Goat Mountain Read online

  He shouldered his rifle and stepped down through the center of the canyon, from rock to rock at the water’s edge. I followed and couldn’t see what lay below us. Enormous rocks blocked our vision. Smaller stones and boulders rounded and smooth, but these great slabs of cliff had fallen and never been moved since. They’d taken trees and soil with them, some still fringed where the water couldn’t reach. We never visited in winter, when all was moved and shaped. We came in early fall, at the driest time, after the long hot summer, the water gone, difficult to understand the origin or shape of anything.

  My father moving fast. I struggled to keep up. The slope gentle, but rocks everywhere. We came to the largest boulder yet, blocking the entire center of the gorge, small trees growing on top, and climbed along an edge and heard a crashing and snapping, a rush of sound too much to take in, a deer ripping out of branches and leaves on the other side. My father yelled and scrambled toward the top, his rifle up already, and there was a ricochet on the rock above him and the sound of the bullet slapping into the earth beside us and a puff of dust and then we heard the tinny pop of Tom’s rifle and another ricochet on the other side of the rock, winging twice this time off stone, another pop, and my father threw himself down, hiding, hands over his head as if they could stop bullets. He’d let his rifle fall, stock and barrel and scope clattering, and then the deeper boom of my grandfather’s .308 and another pop of Tom’s .243 and more sound of hooves on rock and my father yelling goddammit fucking stop you fuckwads pieces of shit and I was in tight against the back of that rock and breathing fast.

  Goddammit, my father yelled again, and he hid against that wall and grabbed for his rifle. More booms and pops, all sounds of the buck gone now, and my father climbed up and brought his rifle to his shoulder and was swinging the barrel back and forth, side to side, searching, but that was it. No more shots, no more hooves. Only the trickle of water on all sides.

  You get him? my father yelled.

  An echo, and they didn’t answer right away.

  No, Tom finally yelled back.

  Missed him, my grandfather yelled.

  Nice work, my father said, but loud enough only for me to hear. He sat on a wide flat rock and inspected his rifle. I carry this for years, he said, here and in Nevada and Wyoming, in all kinds of weather, and I never get a single ding or spot of rust, and now it looks like I dragged it behind the truck.

  The forward part of the stock, below the barrel, was darker wood, carved into a grip. Crushed now along the edge. The bluing of the barrel scratched, the bolt scratched, the scope dinged.

  I’m so fucking angry, my father said, and then he stood and held his rifle high over his head in both hands and threw it down onto the rocks. This beautiful rifle that he loved. Crunching sound of wood and clattering and then it lay still, barrel angled upward, stock in the water.

  My father breathing hard, arms hanging at his sides, looking down at his rifle. That gun is going to stay right fucking there. Don’t touch it.

  Then he started up that slope, taking big steps and sliding back halfway on each, pulling at rock and weed with his hands. He didn’t look back, and I knew he wouldn’t care whether I made it out of there or not. His feet kicking into that mountain and hands ripping at everything above. This canyon the exposed flesh of the mountain, and he would punish.

  I thought about picking up his rifle and slinging it over my shoulder, carrying it up to him. But he’d only be angry, even if that’s what he wanted. So I didn’t touch it. I followed and small rocks were flipping down the hill at me, kicked free by his boots, so I moved to the side and climbed my own path.

  One hand holding my rifle and the other grabbing at dirt and rock and root. My chest against the ground, lying against the mountain as I climbed. Smell of dust and pine, the patches of needles so slick I had to keep traversing to find bare dirt and rock. Moving as fast as I could.

  I didn’t look down, only at the wall of dirt in front of me, and I felt that I was tilting backward, that I would simply fall off the planet and keep falling and never hit ground again. I believed that what kept me from falling was only my own will, remade in every moment.

  10

  POX AND PLAGUES. THE GREAT FLOOD. LANGUAGE TURNED only to babbling. Humanity erased over and over. The Bible is about our fight against god. And somehow we’re more powerful, simply because of our will, because we’re persistent. We refuse to be erased.

  It’s been a bitter fight. The great flood. Think of how many lost. Drowned like rats, no burials, no apologies, no reparations. God owes us. We have a long way to go to even the score. Imagine that wall of water coming over a hill, the sheep scattering, and you feel the cold breath of it, a thrill in that dry heat, the sudden change, and the sun is underwater, pale shafts of light reaching through the blue, and that can only be beautiful, the moments right before annihilation can never be anything less than the very best moments, held suspended. That wave breaking overhead and the sun shining through it and every pattern in the world visible in the light, revealed, and god’s punishment means nothing because you can’t feel that you’ve been bad, because you didn’t start in the garden, you were only here on this hillside and then the wave came.

  I had been to Sunday school since I could remember. My father’s one concession to religion. He didn’t go to church himself, only sent me, his only son sent in his name, ha ha.

  My grandfather never spoke about religion, nor did Tom. Really they never spoke about anything except hunting and fishing.

  I slithered my way up that steep canyon slope, my belly in the dirt, and I refused to be left behind. I did not pause or rest, and I kept that rifle clenched in my fist and wouldn’t let go. Taste of dirt, of all that has rotted and decayed and lain dormant, all that waits and then is released.

  My father disappeared over the rim and no doubt kept going, and there was no sign or sound of Tom or my grandfather, though I was exposed on this slope and my grandfather had a clear view from his ridge. He could easily have sighted in with his scope and shot me as I climbed. I would fall backward just as I imagined.

  An overhang of root and dirt at the top, so I crabbed to the side and crawled up rocks that slid beneath me, and finally I made the rim. I lay for a moment on the flat and rested, out of breath and my legs burning. But then I rose, because I knew no one would wait. I’d have to be close enough behind to hear their path across that next hillside, back to the wallow.

  Retracing our steps. Like ants marching along a path, atavistic reckoning that feels like discovery but is only recognition. I like that idea, because then my pulling of the trigger was the pull from some earlier generation, something only recognized, not originated. And that’s how it felt. Like someone else’s hand working inside mine.

  That scrub hillside curved outward in a torment typical of our world, the end in sight and then not the end and then in sight again and then not the end and on and on, so that we just keep stumbling along, scraped and torn as we push through. The poison oak rising all along my skin another plague. Welts and bubbles I could feel on my face and neck and see on my wrists, the bubbles much lighter in color, almost white against the angry red, and holding some vile liquid invented where.

  I wandered through live oak and scrub and sun, sweating and growing the welts, and I couldn’t hear even my grandfather and his path of destruction but only my own footsteps, and so I had no way of knowing if I was on the right course, but because I’m an ant, I ended up at exactly the right spot, coming down over that lip into the wallow right next to the truck. The men already in the cab, waiting, silent as stones, and I climbed aboard and we were off again. Simple as that.

  We rose out of that bog into ponderosa pines where Tom had once wounded a spike, a story remembered by each of us as we passed, a story as always with a lesson but a lesson unclear. Don’t shoot a buck with no fork in its horns. Illegal, and not good for continuing the population, to shoot the young ones, but something beyond that, too. Some pact made to follow code and r
ules even if we have no idea where they come from. In other states, it was legal to shoot does, the female deer, something we considered outrageous. Who can say what rules they follow and why? How much of what feels inviolable is only random, with no ground to it at all?

  We emerged from that area of shame and the switchbacks appeared above us, bare jagged scar cut into the hillside, denuded of trees. As exposed as a quarry, white and blinding in the sun, a furnace emanating heat. And we could see there’d been a slump during the winter, part of the road caved away in the middle of the Z, but we didn’t stop or even slow. My father accelerated, in fact, and we rode up on the side of that steep hill, the pickup tilting at a crazy angle and I could feel the beginning of the fall, the roll to the side, but we were going so fast the momentum carried us through and my father yanked us back onto flat road and hit the brakes in a cloud of white dust, our tires sliding. The drop-off to our right, bare slope ahead, the road kinking up to the left. My father just making that turn, the front tires grabbing and pulling us upward.

  My father sped again, and this obviously was not a hunt but only a punishment. He hit a dip so fast my feet were in the air and only one hand clinging to the rear slider window of the cab, my rifle in the other hand flung skyward, and I heard one of the men hit his head on the roof, Tom probably. My grandfather too heavy and my father clinging to the wheel.

  A lurching sharp turn to the right at the next switchback, and we had two tires in the air from the tilt, then grabbing again, and shot into trees, cool shade, flying along over uneven ground, bucking and sliding, pinecones and twigs popping and flung in our wake. The ride of the damned, last ride into hell, trying to outrun the devil, and I shouted in excitement, exhilarated. I glanced behind for what might follow. I kept that rifle in my hand, and my eyes teared from the wind.

  My father always controlled, never one to do this, to just stomp on the gas and go. The pure thrill and adrenaline. A gift from the dead man. A new freedom. The landscape become a kaleidoscope, rolling and exploding on all sides, without orientation. Branches whipping at us, the treetops spinning overhead, the furrows and lumps of land coming at us like waves, rise after rise and this mountainside endless, born from itself again and again and we were riding it, finally.

  My father did not let up. He tore along all the way back to camp, came to a sliding stop in the pine needles just before table and stream, and our cloud of dust followed us in, washed over us and seemed a kind of blessing.

  The passenger cab door opened and Tom and my grandfather were out, but my father waited a while, and I waited with him. It seemed too soon to move. The air cool in here, the reassuring sound of the spring in the basin and running lower alongside us, the breeze in the pines. Always a breeze here, even when there was a breeze nowhere else. Safe ground. And we would rest now. We’d have lunch and lie down for naps, and all would be renewed and begin again. This was the promise of camp.

  My father finally opened his door and stepped out. He looked lost. His eyes searching mine and his mouth loose. His finger had been on that trigger. He had killed that man. I believe now that’s how he felt, nothing less than that. The sins of the son visited upon the father. And nothing he could do to go back and change a thing.

  I thought my father might say something, but he only walked away to the table to wait for Tom and the food. Reduced to habit. Sitting at the bench gazing down at the wood, not really looking at anything.

  I grabbed my spare clothing from the cab, stripped off layers of caked mud until I stood bare and naked on the pine needles and kept my rifle close. The dead man in his sack directly behind me, watching always. My white skin with dark smears of mud and small island chains of red welt. The poison oak across my belly and on my privates from when I peed. Anything you touched became the property of the oak. And if you scratched, the islands grew and formed continents, entire regions of angry red and white bubbles edged by smaller darker welts, as if your skin could boil.

  I pulled on a new T-shirt and underwear and jeans, found my clean pair of socks and knocked my boots together to remove most of the mud. I didn’t have another jacket, so I whipped it against the bed of the pickup, small shards of mud flying off.

  Lunch was ready now, the men at the table with their knives. My father and grandfather on the uphill side, not looking at one another. I climbed in next to Tom and kept my rifle away.

  Lighter-colored, Tom was saying. Almost gray. Silvery. Like an older buck, but I only saw forks.

  Three-pointer, my grandfather said.

  I didn’t see that, Tom said. I only saw forks. But he was light, almost the same color as the rock. I must have looked right at him when he was standing there and not even seen him.

  You’d have noticed him, my grandfather said.

  No, I don’t think so. I think I looked right at him and didn’t see him. I think if he had just stayed still, none of us would have seen him.

  In another minute, I would have been standing next to him, my father said.

  Even then, Tom said. I don’t think you would have seen him.

  That’s just stupid.

  No. You never saw him, so you don’t know. Think about this for a minute. He didn’t jump until you were right on him, but you know he must have heard you coming, and smelled you, and he didn’t move. So that means he decided to wait. He was going to hide and wait it out. He made a decision, but then he just got jumpy.

  He didn’t make a decision.

  He made a decision.

  Well. My father rubbed at his forehead with both palms, down over his eyes and cheeks.

  He almost had us, Tom said. He grabbed two more pieces of bread and went for the deviled ham, smearing it across both sides, a kind of pink froth.

  Not just almost, my father finally said. I don’t see a buck hanging over there.

  Springing around in those rocks, darting this way and that. It’s only luck if you hit one in that situation.

  That situation, my father said. Trapped in a narrow canyon, shooters on both ridges, crossfire from above. Be a real miracle to hit anything then.

  Well, Tom said. No point in talking.

  Harder to hit the buck, though, if you’re way the fuck off and almost hit the people in the canyon.

  You can fuck off, Tom said.

  You’re an eagle eye. A real sharpshooter.

  Look, Tom said. That buck knew what he was doing.

  No buck knows anything.

  You don’t know anything.

  Just go back to your sandwich.

  You go back to your sandwich.

  We listened to the water in the basin then, a rushing sound so urgent at times you could hardly stand it. At times it seemed like it would wash us away. And it could never be shut off. There was no faucet, no way to hold it back. Only the sound and force of it increasing, magnified in that basin. Water from seams of rock deep inside the mountain. Water that fell as rain a thousand years ago and had lived in pressure ever since, released only now and what was to keep it from doubling in pressure and doubling again under the weight of all that rock.

  I felt panic, my heart yanking and no room for breath. That water could rip the earth open right here beneath us. And my own blood was the same, pumping and pressurizing and no holding it back. I panicked like this all the time as a kid, my dreams all of pressure and panic, and even remembering now my breath is short. And each time, I didn’t believe I would survive. I didn’t know how to get through those times. My father and grandfather across from me unbearable presences. Their side of the table higher, and they could fall against me at any moment.

  Time never did move again. That’s what it felt like. A moment an eternity. In memory, now, I can say we finished that lunch and got up from the table, but at the time, we were lost indefinitely and it was nothing less than that, and my father weighed a thousand pounds and my grandfather ten times that, and they were crushing me, the pressure of the water building behind them.

  But the men did finish chewing their sandwiche
s, and I didn’t eat but I couldn’t, and my father was the first to rise and walk away toward his bedroll, and I could breathe again, and Tom left, also, and my grandfather had me pinned there still, his face a mountain rising in folds and crevices, white granite with dark grains and veins, and he swiveled his legs and rose and fell across that ground toward his mattress and I was released.

  I walked carefully and stayed far away from that basin and from the mattress of my grandfather, and as I walked, the air began to thin, finally, the pressure easing and pulling back to where? Where does that go? The air normalizing, sound normalizing and making everything a lie, a dream, and yet only a few minutes before my heart had been made of stone.

  My bedroll hidden behind deadfall, tucked in against the mountain, and I looked over my shoulder as I neared, made sure no one was watching. Then I hopped over that trunk and disappeared down low, safe in my hollow. I rolled out my sleeping bag and lay back to watch the sky above and the needles of the pines perfectly etched, each of them sharp against the blue, real and undeniable, individual, but thousands of them gathered together spiking the air. To think of how many in just the ring of trees above me and then our camp and up the hillside and across to other mountains and extending for hundreds of miles, this was a different kind of panic, not one of pressure but of vanishing outward and thinning and dissipating and this was the other panic I felt all the time back then, not of being crushed but of vanishing, pulled into vast empty space, and the two were equally terrifying and equally without source.

  I closed my eyes and curled into a ball and waited, smelled the woodsmoke in the sleeping bag, soaked into it over the years, a comfort, and the smell, also, of sweat and the blood of animals of all kinds, and I was just heading toward sleep when I heard a heavy thump and knew exactly what it was. The dead man fallen.

  11

  WE ALL WAITED, I THINK. I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE ROSE immediately. And this was because the dead man was capable of anything. If he had fallen, who knew what he might do next? He had no insides, no center, so the heavy sound of that thump, the enormous weight of it, had to be his invention. His head no longer pinned against his chest, his limbs free to move, his head back laughing and he could be up and dancing any moment. He had no blood and so he followed no rules.