Echo Mountain

by Lauren Wolk

  Nobody said “and dying for lack of it,” though I’ll bet we all thought it.

  My mother said, “If you’re sure.”

  Cate nodded.

  We waited while my mother went for what we needed.

  When she came back, she paused.

  She looked like she had something to say.

  I knew my mother. I knew she was still struggling. But the hag was Mrs. Cleary. The same nurse who had helped Esther through a course of earaches so bad they’d made her scream. And I was the same girl who had made my daddy’s hand twitch, and his eyes roll. Made him groan. Was maybe the reason he had opened his eyes, even if for just a little while.

  I smiled at her, the flame in my chest so bright I was surprised she couldn’t see it shining from my eyes.

  But perhaps she could, since she finally said, “This is all so strange, and I don’t much understand any of it, but I’m sorry for how hard I’ve been.”

  I thought of Larkin’s mother. Esther. Cate. And me myself.

  “Daddy’s been asleep for months,” I said. “How were you supposed to be? And you’re right. I am a twelve-year-old girl. I’m not a doctor. So it’s all right, Mother.”

  Which earned me a look I’d keep for a long, long time.

  * * *

  —

  After she’d gone out again, I shut the door and turned back to the bed.

  Cate said, “Would you really have burned me with that chisel?”

  It was the same question Larkin had asked days before, though the answer was no longer true.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I’m ever so glad you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Me too. It would have made things worse.”

  “Yes, but something like that—” She stopped to choose her words. “It’s something you should never have to do.”

  “Because I’m twelve?”

  At which Cate looked disappointed. Hurt, even. “Because no one should have to do such a thing if there’s another way.”

  If there’s an else.

  “Even this,” she said. “The hot vinegar. What you’re about to do will stay with you for your whole life.”

  I nodded. “I hope so.”

  Which earned me another look I’d hold on to forever.

  “And then I’ll know how,” I said. “One more thing I can do.”

  Cate smiled. “Just hours ago we were talking about your father and skunk stink and horseradish.”

  “We were.”

  “And now this.” She gestured at her leg.

  Which reminded me of the balsam sap I’d given for Scotch’s hoof instead of using it on my father’s scar. The egg I’d fed to Maisie instead of using it to lure a skunk. The honey I’d left for the bees instead of adding it to my medicine brew. And the time I’d spent up-mountain instead of here, by my father’s side.

  “My mother thinks he will wake or he won’t, regardless of what I try,” I said.

  “You think that’s true?”

  I remembered what Cate had said to me not long before. “Tell me what true is.”

  She smiled. Said nothing.

  I tried to find the words to say something I’d never said before. “It seems to me that what I do for one thing is what I do for everything.” Which wasn’t exactly right. “I can do this,” I said, looking at her wound. “So I will. And I have an idea that it will be . . . more than what it is.”

  Cate didn’t say anything about that, and I didn’t know if she understood me, but I thought maybe she did.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Captan didn’t like the sounds that Cate made as I ladled the warm vinegar onto her wound, bit by bit, letting it seep into the cut and then collect in a reservoir on her skin, inside the glue dam I’d made.

  The dam slipped a little and shifted in the heat, but as it softened, it still kept a grip on her skin and held the vinegar pretty much where I wanted it to be.

  What seeped out I wicked away with the rag.

  “It’s working well,” Cate said through her teeth, her hands in fists.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am,” she said. “I will be.”

  After a while, my mother came to have a look.

  “You’ve had no supper. Either of you.”

  I looked up at her.

  “Ellie, you go on and have something. I’ll stay with Mrs. Cleary until you’re back.”

  “A name I’d nearly forgotten,” Cate said. “Though I’ll not forget my good husband, stuffy as he was.” She tried to smile, but it was a struggle. “Doctor Cleary was Doctor Cleary, through and through, though he was Reggie to me when the world wasn’t listening.”

  My mother looked at me. “We’re all more than one thing.” She went around the bed to lean over my father, kiss him on the forehead, smooth his cheeks with her hands. “Go on now, Ellie,” she said. “Go get your supper. And when you come back, bring your father some broth. And bring Mrs. Cleary a plate.”

  “Oh, don’t bother with me,” she said. “I haven’t much in the way of an appetite.”

  “Perhaps not, but you need your strength if you’re to get better. You’ll at least try some of the broth I’ve made for him.”

  So I went for my supper and found that Samuel had been right: The trout was the best I’d ever had, though being hungry had a lot to do with that.

  I looked in on him before I went back to Cate. Found him sleeping so deeply that even when I kissed his warm cheek he didn’t stir.

  To Esther, who was reading by lamplight in her bed, I said, “You’re kind to read to Daddy like you do.”

  She looked up, startled. “I suppose I am, but I do it mostly for myself, Ellie.” She laid her book down in her lap. “It’s terrible to feel useless.”

  Which I knew to be true, though I hadn’t imagined how she must have felt as our father lay shrinking and fading to gray through the long, cold months.

  We looked at each other in the golden darkness.

  “Good night,” I said.

  Esther picked up her book again. “Mrs. Cleary is lucky that I wasn’t the one who found her.”

  “Well, but you did,” I said. “I just found her first.”

  * * *

  —

  It was an odd supper I took to Cate: a mug of venison broth and a slice of dried-blueberry-apple-walnut-maple pie. For Captan, the last of the trout topped with the soft, brown skin from the bottom of the corn-bread pan.

  For my father, broth alone.

  While my mother fed him in hummingbird sips, I fed Cate likewise, though she managed the pie in bites.

  “At my age, making friends with a new kind of pie is an unexpected blessing,” she said. “I would never have thought of putting those things together, though they make for a fine family. And such a buttery crust.”

  My mother smiled. “You’re a terrible liar, but thank you.” She collected the empty mugs, the plate, the vinegar pot. “Shall I heat this up again?”

  “Just one more go of it, please,” I said. “And then we wait for the morning.”

  She must have seen the question on my face—And, in the morning, will you still send for the doctor?—because she said, “That’s fine, then, Ellie. We’ll see how everything goes.”

  When she had gone, Cate said, “You’re exactly like her and entirely different, aren’t you.” Another question that wasn’t a question.

  But since she’d asked, I gave her an answer. “Entirely different, yes, though I don’t know what she was like when she was a girl, and I don’t know what I’ll be like when I’m grown up. So I don’t really know much of anything.”

  Cate gazed at me sleepily for a long moment. “You know a fair bit, Ellie.”

  “I wish I’d known her before she had Esther. And me. And S
amuel. I wonder what she was like back then.”

  “Well, different, of course. And different, still, before she married your father. And different, again, before she picked up that mandolin over there for the first time. And, again, after she laid it down.” She closed her eyes. “The sun never rises the way it did the day before. Not exactly. And it won’t rise the same way tomorrow. But it’s still the sun,” she said. “And we’d all be just as cold without it.”

  * * *

  —

  When my mother came back with the vinegar, she said good night to all four of us.

  “You can have my bed,” I told her. “I’m happy to sleep with the dogs.”

  She looked a little sad at that, until I said, “It’s a lovely thing, to sleep with puppies.”

  So we decided on that and she went off to bed, leaving us in a pool of lantern light beyond which the entire world disappeared again.

  I let the vinegar cool a little and then slowly ladled in another small dose.

  We waited quietly while it seeped into the wound, a puddle of it remaining on Cate’s skin. “I think that will do for now,” I said.

  Cate was tired out but no worse than before. Perhaps a bit better.

  I left the gash open and laid a fresh cloth across her leg before pulling the blanket over her.

  Then I went around the bed to my father.

  “I wish I could do something for you, too,” I whispered.

  “I believe you just did,” Cate said. “Isn’t that what you meant?”

  I had to think back before I knew what she was asking. “About one thing and everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or maybe if I do one thing, for you, someone else will do one thing, for him.”

  “I will,” she said. “If I can. When I’m able.”

  But, in the end, it wasn’t Cate who helped him.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Later that night, from my nest among the puppies, I heard my mother call my name, and I was up and out of the woodshed like a cricket. But it was nothing to do with my father or Cate. At least I didn’t think so at the time.

  “It’s Captan,” she said. “He came and woke me up, but he won’t go outside. I don’t know what he wants. When I went back to bed, he came with me and won’t leave. He keeps . . . singing in my ear.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Singing?”

  “Whining, like a big mosquito. Right in my ear.” She pulled me inside and shut the door. Captan stood there in the darkness, his eyes like full moons.

  “Is it Cate?” I asked my mother. “Did you check on her?”

  “Of course I did, Ellie. A dog like that comes to me in the night, of course I went in to have a look, but she’s sleeping soundly. Some fever still, but no worse than before.” She bent down to look into Captan’s face. “He followed me in to see her but then out again when I left. I don’t know what he wants.”

  Which is when I felt what he felt, knew what he knew, and realized that he, in that moment, was a lot like me. Filled with both lullaby and shout. A dog split in two. A dog doubled.

  He didn’t budge when I went to him and rubbed his ears. “What’s that song?” I said. “What is it, boy?” But he kept looking at my mother. Not at me. “This has something to do with you, Mother.” I stepped aside.

  When she held out her hand, he put his nose in her palm. Licked it. And sang some more of the song he’d apparently been saving for her.

  Since I’d met him, he’d made no sound except a pair of howls, a little whining and, from time to time, a growl or two.

  And this was no growl. Far from it.

  When he turned toward the bedroom where Cate and my father lay sleeping, I waited for my mother to follow. And then I did, too.

  * * *

  —

  The lantern burned so low in the room that it lifted the darkness only a little, like the very first moment of dawn.

  I turned up the wick and held the lantern high.

  Nothing seemed amiss, but Captan kept singing. And he went not to Cate but to my mother again, singing all the while.

  “What’s the matter with him?” my mother whispered. She bent to look him in the eye again. “I don’t know what you want.”

  No more lullabies, I had said.

  Captan seemed to disagree.

  And he clearly meant this one for my mother.

  But then he left her and went to my father’s side of the bed, his nose close to my father’s face.

  We looked at him.

  He looked at my mother.

  Looked at her some more, still singing.

  And then he turned back to my father.

  And he barked.

  One loud, shattering bark that nearly stopped my heart.

  The first bark I’d ever heard from him.

  “What!” Cate cried, startling like a grouse. “What is it, Cap?”

  And then he barked again.

  “Captan!” I cried.

  And he barked again, even more loudly than before.

  My mother covered her ears.

  “What’s wrong?” Samuel said as he tumbled through the doorway. “Why is that dog barking?”

  For a fourth time, Captan barked.

  And my father turned his head away.

  “Oh, good dog,” I said, rushing to the bed. “Good boy.”

  “What’s happening?” Esther cried as she, too, raced into the room, her face wild.

  And Cate said, her voice full of wonder, “I don’t believe Captan has barked since my boy died.”

  And the fire in my chest flared even more.

  I stepped out of the way and pulled my mother close to my father, Samuel pushing up, too, Esther with him.

  And Captan barked again.

  And my father flinched again.

  “Oh, good dog,” I said.

  At which Captan began to sing some more of his dog-song, louder than before, looking up at my mother, though I was the one who understood him.

  “Oh, you very good boy,” I said. “You are a great and wonderful dog, aren’t you, Captan.”

  And he sang some more, his eyes on my mother’s face.

  “What does he want?” she said, clearly baffled, her cheeks pink, her hands at her throat.

  I went to the corner and picked up the mandolin my mother hadn’t played since my father had gone to sleep.

  “Oh, my beautiful, beautiful boy,” Cate said softly.

  But I didn’t think she was talking to Captan, though it was clear that she understood him, too.

  I held the mandolin out to my mother.

  She took it from me.

  Cate watched as if she might be watching a rose about to bloom.

  We all did.

  And my mother looked at my father, listened to the song that Captan was singing, and began to pluck the strings softly, one by one, turning the knobs on the neck of her mandolin, of her Keavy, until the notes rang true. Whatever true is. And Esther went still. Even Samuel went still. And Cate began to smile.

  And Captan looked at my father and barked again, a ringing bark that echoed as it rang. And turned to my mother and sang to her some more.

  And I watched, and I watched, and I watched as my mother began to play. Something I couldn’t name and hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Something sweet, and sad, and wonderful that made Captan croon and tremble. Made us all smile like children, which some of us were. Which all of us were in that moment.

  Even my father, who opened his eyes as if it were Christmas morning, he himself the gift.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word. But this time, when he looked at me, he was there. He was right there, in those eyes, looking out at me as he once had.

  And I was right there where he could see me.

  Chapter Seve
nty

  None of us got another minute of sleep for the rest of that night.

  We stayed in the bedroom and watched as my father slowly surfaced, blinking and sighing, all of us caught between hope that he was finally awake for good and fear that he would slip away from us once more.

  Captan returned to Cate’s side, quiet again. Samuel lay down at the foot of the bed and made up songs about brindled dogs and black snakes. Esther and my mother paced and murmured. And I checked on Cate’s leg, fed her some tea, and said to my father, again and again, “It’s all right, Daddy. It’s all right now.”

  Just before dawn, he finally turned his head toward my mother and said, his voice full of rust, “What happened?”

  It took a while for anyone to answer, what with my mother crying and Samuel asking Cate how she had managed to fix him; but after things calmed down, Esther said, as I’d known she would, “You were cutting down a tree and Ellie got in the way and you got hurt saving her.”

  “Esther, hush now,” my mother said.

  “Oh, I don’t blame her,” Esther said. “She’s just a kid.”

  Which was how I felt about Samuel chasing that rabbit.

  And Esther was only saying what she thought was true. And what was true. At least true enough.

  But a part of me soared and sang when my father looked directly at me and said, “Not Ellie.”

  “But I was,” I said, meeting his eyes but completely aware of Samuel, who had laid his little head on my father’s chest and could hear every word we said. “Esther’s right.”

  My father frowned. He held my gaze for another long moment, and I thought he might say something more, but then he put his hand on Samuel’s head, and nodded slowly, and gave me the smallest of smiles.

  I smiled back at him.

  And then watched as he turned to find Cate lying in the bed next to him.

  His eyes grew wide, and he leaned away from her and whispered, “You’re—”

  “Cathrine Cleary. I was a nurse in Bethel.” She nodded at my sister. “Esther, there, used to come to us with earaches.”