Magdalena Mountain

by Robert Michael Pyle

  Crawling as far into the cleft as she can and reaching still farther, she feels a vein of ancient ice. She manages to break off a piece and sucks it to assuage her fierce thirst. It helps. Her throat soothed, dulled by drudge and dread, lulled by cold, Mary Glanville or Magdalene sleeps again. Mercifully, she does not dream at all. Nor is she aware that two mating alpines, twelve pikas, and a brood of marmots and their mother all share this labyrinthine system of cavities with her. That knowledge might have been some cold comfort in the night.

  Attalus never sleeps. Suffering greatly from cold and contusions, he huddles against a slab of eroded schist on the ridgeline. The rock blocks the wind, but every degree that drops off the scale falls right into the frigid pit of his gut. It doesn’t matter. He could take much worse without giving up. And it never even occurs to him that he might be mistaken.

  The monk drools from hunger and hate. But the only hunger that matters is the kind that blood alone can quell. His plan is to remain in sight of both mountain faces, northwest and southeast, so that Mary cannot escape his scrutiny. He knows she had not gotten off the rocks before night fell, nor could she in the black, clouded night. If she tries, and dies in the attempt, so much the better; it would solve his problem neatly.

  But no. That would give the mountain the satisfaction of dispatching the witch, the sweet vengeance against this impostor who assumes its holy name. Only the dark engine of enmity, fueled by animus, warms the knotted heart of Attalus and keeps it from becoming one more stone in the cold mountain night.

  No, you couldn’t call it sleep. But in the depth of the darkness, the brain of Attalus falls into a state of self-recognition that he fends off successfully almost every waking hour. His grizzled gray and pink cheeks rise and fall almost as in slumber. His cramped fat legs jerk, as before a shallow dream. And then certain images thrust their way into his semiconsciousness against his every particle of will. His fingers, pressed against the long slope of his brown-spotted forehead and the thin, colorless hair that runs back from it, begin to tremble. The tears that find their way out almost freeze to his lashless eyes. Some might call the sound that issues from him a moan, heavy, rising to a sob; to the pine marten working the ridge for ground squirrels in their dens, it becomes a howl from a species of animal beyond her ken. But what follows is clear to every ear on the mountain except Mary’s: the wailing of one name: “Anna . . . Anna . . . Annnnaaaa!”

  Mary shivers piteously. Then, sometime before dawn, her shivering ceases.

  James Mead slumbers warmly at the lodge. Oberon paces the monastery, uneasy. Somewhere on Magdalena Mountain a torpid brown butterfly lies among the rocks, unaware of anything at all.

  36

  “So what did it prove?” The dash lights glowed but failed to reply, and the radio just talked back.

  Rolling uphill from Lyons in his Rent-a-Wreck Mercury, on his way back to Magdalena Mountain, Mead ran over the trip home in his mind for the twenty-third time. Nothing was revealed. But the images came back as sharp as the oncoming headlights or the sunset outlines of the Indian Peaks.

  Laura Dever had given him a lift to Loveland, where he’d picked up the car. From there it was a straight shot south on I-25 all the way to Raton Pass, then west. He could reach his parents’ house from Magdalena Park by taking about three turns, but he wasn’t sure he was all that eager to get there. He’d skirted Denver’s inchoate smudge with all possible speed, but its smog still stung his eyes as he neared Colorado Springs. When he pulled into a rest area that had mosaic pumas and pinecones on the side of the john and got out for a stretch, the scent of hot sun on soil damp from last night’s rain among Gambel oaks hit his nostrils hard. An aroma of his youth, it tingled in his memory. His preoccupations had helped keep the family barbs sheathed inside him, but they were near the surface, ever ready to cut through the fragile integument of his conscience. That scent of wet dirt and tannin did it. He was going home, for better or for worse.

  But first there was a quick visit with F. M. Brown out in Fountain Valley, southeast of the Springs. More of a pilgrimage than a proper visit. Brown, longtime teacher and butterfly author, greeted Mead with a powerful handshake, a bouquet of scientific reprints, and questions about his genealogy. He really wanted him to be related to Theodore Mead, several papers about whom were among the sheaf. “Couldn’t have a better name for a butterfly man,” he said, biting his pipe between his Colonel Sanders goatee and mustache. They discussed lepidopterists they knew, and when the name of Nabokov came up, Brown surprised Mead as much as he had with his postcard about the name Magdalena.

  “Ol’ Nabokov loved the satyrs almost as much as the blues,” he said. “His student and driver once kicked up a new species for him in the Grand Canyon, which he named Neonympha dorothea for her. So I’m sure he was delighted to find magdalena. At least it’s got no spots! He and I got into quite a tiff over the spots on ochre ringlets one time. George Winchester, as editor of the Lep. News, egged us on. I didn’t think much of Nabokov’s statistics, and he reckoned I couldn’t see the butterfly for its eyespots! We resolved it in a friendly fashion and became great pals.” Winchester had told Mead the same story, but it hadn’t sounded quite so chummy.

  “So, Dr. Brown—”

  “Call me Brownie.”

  “. . . Brownie, I appreciated your postcard. Is there anything else you can tell me about the Black Butterfly of the Boulderfield, as Nabokov called it?”

  “Funny you should come by and ask. Something has been scratching at the back of my mind like a cricket in a tin can. I haven’t put my finger on it yet, but I have some ideas where to find it. If I do, may I still write you care of Magdalena Park Lodge?”

  “Yes, sir . . . Brownie. I’ll be back there in a few days at most, and I’d be grateful.”

  On his way out, Brownie told him to stick with it; he might be as successful as his namesake. “But I’m afraid the lovely Edith Edwards is already taken,” he quipped. Mead thought, Thank Christ! What I don’t need is one more cute chick! Brownie had pointed out that W. H. Edwards, T. L. Mead’s father-in-law, had named numerous butterflies after unknown females, such as the Sara, Flora, Stella, and Julia orangetips. Maybe he had suffered romantic vertigo too, thought Mead, or else had a lot of daughters or nieces. He was pretty sure there were not enough new butterflies in Colorado to name after all the pretty women he’d fallen for this summer.

  But all that was just diversion. Colorado Springs to Albuquerque was normally an eight-hour drive, but Mead’s agitation fueled his foot with such octane that he took it most of the way in six. It was late, so he spent the rags of the night in the car in a corner of the Sandias that he remembered well. When he had taken his family camping in the mountains, that bad time, they were not far from here.

  He pulled into the driveway at breakfast time, expecting in the manner of all who travel lost in their own thoughts that the world would be awaiting them. But no clamor of welcome greeted his arrival. Then he remembered. His brothers both had jobs in Santa Fe, helping an uncle with his business during the annual summer-long Fiesta. At least he’d expected to find his parents breakfasting together, smiling their surprised if abstracted greeting. But through the broad window of the sunroom, no faces showed. He entered through the garage, saw that his dad’s VW was missing. His mother’s Falcon stood alone. The door was unlocked. He knocked anyway, then went in.

  “Mom?” He listened, heard nothing, and decided everyone must be gone. But wandering the hallway toward the bedrooms, he heard a muffled mewing and pursued it from room to room. As he neared the master bedroom, the mews resolved into soft sobs. He found his mother weeping on her bed.

  Helga Mead, fifty, slender, and fair, was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. She grew up in a stern, not unloving, but not too touchy household, where crying was seen as weakness letting itself out for all to see. Helga’s life had been little lubricated by tears. When Mead found her that way, he was surprised and frightened.

&nb
sp; Watching from the doorway, afraid to step in and shock her, he recalled that she’d barely wept even after Molly’s death. She was inconsolable but stoic. Her mirth had fled, but she seldom openly shed tears. At the funeral, when her sobs never came, some had thought her cold behind her statue’s face, like those white granite figures that shine with winter’s frost in Oslo. But no one had seen her—no one—a few days later when she disappeared for forty-eight hours. She came home after, said nothing. Only her eyes, cast from red sandstone, gave away her private grief.

  Mead entered the room, sat on the bed, put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t start, but her shoulder shook like an aspen leaf in the breeze. She did not put her hand on his. “Mom.”

  Helga shook in silence. Finally she said, “I knew your voice.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Fishing. He’s always fishing. I can’t blame him.”

  They were quiet for a long time. Then Mead asked, “Mother? Do you hate me?”

  “No. Though I can see why you think so.”

  “Then, do you love me?”

  “I don’t know . . . if I love.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  Helga made a kind of sobbing moan, which said less yet far more than any word. Mead, half as Nordic as his mother, the other half English, was not a speedy weeper either. But he cried then, softly. The fact is, they cried themselves to sleep, side by side but not touching.

  In the afternoon, James got up, left Helga sleeping, showered, and made a bite to eat. He’d often cooked for her in high school, when she was attending classes or therapy with Molly. She smelled the cooking odors, and though they nauseated her at first, she rose, washed, and came out to the kitchen. “Thank you, James.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t have breakfast for you when you got here.”

  “Well, I hardly announced my ETA, did I?”

  “We expected you sometime. Dad will be sorry to have missed you. He’s deep in the Sandias, won’t be back till Tuesday. I don’t suppose you can stay?”

  “No—I’ve got to head back north tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to come back for a week or so in September.”

  “What’s the rush?” asked Helga between bites of omelet. “I thought your research was on hold and you were just visiting out here.”

  “Well—I’m on to something else, sort of. More of a whim than bona fide research. But it could be important, may lead to a worthwhile thesis project.”

  “So what’s wrong with whims? At least we tried to raise you boys to be aware of the possibilities that present themselves.”

  “That’s true, and I’m thankful for it . . . I guess that’s what I’m doing.”

  “After all, your dad’s coming here from White Sands was a whim, and it got him out of that atomic mess. So was your Fulbright, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, well, I guess it was, really. Maybe not as whimsical as this.”

  “So tell me. Is Yale okay with this whim? And your professor?”

  “Umm, they don’t . . . actually . . . know about it yet. Sorry, it’s too complicated and weird. Maybe I’ll be able to share it better in September. It has to do with a big black butterfly named Magdalena. Anyway, time is short, and I wanted—”

  “James, please—I can’t.”

  “Can’t talk about it?”

  “No!” She snapped her fork down on the table.

  “You can’t cry your life away either, Mother. And you’re not going to brush me off that easily.” They went silent again and resumed eating.

  “I don’t cry, very much,” Helga said. “Just now and then . . . when I think I’m alone.”

  “Well, excuuuuuse me! I’m sorry I disturbed your solitude.”

  “No . . . no, James, I didn’t mean that. I’m glad you came, I really am. Just—I don’t seem to be able to share what I feel. Poor Ed’s going crazy with me.”

  “Have you tried counseling?”

  “Of course! We’re not that backward here, you know. But it hasn’t helped. Religious ones are no good; you have to have faith to be reached by faith.”

  Mead’s eyes went up at that; he’d always thought she did have faith.

  “And the secular is just bleak. Plus, the private costs so much. Ed’s insurance won’t cover ‘mental.’ Besides, they all try to appeal to my love of myself and you all. But I’m not feeling much of that. And they’re big on there being no victims, taking responsibility for your grief, and such hogwash. Or else they prescribe pills—and you know how I hate pharmaceuticals.”

  “You’re young, Mom. And healthy, right?”

  “Disgustingly so. But drawing down. And starting to drink. Oh, don’t look like that, it’s just a little. I can’t hold enough to help, or to hurt, for that matter. Oh, James—if only I could have a whim! But I haven’t even known what whimsy tastes like for years.”

  “A whim . . . like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . some sort of grand enthusiasm . . . some kind of mental involvement I could care about, just to get my mind off Molly. Some travel, maybe, I don’t know. But it seems so pointless. James, to follow a passion, you need a dream. I don’t think I have any more dreams.”

  James sighed, his head in his hands, wishing he could lend her a few of his own. Then he looked up. “Do you remember that letter you wrote me at Yale? The one where you asked if I thought things could get better?”

  “Yes, I guess so. You didn’t tell me the answer.”

  “I replied to the letter, I just didn’t know the answer. But I’ve seen some things—some people—lately who make me think that even quite desperate situations can get better. I don’t mean to belittle your pain . . . our pain, we share it too, you know . . . but don’t you think that people with even deeper cuts have healed?” He went on, though he knew it was probably a mistake. “I mean, I stopped to rest in a little pioneer cemetery out of Raton. Every other stone was for a child of one day, six weeks, six or eight or ten years old, sometimes two or three of them in the same family. Or the mother died too, in childbirth. And 1918! So many, with the flu. Not to even mention World War One . . .”

  “So you think it’s me—” Helga looked at her plate.

  “I didn’t say that. I just think you’ve got to get out of your tailspin. Other people seem to, and I believe you can too.”

  “I’m glad someone thinks so. Tailspin, it is. I really am afraid that I’ll just dig myself deeper and deeper into despair, until Ed gets fed up and leaves . . . and then what? I’d be lost without him.” Her voice came tremulous with that, and she looked pale, bleak . . . beat.

  “Mom, you don’t—”

  “Contemplate suicide?” Mrs. Mead’s narrow nose spread slightly, and she reared her head, flared her nostrils, and took a deep breath. As she did, she saw beyond James to the plates arrayed in the Welsh dresser beyond him. Blue willowware, Fiesta, Carnival. Whenever she looked over those plates, she felt the warm weight of history, like an extra blanket on a winter night. Some of them came from her side, some from Ed’s. A few were acquired during their own marriage, and a baby plate for each of the children. Each, except Molly. Somehow, with Molly, there was never time to do things like choose a baby plate. Remembering that her daughter had never had a baby plate, had never even had her handprint bronzed (the boys’ golden patty-cakes were there in the dresser too), almost made her cry out.

  James waited, chewing on his mustache, breathing slowly.

  “Of course. Daily.”

  “Mom!”

  “But would I do it? No, I don’t suppose so.” She gazed over the plates again. “If only because I know how you would all feel. It’s a pretty damned selfish thing to do.”

  James wanted to ask, And you don’t think this is pretty damned selfish? Instead he said, “Sometimes I wonder if you want us to feel bad, or at least me.”

  “James! No! Do I?”

  “You’ve got to blame me some, Mom.
I know you do. Or else, what’s happened to us?” He was shaky in his throat, tripping on thin ice. “You don’t know anything about me now . . . my studies, my girlfriend, my plans . . . my dreams. You’ve just let me go by the wayside. You don’t really care; you can’t.”

  Helga shook her head slowly from side to side, opened her mouth as if in a broad smile, but bent her brow in a way no laugh ever knew. Then she started to quake. She raised her hands beside her head, held it, let it go, made fists, slammed them down on the table. Lifted her head and sucked in her breath in a loud, wailing croak. “Oooohh, James. Do you think that?” Her voice foundered on sucked-in sobs, and she had to draw out each word as if it were hooked inside, just like a little girl with her feelings hurt beyond repair.

  James held her and told her yes, he couldn’t help it. She shoved him away, stood, and shouted, “Well, all right then—damn you, you did take us away! If we hadn’t gone with you, Molly would still . . .” Her wretched sobs swallowed the rest of the accusation.

  James didn’t cry this time. He’d faced his own guilt, not easily or well, but as best he could. Hers seemed implacable. He wanted so badly to cast these devils from his mother’s heart. But he was no Jesus, and he didn’t know how. So he decided to get the hell out instead, and pronto.