Goat Mountain

9

THE BIBLE CELEBRATES MANY KILLINGS. GOLIATH IS A bigfoot, an earlier and more beastly form of human, and this is what we most want to kill, our competitors, the Neanderthals and giants and other monstrous forms of our earlier selves. Killing the poacher, I was just like David, defending my family and our land and the law. I was on the side of god. “This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a god in Israel,” David says. The act of killing might even be the act that creates god.

There are times I get excited and think I did something beautiful in killing that poacher. A triumph. I wander around my small apartment like a thing possessed, pacing, and I can feel my righteousness. But then I think he was only a man, only one lousy guy back in the fall of 1978, long ago, some hunter out to kill a buck on someone else’s land, insignificant. And that makes me only an ordinary killer, with no special claims.

Wallowing in that mud, playing the bear cub, I had a frightening innocence. Born into a world of butchery, a child will embrace butchery and find it normal. Or at least I did. And this was before the testosterone would kick in, before puberty. I was a monster even before I was remade into another kind of monster.

My father never did tell me to get out of that mud. He grabbed his.300 magnum from behind the seat and held its barrel pointing to the sky, pulled back the bolt partway to check that nothing was in the chamber. Then he slung it over his shoulder and began walking. My grandfather and Tom followed. We were going to hunt right here, down through brush and these hills that had no view. There was no chance we’d see a buck, and everyone knew that and began the hunt anyway.

I grabbed my rifle, followed over a lip at the edge of the wallow, and entered a different land entirely, a land dry again, a land with no hint of water. Live oak, my least favorite tree, and the shade from it spotty and low. We were traversing a wide choked hillside, not going down into the egg-crate hills, and I had never been here before. I would have lost track of the men if it hadn’t been for the enormous sounds my grandfather made tearing through live oak and buckbrush. If you hadn’t yet seen him, and you heard only these sounds, you’d have the most terrifying imaginings.

The sun hot and blinding, and the mud on me pulling at my skin as it dried. The spines of the live oak leaves. My jeans and jacket caked and heavy. I was thirsty, and there was no water. There was never any water. A kind of test in my family, to hike all day in the brush in the California sun and drink nothing.

I emerged in an area of gray pines. The men waiting for me, two ridges forking off below.

You can each take a ridge, my father said. We’ll wait fifteen minutes and then go down through the center to flush.

My grandfather walked the ridge on the left, Tom to the right. Their rifles no longer slung but held before them, ready, and both men alert. The canyon below fell off suddenly, bits of cliff and loose rock. Tall thin darker ponderosa pines rising along steep slopes.

The canyon still in shadow. The bottom of it would see sun for no more than a few hours each day. A place that looked smaller than it was. Once we were down there, it would grow considerably. I knew that.

There’s nothing I can do, my father said. You’ve put me in a situation where there’s nothing I can do.

My father standing at the edge of an outcrop of rock, looking down. You imagine all that could happen in your life, he said. You imagine all that could happen to your son. You worry about him breaking a leg or not getting along in school, or not wanting to hunt, or maybe even what kind of man he’ll turn out to be, if you ever look ahead that far. But you never see this. There’s no way of seeing this, especially at eleven years old. It’s just not something that happens.

Sorry, I said.

My father laughed, a bitter strange sound like strangling. Yeah, he finally said. You’re sorry. Well that fixes it.

The cicadas pulsing around us, pressurizing the air. My father stepped to the side, top of a chute, and went down fast. Almost like surfing, his right hand out and touching rocks as he slid down the face. Steps that sank ten feet. Rifle slung diagonally across his back, right side tucked into the hill. White T-shirt, brown Carhartt pants and boots. He made a slalom course of that slide of rock, traversing down and then twisting in the air, planting his feet again, left hand now to the hill.

Below him, a cliff edge. This run of loose rock ended in a deadfall I couldn’t see past. Only air beyond.

I couldn’t move or speak. I could only watch as he tucked in closer and planted his feet hard, hopped once more, twisting to the right. Still sliding as he stepped onto solid rock and grabbed at small scrub with his hands. His momentum should have carried him past, but he managed to cling there. And then he traversed that rock and made it to a tree that grew at a crazy angle, some twisted thin thing heading out into space, and there he rested. He leaned against it and looked up at me.

Come on, he said. It was against the rules to speak that loudly on a hunt. But our role was to flush, and maybe he just didn’t care.

What I thought, standing there on that lip, was that he wanted me to die. He knew I wouldn’t make it down that slide onto rock the way he had. I’d keep going over the cliff edge and then I’d be gone. He’d no longer have the problem of what to do with me.

He waved for me to come, and I almost did it. I almost stepped down into the slide. But then I just kept walking along the rim, keeping to higher ground, following the path Tom had taken, and I looked for an easier way down.

I was afraid to look at my father, but when I took a glance, I thought I saw him grin. Just one side of his mouth, but a grin, and then he was traversing again, getting away from those cliffs, crossing into a steep patch of pines that leaned in close to the slope. He disappeared into the trees, and I began my descent above them. If I fell, I’d have those trunks to reach for.

My boots sliding downward, rifle in one hand and the other clawing at plants and rock, trying to slow. Small flowers and low-growing weeds like vines but all too thin, ripping through my fingers, and I slid full body, shirt and jacket riding up, my side scratched. And still I couldn’t stop. I hit pine needles, slippery, fell faster, aimed for a trunk and hit with my boots, collapsed against it.

I was breathing hard from fright. My father far below surfing through trees, and I couldn’t imagine doing that. Wide spaces between trunks, plenty of room to fall through, the rocks of the creek a long ways off.

I didn’t want to move. I thought about just letting my rifle go, so that I’d have both hands, but a rifle had to be taken care of always.

So I eased away from that tree and began falling again, frantically crabbing to the side to get in line with the next trunk. Dangling off the edge of the world, it felt like. A place my father would never have brought me before. All rules had changed.

I hit that next trunk and stood on it, lay back against the slope and closed my eyes, everything inside spinning, my heartbeat out of control. I couldn’t rest long, though. He’d leave me behind, and I had no idea how to get out of this canyon.

I slid down to the next trunk, and the next, until I was in a chute of larger rocks, reddish and veined, and these I could climb down through carefully, the footholds solid. A river of rock in motion too slow to see. A river of flesh, dark red and marbled in white, muscle of this mountain exposed. This was not our land. I had never been here before, and I wanted to leave.

I could see my father at a wide boulder in the creek below, rifle out, elbows braced on the rock, scanning both hillsides with his scope.

The weight of the slide above me, tension of each rock holding every other rock in place, flexing under strain, and I was in a mad rush to get out from under. Running where I should not have run, one misstep and I’d have broken my leg, but I charged out of there and along the creek and stood panting behind my father.

Quiet, he said.

My breath shaking out of me, the canyon rims above seeming to pull inward, the sky receding, sucked away in a vacuum. Is this part of the ranch? I asked.

No.

My father concentrated as he scanned those hillsides, looking for movement in the trees. The creek trickling around us. It might have cut this gorge, but it was almost nothing now, nowhere more than a foot or two deep. The rock green at my feet. Strange mountain. Large chunks of pale green with white veins running through it. A rich darker green where it was wet.

There’s no way out, my father said. Not this canyon, but what you’ve done. There’s no way out.

He shouldered his rifle and stepped down through the center of the canyon, from rock to rock at the water’s edge. I followed and couldn’t see what lay below us. Enormous rocks blocked our vision. Smaller stones and boulders rounded and smooth, but these great slabs of cliff had fallen and never been moved since. They’d taken trees and soil with them, some still fringed where the water couldn’t reach. We never visited in winter, when all was moved and shaped. We came in early fall, at the driest time, after the long hot summer, the water gone, difficult to understand the origin or shape of anything.

My father moving fast. I struggled to keep up. The slope gentle, but rocks everywhere. We came to the largest boulder yet, blocking the entire center of the gorge, small trees growing on top, and climbed along an edge and heard a crashing and snapping, a rush of sound too much to take in, a deer ripping out of branches and leaves on the other side. My father yelled and scrambled toward the top, his rifle up already, and there was a ricochet on the rock above him and the sound of the bullet slapping into the earth beside us and a puff of dust and then we heard the tinny pop of Tom’s rifle and another ricochet on the other side of the rock, winging twice this time off stone, another pop, and my father threw himself down, hiding, hands over his head as if they could stop bullets. He’d let his rifle fall, stock and barrel and scope clattering, and then the deeper boom of my grandfather’s.308 and another pop of Tom’s.243 and more sound of hooves on rock and my father yelling goddammit fucking stop you fuckwads pieces of shit and I was in tight against the back of that rock and breathing fast.

Goddammit, my father yelled again, and he hid against that wall and grabbed for his rifle. More booms and pops, all sounds of the buck gone now, and my father climbed up and brought his rifle to his shoulder and was swinging the barrel back and forth, side to side, searching, but that was it. No more shots, no more hooves. Only the trickle of water on all sides.

You get him? my father yelled.

An echo, and they didn’t answer right away.

No, Tom finally yelled back.

Missed him, my grandfather yelled.

Nice work, my father said, but loud enough only for me to hear. He sat on a wide flat rock and inspected his rifle. I carry this for years, he said, here and in Nevada and Wyoming, in all kinds of weather, and I never get a single ding or spot of rust, and now it looks like I dragged it behind the truck.

The forward part of the stock, below the barrel, was darker wood, carved into a grip. Crushed now along the edge. The bluing of the barrel scratched, the bolt scratched, the scope dinged.

I’m so fucking angry, my father said, and then he stood and held his rifle high over his head in both hands and threw it down onto the rocks. This beautiful rifle that he loved. Crunching sound of wood and clattering and then it lay still, barrel angled upward, stock in the water.

My father breathing hard, arms hanging at his sides, looking down at his rifle. That gun is going to stay right fucking there. Don’t touch it.

Then he started up that slope, taking big steps and sliding back halfway on each, pulling at rock and weed with his hands. He didn’t look back, and I knew he wouldn’t care whether I made it out of there or not. His feet kicking into that mountain and hands ripping at everything above. This canyon the exposed flesh of the mountain, and he would punish.

I thought about picking up his rifle and slinging it over my shoulder, carrying it up to him. But he’d only be angry, even if that’s what he wanted. So I didn’t touch it. I followed and small rocks were flipping down the hill at me, kicked free by his boots, so I moved to the side and climbed my own path.

One hand holding my rifle and the other grabbing at dirt and rock and root. My chest against the ground, lying against the mountain as I climbed. Smell of dust and pine, the patches of needles so slick I had to keep traversing to find bare dirt and rock. Moving as fast as I could.

I didn’t look down, only at the wall of dirt in front of me, and I felt that I was tilting backward, that I would simply fall off the planet and keep falling and never hit ground again. I believed that what kept me from falling was only my own will, remade in every moment.