Mountain Solo

by Jeanette Ingold

  "And your heart breaks for them when they don't make it," Dad answers.

  Amy is asleep in our tent, taking her half out of the middle. I tug her sleeping bag and all, over to one side. I don't think I've woken her but a few moments after I settle into my own sleeping bag, she says, in a voice so low I can hardly hear her "I'm never going to help Pop with another animal. It was my fault Midnight died."

  "That's not true!"

  "Yes, it is. We got him well and put his cage in the pickup and drove into the woods, and then Pop asked me •‹here I thought we should let Midnight go. And I pointed to some trees because I thought Midnight would like being able to see the river from them."

  Amy starts crying. "Pop said I'd picked the perfect spot, only I didn't. I picked a spot where there was poison."

  I reach over find her hand in her sleeping bag, and squeeze it. "You had no way of knowing that. Besides, Midnight might have found the poison miles away from where you left him."

  "If I'd picked better he never would have."

  "Maybe not," I tell her "But if you hadn't taken a chance and picked some place, he'd still be in a cage. Is that what you'd want for him?"

  "No." Amy sniffs, and her sobs lessen.

  "You and Dad did your best for Midnight. You patched him up and you gave him a chance to live his own life again. So you did right. Okay?"

  "Okay," Amy answers. She pulls her hand from mine. "But I'm still done taking care of things."

  The next thing I know, it's early morning, and sunlight is pricking through the mosquito netting on the tent door If I half close my eyes, I can see patterns in the sparkles of light: a grid like a ticktacktoe game and a leaf and a spray of flowers. I feel lazy and comfortable enough that I'd like to stay in my sleeping bag, but I can hear the others already getting breakfast.

  Amy chatters too brightly as we take down our tent and stuff our sleeping bags into their sacks. She goes on about everything except Midnight.

  Today's goal is one of the lakes in the long chain of high mountain lakes that we saw from the top of Stuart Peak.

  Amy runs ahead, dashes off the trail, pops up behind us, and, generally, does her best to make a nuisance of herself.

  "You're going to wear yourself out," Meg tells her.

  Dad, scouting for interesting birds to watch, is hiking up where our talking won't make him miss hearing them. Now, though, he calls to Amy to look through his binoculars at an eagle soaring high overhead.

  She ignores him and dashes into the woods again, and the next time she reappears, Meg tells her, "Calm down now, Amy. I do not want you out of sight."

  "Okay!" Amy says, "but I don't see why." She hurries to put some distance between her and us, and then she settles into a defiant stride.

  "She was pretty upset about Midnight," I say.

  "I know," Meg answers. "But I don't know what to do except let her be for now. Sometimes people need time to lick their wounds the way animals do."

  THE TRAIL ENTERS a sloping mountai^ meadow dotted with red paintbrush and small yellow flowers like daisies. The morning sun gives the hillsides a golden hue, and above them the sky is deep blue and cloudless.

  "Did you ever see a prettier day?" Meg asks. "1 hope this weather holds. It's perfect for hiking, and it will make the working part of our trip easier."

  "It would have been nice if the Randalls had spotted something helpful," I say.

  "I'm just as glad they didn't," Meg replies. "They might not have known not to disturb things. It's a perennial problem—someone finds an object of historic interest and carts it away to display on a coffee table. Or maybe even brings it to my office thinking they're doing a good deed."

  "Like the guy with the kettle."

  "Yep. What people don't realize is that when you remove an object from its context, you destroy much of its value as an artifact that can help explain the site."

  Meg gives me a wry smile. "What they also don't realize is that removing artifacts like old tools and cabin hardware can be a violation of both the Antiquities Act and the laws against taking things from federal land."

  I say, "What I don't get is why you're setting out on foot, without equipment, to find this place. Isn't there technology to help? I read about how people used aerial photography and infrared film to find fire rings along Lewis and Clark's route."

  "That kind of archaeology takes money, so you have to set priorities," Meg says. "The journey made by Lewis and Clark was unique in our country's history, while there were probably hundreds of homesteads like the Bottners'. Thousands, maybe."

  "Then why do you want to find it?"

  "Because it might fill in a little of the story of what happened here in western Montana. In the 'Snake, especially."

  "So what do you do? Just walk around and hope to come across something?"

  Meg laughs. "With any archaeological project, the work starts with learning all you can of an area's history. Then once you're in the field, you still have to work from a grasp of what time does to artifacts and structures—how it deteriorates some things fester than others, and how it lays down soil until the past is compressed in the layers beneath your feet."

  "That you work through backward?"

  "That you work through backward," Meg agrees. And then whatever you find has to be interpreted. That's where the real skill comes in, and where one historian's work gets separated from another's."

  "Music's that way," I say. "The actual music that a composer writes doesn't change, but every musician interprets it a little differently."

  "I wouldn't have thought of that analogy, but it's a good one." Meg gives me a grin. "I've talked your ear off haven't I?"

  "No," I tell her "I was interested. You really love it, don't you? Your work, I mean."

  "I do," she says. "I surely do."

  We're slow to put our packs on after a midmorning break, and I'm not the only one who groans a little.

  "The second day out is always the hardest," Dad says. And truly, I'm pretty uncomfortable, with leg muscles that remember yesterday's climbs and half the bugs in Montana taking turns sliding down my sweaty neck.

  Amy's still acting silly, only she's walking with me now instead of keeping to herself. In fact, she's walking almost on my heels, and when I ask her to drop back she moves closer and tries to bring her toe down on the back of my boot.

  "Amy, quit it," I tell her.

  "Bet you can't make me," she says, darting around me.

  "I said—" I break off, puzzled by a strange sound. "Hush," I say, grabbing her arm. "Did you hear that?"

  "What?" she asks, pulling free.

  Then I hear it again, a breathy cough.

  "Dad!" I say, glad he and Meg are only a few feet in front. "I think I hear an animal. Something big."

  Dad's hand goes to the canister of hot-pepper spray that hangs from his pack belt. "Where?"

  "Up ahead, just past where the trail bends."

  An instant later Meg says, "Look in that tree." She points to a ball of black fur—a bear cub—clinging to a high limb "We sure don't want to get between it and its mama!"

  We go back the way we came, and once we're a safe distance away, Dad says, "It's a good thing you heard that mother bear's warning, Tess. That could have been nasty."

  Meg nods, her hand firmly clamped on Amy's shoulder.

  "I KNEW IT was a bear," Amy says. She's walking with me again as Dad and Meg lead us on a wide detour around the cub and its mom. "Or I would have, if I'd heard it cough."

  "How?" I ask.

  "Because I know a cough is a bear sound. They've got a lot of different ones, but a cough—it's called a huff—that's one of their warnings that they don't like '‹hat's going on. Like standing on their hind legs is another" Amy becomes animated as she tells me what she knows. "A huff's different from a growl, which bears do when they're fighting And when they just whimper—that's a mother bear calling her cubs."

  "Where'd you learn all that?" I ask. "Did Dad teach you?"

&
nbsp; "I guess."

  "Do you know as much about the animals he has at the clinic?"

  Amy's face turns expressionless. "I told you, I'm not doing the clinic anymore. I don't care about any old animals."

  Then she rushes ahead to a fallen tree that lies at an angle, its roots still partly in the ground and its needled top several feet up in the ait She jumps onto the low end and begins walking up its trunk, arms out to steady herself. "Look at me," she calls. "I'm on a balance beam."

  "Amy!" Meg exclaims as she and Dad and I hurry to get under her "Come down now, before you fall and break a leg!"

  "Why?" Amy asks. "I can do this. I'm surefooted." The edge of her backpack snags a branch, and she bobbles but catches herself. She says, "See!"

  "Now!" Dad says, reaching an arm up to her Amy hesitates, and then, making a face, jumps down on the other side. The weight of her backpack sends her sprawling, and she scrambles up red-faced but unhurt except for some scratches.

  "Amy," Meg tells her "you will either behave or walk with me until you're ready to."

  I hear Amy mutter "You're not the boss of me."

  "What did you say?" Meg asks.

  "Nothing."

  "Yes, she is," I whisper.

  AMY STOMPS along in injured silence for a good five minutes before blurting out, "They think I'm a baby!" She pushes through some brush and lets the branches snap back. One just misses my face.

  "Hey!"I protest. "Watch it."

  "It's true. Everything fun, Mom says I'm too little for She's always deciding things for me!"

  "She's your mom. What do you expect?"

  Amy kicks a pinecone so hard it bounces off the rock that it hits. "Do people decide stuff for you?"

  "Yeah."

  "Did somebody decide for you to come to Montana?"

  "No. My mother didn't want me to do that."

  "Then what?"

  I think a moment, trying to pick one example from dozens I could give her "Well, it was other people's decision when I moved to New York with Mom."

  "Moving doesn't count. Kids never get a say in that," Amy says. Then she asks, "Didn't you want to go?"

  "Not really. I was pretty scared."

  "You're not supposed to let people make you do things you're scared of. Mom says when you're scared there's usually a good reason, and you'd better figure out what it is before you get talked into doing something stupid."

  I hold back a smile. "It was mainly my mom saying we should go."

  "Moms aren't always right," she says, totally ignoring the fact she's just been quoting her own. She picks up another pinecone, which she tries to kick like a Hacky Sack. "And you shouldn't have to mind moms when they're not."

  "Oh?" I say, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Meg For Dad, too, since Amy is half his responsibility now.

  Amy's face puckers with earnestness. "Like you. You went to New York 'cause your mom said to, and that's how you ended up at that concert, right? The one where you played so bad? But then she said not to come out here and you did anyway, and it's perfect."

  I feel my face grow hot. It hadn't occurred to me that Amy knew about the concert. I suppose Dad or Meg told her hoping she wouldn't ask embarrassing questions.

  "I'm glad you're here," Amy says. "I don't want you to ever go back."

  "Are you sure? You hardly know me."

  She retrieves the pinecone, tosses it up, and manages to boot it three times before it drops. "Yes, I do. So will you? Promise to stay forever and ever?"

  "I can't promise that."

  "At least for the rest of high school?"

  "Maybe. I can't promise."

  "You better!" Amy scoops up a green caterpillar. "Because if you don't, I'll put this down your neck!" She snatches at my shirt collar.

  "Okay, I give you my word," I say, scrambling out of reach. "But my fingers are crossed."

  "I don't believe in crossed fingers. So now you've promised!"

  "No, I didn't."

  Amy puts down the caterpillar and then pauses to examine a millipede. "I don't think these things actually have a whole thousand legs," she says. "Fifty, maybe. So, was New York really bad?"

  "No. I didn't like it at first—Manhattan is about as different from Missoula, Montana, as you can imagine—but once I got over feeling lost, it was okay."

  "Because you got a boyfriend, right?" Amy asks. "Ben?"

  "No. Before that," I tell her.

  "Then what made you like it?" she asks.

  I think back. "Lots of things. But the first ... There was a cello player."

  "That's what I said. Ben, right?"

  "No, no. This was a different person altogether Just someone I heard play once."

  "Was he good?"

  "Very."

  Tessie

  New York. I'd known it was big, but I still didn't expect the jumbling, towering, rushing, squishing-in size of it. Nor the noise—the sirens and horns, the belch of bus exhausts and the rumbling roar of subways beneath my feet. Sound after sound startled me my first days there, and I wanted to cling to Mom's hand like I was a little kid instead of a twelve-year-old girl.

  "You'll get used to it," Mom told me. "In no time you'll feel at home."

  I figured I'd get over being frightened, but I doubted I'd ever be at home in a place so different from what I was used to. Even the air felt different, hot and sticky right through the night. Where I was from, no matter how hot August got, things cooled down at night.

  And I didn't like looking up at buildings instead of sky. I missed mountains. I missed Dad. I missed living in a house big enough that I could go off by myself when I wanted to.

  The apartment Mom and I moved into just had a bathroom and two rooms: a tiny one that Mom took for hers and a midsize one that served for everything else. One end was the kitchen; one end had windows that looked out on a street always jammed with traffic; and the space in between was both our living room and, with the sofa folded out, my bedroom.

  Mom stayed away for hours every day arranging things like telephone service and finding out where to buy groceries and how to cope with getting them home without a car I'd have gone with her if she'd let me, but she said I needed to prepare for meeting my new violin teacher.

  I tried, but for the first time in years I practiced with an eye on the clock, wishing for a morning or afternoon to end. I felt disconnected from my violin, and I felt shut in by the little apartment with its windows closed against street noises. More and more I wished we hadn't left Montana.

  Finally I got up my nerve to say, "I don't like it here. I want to go home."

  "Please trust me, Tessie," Mom said. "You'll feel different after your lessons start. And you're going to love Manhattan. There's so much here."

  "I haven't seen anything," I told her "You don't even let me leave the apartment."

  "That's just for now, until I can teach you how to get around." Mom squeezed my shoulders. "What would you think about taking the day off? I saw an ad for tours of Lincoln Center We could see where some of the best music in the world gets played."

  "Will there be a concert?" I asked.

  "Not on a Saturday morning, but we can get a sense of the center After all, maybe one day you'll play there."

  "Mom..."

  "I said maybe. Right now we'll just go enjoy ourselves, like any other tourists."

  I WAS SURPRISED to find that Lincoln Center wasn't one huge auditorium, the way I'd pictured, but several buildings. The three biggest were huge, glass-fronted halls that each faced one side of a great plaza with a fountain in its middle. Banners proclaimed the hall on the left to be home of the New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera. The building at the back of the U was the Metropolitan Opera House, and our guide said the American Ballet Theatre also performed there.

  "The largest venue in Lincoln Center it seats four thousand nineteen," our guide told us in the droning tones of memorized spiel. "Performers sing without the aid of microphones."

  I asked, "Is that where t
he New York Philharmonic Orchestra plays?"

  The guide frowned at being interrupted. "Of course not. The symphony plays in the symphony hall. Avery Fisher Hall. That's next."

  I didn't know exactly what I hoped to find in the symphony hall, but its vast space was disappointingly empty except for a woman distributing papers among music stands.

  And then a man carrying a cello walked out. He sat down before one of the stands and began playing all by himself drawing out notes so clear and pure it didn't seem possible that a person was playing them.

  Nothing on any CD I'd ever heard and nothing anyone had ever told me had prepared me for the sound of a master musician playing live in a hall built for a symphony.

  And Mom ... Mom reached over and took my hand.

  The first week in September Mom and I took a bus up Broadway and then walked a couple of blocks over to meet Mr. Geisler in his studio on the upper West Side. Since he'd agreed to take me as a pupil on Mr. Capianelli's recommendation, I guess I expected him to be like Mr. Capianelli. Not in appearance, of course, but in directing most of his talk to Mom, as though they were conspirators who between them would see I benefited from my lessons.

  The man who greeted us, violin in hand, was seventy or maybe even eighty. White haired and welcoming, he made it seem like meeting me was the best thing he had going all day. He was nice to Mom, too, but he made it clear that I was the one he'd been waiting for.

  "So," he said, "so, my old pupil has sent me his best pupil. Come, let's make some music."

  During that first lesson, that's all we did. Mr. Geisler and I played together moving from one piece to another as I tried to match my playing to his. Somehow he knew what music would be in my repertoire, so I never had to say stop, I don't know that.