The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

  Vonn boarded the tramcar behind a group of young people with whom I assumed she was travelling. I’d spotted her earlier, leafing through the Native American history books in the gift shop. She was beautiful, with black hair and dark skin, sharp cheek bones and full lips. She was wearing khaki pants and a blue peacoat, and on her feet, lime green flip-flops, by which I judged she did not intend to hike.

  My father, Frankie, used to say there were two kinds of people—the noticers and the noticed. He said I was the former and he was the latter. Frankie would have described Vonn as exotic, the way people do when they’re not sure about a person’s ethnicity. I guessed the girl was biracial—Caucasian and Latina, or Caucasian and African American, or Latina and African American. She took a place at the window facing the desert, and turned away from her companions.

  Bridget bounced onto the tramcar seconds before the doors closed, and squeezed her way to the centre of the cable car, her high blond ponytail swinging with each shift of her pretty head. She was dangerously lean, swathed in layers of Lycra, with a warm-looking fleece-lined windbreaker tied around her waist and a pair of costly running shoes on her feet. When she stretched across me to grasp the pole, I felt obliged to move.

  She carried a blue mesh sports bag, inside of which I could see a wallet, three bottles of water and three granola bars in silver foil wrappers. I’d taken her for a college senior until she looked up at me to smile, and I saw the ice-blue eyes of a woman in her late thirties. I might have stared a moment too long.

  The tramway worked on a double jig-back system, with one cable car heading down the mountain while the second climbed up; it hung on twenty-seven miles of interlocking cable strung between five massive towers bolted into the rocky mountainside. At each of the five towers the tramcar made a transition and rocked like a carnival ride for a minute or two—longer if the winds were high. Riders had strong reactions—especially first-timers. As we approached the first tower I steadied myself. The woman with the ponytail had just opened one of her water bottles. Rookie.

  The tram conductor, whom I thankfully did not recognize, announced over the microphone, “We’re approaching the first tower. Ladies and gentlemen, hold on tight.” He paused dramatically. “There will be sway.”

  “What does that mean?” the blonde woman asked.

  “Brace yourself,” I said, but she didn’t hear me because right at that moment there was a loud thump, and a quick drop, and the tramcar began to rock forcefully and she screamed and spilled her water and lost her balance on the slippery floor.

  Taking her elbow to stop her from falling, I gave the impression I cared.

  When the tramcar was steady again, sailing through wispy grey clouds, the woman found my eyes. “You look familiar.”

  “I ride the tram a lot.”

  “I’ve only been on this thing one other time and I took a sedative so I don’t remember.”

  I looked away, hoping the gesture would discourage conversation.

  “You look familiar from someplace else.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t look down. I have such bad … what is it?”

  “Vertigo,” I said darkly.

  “Is it gonna swing like that again?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  On the other side of the tramcar a little boy began to cry. He wasn’t afraid of heights or startled by the rocking. He was crying because the clouds had stolen his desert view. I watched the older woman in the oxblood poncho lean down and pass the crying boy her binoculars. She pointed out a rift in the clouds where he could see the Santa Rosa Mountain range in the distance. The little boy smiled. The woman smiled too.

  The blonde beside me carried on. “Vertigo. It’s not so much I think I’m going to fall but I think I’m going to jump. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  When she turned to look around the tramcar her ponytail brushed my chin and bathed me in her scent, a bergamot-and-ginger mélange that I found disturbingly pleasant.

  “I don’t think I’ll be doing this sober again,” she said.

  I lifted my nostrils to the breeze from the open windows, taking in the crisp note of sage as we continued our ascent.

  “It’s awful to be afraid,” the woman said, laughing to hide her nervousness.

  She was right.

  My attention was caught by the dark-skinned girl in the green flip-flops, who appeared to be staring at me from the other side of the tram. I wasn’t sure what to make of her attention or her expression. She looked pissed. I couldn’t imagine why.

  From years of habit, I turned to ask my friend Byrd. I’d done that a hundred times in the year since his accident. Turned to look for him. Picked up the phone to call. Byrd wasn’t just my best friend. He was my only friend. My brother. We had everything in common. We even shared a birthday. I whispered in my thoughts, Happy birthday, Byrd.

  The woman swung her ponytail and opened both eyes and lifted her head to peer out the window. “You can’t see anything with the fog. Kind of a blessing.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Can you buy water at the mountain—?” She interrupted herself to scream again as we hit the next tower.

  The air grew colder as we rose. I could smell turpentine from the pines, and chilled zinc in the sediment, marine life, bones and roots and pulverized seeds, ancient odours that spoke volumes of loss. I tried to block out the sound of the nervous, chattering woman. Unsuccessfully.

  “I broke my training last night,” she said. “I’m training for a triathlon and I want to kill myself for having a margarita with dinner. I’m already dehydrated. One bottle won’t be enough. Are we almost there?”

  Controlling my impulse to correct her, because I could see that she in fact had three bottles of water in her mesh sports bag, I said, “You can get water at the gift shop.”

  “I’m Bridget.”

  I didn’t like the way Bridget was studying me.

  “Are you sure we don’t know each other? Are you from the area?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I grew up a few miles from here in Cathedral City but I live in Golden Hills now,” Bridget said. “You know it? Near the coast? You know Malibu?”

  “No.”

  “I still come out here to the desert a lot. My mother’s got a condo in Rancho Mirage. I thought of moving back, but then I met someone. I’m happy.”

  Bridget didn’t look happy. I wondered if I could start making my way toward the exit.

  “He was the realtor on my hillside colonial. We’re training together. For the triathlon. He’s younger. Much younger. Not that it matters. Until the woman gets older. When’s the next tower?”

  “Soon.”

  Clutching the pole she gestured at my baseball cap. “My second husband was from Michigan. Grosse Pointe. He liked the Detroit Tigers too.”

  “The next tower,” I said, pointing ahead.

  Bridget screamed when our tramcar thumped over the transition, and by the time we stopped rocking she was almost in tears.

  “The next towers don’t rock as much,” I said, taking pity.

  I noticed that the girl in the flip-flops looked nauseous. I hoped she didn’t vomit on the tram. She tightened her grip on the pole, keeping her eyes on the floor as we approached the next tower. The wind kicked up and rocked us violently. Bridget screamed again. She wasn’t the only one.

  When we finally pulled into the Mountain Station’s dock, my head was pounding from the sound of Bridget’s screaming. I could not get away fast enough when the tram doors opened, and rushed off without a backward glance, even when I heard her shout, “Goodbye!”

  Once I’d left the other tourists far behind I slowed my pace, trudging into the woods. I was relieved to see the thick clouds settling low, because I knew it would cut down the foot traffic. Who’d bother with a hard, steep hike without the reward of a spectacular view at the end? The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls.

  T
he sky grew darker as I hiked through the towering conifers, over the rivers of cobbled stone, past the massive white slabs of rock, so artfully arranged by random aspects of nature. I was heading for the rogue trail that would lead me downward through a small meadow and over a hill of rock-hewn steps toward a slender, twenty-foot outcropping, the place Byrd and I called Angel’s Peak.

  Normally I liked to hike at a brisk pace but this day I was panting, plodding, pulling my prematurely dead weight, thinking not about the end of me, but the sum of me—all the befores and afters that had brought me to that moment.

  Before Frankie got wasted on premium tequila on Halloween night and lost control of his Gremlin on a dark desert road, my father had been a hard-drinking risk taker. After, he was a convict and two young people were dead.

  Frankie was in the hospital briefly after the Halloween tragedy. He refused to see me there. One of the nurses told me he wouldn’t read the notes I left. After a couple of days he was taken away in handcuffs. I took the bus to the prison but Frankie refused to see me there too. He didn’t try to contact me in any way. I was already on the edge after what happened to Byrd. Frankie pushed me over.

  I’d decided to end my life on my birthday—some warped tribute, as I saw it, to Byrd, and my mother. The mountain was the most obvious setting, and Angel’s Peak the most meaningful place. I started counting down the days from Halloween. A week passed, then two, then I overheard that Lark Diaz was going to be back in Santa Sophia for the weekend to be a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding.

  Lark Diaz was never my girlfriend, but she was the girl of my dreams and the thought of seeing her again made me hopeful. I envisioned our emotionally charged reunion, and created a hundred scenarios that ended in a kiss. But on the day she arrived, Lark didn’t accept even one of the dozen phone calls I made to her father’s house. She wasn’t there when I showed up on his doorstep. She eluded me at every turn, until I rode my bike twelve miles to the church on the day of the wedding.

  From a distance, I saw her perched on the ledge of a gazebo on a small hill of the church lawn, wearing a voluminous floor-length green gown. Her dark hair was pinned up on her head, her neck and shoulders were bare. I lost all sense of caution. “Lark,” I called, advancing from the rear.

  She didn’t turn around, but I knew by the way she stiffened that she’d heard me.

  The gazebo was higher than the ground where I stood. There were crates of equipment of some kind piled up behind it. I couldn’t get close. “Lark! Did you get my letters?”

  She just sat there.

  “Did you read them?” My voice sounded strange in my ears.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s okay. I just wanted you to know … Lark?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I love you!” I shouted, my heart thumping in my ears. “I love you!”

  Lark eased herself off the gazebo ledge and slowly turned to confront me. As she did, she stepped to the left, revealing several dozen wedding guests, gathered on the lawn, staring at me pityingly.

  “Wolf,” she said, simply. Her voice bounced against the church wall in the distance. The microphone near where she stood was turned on and had broadcast all that I said.

  Byrd’s accident. Frankie’s imprisonment. The humiliating scene with Lark. I couldn’t shake the sense I was bleeding out, leaving a sticky scarlet trail as I climbed the tumbled stones that would take me through a small grove of limber pines toward the overgrown route to Angel’s Peak.

  A long branch of spiky chinquapin reached out from nowhere to snag the nylon shell of my parka, and when I stopped to free my sleeve from the yellow bush I was surprised to spot the girl in the green flip-flops moving slyly through the distant trees. For a split second I flattered myself that she was stalking me, this rare mountain feline. I wondered why she was hiking in such ridiculous footwear and what had become of her friends from the tram.

  Byrd and I had rarely seen people hike alone. Sometimes the birdwatchers went out solo but most didn’t stray far from Wide Valley. They’d find a spot off trail, sit on stumps or collapsible canvas stools with binoculars and thermoses of tomato soup, and hope someone might stop to chat on their way to the peak. Byrd and me? We always stopped. We had more in common with elderly birders than people our own age.

  I ducked into a shortcut through the trees, climbing over boulders and logs. The forest was still and the girl had disappeared. I figured she must have been done in by her footwear and gone back to the Mountain Station, or found the group of friends with whom she’d boarded the tram. I couldn’t wonder much beyond that because the mountain was distracting me, wafting the butterscotch fragrance of Jeffrey pines up my nostrils, dispatching warblers and chickadees to greet me. I hadn’t been up here since Byrd’s accident and I shivered with shame at the purpose of our reunion.

  A white-headed woodpecker beat out an introduction as I approached, and I noticed a male goldfinch dancing on the snarled branch of a mountain mahogany. A second finch sang from the sugar pines. I wondered if somehow they’d got wind of my intentions and had come to dissuade me.

  Climbing some steps of black-veined quartz, I caught the fragrance of lavender on a stiff breeze from the east. Lavender grows on the mountain, but not at the higher elevations—at least I’d never smelled it before. Curiosity over why I could smell lavender was the reason I lifted my head and looked through the trees, and spied something large and red—the older woman in the oxblood poncho from the tram—moving through the branches an unsafe distance from the main trail.

  Taking cover behind some brush I watched her raise her binoculars. It did briefly occur to me that she might be lost, but I assured myself that she was a seasoned birder and had only stopped to rest. Angel’s Peak was waiting for me. Red Poncho was on her own.

  Then the branches of an expansive wax currant bush quivered behind the woman and I was surprised to see the blonde with the ponytail emerge. Bridget. So maybe the older woman was a trail guide. Bridget drank from one of the water bottles in her blue mesh bag as the older woman drew a banged-up yellow canteen from her knapsack.

  The sight of the yellow canteen stole my breath. Byrd had one just like it—a gift from me, purchased at the tramway gift shop. My stomach churned when I heard, even from that distance, the sound of the metal cap twisting over the threads of the spout. Before I knew it I was streaking away through the trees.

  Bridget spotted me, and called out, “Oh! Hi! Hey, there!”

  I hurried on, pretending not to hear, searching the woods for the way to Angel’s Peak, which I remembered being left of the granite barge ahead and between two massive wind-worn boulders. I found the boulders quickly enough but was confounded to see that several large sterasote bushes had grown over the trailhead. No way around and no way through. I stood there for a moment, stung by the odours of the wide, volatile bush made pungent by the fog settling around us. Then the wind blew the camphor scent up my nostrils, which caused me to sneeze repeatedly.

  Reaching for the knife in my knapsack, I was confident I could hack my way through, but I remembered that I’d left both the knife and the knapsack behind.

  The older woman in the red poncho must have heard me sneezing, because she started hollering, “Young man? Young man?”

  I looked around for the young man to whom she was referring and realized she meant me. I’d grown tall like Frankie, broad from the weights I lifted alone in my room with Motown blasting on my stereo. I inherited my taste in music from my old man.

  I tried to ignore her, but she kept calling.

  “Young man. Please. We need help.”

  “You’re off trail!” I called as I started toward the pair.

  “I’m trying to find a lake. Secret Lake.” She glanced around the quiet woods.

  Secret Lake belonged to me and Byrd. “It’s not on the trail map,” I said.

  “Yes, I know,” the older woman said.

  “Not many people know about it,” I said, coming close
r.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Under the red poncho she was wearing a thick outer coat and under that a heavy turtleneck sweater. Up close the lavender smell was strong. She must have noticed me sniffing. “Oh,” she said with a laugh. “It’s my lavender.” She drew a small silk pillow from the pocket of her coat. “I carry it everywhere. Keeps the bugs out when you’re in and away when you’re out.”

  I’d never heard any homespun wisdom about lavender repelling insects but it didn’t sound preposterous. “How do you know about Secret Lake?”

  Jogging in place on a bed of pine needles nearby, her ponytail bouncing absurdly, Bridget took her pulse. “We need to keep moving,” she said.

  “My husband discovered the lake. There’s a rare flower that grows around it. That’s why it’s off limits.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t tell her I already knew about the endangered mountain phlox.

  “You don’t want to step on something that’s endangered.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve been there many times,” the woman explained. “Just—my husband always led the way. He never got lost.”

  “Well, you’re way off.”

  “I thought so,” Bridget said.

  “How could you think so when you’ve never been there?” the older woman asked politely.

  “My sixth sense,” Bridget said. “This way didn’t feel right.”

  I didn’t have time for this. “Head back the way you came, then veer to the north and a little east and catch the trail again. Follow it for a half-mile or so, and then up the short escarpment west of the little ranger station and down through the black oak.”

  “I know the ranger station,” the woman said.

  “Over the creek and beyond these big boulders to the north a ways, there’s this rock formation,” I said. I didn’t add that my friend Byrd called the giant, phallic rock formation the Circunsisco Gigantesco. “It looks like a … tower—you can’t miss it. ’Bout half a mile from there.”

  “The tower! That’s what I was looking for! I thought we should have found it by now.”