The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

“The air’s different,” Nola said.

  “Lower elevation,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ll find berries,” Bridget said.

  “Listen to that wind!” I shouted as we stepped out of the stone chalet. Like it heard me, the wind shoved me from behind. Bridget covered her ears against the howling.

  Something moved on the ridge to my left—a flash of tawny fur. I turned slowly, about to come face to face with the mountain lion I’d feared had been stalking us. But it wasn’t a mountain lion, it was a massive bighorn ram. Six feet tall, I’d guess, and just as long, with white spotted flanks and huge, curled horns.

  I didn’t dare alert Bridget, whose back was to me. She had a poor track record in situations requiring calm.

  When the ram snorted in my direction I sensed no threat. In fact, I can tell you that I saw his appearance as a good omen. I felt forgiven for killing the lamb. Mercy killing or not, the deed had haunted me.

  When the ram tired of looking at me—I’d never have tired of looking at him—he leapt, clattering from boulder to rock, then disappeared beyond a crag.

  “So loud,” Bridget strained to shout, turning in time to miss the bighorn.

  I nodded, and looked toward the shelter to find Nola sitting up and staring in wonder at the place on the rock where the bighorn had been. It was rare to see a bighorn and when our eyes met we acknowledged the privilege, and the opportunity to share it. Bridget turned around, pulling at my frozen hands. “Let’s go see.”

  Assaulted by the raging wind, we started up the slope but Bridget barely had the strength to put one foot in front of the other and so I hauled her most of the way, gripping her waist, bearing her weight on my hip. We looked back to check in with Nola every few steps. Neither of us remarked that the wind sounded like a helicopter or a waterfall. We were sick of the wind making us look stupid.

  I sniffed the air to find that it smelled like water again. An olfactory mirage.

  “Smells like water,” Bridget said.

  The wind changed direction and the sweet scent disappeared.

  “I keep thinking about that little baby. Vonn’s baby,” Bridget said.

  “Me too.” It was true. I was already grieving her child.

  “The father’ll never know,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Vonn’s baby—the father.”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe he already has a bunch of kids out there that he doesn’t take care of.” I squirmed, thinking of Yago.

  “Maybe,” Bridget said.

  “Anyway, she said she didn’t know him.”

  “I heard her talking about him on the phone.” Bridget’s eyes flickered with hope. “Maybe it was more than a one-night thing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for her right now.” She struggled to form each word.

  “Maybe.” We both knew she was grasping at straws but I admired her spirit. “We’re not giving up yet.”

  Just then we crested the ridge. And I fell to my knees. That’s what I did. I fell to my knees when I saw what I saw. When I turned to look I could see by Bridget’s face that she was seeing it too, in all its majesty—roaring, thundering, cascading. It was not some cruel mirage. It was Corazon Falls.

  Few eyes have looked on Corazon Falls. The waters are remote and the canyons are a death trap for even the most experienced of hikers. On top of that the winds are usually high and unpredictable.

  Back at the shelter Nola could see that something had stopped Bridget and me in our tracks. I shouted down to her. “It’s the falls, Nola! We’ve found Corazon Falls!”

  She couldn’t hear me, of course. I turned to Bridget, who was standing away from the edge of the cliff, entranced.

  The scent of the water was intoxicating. So close but so far. We inhaled the clouds of moisture as we studied the landscape. The rocks were ragged, big as cars, descending toward the shallow rapids at the crashing falls. The river’s banks were slight and rocky too.

  I couldn’t see a way down. “We just need to get down. Water leads to people. Right?”

  “What about over there? By those trees?”

  I shook my head. The route was impossibly steep.

  “What about there?”

  “Maybe,” I said, drawing closer to the edge.

  Bridget closed her eyes. “I can feel the spray.”

  I searched the rocks for a route to the bottom. “Maybe there,” I said, gesturing at a collection of tumbled boulders to the right of the falls. But just as I said it one of the smaller boulders came loose. We watched it bounce down to the water, and shatter when it hit the riverbank. I was overcome by vertigo and had to close my eyes and lie flat on my back to let it pass.

  “You all right?”

  “Vertigo,” I said, darkly.

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Bridget fought her own vertigo, getting down on her knees and crawling over the rocks like a lizard, the plastic poncho squeaking as she found a place beside me near the bushes at the cliff’s edge. “What about there,” she said, inching closer, pointing with a shaky finger.

  “Careful,” I said, feeling a tremble in the granite upthrust beneath us. “Maybe.”

  Bridget pushed back the branches of some fragrant sage for a better view. “What about there?”

  “Even if I got all the way down,” I said, “how would I get from that rock to that one?”

  Impossible. She saw it too. We were quiet, watching the waterfall, breathing our last breaths, thinking our final thoughts, drawing inevitable conclusions.

  Moved by the beauty of the falls, and the scattering clouds and the pale blue sky against the amber rock, Bridget sighed.

  I agreed. The rushing water. The clearing sky. Good place to die.

  We looked around, nodding—we might have been considering a vacation property, that’s how content we must have appeared.

  Looking back at Nola in the shelter I waved, and felt reassured when she waved back. I was worried that she was going to lose consciousness, or worse. I didn’t want to be robbed of the chance to say goodbye.

  “Nola has to see this,” I said. “And Vonn. When she wakes up.”

  It took some time for me to hike back to the shelter and carry Nola up to reunite her with Bridget. My knees were burning, and my shoulders were aching as I went down once more to collect Vonn. She was dead weight. I had to pick her up like a child and cradle her, each step torture. Finally I reached the ridge. We four were together again, in view of the roaring falls. I laid Vonn down beside Nola a few steps away from the edge.

  The sun shone down on us and warmed us. In the water’s white noise we heard helicopters, and airplanes, and the whispers of our dead. I began to fixate on the likelihood that the scavengers would become ill from feasting on Vonn’s snake-poisoned cadaver. We hadn’t been successful at finding our way back, but I felt no small amount of pride in the blessing of Devines. We were quiet there in the sunshine for a very long time.

  Bridget’s words broke through my reverie. “I can’t seem to make peace with it.”

  I struggled for composure but by that point I was too weak and confused.

  “In my dream we were saved, Wolf. I remember the feeling. The greatest feeling,” she said.

  “I believe you, Bridget,” I said.

  “You do?”

  “I do.” It was the truth. I believed she believed.

  On my hands and knees I went to Nola, who was beside Vonn in the shade of a bush, sniffing her lavender sachet she’d drawn from her pocket.

  “Come on. Come over there with us. It’s a hell of a view,” I said.

  We crawled, Nola on her elbows, back to the edge of the cliff beside Bridget. She was too spent for awe and wonder. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  We watched the water, mesmerized, preparing for our last breaths—at least that’s what I was doing. I suppose I’d accepted it. I prayed that Vonn would wake long enough to see this
rare sight.

  I don’t remember feeling agitated, but rather calm. That is, until Bridget grabbed my arm, shouting, “What’s that?”

  I squinted, trying to find what she was looking at.

  She pointed with a trembling hand. “There! Down there! On the riverbank!”

  “Where?”

  “THERE!”

  Then I saw it. An orange vest. It was an orange vest. And not just an orange vest but one attached to a man, leading two other men, also wearing orange vests, and carrying knapsacks through the bush and over the rocky riverbank heading toward the falls.

  “Hikers,” Nola croaked, pointing. She did not have the strength to call out.

  They weren’t hikers. They were Mountain Rescue.

  “Hello! HELLO!” I shouted, but couldn’t be heard over the raging water.

  We watched, breathless, as the lead hiker took his binoculars in hand to scour the area. Even from this distance we could see they had walkie-talkies and ropes. Mountain Rescue. They were They. They were the They we’d prayed for.

  “Help!” I screamed thinly.

  Nola watched, paralyzed, as Bridget pulled herself to her feet.

  The ridge was so dense with brush there were few places we could be seen. Bridget started jumping up and down, waving her arms above the bushes.

  I jumped up and down too, and when that didn’t work I threw rocks and branches, but the men in the orange vests were much too far away and appeared to be concentrating their search efforts on the ground.

  Finally, one of the men trained his binoculars on the ridge where we stood.

  “Wave your arms!” I screamed to Bridget, and we did, insanely, repeatedly. Nola waved with her good arm, until the man put down his binoculars and turned to scan another area. He hadn’t seen us. It was a long way, and a ragged ridge and he’d passed us over.

  “There are big rocks back at the shelter!” I shouted.

  “I’ll get them,” Nola said, then tried to stand but couldn’t.

  Down below, the man in the orange vest trained his binoculars on our ridge once more. I jumped and waved. He looked like Dantay, even from that great distance. I was terrified that I was hallucinating.

  Bridget turned to look at her mother and noticed Vonn trembling.

  “She’s seizing,” Nola said.

  Vonn went still, then limp. We dropped down beside her. It was only a moment. I didn’t know at that point if she was still breathing.

  When I leapt to my feet again, I saw that the man in the orange vest had put his binoculars down. He’d missed us. Again.

  “They’re leaving!” I jumped up and down, hollering. Bridget joined, waving her arms.

  Turning to look at Vonn, slumped and pale on the ground behind us, I was shaking with fear. We were losing her. And the baby too. With a final surge I screamed at the top of my lungs, “HELP!”

  Just then the last man stopped—as if he’d heard me—and turned back to scan the rocky river and its shallow banks.

  I shouted, “UP! LOOK UP!” We waved our arms madly.

  The man in the orange vest looked everywhere but up.

  “PLEASE!” I shouted.

  The orange vest was about to walk away again, but appeared to change his mind.

  “Here!” I shouted.

  He moved closer to the river and settled there on one knee to wash his face. Then he took a canteen from a pocket inside his coat, and dipped it into the cold churning water.

  “The pink knapsack!” Bridget said suddenly. “Put rocks in it! Make it heavy enough to splash!”

  Down by the water, the other two rescue men joined the first to wash their faces and fill their canteens.

  I raced down the hill to get the bag.

  “Hurry,” Nola called.

  The short journey was an eternity, my toes screaming each step of the way. Finally I reached the bag and stooped to fill it with large, heavy rocks.

  As I staggered back up the hill with the bag Bridget called out in her strangled voice, “They’re leaving! Hurry!”

  “Take this!” I hollered, holding out the knapsack as I struggled to climb the final steps to where Bridget stood near the edge.

  She grabbed the pink bag from my hand, then, in a panic, swung it around her shoulder and let it fly. I knew before the thing left her hands that she didn’t have the weight or muscle to throw the bag as far as it needed to go to clear the ridge and hit the water with enough force to get the rescuer’s attention.

  “No,” Bridget cried, watching the bag as it snagged on some manzanita on a slight projection under the ledge.

  Below us, the rescuers rose, preparing to leave. Nola sank down on a nearby rock. All hope was lost.

  Bridget turned to look at Vonn, unconscious on the ground. Then she looked at Nola. Then at me.

  “It’s okay, Bridget,” I said. “It wasn’t heavy enough anyway.”

  Bridget turned and started to run.

  Nola shouted, “Not now, Bridge! Please!”

  I was annoyed with her too, thinking of the precious energy we would have to spend finding her when she got lost in the woods. “Bridget!” I hollered, but I guess I didn’t blame her for wanting to die alone.

  “Bridget Devine!” Nola shouted sternly.

  Bridget stopped.

  “We need to stay together!” Nola called.

  “Stay with us, Bridget!” I shouted.

  Bridget turned back to us, holding her hand over her heart.

  “Bridge?” Nola called. “Come back here!”

  Then Bridget started to run again. Only this time she wasn’t running away from us but toward us. There were no bees chasing her. No snarling coyotes. And there was nowhere to run but the cliff’s edge.

  “Bridget!” I shouted when I realized what she meant to do.

  The look on Bridget’s face wasn’t fear. It wasn’t horror. Bridget knew before she leapt, when she raised her arms in that big red plastic poncho, before she cast off from that ridge and dropped to the rocks below, Bridget Devine knew that it was the single greatest moment of her life.

  Clairvoyant after all.

  Nola stared at the empty place where her child had been.

  It all happened so fast.

  Bridget must have looked like a giant red bird—that’s how I imagined her—gliding down to land on the jagged wet rock. She surprised the hell out of us all.

  I crept toward the edge and peered down into the river to see Bridget’s body limp on a rock near the bank several yards from where the men in the orange vests had stopped to fill their canteens. That was a hell of a good jump if you can say such a thing about such a thing.

  Even at a distance I could see where her blood splashed across the white rocks on the river bank. It looked like a fresh petroglyph. I imagined it said, in some uninvented tongue, Bridget Devine was here.

  The three rescue workers in orange vests were staring, dumbfounded, at the oxblood lump that had shot down from the ridge and landed with a thud.

  Finally, they looked up.

  I waved.

  I knew the men returned my wave but I could not take my eyes off Bridget and the red ribbons of blood.

  The wind died down and the air was silk, more stable than anyone had ever seen it near Corazon Falls. I remember lying there quietly on the rocks, watching the helicopter hover and land. The sun was high.

  I think it gave Nola and me a little comfort to know how much Bridget would have enjoyed being right.

  I could barely muster a whisper of thanks when men appeared with water and chocolate. I kept lifting my head to check on Vonn and Nola.

  The rescue is a blur. Odd-angled images as they loaded us into the gurneys. Nola first, then Vonn, then me. Nola was beside me in the helicopter. I heard her rasp apologetically to the pilot, even near death as she was, “We must smell awful!”

  Nola Devine being sorry. I turned to look for Bridget. Then remembered.

  Looking down from inside the helicopter, I spotted the red dot on the riv
erbank and watched it grow smaller and smaller until we were at such a distance that it looked like a push-pin in a topographical map. That was the last time I saw the mountain.

  AFTER

  I WOKE IN THE HOSPITAL four days later, missing three toes, thirteen pounds, and what had been left of my boyhood.

  My first word upon gaining full consciousness after our rescue? “Vonn.”

  A nurse appeared at my side, raising my bed, checking my vitals. The water in the glass she lifted to my lips tasted of bleach. I thought of Nola. I sniffed the air for something familiar—rock, earth, pine, snow—but could detect only the duelling qualities of ammonia and blood.

  I fell back to sleep and woke some time later, smiling when Nola Devine appeared at my door, folded into a wheelchair pushed by an orderly. Her arm was set in a sling, the swelling down significantly.

  “Vonn?” I said.

  Nola wheeled closer to my bed. “She’s okay. She’s confused. She’s been in and out of it since we got here.”

  “The baby?”

  “A fighter. Everyone says so.”

  Bridget, I remembered. Nola seemed to read my thoughts.

  “She hasn’t asked about her mother yet. She’s sleeping a lot. She really doesn’t remember much.”

  “Has she asked about me?” I had no voice.

  Nola shook her head. “She doesn’t remember the rock slide, or crossing over the crevice or being bitten by the snake. None of it. I haven’t known how to tell her.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “The nurse said we could go up and see her in a few hours. They’re doing some tests. In the meantime, the guys from Mountain Rescue are here,” Nola said.

  I tried to sit up.

  “They’ve stopped by every day since they brought us in. It was Harley Diaz, Wolf. He started the whole thing in motion. No one was looking for us.”

  “Harley,” I said, when he entered. Harley wasn’t on the Mountain Rescue team and I was a little confused.

  “You forgot your knapsack,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Harley leaned over, embracing me warmly.

  “You saved us,” I managed to say. “Thanks.”

  “Thank this guy,” Harley said as the next man entered the room. I knew it would be Dantay, who I thought I’d recognized, even at such a great distance, when he lifted the binoculars to survey the ridge.