Goat Mountain: A Novel Part 7

My grandfather's feet in only socks, no boots or moccasins, slopping into water and sand and rock with no care or hesitation, ripping through ferns, the dead man yanked and shaken and soaked and torn. The ferns lush, deep green and unlikely, unchanged for a hundred million years, and the dead man now like how many generations before him, dragged away, and my grandfather as terrifying as any beast the world had ever seen.

Then through pines and into sunlight, the meadow, dry yellow gra.s.s and s.h.i.+mmers of heat, a different world entirely, my grandfather luminous, a second sun brought close. All distance collapsed, each world brought next to every other and no gate at the boundary. My grandfather's legs hidden by the high gra.s.s and so he seemed an orb that glided across that field, disconnected to the ground. The dead man leaving a wake of darker yellow, dull and not catching the light, a hollow that would not fill, and he gazed into this wake, would not lift his eyes to the sky, kept his chin pressed tight, intent.

This meadow the place of all my childhood play, close to camp, a small and nearly perfect meadow that should not have been used for this. One transit erasing all others, polluting memory. But my grandfather did not pause. Swept along unstoppable until the dead man had left his wake and disappeared into brush. We had lost them. Too far away for sound. Tom and I had not moved. We stood with our rifles and watched the far rim of that meadow. My father on the ground in prostration, and no sound from him either.

We waited and the entire mountain seemed to wait with us, all oriented toward where my grandfather had gone down over the horizon and waiting for his return, same as any sun but the night sped up and no darkness, no rest or new beginning, day after burning day without end, and he reappeared above those gra.s.ses and left no mark as he advanced upon us, an orbit that could not be changed, and nothing that had ever happened had left any effect on him.

He crossed the meadow and grew in size and crossed the threshold into pines, in shadow, extinguished, and crushed through ferns and the boundary of the stream back into our world, and he did not stop or notice us with our rifles held low and level, pointing at him, but walked right between Tom and me. If we fired now, and the bullets found some way of pa.s.sing through him, we'd be shooting each other. But he did not look at either of us, the tremendous weight of him set in motion with his pencil legs unsteady and erratic until he reached his mattress, where he collapsed upon it face-first with his arms at his sides and legs flipping up behind. The sound of rusty mattress springs, coils jounced, and that was it. He did not adjust or move except to breathe, the rough rise and fall of mottled flesh and those tiny lungs buried somewhere beneath.

My father rose behind us with a low moan and Tom and I swiveled in unison with our rifles, guards at some gate that had not yet been built. But my father had no interest in us. His eyes were fixed on the far edge of the meadow, and he pa.s.sed beneath the hooks and over the water and through fern and pine and into that bright gra.s.s following in the dead man's wake. A figure clothed and thinner than my grandfather, a figure with legs and a stride and a human form, having to walk across the earth and suffer. A figure on which all that had happened had left a mark.

He pa.s.sed step by step across that meadow beneath the sun and grew shorter at the far end as the land curved down and then was swallowed in brush. We waited, as we had waited before, but the mountain did not wait with us. It was indifferent, my father no devil or G.o.d but only human. His return over the horizon would mean nothing.

But we waited, and my grandfather settled into sleep behind us, his breath slowed and deepened and a faint whistling all through him. A giant at rest, and it was unclear for whom we stood guard. Tom wearing a camo T-s.h.i.+rt, dark patches of green and brown and black, and his rifle held together with tape, ill prepared for some war not yet announced. Both of us ready to fire from the hip, not raising our rifles because it was unclear where we'd aim. As if some enormity were about to descend upon us.

But my father reappeared, a shape become smaller and bent, dragging the dead man, stepping backward across the meadow. Not following the previous wake but wandering aimless through that high gra.s.s, not bothering to look behind, only dragging. His path erratic and jointed, my father pulling in tugs, and the meadow became a larger distance to cross and it seemed too long for him to reach the pines, finally, and then drag through ferns and into the creek. The dead man's bare ankles sweeping downward a bit in the current, at play again on a sunny day, going down to the creek to cool off, a strange dead man who still had not discovered the gravity of what had happened to him.

My father pulled until the dead man lay beneath the hooks, and he dropped him with his arms flung above, relaxing, not a care in the world. He was a tricky dead man and took advantage any time we looked away.

My father loosened a rope that held a chain and hook, let them fall to the ground, and then he knelt at the man's feet as if he'd wash them, bare feet bloodless and white, not turned dark like the rest of him, but my father took that hook and impaled an ankle, hooking the Achilles tendon, just as he did to hang a buck, and the hook went in bloodless and he impaled the other ankle also and let them fall into the dirt.

Then my father rose and pulled at that rope and wrapped it around a tree to the side and pulled and sweated the line and the dead man rose again as he had before but this time with his ankles skewered the same as any buck and his arms back in praise but his chin ducked, penitent, not so wild now, understanding something of his fate, perhaps. That dark thin belly and the double birth, and as he rose, he swung and we saw that crater again, dark and unknown as any moon, and the flies gathering again, and it seemed that we had stood here before in this same moment and would stand here again and would always be raising the dead man to hang here above us.

12.

WHAT IF JESUS HAD BEEN HUNG THIS WAY, UPSIDE DOWN, spinning slowly, hands partly curled, like claws, and knuckles brus.h.i.+ng dirt? Head up unnaturally, chin against his chest, straining to see the sky past his feet. Jesus the hunter, hanging the same as any beast. The pews of every church built high against the ceiling so that we could look down into his eyes. Or perhaps we'd all lie on a bare floor, no pews at all, and gaze upward, or even hang ourselves from our feet in long rows like bats and chant as the blood filled our heads.

But his knuckles are in the dirt as he twirls, and so there can be no church at all, nothing with a floor and nothing with a roof because then he can't see the sky.

My father did not cover him. No sack to hide this Jesus, this dead man, nothing to contain him.

I stood with my rifle like a Roman guard and what could not be stopped was my attempt to read the stigmata. The human mind will always read and will never stop reading. This double birth, the entry hole of the bullet above but now hanging below where the umbilical cord has been cut, this tells us we are reborn in death. The crater behind it tells us that this mortal life was empty. This is not what these things mean at all, of course, but we can't stop our minds. I can't stop reading the dead man, even now, because I still want something, just as he will always have that look of wanting more.

My grandfather slept peacefully. Uneven breath that could halt at any moment but always kept going and no less peaceful for being uneven. I stood between him and the dead man, two forms in repose, and I didn't know which direction to face. Always turning, like that slow spin. My father and Tom gone to their bedrolls but I knew they would not sleep. They would only lie in that forest looking up toward the sky, become the congregation, following his gaze.

The trees become pillars of stone, carved in a language forgotten, and the sky our dome, the mountain behind us the apse. Floor of dirt and no ceiling that can be reached. The altar brought out through the nave to the very entrance, to the border of that stream and the sunlight and meadow beyond, the world outside this sanctuary. Simplest of altars, a hook and chain. And a great slab of marble for the priest, the mattress of my grandfather. The rest of us arrayed in fear around him. Each ma.s.s a battle, the breaking of the body of Christ and drinking of his blood. The Christian ma.s.s more gruesome already than anything we could invent. Even the dead man hanging hooked by his ankles was tame, no drinking of his blood, no ingesting his flesh. We were not cannibals.

The repose of the dead man and my grandfather, the great calm, neither of them moving except from air, in the breeze or to breathe, that repose was why I couldn't move. I stood there with my rifle for hours expecting something to happen at each moment but there was only breeze and breath and the slow growth of the shadows, the pillars turning over the ground before me, circular movement like a dial to be read, arrangement in some pattern from the very beginning.

At times it seemed I would not stay on my feet, the world tilted so steeply. But each time it corrected, and each new position of shadow solidified and held and then slipped again. Like riding the card on a gigantic compa.s.s, caught somewhere near an edge, never in the center.

The afternoon darkened, the meadow burning at a lower pitch, all the sky still bright but deepened in color, all the white gone from the yellow and blue and replaced by gold and black, and each tree around me gained in presence, bark etched and hardened but grown.

Figures visible in the patterns of the bark, carvings on the pillars but not anything I could read. Waiting for the priest to rise again, and he rose first. s.h.i.+fting sideways on his mattress, digging at an ear, deep exhale and then he rolled and sat on the edge, looked at me.

You'll need to always be like that, he said.

He was only a man, my grandfather. I could see that at moments like this, when he first woke. His mouth open in a yawn of dental nightmare, dirty fingernails scratching at his white belly, leaving pink tracks, pulling on his boots and then his brown hunting s.h.i.+rt and that jacket he always wore, shrinking in his clothing, his fringe of hair bent, digging a finger again into an ear. Only a man. But these moments never lasted.

He heaved forward and swung back into the mattress, springs squeaking, and heaved forward again and ended up somehow on top of his feet and legs. Paused for a moment, peered curiously around, eyes blinking, some kind of bird too fat to fly. Same thoughts as any bird, thoughts of nothing, no mind. Icy soul of anything made too long ago, bird or reptile or rock. And then he tottered off toward the outhouse.

Old and frail, shape-s.h.i.+fter. Trick of the devil. But my own blood. Walking unsteadily beneath the trees, disappearing behind the dark plywood sheets. Outrageous sounds then, as if he were a great bellows flattened. I expected to see him emerge reduced in size, but he came out the same rounded shape still, tottering back toward me and, as always, not looking anywhere. Eyes that had never seen.

You can't stay awake forever, he said.

I backed away, preferring the company of the dead man. Even with his tricks, he was safer. I retreated to that stream and ferns and hanging body, and my grandfather pa.s.sed before me to the table for a second round of lunch. Made himself a sandwich with his hunting knife, licked the blade and stabbed it into the wood.

My father risen now also, no longer armed, nothing to gather, no gun and sh.e.l.ls. p.i.s.sing next to his bedroll and then Tom rising and doing the same and the two of them wandering camp. I turned away and p.i.s.sed into the stream, leaving no trace, no scent to be tracked, rifle tucked in the crook of my arm. My head turned to look over my shoulder, not taking my eyes off my grandfather.

The dead man did not smell good. We hung the meat of bucks to tenderize them, let them break down a bit for at least two days. But no buck smelled like this after only a day. The dead man making himself a nuisance, not properly gutted and no hide to remove. Bits of lung and heart and intestine, entrails, b.a.l.l.s intact. Everything that we stripped from a buck. When I'd finished p.i.s.sing, I moved farther away.

The afternoon had become hot. I could feel it at my back from the meadow, invading the cooler air. All pieces of memory that I tell myself over and over now, the most important few days of my life, days I want to remember in every smallest detail, but how did I tell them to myself then? I have no access to that mind. Grim dream in stops and starts filled with outrageous shapes.

My grandfather rose from the table and walked like a toddler to his bed to grab his rifle. Held it barrel to the sky and checked there was no sh.e.l.l in the chamber, or did he let the bolt slide back an inch farther and load a sh.e.l.l? No way to tell from twenty-five yards away. I held my rifle in both hands, ready to push down on the bale to lever a round. The rifle heavy from standing with it for hours, my shoulders stretched and hung.

I sidestepped and put the truck between us, a s.h.i.+eld, and waited until my grandfather heaved himself into the cab, and Tom after him, and then my father came around to my side, looking at me like he had never seen me before, and then I climbed into the back.

Riding in this truck as if we shared a common destiny, as if we could be brought together. Rolling slowly out of those trees onto open dirt road, letting the earth turn beneath us. Pa.s.sing the dead land of the imaginary buck, crossing into wide views and gentle slope that curved all the way up to the high ridges, rockfall and talus slopes. Afternoon still, and hot, but the time of shadows, each tree up that slope standing individually and marking itself against the ground. Every small plant and fallen branch and stone making itself known, until a hillside was more than could be seen. A texture only. The creation too much.

My father driving slowly now. This would be a hunt. Low whine of the four-wheel drive, the feel of the truck held back in gear. End of day the time when deer would come out of the brush to feed in the open and under trees.

We pa.s.sed the turnoff to the switchbacks and bear wallow, continued on to the next wide ridge that sloped downward into white pines, both sugar and gray. Big Bertha coming into view, second-largest white pine in the state, a trunk ten feet thick and tapering only gradually until the very top, where it gnarled and kinked and crested in a wide flat plane of branches and needles that had always looked foreign to me, something from Africa or imagined lands, not from this place. Standing leagues above any other tree, a kind of signal, a living monument. Its bark almost pink in this light. Centuries made visible and real, a recognition of time that we could touch.

We always stopped here, always walked up to that ancient trunk and touched it with a hand, even if briefly. It had to be done, looking up into that enormity.

But my father pa.s.sed without stopping, and I was still gazing back at the tree. A refusal of scale, a rupturing of normal form into this giant, an indication of what was always there lurking behind all that we believe. Any part of our world capable of this at any moment.

My father driving us farther down into the lower glades. I knew now that was where he was headed. Two wide meadows that fell hundreds of yards down a hillside, one above the other with a strip of brush between. The most open land of the ranch, rimmed by sugar pines.

The smell of sugar pines, sweeter like their name. And the enormous cones, two feet long and half a foot thick, wide petals of something not wood or flower but a substance all its own, curving outward together and darker at their tips. My father stopped in the final stand of trees before we'd enter the glades, stopped where he always had, and Tom was out to make room for my grandfather, who appeared without his rifle because he cared more for these cones than he ever had for deer.

My grandfather a collector but only of these cones. Something I never understood. I hopped down and followed at a safe distance under the trees. Cool in here, the breeze that came at the end of every day, and the pines looked silky, the pale green arranged everywhere above us in brushed arcs, a kind of sanctuary, the trees very tall, taller here than any other stand of sugar pine I'd seen.

My grandfather taking his first steps, leaning too far forward, a child in an enchanted garden. His tongue on his lower lip, mouth open and breathing hard. His hands forward, fingers open. Small hard bird's eyes hunting for seeds. He reached down for a large cone and the weight of him seemed impossibly off-center, tiny legs behind and struggling now to catch up as he lurched forward and rose up and somehow he did not fall and he was holding a cone like a golden egg, peering at it up close, giant cone that perhaps was yet another way of reaching back in time. A pinecone nearly as large as his head, and he held it as he would a child or a lover.

This is how I would like to remember him, standing with a newborn cone raised high in celebration under the soft pale sugar pines, a breeze and late-day sun reaching through, more cones everywhere at his feet. The closest I ever saw to rapture, and the only indication of something good or soft or innocent in him, the only time he might have had a soul.

Fringe of his hair haloed in the light, his fingers pink and new as if he had only now entered the world, and that tongue working gently, pulsing forward and back, his only movement, as if speech had not yet been invented. What he felt or saw was sealed away from the rest of us.

He turned the cone in his hands, and his wonder at it did not diminish. He was looking at it still as he walked toward the truck, and then he flipped it into the bed and turned away for another.

He would do this for the rest of the afternoon, until the bed would be filled with these cones. He would want to keep them all, and there would be a quarrel with my father when it came time to pack the truck again, my father sliding the boxes of gear and the cones bunching and crus.h.i.+ng. At my grandfather's house on the lake, enormous piles of thousands of cones stacked behind the garage. A kind of nest? I never understood my grandfather, not one thing about him.

My father and Tom had wandered off to the edge of the glade, and I followed, left my grandfather to his collecting. A wall of sunlight, the end of shade and cool breeze, gra.s.shoppers flung in arcs through hot air, b.u.t.terflies and dragonflies. I had to shade my eyes from the burn.

My father lying in the dry yellow gra.s.s as if he were sunbathing, except his face was squinting in displeasure, eyes closed but no rest. Ants crawling over him, black figures on his arms and neck and boots.

The pattern of wind in the gra.s.s, sweeping up the hill in rounded blows that veered and spread and vanished again. Silver gone yellow, returned to waiting, and then silver again, pressed low against the earth. No predicting where or when but only watching and waiting, seeing and forgetting. An element we could never hold, never capture, even as we breathed it. And the land in folds and rises already, preshaped. All made silent by the trees behind us, a dislocation of sound. What we saw seemed only a dream, another place of wors.h.i.+p, but this time the congregation was left alone, the priest become a child tottering off into his cones.

13.

DESERT THE HOME OF THE BIBLE. WE COME FROM DESERT. We're meant to walk across dry ground, meant to breathe dry wind. This open glade of dry gra.s.s grown only to our s.h.i.+ns, thin stalks with too much s.p.a.ce between, not a place where more can grow. Hordes of us burning under the sun, water a clock and nothing more, step after step in our vast migrations, and how did we become so numerous?

Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, then Abel is gone, but there are enough people for Cain to build a city. We are sudden apparitions, risen out of the dust in great armies as Cain walked toward where he would found that city. Cain and the others we remember from the Old Testament are demiG.o.ds. Noah lived nine hundred and thirty years. But we are more ephemeral, risen and walking, made of dust but filled with thirst. Dust that will not rest. And this is G.o.d's will, but his cruelty was to make the dust think, so that it would know its thirst as it walked.

Tom already far down that slope, a walker the same as thousands of generations before him, dissolving into the folds of earth, visible and then gone and then visible again, patterns sweeping over him, patterns he would not see or know but would partic.i.p.ate in nonetheless.

And I followed, as of course I would. Walking is all we know. Only the broken lie down and refuse to walk. My father with all taken away: his rifle, his will, his future. There was nothing I could do but leave him. The feel of that ground beneath my boots, ripped and changed forever, sound of it against the wind, a scab-land of spiked burrs and yellow thorns, dislocated and without source, brought here and forgotten.

Some feeling of hope at the beginning of every walk, something in the act of setting out, a pleasure. The scattering of small lizards before me, bodies without momentum, a run and instant stop then run again. Gravity with no hold at that scale.

I looked for the tallest of the gra.s.ses and pulled one from the ground, bent the end back carefully and creased it over itself and tied to form a slipknot. Squatting with my rifle close, the stock of it on the ground and barrel on my shoulder. I kept an eye on Tom where he was disappearing below and also on the edge of the glade above, where my father and grandfather were lost to their own callings.

A small loop now at the end of the gra.s.s, slipknot noose for lizards, and I stood and walked carefully, each footfall held back and erased, and I followed these tiny remnants of time, plated backs and scaled necks, holes only for ears and expressionless mouth, eyes direct apprehenders of the world, no mediation, no thought. The first hunters and no desire to hunt but only shadows of movement and instinct to devour. If I held still, I became the same as any rock, unrecognized. All forgotten instantly, each moment new, the world as it is. On moving, I became something again. And so I became rock then movement then rock then movement then rock again across that desert until the yellow stalk I held outstretched with its loop hovered just above a fat lizard with blue along the sides of its neck.

I was very still, and the gra.s.s in my hand trembled only slightly, moving less than the stalks around us that leaned over and shook and went upright again. Sound of that to a lizard. Head jointed, twitched to one side, c.o.c.ked upward. Body a sack of thick skin, slumped.

I lowered the noose very slowly, and the lizard c.o.c.ked its head the other way, gauging what? I lowered until the edge of the loop came down past his chin, and then I yanked back and up and the lizard dangled midair in a panic that reached back to everything that had ever crawled. Legs and tail thras.h.i.+ng at air, body kinking, all soundless. The wind in the gra.s.ses and trees all that I could hear. I held him up close, looked into his eyes, and still no recognition. Tail a snake in a wave pattern, as responsive as water in wind, just as conscious. Yellow collar, blue throat, warm air, all equivalent.

I lowered him to the ground and he charged at the collar. I let go. A lizard now with a stalk trailing, and perhaps it would trail always.

Every field populated. Humans not sovereign. The lizard a predator, a giant, but not enough of him to cover this ground. All has been taken over by insects. Hundreds or thousands within reach no matter where we stand. I went down on my hands and knees, the rifle in dirt and bare gra.s.s, and watched the infestation. Ants black or black and red, polished and untouched and their legs not quite reaching ground, suspended just enough to leave no track. Stink bugs a dull gray and folded, bright orange along their edges. Gra.s.shoppers nearly invisible against the light brown clumps of dirt, waiting until the very last moment to jump. The activity of the world mostly invisible to us.

I rose and walked again, the hot air and late sun a pleasure, even the lizards and insects a pleasure, something about being that age, something I have trouble recovering now. I look at a field now and see nothing but time.

But when I was eleven, time was unlimited and unknown, life a thing that stretched infinitely, and I walked through gra.s.s without being able to feel my ankles or knees or back, nothing yet failed, joints a rumor only, muscle and bone not yet separating. I felt no guilt at all, no remorse, and no worry as I know it now, only impatience, only movement, and this slope caved and rose and the wind swept past and I could see across to other mountains and feel the mountain rise behind me.

I was looking for bucks again, along every edge. Approaching the line of brush and trees that divided the two glades, I slowed and crouched and kept my rifle low. The shadows stretching toward me, a thin ruff of cover. I ducked beneath branches of small gray pines and found Tom sitting against a trunk, hidden in shadow.

No sign of a buck, he whispered.

I sat against a trunk ten feet away. Our rifles across our thighs. A few more trees in front of us and then the bright yellow of the enormous glade below, large enough to be its own region. A ridge in the center with rock outcrops. A fold to the left that fell down into a large stand of sugar pines. Wide arcs of open field to either side, and a line of brush high on the right, a fire road hidden behind it.

Breezy here, cooler in the shade, cicadas pulsing. Large dragonflies cruising the margins. A few small white b.u.t.terflies in their jagged flights just above the tips of the dry gra.s.ses.

I was there the day you were born, Tom said. There was no sign.

Sign of what?

Nothing to warn us. If anything, you seemed like nothing. I had a beer, I got bored, and I left.

What was my mother like?

Ask your dad.

He never says.

Well.

The lower glade a great burning disk, and we rode an edge of it, tilting higher. The heat of it.

It's not just that you've done one thing, Tom said.

What's that?

The problem is that you're never going to follow any rule, ever.

What does that mean?

It means nothing. That's the problem. There's nothing left to hold anything together.

I didn't understand what Tom was saying. I do understand now. And I wish I could talk with him now. He was my best chance. My father and grandfather too distorted. But at the time, I said nothing. I only looked at him, this familiar face, eyes floating somewhere behind his gla.s.ses, this face like a boy's.

I would help, he said. You know that. If there were anything I could do for your family, I would help.

Thank you.

Well enjoy your last freedom. You'll be sitting here like this, but the tree trunks will be bars and the wind will smell like p.i.s.s and s.h.i.+t and sweat and puke and your b.u.t.t will be on concrete. You won't be holding a rifle. No one could have seen what you are, but they'll all find out when we get back. And from then on, every time anyone looks at you, you'll see what they think of you.

I looked out at that burning plain and the rock outcrops in the center, heaved up and broken. Scattered remnants fallen to both sides, broken long enough ago they were covered in lichen. But of course that's how I see it now. At the time, I saw the glade, the outcrop of rock, and I thought nothing of it, had no sense of nostalgia or time or ruin that could make broken rock the scattered remnants, had no more thought than any lizard during moments like this that might have held a key. All wasted on my younger self, and I wish I could remember exactly what Tom said, because there might have been something more, something that would help now, but what I remember most is what he said next.

You'll rot for thirty years. And when you get out, I'll be waiting. You'll feel it before you hear it, the rifle slug in your back. Just remember, when you get out, that's what's coming.

I remember that clearly because of the shock of it, because it was not like Tom, didn't fit with any other memory of him.

Tom walked into the glade, into the heat and sun and gra.s.ses, and angled off to the left, downhill. Camouflaged T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, crouched, moving carefully, returning to the hunt.

And so I hunted too. What I was born for. Emerged in the light and followed the edge of brush uphill, remained close and hidden against it, my right arm sc.r.a.ped at by spines and thorns. The lower glade an arena, and the two of us circling along its edges in opposite directions.

Tom working his way toward that stand of sugar pines at the bottom, but I could see nothing there except shade and more of the cones that appeared giant even from a distance. Tom become smaller and nearly invisible against the dark brush, known only by his movement. What we expected to find was unclear. We could already see the entire glade, and there was plenty of s.p.a.ce under those trees, no place for a buck to hide. We were circling a great emptiness.

I was close to the fire road hidden somewhere behind this brush, and then I was pus.h.i.+ng through, leaving the glade and Tom, trying to become thin as the branches clung. Stepping sideways, rifle out front in my left hand. The scratches along my arm a pleasure, a relief from the itching welts and boils of poison oak, and then an ache. I could feel it spreading and growing in this heat, taking over more and more of my skin. Welling along my belly and sides, sc.r.a.ped at also as my T-s.h.i.+rt rode up, a pleasure and pain surging. Dry, everything dry, and I hadn't had water in hours. Dizzy and the top of my head wavering. And I wondered if I was off course and the fire road not here at all, just wading into dry brush that would never end.