As for her having strayed into that neighborhood of fine
residences, she was unsurprised. It was in line with her
queerness. She did so many things without knowing that she did
them. But she must be careful. It was better to wander on the
marshes and the Rock Wall.
Especially she liked the Rock Wall. There was a freedom about it,
a wide spaciousness that she found herself instinctively trying
to breathe, holding her arms out to embrace and make part of
herself. It was a more natural world, a more rational world. She
could understand it--understand the green crabs with white-
bleached claws that scuttled before her and which she could see
pasturing on green-weeded rocks when the tide was low. Here,
hopelessly man-made as the great wall was, nothing seemed
artificial. There were no men here, no laws nor conflicts of men.
The tide flowed and ebbed; the sun rose and set; regularly each
afternoon the brave west wind came romping in through the Golden
Gate, darkening the water, cresting tiny wavelets, making the
sailboats fly. Everything ran with frictionless order. Everything
was free. Firewood lay about for the taking. No man sold it by
the sack. Small boys fished with poles from the rocks, with no
one to drive them away for trespass, catching fish as Billy had
caught fish, as Cal Hutchins had caught fish. Billy had told her
of the great perch Cal Hutchins caught on the day of the eclipse,
when he had little dreamed the heart of his manhood would be
spent in convict's garb.
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