They climbed stiffly from their seats and stood on the ridge peak and looked down into the Pastures of Heaven. And the air was as golden gauze in the last of the sun. The land below them was plotted in squares of green orchard trees and in squares of yellow grain and in squares of violet earth. From the sturdy farmhouses, set in their gardens, the smoke of the evening fires drifted upward until the hill-breeze swept it cleanly off. Cowbells were softly clashing in the valley; a dog barked so far away that the sound rose up to the travelers in sharp little whispers. Directly below the ridge a band of sheep had gathered under an oak tree against the night.
“It’s called Las Pasturas del Cielo,” the driver said. “They raise good vegetables there—good berries and fruit earlier here than any place else. The name means Pastures of Heaven.”
The passengers gazed into the valley.
The successful man cleared his throat. His voice had a tone of prophecy. “If I have any vision, I tell you this:
Some day there’ll be big houses in that valley, stone houses and gardens, golf links and big gates and iron work. Rich men will live there—men that are tired of working away in town, men that have made their pile and want a quiet place to settle down to rest and enjoy themselves. If I had the money, I’d buy the whole thing, I’d hold on to it, and sometime I’d subdivide it.” He paused and made a little gathering gesture with his hand. “Yes, and by God I’d live there myself.”
His wife said: “Sh!” He looked guiltily around and saw that no one was listening to him.
The purple hill-shadow was creeping out toward the centre of the valley; somewhere below a pig screamed angrily. The young man raised his eyes from the land and smiled a confession to his new wife, and she smiled firmly and reprovingly back at him. His smile had said: “I almost let myself think of it. It would be nice—but I can’t, of course.”
And hers had answered: “No, of course you can’t! There’s ambition to think of, and all our friends expect things of us. There’s your name to make so I can be proud of you. You can’t run away from responsibility and cover your head in a place like this. But it would be nice.” And both smiles softened and remained in their eyes.
The young priest strolled away by himself. He whispered a prayer, but practice had taught him to pray and to think about something else. “There might be a little church down there,” he thought. “No poverty here, no smells, no trouble. My people might confess small wholesome sins that fly off with the penance of a few Hail Marys. It would be quiet there; nothing dirty nor violent would ever happen there to make me sorry nor doubtful nor ashamed. The people in those houses there would love me. They would call me Father, and I’d be just with them when it was kindly to be just.” He frowned and punished the thought. “I am not a good priest. I’ll scourge myself with the poor, with the smell of them and with their fighting. I can’t run from the tragedies of God.” And he thought, “Maybe I’ll come to a place like this when I am dead.”
The old man stared into the valley with his eager eyes, and in his deafened ears the silence surged like a little wind blowing in a cypress tree. The farther hills were blurred to him, but he could see the golden light and the purple dark. His breathing choked and tears came into his eyes. He beat his hands helplessly against his hips. “I’ve never had time to think. I’ve been too busy with troubles ever to think anything out. If I could go down there and live down there for a little—why, I’d think over all the things that ever happened to me, and maybe I could make something out of them, something all in one piece that had a meaning, instead of all these trailing ends, these raw and dragging tails. Nothing would bother me down there and I could think.”
The bus driver dropped his cigarette in the road and stepped it into the dirt. “Come on, folks,” he called. “We ought to be getting along.” He helped them in and shut the doors on them, but they crowded close to the windows and looked down into the Pastures of Heaven where the air lay blue like a lake now, and the farms were submerged in the quiet.
“You know,” the driver said, “I always think it would be nice to have a little place down there. A man could keep a cow and a few pigs and a dog or two. A man could raise enough to eat on a little farm.” He kicked the starter and the motor roared for a moment before he throttled it down. “I guess it sounds kind of funny to you folks, but I always like to look down there and think how quiet and easy a man could live on a little place.” He thrust the gear lever; the car gathered speed and swept down the grade toward the long Carmel Valley and toward the sun where it was setting in the ocean at the Valley’s mouth.