Goat Mountain: A Novel Part 4

ALL THE AIR GONE OUT OF THE WORLD, AND MY RIBS PINNED down, being crushed. An enormous weight, and I woke to my grandfather sitting on me. One hand on my face, pus.h.i.+ng my head back against the ground, his other hand high in the air, holding his knife, ready to slash my throat like the throat of any sacrificial animal.

My legs moving on their own, kicking at the ground, and my left arm, free, punching into his side, but the rest of me was pinned.

He was staring down at me, that wide expanse of face featureless and the color of bone in starlight. No recognition, only a blank look into the hollowness of the world, and that knife held high, ready.

I could have cried out, could have asked my father for help, but that would have required time and sequence, one act following another, and my grandfather above me with that knife was outside of time. That moment an eternity and also an instant, and it held every other moment between the two of us.

Waterwheels here at the creek, his thick fingers holding an impossibly tiny nail in place against a thin slat of wood, tapping with a hammer, tapping lightly, careful not to split. Placing that slat between uprights in the stream, and the wheel coming to life immediately, a pulse to its revolutions, a pause between each of the two flings from water, and that pulse a reflection of our own blood.

Those hands on the pier at the edge of the lake holding a catfish in moonlight. Slick dark dream created from water, from water and mud and whatever quickens in each living thing, mouth wide and gasping, rimmed by tendrils, an ugliness and beauty that would not be believed. Hands that never hesitated, that ripped that hook from deep inside the fish even if every organ inside was attached, even if the entire stomach had to be pulled out through that mouth. The tail churning side to side through air that had no thickness, nothing to push against, and the flesh in folds, loose-skinned, invented too quickly.

The lake with its own stagnant breath always close, rotting of dead carp and birds caught in the tules, rotting of algae on the rocks, baked each day in the sun and then exhaling at night. The air thick with water and rot and these mudcats rising out of that, and my grandfather made of that also. A presence that had never begun but had always been.

I waited for that knife to come down. Nothing I could do against it, my throat exposed and the rest of me helpless. My grandfather as large and unfeeling as mountains.

I can't help but think now of Abraham and Isaac, of course, and I wonder whether every story in the Bible comes from Cain. A riddle, all of it, testing a man and finding him worthy because he's willing to kill? Cain as our goodness, our faith, our murderousness as our salvation? No guidance is possible from the Bible. Only confusion.

And what does it mean that this was my grandfather, not my father? How do we read our lives when the story has veered off from what we know? A grandfather reaches further back, is more a father than the father himself. For him, the sacrifice is greater, the erasure reaching further into the future, but he also feels nothing, and so is there any sacrifice at all?

My grandfather did not come from G.o.d. I'm sure of that. He came from something older, unthinking, unfeeling. He came from something as true as rock and stars, a place of no recognition, before names. And what he offered was annihilation.

But not this night. This night the knife did not come down. My grandfather rose to his feet and air entered my lungs again and he turned and walked back to his bed. A messenger with no message, sent by nothing. I lay with my heart clenching and the oxygen flooding everywhere, and I had to put my arms out not to fall off that ground.

I could smell smoke from the fire still, last smoke, and the occasional pop of a coal. I could hear water and wind rising as the blood ebbed in my temples, and I didn't know where I could hide. All places here exposed.

I waited until my pulse and breath were as near silent as they could be, and I waited until the soft snoring of the men was enough that it might include my grandfather, and then I rose in my socks, no boots, and moved slowly toward the creek. Each foot placed in the pine needles and tested, making sure no small branches or twigs might snap. Crouched and arms wide for balance, a kind of bird alighting in the shadows. The heat falling from me, the night air cold.

I pa.s.sed down through camp and made it to the truck. I was not far from the dead man. His sack white in the darkness, all color leached away, and I must have swayed in place, because he seemed to be moving. A pendulum ticking away in that night, as my grandfather had said.

I stood with my hand on the driver's door and waited, listening for any sound of my grandfather, keeping an eye also on the dead man for whatever he might do, and when I could wait no longer, I opened that door and the cab light came on and my hand lunged in behind the seat to grab my rifle, cool stock and colder metal, and I pulled it free, the heft of it, and closed the door gently, only a click, and the light was off and I was standing in darkness again, blinded. I wouldn't be able to see if anything came at me. I could no longer see the dead man in his sack. I stepped away backward, quickly, crouched, the rifle held before me, and half-ran backward down that road, an ape reversed, far away from camp, and lay down in the dirt with the rifle at my shoulder, ready to skylight any man or beast that might come charging.

I had only three sh.e.l.ls in the rifle. No extra ammunition. As quietly as possible, I levered one of the sh.e.l.ls into the chamber, ready to fire, my finger just above the trigger. Exposed on this road, forest on every side that could be hiding anything, and my ears still useless from blood.

Lying at the very bottom of this ocean of air. Clung to that. The solidity rea.s.suring. The haze of stars so far away they were the same as not real. No longer individual but so many billions they could create a wash of light. The origin of my grandfather the same, unreachable and unimaginable, and the origin of the dead man, also, and the origin of myself. All vacuums of meaning.

TOO COLD IN THAT NIGHT to sleep exposed on the road in the dirt. I s.h.i.+vered and rose in a landscape transformed by the moon. The road a clear white path winding upward into forest that grew more dense and dark where we camped. This is the place we had chosen, the farthest in and most hidden.

Above us, great faces of cliff and broken ridge, long pale slides of talus. Some instinct to back up close against the rock, and if there had been a cave, inside is where our camp would have been.

Standing alone in the cold, I could feel immensity, how small I was at this moment. Wearing only socks, underwear, and a T-s.h.i.+rt, I didn't know how I had lasted this long. Kept warm only by fear.

All was silent. Not a sound in that void. And without sound, the distances could have been anything. The rock faces impossible to gauge in size. All the world waiting, ridges in every direction as I turned. The still point, when the air had equalized and there was no breeze, and if the sun never rose, all would remain this way. Each night, it was possible to want that, to want the night to never end.

I let the hammer down carefully on the rifle so it would not fire. The metal of that rifle the coldest element, and I tried to touch only the wood, held it in both hands before me as I walked toward camp. Like the last remnant of some larger band advancing still.

I left the road as I neared, made my way up through trees to come at camp from higher ground. Large pines with cones scattered everywhere and fallen smaller branches, so that I had to test each step before allowing any weight. The walk of a blind man, each foot seeking ground and no momentum. Ready to stop at any moment.

In the forest, all vision reversed. On the road, under the bright moon, all substance was light, outlined in shadow, but here all substance came from darkness, and it felt as if the world could have been created this way. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. This was how it began, before the light. Not absence of matter but antimatter. A void prefiguring. The first pull that shapes us.

Walking through that forest, I had to focus on the darkness, because light was insubstantial and could only mislead. The forest grew as I walked, all voids always expanding, the distances seeming farther. From the road, I had seen the entire stand of pines between the rock above and road below, notched into the mountain, bordered and finite, but once I was in it, all borders fell away and new land emerged, small ridges and folds inventing themselves between me and camp and each step slower than the last.

The rifle was all I had, held close across my chest, and I was without scale, could have been any size, nothing around me fixed, and it was some time before I was above the camp, oriented by the water rus.h.i.+ng into that sink and by pattern of moonlight on the roof above the table and on the cab of the pickup. More difficult to find the men where they slept, but I was careful, and I found the place where my grandfather had been ready to slit my throat with that knife, and I felt exposed and afraid and was s.h.i.+vering, looking constantly behind and to all sides, but I worked down closer through the trees until I could see the white of his mattress and his great bulk lying upon it.

I held that rifle with my thumb ready to pull back the hammer and considered hunting my own grandfather. He had come close to killing me, and it seemed he could still do so at any moment. I didn't know that I could sleep and count on waking up.

I raised my rifle to my shoulder and lined up that round peep sight with the thin vertical tip on the barrel, old metal that my grandfather himself had held when he was a boy, the rifle he had used to kill his first buck, and the dark bulk of him was softened and made smaller by this deadly alignment of fin and circle, all invention colder and smaller than we expect, its power a transgression, an opening of the heavens themselves, and this eased my fear. I pulled back the hammer with my thumb and now no one in this world had any power to stop me. Whatever would be, I would decide. And the poacher had made all possible. There was no longer anything I couldn't do.

But I lowered the hammer and then lowered the rifle. I can't say why I didn't pull the trigger then any more than I can say why I did pull it earlier. The decisions we make come from nowhere near our conscious minds. I stepped back carefully to my sleeping bag and carried it farther off into the trees, higher on that slope, found a hollow behind a fallen trunk, a place blocked from view, and lay down and tried to get warm, held my rifle close and hoped for sleep.

7.

THE DARKNESS A GREAT MUSCLE TIGHTENING, FILLED WITH blood, a living thing already before G.o.d came to do his work. No first breath but an earlier animation and pulse and pressure. I lay in that darkness waiting, and I did not sleep, and the stars meant nothing but only the dark s.p.a.ces between them. That was what lived and breathed and flexed. The ground beneath me swinging gently, responding to the pull, and I was caught between. A kind of trap on springs and my grandfather in his great bulk tottering somewhere in the darkness, his footfalls landing anywhere.

What can never be understood is time, why a foot falls when it does. My grandfather waiting my entire life, and something in me waiting also.

It seemed possible that I would never sleep again. My mind as clear as the cold air, fully alert, and each moment expanded and nearly infinite. That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always slipping.

But eventually I heard the pumping of the lantern, Tom risen to cook breakfast, and the trees appeared above me, created in an instant, transformed absolutely from their shadows, made in the light, thousands of needles without true color, yellow-white instead of green, and their heavy cones and branches and the deep etchings of their trunks. All distance gone, the heavens erased. The world flattened.

I could not hear that soft roar of the lantern, a sound I loved, because the spring was too loud in the basin, but I could hear metal on metal, sc.r.a.ping and cutting as Tom worked, and I knew that I had pa.s.sed into safety. My grandfather would not come for me now. Now the day had begun and we would all hunt together and all else that waited for us would be deferred.

I remained in my sleeping bag, in the warmth, and the breeze rose even though there was no sign yet of the sun. A prefiguring, the air itself impatient for the day. I do imagine the creation like this. A thing awaited, a restlessness.

The light of the lantern not steady but pulsing slowly enough to notice, a different kind of sun. And this camp become its own dwarf universe, separated from the darkness all around. I rose and pulled on my jeans and boots and jacket and hat, my shadow cast enormously against the slope and trees behind. Tom the largest giant of all, one swing of his arm covering my entire region in shadow and then gone again.

I rolled and tied the old sleeping bag and left it under the protection of the fallen trunk. I stepped sideways along the hill, rifle in both hands, that sh.e.l.l still in the chamber, ready, and came at camp from a different direction, close along the spring and its pipe and stream, the sounds of my footfalls covered.

Tom standing at the griddle backlit by the lantern. His camo baseball cap and jacket, mottled dark greens. One hand in his pocket, the other holding a spatula. He looked up and saw me.

Same as any other breakfast, he said. Same as any other hunt. Holding your rifle. But I know the difference.

Tom's face in shadow but that voice the same as I'd heard all my life.

You don't get to do something and have it be nothing. Soon as we're back, I'm going straight to the sheriff.

You're right, Tom, my father said. You should turn yourself in after shooting that man. It's the right thing to do. My father on the other side of the table, downhill, his face revealed by the lantern. He had been visiting the dead man, perhaps.

I don't believe I heard you right, Tom said. He turned away from me and the griddle, faced my father.

You heard.

No, I can't have heard you right, Tom said.

Our work here is to collect the evidence, my father said. I've put that man in a sack, and I've apprehended you, and brought you back with the evidence. Three of us as witnesses.

You'd do that.

Yes I would.

You're sure about that.

Yep. Though maybe there's no need for anyone to visit the sheriff at all. That seems better, doesn't it?

Well. Tom turned back to the griddle. First hotcakes are ready, he said. Time to grab plates.

I held my rifle down low, out of reach, and stepped just close enough to grab a plate. Tom put two pancakes on it and looked at me. I was in his shadow and could see his face now, stubbled and tired and his eyes distorted behind those gla.s.ses.

I sat at the downhill side of the table, steered clear of my father. Rifle b.u.t.t between my feet and barrel coming up past my right shoulder, in close and protected. I grabbed the pot of cream of mushroom soup steaming at the center of the table and poured it over my pancakes, creamy white with dark chunks, half-moons. Thick gravy, condensed without the water added.

My father sat down opposite and yet managed not to see me. I was not there. He poured the gravy over his own pancakes and cut a piece with his fork. Roar of the lantern the primary sound now, close above us.

My grandfather ambled out of the darkness to the table, and my father got up to allow him room to swivel his legs across the bench. The sound of his breath working, lungs too small for all that bulk, a heart the size of a walnut. Everything inside him shrunken away, until finally you could cut him open and find only endless fat.

A plate put before him, and he poured the gravy and began chewing even before the food hit his mouth.

My father cutting perfect double-layered triangles, as he always did. Portioning the same amount of gravy on each bite, chewing for about the same length of time, everything ordered.

And then Tom joined, stabbing his legs in beside me. His plate piled with three pancakes, taking more. He poured the white gravy and then cut in a ragged way with his fork, working toward the center of the pancakes without tr.i.m.m.i.n.g any edges. My father always annoyed by this, glancing over as he ate. And suddenly it seemed as if this could be any other hunting trip, rising early in the morning, before the light, my father glancing over at Tom's plate and holding back from saying anything. The lantern and the spring. The wind coming up.

The dead man just playing, a joker tied himself in a sack, horsing around. I looked over my shoulder and he was there, swaying a bit in the breeze, holding back his laughter, his chin tucked into his chest, eyes closed.

I do understand that something has happened, my father said.

Hallelujah, Tom said.

But think about what the two of you have suggested. We have killing and burning my son as one suggestion, and that from his own grandfather, who apparently has lost his mind.

My grandfather said nothing in response. A jaw chewing as automatically as any cow's, eyes vacant.

And then we have the bright idea of going to the sheriff, so that we can all explain how this happened and why we brought him here and put him in a sack and on and on. We'll have lots of time in pajamas for the rest of our lives to get the stories to work out.

It's not too late, Tom said. It's still only one person committed a crime.

Not true, my grandfather said. Not true. He was staring now at the dead man, sighting him from farther off than seemed possible, and his fist on the table with the fork sticking up.

So what's your bright idea? Tom asked.

We bury him, my father said.

Bury him, Tom said. A proper Christian burial. Do we invite his mother?

It's easy, my father said. All this land, and no one here, no way to check all of it. We go out in the brush somewhere and dig down and bury him and forget about the whole thing.

As if it never happened.

Yeah.

And what happens when they come looking for him?

Let them look. We don't know anything.

And what happens when they find that blood where he was shot?

Nothing. There's no body. And we don't know anything.

We don't know anything.

Yeah.

And your son never says anything, never in his entire life. Doesn't slip and say something at school.

Yeah.

That man in the sack is not the problem, my grandfather said. You take care of that and you still have taken care of nothing.

My zombie dad suddenly the f.u.c.king philosopher.

Zombie?

Yeah, Dad, as in you're never f.u.c.king home. You're as lively as a piece of wood. And now suddenly, when there's a problem and I could use some help, you're f.u.c.king Aristotle. Hooga booga. We know not what comes from our own a.r.s.es. Doing something is doing nothing. Waa waa waa.

My grandfather swung that fist with the fork faster than I had imagined possible, and now his fork was standing up in my father's forearm where his sleeve was rolled back, the tines deep in his flesh and already turning red at the edges. So sudden it seemed almost as if forks were supposed to stick up out of forearms.

Then a bellowing from my father, yanking the fork free, hints of red in the air, red even in the flattening light, and my father merged with that great bulk, a collision that reversed time, that took what had calved away and found it entire again, one ma.s.s falling backward, suspended, a fall soft and continuing, a kind of love almost, the underside of boots waving above the table now and a whump of sacks of flesh hitting earth, a snarl of sound unrecognizable to me, and nothing set in motion would ever cease. A tumbling and grunting across ground I could not see, so I stood, as Tom did, and we watched this ma.s.s work its way toward the land of miniature waterwheels and islands and channels, and these giants, at times separate, at times combined, rose and fell across that land, the water a way to mark movement, great splashes and sprays in the shadow now of the tree but carrying light anyway, a faint blue to it even when lofted, and I was standing now at the water's edge, and holding my rifle in both hands, and my father labored for me. He was crying. I could hear that. He was weeping as he pummeled my grandfather and was pummeled back, slapping sounds flat and unconnected. Tumbling into light again, farther downstream, and I saw my grandfather's mouth open, great dark hole inhaling, fueling that ma.s.s. I knew my father had no hope.

My father was weakened by a sense of right and wrong. The unjust was a weight to him, and he would return the world to a perfect order, and that can never be done. But my grandfather worked from older rules, I see now, from what s.h.i.+fted mountains and made light bend. He was waiting only to see what would happen, and no outcome was any less desirable than any other. I didn't know that at the time, but I had some sense of it, a fear that was wholly earned, an instinct that was unerring, an instinct my father had somehow lost.

My father lay flat on his back in the stream, face barely above water, and my grandfather lay across him looking up into darkness and used only his elbow, jabs downward and my father buckling each time, and my grandfather seemed not even interested, unwilling to make a greater effort. Only these lazy, punis.h.i.+ng jabs, and the blank stare into nothing above.

That face, that blank stare, is what I still need to understand. How could I kill and feel nothing? Can we ever know how we have become?

This is why I keep looking to the Bible. It's almost entirely worthless, and I don't care about Jesus, but the Old Testament is a collection of stories from an earlier time, atavistic shadows that I keep wandering through, hoping for recognition.

The fight was over, my father defeated, and my grandfather rested on him, that elbow still jabbing downward now and then. The stream considering them just another island, the cold soaking into my father, and Tom and I stood at the bank and did nothing. My grandfather not a force that could be mitigated in any way. We could only wait.

And finally he rose. To his knees, pus.h.i.+ng at my father for leverage, and then one leg up and a kind of rush and fall forward to get the other leg under him, and he kept falling forward with heavy steps across that stream and past the table and all the way to his mattress, where we heard him collapse again.