Gift of the Golden Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

and balloons and a banner that said "Welcome Home." She put her head on the steering wheel and sobbed, she emptied herself of tears too long stored, and then, exhausted, she sat with her arms wrapped around herself and waited. The rain would seem to let up for a time, but then it came throbbing down again, even more ferocious.
         She sensed it before she heard the noise, a rattling. Something was rattling the door handle. She turned her head and saw, through the water, a blur of red, a hand. Swollen, gnarled, pawing at the window. And then a face—misshapen, grotesque, and a mouth, black and yawing open, open and shut.
         "Oh God," she whispered, "Dear God."
         She turned away, hid her face, covered her ears. When she had the courage to turn back, it was gone.
         She sat until the rain spent itself, until it grew steady and then stopped altogether. She waited until the sky grew light, until finally it was bright. And then she stepped out into the world and breathed in the freshness of the earth after a summer's hard rain. She felt tired and drained and quiet. She was alive, and alone in the middle of a never-ending road in the midst of a great empty land. She stood alongside the mud-spattered Mustang which had spun around to face in the direction from which she had come before it sank to its hubcaps in the mud of the great plains. In the other direction a giant sycamore, felled by a lightning bolt, lay across the road.
         The air moved only enough to sound a soft rustling through the corn rows, other than that the silence was complete. At first she thought it was nothing, that her eyes were playing tricks. Then she saw that it was moving toward her, moving down the middle of the road. Five minutes more and she could make it out:

a tractor. Another five minutes and she could hail the old man driving it, a big thick man in a red rain slicker and a baseball cap. He raised a gnarled old hand in greeting:
         "Took me a spell to get back, but then I figured you wouldn't be going noplace." He grinned then, and his big horned face rearranged itself into kind folds.
         "You frightened me," she said, and was surprised to hear her voice crack. If he heard she couldn't tell, he was already attaching a chain to the Mustang.
         When he had pulled it back on the road he took off his hat, retrieved a big blue handkerchief from its crown, wiped his face, and asked her where she was heading.
         "Home," she said, her voice strong now, "I'm going home."

TWO

    KARIN PERCHED ON the window seat in the dining room, hugging her legs to her and resting her chin on her knees. For a time she scanned the wide view of San Francisco Bay offered from the window, then she turned to survey the living room with its high beamed ceiling. The morning light streamed through the French doors to illuminate the fireplace, and the acrid scent of fresh ashes lingered in the air from last night's fire.
         "I can't believe how lucky we were to find this place," she said, turning back to the sweeping view of the Bay, dotted now with hundreds of sailboats.
         May sat at the dining table, several forms spread out before her, and toyed absently with a fountain pen while she studied her friend. She was thinking of the contradictions that existed between them, of how opposite they really were. Karin was small and soft, curvaceous and warm, with large breasts while May was tall and dark and cool, and not quite flat-chested. Karin's mop of blond hair curled out of control, while hers was straight as a stick and black. Karin was pink and pretty in the Scandinavian way; she

was olive-skinned and unusual looking, people guessed she was Mediterranean. Karin was sweet-tempered and easygoing while she could be moody and intense. She sometimes wondered how they could have become such good friends. . . .
         "It's what they call an 'old Berkeley house,'" Karin broke in, "meaning brown shingle with lots of wood