The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  “Whatever possessed you to come after us like that? Do you do that sort of thing often?”

  Eugene laughed a little self-consciously. “Damned if I know. I’ll bet I was as surprised as you were. That’s the first fence I’ve run into for a while, I’ll tell you that.”

  Her voice was almost a growl with the edge of vengeance in it. “I was so glad to see that!”

  “I’m sorry I scared your horse. It was stupid of me—it’s lucky you weren’t hurt.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

  “Well then I’m glad you’re a good rider. Why don’t you get down and give both of you a break?”

  “You have some nerve—inviting me onto my own land.”

  “If you wanted me off bad enough, I’m sure you could have brought someone back with you. As a matter of fact, if it upsets you that much I will go. But I didn’t know it was yours, or that anybody’d have any idea I was out here. I leave a place just as clean as I find it.”

  “You knew it belonged to someone. It’s posted.”

  “Hey, if I stayed off all the land that belonged to someone, I’d have to have wings, wouldn’t I. I treat the land with respect. And I don’t take anything—but air and water and firewood.”

  The stallion whinnied and stamped his foot angrily. “All right, Baby.” Pointedly ignoring Eugene, Catherine dismounted and tied the reins to a sapling. The horse immediately buried his head in the thick sweet grass. Now she no longer had a prop or distancing device between herself and the biker. She thrust her hands into the back pockets of her tight faded jeans and faced him defiantly. He’d already lit his Coleman stove under the water. Behind him the thin sides of his tent seemed to breathe in the light breeze. He saw her looking at it and turned to admire it through her eyes.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Not what I’d have expected.”

  “From a biker?…It’s made from a couple of parachutes. Then waterproofed.”

  She tilted her head slightly, as if to intensify the directness of her gaze. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “I’m on my way up to Shasta. When I saw this spot…” He didn’t need to finish the statement with words.

  “I don’t know how the hell you found it.”

  “I saw the old logging trail that comes up here from the road this morning. I always keep an eye out for one when I’m looking for a place to camp. Then I just happened to stop close enough to hear the stream.”

  “You must have good ears.”

  “This water’s ready. Sure you won’t have some coffee?”

  Well: she could smile after all. “All right. Thanks.” She walked up and extended her hand. “My name’s Catherine—and that’s Jebel Druze.”

  “Hi, Catherine. My name’s Eugene. You can call me Gene.”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s a beautiful horse. Arabian?”

  She nodded. “Thank you. He’s quite a horse all right—sired a few good ones too.” She looked at the stallion fondly, now seeing something of her own through another’s eyes. “He can be ornery at times, but he’s a real sweetie. Well-behaved for a stallion.”

  Eugene handed her the coffee in a beautifully shaped, multi-glazed mug. Catherine examined it appreciatively and looked from it to the Indian rug. “You travel in style.”

  “Well…” he grinned and opened his hand in an expansive gesture, “this is my home when I’m on the road. Won’t you sit down?”

  A flash of anger in her eyes revealed that Catherine had lost none of her resentment at being treated like a guest in her own, no longer secret, place. But the anger in them gradually gave way again to the curiosity the biker had stirred in her. She accepted his invitation and sat down on the sun-warmed rug, crossing her legs tailor-fashion, clasping the hot mug in both hands. Eugene was drinking his coffee from a tin cup. “How often is that?” she asked.

  “Is what?”

  “How often are you on the road?”

  “Oh. Between gigs; I’ll set up somewhere for a while—I’m a mechanic, among other things—and when I’ve got enough to hold me for a few months, I start lookin’ around for the next place.”

  She nodded understandingly and took a sip of the coffee. “…You’re right about the water.” Her smile was even warmer this time. It occurred to him that he was more relaxed with her than was usual with someone he’d just met. After how they’d met that seemed ironic. But then he didn’t usually go chasing women across the countryside either; there was obviously something about her that had spoken to him.

  “Maybe that’s what I should do,” she said. “I’ve traveled a lot, but not the way you’re talking about. I’ve never just…taken off. It’s always been pretty well planned, and usually with someone.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “I don’t know…family, upbringing. I know that’s a cop-out.”

  “That’d be the last thing that would stop me.”

  “Family?”

  “Haven’t had one for quite a while.”

  “I’ve wished I didn’t at times. Or at least one with a little less profile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, my father’s a biggie in San Francisco. That doesn’t have a damn thing to do with me, but a lot of people act like it does.” She looked around her to the trees ruffling their leaves against a wedge of graying sky. Diffused by a scrim of spun-glass cloud, the sky had turned the pool beneath it into a luminous pearl. Her eyes got distant. “…This ranch is my refuge.”

  Eugene let her drift, let go himself as if to join her out there on her horizon. But he couldn’t find her; there was another long silence but for the dialogue of wind and trees.

  “…You must have heard some of the stories about Mt. Shasta,” he said at last.

  “Oh sure. The man who runs the ranch is a Shasta Indian. Ram is his name; he’s almost a second father to me. Actually, Ram’s more of a father in a lot of ways…. Anyway, I’ve heard stories since I was a baby about Shasta and its sacredness for his people. But stories are one thing. He’s shown me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you believe strongly enough in something, your impressions of it are going to be affected, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, real or imaginary—just that they’ll be influenced by your belief.” Eugene nodded. “So as a child, with everything Ram had told me, the mountain was sacred and alive for me—like some great deity. A feeling would come over me when I was up there that I still get sometimes.”

  “What kind of feeling?”

  “Well…of being watched—or watched over. It’s like there were—it sounds silly, but its like there were these big gentle hands around you.”

  “Doesn’t sound silly at all. And you attribute this—this feeling, to Ram’s stories when you were a kid?”

  “They certainly had something to do with it. I’d probably have had some kind of feeling even without them. I love the outdoors. Nature.”

  “But it wouldn’t be as…mystical?”

  “I don’t know! What are all these questions—are you a writer or something?”

  “I’m just interested. That’s what brought me up here—the stories and legends. Have you ever heard of a secret entrance—or some kind of opening in the mountain, that’s hidden or invisible?”

  Catherine smiled patronizingly. “That’s the hokeyest of all: that there’s a secret world inside the mountain, or an entranceway that leads down inside the earth. There’s even some crazy cult or something that believes that’s where the flying saucers come from that people keep reporting.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “Leave it to us: what the Indians made beautiful, and sacred, we have to turn into dome kind of weird trip. Everything has to be taken to extremes.” She stood, suddenly restless. It had grown darker; clouds were massing over the trees in that part of the sky they could see, and she knew they would soon be swir
ling past Shasta’s summit like a silt-laden river.

  Eugene lay back on one elbow and squinted up at his visitor. Her refined patrician face, framed in dark chestnut-colored hair and the lowering clouds, had an almost haunted quality about it. For the first time he saw the depth of her discontent and unhappiness. Her high strong cheekbones accentuated, perhaps exaggerated, the drawn, high-strung quality of flesh and spirit beneath them. A feeling of empathy arose in him.

  Until now, the very attraction he had felt for this woman was at the same time a kind of resistance, for it set off a subtle alarm system that reminded him of the dangers of lost or surrendered self-control. Attraction alone was never enough to turn his head for long. When he was no longer moved by physical beauty, animal magnetism, he’d be concerned. But to be diverted by them was another matter.

  Empathy, however—this feeling of distant kinship that had just stirred within him—was a signal itself: some part of his nature alerting him to…what? Shared experiences? A kindred soul? A common response or attitude toward the world at large? It could be any of these or none. In any case, empathy was certainly not sympathy. If Catherine was traveling the same road he was, the last thing she needed was sympathy. If anything, she needed to be pushed.

  “So you don’t think much of the Mt. Shasta legends?”

  Now it was her turn to look at him, so confidently sprawled on his colorful rug on her father’s land—her special place. There was a gentleness in his eyes; sensitivity, certainly intelligence, in his face. He’d been reading something by Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit philosopher-scientist; she couldn’t make out the title. He sure didn’t fit her image of a biker.

  “The reality of Shasta is what turns me on,” she said.

  Distant thunder rumbled, seeming to darken the sky noticeably. If she left right now, she’d get home before dark and, if she was lucky, dry as well. “Looks like it’s gonna rain,” said the biker. “You’re welcome to stay here, in my tent, till it blows over.”

  There would be almost a three-quarter moon tonight, if it wasn’t covered with clouds. Besides, if the rain came up quickly enough, she might be able to wait it out and still leave before dark. “I guess I will,” she replied. “Thanks. I’d better get my horse in some shelter. Do you have a rope I could tether him with?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give you a hand.”

  She released the stallion’s cinch and girth straps, instructing Eugene to pull off the saddle while leaving the blanket to keep the horse warm. While he carried the saddle to the tent, Catherine led Jebel Druze to ample shelter within the stand of pines which, until today, had secluded the glade so successfully from the outside world.

  Chapter 17

  Rain drummed against the sides of the tent. The downpour seemed to draw the day’s last light with it into the steaming earth. Yet the two of them were snug and dry. The taut nylon was as impervious to water as it was conductive of light, surrounding them even in the midst of this storm at dusk with a soft twilight glow, like an enormous lamp shade of some light-gathering material.

  * * *

  How strange, thought Catherine, to be here with this man. She didn’t know a damn thing about him, which was part of the attraction. That and his looks and the fact that he was so different from the kind of men she was used to. He’d surprised her so far, she had to give him credit for that. People who could surprise her got her attention.

  But she didn’t feel like thinking about any of this now. Here out of the storm the sheltering tent was like an extension of herself. Its sides were a second skin and the rain beating against them was a sensual massage. Everything within was in her embrace, including the biker. She imagined the translucent sides as the petals of an androgynous flower, with she and Eugene its pistil and stamen. When she laughed huskily at this image and he turned his head, she tingled; the feeling of his eyes on her face and body was like the rain on the sides of the tent.

  “What were you laughing at?” he asked languorously. They were lying on their backs on a sleeping bag which he had opened and spread out.

  “Just feeling good,” she said.

  “I’m glad you stayed. I’d hate to think of you out in this rain.”

  “I’d have found shelter somewhere. But not like this.”

  He turned his face again toward the roof of the tent. For a moment she was sorry he had looked away, but she felt too warm and content to hold onto the feeling. The rain hammered away at both of them.

  “…You said you were coming back from Mexico?”

  “I spent the winter there.”

  “Tell me some more about yourself.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t care—I just want to hear you talk.”

  “Small talk and I don’t get along at all.”

  “Oh come on. How can I share a tent with a total stranger?” Her hand touched his forearm with the same gentle teasing that was in her voice. He felt her thumb and forefinger and then the other fingers lightly squeeze his arm and release it. It was a nice touch: sexy, tender, undemanding.

  “Well, I grew up in Brooklyn. We moved to Long Island when I was ten. My brother—he was a year younger than me—drowned the first summer we were there.”

  “…Were you close to him?”

  “Yeah, we were pretty close. We argued and fought a lot, and we were really different—he was more into sports than I was. But we got along. We understood each other.”

  “It was hard for you then? His death?”

  “I suppose it would’ve been, if I’d let it. I closed it off. For a long time I just never accepted it. It was a lot harder on my folks. My old man felt responsible, although it really wasn’t his fault at all—and my mom was glad to oblige him in his guilt trip. She had to blame somebody. Anyway, I started hanging out in the street after that—got interested in cars and bikes.”

  “An interest I find unfathomable,” she interjected in a fair Tallulah Bankhead impersonation. It elicited the smile she’d hoped for. They lay facing each other and she overrode her impulse to grasp his muscular arm again in favor of reaching out to his whole body from inside herself. She was rewarded with a subtle turbulence in the air, more sensuous than touch, between them.

  Did he feel it? His eyes focused more intently on hers. Something deep in them arose to confront her. It was a soft look but penetrating, with both the innocence of a child…and something harsh and naked and appraising as well. She turned away and then so did he.

  “How long did Long Island hold you?”

  “Not very.”

  “I should hope not. Not that there’s a lot of difference between Long Island and Marin County.”

  “My old man split and Mom just gradually went to pieces. I sure wasn’t any help—I wasn’t home much. And when I was, she wasn’t, or else she was drunk or…otherwise engaged. We just got sick of each other—so I left home. Couple of years later I heard that her boyfriend of the moment had beaten her up really bad, and that plus booze and pills eventually killed her. You probably got a lot more than you wanted to hear.”

  Catherine was, in fact, feeling a little stunned. “…You forget how lucky you are,” she said after a while. “Then again, it seems like people can survive almost anything.”

  “One way or another. I learned how to take care of myself early. I never really felt deprived or anything—I always had a place to sleep, and at least till I moved out, I never went hungry. I can’t complain.”

  The rain had let up, but her return now was out of the question. The moon wouldn’t be up for an hour or so, and she’d never see it through these clouds anyway. They were so low they seemed almost in danger of being impaled on the treetops. But they had nothing to spill now; they were thin and pure, relieved of the dust and moisture that had swollen them earlier.

  In a rain as fine as mist the two of them made a fire next to the pool with damp wood and half a cup of gasoline from Eugene’s tank. It was understood, though not really articulated, that Catherine would wait to see whether
the cloud cover held. What she would do if it did wasn’t discussed. They ate mostly in silence: fried eggs and potatoes and soup made with the crystal water which also provided ambient dinner music au naturel. They ate from the pan and drank the outdoors-delicious soup from the cups they’d had their coffee in, after Eugene scoured his with sand to remove any trace of gasoline. When the utensils had been washed and put away, he rolled a thin joint, handed it to Catherine, and lit it for her.

  “You didn’t bring this across the border, did you?”

  Nah. Got it from some friends in L.A. It’s home-grown—not too potent.”

  “As long as it can get it up,” she said, squeezing the words out while holding as much of the smoke as possible in her lungs. Eugene didn’t respond and Catherine arched her eyebrows playfully. They shared the joint for two or three more tokes and then he waved it away. Catherine smoked it down to her fingers.

  “You obviously can’t go home now,” he said. “You know you’re welcome to stay here. Will they worry about you back at the ranch?”

  “No, they’ll figure Jebel and I are holed up out of the rain somewhere. They’ll wait to see whether we’re back in the morning before coming to look for us.

  “Would he go back without you if you were hurt?”

  “Right. As long as he doesn’t show up riderless, they won’t worry much.”

  As the mild grass and the fire, the pungent ferny smell of the rain-soaked earth and the celebration of the replenished stream began to weave their harmonious spell, Catherine came into her element. The desperate look around her eyes, and the hostility meant to conceal it, were gone. So was the arrogant toss of her head, ostensibly to shake the luxuriant tangle of hair from her eyes, but intended of course to convey that this was no woman to fuck around with. She ungrew this anxious armoring until the young skin beneath it glowed with such pleasure it was impossible to tell whether it reflected the flames in front of her or the fire within.