Goat Mountain Read online

  15

  OBLIGATION. WHAT’S REQUIRED OF US BY GOD. THE ORDER of things. We sow what we can, but god found Cain’s offerings inadequate. And nothing more that Cain could do. What if it’s not possible to please god? No offering sufficient, but an offering required nonetheless.

  That buck was what my family required, and yet it wasn’t sufficient. No celebration. But my grandfather made sure it would be my kill.

  I circled the buck from lower ground. Head turning, hooves digging, trying to face me. Tiring, bleeding out, coming closer to some dull recognition.

  On hand and knee I crawled across that dirt, shoulders ducked close to the ground, and when I was so close my face was almost touching the hide of his back, his head and antlers yanking, trying to see me, I leaped from all fours and wrapped my arms around his neck.

  Thrashing, risen up from the earth, that neck still alive. Every beast made for man, put here for him, but of course that’s a lie. The buck fought for his own dominion, roared and shook his horns and yanked his neck and tried to throw me off. What I knew was that he wanted to live. Something I could never have felt for the dead man, the pull of a trigger too easy, a trigger something that makes us forget what killing means. But in my hands I could feel the pulse of the buck’s neck, the panic in him, the terrifying loss, the impossibility that anything could ever be just, the tragedy of our own death, incomprehensible, and the will in us to disbelieve. In killing, I was taking everything. And what I destroyed could never be remade. I knew that and reached for my knife.

  My left shoulder slammed against the ground over and over, and I was being shaken loose, gripping with that arm, and I would have let go if not for my grandfather watching. I had lost the desire to kill. I would have reversed time and not fired my rifle, let the buck leap into the brush and escape. I felt remorse, though I had no word for that at the time or even any possibility of understanding the concept. We were put here to kill. That was immutable. It was family law and the law of the world. And I reached for my knife because my grandfather was there to enforce. But who I was had changed. From that moment on, every kill would be bitter to me. Every kill would be something forced, something I did not want. And that’s what would make me human. To kill out of obligation, to kill even when I did not want to.

  I pulled my knife across the buck’s throat, and it did not cut easily. I had to saw back and forth as the buck screamed like any human and flailed and thrashed and did not want to die. And even when no sound would come out, when blood was everywhere and the buck’s throat cut and filled, I knew he was still trying to scream, and I’m glad I could not see his mouth or eyes and could see only the stiff hairs of his hide as he struggled and fell and shook against the ground.

  Bathed in blood. The buck still jerking. And I just kept sawing, kept cutting deeper and deeper until I could feel the blade against bone, against spine, and then I let go of the knife and just held on until the buck moved no more.

  No animal should be treated like that, Tom said.

  Every animal is treated like that, my grandfather said. He still had his rifle to his shoulder, ready, barrel pointed at the ground just uphill from me and the buck, as if he might shoot again at any moment.

  We’ve never treated a buck like that, my father said. Never in our lives. Never in all the times we’ve hunted here.

  We’ve done the same thing every time.

  No we haven’t.

  You think somehow you can be safe. You think you can be untouched. You think it’s possible to be moral.

  More philosophy.

  My grandfather smiled then. Smiled at my father. Different than I had ever seen him do before. And then he turned, still smiling, and pointed his rifle at me. Time to gut that buck, he said.

  I thought he was going to pull the trigger. I froze, just instinct, and my father and Tom froze also, and waited. Whatever happened, they were not going to interfere, apparently.

  But nothing happened. My grandfather only waited, his rifle pointed at me, and I unlocked from the buck, pulled my arm free from under his neck. I hadn’t realized one of my legs was around him, heel digging into his stomach as if into a stirrup. I freed myself and knelt in the dirt.

  The buck’s eye still open, and he did not look dead. Only stunned, held in suspension somehow, but his face still the face of something alive, still taking in the world.

  I scooted around to the front of him, my back now to the men. I could feel my grandfather’s rifle on me still. I turned my knife blade up and snagged the tip in the center of the buck’s belly, white hide, and I was careful to snag only the surface. Any deeper and I’d cut into the pale green stomach sack and release bile.

  I was facing directly into the sunset, downslope on this fire road, and the sun was lying fat on the horizon and burning hot in my face and the breeze had died. I don’t know where it could have gone. I tugged lightly at the knife and the skin broke and the white hairs bloodless. The knife low and parallel to the cut, my fist lower against that belly, keeping everything at the surface, and as the hide parted a few inches the guts swelled into the gap, fragile membranes, slick and pooling in the light but I was partially blinded by that sun and worried I wouldn’t see the tip catching a membrane, so I slipped my left hand in below the knife, fingers caressing the entrails and riding just beneath muscle, the blade skimming through above.

  Ritual. What it does is make the horrifying normal. I was settling in to this gutting already, finding it easy, no longer feeling anything at all for the buck, for the life I had taken. The killing of a few minutes ago already far in the past, shielded. And the men calmed also. No more speaking, only standing in place and watching what they had watched a hundred times before and had themselves performed from the first day they were men.

  A ripping sound through muscle and hide, tearing of all that had been woven together, the blade sharp and able to slide along that surface. An opening of all that had been concealed, the inner workings in each of us, a man not so different from a buck. Opening until the sternum, rib cage, brisket, end of the cut.

  I wiped my knife on his hide and resheathed it, and then I opened that belly, both hands pulling the muscle away, dark cavern of heat and steam and walls of blood and bone, and it should have spilled out toward me, but the buck’s belly was facing uphill and this would not work.

  I grabbed his hind legs and stood with one foot on the stock of my rifle, to keep it pinned. I swung those legs straight into the sky and then heaved against them and this time the buck could not twist against me. This time I rolled him, hams first and gut and chest, then stepping forward to grab his forelegs and rotating those, too, and pulling at his antlers to flop his head.

  I knelt, my back to the sun, the buck and men before me, and as I opened that cavern again all was made iridescent in the last light. The stomach sack the largest orb, green-gray with hints of pearl, the liver a deep red in loaves shaped and set here somehow and impossible. The intestine a yellowish and lumpy tubing. The diaphragm shimmering, thinnest of walls. All sliding toward me, spilling out against my knees. The breath of it.

  I used my knife to cut the diaphragm in a large arc, thin sheen falling away to reveal lung and heart and rib, cut the esophagus, and felt in the intestines for the colon, stiff tube, raised this into the light and cut through then ran my hands along it to discharge the dark pellets until all was flat and smooth and empty.

  I cut through the large vein and artery that fed the liver, resheathed my knife and reached in close and scooped everything toward me with both arms, gentle shifting of dough, my fingers easing apart membranes, but what was remarkable was how little was attached. These guts living separate from the rest of the body, in their own world. My face against his hide, his scent and sweat mixing with these other vapors, and my arms pulled from this other void unrelated to him.

  My hands sliding along the walls, searching, and finally all was smooth and I scooted my knees back and pulled everything onto the dirt.

  Save the liv
er, my grandfather said. Don’t let that liver touch ground.

  I made sure those dark red loaves floated on top of the mass that had become a creature entire, its own being. Something dredged up from the ocean, slick and shielded by no more than membranes, brought somehow to this dry slope of burr and thorn. Intestines like tentacles.

  I would leave it here, and it would dry and pucker at the surface and deflate and be torn apart and eaten by coyotes and ants and everything else, but I knew that first I would have to eat part of the liver. I would have the first bite. I looked up and could see all three men waiting. Turned gold-red by the sunset, their faces no longer white, the landscape bled into them. My grandfather with his rifle held low now in one hand, no longer at his shoulder. Face creased and unreadable, gone, soulless, only waiting.

  I cut away a hunk with my knife, a hunk the size of my fist. It had to be enough to fill a hand. How did I know that rule, and was it even a rule? Or was it a discovery repeated in each of us, inevitable?

  I knelt before that buck, before the men, and lifted raw liver to my mouth. Still hot as I bit down through, and no resistance, only hot mush that tasted of blood. I could feel myself retching but held it back and chewed and swallowed and bit again and thought of the dead man, thought of eating his liver and could feel the bile rising, my chest and throat convulsing, but I held it in and swallowed again and could taste the inside of every man and beast, could taste that we are made of the same things forgotten and ancient beyond reckoning from when the first creatures crawled from the soup. Taste of seawater and afterbirth in my mouth, reminder of where we came from. And why hadn’t I done this when I killed the poacher? It was the same. Everything was the same, and I should have tasted his liver and then his heart.

  I mashed what was left of the liver into my mouth and made myself finish it. Poison catcher. A taste I wasn’t sure would ever leave.

  The sun gone down, in shadow now but still reddish, the men waiting. I had the heart still to eat.

  Torn diaphragm sagging in remnants, lungs frothy looking, orange tinge to the red. As if our breath were foam, a reminder again of the sea, of our origins. And the heart hanging in place rigid and marbled in white, a thousand miniature designs reaching upward across its surface, every thread of muscle and blood and fat.

  I grabbed this heart in one hand, tough and rubbery, same size and shape as a human heart, no different. My other hand holding the knife, reaching upward inside to find the large arteries and veins and cut through, vines in a forest enclosed. Severing all, and more blood, endless blood, running out now hot over my fingers. I pulled the heart free, held it in the open air and turned it over to drain onto the dirt, blood heavy and thick and pooling in the dust.

  Domination. To hold a heart in the air still warm and take a bite from it. Proof that all was created for us, for our use. An assertion repeated and echoing through time.

  I sank my teeth into the wall of that heart and it was so slick and rubbery I had to push it hard against my face. My teeth not made for this, not sharp enough, so I shook my head as I bit, tore at the muscle. My knife dropped and the heart held in both hands, and I was made a beast again, eyes closed and jaw working and the taste of blood and flesh in my mouth.

  Now you’re a man, my grandfather said.

  Now you’re a man, my father said.

  I let that heart drop and roll away and I chewed until I could swallow, and I felt my life had begun. Eleven years old and now a man, blood all down the front of me. The sun fallen and the shadows darkening and the night a great embrace, a connecting of all things.

  16

  THE BEAST IS WHAT MAKES THE MAN. WE DRINK THE BLOOD of Christ so we can become animals again, tearing throats open and drinking blood, bathing in blood, devouring flesh, remembering who we are, reaching back and returning. We reassure ourselves. The Commandments impossible, and we can only fail, so we need this reassurance every Sunday that who we are has not been lost.

  I swallowed that heart and was made whole. A generation completed, able to stand now before my father and grandfather. But there was more still to do. Dominion not yet complete. What made the buck a man needed to be removed also, and this the trickiest part, especially in failing light, darkness falling quickly.

  I picked up my knife and knelt before his crotch, pulled at a leg to spread him wide. Continued the cut from his belly down farther now to his anus. Grabbed his balls and pulled, then sliced in close with the knife, flung the balls into brush, scattering him into oblivion. Flayed that hide away across his inner thighs and pulled the sheath off his penis, leaving only the inner stump of it, thin and rat-like, all hide gone.

  The flies thick now, small satellites in the faint light, a madness always to their sound, creating an urgency in me. I carved down through muscle toward the pelvic bone, careful slicing. I needed to find the bladder and not rupture it. Urine would spoil the meat.

  I didn’t understand how the bladder had become hidden away like this. What was the plan or reason? I carved but was not able to reveal it. Reached in with my fingers carefully behind the meat and in among the bones, a place distorted by feel, and searched blind, hoping it would be small and could be pulled out through the hole for the penis, but it was large and full and still warm.

  My face in close, the flies landing on my cheeks and neck and I couldn’t see what I was doing, darkness thickening and my hands buried inside the buck, but finally I was able to free the membranes around the bladder and felt it relax into my hand.

  I cut carefully around the anus, then pulled everything out through the hole: the colon, bladder, and penis, which I had to push down into its own smaller hole with one hand while I pulled with the other, thin rat’s tail disappearing.

  I carried the entire assembly in both hands carefully and dropped it into the brush, away from the meat. Then I returned for the lungs, scooped out the frothy mess and tossed it into the brush handful by handful, feeling along the ribs for any I might have missed.

  Well, my father said.

  Yeah, Tom said. We should get the truck.

  So the men left me. They walked up that fire road, apparitions receding, darker blots against the general darkness, and I was left alone. Scooped my hands in along the walls, but all was smooth now and drying out. My hands constricting as the blood dried on them, a tighter second skin.

  I stood beside the buck and looked up at the sky, a deep blue, the stars appearing, north star low and bright. I was a man now. This fire road and slope a holy place, the sacrifice made, rituals performed. But it was better than that. I wish I could return to that moment. A new beginning, a kind of innocence, the old life and self burned away. Isn’t this what we all want? And how many times do we experience it in a life? The moment never lasts long enough.

  All was whole. This place I stood the only place, and this buck on the ground beside me my buck, and I had done what was required, my work finished, and the only light from this deep blue and the stars, no sign of other humans except this road, a swath cut into the brush, but if I could forget that and erase it then I could have been standing in any time, and this hillside and even the sky above belonged to me. I remember I spread my arms wide that night and felt I could extend infinitely. If I closed my fists and pulled inward, I could warp mountains, collapse ridges. All of this world within my grasp.

  That night was mine. The men would walk up the fire road, take the fork to the sugar pines and the truck. We’d drive to camp and hang my buck head down alongside the dead man and I’d flay the hide from around the hams and punch my fist between hide and meat. I’d do this in lantern light, and dinner would be late, and I’d fall asleep exhausted. I hadn’t slept during the afternoon nap or the night before. I lay back against the earth and could feel myself drifting off already, sleep an enclosure, muting all, but then I heard the truck start up, muffled and far away.

  I stood and felt dizzy. No food, no water, no sleep. And the struggle with the buck, having to wrestle and cut through his neck with my
knife. Shoulder sore from being slammed against the ground. Poison oak spreading everywhere, a plague. I kept scratching, and that only made it worse.

  I could see the tops of high trees far away illuminate for a moment in headlights. Trees farther up the mountainside, above the glades. The growl of the truck very faint. This ridge a kind of bow, blocking my view and burying sound, distorting sound to the point that the truck seemed only more and more faint. And then I saw white on treetops again farther up the mountain, and this was not right.

  The cutover to this fire road was at the top of the glades, not higher. The headlights should not have been facing away. They should have been sweeping the air above me and backlighting the ridge and the sound coming closer.

  What are you doing? I said aloud. The sound of the truck no longer constant but only momentary, interrupted, fading.

  They were leaving me. My father and grandfather and Tom were driving back to camp without me and without my buck.

  I searched for my rifle, found it still snagged, freed it and wiped the dirt and blood on my jeans. Then I ran up that fire road, no moon, very dark now, the road a slightly lighter black against darker black, an image against my eyelids when I blinked. No hope of catching them, but I ran anyway because there was nothing else I could do.

  Heaving up that hill, legs burning, scraping against brush at the side then veering until I was at the top of the bow, where the mountain fell inward and the road leveled out, and I saw the white of the headlights far away on another slope, faint illumination of brush, and a wink of red.

  I levered a shell into the .30-.30 and fired at where I had seen the taillights. I didn’t think about it. I just fired. I was so angry. And the rifle kicked back hard against my shoulder. Not something I had felt firing at the buck, but now I knew the full jolt of it, unprotected by the thrill of killing, and my ears blanked out and I smelled sulfur and the truck kept moving, unaffected.