The Mountain Story

  I was having trouble breathing.

  “Why don’t you have a knapsack?” Vonn asked.

  “I didn’t bring one.”

  “I know. I’m asking why.”

  “I forgot it at home.”

  “You must feel so stupid. Do you think about it? Do you obsess about it? How much water had you packed? Food? A tent? Did you have a tent?”

  Yes. Yes. Yes. “I don’t see this being positive, Vonn.”

  “Are we going to die here?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe.” I was thinking about the lamb.

  I’ve never told anyone about the lamb.

  It was late spring and the meadow outside of the Mountain Station was painted in purple lupine and coral root, explosions of amber wallflower and scarlet snow plants busting up through winter decay. Byrd and I had stopped on our way to the peak to talk to a middle-aged birding couple about their morning hike. The husband was excited to share with us that they’d spied a peregrine falcon, rarely seen, in the meadow outside of the Mountain Station. He’d gestured at the saddle-peak beyond. “We couldn’t follow it off trail though,” he said with a shrug.

  Byrd and I shared a look. The man was pointing in the direction of Secret Lake. We changed our plans and elected to spend the day searching for the peregrine falcon. With Byrd in the lead, we searched the pines for a sign of the rare bird. Then he stopped and I stopped too because in front of us stood the most magnificent female bighorn sheep and, behind her, careening comically into her rear because he was so coltish and clumsy, her lamb. Both animals regarded us sideways, all four of us in a quandary about our next step.

  We were aware that any quick movement would cause them to bolt and that if they became separated from each other it would be disastrous for the lamb. We were so close I could see a tick moving on the ewe’s nose. We stood there with earsplitting grins, watching the pair sniff us on the wind.

  The squawking ravens who settled in the pines overhead seemed to rankle the mother bighorn and she turned an eyeful of accusation on us. Her horns were not as long or curved as the males of her species but they could hurt pretty bad if they gored a guy in the ribs, or worse. The ewe lowered her head. Byrd and I muttered expletives.

  Then the ravens began to heckle more insistently from the pines, spooking the lamb, who jetted off through the brush. The mother turned, sprinting after her baby.

  Byrd and I could see that the lamb was heading toward a cleft in the rock that dipped into a short meadow that led to a deep drop. The mother had gone the other way, up into the dense pine forest where she’d lose track of her lamb’s scent altogether. We set off after it.

  Then it happened. The lamb jumped too close to the edge, scrambled, then fell to a shallow ridge below. It was only an eight-foot drop, but it was enough. Byrd and I climbed down the rocky incline to him. It still hurts to remember the way it was lying there, both front legs broken, bleeding, bleating. I couldn’t read Byrd’s face. It was strange, he looked so calm.

  “Can we save him? Byrd, can we save him?” I already knew the answer. It was unfair that I made him say it out loud.

  I could hardly look at the bleating creature but the damn lamb kept finding my eyes. It was pleading with me. I didn’t know if it was for life or death. I watched Byrd reach into his left sock for his Swiss Army knife. He pulled open the blade.

  The lamb’s cries bounced off the granite. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, unprepared to bear witness.

  “Help me!” Byrd shouted, pounding my leg. Reluctantly I bent down to hold the writhing animal still.

  “Throat,” he said.

  I held the lamb and closed my eyes, waiting for the sound of tearing flesh, preparing for the warm gusher of blood, eager for the silence that would follow. But there was a strange pinging sound, and when I opened my eyes I was confused to see the knife on the rock beside the terrified lamb and Byrd disappearing through the brush. I picked up the Swiss Army knife and with one swift cut performed the brutal act of kindness.

  Heading down in the tram that night, we noticed some uneasy riders glancing our way. Byrd gestured at my blood-splattered jacket. “Maybe you should take it off.”

  “Yeah.” I did.

  “Guess you’re stronger than you think,” he said, focused on the white desert. To this day I can’t decide if Byrd had tested me or failed himself.

  Nola was wheezing in her sleep. Bridget, snoring uncharacteristically softly.

  “They sound like cats,” Vonn said, echoing my thoughts. “You said before there were mountain lions.”

  We were not going to see a mountain lion or bear on this outcrop—I was sure of that. “There’s hardly a dozen ground squirrels here. Slim pickings for a mountain lion.”

  “There’s us.”

  “Don’t put that out there,” I said, half joking. “Don’t put that out in the universe.”

  “You think the universe has ears?”

  I shrugged. “My friend always said that.”

  She hesitated. “You know how people turn to God in their darkest moments?”

  “I guess.” I thought of the sunrise, how astonished I’d been, moved to tears.

  “Isn’t that like being a fair weather fan in sports? Do you think—if there’s a God—He sees it like that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Can God see us now do you think? Does He know we’re stranded on this giant ledge?”

  I paused for a long moment before I realized I didn’t want to speculate. I couldn’t bear to think God was aware of our suffering and couldn’t reconcile His nature if He wasn’t.

  “Do you believe?” I asked.

  I’d felt God on the mountain that morning when I rose but He seemed so far away now.

  “I’m waiting for a sign,” Vonn said.

  Bridget shifted in her sleep then, and rolled out a minute-long single-stroke snare-drum fart. Then she started snoring again, loudly, and Vonn and I nearly shared a seizure from laughing so hard. When we stopped, Vonn fixed her mother’s head.

  After a pause, she said in a quavering voice, “I might have been the one that lost the keys. I’m not sure I gave them to Bridget.”

  “It’s okay, Vonn,” I said. “It was just a mistake.”

  “If we hadn’t gone to the spa for my stupid pedicure that I insisted on, we wouldn’t have lost the keys, and we would have gotten up here earlier in the day when it wasn’t foggy. Maybe we would have found the lake. We wouldn’t have met you. You wouldn’t be lost, Wolf. It’s my fault. What if God is punishing me?”

  “For losing the car keys?” I wanted to assure Vonn that what I felt in the sunrise had no judgment or wrath, but I didn’t. Even then I thought people should come to their own conclusions in matters of God. “That wouldn’t make sense.”

  “Or other things,” she said.

  Interpreting God’s motives—even ascribing motives—seemed absurd. “We’re here because we’re here,” I said. “Still, a few prayers couldn’t hurt.”

  “My toes are numb again,” Vonn said, pressing her heel into my ribs sometime later. “You said to tell you.”

  I could feel her stiff, frozen feet through the socks and was sickened to think of the deadly pathology at work on us all. I took her left foot in my own cold hands, rubbing vigorously, trying to restore circulation.

  “Hurts,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “I know,” I said. “Burns.”

  “Burns,” she agreed. “Am I getting frostbite?”

  Necrodigititis. I managed to coax the warmth back into the ball of Vonn’s foot but her toes were hopelessly cold. “If it hurts it means blood is circulating. That’s a good thing. Let me keep rubbing them,” I said.

  “Why is it taking so long?” Vonn asked. “Why can’t they find us?”

  I prayed to God they would.

  “I’m so thirsty,” Vonn said hoarsely.

  “It’s going to rain,” I said again.

  Nola was groaning in her sleep, Bridget sn
oring in concert. Vonn fixed her mother’s jaw again and the snoring stopped. “I learned to do that when I was little. I slept with her for years.”

  I nodded.

  “How will the rescue dogs track us if it rains?” Vonn asked. “Doesn’t that wash our odour away? What about our footprints?”

  “Depends how much and how hard it rains,” I said. “We need the fluid. We want the rain.”

  The mountain made her mournful music: the howling wind, the hooting owl, those granite bass notes playing reverb with the canyon. I felt every cell in my body shrivelling, my muscles worn from the day’s futile climb. When I shifted I had the sense that my brain was quivering in my skull. All I could smell was sterasote. The lights from Palm Springs mocked us. Tin Town stared back at me like the glowing debris from an explosion.

  Did I fall asleep? I’m not sure. I remember that I was startled by the thought that it had been some time since Vonn had complained about her toes. I started up a vigorous massage with my clumsy hands. “Feel that?” I asked.

  “Numb,” she said.

  I pinched the flesh of her big toe as hard as I could.

  “It doesn’t feel like we just met,” Vonn said, oblivious to the pinch. I remembered Byrd saying those same words to me a few years ago.

  I worked my stiff fingers around her toes, my own hands aching from the effort.

  “You must regret that you got distracted from tracking the bighorn,” Vonn said.

  “What?”

  “You must regret you saw Bridget and Mim.”

  I paused. “I don’t.”

  She stared at me in the dark. “No matter what?”

  “No matter what,” I said. Then I leaned over in the dark, grasping Vonn’s arms and pressed my chapped, icy lips to hers. We stayed that way for a long moment, breathing in each other’s scent. It was not a kiss, exactly—we were too cold and hungry, our mouths and lips too dry. It was something more, ripe and mature and wise and complex, but I don’t think there’s a word for it. So many details in that kiss, and something else, something in particular that I wouldn’t name, not yet, but knew I had to revisit.

  Beside us Nola groaned in pain.

  “Is she unconscious or asleep?” Vonn asked. “I’m scared.”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s strong as an ox.”

  “She’s old, Wolf. She takes bone pills! You take bone pills when your bones are like sawdust.”

  “Ox. Bones. Sawdust. Stop talking about food.”

  She laughed, but just a little. “Days or hours?”

  “What?”

  “You know what I’m asking—days or hours?”

  “You can’t talk like that. You can’t think like that. I got close to the ridge today. If only I had a rope to help me reach that second branch.”

  “My coat?”

  “We need our coats.”

  “What about your idea of using the straps from Mim’s knapsack?”

  “Yeah. Not long enough to make a good rope though.”

  “Right,” Vonn said, trying to stay positive. “We’ll use the straps, and the rest of the underwear?”

  “Mim’s brassiere?”

  “Mim’s brassiere,” she said, smiling.

  “It’s a plan. We make a rope. I climb all the way up. I get help. We’ll be home by noon tomorrow.”

  “It’s a plan,” Vonn said.

  I continued to knead the flesh of her feet, relieved when she started to whimper.

  “Hurts,” she said.

  “That’s good. It’s good that it hurts.”

  She watched me for a long while, then said, “You know about those Andes plane crash survivors from the seventies? The rugby players.”

  I did.

  “Did you read the book?”

  I’d read the book.

  “You remember what they did?” she said.

  They famously turned to cannibalism to survive. I didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “I can’t eat Mim.” She burst into tears.

  “We won’t eat Mim.” I took her in my arms. “We won’t eat Mim.”

  “Promise?” Our eyes met.

  I paused. “We’ll eat Bridget.”

  There was a moment of silence before she laughed. “You’re sick.”

  “You too,” I said. A compliment.

  We watched from our perch in the cave as the owl hooted through the gloom then disappeared on flapping wings. “Good!” I called. “Go!”

  “Think he’s been watching us?” Vonn asked.

  I did, but didn’t want her to think I was flaky.

  The silence stretched. When the wind kicked up to interrupt my meditation I was peeved, and turned my face toward it. Vonn nudged me in the ribs again, saying, “My feet, Wolf.”

  “Do you believe in God?” I asked.

  “Well now,” she said. “Duh. Haven’t we already had this discussion? I’m the fair-weather believer. Remember?”

  I’d meant to ask her if she believed in ghosts, for a second earlier when I’d turned into the wind I’d seen something move. I was sure it was Byrd again, or maybe my mother, the ghost-angel. I checked Nola to make sure she was still breathing. The woods were quiet save for the distant hooting owl, then the sound of snapping branches.

  We scanned for danger and decided it was just the wind.

  “My feet are blocks of ice.”

  They were. Tucking her right foot into my armpit I started an aggressive massage on her left foot again, through the scratchy wool socks.

  “It’s not working,” she said, and I could sense her stirring panic. I stripped the sock from her foot and rolled it like a glove over her chapped, frozen fingers. I couldn’t make out the details in the dark, just the outline, enough to see that all of her toes were swollen and stiff. I took her foot in my own rigid hands, trying to massage the blood back down through her calf and into her ankle, the arch, the heel, the ball. I was afraid of how cold the smallest toe felt.

  “Am I going to lose my toes?”

  “No,” I said.

  Vonn didn’t resist when I drew her foot toward me, just shut her eyes as slowly I took her toes into my mouth, warming them with my tongue, sucking gently to draw down the blood. I was moved by her groans, which were not sounds of pleasure. I couldn’t save her from pain, but I hoped to save her from frostbite. We watched each other in the darkness and shared, in those strange moments, one of the greatest, strangest intimacies of my existence.

  Then there was movement in the bushes to the west. Even with my senses impaired and my mouth distracted I could smell it. Vonn quickly pulled her toes out from between my teeth and put the sock back onto her foot.

  “Coyote,” I said, imagining he’d tracked us here, lured by Nola’s blood. Or maybe our failing bodies were giving off a scent that cried out to its appetite.

  Movement in the trees to the north of us meant there was more than one. Two. There were two of them, stalking us. This was happening.

  I’d dragged a small branch into the alcove in case of curious wildlife—I was thinking squirrel, rat, spider. I never imagined confronting two aggressive coyotes while stranded on an outcropping over Devil’s Canyon. I’d have grabbed a bigger branch.

  I stood at the entrance to the cave, listening to the animals stalk us from the bush, waving my stick and shouting, “Git. Git! GIT!” I tried to make myself a large menacing presence but those canines must have been as hungry as we were because they didn’t retreat very far.

  Then the first dog returned, advancing from the left, the second from the right, weaving through the brush and over the rock toward our shelter. I hollered at them. So did Vonn.

  Bridget woke to see the menacing coyotes and started to scream. She screamed her bloody head off. The coyotes retreated into the bush and howled along with her. What a haunting sound that trio made, snatched by the canyon walls and repeated by the devil himself.

  We waited. I could hear them—rustling bushes and snapping twigs—but I couldn’t see them. “Git!” I
shouted, but the coyotes must have thought I said, “Come,” because they stepped out of the brush, posturing.

  “Throw something at them, Wolf!” Vonn shouted.

  I looked around for a rock but when I couldn’t see one within reach I grabbed the big plastic peanut butter jar and chucked it as hard as I could, beaning the closest coyote right between the eyes.

  The coyote shook off the strike and came back to life snarling and snapping, able to see me better in the darkness than I could see him. The other coyote snapped up the plastic jar to crush between his incisors, then started to shake it like they do, to break the prey’s neck. The jar snapped off the lid and the beast disappeared in the cloud of ash.

  The mangy animal sneezed. I stood my ground, brandishing the branch, shouting—we all were. Bridget picked up Nola’s knapsack and hurled it. The dog caught it impressively in its teeth, his mate joining in the killing frenzy, tearing it to shreds. I stomped forward, swinging my impressive stick. The beasts, confused by the bloodless sacrifice, dropped the canvas sack and bolted.

  I gave chase, claiming my territory so they wouldn’t come back, but I was slow in the dark, pulling myself over the rock and through the brush, following them by sound. I could tell they were headed for Devine Divide, and it occurred to me then that the wily coyotes might be tricking me—trapping me. I pressed on against my better judgment. Maybe I was afraid that if I quit they’d find out how weak I really was.

  They were on the rock near the sterasote bush. I could see them moving in the shadows, then, after a brief hesitation, one after the other, the beasts made spectacular leaps over the wide gulf that separated us from the slope on the other side.

  The first coyote stuck the landing gracefully in the moonlight but the second stumbled. I was pretty sure he was limping behind his partner as they trotted up the slope and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Wolf?” Vonn called.

  Something caught my foot and I reached down to find the remains of Nola’s knapsack. The dogs had torn it up pretty bad and it didn’t look salvageable for much. I looked up into the heavens, thinking, Really?

  When I returned to the cave I saw Vonn’s shadow standing guard, holding a large spiny branch.