The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

  Frankie glared. “Just do it.”

  “I do the dishes,” I said. “I clean the toilets. I take out the trash.”

  “And you clean up the shit,” Yago said.

  “Frankie!”

  “It’s a job interview,” he said. “I can’t keep the guy waiting.” The door slammed behind him.

  I swallowed hard as I watched the Gremlin pull away.

  Yago threw a dirty dishrag at my head. “Clean it up.”

  I stood my ground.

  “Clean it up, Wilfred,” Kriket said.

  “Clean it up,” Yago repeated calmly.

  I remained defiant, even as Yago grasped the back of my neck with his thick fingers and even as he forced me to my knees and even as he slammed the left side of my face into the brown mess.

  If there ever was a casino job, Frankie didn’t get it.

  Back on the mountain with the Devines on the second day, it was mid-afternoon, the sun scalding. I was hanging on for dear life when the boulder I’d used to spring myself to my current position came loose, fell with a thud and rolled toward a cluster of pines. I checked to make sure that Nola was all right down below, and then realized that the fallen boulder had left me stranded. Nowhere to climb up and no way to climb down. My muscles began to spasm, and I shook, clinging to the rock.

  In an attempt to slow down my breathing I thought of my mother in her billowing white dress. The two of us, twirling in the mirror. Again and again and again. My mother the angel shouted over the wind, “Go to your left, Wolf! Move your foot to your left!”

  I moved my foot to my left as my ghost mother’d instructed and found the toehold I hadn’t seen before.

  Choking on dust I climbed down the wall and made my way back to Nola, leaning on the rock beneath the pines.

  “I didn’t know if you could hear me up there over the wind,” Nola called on my approach. “I was yelling at you to go to your left. You took the longest time to move.”

  I was exhausted and irritable and needed to let off a little steam. I took the parka from around my waist and hit the rocks and brush with it, again and again, whipping it until a cloud of feathers exploded from the seam of the sleeve.

  Nola ignored my outburst, focusing instead on the place in the rock where I’d broken the brittle branches with my coat. I’d uncovered an unusual pattern of divots. “Those aren’t natural,” she said.

  She was right.

  “They look like mortar holes.” She pointed out the worn concave bowls dotting the smooth flat stone next to the one where she was seated. The pain in her wrist was bad and she nearly fainted when she moved to get a closer look. Even so she sounded like a schoolgirl when she squealed, “They are! Wolf, they are mortars. Here! Metates! These are Native American grinding stones! Look here and here!”

  Food had been processed on this rock—hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago—yet it didn’t make sense. “There’s no water source here,” I said.

  “Maybe there was a spring or waterfall then? Maybe this was a seasonal hunting camp?”

  That was plausible until we remembered that there was no way to get to where we sat—certainly the Indians had not scaled several hundred feet of granite from the canyons below. Nor leapt the fifteen-foot crevice. Nor jumped off the ridge where we fell. “There must be something we’re missing?” Nola said.

  “I don’t have time to wonder,” I said. “The sun sets early.”

  Nola examined the sky as I walked back and forth, scanning the wall, squinting.

  “You need to drink something,” Nola said.

  “I’m good.”

  “Really, Wolf!”

  “Where are Vonn and Bridget?” Mostly I wanted to divert Nola’s attention.

  “Still out looking for that bag,” Nola called. “We’ll all feel so much better when they find it. And my binoculars!”

  “And my hat,” I added.

  “Was that your lucky hat?”

  I looked around, raising my arms to the wilderness in answer.

  “Your generation just goes straight to sarcasm.”

  I started back for the wall.

  “You need to rest,” Nola called.

  “I’m fine,” I shouted back.

  “You need water.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Wolf, your coat,” Nola shouted.

  “I’m good!” I barked.

  “Wolf! What if you have to spend another night up here? You need your coat! You can’t go up without your coat!”

  My memory flooded with the smell of my childhood, those grey Michigan winters, sick-making with the car exhaust and cigarette smoke and dusty furnaces blowing all night long. Freezing my skinny ass off all the way to school because I wouldn’t wear the winter coat I had to nag Frankie to buy me every year.

  “Your coat!” Nola shouted again.

  I carried on, pretending not to hear her. I interpreted her caution about the coat as a lack of confidence in my abilities. I was pissed at her—genuinely pissed at her for putting the possibility of failure into my head. Why would I need a coat? I was going to get up there and back to the Mountain Station long before night fell, wasn’t I?

  I strained toward a skull-shaped knob, snagged by fear. Nola was right, of course. Only a fool doesn’t prepare for a worst-case scenario. You can’t imagine how much it irritated me to have to climb back down and collect my parka. I didn’t look her in the eye as I swept my coat off the rock. I hated her for caring. I hated her encouragement.

  “Wolf,” she said sharply, and I ignored her.

  After tying the sleeves of my coat around my waist I began to climb once again, sneezing from the clouds of sediment that shook loose with each grip. At some point I became distracted by a mass of breccia—a conglomerate of rocks studded with other rocks—that reminded me of the head cheese one of my first-grade classmates used to bring for lunch and made me hungry and nauseated at once. I swallowed hard, reaching for a grip in a fracture just a little beyond my arm span, but found myself stranded once again with no recourse but to climb back down.

  The sun was vicious and the wall was mean. I felt a stab of resentment toward Bridget and Vonn, who were sauntering around in the shade of the pines, looking for the bag. And toward Nola for being helpless and burdensome. I hated them all just a little, but they’d saved my stupid life.

  So there I was, up the wall and down the wall from this way and then from that. With each attempt I looked back to find Nola’s smiling face. She’d hardly taken her eyes from me the entire day, sitting there by the ancient grinding stone, elevating her arm like I’d told her. I don’t know when I realized that her lips were moving. She’d been praying that whole time.

  I continued to find myself between a rock and a rock. Every ounce of energy I expended climbing to a certain height was doubled by the effort of climbing back down. I thought of Byrd, not so much wishing he were there but that I was not. The wind sounded a call to surrender. I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until I opened them.

  I wasn’t alone.

  “Byrd,” I said, curiously aware that I was hallucinating. “I’m hallucinating, Byrd,” I told my conjured friend.

  “Is it cool?” he asked.

  “It’s a little cool.”

  “You look like excrement. Come on.” He reached beyond a jagged lip to reveal the sturdy grip I’d been unable to see, and began to traverse the wall, guiding me toward the steps and grips.

  I’ve had many conversations with myself about Byrd’s appearance on the mountain. At that moment I didn’t care if the vision of Byrd had originated with me or apart from me. I was only grateful for my surging strength. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard my friend, or seen him in the spirit realm. (I believed my mother to be in heaven, but I was confused about what had been done with Byrd.) I followed him, straining for holds that I should not have been able to reach. “Thanks, buddy,” I remember saying, but he was gone.

  “Byrd!” I called out, panicked.

 
“Crows?” Nola shouted from far below. “They’ve been there all day!”

  I craned awkwardly to look up beyond the ridge to where she was pointing, and in so doing caught my jacket sleeve on a jagged fin of rock. The coat came untied from around my waist and slid down my thighs. I spread my knees to catch it but only managed to loosen it further. Unable to let go, I could only watch helplessly as my parka floated to the ground and landed in a cloud of dust. I’m pretty sure I heard God laughing. Maybe it was Byrd.

  Climbing back down, I felt every aching cell of my body. My lungs were burning, my eyes were seared, my head, shoulders and nose torched, not to mention that I was also hot with shame over my failure. I wanted to whip my damnable coat against the damnable grinding stone until there was nothing left but shredded nylon and feathers soon scattered by the wind. Panting, I took a seat on a smooth boulder beside Nola, who passed me the yellow canteen.

  “My friend had one exactly like this,” I said.

  “Pip got it from the gift shop,” Nola said. “You see a lot of these around.”

  It was the wind of course, but in the moment it sounded like Byrd, shouting into my ear, “Drink it! Drink it, you eejit!”

  I brought the spout to my lips and allowed a small quantity of fluid into my mouth. The metal was cool and smelled of Nola, and Bridget, and Vonn Devine. The canteen. That yellow canteen.

  “Drink some more,” Nola insisted, pushing the yellow canteen back into my hands.

  “I’m all right,” I said. Grabbing my dusty parka, I tried to stand but couldn’t.

  “You need to rest,” Nola said. “There’s plenty of time.”

  There wasn’t plenty of time. Darkness was snickering just behind the peaks. I rose, but my knees buckled again and brought me down to the rock on my bony ass. Nola tried to rise but was beset by dizziness.

  “We make quite the pair, don’t we?” she said.

  Clouds were gathering on the horizon and I prayed to God for the mercy of a little cloud cover to cool my burning skin and relieve my stinging eyes. God, I thought, please help me get up that wall. Please help me take them home.

  I had to blink when a skink, this little blue-tailed lizard, darted out from the brush near my feet. Was it a sign? There was a sound then, a ticking sound, and I was reminded of the rattlers and their affection for the sun. I snapped to attention, scanning the surrounding rocks. I don’t know if I was being paranoid, prescient, or just fooled, like we all were, by the puckish wind.

  When Bridget and Vonn stepped out of the brush again with no good news about the mesh bag, I took the moment to tell them, “The rattlers come out when it’s warm like this. Watch out around the rocks.”

  “I am terrified of snakes,” Bridget said.

  So was I. “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.”

  Vonn stumbled, bracing herself against the trunk of a tree. Fearing she was going to hurl again I turned away to afford her some dignity. She didn’t heave though, and when I looked back at her we locked eyes. I saw something in her expression. I couldn’t say what it was. She shrugged, deflated.

  “Keep looking,” I said. “We’ll all feel better when we have more water. Just watch your step.”

  “If there are snakes out I’m not going anywhere,” Bridget exclaimed, sprawling on a bed of boulders.

  “They like the rocks,” I said again.

  Nola raised her voice to her daughter. “Bridget. Please! We need that water!”

  “We’ve looked everywhere for that stupid bag,” Bridget said.

  “Keep looking,” I said. “We can’t give up.”

  “Why aren’t you climbing?”

  To me, Nola said, “I’ve been sitting here wondering why no one calls you Wilfred. It’s a good name.” She could see that I was exhausted and was stalling for me. “A smart person’s name.”

  “Seriously?” Vonn said. “Mim? The names thing again?”

  “Wolf just sounds so mean. And you’re not mean at all!”

  “I can be mean,” I said.

  “I’m named after my great-grandmother on my father’s side,” Nola explained. “Her name was Lonya but the nurse got it wrong and when she saw that my little bracelet said Nola my mother was too superstitious to change it.”

  I was grateful for the rest.

  “Bridget’s named after Patrick’s grandmother. I wanted Bridget to name Vonn after one of the grandmothers or aunts on my mother’s side. I just think names should mean something.” She sighed. “We used to pass names down with our china and linens and photographs and now everything is new and made up. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t like my name. Bridget. It sounds so fidgety. I just wish it was something more calm. Something that suits me better. Autumn. Season.”

  Nola turned to Vonn. “Normally I don’t like naming children after cities and states. I do like Georgia for a girl.”

  “I like the old-fashioned names,” Vonn said.

  “Millicent? Gwendolyn?” Bridget asked.

  “Clara. Virginia. Annabel,” Vonn said.

  I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is Vonn helping me to my feet.

  The blood rushed to my head when I stood, and I had a glimpse of my future. I’d never thought much of my future before that moment, not beyond the wilderness trips and extreme mountain climbing I’d do with Byrd, or the fantasies (which don’t count) of driving a Lamborghini with Lark naked in the passenger seat on some deserted road. Future. I remember turning that fat word over in my mind, desiring it, like food and sex. I must have been smiling, because when I looked up Bridget was smiling back at me.

  “We’re going to get rescued. I know it. I have a very strong feeling about that,” she said.

  When you’re in the wilderness, minutes pass like hours and days like years, or in a split second your whole world could be spun on its axis. It was about four hours past noon, judging by the sun, when I felt the brutish wind driving in from the north. I was making my way down the wall after my ninth failed attempt. There were scarcely two hours of daylight left.

  Bridget was there when I reached the bottom, shouting, “Do you hear that? Can you hear that?”

  The sound was unmistakable and yet I knew it was a lie. Nola sat up, scanning the sky. I didn’t dare waste my limited reserves of strength celebrating another deception. I didn’t even turn to look at the sky when Bridget shouted, “The helicopter!”

  Her optimism was infuriating. With time leaking through our fingers I’d have only a few more chances to make it up the wall. I didn’t feel like wasting my breath telling Bridget not to waste hers. It was the wind. Only the wind.

  I found a rock on which to rest. In time Bridget and Vonn stopped waving.

  “What if no one even knows we’re lost yet?” Vonn asked.

  Bridget didn’t correct Vonn this time. “It sounded so much like a helicopter.”

  “Or a waterfall,” Vonn said.

  Nola agreed. “Waterfall. Yes. Are you sure that waterfall is as far as you said?”

  “Corazon Falls? It’s miles and miles.”

  “So it couldn’t be what we heard.”

  “There’s no helicopter. There’s no waterfall.”

  “I think the wind sounds like a train,” Nola said. “A freight train.”

  “The tracks rolled right by our house in Michigan. The wind does sound just like a freight train sometimes.”

  “All I care about is the helicopter,” Bridget said, sighing. “I’m so thirsty.” We watched her pick up the canteen and sip from it.

  “Eventually someone will notice that one of us is missing and they’ll send Mountain Rescue to track us,” I said. “They have equipment. A great team of dogs, too.” I pictured Dantay throwing a long rope ladder down from the top of the ridge. Uplifted by the image, I stood, ready to tackle the wall again.

  “Have you been in trouble up here before? Have you been lost up here?” Bridget asked.

  I turned to find the Devine women staring
at me. “I’ve never been lost up here,” I said. It was the truth. “My friend’s uncle heads up Mountain Rescue.” Also the truth. “The tracking dogs will pick up our scent.”

  I started up again, chanting a rhythm as my feet found boulders and my hands found grips. Higher and higher I climbed, calling on happy memories to fuel me; Glory, Byrd. Always.

  I was certain this particular maze of steps and grips was the one that would put me in reach of the ironwood but I was wrong. That’s when I heard Byrd’s voice again, like he was shouting right into my ear. “What’s your plan, Mountain Man?” I smiled in spite of myself.

  Climbing back down took the scant energy I had left. When I collapsed at the bottom the three women were all there. “You were so close,” Nola said, passing the canteen to me.

  I drank sparingly. Vonn merely wet her lips before passing it to Nola, who passed it to Bridget, who stopped to watch us watch her. “You think I’m going to guzzle it like he did. I won’t. I want to. Not like you all don’t want to.”

  The sound of a roaring waterfall ripped through the silence. We all heard it and turned to watch the trees like somehow we might witness the deception—catch them in the act. How did the wind in the pines sound like a waterfall? Or a freight train? Or a helicopter? What cruel magic transformed the air as it cut through the towering sugar pines and the fragrant Jeffrey pines and the practical lodgepole pines and the dense white fir?

  “We have a little more than a cup of water left. No food,” Bridget said. “What if we get stuck here another night?”

  I recalled the quick glimpse I’d had inside Nola’s black knapsack when they first asked me for directions and blurted at her, “Peanut butter! You have food!”

  “I don’t have food,” Nola said, wide-eyed. “I don’t have peanut butter!”

  “Why would she have peanut butter?” Bridget asked. “She doesn’t even eat peanut butter.”

  “That was Bridget, Wolf,” Vonn corrected. “In the sports bag she had peanut granola bars. Remember?”