the bottom of a swimming pool. He couldn’t believe it because Catherine’s change of mind seemed reasonable enough and her handling of it thoughtful enough...and because he’d never have dreamed he would give a fuck what she did or didn’t do. No, that was bullshit, an exaggeration. He’d never have dreamt, though, that he’d be this upset about something so trivial.

  What was the source of this pressure on his chest and his change in attitude toward Catherine, as if she’d suddenly become...an adversary? It was undoubtedly connected to his breakup three years ago with Anna. He had promised himself to learn to apply discrimination in his choice of lovers—a more sensible and less extreme alternative than the monastic lifestyle he’d initially adopted after he and Anna separated. She had been a perfect lover...Piscean mermaid in a sexual ocean, weaver of dreams and magic spells, with the inner strength and integrity to make both come true.

  When this hadn’t been enough...when even his ideal relationship had palled for him, his first reaction had been to turn away from sex as a pursuit or pleasure worthy of the true seeker. There were plenty of spiritual exemplars who advocated abstinence of course. And he had decided to consider himself a seeker, an aspirant for the kind of peace of mind and devotion to one’s true nature and purpose, to people and planet, inherent in nothing less than saintliness—though his conception of that exalted state was an unconventional one.

  It was founded on an ultimate trust in the way the universe works, in an underlying cosmic unfoldment which is ineffably wise and just—no matter how persuasively events might argue otherwise. From this to Shakespeare’s endlessly quoted maxim about being true to yourself first was a simple step. For Eugene, then, saintliness lay in fulfilling that unique nature with which the universe has entrusted each of us. It was as simple or as difficult as that.

  ...Simple, or simplistic? When was detachment from the snares of an illusory material world actually repression of real and healthy human needs? After a year or so of a relatively simple lifestyle—one genuinely aspiring to asceticism if falling short—Eugene had begun to question the honesty and sincerity of his motives. Twice before meeting Catherine he had attempted to reconcile his spiritual and physical needs in a sexual relationship, only to find them as stubbornly irreconcilable as oil and water. Or the rails in the cartoon of two railroad construction gangs who find to their chagrin that the tracks they have laid from opposite directions come together so that the left rail going one way is not the right but the wrong one going the other.

  Thus his determination to become more discriminating. Did it make sense to strive to be all-giving, with a love that sought to be unconditional, if one’s lover was unable to appreciate the effort? He came to realize how easy it was for the other to learn to expect this as her due, inherent in the particular equation the two of them had established, with no thought of equal reciprocation. He saw more clearly how he’d done the same thing himself.

  It was under these circumstances that Eugene had met and tried to measure Catherine. Of course it was unfair to hold against her his own frustration in discovering that she was not the woman he had extrapolated from insufficient information. But he was doing so nonetheless. She appeared to be just another individual out for all she could get: the gratification boogie.

  He tossed off the beer in his glass and for the first time since he’d come in looked around the dark sleazy little bar. There was nothing to see; it looked just like it smelled—as if over a coat of paint whose original color one could only guess at lay a grimy varnish of smoke, sweat and beer vomit. There was nothing to distinguish it from any other beer-bar anywhere in the country. Great place to be spending the afternoon.

  The bar in Baja had been entirely different...that old man, calling him a “lone wolf howling at the moon”—something about him had made quite an impression. Until he started on that business about a wife and family. Here was a perfect example of where that kind of bullshit got you. But Eugene’s anger had spent itself for the time being. It was like that; when aroused, it tended to rise up in waves, each stronger than the last until it peaked and the cycle had been completed. Then periodically it would repeat itself, gradually diminishing until all the energy behind it had finally been released. This could be a long process since it was fully capable of feeding on itself indefinitely.

  * * *

  Pretty Boy had been avoiding his errand at the health food store. He didn’t want to go in and rough up some dude, then hang around waiting for the Gang, and the cops, to show. Besides, he didn’t really like getting too physical anyway. He had to be part of a mob to get that hit of adrenaline blood lust. Otherwise he preferred to hang loose, portraying young America’s dream image of the super-cool stud.

  So he figured to wait until the gang showed up, then go in and pistol-whip the punk and be reclining casually against the counter when they walked in. He’d already cased the place; there was a back room where he could herd any bystanders. In the meantime he’d just hang out, eyein’ the ladies, striking fear into the hearts of the local citizenry, waiting for the Long Riders—the Daltons, James Gang, you name ‘em—to come storming into
town with Harleys blazing. Imagine his surprise when he spotted Catherine in Mt. Shasta’s only boutique.

  She was paying for something at the counter. Was it the same chick?...Definitely. All right, she was coming out! Pretty Boy stopped and lit a cigarette, timing his move so he’d be walking by just as she emerged. Pocketing the lighter, he spun around and appeared to be in full stride as Catherine stepped through the door. He did a broad double-take and flashed her his endlessly rehearsed James Dean. His expansive imagine-seein’-you-here gesture—chest out-thrust, arms opened with palms turned up, the face a caricature of surprise—aimed for a strong initial impression rather than authenticity. She definitely noticed him.

  “Hey—it’s the lady with the horse! What’re you doin’ in a little one-horse town like this?” Naturally Catherine answered the line with an absolutely withering look and brushed past him. Overtaking her, Pretty Boy continued his high-pitched hype. “Hey, I mean it. You got too much class for a berg like this.” Although she was walking hurriedly, his long legs enabled him to keep up with her without straining the laid-back image.

  “What do you know about class?” she snapped, looking straight ahead of her.

  “Only how t’ reckanize it, Baby.”

  She laughed harshly and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Are you one of the assholes who came out to the ranch the other day?” Her eyes had to substitute for the whip she’d have liked to use across his face right now. He kept shaking his head as if he were feeling its sting.

  “That was just a misunderstanding!” he said, drawing out the word, agonized over the trouble they had caused. “We rode in there lookin’ for ridin’ lessons. Really. We saw you ride in.”

  “You’re full of shit. Get out of here—leave me alone!” She was walking again and he continued to keep pace with her, letting go now of the exaggerated gestures and pained expression.