Goat Mountain (14 page)

21

M
Y FATHER LEFT ME THERE WITH THE BODY AND SHOVEL,
but he took the gun. He hiked uphill into short brush and then exposed rock and climbed along the spine of Goat Mountain, great chunks of broken rock like vertebrae leading up to that wide bald summit, the head, a thick plate meant for ramming, studded with outcrops that might as well have been horns. My father smaller and smaller, receding into the distance until he was no more than an ant on the larger vertebrae, disappearing in crevices and emerging again, the beast become larger toward the head.

The wide open slope where I stood would be the pelvic bone, and this seemed right for the place to bury the dead man, to bury him where he had been born. The goat a favorite form of the devil, the devil half man, half goat, and able to give birth endlessly, unceasingly, to every hybrid form, and when he's filled the world with enough of his own shadows, he'll rise up. This spine will unlock and rip itself free from the lower slopes and all smaller stones will fall away. He'll shake that great head and free it too and then his pelvic bone will tilt upward and there will be legs below and this slope will find itself hundreds of feet in the air and the dead man buried and clinging here.

But no one knows when the devil will rise or why. Doesn't he already have everything he wants? It's hard to know what he would gain.

This ground made of rock. The shovel loose and small and stabbing in no more than an inch or two, my bones jolting, impossible task. I removed the dry grass and hint of soil and the small loose stones, creating a scab on this hill and nothing more, no depth. I knelt in the center of the scab and was only confused. The day brightening and my father gone along that spine, and the air warming.

The dead man was not helping. Facedown for a nap, tucked into that hill, not concerned by the colony in his back. Dreaming of his chariot and four horses, golden bridles and reins and gold curved all along his arms. Driving fast across the earth, but this is desert and there must be sand in great dunes, and as he tries to gallop up a dune, the wheels dig in, the hooves mire, and he's sinking and sinking in sand, whipping his horses and going nowhere. Or maybe this kind of dream stops when you're dead. Maybe the pressure and panic are gone.

The dead man was looking straight down into the earth. His head not relaxed and laid to the side on a cheek like a man sleeping but instead peering down. Rock as open space, veins of lighter stone like air curving around heavier stone, and the dead man might see into this world. A great lake at the center, molten and shifting, and all along the edges of this burning lake are beaches and islands, flatlands and mountains forming for a day or an instant and dissolved again, landscapes of impossible beauty never seen directly but only through density and mirage without air, and here the colonies of demons wait to rise through fissures and canals, pressed toward the surface, slipping along molten rips until they come closer and slow and finally are caged in hard stone, held forever just short of their desire, birthed only by the will of Satan, made of rock himself, half submerged, the one who would regress and recover and no longer deny. All forms are obedient to him. He has no fear and can take any shape. He looks only down. He knows that what happens anywhere above doesn't matter.

I enlarged the scab. That was all I could do. No shovel can dig through rock, just as no center of us can be reached or understood. We can only work away at the edges, chew away our own skin, and so I stabbed with that shovel in both hands like a knife plunging downward, on my knees before some sacrifice, and each stab went almost nowhere and I flung aside almost nothing.

My knees bitten into through my jeans, my hands blistering, the air thickening with day. The rock I uncovered was dark and ridged, weathered in some earlier time and then buried again.

One of the mountains near here submerged completely, buried under a plate and half burned, then returned to the surface again. Its rock half transformed and exposed now, showing us the underworld. Imagine that, an entire mountain gliding along and diving into the furnace, then rising out again quickly enough not to dissolve.

Nothing around us has ever been stationary. All of it is moving now, and all of it will be burned. It's an error to wonder when Satan might rise up. He's rising up now, the small stones falling away all along this ridge in piles of scree, that spine and goat's head freeing itself, already named, but all we might hear is a rock falling one night, and perhaps another rock the next year, and all we might see is nothing.

We won't see him rise, and neither will our children or our children's children or a hundred generations after, but some generation will know him as risen and gone wandering and will not be able to see Goat Mountain as it is now, all signs of it erased except a few small mounds disconnected. No one will imagine that they were once one mountain.

I removed all that would grow and all topsoil that would grow it, and the only part left of this shelf was under the dead man, so I stood uphill and put my toe under his ribs to turn him as my father had, but I was not strong enough. He was rubbery and the ends of him stayed where they were and his ribs sprang back.

So I knelt close on the downhill side and leaned over him. A hand at his armpit and another at his waist, and the maggots in close and surging, and I did not like this but I saw no other way. My face inches from him and the smell not what I had imagined. His earlier smell gone, taken by the maggots, and now he smelled almost like bread, or the wet dough of bread, yeasty and thick. The transformation into Communion, the body become bread and sustenance. Putrid, also, of course, but perhaps I was used to that, had been living in that smell, and the maggots really had made a change, and there was something milky, also, milk in a pail and the smell of udders. As if the dead man really would sustain us, as if that were his will. His intentions for us had never been clear.

I rolled him toward me, soft and heavy, his flesh feeling just like dough, and I might have been at some great table, and the maggots hidden against my knee now and his belly in close and I looked toward his face and he was looking down at me, benevolent. The most open expression, mouth loose and eyes gazing deep into mine and beyond and all relaxed, no more tricks, only sincerity. He was worried what would happen to us when he was gone.

I stared into those eyes. I couldn't look away. A different life to dead eyes, all fear gone, all reserve and calculation. A nakedness. An acceptance.

I knew now that we needed to give the dead man a proper burial. He needed a coffin to shield him from the dirt, so that those eyes could gaze always and be clear. It would be best if he could lie here on open ground, and even better if he could hang upside down again and look up into the heavens with those eyes that were limitless and might see even to the stars, but he needed to be protected, also. The thought of something ripping him into pieces was unbearable.

It's hard to know what the dead need or want. I had never heard the dead man's voice. Everything about him was only a rumor. If I had been there to know him alive, I'd know what to do now.

Tell me, I said. Tell me what to do.

It was then the sun hit, and this seemed a sign, but a sign of what? The warmth in my hair and I knelt over him and waited. The two of us on that narrow shelf on a steep slope, all fallen away around us, and I waited but the dead man did not speak. The sun only fell lower down my face and neck and chest, too hot and bright to look at, igniting welts of poison oak that had spread everywhere, and so I was scratching and my chin ducked like the dead man's and eyes squinting while his remained wide open.

My knees hurt in the rocks so I stood finally and grabbed the shovel, bent low and chopped at the area where he had lain. Stab and fling. The sound of rock and shovel, always dislocated, seeming to come from a few feet to the side, as if someone else were out here digging. Hinged shovel loose and worthless, dented and rusted at the edges and used in some war, burying the living as well as the dead.

I just kept digging, because I didn't know what else to do. I tried not to look at the dead man again, though he was constantly in the way, his feet and hands everywhere. I tried to take the entire area an inch deeper, kept hitting bedrock until I heard my father's footsteps above, rough slide of his boots.

He was bright in the sun, holding my rifle, coming down the glade fast, as if no step could ever fail. I had nearly forgotten him. And I looked down and realized that what I had dug here was not at all what he had wanted. What I had done didn't make any sense.

I couldn't do anything else, I said. It's all rock here.

My father charging still, unable to hear me, sliding and then quick steps to stop himself on this mound. His breath in jabs.

That's not a grave, he said.

It's all rock.

You owe that man a grave, and you had plenty of time.

We stood on either side of that body and the dead man made no comment. We needed my grandfather. He never hesitated, never seemed to hit a moment when all was unclear and no way forward.

My father leaned over and yanked the shovel from my hand. He gave me the rifle to hold, and I was happy to have it back. Reassuring weight, old steel.

My father stabbed at that mountain, and the mountain did not yield. A few small sparks, flint, as if he might find a fuse, but soon enough even those were erased by the sun and there was only the sound of metal striking stone.

Okay, my father finally said. Sweating in the sun, his T-shirt damp at the chest and his forehead wet. Okay.

He dropped the shovel and squatted low with his forearms on his knees. Looking down at the body. I wanted a burial, he said. Hiking on the ridge, I even felt a bit of hope. I thought maybe we'll leave this behind us. Give the man a decent burial and go home.

My father weak again. No anger, only sadness. I have sympathy for him now, and I wish I could go back, but I had no sympathy for him then. I stood removed on that raw patch of earth, and whatever closeness I had felt with the dead man I did not feel with my father.

Not a lot of options, my father finally said. And we need to end this.

My father stood then and grabbed the dead man's ankles and ran to the side and flung. It was so quick, I hardly saw it. I didn't get to say good-bye, didn't have a last look at his face. Sidesteps along the slope and my father just yanked the dead man into the air and then his pale body was scudding downward and stopped about fifteen feet below us, snagged on something, caught short.

Goddammit, my father said, and he slid down to the body and put both arms under and flung again and the dead man tumbled sideways, rolling faster and faster and gaining speed, pirouettes on a stage held sideways, and then he dove headfirst and planted his neck and the rest of him flipped over, a somersault, and landed hard and that's when the top half of him somehow came loose and soared into the air without the waist or legs. He had ripped in half at the cavern, freed now from all that would trouble him, and he was as graceful as any diver, arms out together and chin ducked and waiting for immersion. His work in this world complete.

22

O
UR CAMP AT THE LOWER END OF THE GOAT'S RIB CAGE,
where he breathes. No Eden. This entire slope expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. The enormous heart made of stone hidden away somewhere behind us under that ridge.

When we returned, my grandfather on his slab had his arms spread wide and mouth open, as if he would devour all, reclaim and ingest the world he had made, only borrowed by the rest of us. A great splitting sound from deep within him, shifting of continents, audible even over the truck.

Tom as far away as he could be, sitting in an old camp chair beyond the basin, facing us and my grandfather, not sleeping. His rifle across his knees.

My father turned off the truck and my grandfather's breath caught and it seemed almost that he might not breathe again, and I could hear only the water, but then he sucked in another great chunk of sky and the tumblers inside him ground again, chewing on rock and tree and cloud and returning each thing to what it was made of to be made again.

Is it done? Tom called out.

Yeah, my father said. He walked over to the table and I walked behind him with my rifle, keeping an eye on my grandfather and also on the buck's head where it hung now alone. Walking a kind of gauntlet between them. Antlers made larger by having no body. Head peering down but large eyes animated still. Something in them beyond what could be killed.

Where? Tom asked.

Upper glade.

Upper glade? How do you bury a man in the upper glade? That's a cliff with grass.

Well.

Well what? How the fuck did you bury him there?

My father sitting on the wrong side of the table, the downhill side, Tom's place. Tom standing now and pacing, holding his rifle in both hands like some wind-up soldier. He was always like this, guarding nothing, waiting for something but wholly unprepared, spooked from the moment I first pulled that trigger and spooked still, believing maybe everything was unreal and nothing had happened. He was like most people in that way. Continuing on, day to day and year to year, outraged and doing nothing.

Let's just have lunch, my father said, and he didn't even look up. It wasn't a question. Because every Tom can be ignored. Tom didn't use his rifle but hung it over his shoulder on an old webbed strap, more army surplus, then opened one of his wooden boxes and began pulling out bread, lunch meat, cheese, mustard, ketchup, pickles, because that was what he did.

You didn't bury him there, Tom finally said.

In a way, my father said. It's done, anyway. An open-air burial.

As in no covering of dirt.

Yeah.

That kind of burial.

Yeah.

Well that'll look good.

No one's going to see it.

Won't they? Tom set down a paper plate with the lunch meat, perfect circles of flesh remade. Then he leaned in across the table, his face close to my father's. Listen, he said. Let's just leave right now. Before he wakes up. I'll say it was him. Even if it wasn't, it might as well have been. He's the one we have to watch out for. Tom glanced at me then, and he didn't seem entirely sure.

Stubble along Tom's cheeks and neck, dark stubble. Wearing no hat. Dark hair matted to his head. Those thick glasses and thin wire frames, eyes large and afraid.

Tom, my father said quietly. His face equally as stubbled and dirty, a vertical line in his cheek filled with dirt and sweat. The two of them peering at each other in close, humanity conspiring against their gods, against fate, ducked close in conference through every age, as if they could hide.

We just leave now, Tom whispered.

He's my father.

Save your son. That's enough. Someone doesn't make it out of this. There's no way around that.

Tom, you're not talking sense.

I'm the first one talking sense this entire trip. You listen, because this is the first time you've heard something that's not crazy.

My father shook his head and closed his eyes. He put his hands up over his face and rubbed at his forehead. The water in the basin a constant weight, and the stream beside us made of lead, pulling down this patch of earth and dragging it away. All of us holding on against that.

We just go back tomorrow, my father finally said. As we planned, and we move on. If we ever hear who the man was, we send something to his family to help them. Anonymous. And that's it.

Rivers of lead or mercury, heavy and silver-gray, working down through this mountain, the arteries and veins. This entire ridge the buried goat made not of blood and flesh but of mercury and stone. I can't find the source of that pressure now, but it was always when I sat at that table, and perhaps it was only panic at how little held us together.

You think about this, Tom said. This is the rest of your life you're deciding right now.

It's already decided, my father said. There's nothing I can do. You and he both tell me to do things I can't do.

Tom bent down to pick something off the ground, something I couldn't see, but when he straightened, he had a small stone in his hand, and he hucked it at my grandfather where he slept. Rise and shine, fucker, he said. Looks like we're going on the hunt after all.

Aborted snore, half a lung sucked into his throat and blown back. Smacking sounds then, chewing on some meal from dreams, first images of what the world might be, and then an enormous yawn.

We all waited unmoving. The trees not pillars but ribs, this place not a cathedral but a cavern, and my grandfather was held nowhere. He was both smaller and larger than this mountain.

He bent his knees in the air, wearing only his boxers, legs thin as bone, draped with loose pale skin and no meat, and he swung them forward to rise to a sitting position. Hundreds of pounds somehow levered by nothing at all. Only boxers, naked otherwise, and the great teats hanging down, pink and waiting to feed all that would be.

You look like deer, he said. Frozen in place, watching, about to jump.

Fuck that, Tom said. I'm not afraid of you.

My grandfather smiled.

Tom looked away, then sat down and started making a sandwich. My father and I unfroze and worked on our own sandwiches. The water thickening and slowing beside us. Pink meat and yellow cheese, white bread, red ketchup. All of us aware of every movement my grandfather made, pulling on his pants and boots, his shirt and jacket, tottering off to the outhouse and returning with his vacant stare to sit on the uphill bench beside Tom and swing his legs in. He reached for his knife, drove it into wood to stand beside our knives, large curved blades, and in this moment we could have been all the same, but only in this moment.

I see you decided not to use the buck's head, my grandfather said. So the man has had a proper burial?

My father glanced at me and didn't answer. The two of us on the downhill side sharing a bench, hanging on.

Something went wrong, my grandfather said. I'm curious now.

I focused on chewing. The bread gumming at the roof of my mouth.

Well? he asked.

But my father only ate.

Did he come back to life? Was that the problem? Did you lose track of him?

My father brushed the crumbs off his hands, grabbed his knife and sheathed it, then stood. I'm leaving for the hunt in five minutes, he said. I don't care who's left behind.

Tom grabbed his knife and looked at my grandfather. Then he sheathed it and stood and walked away toward the truck. I'm ready, he said. His rifle already slung over his shoulder, and I saw he had his canteen, too.

What was it like to bury your kill? my grandfather asked me.

I didn't, I said.

So he's not buried?

No.

My grandfather smiled. Where is he, then?

In the upper glade. In two pieces. He fell apart.

Fell apart.

Yeah.

My grandfather grabbed his knife and looked at it. He was chuckling. Fell apart.

It looked like he was taking a dive.

Into what?

I don't know.

My grandfather's pig eyes cold and small. The chuckling and grin on the surface only. The rest of us here for his grim entertainment. Holding his knife in one meaty fist, point up, twisting it slowly as if gouging the air, working a small rip, tearing a bit at the fabric of the air, opening some vacuum invisible that would begin to pull all things inward. Annihilation. It was always what my grandfather promised, and it might begin in one tiny point, without warning. He had a different relation to air and light and sound and weight. He was nimble even in the places we could not see.

Long curve of that blade, beveled to an edge too slight to know. Milky thickness beyond the bevel, metal polished so smooth it might have been liquid, pewter gray, associated with the mercury running through the veins of this mountain, similar satiny surface and unfathomable weight beneath.

A trick of my grandfather's to distract. Each of us lost, over and over.

The knife suddenly gone below the table, sheathed. And then he shifted his great bulk, swung his legs over the bench, and wandered off returned to nothing at all, a heap of flannel and wool.

My father had already started the truck. Sitting in the cab with Tom. Last hunt. The two staring ahead past the stream and waterwheels into the hillside, waiting.

The buck waiting also, slow revolution of blue-green galaxies at the back of those eyes, beyond annihilation. The rip my grandfather had opened might pull all things toward it but those eyes. Impulse and source.

This camp no refuge. It was not possible for us to carve out any place of our own. I understand that now. The stream and ferns and trees no barrier against the open meadow beyond or the mountain above, no separation.

My grandfather grabbed his .308 and stuffed into the cab, the truck dipping on that side, hanging tilted, and I waited until his door was closed, then passed and climbed the bumper.

My father backed and turned and we rumbled onto the road again, and I didn't know where we were headed. A hunt an evasion, an attempt to stall everything else.

The air ten degrees hotter the moment we left the trees. The sun bright off the top of the cab, and I was squinting. Usually the afternoon hunt was later, when the sun was lower. Everything off balance this trip. My father and I were supposed to have taken a nap, but all my father wanted now was movement.

Each tree trapped in its own heavy shadow, pinned down. Every open area blasted and washed out in white. Grasshoppers flung like small rocks heated until they popped. Dragonflies cruising on solar wings.

I tried to look for bucks, but a buck here would be no more than a mirage. Shadow form stamped into the white and then fading almost instantly. Thrum of cicadas overwhelming, rubbing at the air and dissolving shape, making it nearly impossible to see.

White manzanita, each bush of it a thousand velvety mirrors, arrayed on both sides of the road, hung separate from the earth, winking among green manzanita with leaves almost as bright. Their only intent confusion. The road lost somewhere in that maze.

We fell into the draw below the reservoir, and the leaves of the wild grape had all fused into one brightness, hot mantle of a lantern flung and grown. Shade then, and my eyes with no time to adjust before we emerged in light again, and we passed the road to bear wallow. My father driving us on.

No blue to this sky. All blue burned away. Heat waves risen over the blackened arms of fallen ponderosa pines, melting in waves amid dry brown sedge. Thick clumps of it on all sides, resisting erasure, spiking through the melt. The road before us a memory of water, dry now but rutted with scabs grown inward.

Falling downward always, this road the beginning of what would become a canyon, our stamp left on the earth. And my father took the next turnoff, a little-used track overgrown with thistle purple and green amid the brown, a road leading to the burn, the lowest section of the ranch where a wildfire had swept through and laid waste to all. A place where the ground itself was red and black as if still on fire and might cave away beneath you as you walked. False diamonds there, clear shards and chips as thick as your finger lying everywhere on the surface, as if all might be given, formed under pressure in some earlier time and now simply offered up.