Goat Mountain Read online

  The air cooler now, the road fully shaded, patterns of shadow in the steep slope that fell away to the left. And finally we arrived. The gate ahead thick steel painted the color of dried blood. Heavy pipe construction that no truck could bend, both sides anchored six feet deep in concrete, and a lockbox too thick to shoot. Even a rifle slug would only smear and ricochet. An evolution of gates over the years, and this the final one, put in by my father, a gate that could never be destroyed by any poacher, a gate that would never have to be replaced.

  I jumped down and followed my father, who lay in the dirt under the lockbox and reached upward with both hands through a narrow steel chute. This prevented anyone from getting at the lock with bolt cutters or a gun. But there was hardly room for a key, either, working blind and cramped. My father grimacing, his shoulders rising up from the ground. Goddamn poachers, he said. I can’t quite turn the key. Get down on the ground behind me.

  So I lay facedown in the dirt and gravel and leaves and my father braced against me, raised up, and I heard the lock spring open.

  Finally, he said, and he worked a bit more to fish the lock out.

  I stood up and brushed off the dirt and leaves as my father swung the gate wide. Tom and my grandfather were standing here now, looking up along the ridge. We got a poacher, Tom said.

  I went over next to them and looked up and saw, far away, on an outcrop of rock, an orange hunting vest.

  How’d he get up there without coming through this gate? Tom asked.

  Must be coming in on dirt bikes, my father said. Too heavy to lift over this gate, but if they follow the main road, there must be some trails now that cut over.

  I don’t know of any trails, my grandfather said.

  Opening weekend, Tom said. Shooting and spooking everything on opening weekend. And why does it matter to them when they hunt? They’re breaking the law anyway, so they might as well shoot one in June.

  Once they carry it out of here, no one knows where it came from, my father said.

  True.

  Well let’s take a closer look, my father said, and he walked back to the cab. I didn’t know what he meant, but he came out with his .300 magnum. He stood and brought the rifle to his shoulder, aimed up at the poacher. A large black scope. It was a beautiful rifle, oiled dark wood. A rifle for shooting bears, too big to use on deer, but it was what my father used anyway, some part in him willing destruction. I had seen that rifle take nearly the entire shoulder off a deer as the bullet came out the other side.

  He’s a pretty one, my father said. Enjoying a sunny day looking out over all our land and our bucks.

  King of the world up there, my grandfather said.

  Roll the truck closer, my father said.

  So Tom went and released the emergency brake, easing forward to where we’d been standing.

  My father aimed again, but this time his elbows were on the hood for balance. He pulled back the bolt and then drove it home, a shell in the chamber. Let’s see if he can hear that. I want him to take a look over here and see what’s aiming at him.

  But the poacher had not moved or looked in this direction, as far as I could tell. He was far away, probably more than two hundred yards, so I couldn’t make out his face exactly, but it seemed he was looking down the slope farther ahead.

  Tom had his rifle out now, too, aiming up at the poacher through his scope. But I had only a peep sight on my .30-.30.

  Come take a look, my father said, as if reading my mind.

  So I held the rifle, braced my elbows on the hood of the truck. Smell of gun oil in close, like my .30-.30, but otherwise not the same at all. Heavier and perfect, smooth wood and dark blue metal fused together as if all had been born of one piece, and the balance when I put the stock to my shoulder was perfect too, a thing meant to be and easily become a part of me.

  The scope an illumination that seemed without source, a view directly into the world, my own better eye. Texture of rock at over two hundred yards, more than two football fields away. Dark rock with grains and bumps and ridges from weather, a wide slab, and I followed it to the left, to where the poacher sat at the edge, his boots dangling, a rifle lying across his thighs. Jeans and a white T-shirt in the sun, the orange hunting vest. Orange baseball cap. Wanting to be seen. Out here in the open, on our land. He had long sideburns, light brown. His face and neck pink from the sun.

  I traced an arm with the center of the crosshairs, moving up from elbow to shoulder. The poacher seemed to sense this, the most uncanny thing. He turned to his left and looked directly at me, into the scope, and he scooted his legs around until he was facing forward. He had seen us, seen something. Some color from the hood of the truck or a reflection on a rifle scope. His hands lifting his binoculars from around his neck and looking straight at me with great dark eyes.

  My hand tightened on the stock, and I held my breath. The crosshairs floating just between those lenses. Locked in time with this man, locked in this moment held still.

  A slow exhale, careful, as I’d been taught, and I tightened slowly on the trigger. There was no thought. I’m sure of that. There was only my own nature, who I am, beyond understanding.

  The world itself detonated from some core and I was flung through the air, landing in the dirt. The aftersound in my ears and pumping of blood. My heart jackhammering. The rifle beside me in the dirt, my right hand still on the grip.

  My father lifted me by my shirtfront and threw me backward and I did not hit ground where ground was supposed to be. I’d been lofted past the edge of the road and the earth fell away and I kept falling, hit from behind by a tree trunk or branch and another and another, still falling through air, twisting, and a rush of shadow from the right was all I saw before my right shoulder hit hard in dirt and leaves and I cartwheeled and slammed a trunk with my left leg and was spun around to hit ground with my head and neck and then upright, seeing straight ahead as if I were running down this slope, and I threw my arms out from instinct and flinched sideways to catch the next trunk on a shoulder and was flung beyond bearing until I skittered through leaves and finally lay still, not knowing how I was possible or what would be.

  2

  IT’S RARE THE WORLD IS EVER TRULY NEW. RARE, ALSO, THAT we find ourselves at the center. But all had realigned at that moment. When we kill, all that is orients itself to us.

  Cain was the first son. The first born of Adam and Eve. Cain is how we began, all who didn’t get to start in paradise.

  Everything hurt, but it seemed I was only sore, nothing broken. Dark dirt and leaves damp and decaying. Dry on the surface, but I had disrupted the surface. My head was downhill, so I pulled my legs around until I was sitting, and all seemed to work. Legs and back and arms. My right shoulder and legs battered, neck stiff.

  A new forest, all trunks very small, nothing old, and that was why I wasn’t broken.

  Got lucky, I said.

  The canopy forming a parallel slope above, just as steep. I was caught between these two planes, the ground that was and the slope above that. A shaftway heading down, a place always in shadow, the sun only a rumored brightness beyond.

  The power of that rifle. My legs not braced well enough. It had blown me flat. I wouldn’t let that happen again. That was the way I was thinking. A child’s brain is a different thing entirely. What I can’t recover is how that brain created a sense of the inevitable, how it connected each thought and movement smoothly, as if they all fit together.

  I hiked back up that slope, stiff and sore but still functional. Climbing my way through the trees, each one a handhold and every step of my boots leaving a dark scar in the hillside, the slope that steep that no step held. And when I reached the lip, I found my father and Tom aiming their rifles up at where the poacher had been. My father’s elbows on the hood, Tom braced in the passenger door. My grandfather held his rifle, also, standing at the tailgate, guarding the road behind.

  What are you doing? I asked.

  Waiting to see if someone comes looking,
my father said.

  You piece of shit, Tom said. You fucking piece of shit. He sounded like he was going to cry. He sounded weak.

  I had no scope, no binoculars, so I couldn’t see anything up the ridge. It was quiet. Only insects, nothing else. No birds, no wind. The air hot even in shade. My father’s white T-shirt wet all down his back and sides and sticking to him.

  I saw my rifle on the driver’s seat. I was reaching in when my father kicked the door closed. I yanked my hand away just in time.

  You’ll never touch a gun again, my father said.

  Yeah I will. I’m killing my first buck this weekend.

  My father was very fast. The butt of his .300 magnum heading straight for my chest, but I jumped back out of reach.

  What are you, he said.

  We have to get out of here, Tom said. Just back out right now and find a turnaround and report what’s happened.

  He could still be alive, my father said. We have to go check on him.

  He’s not still alive.

  You don’t know that.

  I saw the shot hit. I was looking right at him in the scope. He’s not still alive.

  Well we have to go up there.

  No we don’t. We need to leave.

  We’re not leaving, my grandfather said. My father and Tom both looked at him, but he didn’t say anything more.

  Here’s what we’re doing, my father said. We’re driving in around the first bend, out of sight. And we’re locking the gate. Then we’re going up to check on him.

  I’m not going, Tom said.

  You’re going, my father said. We’re all sticking together.

  Tom shaking his head, mumbling to himself. He lowered his rifle and walked back along the road, but he stopped after fifty feet and just sat down in the dirt.

  My father drove through and came back to swing the gate closed, lay down on the ground to reach up through the lockbox. The tendons in his neck making a trough of his throat. His concentration complete, as if the only task in this world was getting that padlock closed.

  My grandfather sitting in the cab, waiting, a thing of flesh with no thought. My father joined him, drove ahead slowly down a road transformed from dry yellowish dirt and spined platelets of live oak to pine needles. A stand of pines on either side, the road more shaded, falling toward a crease in the mountain where a creek ran only in winter. The road red-brown, carpeted in pine straw, the sound of the tires shushed.

  I followed, and when I looked back, Tom was following behind me. A figure transformed in a single moment, in that one pull of a trigger. Slack shoulders, head down, rifle held loosely in one hand, a figure refusing to be who he was, where he was, a figure refusing time, also, still holding on to the belief that time could be turned back. Even at eleven years old, I despised him, found him weak, but I was a kind of monster, a person not yet become a person, and so it was possible to think that way.

  Somewhere above us, the poacher, and I was eager to see. I wanted time to hurry forward, but every movement was slow, the air itself stagnant. The fall of my boots on this road muffled, the slope on either side indeterminate, shifting, impossible to gauge the axis because some current in my head surged on its own counter-axis.

  The truck eased around the bend to the left, riding the shoulder of what would become another ridge, the form of the land generating from itself, and my father rolled to a stop, out of sight now from the gate. He and my grandfather stepped from the cab with their rifles and we met at the crease in the mountain, at the dry streambed.

  No conference and no pause but only my father stepping forward into that bed, sound of his boots rolling smooth rocks beneath, and he was carried as if in an updraft, a thing meant to rise and slide along mountains.

  My grandfather far slower, a shifting of that bulk at the beginning of every step, a weight that could fall in any direction at any time, no step secure. His .308 over his shoulder on a wide leather strap, his right hand hooked under this strap and pushing at it for balance and steerage.

  Tom and I rose past him, up that streambed and then along a slope shielded by pine with only sparse growth beneath, easy to see and move beneath the trees. But then the pines ended and we had to push through brush, Tom raising his rifle over his head, twisting and turning through all that clung and tore. The sound of that isolating us, my father and grandfather gone.

  Tom led the way, tall enough to keep his shoulders above, but the branches were in my face and so thick and springy I had difficulty pushing through. So finally I crawled beneath the growth, my chin ducked and face close to the dirt. Eyes closed to avoid being scraped. Knees pushing at the earth, and the sky made of thorns.

  Where I was, I didn’t know. Tom was gone and all were gone. Movement of lizard and bird, dry shifts of sound. Home of snake and tick and every insect, and no path. No exit on any side, and the sun bearing down. Small dead leaves knit into sharp points. A weight of sound in that heat.

  Clinging close to the skin of the mountain, pressing as flat as possible. A thing learned to crawl again. The mountain a heaving presence that could throw us all at any moment. I felt bulky, too large, not well enough attached. I began to feel afraid, and I wanted my .30-.30. I wanted to lever a shell into the chamber and have it ready. I rolled onto my back and held my breath and listened for movement.

  Above me layer upon layer of spines. A place it would not be possible to stand. Live oaks as thick as any I’d seen.

  I didn’t want to move. Any movement would only wrap everything more tightly around me. I was trapped, my heart jerking in my chest.

  I did the one thing I knew to do when I was lost. I cupped my hands at my mouth, blowing between my thumbs. Sound of an owl, a hollow sound that would carry.

  And then I waited. From high to my left came the answer from my father. And then from farther below, my grandfather. Each of us recognizable, no two sounds alike. And then Tom, from near my father.

  I rolled back onto my stomach, pulled myself uphill, no longer lost.

  False rattles, insects that sounded like snakes. Explosions of birds. The halting movements of lizards in leaves. I was looking everywhere constantly for the shape of a snake. On the earth above and to both sides and in the low branches that brushed over me. Most snakes I’d seen had been wrapped through branches, just off the ground. Same color but thicker. Baby rattlers no wider than your smallest finger and less than a foot long, looking almost identical to a branch, deadliest because they couldn’t gauge their poison yet and had no rattles, gave no warning. I was moving headfirst, so it was my head that would be struck, snake fangs in my forehead or cheek or the back of my neck.

  Small movements everywhere, and my fear made me slow. Every few feet I’d stop and look around again. No place I’d ever wanted to be. And I began to think that staying low to the ground was the worst possible way. I began to wonder about trying to get on top of this. But of course I would only fall, ripping down through everything. So I kept crawling.

  Hotter and hotter, rising toward noon. My eyes stinging from the salt, all of me covered in sweat, and I heard my father’s call, closer now, impatient, and answered back. I had managed to find the worst patch on the entire mountainside, and it was another twenty minutes of crawling before I was out of there. My bruised shoulder and legs stiffening, my neck kinked like it was broken, the fear all through me.

  I was able to stand in brush just over my head, brush that grew like enormous clumps of gray-brown grass but with short trunks beneath. Enough space to push through, and above I could see the rock outcrops. I skirted the base of the lowest one and came up along the far side and found my father.

  He was facing away, kneeling and using his rifle as a post to lean against. The barrel in close to his right shoulder and both hands wrapped around it. In his white T-shirt, he was like insect spittle hanging along a stick. The same shape, just as slack, and he didn’t turn to look at me.

  Tom stood next to him, crucified by his rifle that lay across his shoulders, both a
rms hanging up over it, hands loose in the air.

  They were both looking down at the ground, and I knew I’d find the poacher there. I didn’t hesitate, though. Some part of me was not right, and the source of that can never be discovered. I was able to walk up and look at that body and somehow I was not upset by it any more than looking at the carcass of a buck. If anything, I was excited. And perhaps this was because I’d seen so many bucks and everything else dead on the ground all my life. We were always killing something, and it seemed we were put here to kill.

  He had landed facedown. Much of the middle of his back was missing. The hunting vest was still orange up high at his shoulders but had turned red and brown and black everywhere else. He smelled just like a dead buck, exactly the same, and the same large flies had come to swarm around the wound. Iridescent flashes in the sun, black circular orbits bound magnetically to that place, the sound of dozens combining into one, a sound unnaturally loud in all the stillness around.

  The rock above had been sprayed, all of it, a swath ten feet long. I understood this was a man, but what I was thinking was that this was an excellent shot. A perfect shot, from over two hundred yards, with a rifle too big for me, a rifle very difficult to hold steady. If this were a buck, everyone would be grinning. There would be hoots and the high battle cry we made only when a buck was killed. We would not be so unnaturally silent. With my buck knife I’d be opening up the belly, then pulling out the innards and eating the heart and liver, and all of that would be considered good. And what if we had never been told that killing a man was bad? Wouldn’t we feel the same way then toward a man?