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
were the most fertile in the world, producing eighty percent of the
entire country's fresh vegetables and melons, half its fresh fruit and
almonds, and much more.
They stopped at a roadside produce stand and bought a one-pound bag of
roasted almonds for a quarter of what the cost would have been in a
