on drugs.”
“The City Where the Sun Goes Down.”
“Well, it still does set in the west,” he acknowledged, picking up
another photo from Montana.
“City Where the Sun Goes Down … That makes you think of the thirties
and forties, swing music, men tipping their hats to one another and
holding doors open for ladies in black cocktail dresses, elegant
nightclubs overlooking the ocean, Bogart and Bacall, Gable and Lombard,
people sipping martinis and watching golden sunsets. All gone. Mostly
gone. These days, call it the City of the Dying Day.”
He fell silent. Shuming the photographs, studying them. She waited.
At last he looked up and said, “Let’s do it.”
PART TWO The Land of the Winter Moon Under the winter moon’s pale
light, across the cold and starry night, from snowy mountains soaring
high to ocean shores echoes the cry.
From barren sands to verdant fields, from city streets to lonely
wealds, cries the tortured human heart, seeking solace, wisdom, a chart
by which to understand its plight under the winter moon’s pale light.
Dawn is unable to fade the night. Must we live ever in the blight
under the winter moon’s cold light, lost in loneliness, hate, and
fright, last night, tonight, tomorrow night under the winter moon’s
bleak light?
The Book of Counted Sorrows CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
In the distant age of the dinosaurs, fearful creatures as mighty as the
Tyrannosaurus rex had perished in treacherous tar pits upon which the
visionary builders of Los Angeles later erected freeways, shopping
centers, houses, office buildings, theaters, topless bars, restaurants
shaped like hot dogs and derby hats, churches, automated car washes,
and so much more. Deep beneath parts of the metropolis, those
fossilized monsters lay in eternal sleep. Through September and
October, Jack felt the city was still a pit in which he was mired.
He believed he was obligated to give Lyle Crawford a thirty-day
notice.
And at the advice of their Realtor, before listing the house for sale,
they painted it inside and out, installed new carpet, and made minor
repairs. The moment Jack made the decision to leave the city, he’d
mentally packed and decamped. Now his heart was in the Montana
highlands east of the Rockies, while he was still trying to pull his
feet out of the L.A. tar. Because they no longer needed every dollar
of equity in the house, they priced it below market value. In spite of
poor economic conditions, it moved quickly. By the twenty-eighth of
October, they were in a sixty-day escrow with a buyer who appeared
qualified, and they felt reasonably confident about embarking upon a
new life and leaving the finalization of the sale to their Realtor. On
November fourth, they set out for their new home in a Ford Explorer
purchased with some of their inheritance. Jack insisted on leaving at
six in the morning, determined that his last day in the city would not
include the frustrating crawl of rush-hour traffic. They took only
suitcases and a few boxes of personal effects, and shipped little more
than books. Additional photographs sent by Paul Youngblood had
revealed that their new house was already furnished in a style to which
they could easily adjust.
They might have to replace a few upholstered pieces, but many items
were antiques of high quality and considerable beauty. Departing the
city on Interstate 5, they never looked back as they crested the
Hollywood Hills and went north past Burbank, San Fernando, Valencia,
Castaic far out of the suburbs, into the Angeles National Forest across
Pyramid Lake, and up through the Tejon Pass between the Sierra Madre
and the Tehachapi Mountains. Mile by mile, Jack felt himself rising
out of an emotional and mental darkness. He was like a swimmer who had
been weighed down with iron shackles and blocks, drowning in oceanic
depths, now freed and soaring toward the surface, light, air. Toby was
amazed by the vast farmlands flanking the highway, so Heather quoted
figures from a travel book. The San Joaquin Valley was more than a
hundred fifty miles long, defined by the Diablo Range on the west and
Sierra foothills to the distant east. Those thousands of square miles