Over the radio The Doors were demanding that it be brought on through to the other side. Wasn't Morrison dead? He couldn't remember. All he could be sure of was that it was 1969 and the valley was filled to the foothills with smoke as 300,000 acres of stubble were burned so lawn-seed buyers in subdivisions in California wouldn't have to weed a single interloper from their yards.

Tremendous.

The bathroom door slammed again. He heard the plastic heels crunch past below; one of M'kehla's dogs followed, barking tentatively. The dog followed the steps around the other corner, barking in a subdued and civilized voice. The bitch Great Dane, he recognized. Pedigreed. She had barked last night, too. Out in the field. Betsy had got out of bed and shouted up the stairs at him to go check what was the matter out there. He hadn't gone. Was that what offed the lamb? One of M'kehla's Great Danes? He liked to think so. It made him pleasantly angry to think so. Just like a Marin County spade to own two blond Great Danes and go off and leave them marooned. Too many strays. Somebody should go down to that bus and boot some pedigreed ass. But he remained seated, seeking fortification behind his desk, and turned up the music against the noise. Once he heard a yelping as Sandy ran the bitch back to the bus. Sometimes a little breeze would open the curtain and he could see the peacock still sitting on the clothesline pole, silently bobbing his head. Eventually he heard the steps return, enter the barn below, and find the wooden stairs. They mounted briskly and crossed the floor of the loft. Sandy came through his door without knocking.

"Some great place, Dev," she said. "Funky but great. Sandy gave herself the tour. You got places for everything, don't you? For pigs and chickens and everything. Places to wee-wee, places to eat, places to write letters."

Deboree saw the pitch coming but couldn't stop her chatter. "Look, I blew the last of my airline ticket to Seattle renting that pink panther because I knew you'd want Sandy to bring you the sad news in person. No, that's all right, save the thanksies. No need. She does need, though, a little place to write some letters. Seriously, Dev, I saw a cabin down by the pond with paper and envelopes and everything. How about Sandy uses that cabin a day or so? To write a letter to her dear mother and her dear probation officer and her dear ex et cetera. Also maybe catch up on her journal. Hey, I'm writing up our Mexico campaign for a rock'n'roll rag. Are you ready for that?"

He tried to explain to her that the pond cabin was a meditation chapel, not some Camp David for old campaigners to compile their memoirs. Besides, he had planned to use it tonight. She laughed, told him not to worry.

"I'll find me a harbor for tonight. Then we'll see." He stayed at his desk. Chattering away, Sandy prowled his office until she found the shoe box and proceeded to clean and roll the last of his grass. He still didn't want to smoke, not until he was finished with that dead lamb. When he shook his head at the offered joint, she shrugged and smoked it all, explaining in detail how she would refill his box to overflowing with the scams she had cooking in town this afternoon, meeting so-and-so at such and such to barter this and that. He couldn't follow it. He felt flattened before her steamrolling energy. Even when she dropped the still-lit roach from the window to the dry grass below, he was only able to make the feeblest protest.

"Careful of fire around barn?" She whooped, bending over him. "Why, Mistah Deboree, if you ain't getting to be the fussy little farmer." She clomped to the door and opened it. "So. Sandy's making a run. Anything you need from town? A new typewriter? A better radio – how can you listen to good music on that Jap junk? A super Swiss Army? Ho ho. Just tell Sandy Claus. Anything?"

She stood in the opened door, waiting. He swiveled in his chair, but he didn't get up. He looked at her fat grin. He knew what she was waiting for. The question. He also knew better than to ask it. Better to let it slide than encourage any relationship by seeming curious. But he was curious, and she was waiting, grinning at him, and he finally had to ask it:

"Did he, uh, say anything, Sandy?" His voice was thick in his throat.

The black eyes glistened at him from the doorway. "You mean, don'cha, were there any, uh, last words? Any sentences commuted, any parting wisdoms? Why, as a matter of fact, in the hospital, it seems, before he went into a coma, he did rally a moment and now wait, let me see…"

She was gloating. His asking had laid his desperation naked. She grinned. There he sat, Deboree, the Guru Gung Ho with his eyes raw, begging for some banner to carry on with, some comforter of last-minute truth quilted by Old Holy Goof Houlihan, a wrap against the chilly chaos to come.

"Well, yep, our little hippie chick did mention that he said a few words before he died on that Mexican mattress," she said. "And isn't that irony for you? It's that same ratty Puerto Sancto clinic where Behema had her kid and Mickey had his broken leg wherein our dear Hooly died, of pneumonia and exposure and downers. Come on! Don'cha think that is pretty stinking ironic?"

"What were they?"

The eyes glistened. The grin wriggled in its nest of fat. "He said – if Sandy's memory serves – said, I think it was, 'Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight.' Quite a legacy, don'cha think? A number, a stinking number!" She hooted, slapping her hips. "Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! The complete cooked-down essence of the absolute burned-out speed freak: sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! Huh-woow woow wow!"

She left without closing the door, laughing, clacking down the steps and across the gravel. The injured machine whined pitifully as she forced it back out the drive.

So now observe him, after the lengthy preparation just documented (it had been actually three days and was going on four nights), finally confronting his task in the field: Old Man Deboree, desperate and dreary, with his eyes naked to the smoky sun, striding across the unbroken ground behind a red wheelbarrow. Face bent earthward, he watches the field pass beneath his shoes and nothing else, trusting the one-wheeled machine to lead him to his destination.

Like Sandy's neck, he fancies himself swollen with an unspecified anger, a great smoldering of unlaid blame that longed to bloom to a great blaze. Could he but fix it on a suitable culprit. Searching for some target large enough to take his fiery blame, he fixes again on California. That's where it comes from, he decides. Like those two weirdo prickhikers, and Sandy Pawku, and the Oakland hippie chick who must have been one of that Oakland bunch of pillheads who lured Houlihan back down to Mexico last month… all from California! It all started in California, went haywire in California, and now spreads out from California like a crazy tumor under the hide of the whole continent. Woodstock. Big time. Craziness waxing fat. Craziness surviving and prospering and gaining momentum while the Fastestmanalive downs himself dead without any legacy left behind but a psycho's cipher. Even those Great Danes – from California!

The wheelbarrow reaches the ditch. He raises his head. He still cannot see the carcass. Turning down into the ditch, he pushes on toward the place where the three ravens whirl cursing in and out of the tall weeds.

"Afternoon, gents. Sorry about the interruption." The birds circle, railing at his approach. The wheel of the barrow is almost on top of the lamb before Deboree sees it. He is amazed at the elegance of the thing lying before him: a rich garment, not black at all, not nearly, more the reddish brown of devil's food cake. A little chocolate lambie cake, served for some little prince's birthday on a tray of purple vetch, garlanded with clover blossoms, decorated with elegant swirls and loops of red ant trails and twinkling all over with yellow jackets, like little candles. He blows them out with a wave of his hat. The three ravens swoop away to take up positions on the three nearest fence posts. Black wings outspread, they watch in imperious silence as Deboree flaps the ants away and bends to inspect the carcass.