Goat Mountain: A Novel Part 3

My father sliding toward that same face, chin and cheeks loose. No word among the men, moving as silently as possible, all absurd since we were about to start the engine. They climbed into the cab with their rifles between their knees and pulled the doors shut carefully, no more than a click for each.

Then the engine, and backing and turning around and we rumbled on down that road, and who cared what the road held. I couldn't even look at it. Pointless hunt. I was the spotter, but I looked instead at the trees. The older forest and then the newer one, the open section of land that had been logged a few years after my birth, all the trees thin and individual, planted, the areas between filled with wreckage. Gra.s.ses and ferns and poison oak gone red with fall, looking like bunches of flowers, a junked landscape waiting to burn, all smaller limbs left behind by the loggers and decaying still, choking every pathway, making a false floor.

I pounded the top of the cab with my fist and we lurched to a halt. The doors flew open and Tom was out the right side first, raising his rifle to his shoulder. Then my father out the left side, raising his rifle.

Where is it? Tom said. Trying to whisper but hoa.r.s.e and loud. Where's the buck?

I pointed to where the new forest rolled downward into brush and a lost part of the ranch we never hunted. We never found bucks this close to camp.

What was he? my father asked.

A big buck, I said. A three-point, I think, but he was leaping and moving fast into the brush.

My father took off across that wasteland at a run. Tom on his right flank and me following. No foothold secure. Small limbs and sawed-off stumps and holes everywhere, but the top of my father floated as if on springs, facing forward exactly to where I'd pointed, looking for that buck. His legs and boots laboring beneath, unconnected.

I looked back and saw my grandfather mired far behind, lost to the chase, and I smiled and tripped and went down hard into poison oak, greasy curse that would puff up along my face and neck and arms within a day, but I didn't care. That was part of every hunt anyway. I was back on my feet and running hard, trying to catch up to the men. I wanted to whoop out loud, because I loved this. If they weren't going to let me hunt, we'd chase phantom bucks into the worst h.e.l.l this land could offer.

Running straight into the sun, low on the horizon. Tom holding his rifle in both hands, leaping over every obstacle, looking like a jackrabbit. My father lower and smoother, his rifle in just one hand, pulling ahead.

Shape had been transformed into color. My feet looking for the light brown of dirt, flat, avoiding darker shades of fallen branches and the white-gray of trunk tops or dark red rot. The yellow only an illusion, a screen, the same as air, insubstantial. Dry gra.s.ses were what we swam through, up to my waist in some places, veering to avoid thistle, milky green and white spines.

The trick was to look farther ahead. You could trip only if you looked too close, if you worried about what was happening right now. If you kept a wider view, staring into that sun, you could never fall.

My father and Tom shadows in that light, half-presences, becoming insubstantial, becoming movement without weight. An arm back, midstride, might catch the sun and the body would become a body again, but then return to shadow that stretched all the way to me and far beyond.

They were moving faster and faster, and I was losing them, falling behind, but then Tom would leap, and the height of his shadow would fling past and over me and the gap between us would collapse. He could expand or collapse and every part of him would remain to scale, and all the while, in every moment, everything around him grew, every long shadow of every thin tree, the world stretching toward me as I ran.

My father a more constant shape, held low, a different gravity. It didn't matter that the buck was imaginary. I knew he would find it anyway. He would make a buck appear. He'd shoot on the run, that big boom rolling out across ridge after ridge and slapping back from the mountaintops.

What we wanted was to run like this, to chase our prey. That was the point. What made us run was the joy and promise of killing.

I could feel my lungs, my legs, but this was only because I knew there was no buck. The men would not feel a thing, all pain washed away in adrenaline. There was no joy as complete and immediate as killing. Even the bare thought of it was better than anything else.

My boots heavy as I lost sight of the men and focused only on the branches and trunks and brush and gra.s.s before me, trying not to fall. Fear of snake, fear of twisting an ankle or breaking a leg. I had been knocked out of the dream, but my father and Tom were still there.

I stopped and bent over, my hands on my knees, and tried to catch my breath. Looking back, this seems strange, that a kid could ever tire, but I remember my chest and head pumping and dizzy and everything overwhelmed. I remember walking after that, stepping over all the deadfall, and coming to poison oak so thick there was nothing to do but wade through it. Glossy, waxy green, the edges turned red, as if the plant had poisoned itself, rotting away and dying even as it secreted more poison. You have to wonder why it exists in this world.

Where the forest has been cut, all the most vicious plants grow, each one struggling to choke out every other. Thistle and nettle, live oak and poison oak, burrs and spines and thorns. And this is where I had sent my father and Tom, and this is where I followed.

We pushed our way into this oblivion and just kept going, the land falling down in a slow curve. The sun failing, winking along the farthest ridge and then gone, the sky still bright, the planet turning beneath us. Each of us alone now, separate on that hillside, hearing our own footsteps and blood against the rise of a breeze, the hot air from low in the valley making its way upward.

I did not call out for my father or Tom, and they did not call out for me. We continued, each of us, until that point when the sky had faded enough that we would return at the pickup in darkness, each of us knowing exactly when that would be, and though we took separate paths, we knew we would arrive at the same time.

Walking in a void. The truth of every landscape. When the promise of killing is taken away, the brush is without name, a dozen varieties but all of it dry and reaching upward and compact and unforgiving, grown too close and shortening all escape. The sky new and old and nothing, and the earth insubstantial. We walk on because that's all that's left.

My hands were empty, no rifle. What's good is to hold the grip of a rifle and let the barrel go over a shoulder. The weight of that cutting a crease along your neck. The swing of it as you step, the burden and the heat still in that barrel. And in higher brush, to hook your other hand over the barrel and carry that rifle on both shoulders. You become a giant when you hold a rifle like that. The distance from your shoulders down to the ground increases, and you can wade through any brush and never be held back. And you're still watching for movement to both sides. In an instant, you could bring that rifle down and fire. One foot would be back for balance, but you'd never have thought to put it there. And even if you never find movement and never bring the rifle to bear, still it's the two of you walking in that void, and the night as it closes in feels companionable.

But with no rifle, the air is only air, and it's impossible to know what to do with your hands. Arms up to fend against brush but the hands themselves useless, and the brush grown tall, and no bearing available, one's track winding like a snake's. Buried in brush, and all of it endless, and each step a struggle.

I tore through enormous stands of poison oak and finally was clear to cross that more open wasteland, too dark to see the truck but light enough still to find my way, everything timed to the light from before I was born, and my feet timed, also, and my breath and my blood and even my thoughts, which were of nothing.

We stood around that pickup looking at the ground or the sky.

Too dark to track, my father finally said. But we'll get him tomorrow.

Been a long time since we've gone down through there, Tom said.

Years, my father said. More than that.

Might be nothing down there.

Might be. We can decide in the morning. See how things look.

The four of us darker presences in that night, which had become cold already. The air too thin to hold heat once the sun was gone, but somehow it held still the barest bit of light. Enough to tell that my father and Tom both held their rifles in the crooks of their arms, barrels pointed down. My grandfather's on a strap on his shoulder. A shadow in darkness can move anywhere, and as I blinked or s.h.i.+fted my glance, the men would veer closer or fall away.

Might be nothing at all down there, Tom said.

Might be, my father said. But we've seen one.

He says we've seen one. Did you see one, or any sign of one?

No, my father said.

He was a big buck, I said.

We heard that, Tom said. Outlined in sun, I'm guessing. All ablaze. Every point on fire, and leaping fast through all that c.r.a.p.

Yeah, I said.

And disappearing just as we looked that way.

Yeah.

Okay, my father said. That's enough.

We've never seen a big buck this close to camp, Tom said.

Doesn't mean we didn't see one now, my father said.

How many years? Tom asked.

Bats were flying over, pieces of the night come loose and diving down between us. No sound of their wings.

What happens now doesn't owe anything to what happened before, my grandfather said.

Yes it does, Tom said.

And what from before told us he would shoot that poacher?

That's not the same.

Sure it is.

The cold sinking down over us. The way we'd stood many times, gathered around the pickup in darkness at the end of a hunt, except there was no smell of sulfur. That was missing.

That buck could be there or not be there, my grandfather said. You have no idea which it is.

It's getting cold, my father said. Time to get back to camp.

All three of you have gone crazy, Tom said. All three of you.

My father opened the driver's door and the light came on. The only light on that entire mountainside, and my father's thin hair as he tilted in. Then Tom scooting into the center with his rifle barrel leaned back against his shoulder, and then my grandfather.

I sat down in the bed, kept low against the cold as the truck twisted and the four-wheel drive moaned, and we were back in camp quickly.

My father fired up the lantern first thing, pumping at it in darkness and then lighting the wicks, like tea bags on fire, and then the flames sucked in and grew white-hot as he opened the valve more, the sound of a furnace, a soft roar.

He set this near the griddle and then made a fire in the pit just before the table. Big Blue Tip kitchen matches and newspaper, smaller sticks and then the split wood he had brought. We sat on log rounds as Tom worked on dinner. The fire grown and the heat coming off it, the three of us leaning in as close as we could. The sparks lifting up into the pines. The fire setting us apart from all else. The first thing to distinguish man. Hunting in a group was older but shared by animals.

There's not much we can do that is older and more human than sitting at a fire. The way a flame surrounds a piece of wood and illuminates, how soft that flame looks, and how it seems nothing at all will happen to the wood. Blond still beneath, visible through flame, and the transformation to black is something unnoticed until it's already done.

No edge of a flame ever breaks or tears. It can take any shape at all, but every change is fluid, every edge rounded, each new wave born of the last and complete and vanished. It's only in fire or water that we can find a corollary to felt mystery, a face to who we might be, but fire is the more immediate. In fire, we never feel alone. Fire is our first G.o.d.

We could hunt the glades tomorrow, my grandfather said.

We should go back for that buck, my father said.

You know there's no buck, my grandfather said.

Three generations of us staring into that fire, into the first coals, radiating orange, a deeper color to the heat. The wood organizing itself as it was consumed, segmenting into rectangular coals. And where did this order come from?

You don't know that, my father finally said.

What I know is that he's not right, my grandfather said. Something in him is not right. And what we should be doing is killing him right now and burning him in this fire.

You're talking about my son, my father said. Your grandson.

That's why we should be the ones to take care of it.

Neither of them were looking at me. They spoke about me as if I were a million miles away.

I'd kill you first, my father said.

I know that, my grandfather said.

In firelight, their faces two versions of the same, separated only by time. Same eyes staring down into the coals, same hands outstretched, only the surface different. Older skin, and my grandfather swollen and infirm. But if you could cut away the fat, go back in years, you'd find the same man.

What I can't remember is what I understood. I know my own grandfather said I should be killed and burned, but I can't remember what I felt when he said that. I think I felt nothing, because I remember nothing. Anger might have been possible. When there's no understanding, anger is always possible. But I could not have felt any recognition, and for some reason I don't understand now, I felt no fear.

With every moment, things are getting worse for us, my grandfather said. Every minute that pa.s.ses. That body hanging is like a clock.

That's true, Tom said. His voice from outside, unwelcome. The smell of steaks and onions on the griddle, popping of grease just audible beyond the drier sounds of our fire.

Maybe stay out of this, my father said.

I wish, Tom said. I do wish that. I wish I could erase when I met you. I'd lose all the years to avoid this now.

We met before we even had memory.

I'd erase it all.

You'd erase your whole life.

I would have had a different life, is all, and no matter what happened, it would have turned out better than now.

That's fear, my grandfather said. That's only fear talking, and nothing about it is true.

Please, my father said. Please just stop talking, both of you. His head bowed as if in prayer, mouth resting on his folded hands, elbows on his knees. His eyes closed. Praying to the fire, and the fire leaving shapes across him, the form of every beast from the beginning, atavistic summoning of which he was wholly unaware. We can never see these shapes in ourselves, and we can never see them in time. We can only remember them. If we go back and search, we can find all portents, every moment of our lives speaking to every other.

That body is still hanging there, my grandfather said. You don't seem to understand, either of you, that what you do or say or think doesn't matter now.

Please just don't speak again, my father said.

My grandfather rose then and stepped into the fire. His boot with all that weight above it crus.h.i.+ng down through half-burned limbs and coals, a hive of sparks, and then he stepped out, and no part of him touched. He was not something that could burn, and the fire now was broken, the pieces of wood become individual, flames reduced to their sources and no more than a few inches high anywhere.

My grandfather continued on to the table, took his spot on the high side closest to the tree and creek. Sat down heavy and pulled his hat from his jacket pocket, an old green plaid hat with earflaps. No expression, just staring ahead into the darkness where the poacher hung and the brown of the burlap caught the light even from that diminished fire.

My father turned away now from the fire, sitting on his low stump with his hands in his pockets and looking uphill, the base of the higher ridges, the trees showing faintly against the dark. I wanted in that moment to be able to talk with him, but what would we have said?

Tom set the paper plates on the bench and filled each one with a steak and onions and slices of bread, and brought them to the table. He and I sat on the lower side, and the three of us began eating, and after some time, my father joined and ate also and we said nothing. Only sounds of chewing, the muted roar of the lantern, the water in the creek beside us, the wind above in the trees. We could have been alone, each of us, and that to me is the strangest thing now. That's something I don't understand, why there was never more connection. When I search my memories, it seems it was always this way, that every moment spent with my father or grandfather or Tom was a moment alone. And so it's hard to know why they even matter. But they were the closest people to me in my life. My mother had left before I had memory, my grandmother was dead, and these three men were all I had. They were all I knew, so at the time the distance must have felt natural, just the order of things. And it seemed inevitable that we would always be together.

We finished our food and Tom threw our paper plates into the coals where they flared and curled and died out. He washed the forks and the griddle and wiped his hands on a towel and walked into the trees to his bedroll.

My father disappeared also into the trees. And then my grandfather having to use his hands to help push up onto his feet and that unsteady walk to his mattress, the sound of the springs, rusty and old, as he settled himself in his sleeping bag.

I sat for a while longer listening to the water and the lantern, two sounds from different worlds that fit together anyway because my earliest memories included them. Anything can become familiar and seem meant to be.

I reached up and turned off the gas on the lantern. An immediate loss of light, and the water grown, the tea-bag wicks glowing red along their edges, thin lines that looked as segmented and broken as coals, and then they disappeared and all that was left was the water and darkness and then the light of stars forming against the dark outlines of treetops.

The ancient world. Sounds of water and a breeze, that mountain lit only by stars. A small band of us sleeping on the ground in these trees, waiting for morning when we could hunt. Nothing changed in all that time, in all the world.

I walked into the trees to my bedroll, laid out my sleeping bag and tucked inside, and I wish now I could have slept under hides. I wish now I could have gone all the way back, because if we can go far enough back, we cannot be held accountable.

6.