The Mountain Story

“Are you all right, Wolf?” Bridget asked.

  I could hear Byrd’s laughter, and because it sounded so real, I started laughing too, until I saw myself in Nola’s glassy eyes.

  “Look,” Vonn said, pointing out another blue fragment half-buried in the dirt between two boulders.

  It was denim. I leaned down and pinched it with my fingers and pulled it from the earth. It was like a magic trick, almost comical, as I kept tugging and tugging and finally freed a sizable pair of jeans from their earthen tomb.

  “Hello! Hello! Hel-lo!” we all called out to the wilderness, shivering, not in the least because the jeans belonged to a very big man.

  “His coat,” Vonn said, pointing to a large camouflage-style raincoat hanging weathered from the branch of a nearby tree.

  “Stay here,” I told the women. I didn’t want to alarm them, but I’d spied through the brush a dirty red hunter’s cap on what appeared to be the slumbering head of a shirtless man. It was freezing cold, and the man was without his coat, so he was either dead or crazy.

  “Oh my God,” Vonn said, holding on to her mother and grandmother as I limped toward him.

  My mental state was such that I knew I should fear his. I wondered if he had a gun. “Hello,” I called.

  As I walked toward him, with each painful step, I was praying that he was dead so I could have his boots.

  He was dead. He had no boots. No legs for that matter. Missing too was an arm. Scavengers had gutted him, made bowls of his hip bones and licked him clean. Poor bastard. Poor bastard.

  A ground squirrel startled the hell out of me, darting from beneath a granite ledge nearby where I noticed the remnants of the man’s missing leg, the right, judging by the shape of the brown-socked foot. I looked around for the twin but the left leg was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the boot that the man must have at some point had on his foot.

  Struck by a thought I went to the leg, looking around for the bush knife I hoped the stranger kept there, grasping the dried muscle and desiccated skin through the rotting brown sock. No knife.

  After a second’s hesitation I picked up the blackened leg bone and headed back to the spot where the man’s torso lay, though I had no strength in my bones to dig a grave for his.

  “Why did he take off his clothes?” Vonn called to me, watching from the distance as I returned the man’s leg to his carcass.

  “Happens sometimes when people are freezing to death. Their brain short-circuits. Maybe they think they’re burning up with heat. They take all their clothes off.”

  Vonn turned, darting into the brush nearby. I was afraid she needed to vomit. But Vonn didn’t vomit. After a moment she returned triumphantly, carrying a large pink knapsack she’d spotted in some meadow grass. I can’t recall if she raced back to us or if we ran to her, but I remember we four on our knees gathered around the knapsack.

  “Is it his wife’s?” Vonn wondered. “What if she’s alive? What if she’s still here?” She dumped the contents of the knapsack into the dirt: a damp and mouldy Florida State T-shirt and a yellow canteen, an exact match to Nola’s and the one I gave to Byrd. The canteen was dry, I knew, the second I picked the thing up.

  “This can’t be all,” Vonn cried, clutching the empty knapsack. “It can’t be!” She shook it again. I almost laughed when a penny fell clattering onto the rock. Her face changed then, as she felt, in the seam of the knapsack, a long, zippered compartment. She opened it and drew out a leather-sheathed hunting knife.

  I took the knife from Vonn’s trembling hand, pulling out the blade to examine it, before I returned it to its sheath and the sheath to my pocket. Tenacious Vonn continued to search, and found two more treasures in the same compartment as the knife—a small jar of Tabasco sauce along with some waterlogged pouches of salt and pepper and a tiny tin of peppermints. I naturally saw the tin of peppermints as a sign from my mother—it was the same brand she always carried in her purse.

  Watching Vonn open the tin I drooled in anticipation. Inside were a full complement of twenty minuscule mints—five each, two of which we quickly agreed we would have immediately, saving the next for sunset, and the next for sunrise. We watched each other place the tiny treasures on our tongues, the most sublime thing any of us had ever tasted.

  “What about this?” Vonn asked, opening the Tabasco sauce. “Can we drink it? A drop? Please?”

  “No!” I said taking it from her, jamming it into my coat pocket. “That would make the thirst worse.”

  “It couldn’t be worse,” Bridget said.

  “Couldn’t we have a little?” Vonn begged.

  I shook my head and started forward, disgusted to find myself salivating over the thought of shaking the hot sauce over some steaming ground squirrel flesh.

  Vonn slipped into the harness of the flaccid pink knapsack.

  “That would be the worst,” Vonn said. “Being alone. Up here.”

  “Shouldn’t someone say a prayer over the poor man’s body?” Nola asked, and all of us stopped to look back.

  “I did,” I said, which was a lie. I’d said a prayer for Nola.

  (Later I found out the man’s name was Pedro Rodriguez. While living his dream to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone, he’d gotten lost and became trapped in Devil’s Canyon. The man left his wife, four daughters and seven grandchildren. The pink knapsack belonged to his eldest granddaughter and he was carrying it for luck. When we found him he’d been missing for three months.)

  The trees gave way to a long stretch of corrugated granite. I felt my life force draining into the veins of the rock as I charted the white bands of feldspar, drawn like chalk arrows we were meant to follow.

  Vonn called from behind me, pointing at something in the woods to the west, “Wolf, look over there.”

  We four changed course to investigate a nearby rock and what appeared to be a large lizard but was instead the corpse’s left leg, and a few feet away from it, astonishingly, a single, weathered leather hiking boot.

  The pine boughs above me shivered as I sat down to pull the hiking boot over my stiff left foot. It was several sizes too large, which meant that I could switch feet easily to give each of my soles a break from the rocky ground. I looked around for its mate but couldn’t find the right boot anywhere.

  “This is bad,” Bridget murmured.

  “We need to move to higher ground again,” I said. “Looks like the snow’s stopped but there’s not much daylight left.”

  Behind me, Vonn opened the bandage on Nola’s wound, releasing a potpourri of infection from the blood-blackened sterasote. Bridget gagged. I moved upwind.

  “I am so sorry,” Nola said, holding her breath.

  “I need to clean Mim’s arm. And I’m going to need fresh bandages,” Vonn said, taking off her coat.

  “No,” Bridget said. “Use my shirt.”

  “Not now. We need to keep moving,” I said.

  “Why are we going back up?” Vonn asked. “It’s cold up there.”

  “I know, but we need to get visible. In case there’s a plane looking for us.”

  “Or a helicopter,” Bridget added. “They have to be looking for us by now.”

  The committee of vultures was circling again, and I worried they’d get the wrong idea if we stopped too long. “Come on.”

  Vonn shook her head, gesturing toward Nola’s purple, pus-filled arm. I started toward them but my muscles were spent, my vision blurred, my gut in spasm—the whole works beginning to shut down. I had to sit and rest before I reached them on the rock.

  “Rest,” Vonn said. “I’ll do this.” She dressed the wound with some fresh sterasote leaves, pretending it was doing any good.

  One of the circling vultures broke ranks to swoop down. He settled on a tree growing out from a fault in a rock nearby, the eager reaper with his pickled red head and massive talons, getting an estimate on Nola to report to his friends. I hate spies.

  “Git!” I shouted, and he did, but I knew he’d be back.

  “Come o
n,” I told the Devines. “We need to keep moving.”

  Vonn hastily rewrapped Nola’s wound and we carried on toward higher ground, manoeuvring over boulders and branches and roots, our path presenting itself as a multiple choice of barely possible and impossible routes.

  I limped along in the lead with my one excellent boot and my aching socked foot and my only remaining stick. Turning to check on the Devines, I’d had to blink away visions of the coyotes and mountain lions and Yago attacking from behind. “Okay?”

  Bridget behind me in the red poncho supported Nola from one side, while Vonn took the other, clomping in my hiking boots. No one answered.

  The most successful people in the most impossible situations are the ones that are sure they’re gonna get out of it, and they go on thinking that, even if they die trying.

  “Okay,” I shouted again.

  Vonn looked up, grateful. “Okay,” she said.

  We carried on through the cold, bleak forest, intending to move to higher ground but finding ourselves at the mercy of the canyon.

  We were alternately chilled in the long stretches between the rocks and baked on the bare ridges. We stopped to rest every quarter hour or so, but only for a moment, all of us knowing instinctively that our next stop could also be our tomb. Our pace was torpid. Our stomachs were empty. Our thirst was wretched. Our spirits were weak.

  “I was dreaming last night,” Nola said.

  “You bit me,” I said.

  “Yes, I did. I remember why. I was eating anniversary cake. In my dream. Pip was feeding it to me. We always did buttercream frosting.”

  “We have to keep moving,” I said.

  “The vultures are back.” Vonn pointed at the black bird hunkered down on a nearby branch.

  Bridget shivered.

  “I dreamed about Pip being so happy to see me,” Nola whispered.

  “We’ll rest a little. Okay?” I offered, hurling a rock to scare the black bird away.

  The vulture fled the branch but found another.

  “Stay with us, Nola,” I said.

  “Come on, Mim,”

  “I’m ready,” Nola said, struggling to keep her eyes open. “It’s okay.”

  Bridget held up her hand then, shushing us. “Listen.”

  I wanted to strangle her—I did. Especially because the air was still, and the mountain was quiet, eerily so. Nothing sounded like a helicopter or waterfall or rescue plane or barking dog.

  The only sound, and it was crazy-making, was the rhythmic kiss of water hitting rock.

  That’s what Bridget was hearing too, and now I could smell the water. I moved through the trees, trying to sniff out its source, and at last spotted a timid dripping stream moistening the fractures in the granite over our heads, then falling one drop at a time into a loose, glistening cairn of pebbles below.

  We didn’t whoop. We didn’t celebrate. We helped Nola to the ground where she struggled into position with her head resting on the rock, and waited open-mouthed, like a baby bird, for the sandy, dripping water to accumulate on her tongue. After swallowing a few mouthfuls, she murmured a prayer and gave her spot to Bridget. Bridget took no more or less time than Nola to drink a mouthful, then made way for Vonn, who drank a few drops and made way for Nola again, who insisted Vonn drink some more.

  After the women had several drinks, I took my turn. The water tasted sour, but the wetness on my lips and tongue and throat was inspirational. We took turns resting our heads on the rock to accept the dripping water—the process was interminably slow.

  What prompted my urge I can’t say, but I was seized by the impulse to write my name on the found canteen’s yellow enamel. I couldn’t find a stone sharp enough to scratch the surface so I asked to borrow Nola’s diamond wedding ring, which Bridget had been wearing on her index finger. When I finished, Nola asked me to write hers too, then Vonn scratched her name, and finally Bridget. We were here. Damn it.

  “We have to fill it,” I said.

  “It’ll take all day,” Vonn said.

  We set the canteen on the ground, propped up by a few rocks, to take the dripping water. Every drop was a second, a heartbeat, another grain of sand.

  Looking around at my motley crew, I waited for a sign about what to do next. Drip, drip, drip. We were quiet and still for a long time.

  Vonn was the first to double over vomiting, and then we all began to purge in tragically embarrassing bouts. The water we’d thought would save us might instead dehydrate us further.

  “Oh, Wolf,” Nola said. I took her in my arms.

  We needed cleaner water. I tore a piece of nylon from the pocket of my parka and used it as a filter over the mouth of the canteen. We watched the water. Drip, drip, drip.

  We did fall asleep then, or maybe we fell unconscious. We were all in and out that fourth day. Mostly out of it.

  When I opened my eyes, I was startled by our reality. Was I really on the mountain? Lost with three Devines? Were we really only hours away from dehydration, hypothermia? I took a moment to look around, reacquaint myself with the rock, moved by the sky. I hoped, in taking that moment, the hallucination I was having—of three hungry vultures waiting out our lives—would fade.

  But it didn’t. One of the birds was bobbing in a Coulter pine. Another, strutting on a rock. The third was flapping within two feet of Nola. It was no illusion.

  “Nola,” I said, shaking her awake.

  She saw the vultures and shrieked in terror. Bridget and Vonn woke, screaming when they saw the birds too. Amid the mayhem, I knocked over the yellow canteen, spilling a tragic amount of the carefully collected water. I looked at the spilled water, homicidal.

  Vonn set the canteen back under the drip.

  Stomping toward the biggest buzzard in my single boot, I hollered, “Get out of here!”

  The vulture raised his crooked wings, flapping aggressively.

  “Shoo!” Nola cried.

  I charged at it, the pain of each step a shot to my skull. “GO!”

  Finally, the bird took flight, hovering, smug.

  Bridget hurled a rock at the pine branch where another was perched. She missed, and when the rock hit the ground all three of the vultures converged upon it for a taste of our scent.

  “They’re like seagulls,” Bridget said. “Do they think we’re feeding them?”

  Nola chastised them. “We’re not a food court.”

  The birds were too close for comfort. I charged again, shouting, “Go! Git! GIT!”

  The vultures cocked their heads. Do vultures laugh?

  I picked up a large rock and threw it into their midst but that didn’t scare them away. They pecked at the rock like they’d hoped it was human sacrifice.

  Vonn threw handfuls of dirt at the birds and, after that, just insults.

  Bridget folded herself, sharp angles like origami. “Make them go away, Wolf,” she cried, covering her filthy face with her filthy fingers.

  “GIT!” I shouted, charging toward the vultures again. I fell against a rock and some hard object slammed my hip bone. The Tabasco sauce from the dead hiker’s knapsack.

  My first thought was that maybe I could drink the whole thing in a single gulp and kill myself—not suicide but sacrifice to the buzzards. My second thought was that the Devines might try to save me and I imagined it would all end quite badly. Not that, at this point, it looked like it would end especially well.

  “Vonn,” I said. “I need Nola’s bandages. Give me the bandages.”

  “They’re disgusting.”

  “Not to vultures,” I said.

  Then she saw that I was holding the bottle of Tabasco sauce in my hand and realized my intention. “Okay.”

  She peeled the pus-welded bandages from Nola’s arm and handed the repulsive mess to me. I soaked the bloody, fouled fabric with the hot sauce, then I put a big stone inside to weight the rags and hurled it at the birds.

  It was both disgusting and gratifying to watch them swarm the bloody Tabasco-soaked cloth. They pe
cked and shredded the bandages—oh and the sound they made, that horrible sound, only worse because of the Tabasco—and then you could tell they were confused and then they flapped away.

  “It worked,” Vonn breathed.

  Nola and Bridget grinned with the victory. Even the trees praised our gross ingenuity, creaking and clapping in the wind, blowing away the clouds and bringing back the sun to torch us. The temperature must have been twenty degrees hotter in the sun than shade. I was afraid to sweat and lose more fluid.

  Nola’s wound was festering and I knew it had to be re-dressed right away. “We have to take care of your injury,” I said.

  “Please don’t waste time with that. We have to keep moving,” Nola said.

  “Vonn’s going to clean it, Mother.” Bridget struggled to speak. “She knows what she’s doing. Let her help.”

  “It’s not like I’m a doctor.” You could see that Vonn was chuffed by her mother’s confidence.

  “Come on, Mim. We can’t leave it exposed like that,” Bridget said sternly, turning to work herself out of her T-shirt. “Use this to bandage it back up.”

  “That’s the only other layer you have under there, Bridget,” Vonn said, tending to Nola’s putrid arm. “You’ll freeze.”

  “I’m numb,” Bridget said, more as a statement than a complaint.

  Vonn found some fresh branches to use as splints, and with no time or space to crush them, took a fistful of the sterasote leaves and wrapped Bridget’s T-shirt around Nola’s injured wrist.

  “You must have a high tolerance for pain, Nola,” I said.

  “Perk of aging,” Nola said, trying to smile. She gestured toward the dripping water.

  “We have to be patient,” I said, checking in with Bridget and Vonn. “Right? We’ll feel better when we’ve had some more water. And we’ll have some energy to get back at it. Right?”

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Hot,” Vonn said, when she saw me watching her. She was unaware that her cracked lip was bleeding.

  “Hot,” I agreed, noticing a branch beside Vonn moving in the wind.

  “It’s going to take forever,” Nola said.

  Drip, drip, drip. Nola was right. It would take all our daylight hours to fill the canteen and then what? The temperature in this part of Devil’s Canyon would drop to near freezing when the sun shifted. Not to mention that in the unlikely event there was a plane looking for us, we would not be spotted here.