The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

“Michigan? Back to Michigan? Why would you leave California to go to school in Michigan? What a joke! Why would you want to go there at all? Ever?”

  Byrd shrugged, then shrugged again.

  “Michigan’s too cold,” I chided. “You won’t go to Michigan.” I’d looked away so he wouldn’t see me swallow the lump in my throat.

  In the late afternoon, gathered together behind a clump of trees at the Desert Station, we toasted our adventure with a belt from a silver flask of Jamaican rum that Gisele had pilfered from her host’s wet bar.

  “If my dad finds out you took his Jamaican, we’re dead,” Lark said, and I was chilled to think of the look on Harley’s face if he found out about the red weed.

  We’d told the girls to dress for winter and were pleased to see they’d complied, with boots and warm coats and fuzzy hats and gloves. Gisele seemed the most eager of us all, swigging the rum and giggling. “I love being in disguise,” she said. “Who would recognize me in these loser boots?”

  Lark laughed mirthlessly seeing as the boots had come from her closet. “Lucky they fit. Especially the calf. You’re so much shorter than me.”

  Gisele straightened and said, “That was bitchy, Lark. Basically you just said that I’m a short cow with big feet.”

  “I forgot the tea!” I lied, hoping to defuse the tension between the girls. They swivelled around, turning their venom on me as I pretended to search the knapsack. I sighed with relief when I found the canteen and we celebrated, order restored.

  The girls giggled and screamed at the tram-rocking transition towers and we used their terror as foreplay, embracing and tickling them, flinging our youth in the faces of the other riders when they frowned. But then the tram conductor warned us to dial it down or he wouldn’t let us off at the Mountain Station, and Byrd and I remembered what we were risking. We were about to lose our virginity to college girls, on our shared birthday, at one of the coolest places on earth. The stakes were unusually high.

  It was an unseasonably warm day, and we were sweating in our coats as we walked. When we reached Circunsisco Gigantesco, we paused while Byrd described, with great solemnity, the rock formation’s power to produce spontaneous and multiple orgasms.

  The fabled wild horses, whose ancestors were first lost on the mountain centuries before, could have been galloping in front of my stupid face but I was so singularly focused on my pursuit of Lark I wouldn’t have noticed. I couldn’t wait to show her Secret Lake. Finally we stepped through the canopy of trees, past the boulders and through the brush to reveal the smooth, framed water. I was bursting with pride.

  “I thought it would be bigger,” Lark said.

  Gisele screamed at the sexual innuendo. “I thought it would be bigger!”

  “It’s a vernal lake,” I said defensively. “Its size depends on the rain. This is the smallest it’s been in years. Our precipitation was way below average. Way below.”

  Gisele laughed harder. “Smallest in years! Way below average!”

  Both girls tipped back another swig of the Jamaican rum. They were not watching their step. “Watch the phlox!” I called.

  We finally settled down together, sitting cross-legged on the Slab, the yellow canteen in the centre of our circle. There was no wind. I’d never felt the mountain air so still and quiet. Even the birds in the tall trees were silent, a captive audience for our cautionary tale.

  “Look,” I said to the girls, waving my arms around like I was showing them my cool bachelor pad, crestfallen when they didn’t seem the least impressed by the slim, glossy lake or the wraiths’ shadows dancing on the forest floor, or the way sunlight stroked the ragged rocks and coaxed the flecks of metal in the breccia to the fore.

  “What did the Indian boys do back in old times?” Gisele asked, with surprising solemnity.

  “What?”

  “Did they have to pierce something? Dance? Firewalk? Or was it just drinking the red weed and going off in the forest?”

  “Drinking the red weed and going off,” Byrd said authoritatively.

  “I think we have to make up our own ritual,” I said, serious. “No going off alone. Agreed? No going off alone?”

  “Agreed,” we chimed.

  Byrd reached for the canteen.

  “Wait!” Lark cried as Byrd rose to his feet.

  “Make a speech,” Gisele said, grinning. “Shirtless.”

  Lark flinched. “He’s my cousin!”

  “Don’t look.”

  Byrd uncapped the toxic tea. “I’m starting to think this is a bad idea.”

  Lark frowned while Gisele sniffed the air. “It smells like feet!” Gisele said.

  Byrd gagged and put the cap back on the canteen.

  “Why don’t we stick with the rum,” I said.

  “What about you?” Gisele asked Byrd. “You want to stick with the rum? Or are you ready to become a man?”

  The dying light cast Byrd in amber as he held the canteen like a trophy and leaned into an imagined microphone. “I want to thank my agent,” he said.

  We all laughed.

  Still holding the canteen aloft, Byrd took a solemn stance. “Today, we are men.”

  Lark and Gisele hooted and hollered.

  “Today, we are men,” Byrd repeated.

  “Men!” The girls laughed, clapping, and I found myself joining in. “MEN!”

  I could smell the coming winter, or maybe it was a relic of winters past. Maybe the odour of pine sap was strong. Or maybe it was the rum that was so strong. Byrd looked at me for a long time—he could have been a great actor. He spoke volumes without a word. I knew it was all a big show, but I still got choked up when he asked, “Do you know, Wolf? Do you even know what it means to be a man?”

  I felt like an asshole for getting emotional because it was just Byrd and he was only goofing around, but the thing is, I didn’t know the answer to that question, and I thought I should at least have some idea. I felt the weight of my father’s failures and the absence of my mother and I wondered who would teach me, or if a guy could learn on his own, what it means to be a man.

  Byrd reached out his hand and helped me to my feet. We bellowed, “MEN!” and I sucked back snot and started laughing.

  Gisele rose, snatching the yellow canteen from Byrd’s hand. “MEN STALLING!” she charged as she untwisted the cap.

  Things seemed to happen quickly after that. Gisele dropped the cap, which bounced off the rock and fell into the brush. I laughed along with the others but I was annoyed by her carelessness. “We should really try to find that before it gets dark,” I said.

  Lark was not her unflappable self. She leapt to her feet to say, “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, Gisele.”

  A flock of mountain quail fluttered over our heads, flying low, sweeping the field of phlox beyond.

  “We said we were gonna. Come on—we said.” Gisele didn’t sound like a grown-up college girl and neither did Lark.

  Byrd reached out to take the canteen back but Gisele held it out of his reach. “You’re supposed to be brave,” she said. “That’s the whole point of it.”

  “Don’t do it,” Lark begged.

  Gisele lifted the canteen to her mouth and took a short swig of the brew, swallowing loudly and smacking her lips. We waited, breathless, to see what would happen next. We laughed our heads off when the girl gagged theatrically before wiping her tongue. “That’s seriously disgusting.” She paused. “I feel nothing. Nothing.”

  “Déjà vu,” Byrd said, looking at the yellow canteen. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”

  “Nothing?” Lark asked, staring at Gisele.

  “Should we take a bigger swig?” Byrd asked.

  “I definitely need more,” Gisele said, belching loudly.

  “You definitely need this,” Byrd said, passing her some gum.

  “Shouldn’t I be feeling something by now?” Gisele wondered. She took another short swig as we watched and waited.

  “Nothing,” she said, “but pukey.”

>   I realized, with as much relief as disappointment, that we’d diluted the brew too much.

  Byrd took the canteen from Gisele, sniffing the fluid inside. “Should we just wait and see what happens?”

  Just then Gisele pointed to the west, crying out, “Look at the sunset! Oh my God you guys. That’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And look! That cloud looks like a woman’s face. Oh my God. It’s Mother Nature.” Tears of joy streamed down her face. “It’s so beautiful. Oh my God you guys. She’s just so beautiful.”

  Byrd grinned. “Mother Nature?”

  No matter how reluctant we’d been, now we all wanted to tip back that yellow canteen and go to the exquisite place where even Gisele Michel sounded beautiful.

  But then she started to yell. “I’m burning up, you guys! I’m so hot!” She peeled off her winter coat, even though the sun was sinking and the wind had risen, and started toward the lake. “I’m going in,” she called.

  Byrd and I did not swim in Secret Lake, which was buggy and coated with algae during the summer months and much too cold the remainder of the year. I’m not proud to admit that I did nothing when Gisele started peeling off her clothes. Byrd, on the other hand, gathered the girl into his arms and led her back to where Lark and I had settled on a boulder.

  “You can’t go in the lake, Gisele,” Lark warned, trying to stop her friend from stripping completely.

  “Fine,” Gisele said, shivering, and put her arm around Byrd’s neck. I was glad to see him return her deep kisses as she lifted his hand to the lace of her bra.

  I felt Lark’s hand on my shoulder and thought she meant to kiss me too, but when I turned she was gesturing at Gisele’s right arm, which had begun to spasm.

  “Gisele,” Lark said.

  Alarmed to see her jerking arm, Gisele pushed Byrd away, then fell back onto the polished granite in a fit of giggles. This bizarre behaviour seemed in keeping with what I’d read about the psychotropic effects of the red weed.

  Before we could react, Gisele sat up. The spasms were suddenly gone and she seemed back to her old self when she whined, “I need some water.”

  We’d thought to bring the tea, and the sleeping bags, three condoms each, toilet paper and the gum—but no water. “We didn’t bring any water,” I said.

  “Seriously, you guys!” Gisele shouted. “Oh my God that stuff makes you so thirsty!” She belched repeatedly.

  “We have gum,” Byrd said.

  Gisele got up and started heading toward the lake. “I need a drink. I seriously have to drink something.”

  Lark called out, “You can’t drink the lake water, Gisele! That’ll make you sick!”

  “We should go back,” Byrd said. “We should go back to the station and get water.”

  Gisele started dancing around the way people do when they’re on fire, racing back to us, looking all around for something to drink, finally lunging at Byrd and yanking the yellow canteen from his hands. The sewage-scented tea splashed around our feet but before any of us could stop her she’d downed a long gulp.

  The toxin in the tea was affecting her gross motor skills so that her gait was grotesque, zombie-like. “I’m thirsty,” she cried as she staggered toward the edge of the Slab. It was awful to watch.

  “Stop,” Byrd called, running after her. “Give me the canteen!”

  “Gisele!” Lark screamed.

  “Stop, Gisele!” Byrd called.

  She did stop, feet away from the cliff’s edge, and we three breathed a sigh of relief, until she raised the canteen to her mouth again.

  “NO!” Lark shouted.

  Byrd stepped close. “Give it to me,” he said calmly. “Give me the canteen, Gisele.”

  “I don’t feel good,” she croaked.

  “Come away from the edge,” Byrd said quietly. “You need to get away from the edge.”

  But Gisele was gone, and in her place was some altogether different creature, growling and snapping at the air. Was she on her vision quest? What the hell was she? She clung to the canteen, even as her muscles appeared to seize and her face contort. She lifted it once more.

  “Put it down!” Byrd hollered, reaching out to wrestle the canteen from her hand. Gisele hung on, kicking him hard and high with her borrowed boots. He staggered backwards.

  “Leave her, Byrd!” I shouted.

  “It’s all right, Gisele, just give it to me!” Byrd started toward her again, holding out his hand. She kicked at him, losing her balance and stumbling even closer to the edge.

  “Don’t step back, Gisele,” Byrd begged.

  Gisele began to cough, and when she looked around, seemed dazed and confused. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Don’t talk,” Byrd said.

  “Where’s my driver?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Byrd. I’m Byrd.”

  “Can you fly?”

  “No,” Byrd said.

  “Can I?” Gisele asked, then turned as if to leap. Byrd lunged for her. Byrd stumbled. And then my friend disappeared over the edge. It happened so fast.

  Gisele dropped to her hands and knees, evacuating her guts, which saved her life. Lark sobbed.

  Byrd.

  I see myself looking down at him, the wreck of his body twenty feet below on the ledge where he’d fallen. But it’s a lie. The view was obscured by dense brush.

  Might have taken me ten minutes to climb down to the place where he lay. I don’t remember that part, only that I was there, in those last rays from the setting sun, and I thought he was dead.

  He opened his eyes when he heard me crying and worked up a crooked smile.

  “You’re gonna be all right, buddy,” I promised, but my calm was obliterated by the girls on the ridge above us, screaming their bloody heads off. Beautiful Lark. My dream girl, costarring in my nightmare.

  Byrd found my eyes. He tried to say something but blood poured forth instead of words.

  “Don’t talk,” I said. “Your leg is broken. I know. I can see it’s broken.”

  “Please,” Byrd mouthed. That’s when I noticed that his arms were both broken too. There was blood in a small pool on the ground at the nape of his neck. “Please.”

  “Hang on, Byrd. Hang on. We’re gonna fix you.”

  I looked around at the sweep of forest, the ragged upthrust rock, the wind-worn stone, calling upon the balm of nature to heal my friend. Byrd moaned. There was a massive wound on the crown of his head.

  His eyes fluttered closed. I took off my coat and covered him with it. It should have been me. That’s what I thought more than anything. It should have been me. A glint of metal caught my eye—his Swiss Army knife had fallen out of his sock. I picked it up.

  The girls continued their desperate concerto on the ridge as darkness fell over Secret Lake. I waited with my quiet friend as the girls continued to scream for help.

  The girls screamed. Byrd’s breath grew shallow. I’d given up hope by the time the rescue workers, alerted by some hikers, arrived a few hours later. I looked up and recognized the man climbing down a rope ladder, carrying a medical bag. Byrd’s uncle Dantay. “Red weed?” he asked.

  “He didn’t drink it, Dantay,” I said. “He’s gonna be okay, right?”

  Dantay opened his mouth but stopped when he saw Byrd’s twisted body splayed out on the rock. I don’t remember what Dantay told me after that. His face said everything.

  Sometime later, I heard the sound of a helicopter. In this case it really was a helicopter with a screamer suit dangling from a thirty-foot cable. I don’t like to remember that night, that moment. Byrd didn’t scream. When that helicopter took my best friend away he made no sound at all.

  THE

  THIRD

  DAY

  THE WARMTH OF the sun on my face confused me because the last moment I remembered was dark and cold and terror-filled. A dream. I opened my eyes to find Bridget and Vonn watching me expectantly.

  “I thought you said you wer
e from Michigan,” Bridget said.

  “I am.”

  I was surprised to see that Nola was awake and alert. “You look so much better, Mrs. Devine.”

  Nola nodded. “The swelling’s down. So’s the fever.”

  “The sterasote,” Vonn said.

  “Or the prayers,” Nola said. “Don’t forget about the prayers.”

  I didn’t.

  Vonn put the parka over my shoulders. “You’ve been weird all morning, Wolf. You okay?”

  I nodded, but I was confused.

  “I remember reading all about the teenagers and the red weed in the newspapers when it happened,” Nola said. “My whole congregation prayed for you kids.”

  “Red weed?” I said. “What red weed?”

  Bridget shared a look with Nola and Vonn.

  “The red weed you just told us about,” Vonn said. “You just told us the whole story.”

  “Are you okay, Wolf?” Bridget asked. “See. I told you he seemed off.”

  “I told you what happened at Secret Lake?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I did not. “I thought I was dreaming it. I’ve had such weird dreams. I dreamed about my mother.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Byrd,” Nola said.

  “That Gisele Michel sounds like a piece of work,” Bridget huffed. “How’d they keep her name out of the papers?”

  “And that Lark person too?” Vonn said. “How does she get to walk away scot-free.”

  I doubted that Lark was any more free from the memory of that night than I was.

  “Why did you say you were from Michigan of all places?” Bridget asked.

  “I am from Michigan. I moved to California when I was thirteen. Tin Town.”

  Vonn reached down, offering a hand to help me to my feet.

  “It was all over the news around Thanksgiving last year,” Nola said.

  “Thanksgiving. Why weren’t we here for Thanksgiving?” Vonn asked, trying to remember.

  “There was so much going on. Remember? You were skipping school again. I had to make an appointment with the dean,” Bridget said.

  “You chose that weekend to move, Bridget,” Nola reminded her.

  “That’s right. That’s what it was.”