Goat Mountain: A Novel Part 6

One hand holding my rifle and the other grabbing at dirt and rock and root. My chest against the ground, lying against the mountain as I climbed. Smell of dust and pine, the patches of needles so slick I had to keep traversing to find bare dirt and rock. Moving as fast as I could.

I didn't look down, only at the wall of dirt in front of me, and I felt that I was tilting backward, that I would simply fall off the planet and keep falling and never hit ground again. I believed that what kept me from falling was only my own will, remade in every moment.

10.

POX AND PLAGUES. THE GREAT FLOOD. LANGUAGE TURNED only to babbling. Humanity erased over and over. The Bible is about our fight against G.o.d. And somehow we're more powerful, simply because of our will, because we're persistent. We refuse to be erased.

It's been a bitter fight. The great flood. Think of how many lost. Drowned like rats, no burials, no apologies, no reparations. G.o.d owes us. We have a long way to go to even the score. Imagine that wall of water coming over a hill, the sheep scattering, and you feel the cold breath of it, a thrill in that dry heat, the sudden change, and the sun is underwater, pale shafts of light reaching through the blue, and that can only be beautiful, the moments right before annihilation can never be anything less than the very best moments, held suspended. That wave breaking overhead and the sun s.h.i.+ning through it and every pattern in the world visible in the light, revealed, and G.o.d's punishment means nothing because you can't feel that you've been bad, because you didn't start in the garden, you were only here on this hillside and then the wave came.

I had been to Sunday school since I could remember. My father's one concession to religion. He didn't go to church himself, only sent me, his only son sent in his name, ha ha.

My grandfather never spoke about religion, nor did Tom. Really they never spoke about anything except hunting and fis.h.i.+ng.

I slithered my way up that steep canyon slope, my belly in the dirt, and I refused to be left behind. I did not pause or rest, and I kept that rifle clenched in my fist and wouldn't let go. Taste of dirt, of all that has rotted and decayed and lain dormant, all that waits and then is released.

My father disappeared over the rim and no doubt kept going, and there was no sign or sound of Tom or my grandfather, though I was exposed on this slope and my grandfather had a clear view from his ridge. He could easily have sighted in with his scope and shot me as I climbed. I would fall backward just as I imagined.

An overhang of root and dirt at the top, so I crabbed to the side and crawled up rocks that slid beneath me, and finally I made the rim. I lay for a moment on the flat and rested, out of breath and my legs burning. But then I rose, because I knew no one would wait. I'd have to be close enough behind to hear their path across that next hillside, back to the wallow.

Retracing our steps. Like ants marching along a path, atavistic reckoning that feels like discovery but is only recognition. I like that idea, because then my pulling of the trigger was the pull from some earlier generation, something only recognized, not originated. And that's how it felt. Like someone else's hand working inside mine.

That scrub hillside curved outward in a torment typical of our world, the end in sight and then not the end and then in sight again and then not the end and on and on, so that we just keep stumbling along, sc.r.a.ped and torn as we push through. The poison oak rising all along my skin another plague. Welts and bubbles I could feel on my face and neck and see on my wrists, the bubbles much lighter in color, almost white against the angry red, and holding some vile liquid invented where.

I wandered through live oak and scrub and sun, sweating and growing the welts, and I couldn't hear even my grandfather and his path of destruction but only my own footsteps, and so I had no way of knowing if I was on the right course, but because I'm an ant, I ended up at exactly the right spot, coming down over that lip into the wallow right next to the truck. The men already in the cab, waiting, silent as stones, and I climbed aboard and we were off again. Simple as that.

We rose out of that bog into ponderosa pines where Tom had once wounded a spike, a story remembered by each of us as we pa.s.sed, a story as always with a lesson but a lesson unclear. Don't shoot a buck with no fork in its horns. Illegal, and not good for continuing the population, to shoot the young ones, but something beyond that, too. Some pact made to follow code and rules even if we have no idea where they come from. In other states, it was legal to shoot does, the female deer, something we considered outrageous. Who can say what rules they follow and why? How much of what feels inviolable is only random, with no ground to it at all?

We emerged from that area of shame and the switchbacks appeared above us, bare jagged scar cut into the hillside, denuded of trees. As exposed as a quarry, white and blinding in the sun, a furnace emanating heat. And we could see there'd been a slump during the winter, part of the road caved away in the middle of the Z, but we didn't stop or even slow. My father accelerated, in fact, and we rode up on the side of that steep hill, the pickup tilting at a crazy angle and I could feel the beginning of the fall, the roll to the side, but we were going so fast the momentum carried us through and my father yanked us back onto flat road and hit the brakes in a cloud of white dust, our tires sliding. The drop-off to our right, bare slope ahead, the road kinking up to the left. My father just making that turn, the front tires grabbing and pulling us upward.

My father sped again, and this obviously was not a hunt but only a punishment. He hit a dip so fast my feet were in the air and only one hand clinging to the rear slider window of the cab, my rifle in the other hand flung skyward, and I heard one of the men hit his head on the roof, Tom probably. My grandfather too heavy and my father clinging to the wheel.

A lurching sharp turn to the right at the next switchback, and we had two tires in the air from the tilt, then grabbing again, and shot into trees, cool shade, flying along over uneven ground, bucking and sliding, pinecones and twigs popping and flung in our wake. The ride of the d.a.m.ned, last ride into h.e.l.l, trying to outrun the devil, and I shouted in excitement, exhilarated. I glanced behind for what might follow. I kept that rifle in my hand, and my eyes teared from the wind.

My father always controlled, never one to do this, to just stomp on the gas and go. The pure thrill and adrenaline. A gift from the dead man. A new freedom. The landscape become a kaleidoscope, rolling and exploding on all sides, without orientation. Branches whipping at us, the treetops spinning overhead, the furrows and lumps of land coming at us like waves, rise after rise and this mountainside endless, born from itself again and again and we were riding it, finally.

My father did not let up. He tore along all the way back to camp, came to a sliding stop in the pine needles just before table and stream, and our cloud of dust followed us in, washed over us and seemed a kind of blessing.

The pa.s.senger cab door opened and Tom and my grandfather were out, but my father waited a while, and I waited with him. It seemed too soon to move. The air cool in here, the rea.s.suring sound of the spring in the basin and running lower alongside us, the breeze in the pines. Always a breeze here, even when there was a breeze nowhere else. Safe ground. And we would rest now. We'd have lunch and lie down for naps, and all would be renewed and begin again. This was the promise of camp.

My father finally opened his door and stepped out. He looked lost. His eyes searching mine and his mouth loose. His finger had been on that trigger. He had killed that man. I believe now that's how he felt, nothing less than that. The sins of the son visited upon the father. And nothing he could do to go back and change a thing.

I thought my father might say something, but he only walked away to the table to wait for Tom and the food. Reduced to habit. Sitting at the bench gazing down at the wood, not really looking at anything.

I grabbed my spare clothing from the cab, stripped off layers of caked mud until I stood bare and naked on the pine needles and kept my rifle close. The dead man in his sack directly behind me, watching always. My white skin with dark smears of mud and small island chains of red welt. The poison oak across my belly and on my privates from when I peed. Anything you touched became the property of the oak. And if you scratched, the islands grew and formed continents, entire regions of angry red and white bubbles edged by smaller darker welts, as if your skin could boil.

I pulled on a new T-s.h.i.+rt and underwear and jeans, found my clean pair of socks and knocked my boots together to remove most of the mud. I didn't have another jacket, so I whipped it against the bed of the pickup, small shards of mud flying off.

Lunch was ready now, the men at the table with their knives. My father and grandfather on the uphill side, not looking at one another. I climbed in next to Tom and kept my rifle away.

Lighter-colored, Tom was saying. Almost gray. Silvery. Like an older buck, but I only saw forks.

Three-pointer, my grandfather said.

I didn't see that, Tom said. I only saw forks. But he was light, almost the same color as the rock. I must have looked right at him when he was standing there and not even seen him.

You'd have noticed him, my grandfather said.

No, I don't think so. I think I looked right at him and didn't see him. I think if he had just stayed still, none of us would have seen him.

In another minute, I would have been standing next to him, my father said.

Even then, Tom said. I don't think you would have seen him.

That's just stupid.

No. You never saw him, so you don't know. Think about this for a minute. He didn't jump until you were right on him, but you know he must have heard you coming, and smelled you, and he didn't move. So that means he decided to wait. He was going to hide and wait it out. He made a decision, but then he just got jumpy.

He didn't make a decision.

He made a decision.

Well. My father rubbed at his forehead with both palms, down over his eyes and cheeks.

He almost had us, Tom said. He grabbed two more pieces of bread and went for the deviled ham, smearing it across both sides, a kind of pink froth.

Not just almost, my father finally said. I don't see a buck hanging over there.

Springing around in those rocks, darting this way and that. It's only luck if you hit one in that situation.

That situation, my father said. Trapped in a narrow canyon, shooters on both ridges, crossfire from above. Be a real miracle to hit anything then.

Well, Tom said. No point in talking.

Harder to hit the buck, though, if you're way the f.u.c.k off and almost hit the people in the canyon.

You can f.u.c.k off, Tom said.

You're an eagle eye. A real sharpshooter.

Look, Tom said. That buck knew what he was doing.

No buck knows anything.

You don't know anything.

Just go back to your sandwich.

You go back to your sandwich.

We listened to the water in the basin then, a rus.h.i.+ng sound so urgent at times you could hardly stand it. At times it seemed like it would wash us away. And it could never be shut off. There was no faucet, no way to hold it back. Only the sound and force of it increasing, magnified in that basin. Water from seams of rock deep inside the mountain. Water that fell as rain a thousand years ago and had lived in pressure ever since, released only now and what was to keep it from doubling in pressure and doubling again under the weight of all that rock.

I felt panic, my heart yanking and no room for breath. That water could rip the earth open right here beneath us. And my own blood was the same, pumping and pressurizing and no holding it back. I panicked like this all the time as a kid, my dreams all of pressure and panic, and even remembering now my breath is short. And each time, I didn't believe I would survive. I didn't know how to get through those times. My father and grandfather across from me unbearable presences. Their side of the table higher, and they could fall against me at any moment.

Time never did move again. That's what it felt like. A moment an eternity. In memory, now, I can say we finished that lunch and got up from the table, but at the time, we were lost indefinitely and it was nothing less than that, and my father weighed a thousand pounds and my grandfather ten times that, and they were crus.h.i.+ng me, the pressure of the water building behind them.

But the men did finish chewing their sandwiches, and I didn't eat but I couldn't, and my father was the first to rise and walk away toward his bedroll, and I could breathe again, and Tom left, also, and my grandfather had me pinned there still, his face a mountain rising in folds and crevices, white granite with dark grains and veins, and he swiveled his legs and rose and fell across that ground toward his mattress and I was released.

I walked carefully and stayed far away from that basin and from the mattress of my grandfather, and as I walked, the air began to thin, finally, the pressure easing and pulling back to where? Where does that go? The air normalizing, sound normalizing and making everything a lie, a dream, and yet only a few minutes before my heart had been made of stone.

My bedroll hidden behind deadfall, tucked in against the mountain, and I looked over my shoulder as I neared, made sure no one was watching. Then I hopped over that trunk and disappeared down low, safe in my hollow. I rolled out my sleeping bag and lay back to watch the sky above and the needles of the pines perfectly etched, each of them sharp against the blue, real and undeniable, individual, but thousands of them gathered together spiking the air. To think of how many in just the ring of trees above me and then our camp and up the hillside and across to other mountains and extending for hundreds of miles, this was a different kind of panic, not one of pressure but of vanis.h.i.+ng outward and thinning and dissipating and this was the other panic I felt all the time back then, not of being crushed but of vanis.h.i.+ng, pulled into vast empty s.p.a.ce, and the two were equally terrifying and equally without source.

I closed my eyes and curled into a ball and waited, smelled the woodsmoke in the sleeping bag, soaked into it over the years, a comfort, and the smell, also, of sweat and the blood of animals of all kinds, and I was just heading toward sleep when I heard a heavy thump and knew exactly what it was. The dead man fallen.

11.

WE ALL WAITED, I THINK. I DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE ROSE immediately. And this was because the dead man was capable of anything. If he had fallen, who knew what he might do next? He had no insides, no center, so the heavy sound of that thump, the enormous weight of it, had to be his invention. His head no longer pinned against his chest, his limbs free to move, his head back laughing and he could be up and dancing any moment. He had no blood and so he followed no rules.

Like Jesus from the grave, able to claim anything afterward and who would dare not believe? The only trick that matters, cheating death, because death is the only true G.o.d.

I opened my eyes half believing I'd find his face above me, his breath that would hold no air and eyes that would fall inward and keep falling, that look on his face of wanting more. But there was only sky above, and all those needles of the pines bunched and etched and at no distance that could be known, moving closer or farther at will.

I sat up and peered over the fallen tree that protected me, and no one had risen. The camp empty, no sound of another being, sound only of that water that would never cease.

The mountain rupturing everywhere around us but making no sound. A cataclysm held back by holding my breath. And this was what death would be like, I knew. My dreams of pressure and panic were dreams of death. Forever held at the moment when all was about to rupture. The body fallen, the dead man's or our own, and the impact of that a shock driven through the center, but for one moment all still holds and it's the middle of a bright day, a time meant to be safe, only this premonition inside, these two feelings at once, of being crushed and also of being pulled into vastness.

Each of us afraid to move. But my grandfather a force of his own, heavy sounds of rocking himself upward off that mattress, and then the vision of him standing in the trees, naked from the waist up, looking toward the body, ready for whatever might be. He and the dead man brought together here for battle, because my grandfather was close enough to being death itself, formless and without feeling, a weight that might fall in any direction, and always this, unchanging, only waiting.

The dead man had every advantage, though, in waiting. He lay on the ground in his sack and didn't move.

I couldn't remember seeing my grandfather's naked back ever before, not even once. Blotchy red and white expanse, living flesh and blood, as featureless as his face, in s.h.i.+fting folds and creases, armored in fat. He stepped forward toward the body and the dead man did nothing.

My father rose also and walked slowly through the trees toward the sack, his hands at his sides in fists. My father become desperate, mouth open and grim, ready for anything. And then Tom, and then me, all four of us advancing on the dead man, who coiled inside that sack, hidden, and I held my rifle ready and so did Tom. The men advancing until they were within the length of a body and then they could go no closer, and I was farther out still, walking across that unsteady earth until I stood behind them.

The dead man's boots were still hanging in chains from that meat hook. Yellow-brown work boots with their soles to the sky, hanging down perfectly in unison as if they still held him, and who could say they didn't still hold something? I was creeped out enough to believe anything. The dead man below in his sack with his face and intentions hidden and only his socks and s.h.i.+ns visible to us. White s.h.i.+n meat and bone.

Well we can't leave him like that, Tom said.

No s.h.i.+t, my father said.

I'm not touching him, Tom said.

Another piece of f.u.c.king news, my father said.

My grandfather rolled his neck, eyes closed, rocked his head side to side, like a boxer warming up. Here, he said. Here we are.

More philosophy.

You're not up to the test, my grandfather said. You think everything has funneled down to this, but in fact everything has become possible.

What the f.u.c.k does that mean?

You're standing here at a moment when you could be anything.

Yeah, you're right. This is freedom. A real gift.

It is, actually. You just don't see it. This dead body doesn't matter.

My grandfather stepped forward then and reached down for the dead man's ankles and picked him up, the sack falling free, that white belly gone dark, a stiffness to his arms and legs.

Don't touch him, my father said.

Tom was backing away with his rifle held before him, and I was doing the same. The dead man a darkened ghost, his head kinked, hands tied between his legs, looking at us from the tops of his eyes, vacant holes. My grandfather turning and swinging the body, turning like a shot putter, spinning, pulling that body in an arc and the dead man patient, holding on for the ride, his head and shoulders lifting higher above ground, levitating, and my grandfather at the center, this mound of living flesh. A hub of blood and the dead man become a putrid spoke and this wheel turned and my father backed away but not fast enough and my grandfather flung the body at my father.

The dead man lofted for a moment, an easy lift to his shoulders and his mouth open in pleasure as he sailed through warm air, the center of him still missing but that bullet hole become a second birth and this his childhood, playing on a sunny day, flung outward in pleasure but my father shrinking, caving backward, turning and his hands coming up to fend off, but the dead man collided with him, chest to chest, rolling up close to my father in an embrace, and the two of them fell back in a moment suspended forever in my mind, finally hitting ground and both shaken at impact.

My father screamed. Not something I'd ever heard from him before, but as he lay there on his back in the dirt, the rotting body on top of him, this was too much. He arched his neck and turned and threw that body off and rolled back fast away and was on his feet.

My father and grandfather with their arms curved out from their sides like wings, both ready, and I realized my rifle held low was pointing at my father, and Tom's too. I had no idea what would happen next. Anything seemed possible.

My grandfather a mountain and without age. My father would have no chance against him, but they circled closer, arms out and ready, and my father had become desperate. His mouth contorted as if he were still screaming but no sound came out. His teeth showing as if he would snap and bite at my grandfather.

There are only two choices, my grandfather said as he circled, his voice calm, no fear at all. His knees were not bent. His legs like pencils beneath that bulk, stiff and ready to snap. He could seem fragile at times, always changing shape. You can honor the man who has been killed. You can say his death meant something, in which case we have to punish your son. I'll help you put him in the sack right now, and we can do whatever we need to, beat him or burn him or shoot him and bury him, whatever we need to do to make it right and stop him. That's one choice.

My father was beyond hearing. He was ready to lunge, waiting for an opening, an opportunity, circling in the pine needles near the hooks. The dead man behind me watching also. He could rise and join at any moment.

Or we can decide the man who has been shot is nothing. He was a poacher, he was breaking the law, but he doesn't matter and the law doesn't matter. We put ourselves first. The clan. We make our own rules. So we take his body and throw it out in the brush and don't even bury it. We forget about him.

My father had circled all the way around to the dead man again, and he looked down at that body, and that's when my grandfather charged. There was no sound, no warning. Only this frightening bulk moving fast and he just ran over my father. No hard impact, only a slap against that bare skin and my father curled like a child at his father's naked breast, folded against him and then fell backward onto the dead man, a second horrifying embrace, and he rolled clear and knelt down with his palms flat on the ground in prostration. He caved forward and put his head to the ground between his palms.

My grandfather hadn't even used his arms, hadn't swung at my father, had only run over him. And he returned now for the dead man and untied both wrists. You won't take any responsibility. You won't do what you need to do, because you're weak. So you've made your decision, and this man's death means nothing.

He walked then toward the creek, dragging the body by one wrist. He pa.s.sed beneath the log hung with hooks and chains and the empty pair of boots, and the dead man looked like a naughty child being dragged off to bed. His chin was stuck against his chest, frozen forever there, and so he looked penitent. He knew what he had done, and he understood being dragged away now.