Goat Mountain

23

FORKED RIDGES BRACED AGAINST THE VALLEY BELOW, Satan’s hoof, leverage for his rise. We stood at the top of that fork, the four of us at the edge, a place soundless except for the rise of air from that superheated ground, dark bare surface armored in exposed black rock.

Charred skeletons of every tree and bush twisting below us. Manzanita in blackened baskets reaching upward, oak branches burrowing sideways through the air, tips whitened, no green, no leaves. All seeming to writhe, still in motion. We stood at the tip of the flame, both slopes curling inward orange and red like the surface of the sun drawn upward. Immolation if it weren’t for time, and mirages still boiling.

Something red to that ground, small bits of red rock or something transformed, no vein of it or anything solid, and maybe it was only the red of the manzanita, some sheen to that even when dead or dormant, changing the light.

Snake, Tom said, and then I saw it, not twenty feet away downslope, coiled behind a dark stump of ruined buckbrush. Fat and slack, deflated against the ground, light brown diamonds all along it, rattles up but motionless, still considering, head levered just enough in the air to flick that tongue and smell.

At the end of a hunt, we would have shot it, but not the beginning. All deer would instantly be gone.

Fucker thinks he can take us, my father said. Not even sure we’re worth the effort.

Dry dull skin of the snake. Shadow so black, so sharp and thin along the borders he seemed separate from the ground, not touching. The flattening of him a lie, flattened against nothing. He might reappear anywhere along this slope. And I began to see the buckbrush beside him the same, shadowed at the surface and no roots below, the entire black slope a hard plate, impenetrable, and every object floating and shifting upon it.

No gravity here. Nothing to pull downward. An object might rise along the slope as well as fall. Hard to know which way we tilted. No direction, either, the sun directly above. A compass would only spin.

My grandfather stepped onto that slope and seemed to hang at right angles to it, moving fast, and the snake uncoiled, long slack rope fleeing without challenge or rattle or even much of a curve, flown almost in a straight panicked line, an S no more than memory, and the rough sound of its heavy body rubbing against the earth a memory also, dragging of scales already gone. It knew what to fear.

My grandfather’s boots now where the snake had lain, and he peered up at us looking for reaction, face buried in shadow beneath his cap, bulk erased by that enormous hunting jacket, rifle strapped over his shoulder. I stood there in full sweat in that heat, my entire body slick, and he made no sense to me.

The three of us against him, but there was nothing substantial in us. We were made of nothing.

You’re a crazy fuck, Tom finally said. I’ll give you that.

My grandfather expressionless, waiting, but waiting for what?

Just go on your hunt, my father said.

My grandfather become one of the burned trees, only another shape that might slide along the surface of that slope. What I saw was him biting a giant chunk out of rock and speaking at us in crushed bits of stone, but what happened was that he dropped to his knees, mouth open in a rough grunt of pain, then rolled over and sat facing downslope, taking the seat of the snake.

I was encased in poison oak now, red welts everywhere across my body on fire, a burning thing, layers of immolation: my skin, the boils and welts, my clothing, the superheated air. Even my sweat a kind of oil ignited.

I guess I’ll go down and flush out any bucks, Tom said. Since no one else seems ready to do anything.

Fair enough, my father said, and Tom went down that tilted slope and gave my grandfather wide berth. Footsteps that left no mark. A surface that could not be broken. Tom wearing camouflage green in a place where there was no green, and yet that place swallowed him anyway, dark green against black. Angling off to the right and the hillside growing as he became smaller. My father and I sat at the lip, uphill of my grandfather, keeping him in view.

Pointless, my father said. You won’t be able to hit anything that far away with a.30-.30, and I don’t even have a gun.

My grandfather with his.308 across his knees, sitting cross-legged now.

Tom changed course, cut to his left into the center of the draw, where great boulders had fallen or been exposed and a large stand of pine waited, trunks blackened and become white-gray above, dead sentinels with bare arms and no heads.

He’s going for cover, my grandfather said.

What? my father asked.

He’s running, and he’s going for cover, those pine snags and boulders and falls. He can find cover most of the way down.

You’re crazy, just like he said.

My grandfather raised his rifle to his shoulder, aiming downslope, braced his elbows on his knees in firing position.

What are you doing? my father asked. His voice quiet, dry, and I was holding my breath, waiting for the explosion. My grandfather capable of anything.

I can see him in the scope. He’s taking glances up here and moving fast. He’s running. He wouldn’t be looking up here if he was hunting.

He’s just flushing bucks.

Nope. And he’s still close enough. Not more than two hundred and fifty yards. Still big enough in the scope.

Big enough for what?

You knew there was going to be consequence. You knew that all along.

My father raised his hands to his mouth and blew, the call of an owl, his signature. We waited, and we heard the hollow sound of Tom’s answering call float up toward us. See? He’s just flushing bucks.

He’s heading down to the valley, where he’ll hitch a ride or just keep walking, and he’s going to report all that we’ve done. We’re going to swing, our entire family, because you didn’t do what you needed to. Because you’re weak and you refuse to see what’s coming.

My grandfather still aiming at Tom through that scope. Tom threading down through the snags.

You’re not pulling that trigger. My father’s hand on my.30-.30, taking it from me quietly.

You’re right. Your son is going to pull the trigger.

The entire mountainside below moving toward me, ridges curling back, a rushing sound in my head. The skin of the earth stretching. We called it buck fever. Blindness, loss of hearing, heart clenching as if it would rip itself free, surge of each pump through arteries yanking stumps of legs and arms. The pure thrill of killing, even more magnificent when it’s a man and not an animal. Adrenaline. A surge within that takes us all the way back, before Jesus, before the written word or even the spoken word, before we think of ourselves as being, before we walk upright, before we enter this world as anything that can be called us, this surge when we kill, mark of Cain before there is even an idea of Cain or the possibility of Abel. That heart yanking is truth.

My father slumped over beside me, broken. He would not stop this. I knew that. His head between his knees, rifle low in both hands, resting on his boots. His eyes closed. Same surge in him, and felt as ruin.

Come down here, my grandfather said, but I could not move. I could hardly breathe.

You don’t want me to come get you, he said.

My hands braced on rock to either side so that I would not fall, and even rock was caving away. My grandfather had paralyzed us both. It was not possible to run from him. I could only watch as he rose on those spindles and the earth swung but he remained upright.

I don’t know what to call him now. Beyond any name. He rose toward me the same as law, as whatever made adrenaline. As close as I can know to the creation itself, and he grabbed the top of my head, fingers clenched in my hair, and dragged me down that slope face-first.

Torn across black scab and outcrop, glittering of Lake County diamonds emerged from nowhere, lying on the surface, and no ash. No ash anywhere, all blown and gone, but a thousand blackened seeds and bits of bark and stone. Carried and I might have been carried forever, facedown to see all, every landscape and what it held or might become.

Brought to where the snake had coiled, dropped and then yanked upright into a sitting position and the rifle in my hands.

Shoot him, my grandfather said.

Rifle I had never held before, a kind of sacrament, dark oiled wood and black bolt, black scope. Knees up in a wide base and my elbows braced on them, and the stock in tight against my shoulder, all unthinking, all trained for as many years as I had memory. Aiming without the scope first, as I’d been taught, sighting a landmark, a large snag, then finding this in the scope and shifting downward to find Tom.

Tom in the crosshairs, hustling over rocky ground, hopping as if his feet were on fire, getting close to that snag and a large boulder, cover. The scope shrinking and flattening the world. That boulder could have been five feet past him or twenty-five feet. The way my grandfather saw us always, magnified and up close and distances gone and always seeing our backs, running away.

Every jigsaw piece of camouflage on Tom’s back sharp and clear, and the scope hovering around him, shaken by each pump of blood.

Shoot him, my grandfather said, and I held my breath, pulled that rifle in tight, but I did not want to kill. I was done with killing.

Shoot him. My grandfather’s hand on the back of my neck, ready to crush or twist and snap. Fingers rough as scales.

I timed the hovering of the scope and pulled softly on that trigger just as the crosshairs swung across Tom’s back, but I closed my eyes, also, and flinched.

The concussion and hard insistence of the rifle, taste of sulfur, and though it wasn’t the.300 magnum, it was still much more powerful than the.30-.30, and my shoulder and back were instantly stunned. I knew this but didn’t feel it. The adrenaline muting all. What I saw was a puff against the boulder beyond Tom, rock pulverized into dust, like some meteor hitting, dust unexpectedly white coming from blackened rock.

Tom’s arms went up instinctively, as if the sky were falling, and he ran now, full tilt, bent over low and holding his rifle in one hand.

You kill him or I kill you, my grandfather said. Taking a shot is not enough. You keep your eyes open, and you make the next one count.

I pulled back the bolt and levered a new shell, but now Tom was behind the snag, black pine charred and rutted. He stood behind that trunk and held his barrel pinned against it, an excellent brace, and we heard his bullet slam into the ground below us before we heard the crack.

Shoot him.

Let him kill us, my father said. That’s the best thing. Just stand up and wait.

I looked back over my shoulder and my father was standing at the edge with his arms out, the.30-.30 abandoned at his feet. His white shirt an easy target.

Life was wasted on you, my grandfather said.

Then take it back, my father said. I won’t be this.

A spout of earth beside me, another bullet hitting and somehow creating this dust from what I had thought was rock. A venting. A way in.

I put my hand out to feel the crust. Platelets broken free. Formed by water and fire, all that had dissolved hardened again, the making of new rock.

My hand jumping from that ground, taken on its own life, and I had been shot. A hole through the back of my hand, blood everywhere, and the pain hot, searing hot, as if blood were fire.

My father screaming. Shoot me, you stupid fuck! Leave my son alone!

My hand against the dirt, and I didn’t understand. Two bullets in exactly the same place. It seemed inevitable there would be a third, that another bullet would go through the hole in my hand and into this vent, guided by something more than we know.

My grandfather grabbed the top of my head and pointed me downslope. Focus, he said.

The pain gathered in my skull. Leaking from my hand into the liquid space around my brain, molten.

My grandfather slapped me. Stay awake, he said. Get those crosshairs on him.

I put my cheek against the stock and found Tom in that scope. I could see him reloading, gun held downward, slipping rounds into its underside. Only his hands visible, one foot, part of a shoulder, dark as shadow.

I can’t shoot him, I said. I can’t shoot Tom.

You will.

The center of the crosshairs swimming drunkenly over Tom and that tree, the blood pulsing and my breath ragged. He raised his rifle, taking a sidestep, exposed, and I pulled the trigger and thought he would be dead. His body folded and thrown, this is what I would see through the scope, my own doing, and the look of surprise on his face, like the dead man, an unwillingness to believe.

But the bullet was swallowed somewhere without sign, taken away and vanished, as if it had never been fired, and I imagined I was immune, that no bullet could come from me again.

Tom fired. I could see that in the scope, and instantly my leg was ripped. I looked down and saw two holes in my jeans, my right thigh, blood already and a dull ache and the world shuttering.

The black of this ground become the air. My grandfather slapping me again, shaking me. My father screaming, a sound small and muffled and far away and meaningless.

My grandfather whispering in my ear. I will cut open every part of you. I will peel away strips until you cover the ground all the way from here to there. I will undo every part that was made.

The smell from inside him, the heat of him, and I knew that he would pull me apart with his bare hands and snap through bone and think nothing of it. In every memory he was there, waiting, annihilation and source.

He pulled the bolt and loaded the last shell as I held the rifle. You make this one count, he said.

So I raised that rifle into the sky and pulled the trigger, and the butt was not close against my shoulder so it slammed into my chest and knocked me down.

My grandfather’s hand over my face, fingers squeezing at the edges of my eyes. All of this comes from you, he said. From what you did. This is the consequence, and you will finish what you owe.

His fingers pressing in, and I was terrified I’d lose my eyes, the fear jolting me awake. I couldn’t see, but I swung at him with my good hand.

That’s right, he said. You shoot him or I take out your eyes.