“It’ll rain pretty soon, Joseph. I hope it will. I’m getting sick of a dusty throat.”
The sun came up behind a high thin film of cloud that sucked the warmth and paled the light. Over the hills there came a cold steady wind that blew the dust to ripples and made little drifts of yellow fallen leaves. It was a lonely wind, scudding along the ground, flowing evenly, with very little sound.
After breakfast Joseph led out the saddlehorses, and Elizabeth, in her divided skirt and high-heeled boots, came out of the house carrying a bag of lunch.
“Take a warn coat,” Joseph warned her.
She lifted her face to the sky. “It’s winter at last, isn’t it, Joseph? The sun has lost its heat.”
He helped her on her horse and she laughed because of the good feeling of the saddle, and she patted the flat horn-top affectionately. “It’s good to be able to ride again,” she said. “Where shall we go first?”
Joseph pointed to a little peak on the eastern ridge above the pines. “If we go to the top of that we can look through the pass of the Puerto Suelo and see the ocean,” he said. “And we can see the tops of the redwoods.”
“It’s good to feel the horse moving,” she repeated. “I’ve been missing it, and I didn’t know.”
The flashing hoofs kicked up a fine white dust which stayed in the air after they had passed, and made a path behind them like the smoke of a train. They rode up the gentle slope through the thin spare grass, and at the water cuts they went down and up again with a quick jerk.
“Remember how the cuts raced with water last year?” she reminded him. “Pretty soon it’ll be that way again.”
Far off on a hillside they saw a dead cow, almost covered by slow gluttonous buzzards. “I hope we don’t get to windward of that, Joseph.”
He looked away from the feast. “They don’t give meat a chance to spoil,” he said. “I’ve seen them standing in a circle around a dying animal, waiting for the moment of death. They know that moment.”
The hill grew steeper, and they entered the crackling sage, dark and dry and leafless now. The twigs were so brittle that they seemed dead. In an hour they came to the peak, and from there, sure enough, they saw the triangle of ocean through the pass. The ocean was not blue, it was steel-grey, and on the horizon the dark fog banks rose in heavy ramparts.
“Tie up the horses, Joseph,” she said “Let’s sit a while. I haven’t seen the ocean for so long. Sometimes I wake up in the night and listen for the waves and for the foghorn of the lighthouse, and the bell buoy off China Point. And sometimes I can hear them, Joseph. They must be very deeply fixed in me. Sometimes I can hear them. In the mornings, early, when the air was still, I remember how I could hear the fishing boats pounding out and the voices of the men calling back and forth from boat to boat.”
He turned away from her. “I haven’t that to miss,” he said. These things of hers seemed like a little heresy to him.
She sighed deeply. “When I hear those things in my head I get homesick, Joseph. This valley traps me and I have the feeling that I can never escape from it and that I’ll never really hear the waves again, nor the bell buoy, nor see the gulls sliding on the wind.”
“You can go back to visit any time,” he said gently. “I’ll take you back.”
But she shook her head. “It wouldn’t ever be the same. I can remember how excited I was at Christmas, but I couldn’t be again.”
He lifted his head and sniffed the wind. “I can smell the salt,” be said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here, Elizabeth, to make you sad.”
“But it’s a good full sadness, dear. It’s a luxurious sadness. I can remember how the pools were in the early morning at low tide, glistening and damp, the crabs scrambling over the rocks, and the little eels under the round stones. Joseph,” she asked, “Can’t we eat lunch now?”
“It isn’t nearly noon yet. Are you hungry already?”
“I’m always hungry at a picnic,” she said smiling. “When mother and I went up to Huckleberry Hill we sometimes started to eat lunch before we were out of sight of the house. I’d like to eat while I’m up here.”
He walked to the horses and loosened their cinches and brought back the saddle bags, and he and Elizabeth munched the thick sandwiches and stared off at the pass and at the angry ocean beyond.
“The clouds seem to be moving in,” she observed. “Maybe there’ll be rain tonight.”
“It’s only fog, Elizabeth. It’s always fog this year. The earth is turning white. Do you see? The brown is going out of it.”
She chewed her sandwich and gazed always at the little patch of sea. “I remember so many things,” she said. “They pop up in my mind suddenly, like ducks in a shooting gallery. I just thought then how the Italians go out on the rocks at low tide with big slabs of bread in their hands. They crack open the sea urchins and spread part of them on the bread. The males are sweet and the females sour—the urchins, not the Italians, of course.” She scrunched up the papers from the lunch and wadded them back into the saddle bag. “We’d better ride on now, dear. It won’t do to stay out very long.”
Although there had been no movement of the clouds, the haze was thickening about the sun and the wind grew colder. Joseph and Elizabeth walked their horses down the slope. ‘You still want to go to the pine grove?” he asked.
“Why of course. That’s the main reason for the trip. I’m going to scotch the rock.” As she spoke a hawk shot from the air with doubled fists. They heard the shock of flesh, and in a second the hawk flew up again, bearing a screaming rabbit in its claws. Elizabeth dropped her reins and covered her ears until the sound was out of hearing. Her lip trembled. “It’s all right, I know it is. I hate to see it, though.”
“He missed his stroke,” Joseph said. “He should have broken its neck with the first blow, but he missed.” They watched the hawk fly to the cover of the pine grove and disappear among the trees.
They had not far to go, down a long slope and then along the ridge until they came at last to the outpost trees. Joseph pulled up. “We’ll tie the horses here and walk in,” he said. When they were afoot, he hurried ahead to the little stream. “It isn’t dry,” he called. “It isn’t down a bit.”
Elizabeth walked over and stood beside him. “Does that make you feel better, Joseph?”
He glanced quickly at her, feeling a little mockery in her words, but he could see none in her face. “It’s the first running water I’ve seen for a long time,” he said. “It’s as though the country were not dead while this stream is running. This is like a vein still pumping blood.”
“Silly,” she said, “you come from a country where it rains often. See how the sky is darkening, Joseph. I wouldn’t be surprised if it should rain.”
He glanced upward. “Only fog,” he said. “But it will be cold soon. Come, let’s go in.”
The glade was silent, as always, and the rock was still green. Elizabeth spoke loudly to break the silence. “You see, 1 knew it was only my condition that made me afraid of it.”
“It must be a deep spring to be still running,” Joseph said. “And the rock must be porous to suck up water for the moss.”
Elizabeth leaned down and looked into the dark cave from which the stream flowed. “Nothing in there,” she said. “Just a deep hole in the rock, and the smell of wet ground.” She stood up again and patted the shaggy sides of the rock. “It’s a lovely moss, Joseph. See how deep.” She pulled out a handful and held up the damp black roots for him to see. “I’ll never dream of you any more,” she said to the rock. The sky was dark grey by now, and the sun had gone.
Joseph shivered and turned away. “Let’s start for home, dear. The cold’s coming.” He strolled toward the path.
Elizabeth still stood beside the rock. “You think I’m silly, don’t you, Joseph,” she called. “I’ll climb up on its back and tame it.” She dug her heel into the steep side of the mossy rock, and made a step and pulled herself up, and then another.