The Mountain Story

  I studied the slender septum in the varnished rock where the water dripped but I couldn’t see a way to climb up to find its source.

  “We can’t stay here,” I said, finally.

  “Three days without water, Wolf,” Vonn returned.

  “We need the water,” Bridget said. “I think we should stay.”

  “I’m staying with my daughter,” Nola said.

  I turned to Vonn for a tie vote. “Vonn?”

  “I’m with Bridget and Mim,” Vonn declared. The clouds were reflected in her pretty eyes. Her mouth was set defiantly. “What?”

  I blinked when the branch moved beside her, and I went on blinking until I understood that I was not looking at a branch but a snake, slithering along the fracture in the marbled rock where Vonn was leaning. A Pacific rattler, olive and brown, and judging by the yellowish tail, young.

  Rising slowly, I said, “It’s time to move on.”

  “You just said to be patient,” Bridget pointed out.

  I wanted to pull Vonn away from the snake without any of the women being the wiser. I offered my hand, along with a corny bow.

  “Why are you being weird?” Vonn asked.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “I’m staying here,” she said, staring at my outstretched hand.

  The young snake slithered in and out of the cracks in the rock beside Vonn’s head.

  “We need to go now, Vonn,” I said, my hand waiting in mid-air.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Trust me, Vonn.”

  “What’s with you?”

  “Trust me,” I repeated, telling myself not to look at the snake.

  “I do trust you, Wolf.” She held my gaze. “But I’m staying here.”

  “Please.”

  Bridget turned to Vonn then, promptly spotting the snake a hair’s width from her daughter’s neck. She shouted in her broken voice, “Snake!”

  Nola shrieked.

  Vonn turned, startling the snake.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered as the snake reared up, caught between a rock and a soft place, and rattled his tail.

  Bridget took a step forward. “Get away from her!” she growled, finding her voice in the moment.

  “Bridget!” I shouted.

  I saw it happen before it happened and I had no way to stop it from happening.

  Bridget swiped at the snake with her bare hands.

  “No!”

  The slithering snake, striking at his tormentor, found Vonn’s upper arm instead.

  People say snakebites are incredibly painful but Vonn didn’t shriek or scream. “He got me,” she said, holding her breath.

  “Okay,” I said. “Stay still. The most important thing is to be calm. And still.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Bridget cried.

  Vonn smiled reassuringly, reaching out for her mother. “Mama,” she said, and then fainted before any of us could catch her. She slumped and fell back and hit her head on the edge of a rock, before she fell to the ground unconscious. Just like that.

  “Vonn!” I dropped to her side, my hands on her face.

  Bridget murmured, “Oh my God.”

  “Where’s the snake?” I whipped my head around but couldn’t see it.

  “Vonn! Vonn!” Nola cried, squeezing Vonn’s leg.

  Shot with adrenalin, I bent to lift Vonn to my shoulder. I wasn’t afraid of snakes anymore. I wasn’t afraid of anything, except maybe time. It felt like twenty miles but it was more likely twenty feet before I found a patch of soft earth where I could lay her down.

  “Maybe she wasn’t bitten,” Nola offered desperately. “Maybe she only thought she was. Like Bridge with the bee.”

  Opening Vonn’s jacket we saw right away where the young rattler’s razor fangs had sliced through the layers of wool and punctured her arm. I remembered Byrd saying that bites from baby rattlers were the worst. My mind raced through the don’ts of snakebite.

  “Shouldn’t we suck out the venom?” Bridget asked.

  “No.”

  “Should we tie it off?”

  “No.”

  “Should we try to wake her up?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “We can’t do nothing,” Nola said.

  There was something about urine. Wrong. That was Frankie. Be still. Remove jewellery. Don’t use pressure. Don’t use tourniquet. Don’t apply ice. Keep the bite lower than the heart.

  “We have to keep her still,” I said, “so her heart doesn’t pump too fast and make the venom spread faster. And keep the bite area lower than her heart. You can’t suck out the venom because you’d get sick too. That won’t help anyone.”

  “He was trying to bite me,” Bridget said.

  “Some bites are dry. Maybe it was a dry bite,” I said unconvincingly.

  “No venom? Does that happen?”

  “How will we know?” Nola asked.

  I thought of what Byrd had said. She doesn’t expire.

  “What now?” Bridget asked.

  “We have to go on,” I said.

  Nola had had the presence of mind, even in the chaos with the snake, to bring along the hiker’s yellow canteen with its meagre quantity of water. She even remembered the pink knapsack. Bridget made sure the canteen lid fit tightly while I bent down to attend to Vonn. I didn’t have the strength to lift her again. So I prayed for it.

  Byrd whispered into my ear, “Take back your boots. She’ll be easier to lift.”

  I did. She was, and my feet were grateful. I left the dead hiker’s single boot behind.

  It seemed as though the air changed after that. Time sped up again, and I was out of my body, hovering above, observing the man-child carry the pretty, dying girl through the sloping forests and over the tumbled boulders and up the hill so steep that at some points he practically had to crawl on his knees with the girl draped over his back. I watched his shins banging against the rock, his fingers bleeding, cheeks snagged by thorns. I bet that hurt, I thought, before returning to my body to discover I was right.

  I might have congratulated myself for my strength had I not turned around to find that Bridget, whose shoulders were significantly smaller, and whose legs were stick thin, had hoisted her failing mother and was following in my footsteps.

  That was a hell of a thing to witness. Speaking of heroes.

  After a time, we reached a small, forested plateau where we thought we could gain a sense of direction. I found a worn boulder and eased Vonn down. She was still unconscious, and the bump on the back of her head worried me as much as the swelling at the site of the snakebite. Her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat faint.

  Glancing around I was sorry to find that this vantage point brought us no clear perspective, no sense of direction, just more trees and rock. Bridget staggered up and I helped her settle Nola down beside her granddaughter. Nola, critically injured. Vonn, bitten by a snake. Bridget, on the verge of a breakdown.

  I’d counted Nola out every hour for the past three days and she kept coming back. Now she wasn’t the worst off. Come on, Vonn. Resilience, thy name is Devine. Stay with us, Vonn.

  “How is she?” Nola asked, reaching out to take Vonn’s limp hand.

  “Still breathing,” I said.

  “It’s my fault,” Bridget said quietly. “All of this.”

  “It’s the snake’s fault,” Nola said. The bees. The snakes. Damnable nature.

  We passed around the yellow canteen from which we each took a single small sip, then Bridget and I stepped a few feet away to survey the undulation of rocks and trees. “Not ideal,” she said quietly, looking around, unaware that she sounded just like her mother.

  “No,” I said.

  “We have to get them to a hospital.”

  “We will.”

  “We’ve lost sight of the pine tree.”

  “What?”

  “The pine tree.”

  “Right.” I’d forgotten about the beacon altogether.

  There was a sou
nd then. Distant at first. Bridget and I shared a look. The hooting owl again.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Bridget spied him in a tree on a rocky hillside.

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” Nola breathed.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Would the sterasote help Vonn’s bite?” Nola asked.

  “We could try,” I said.

  With the dead man’s hunting knife I cut a length of fabric from the hood of my sweatshirt and tore it in two. Then Bridget and I took the leaves from our pockets and divided what remained of our cache, cramming half into the putrid casserole that was Nola’s wound, and spreading the rest on the area around Vonn’s snakebite.

  Nola watched me return the knife to the sheath. “Sharper than you’d think,” she said.

  We drank a little more of the cloudy water from the canteen and felt stronger, ready to push on. Nola managed to walk on her own, which impressed the hell out of me. Vonn remained unconscious.

  The owl hooted again, and Bridget pointed to where the bird was flapping away up the hill.

  “We should follow him,” I said. I don’t know why.

  I hoisted Vonn back onto my shoulders. Nola leaned on Bridget, and we traversed the rock and climbed the boulders and dragged our heels through a short grassy meadow and on again over another ridge, following the hooting owl.

  The choice to follow the bird made as much sense as any choice I’ve ever made, any direction I’ve ever taken. We followed the bird for what must have been hours, hiking up, and down again, lost in our own finales, letting the mountain, and the owl, lead the way.

  “We’re going nowhere,” Bridget said at one point.

  “We’re gonna get out of this,” I said. But I wasn’t sure anymore, and thought I must have sounded like a fool.

  We carried on, shuffling over the rocky ground, Vonn growing heavier on my strained shoulders. No point in cursing God. Besides, you had to hand it to Him for his gamesmanship.

  The beauty of the setting sun on that night, the last night, was not lost on me, even with Vonn unconscious and Bridget huffing behind me, Nola leaning on her shoulder. I wished I had my camera. “Haven’t heard the owl in a while,” Bridget said.

  She was right.

  Another night on the mountain. Our last, but I didn’t know it then. Owl or no owl, we had to stop soon, and we’d need shelter for the night. It was cold.

  “Why are we climbing?” Bridget asked. “It’s just getting colder. There’s nothing to see from up here but more rocks and more trees.”

  Just then the owl hooted again, and when we turned to look for him we spied a rock formation farther up the hill, slabs of white granite that had fallen to create a house shape, complete with a tilted chalet roof.

  We headed for the shelter, feeling optimistic, but each awful step brought us deeper into a deafening wind tunnel. If the owl was still hooting, I’ll be damned if I could hear it.

  When we reached the place, Bridget helped me lay Vonn down on a bed of granite within. Nola sat down beside her. “Four days is a long time to be lost,” she said.

  I scanned the area for loose rocks, which I tossed within reach of Nola and Bridget. I wanted to be well armed in case of an attack.

  “Please, Wolf,” Nola said. “Come here.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly.

  She gestured for me to lean down and I did. Then she whispered something into my ear that I didn’t understand. I asked her to repeat it.

  “You know the Andes survivors?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Eat me,” Nola whispered.

  Let’s say that there followed a long pause.

  “You know what they did, Wolf?”

  “I know what they did.”

  “In the movie, they dried it like jerky.”

  I could only thank God for the roaring wind so that Bridget did not hear what her mother had asked me to do.

  “What are you saying, Mim?” Bridget asked.

  “I was telling Wolf thanks,” Nola said, then turned back to me in earnest. “We wouldn’t be here without you.”

  I looked around at the three Devines. Vonn’s complexion was ash. Nola was drained. Bridget still had a flicker of hope. She smiled when she saw my concern. “She’s breathing,” she said, spreading her palm over her daughter’s chest. “She’s gonna be fine.”

  The wind was deafening. Louder than it had been at any other moment on any other day in any other place on the mountain. It was hard to think over the roar.

  “Why does it have to be so loud?” Bridget said, holding her ears.

  That wind raged all night long, from time to time storming into our shelter to remind everyone who was the boss. I suppose I must have slept. I do recall that after a long stretch of being awake I was startled to see Nola struggling to rise from where she’d been sleeping beside Vonn, as if she was being lifted by the wind and coaxed out of the shelter, under a spell. That’s what it seemed like.

  “Nola,” I said.

  The wind appeared to guide her with its hand on the small of her back, as she moved to find her place under the shimmering stars. “Nola,” I called after her, but she didn’t respond.

  I watched her there, with the wind whipping her hair, as her posture changed, and she was young again, lovely in the moonlight, sparkling against the night.

  I crept toward her. “Nola,” I said again, louder, but she didn’t turn around.

  I found a rock to sit down on.

  Nola murmured something to the heavens, turned, then—looking straight through me—arranged herself on the rock and raised her arm in the air. Her head began to swivel strangely, and she dropped her chin to her chest.

  Her arms began to flail about in what appeared to be a seizure. I was paralyzed over what to do, watching her saw the dark with speed and vigour, even with her injured wrist, while her face was joyful and serene. If it was a seizure, I finally decided, I would let her seize.

  After watching her for a time, I began to see that her gestures were not random or epileptic but precise, her motions rhythmic. She was holding aloft a ghost instrument, stroking a set of strings with her infection-ravaged broken wrist. Spiccato. Legato. Pizzicato. Detache. She wasn’t playing air violin. Nola was playing the wind.

  I listened, enraptured by the music, every poignant note.

  When she was done her arms fell limp at her sides. The forest begged for an encore but she’d left it all on the stage. Without acknowledging my presence, she made her way back to her place beside Bridget and Vonn, eased herself back down on the rock, and closed her eyes.

  THE

  FIFTH

  DAY

  THE WIND ON the morning of the fifth day blew so cold and hard I’d had to pry open my frozen eyelids with my frozen fingers. I couldn’t have spoken, even if I’d wanted to. My teeth felt loose. My mouth was a grave.

  Vonn? I couldn’t summon the strength to turn toward her. Of course I was afraid to look. As the sun rose over the ridge, all I could do was lie still with my eyes closed, imagining the assemblage of spirits waking in Tin Town. Kriket and Yago and the legions of Trulys in that trailer. And the Diazes too. Lark. Harley. Dantay. My friend Byrd. My father in jail.

  Regrets. Sure you think about regrets, but it’s not regret for the things you’ve done that occupy you, as much as it is a longing for the things you’ll never have the chance to do.

  I had the strangest sense of being watched, and I glanced over to find Nola, pale and still, eyes wide and fixed on me. I shuddered. “Nola?”

  I was startled when she blinked.

  “The knife,” Nola said.

  “What?”

  “Please,” Nola said.

  I could not connect the dots.

  “Please,” Nola said.

  Knife. Was she suggesting I kill her? Slit her throat like the sacrificial lamb?

  “We’re going to make it out of this.”

  She shook her head.

  “Faith,” I said. “Three seco
nds, remember?”

  I worked up the guts to turn then, to find Vonn still and stiff beside me. I touched her face. “Vonn?” I whispered. “Wake up.” But she wouldn’t. I checked her wrist, relieved to find a pulse, and whispered into her ear, “You’re not leaving me.”

  She whimpered faintly, which I took as confirmation.

  Bridget woke then, and stretched to stroke Vonn’s forehead. “The swelling around the bite mark looks about the same,” Bridget said. “Mim?”

  “I’m here,” Nola said weakly.

  I located the dead man’s canteen.

  “The peppermints!” Bridget blurted.

  She found the flaccid pink knapsack on the rock, and the container of mints inside, but could not pry open the tiny tin.

  “Careful,” I said, watching her frustration build.

  Bridget banged the tin against the rock.

  “That won’t work.”

  “I think I got it.” She slammed the tin against the rock once more and did succeed in opening the lid but upset the contents, and all we could do was watch the tiny peppermints bounce down the rock and roll into the dense vegetation on either side.

  I managed to salvage only three of the remaining mints.

  Nola tried to comfort Bridget. “A couple of mints won’t make a difference.”

  “Here,” I said, passing one of the tiny mints to Bridget.

  “Save mine for Vonn,” Bridget said.

  “Mine too,” Nola said.

  I put the mints in my pocket, and we spoke no more of peppermints or hunger.

  The canteen contained barely enough water to moisten our lips. I passed it to Nola, who only pretended to take a sip before passing it to Bridget, who gave it right back to me. I remember thinking of the dead man to whom the canteen belonged, wishing I knew his name so that I could carve it there along with ours.

  “We have to,” I said, pressing the canteen back into Nola’s good hand. “Just a little.”

  We were careful to save a few drops for Vonn.

  “We should go out there and look around,” I said, rising and offering a hand to Bridget.