“And what is that intended to mean?” said Mather.
“That perhaps we’re underestimating our adversary. We may find that whatever lies beyond this Devil’s Backbone is something entirely unanticipated.”
“Like sunshine?” said Reese, eliciting a guffaw from Runnells.
“I’m serious,” said Haywood. “I think what we ought to do is expect to be challenged. To go forward diligently. Orderly. Not like a band of ruffians.”
Mather knew that he’d been an uninspiring leader in recent days, had not projected his characteristic vim and vigor, had not encouraged his men forward with his unwavering spirit of adventure, had led, in fact, only insomuch that he walked in front of them. He suspected that Haywood’s intention was less of a challenge to his leadership than an attempt to rouse the party’s enthusiasm for the journey ahead. But the fact remained that Mather’s thoughts were far from the future. He was still walking mentally backward through his life, trying to devise a way of thinking by which he could make the past big again.
“Yes,” said Mather. “Diligence is exactly what we’ll need.”
“See here,” said Haywood, rising to his feet and leaning toward the fire, illuminating that which had formerly been occupying him, a map in progress. He beckoned the men to gather round the map, and all but Mather gathered around.
“Here is where we’ve come from, you see?” said Haywood, tracing their path. “And here is where we’ve been. But you see, this, gentleman, this is where we’re headed. It’s blank. The trail ends. The river ends. I haven’t the slightest idea what goes here. Not the slightest. Should I venture a guess, I can guarantee you beyond all reasonable doubt that it shan’t be anywhere close to what we will actually find there.”
25 February 1890
While the mood of the party has been generally good as of late, with Runnells bagging a pair of elk just two days prior, our spirited leader has been more aloof than ever. His appetites cannot be roused. He does not seem to be hungry for the challenge before us. He’s even lost the wild-eyed nervous energy that has marked so much of our recent progress. He has been more measured with his steps and with his words. He is, in a word, deflated. I suspect this has mostly to do with something left behind, rather than something ahead, although I am certainly no expert on matters amorous. In any case, I now fear less for Jim’s competence or judgment and more for his vigor and strength. The terrain promises, at the very best, more of the same. It remains to be seen if our leader will be up for the task, and I’m hoping that he will soon dispel my doubts.
Runnells’s good fortune in bagging the elk did not come without a cost. Heading the bull off as it thundered up the hill, Timber, the big dog, was struck by the beast’s forefoot, killing him instantly and leaving his body badly mangled. They buried the dog in the softest ground they could find.
Having traversed some six hundred vertical feet up the scantily timbered face of the Devil’s Backbone, the party’s hopes of discovering Eden on the far side were soon liquidated by the sighting of another precipitous valley below, bordered by yet another spiny ridge of bald shale.
“The Dark Prince is apparently in possession of two backbones,” Mather commented sardonically.
Beyond the second ridge lay two magnificent timbered ranges intercepted by creeks and valleys, and beyond that, a third range in the shape of a crescent surrounding a single hulking mountain of epic proportions, laden with blue glaciers, and cut through with crevasses. It was not a graceful mountain but rather a broad-shouldered one. It did not taper to a shapely peak but formed a wide oval face punctuated by a hard and angular set of extremities, like a sculptured face glowering at heaven.
26 February 1890
It was truly a magnificent site to behold, this behemoth, and yet it too was terrifying, for standing there on the Devil’s Backbone each of us knew in our hearts that without the grace of God, we might well perish in these mountains.
Jim, in a rare moment of inspiration, and dare I say ignorance, promptly christened the giant Mount Eva, and somehow I was loath to inform him that the mountain already had a name, and that name was Mount Olympus.
the grace of god
JULY 2006
On the first leg of his journey, Timmon had covered nearly seven miles of backcountry; trudging purposefully through the bottomlands and wending his way into the foothills along the rutty switchbacks, fording streams and crossing gullies, huffing and puffing all the way to the foot of the big canyon, a distance that had taken the cumbersome Mather party weeks to navigate through dense foliage and inclement weather. But it was not winter when Timmon set off from Crooked Thumb, and his long strides had carried him swiftly over the clear path. A single thought sustained him all the way: Onward. Onward, past the fat-fried stink of civilization, beyond the demoralizing effects of his plebian existence, safely sheltered from the cesspool of society.
As he drank himself into a torpor that first evening, exorcising his demons by the glow of the fire, he felt at last free of his shackles, adventuresome in his new autonomy. There was nothing left to prove to anyone, nothing owing; he was on his path.
When he passed out four feet from his tent, his withering dingus still moist in the clutches of his right hand, Timmon was nothing if not confident that his trek had taken him safely beyond the reach of humanity. Thus, it was with some confusion (and a whopper of a headache) that he awoke the following morning to the patter of voices from the trail. Slowly, he climbed to his feet and panned the surrounding understory with a periscopic gaze. A rustling in the nearby brush froze him. His heart set to racing. Stealthily — on his toes like some Indian tracker — he inched his way toward the rustling. After a half-dozen steps, he was frozen in his tracks by a sustained and hair-raising shriek.
Through a tangle of huckleberry boughs, the source of this deafening wail was revealed in the person of a pudgy little blue-haired lady with her pants around her ankles in the act of squatting. The force of her scream had sent her tumbling backward where she was grounded like a capsized tortoise, dog-paddling in thin air, a fountain of urine saturating the elastic waistband of her jeans. Timmon rushed to her aid. The old lady’s caterwaul reached its bloodcurdling crescendo just as Timmon leaned down to extend a helping hand, whereupon the helmeted head of his dingus grazed her chin. Here, her terror met an abrupt end when she passed out cold.
This wasn’t happening. No fucking way was this happening.
Now the rest of her group came scrambling (or hobbling, as it were), through the underbrush, arriving just as Timmon was wrestling his manhood back into his pants.
There were five of them, all of them in their seventies at least. In fact, the blue-hair on the ground might well have been the youngest of the lot. They all had matching green pullover sweatshirts with a little patch on the breast announcing their affiliation with the Sequim Seniors Sierra Club. A spindle-legged old sport in a safari hat and high-pocket shorts pushed to the forefront immediately.
“Mildred!” he screamed, rushing to her prostrate form and kneeling on those spindly legs. He began groping for a pulse. “Oh, dear God. What is the meaning of this?” he demanded of Timmon. “Who are you, what are you doing out here?”
“I … I was just … I was camped over there and I heard … and then I … I was just… and then she was … and …”
“Somebody go for a doctor!” said High Pockets. “I’ve got a pulse!”
The four old people looked at one another. They all had walking sticks. The lady with the enormous sunglasses might have been blind. One old guy was still panting from the trail.
“You!” demanded High Pockets, indicating Timmon. “Go for a doctor!”
“But …”
“But nothing! Go!”
Timmon jumped into action, breaking toward his campsite.
“Where are you going?” demanded High Pockets. “That way! The trail’s that way!”
“Just a sec.” In a whirlwind of activity, Timmon struck his tent, rolled it up, an
d stuffed the remaining gear into his GoLite. As he strode through the brush toward the trail, he could hear High Pockets shout after him.
“Hurry up!”
Timmon hurried until he reached the trail, at which point he was paralyzed by indecision.
Was she dead? Was it too late? What if somebody wanted him to make some kind of statement, a ranger or a cop or something? He’d be fucked seven ways till Sunday. He couldn’t risk it. But what if it were his own grandmother unconscious over there? Certainly that would have made a difference, right? What the hell were these dinosaurs doing way up here in the first place? This was the middle of nowhere. But they got up there by themselves, right? It’s not like they were helpless. It’s not like they were gonna freeze to death out there waiting for him to come back with a doctor. Were they? But then if he ran, wouldn’t he look guilty? What if she croaked and they thought he had something to do with it? What if they found his dick print on her chin or something? Forensics were a bitch these days. And it’s not like he could afford a decent lawyer. He’d get stuck with some asshole in Dacron slacks and mustard on his tie, some schlub from a crappy college like EWU or Boise State. Strike three. He’d be a sacrificial lamb. Are you kidding, they’d eat him alive; two-time loser, history of theft, not to mention that other thing with the waitress at the Olive Garden in Silverdale back in ’96. No way. Couldn’t risk it.
But what if they came after him? Sure, he’d get a good head start, but what if they launched one of those manhunts with the dogs? How long would they search for him before they gave up? How long until a sketch artist’s charcoal rendering of him started flashing on TV screens across western Washington? How long before “police identified the suspect as Timmon Tillman of Port Bonita”?
Here he was, a free man, still planning his escape.
If Timmon had made quick work of the first seven miles, he tore through the next seven, harried by the thought that eventually somebody would come looking for him. So he beat a path toward the interior as fast as his legs would take him, stopping only twice to draw water from the river. Was he overreacting? He hadn’t done anything wrong, not where the old lady was concerned. Besides, she just fainted. A few minutes on her back and she’d be fine. But then, wasn’t he just rationalizing his own cowardice and selfishness? What harm would it have done him to go for help? So what, he loses a day? And really, what were the chances that anyone was going to question him? Deep down, wasn’t he just saying, who gives a shit? Hadn’t he always been saying, who gives a shit? Isn’t that what he said at age eleven when he nabbed his grandmother’s wedding ring off of the bathroom counter, only to wing it carelessly into the Chicago River two hours later when Fred Catalanotto told him it was shit? Did he give a shit when his grandmother crawled around on her hands and arthritic knees on the bathroom floor, beside herself with anxiety and grief, bonking her head on the bottom of the basin, groping around the sticky perimeter of the toilet, cursing herself as she peered helplessly down the hair-choked shower drain? Did he really give a shit that the old warhorse grieved the loss of that stupid ring for two solid weeks as though she’d lost her husband all over again? The answer was no, he didn’t give a shit. He had no reason to begrudge the old woman and every reason to be grateful for her. She practically raised him. Sure, she gave him the occasional beating when she was blackout drunk, but he usually had it coming, and besides, wasn’t that her right? She fed him, she housed him, she stuck by him long after his mother died and his old man flew the coop. Yet he still didn’t give a shit about his grandmother’s loss at the end of the day. Moreover, he felt no remorse for having stolen the last precious vestige of the only man she ever loved and discarding it for shit. All these years he’d figured it was Frank Catalanotto’s fault.
That he didn’t give a shit about anybody but himself, Timmon came to realize, was the one great truth of his life. His sole motive was self-preservation; it was both his engine and his fuel, the driving force that propelled him ever forward. And how had he ever profited by this selfishness? It wasn’t even a big selfishness, the kind that got a guy ahead. Timmon’s was a small kind of selfishness, the kind that got a guy just enough to scrape by.
For all his self-improvement in the joint, all of his Walt Whitman and Emerson and Thoreau, for all of his cell-bound forays into religion and philosophy and self-help, for all that lying awake at night and resolving himself to a new life, new patterns, a new way of thinking, it occurred to Timmon, as he switchbacked up the steep ridge, that he hadn’t improved his instincts one bit in the past eighteen months or even eighteen years, for that matter. He hadn’t corrected anything. He was still the same selfish eleven-year-old kid, still looking for an angle, still turning his back on the people that cared the most, still stealing his grandmother’s ring. But none of it meant anything where he was going now, and this thought alone heartened Timmon. Self-preservation was the name of the game out here. A guy had better be selfish, or he was dead meat.
By afternoon, Timmon had gained a thousand feet of elevation, arriving at the base of a steep, partially wooded ridge running north to south like a spine. The path switched back at twenty-degree angles up the incline. Now and again as he ascended, Timmon glimpsed the top of the bald, jagged ridge through the treetops. His quads burned. His blister stung. He was thirsty. But he did not slacken his pace.
The nearer Timmon drew to the top of the ridge, the more he was able to put the Sequim Seniors Sierra Club and everybody else behind him, the more certain he became that nobody would come after him. He would be forgotten, even by the state. His whole life had led up to this conclusion — to be forgotten. All the energy he’d spent marginalizing himself, pushing himself ever toward the ragged fringes of society, was not in vain. He would be forgotten. He snuggled up in this thought like the warm shelter of a cocoon and leveled his interior gaze on the future: the nameless creek, the sun-dappled meadow, the days of solitude.
When he arrived at the top of the ridge, Timmon was awestruck by the vista. Beyond the wedge-shaped valley below lay another spiny ridge and beyond that a solitary mountain of massive proportions, snow-clad and laden with glaciers. It was not so much the mountain’s height but its breadth that was so impressive. There was no getting around this one, all valleys seemed to lead there. It stood in the middle of Timmon’s path like some huge bald-headed bouncer.
And gazing at Olympus, for, surely this was Olympus, Timmon felt the cold reality of death lurking somewhere beneath his skin.
the ghost called memory
JULY 2006
It didn’t matter how much you moved your lips — nobody seemed to hear you. The man in the white coat was uncomfortably close. You winced in the fog of his aftershave. You could smell the little minty green snake tongue working nervously about in his mouth. Peering inside your ears with a light, down your throat, into your pupils, he kept asking you questions.
How’d you get the burns?
What are you on?
How much?
When?
Where?
But never why.
You tried frantically to tell him about things to come that had already happened, things that were happening even now beneath the thin fabric. You tried to explain to him that you were being chased by a death you had already lived, tried to explain the bone white shark and the hot wind blowing out from the center of the flames. You tried to explain that you were not yourself.
And finally, sensing your urgency, he said, “What is it, son?”
But when you tried to explain about Stone Face, about the sickness, about the death you were determined to outrun, he only badgered you with more questions.
Does this hurt?
Can you see this?
How many fingers am I holding up?
* * *
THE BOY WASN’T lucid, by any means. Alert, yes — in fits, anyway. His heart rate was too fast. His reflexes were relatively good. He responded to most directives — open your mouth, hold out your arm, watch my finger — so app
arently he was hearing all right. His lips were moving like crazy, but it was all gibberish. Kid was out of his gourd. Eventually, he’d return to his senses. Maybe then he’d explain just why in the hell he was walking around town with a dead shark and first-degree burns up and down his arms. Maybe then he’d explain why he stood stone still for forty-five minutes in the candy aisle, clutching a bag of peanut M&Ms until the cops finally rousted him.
The mother was apparently on her way. Single mom, go figure. It’s always the single moms. The kid’s permit said that he was sixteen. The doctor would have guessed much younger. Cute kid, in a scrubby sort of way. Small and round-faced. When his lips weren’t moving, he scowled. Probably led a disappointing life. The kid’s shirt said: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT? Poor little runt. Now and again, the boy’s pupils dilated rapidly, and his legs twitched like a dog dreaming of a rabbit. And when he slipped into a sort of momentary trance, the boy finally uttered his first sound.
Doon-doon, doon-doon, he said.
flight
APRIL 1890
Catching a heel on the last step, Gertie nearly tumbled face first into the mud but managed not to break stride as she darted off down the alley. Tobin was less fortunate in pursuit. Clearing the steps in a single bound, his boot heels hit the mud and immediately skidded out from under him. Rearing backward, his head struck the bottom step with such force that the world flashed white for an instant. By the time he regained his feet, dazedly, Gertie was well on her way. To where, he couldn’t say, but at least she wasn’t running toward the Olympic. Maybe to that bothersome whore in the colony. There was still time to nip this thing in the bud, and he knew he’d have the opportunity to nip it. One thing about whores, they always came back. Then again, Gertie McGrew was not your run of the mill whore.