Going to the Sun

by Jean Craighead George

  “Well, I am.” He opened his pack, took out a bag of freeze-dried potatoes and beef, and lit the small gasoline stove. Then he pushed through the windbreak to the meadow. He filled his bucket from one of the melting snow rivulets, washed his face in the icy water and glanced at the Jaw.

  “We’re here,” he said to the mountain, and as he spoke, Hungry Bear became a blur, the Knife Rim a bad dream, and even the Chalet was now a foreign country. Marcus sang as he went back to the tent to cook dinner for Melissa and himself.

  6

  MOLLY AND JASON

  About a week later on a windless evening in June, Marcus came down from a ledge on the Jaw where he had been watching goats all day and stood on a saddle of small rocks that pitched into Melissa’s Meadow. Most of the slopes were snowless now and a multitude of alpine gardens bloomed in thousands of cracks and crevices. They sparkled red, gold and white in the dark rocks.

  The view from the saddle was gigantic. Peaks, green-hanging valleys, waterfalls and knife-edged ridges stretched out to the horizon. Gnarled pinnacles decorated the skyline; and as far as the eye could see, the landscape was entirely the artwork of the glaciers—sharp, clean and decorative. Marcus ran across Melissa’s Meadow and jumped the windbreak. He landed beside his wife who was sitting among neat piles of labeled plants.

  “Melissa,” he said, “tonight we must sleep out in the meadow. All the snow is gone and the flowers are blooming.”

  She smiled at the idea and her teeth gleamed white in her sun-and-dirt-darkened face. Marcus wanted to embrace her, but she was too thoughtful to disturb.

  “Goats eat mostly sedges and grasses this time of year,” she said, and held up a chart labeled Bite Chart. “I’ve been counting every bite the goats take. Seven out of ten bites are grass or sedge, two out of ten are alumroot, and one of ten is a buttercup or sego lily.” Her face brightened. “Marcus, goats eat flowers. Isn’t that lovely?” She turned a page in her field notebook. “And the goat I call Molly dug up three bulbs of the sego lily with her hoofs and ate them. They’re very good; I tried one.”

  Marcus sat down beside her, now as serious as she was. He looked at her chart.

  “I followed six goats today,” he said. “Three females and three yearlings. I didn’t see any billies. I don’t even know where they are. As for Old Gore, I haven’t seen him since the day we arrived. He led us here and vanished.”

  “And Marcus,” Melissa went on hastily, “goats are good harvesters. They eat only a few of the new green shoots and move on, leaving the plant to bloom, seed-out and start new plants. I’ve checked the plants Molly was eating last week. No goat has touched them this week and they are green and strong.”

  “Marcus.” She looked right into his eyes. “Goats reap their food very carefully. They don’t eat themselves out of house and home.”

  Marcus rubbed his chin and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “That’s because we hunters have kept them in balance.”

  “But, Marcus, nobody has hunted up here...except Will, once.”

  “Melissa, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, you shouldn’t hunt,” she snapped.

  “Are you arguing with the scientists?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, I spent a week with Dr. Wing,” he said, irritated. “I’ve seen hundreds of studies of the animals and we’ve got to hunt them. Do you want your meadow all eaten up by goats?”

  “Well, I think hunting is awful. I hate hunters.”

  “I’m a hunter, Melissa. You know that?”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “They’re beautiful—animals are beautiful. You don’t need them for food.”

  “We do. We Kulicks do. I don’t know about you Morgans with all your land.” Melissa’s mouth dropped open; she stared at him incredulously.

  “That’s hateful, really hateful,” she said. “You know how I feel about that.”

  “No I don’t. How do you feel about it?”

  “I find it so despicable that I am living with my aunt. That’s what I think of what my father did to your father. That’s how I feel about it.”

  Marcus grabbed her and threw his arms around her.

  “Melissa, Melissa, I don’t want to fight. We can’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  She struggled out of his grasp and backed toward the tent.

  “Marcus, we don’t need to eat wild animals. We have farms. Why can’t we let them live?”

  He could see her eyes in the alpine glow. They looked like a wounded fawn’s—wide, hurt, not comprehending. He wondered how to convince her, how to cross this terrible rim they were walking on. She was crouched, staring at him.

  “Melissa.” He spoke low with soothing sounds.

  “Don’t call me Melissa in that tone of voice,” she snapped.

  “MELISSA!” He screamed, and stepped carefully to- ward her. “Let me say this. I can learn. If you’re right, if these animals don’t eat themselves out of house and home, I’ll never shoot one. Never.”

  “What about other things?” She uncoiled a little but was still bristly.

  “Probably not other things, either. If you are right.” He took a step toward her. She did not move. He took another step. She did not run. He leaped for her, picked her up and carried her into the meadow. Golden buttercups brushed his boots; the bear grass thrust spikes toward the sun. She was crying when he put her gently down on the grass.

  “Marcus,” she sobbed. “We fought.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Some fights clear up your thinking and you love even more.”

  “How can you say that?” she asked, aghast. “Something awful has happened—nasty thoughts, horrid words.”

  He picked a scarlet flower and tucked it in her hair. “Like this,” he said and kissed her.

  “Goats butt, birds ruffle their feathers, people argue; then all make up. Is that right?” she asked. “Is that today’s lesson?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Anger is necessary and good—like hunting.”

  “Oh,” she screamed. “You’re terrible.” He laughed, tickled her, and finally she laughed too.

  The stars came out, the Jaw rumbled moodily, and in a peaceful half-sleep Marcus heard Melissa speak.

  “Nannies get the last butt in,” she said, “and this is my last butt. Goats do not obey Errington’s law of compensation.” Marcus laughed softly; his wife was a stubborn nanny.

  Hours later Marcus pushed to his elbow and gazed up at the moonlit Jaw. The mountain peak was almost snowless. Only the glacier near the high falls and two small snowfields remained as summer burned down on Montana. Weaving his head back and forth, he studied the peak. A dark cleft in the rocks, called a chimney, ran to the top. He knew these geological chimneys well, they were usually easy to climb; and so at last he saw his route to the peak. He would climb and find the other nannies and kids.

  While Melissa slept, he thought of her grasses and plants. Suppose she was right. Suppose goats did not eat themselves out of house and home. Then how did they keep from over-populating?

  At dawn he stretched and sat up. Pearly mist engulfed him and he could barely see Melissa.

  “Melissa,” he called gently and leaned over her. “There’s a cloud on your face.” Her white lashes fluttered and her round eyes opened.

  “Oh.” She pursed her mouth and stuck out her tongue. “I’ve always wanted to eat clouds.” Gently she cupped her hands, then slowly opened them. The mist poured over her face and she tasted it.

  “Delicious,” she said. “Next best to floating on one. That would be perfect.”

  Marcus picked her up and held her high above his head. “Now you’re floating on a cloud,” he said.

  “Marcus.” Her voice was filled with awe. “You’ve lifted me above the cloud. I can see Molly. She’s curled on the upper ledge in a little cubby-hole of rocks and flowers and...Oh, Marcus, she has a tiny kid! Let me down.”

&
nbsp; Marcus dropped her, caught her and put her lightly on her feet. He pulled on his clothes, waited for Melissa to fasten her boots, and together they stole across the meadow. They climbed the rocks until they were out of the cloud into the sunlight.

  Molly was curled in a bed of blue columbine, licking a small, wet kid who had enormous black eyes and a glistening black nose. His head was gently rounded and he had no horns.

  “He looks surprised,” Melissa whispered, “like he’s astonished to be here.” The kid pushed with its front feet and wobbled to a standing position, collapsed, and got up to a wider, spider-like base.

  “He looks like a baby unicorn to me,” Marcus said. “He’s a mythical satyr—half child, half goat.”

  “Let’s call him Jason,” said Melissa. “Jason, the snowy myth-baby.”

  By noon Jason was dry and fluffy. Large-eyed, spindly-legged, he just fit under his mother’s legs. There he peered out at the grasses and mountains as if astounded. Then, even so new to the world, he knew where his life line lay. After an hour of silent contemplation Jason bumped Molly’s teats with his nose. She let down a liquid that would clean out his alimentary tract and prepare him for his life outside her body. The following day her rich milk would flow.

  Marcus and Melissa watched the fresh wild thing until Molly had bedded him down in the lupines and glacier lilies and wandered off a few feet to rest. After a long while she stood up and grazed the jade meadow.

  “Watch her eat,” Melissa said to Marcus. “See, she does not bite everything down to the ground but crops with instinctive wisdom and moves on.”

  “Hmmm,” Marcus answered, wrapped his arms around his knees and studied the nanny’s eating pattern.

  Another goat was grazing not far from Molly.

  “I don’t know who that goat is,” Marcus said. “You know, Melissa, I can’t really report how many goats there are until I know them all. I get ten one time I count, yesterday I got twenty-three and one day I counted only seven. I’ll have to put marks on them. But how?”

  “With chokecherries,” Melissa exclaimed. “Aunt Jerome uses them to dye the goat wool she spins and knits in winter. It’s a very, very bright purple.”

  “Let’s get some,” Marcus exclaimed and jumped to his feet.

  “How’ll we get close enough to paint on the dye?” he asked as they walked toward the tent.

  “With salt,” Melissa answered. “The goats come to a spot near the Chalet for salt every summer. You can walk right up to them.”

  Marcus took Melissa’s hand and they ran across the meadow to the valley below the tent. They rounded the lake and climbed down the wall of the hanging valley into the hemlock forests that grew below five thousand feet. Marcus made up a berry song as they gathered a few chokecherries from last year’s crop along the stream bed. Then they scrambled back up the wall. At the top Melissa asked how they would paint the dye on the goats.

  “We don’t have paint brushes,” she said.

  “Yes, we do,” said Marcus. “My dad taught me to make a toothbrush out of a willow stick. We can cut one a couple feet long, fray the end, and tap, tap, tap, the goats are marked.” She grinned and freckles sparkled across her nose.

  “Hey,” he said. “Up here in the sun you have freckles. That’s neat.” He hugged her. The evening sun lit the bear grass from behind, and each head shone like a white-hot poker. Slowly they circled Sky Lake.

  Marcus looked from the grasses to their glacier—Tent Glacier, Melissa called it. The ice chutte was now a silver cascade that splashed down the cliff to the lake. At the bottom, green willows grew in the splash. Melissa saw them too and raced over the last remains of a snowfield to cut the wild stalks.

  Four goats were stretched on the snow near the falls. Marcus climbed up the rocks to observe them. As best he could tell they were a nanny Melissa called Twisted Horn, her kid Remus, the pretty goat Helen and her yearling Romulus. Marcus knew Romulus was one year old because he had short spiked horns. Jason, the newborn, had no horns at all, nor did Remus, the other kid. After a year one ring was put down at the base of the horn. The horn grew the following year, then put down another ring. A goat in its third year had two rings near the bottom of each back-curving horn. A four-year-old had three rings. Marcus studied Romulus; he had clean, bright spikes and no rings. He was one year old. As Marcus thought about this, he realized that the yearling Romulus was still with his mother. Helen, his mother, must have lost her kid and readopted her last year’s offspring.

  “That’s bad news. Only two kids have survived.”

  He crossed the snowfield and joined Melissa. “Jason and Remus,” he said to her, “are the only kids on the Jaw this year.”

  Melissa stared at him in distress. “Then the hunters must not come here,” she said. “There’s nothing to harvest— only two teeny babies.”

  Marcus stroked his beard. “My father is bringing three hunters to the Jaw to take their goats this fall.”

  “He can’t,” Melissa said in a low incredulous voice. “Marcus, say he can’t.”

  “I don’t know. I have no conclusions yet. Maybe there’s another part of the herd on the other side of the Jaw. I’ll climb up and find out.”

  “No, Marcus, he can’t hunt,” she said. “There’s no surplus.”

  Melissa was glowering, her blue eyes flashed. Suddenly she stuck out her tongue, turned and ran across the snowfield. Thoughtfully Marcus climbed to a spot where he could observe the four goats. He sat down.

  As he watched, four more goats came down from Tent Glacier. Marcus did not know who they were at this distance, but there were no kids among them. He thought one was a three-year-old and one seemed to be a yearling. It was difficult to tell; they all looked alike with their sharp horns, black eyes and black noses. He focused his field glasses as Helen and Romulus romped onto the snowfield, bucking like circus ponies. These two he knew. Helen was slender and Romulus was yellowish in color. They threw their heads up and down and kicked their heels. They arched their backs; they clicked their hoofs.

  “War dance,” he said. “Dr. Wing’s right. They do war-dance. Now to find out what it means.”

  Twisted Horn walked slowly onto the snowfield; Remus followed her. Marcus could identify Remus. He had one loppy ear. Suddenly Remus kicked up the snow and danced wildly. The four newcomers observed his war dance and grew excited. They sparred and butted.

  In seconds Remus’s performance ended. Then the dancer of the snow turned back into a plodding ruminant. Marcus thought that Ignatius must be correct. The spirits of the Blackfoot Indians did live in the goats. Then he recalled Dr. Wing’s telling him how easy it was to misinterpret. “The eyelines on birds,” he had said, “are not decorations but sort of gun-sights. The dark lines swiftly direct vision so that the sandpiper can catch the darting sand crab, the chickadee find the seed.” Marcus had been fascinated by this bit of knowledge.

  “All is never what it seems to be,” he mused and pinned his glasses on the goats. “A war dance serves some biological purpose.”

  Suddenly Helen and Twisted Horn darted off the snow- field. Romulus and Remus broke ahead of their mothers as they scrambled for the cliff. The four new goats dashed toward the Jaw.

  “What’s happening?” he asked and scanned the lake edge for a mountain lion or a poacher.

  Purple clouds erased the Jaw and swept down the pass with eerie speed. The mountain was telling him something. The goats knew what it was but not he. He ran along the wall, checking the nannies once more as if they would tell him. The four were skirting a tract of yew and huckleberry—the bushes of the avalanche. Of course, Marcus realized, but his insight came too late.

  The snowfield below Tent Glacier rumbled. He clung to the wall. The sun-warmed mass slumped and slid down the cliff like lava. A cloud of ice spewed upwards with a boom.

  “Melissa,” Marcus called. “Melissa, where are you?” He darted toward the avalanche, pulled himself up a rock and ran a high ledge. He stopped. Where he had last
seen Melissa the ice and snow were piled dome-like. The willows she had been cutting were toothpicks.

  “Melissa,” he screamed and ran toward the dome. On a ledge near the falls he glanced down. The snow clouds had drifted off like smoke to reveal a limp form.

  “No,” he cried in agony. “Melissa!”

  “Marcus, stop shouting and give me a hand.” He dropped to his knees and looked under the ledge. Melissa was huddled against the overhang.

  “Help me,” she said. “I’m stuck.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course. Where were you? I yelled and yelled.” Her eyelashes were fuzzy with rock dust and her nose was skinned and bleeding. He pulled her up and smothered her to his chest. His legs wobbled until he thought his bones had melted and flowed out of his body. Melissa was not just his wife, she was the heart that pumped his blood.

  “I’m taking you out of here,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t live a minute.”

  “Marcus, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “I was safe. But Twisted Horn went down with the avalanche.”

  “Twisted Horn?”

  “Yes.” She brushed lichen bits off her parka and pointed to the limp form below. Little black horns pierced up out of the snow like grave markers.

  A plaintive bleating sounded from the meadow. Marcus ran to the edge of the drop-off. There stood Remus, his eyes wide with fright, his ears pressed down and back. He shivered and backed into the rocks.

  “What will become of him?” Melissa cried.

  “He’s eating grass,” Marcus answered. “He ought to be all right. Unless he doesn’t know enough to get away from an avalanche.”

  Remus glanced around nervously, then darted off. He trotted across Melissa’s Meadow and, bawling like a human baby, walked toward his old friends, Molly, Jason and Helen, who were trotting up out of the valley. His voice sounded sad for he was truly crying over his loss. Nanny Helen heard him, started toward him with apparent affection, then lowered her horns and charged. Molly bucked her head at Remus. He turned, sped up the rocks and hid in a stone shelter.