for years they’d been shrugging it off. In his research he’d found several more references to a Mt. Aubrey of Wyoming - in pioneer’s journals of the time, but they simply did not care to hear about it.
“Another mountain altogether,” they would say, “in another state.”
“Then how come it isn’t there now?” he would counter, to which they’d say, “The problems of people in other States isn’t our concern. If they can’t keep track of their landscape that’s their problem.”
They seemed to be missing the point altogether, a point which was hard even for him to articulate, which was that if a mountain moved from one place to another could it really be trusted?
“Don’t worry,” they said, “We have taken steps to ensure its good will. We have its favor. You know that. So shall it ever be.”
“Ever?” he squeaked, “That’s a long time.”
“Don’t rock the boat,” growled someone. “We’re in too deep, now.”
Stokes sat in the library and wiped his trifocals clean. However deep they were in, it hadn’t stopped him from continuing his research. Lately, for reasons he couldn’t quite recall, he had been reading about the ancient Inca civilization. There was a fascinating reference in one book to a certain archaeological site high in the Andes where they had found an abundance of human bones, including skulls which appear to have been crushed by hammers or axes. Oddly, though, the last time anyone had visited the site was in 1934; no one seemed to have been able to locate it again after that. It was rather like the Lost Dutchman mine of Arizona. It was supposed to be situated below the peak of a certain mountain, which Stokes, however, could not locate in the atlas. Apparently they had either renamed the peak or they’d misidentified its longitude and latitude to begin with, because there was nothing but rainforest where it was supposed to be. He sighed. This was not helping him any. On days like this he just felt like giving up. There was something very elusive about the subject - or his mind wasn’t what it used to be - he wasn’t sure which. He slammed the cover closed on the book, kicking up a cloud of dust.
A generation had passed since the first lottery and the time had come for the drawing, but there was a complication. A contingent of tourist dignitaries from Fairfield’s sister city in Japan were in town and courtesy insisted that they be included in the community’s every activity. Of course this was completely unacceptable.
Volunteers had been arranged to keep them busy with something else, so that the Renewal Time could be carried out in secret. The volunteers, of course, were reluctant to be absent - it was an event in which the whole community (except the children, who were initiated into the town’s secret at sixteen) participated. Complete accordance of the community was a vital necessity and for someone to be absent, or for even the slightest lapse in observance of the vital customs (as they had come to be called) might evoke harsh consequences. However, it was decided that nothing could be done about it; the sister citizens were loaded onto a bus for a three day trip to The Grand Canyon - at the town’s expense, of course. They were all smiles when they departed at 2:00 P.M. on Friday, cameras clicking.
At 10:00 P.M. the meeting began.
Things proceeded much as usual. A selection was made. The parents of the newest town savior were commiserated with - though this time comments were muttered about “the daughters of our Japanese visitors, being excluded for no good reason,” and the evening Ritual of Departure and Forgiveness was held.
Before dawn the Purification Committee had assembled and the drugged, sleeping body of Cathy Watson was loaded onto the bower. Light was growing in the sky as they exited the town hall to the accompanying tears of Mrs. Watson, whose husband bravely held her, as did the Deputy Sheriff, as a precaution.
All was just as it had been for a generation. The Committee made its way down the street to the main trail up the...
The lead man in the group stopped suddenly with a gasp. The gasp ran backward through the bower carriers to the parents and deputy. The first finger of sunlight stabbed across the horizon.
A horizon flat as a pancake.
The gasp seemed to move backward and envelop the entire town. From out of their doors, for they never slept well on this night, came the townsfolk, squinting to see what the only people with certified reason to be out that morning had already seen - or failed to see.
The mountain was not there.
The people turned around 360 degrees, seeing nothing but low hills all around - not a trace of the mountain itself.
The sun rose higher and still more people stirred and joined in the gasp. Nowhere, not even as the tiniest dot on the horizon was there a mountain. A grassy plain lay where two thousand people swore a mountain had stood but eight hours before. And there was a slender, flat ribbon of brown where a rushing stream had once tumbled noisily through their town.
B.F. Stokes, who happened to be passing by on his way to the library, followed the line of sight of the peculiarly wordless citizens. He took his spectacles off, rubbed them clean and stared in the same direction they were all staring. It took him a moment to get it. Then he dropped both his atlases, his coffee cup and every one of his doughnuts...even the jelly one.
The mountain had vanished.
People had a mixture of feelings about the event - everything from relief to fear. But mostly what was left after all the rest had settled was a feeling of betrayal. Their mountain had snuck off in the middle of the night. It had deserted them. Stokes, who was considered the leading authority on it, and whose prominence had risen directly in proportion to it, probably took it the hardest; after him, Mrs. Watson, whose Cathy bore the scar of being rejected by the mountain (and ever after bore the label of an outcast, never having friend or lover. In fact she was often accused of frightening good fortune with her bad looks. In truth she wasn’t bad looking at all: her flaws were limited to red hair and freckles and a space between her teeth - but ever after, that particular combination was considered bad luck and those unfortunate enough to be born with that arrangement were doomed to a life of teasing, torment and discrimination). Mayor Duffy, who had directed the town’s reorientation to the mountain, took it pretty hard, too.
People walked around stunned for the next two days. Then one by one they forgot what they were upset about.
The field was reclaimed as grazing land and the lottery was officially canceled. All record of it was struck from the books and the marble monument with the names of the Town Saviors was lugged to a dark room in the basement of the City Hall, to which only the Mayor and the janitor had a key.
When the bus load of Japanese visitors returned, they were warmly greeted, and nothing seemed amiss, either to the townspeople or the visitors. Not even the chaperones, though Fairfield natives, thought there was anything odd about the northern horizon. Just before they left, however, the leader of the tourist group presented the Mayor with duplicate copies of all their photos that had been taken on their trip (which had been printed in a little over three hours at the one hour photo shop). They filled several thick albums. Duffy dutifully handed them to the City Clerk for filing in a “special place” and they were quickly forgotten about.
B.F. Stokes felt bereft of something he couldn’t quite identify, and fell into an unaccountable depression which lasted several months; he never even heard about the photo collection until the Japanese dignitaries send them an anniversary reminder of their “pleasant visit to U.S.,” along with an invitation for them to make a journey of their own to their little town in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. When he dug them out of the dusty box they’d been put in, he found something very disturbing. The photos taken on the day they returned from The Grand Canyon showed a cow pasture. The photos taken the day the bus left showed a mountain in the background. He showed them to Duffy, but Duffy suggested it was all due to defective Japanese cameras and/or film. It certainly sounded plausible, but it was enough of a mystery to challeng
e his notion of historical accuracy, and he vowed to get to the bottom of it.
Ten years later, Jasper C. Morgan, the Mayor of Big Valley, Montana, received a letter from Johnson, McCormack, Duffy and Wickersham, attorneys at law, on behalf of the city of Fairfield, Utah. The letter expressed the hope that the Mayor’s view of the mountain above their town was a pleasant one this morning, because he would surely not be able to enjoy it very much longer. The people in Fairfield had unequivocal proof that the mountain was theirs, not Big Valley’s, and were terribly incensed at its disappearance and subsequent reappearance in this portion of Montana. A certain Mr. B.F. Stokes had happened to open the most recent edition of the Rand McNally Travel Atlas of the United States and noticed the presence of one Mt. Pointy, 13,185 feet high. The lawyers assured the Mayor that historical and photographic evidence was available to show that the mountain did not always stand there; that, in fact, it had once stood by Fairfield, and rightfully belonged to them. They wanted it back - or, at the very least, to be compensated for their loss.
The city of Big Valley retained a team of lawyers of their own.
The lawyers on both sides had an unusually difficult time keeping their minds on this case, and in fact, the