The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Forget it,” he said, laughing. “Seriously. Are you even a junior?”

  “I’ll be fourteen in November,” I said. It was then that we discovered our birthdays were on the same day—one year apart—with Byrd being a year older. That’s a hell of a thing to have in common.

  “Your face looks like jam, dude. And your hair’s gnarly.” Byrd laughed. So I did too.

  I spotted Lark through the window pumping gas for an elderly man. She saw me watching but didn’t smile like I hoped she would.

  “She’s almost eighteen. She’s leaving for boarding school at the end of the summer. New York. She’ll never come back.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’ll have New York friends. A New York life. Plus, she’s too old for you.”

  “She won’t always be,” I said.

  “Are those cut off pyjamas?”

  I shook my head. “Underwear. Frankie has the car and all my stuff is in it.”

  “You walked all the way from your hotel in underwear?”

  That’s when I told Byrd about my aunt Kriket’s trailer in Tin Town, and why I’d been in such a hurry to escape.

  “Your old man’s a case,” he said.

  “You should meet his sister,” I said, telling him about her diaperless babies.

  “So they just walk around shitting and pissing on the floor?”

  “Right.”

  Byrd turned serious, watching me watching Lark. “Don’t even, Wolf. She’s cursed. Her last two boyfriends died under mysterious circumstances.”

  “Is that true?”

  “One was a heart attack.”

  “Wow.”

  “He was thirty-six.”

  “Her father lets her date thirty-six-year-old men? Isn’t that against the law?”

  “Her father didn’t know,” Byrd said. “He would have killed them both.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  “Kitz?” Byrd spat. “Hated that smarmy podlicker. He died of snakebite. Young rattler—they have more toxic venom.”

  “Hate snakes.”

  “I took a bite on the mountain last summer.”

  “You said it was a flea bite!”

  “Not that. This.” Byrd twisted his leg so I could see the puncture marks in his right calf. “Hurt bad. But at least it was dry. No venom.”

  “How do you know if it’s a dry bite?”

  “You don’t expire,” he said, grinning.

  “Did this Kitz guy get bitten on the mountain too?”

  “He was taking his dog for a walk over by the high school. You must have passed it on the way here. There’s a big area of brush out back behind the path and there’s always rattlers. No one goes back there. They even warned people in the local paper.”

  “I was just there!”

  “Don’t go back there.” Byrd was serious.

  “Why was Kitz there?”

  “Masturbating?” Byrd guessed. “Why were you back there?”

  I remembered. “I found red weed.”

  Byrd looked at me hard. “You know what red weed is?”

  “I know.”

  “You sure it was red weed?”

  “The white flower with the red pod.”

  “Where?”

  “Back in the brush behind the high school.”

  “You know they call it ‘dead weed’?”

  “I know.”

  “You know why?”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  “The sheriff sent out volunteers on horseback with packs of tracking dogs and they cleared it from here to the Santa Rosas. My uncle Harley has pictures of all these law enforcement dudes with shovels and hoes. He was there.”

  “Should I go back there and pull it out?”

  “To the den of rattlers? No.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t tell anybody ever.” He said this last part solemnly.

  Lark appeared at the doorway, eyeing us warily. “Don’t tell anybody ever—what?” she asked. Then to me, “What’d you do to your hair?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “What were you talking about? Don’t ever tell anybody what?” she asked again.

  I shrugged. She smiled. “Secrets, huh?”

  “No secrets. I just said not to tell anybody I get to ride the tram for free,” Byrd said, covering.

  “Okay.” Lark shrugged and sashayed down the aisle. The cowbell clanged on the door and she disappeared once more.

  “Harley? Because he rides a Harley?” I asked, continuing our earlier conversation.

  “Harley because his mother named him Harley. Harley has a Honda but he doesn’t ride much anymore. He’s got a warehouse full of classic cars. He donates one to charity every year. Everyone around here knows Harley.”

  “That’s why you get free tram rides?”

  “That plus my uncle Dantay is the head guy at Mountain Rescue.”

  “Cool.”

  “I used to hike with Harley but not much anymore. He’s like fifty.” He laughed. “He’s cool but he talks too much. Everything is a lesson. This flower is for that. That shrub is for this. He just wants me to know my culture. It’s cool, I guess.”

  “Frankie says we had Cree blood on his mother’s side,” I said.

  “I grew up thinking I was Polish.” Byrd laughed. “Well, I am Polish—half.”

  “Don’t you want to learn all that Native American stuff? I would. I do.”

  “When I was younger I did and then … I don’t know … It’s not that I don’t want to know.” He thought for a moment. “Sometimes a guy wants to feel like he learned something without being taught.”

  I had no experience with cool uncles or interested teachers or guiding parents. Miss Kittle was the closest I’d come to having a mentor. “Right,” I said.

  “I have four uncles, three aunts, twenty-two cousins altogether,” Byrd said. “My uncles all try to be my father. Harley’s cool, I guess. Dantay, Gabriel. They’re all cool, I guess. Jorge and Gabriel work at the casino with my uncle Harley. Before he joined Mountain Rescue, Dantay was a stuntman in the movies. He’s got crazy tattoos.”

  “People get lost on the mountain a lot?”

  “All the time.”

  “Is it easy to get lost up there?”

  “Not if you’re with me.”

  “Mountain Rescue would be a cool job.”

  “Dantay lets me ride dirt bikes around his property. I’ll take you over there sometime.”

  “What about the tram?”

  “Day after tomorrow, my day off from here, we’ll meet at the base of the station at eight a.m. You got a bike?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “Bring water. Warm coat. Good shoes.”

  “Coat?” I laughed, considering I’d nearly just died of heatstroke.

  “It can get cold up there. Weren’t you ever a Boy Scout? Be prepared.”

  I thought to ask, “Where do you go to school?”

  “Correspondence.”

  “I’m starting the high school in September.”

  “SSHS, huh? Tell people you know the Diazes.”

  “I don’t know the Diazes.”

  “I’m a Diaz. So’s Lark.”

  “What about Tin Town? Are there Diazes in Tin Town?”

  “Have you looked around? We’re not all out on the rez anymore, dude. We have management jobs in the casinos. We work in real estate. We own half the Mattress Kings in the Coachella Valley.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m just messing with you,” Byrd said, laughing. “There are a few Diazes in Tin Town. But most of my uncles and cousins are rich. The Diazes rule SSHS.”

  Lark startled us when she leaned in to grab a set of car keys from the rack near the door. The sneering minx from the night before seemed to have returned to possess her. “Come on,” she said to me impatiently. “You need a ride home.”

  I grinned at Byrd and then followed Lark down the aisle t
oward the door. Byrd called out to me from behind the register, “Yo!”

  I didn’t turn around when we said in perfect unison, “Arra fah ken ut.” I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.

  The air was warm and the sun still high when Lark led me out of the gas station. I was hypnotized by the sway of her heart-shaped behind and soon felt the familiar tug of divergent blood. Not about to show my appreciation while wearing cut off pyjama pants, I pictured the unusual batting stance of the baseball player John Wockenfuss as I always did in such moments.

  Clearly I could not get into Lark’s car without having my gratitude noted. What if she screamed? What if she hit me? What if she didn’t? Wockenfuss. Wockenfuss. Wockenfuss. My stomach churned but had no influence over my predicament. I looked away from Lark’s bottom, concentrating on my ravaged feet. Burned flesh. Beautiful Lark. Torn toes. Sublime Lark. Wockenfuss. I cannot get into that car with you, I thought.

  Lark turned around, glowering, and said, “You’re going with him.”

  I followed her pointing finger to a sleek black Cadillac at the far end of the lot. “He’s waiting,” Lark said, and then disappeared.

  Or rather it was I who disappeared. Passed out.

  Next thing I knew I was in the passenger seat of a moving vehicle (not just a moving vehicle but a Cadillac Coupe de Ville) with a large male presence beside me at the wheel.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I offered. “I am not myself.” It was the God’s honest truth.

  “Heatstroke.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who I am?” His deep voice rattled the dash.

  I took in the huge man in close-up snapshots: aquiline nose—right nostril with no visible nose hair (I’d never before in my life seen a dark-haired man without visible nose hair before). Buffed fingernails on the lacquered steering wheel, squared off with a file instead of bitten to the quick. Massive Adam’s apple in his deeply tanned throat and a humble gold crucifix hanging some inches below. “Are you Byrd’s uncle?” I asked.

  “I’m Lark’s father,” the man intoned. “You’re not going to vomit, are you, son?” He didn’t wait for my answer before pulling the Caddy to the side of the road. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait for him to stop the car before bathing his supple upholstery in cola-coloured mucus. “Sorry,” I choked, pulling my T-shirt off and trying to mop up the mess.

  When the huge man came around to open the passenger door I swung my legs out of the car but couldn’t lift my head. I noticed he wore fine shoes, at least I guessed they were fine by the way they were not sneakers or cowboy boots. He had creases ironed into his pants. When he set his hands on his knees to steady his huge frame when he crouched, I saw that he wore a ring on each of his thumbs. No tattoos.

  I’d never met such a fine-shoe-wearing, thumb-ringed, bald-nostrilled person and was conscious of my own dishevelled appearance. I wiped my mouth with the back of my arm. I wondered if he wanted to hit me. Maybe he already had. “My head hurts.”

  “You fell pretty hard,” he said. “Does your father have health insurance?”

  Frankie didn’t have socks. “No, sir.”

  “Did you eat breakfast this morning?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Thought you’d go for a three-mile hike in the desert without breakfast? Without water?”

  “I’m new around here,” I said, as if that explained stupidity.

  “Michigan.” He startled me when he set his giant thumbs on my eyes and lifted my lids to search my pupils. “So SSHS?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re enrolled at Santa Sophia High School?”

  “I know the Diazes,” I blurted.

  The man grinned. He liked me. I don’t know why. “You don’t appear concussed.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I hadn’t told Lark’s father my address and didn’t know it anyway, but he drove directly to Tin Town and through the maze of mobile homes, coming to a stop in front of Kriket’s dented mailbox. My aunt peered out from behind her stained bedroom curtains and didn’t seem happy to recognize the car.

  I could see the green Gremlin parked across the street and was glad that Frankie was back. He’d be a friendly face if he was sober and a familiar one, at least, if he was not. I thanked the big man and was sorry that I had to say yes when he asked if I needed help.

  Not a fleet-footed woman, Kriket nonetheless made it to the door before we’d reached the broken front gate. “Harley,” she said without warmth.

  Harley? Lark’s father was Harley.

  “Your nephew?” Harley asked.

  Kriket put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “Wilfred.”

  “Heatstroke,” Harley explained. “Rest and fluids.”

  “Dumbass. What happened to his feet?”

  “Flip-flops,” Harley said.

  “Idiot. What happened to his head?”

  “Fainted.”

  “Moron.” Kriket disappeared back inside.

  Frankie appeared, an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, a cloudy glass of whisky in his hand. “Harley Diaz? I hear you got some job opportunities over at the casino.”

  Harley didn’t hesitate before he shook his head. “Nothing at the moment.”

  Frankie huffed and disappeared, letting the screen door bang behind him.

  I took the trailer steps slowly. Harley stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. “Wolf?”

  I thought he was going to warn me to stay away from his daughter, now that he knew I came from Tin Town. “Yes.”

  “You want to be a mountain man? That right?”

  “Yes, sir. I do,” I answered.

  “You want to climb rocks? Plant your flag at the peak?”

  “I don’t have a flag,” I said.

  “I’m saying, son, that if you’re interested in climbing mountains, you have to remember something.”

  “Okay.”

  He stared at me hard. “Most sports require only one ball.”

  THE

  SECOND

  DAY

  JUST BEFORE THE SUN rose on the morning of that second lost day I untangled myself from the Devine women’s arms and legs and leaned over to check on Nola, disturbed to see how pale she’d become. Her wrist was hidden under the red poncho, but I could guess by the size of the lump it made that it had swollen to frightening proportions. Vonn’s face was twisted in pain. Her stomach, I feared. Bridget was snoring soundly.

  I stood, shivering, staring down on Nola and Bridget and Vonn Devine. As the sun peered over the purple peaks I was shot with a sudden, intense feeling—one I recognized as love, but it was beyond love, and so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. Then I heard something in the white noise of the wind, not words exactly but a clear message. It was a feeling I’d had once before. I’m aware that people explain such extraordinary experiences away—a rush of endorphins, a surfeit of oxygen, a surplus of carbon dioxide, sleep deprivation, hunger, dehydration. I’m aware that the event may have been self-induced, a product of my own need, but I can only tell you that in that moment I felt God. Make of that what you will.

  Outside our cave the ground was uneven, rocky in patches and forested in clumps, with thorny bushes, Jeffrey pines, a few scrub oaks, a dense brood of limber pine, manzanita, wax currant, and a few gnarled mahogany trees. The vegetation was dense and I couldn’t tell how big the area was.

  Walking carefully I manoeuvred through the trees perpendicular to the ridge from which we’d fallen, cataloguing as I went, looking for any source of food or water, surprising myself with the amount of information I’d stored about Native American plant lore. I remembered an afternoon in the canyon at the foothills when Byrd and I had gagged on raw acorn, attempting to eat a Native American food staple called wewish (Byrd had said, “Know why we call it wewish? ’Cause we wish it tasted better!”) We’d sampled bitter mustard flowers and chewed sweet mesquite beans and nearly turned purple from eating too many mountain berries. If there was food on this out
cropping where we’d landed I was determined that I would find it.

  The rising sun steamed the soil, which smelled of worms and minerals. Picking my way through the brush, I scanned the rocks for pools of water and found here and there the shallowest of drinks. The rocks were gritty and the fluid scant but it was something more than nothing, which was all I’d had since the hissing spout on the drinking fountain at the Mountain Station. My gut was cramping with hunger, my last meal, nearly twenty-four hours ago, a bag of Cheez Doodles from the rack at the gas station. Berries were gone by November though. Ditto the mesquite beans. We weren’t at a low enough elevation for mesquite anyway. I thought of the chocolate bars in my knapsack hanging on the hook beside the door.

  I remembered thinking, as I drank from that fountain before heading off to Angel’s Peak, that it would be the final fulfillment of my boring body’s tedious needs. Now it lightened me, pleased me to feel such a strong desire for sustenance. All I’d craved, for a long time, was nothing.

  Revived by the little bit of fluid I could slurp from the rocks, I walked on, soon with the uncomfortable sense that I was being followed. The granite protrusion on which we’d fallen was about the size and shape of a high school gym, much larger than I’d originally thought.

  I caught the whiff of animal—cat, and it did occur to me that a mountain lion mauling would be a fitting finale for a guy named Wolf. Then I remembered that the big cats didn’t spray the same way as the smaller cats. Bobcats wouldn’t attack, unless they were rabid. I paused to sniff the air again but the odour had disappeared and I had to admit to myself that the senses I counted on so heavily were already becoming somewhat unreliable.

  From a perch in the sculpture of a dead birch a pair of ravens cawed. The branches shivered and shimmered around me, and the entire woods joined in, groaning with their bows and bends. The wind blew hard in sharp bursts. I felt my spirit soar and moved with swift, strong strides as the symphony reached a crescendo. But then the sky came hurtling through the branches and I found, with heart-stopping suddenness, that I’d reached the end of the earth. It was true then. We were perched at the mouth of Devil’s Canyon.

  No view from that huge outcropping inspired optimism. I can see myself—an older boy, or was it a young man?—looking down into the murky depths of the canyons below. Definitely not the way down to Palm Springs. I watched distant Tin Town gag to life in the morning sun and shouted an expletive to the lingering moon.