The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men (26 page)

“… grew up with my grandfather, who lived in a slab cabin just outside the reservation. Had an open well down the hill a ways where you could draw water from one of the underground streams that popped out of the mountain farther down, like this one here. Cold and clean all year round. You could lean over and see your own reflection, or the moon sometimes, as long as you didn’t lean too far. Anyhow, he never set foot on government land—that’s what he called the reservation—and he always made the people come to him when they needed something. You know, the healing. Are you hearing me, Hargadon? I’m trying to tell you something. I’m trying to tell you where we are.”

The stars have reappeared, faint pinpricks of light that glow in the shifting haze. The sleeting has stopped or perhaps drifted down the mountain to glaze the world below. But neither Henley nor Hargadon
has moved, and Rifken is making frantic motions over the bare legs and feet of the one while glancing from time to time at the other.

“Anyway, this part I’m telling you now …, it’s like a myth. Which the people don’t tell too often because they are practically all Baptists and such, going to church just like the white folks, except for my grandfather, who was a holy man. And really believed. So you can guess what it was like growing up in a cabin, no other man around, and my mama so grateful when the preacher from the reservation brought us a kerosene heater and a Christmas ham, and my grandfather telling me on the same day that the name of the place was
Ataghi
. And that it was sacred. Way far west, as far as you can go and still be in the mountains. Toward the red sun—that’s the way he said it—so far into the mountains that only the animals knew the path. And that no hunter had ever seen it because of the magic. Like he wanted me to believe too. Telling me that even though there are lots of trails along the headwaters of the Oconaluftee—ones that go higher and higher into wild places—they get all tangled so that not even a little girl could crawl on her hands and knees. Only the animals know the way. Because it’s a lake of magic water where no hunter ever walked the shore or drank from the streams that feed it. But sometimes, if a lost hunter would come near, there might be a big fluttering sound of wings and clouds of ducks and geese and doves and pigeons. Though if he ever reached the spot, there would be nothing, only a flat bed of earth and stone. Which is where we are now. Hargadon? We don’t have that much farther to go. Just an hour. We can make it, all three of us.”

Rifken has taken off his coat and wrapped Henley’s legs as he continues to rub. When he finally looks up, he sees that Hargadon is still capable of moving and that—although he is still seated, still outwardly motionless—somehow the rifle has been unsheathed, and the mittens have been removed, and the dead eyes have reawakened with one final spark.

“Unless,” says Rifken, “it was a spirit warrior who had first cleared his vision with a night of prayer and fasting. And even then he might
see only faint tracks and a few feathers caught in the brambles. Maybe not even a blade of grass. So that most of the human beings in every age think that the lake dried up long ago, but that is not true either. It can appear,
Ataghi
, just at daybreak, to someone who has fasted all night and kept watch, Hargadon. Like a mirror of pure water. Shallow on the land but full of fish and reptiles, covered with water birds, while on the shore will be every kind of forest animal. Because it is the medicine lake of the beasts. And whenever the deer or the bear is wounded by a hunter, he makes his way along these trails, right here, up the headwaters to the secret place and wades into the pure water, swimming to the other side. And when he comes out, his wounds are healed. That’s why the animals keep it hidden, this lake. Invisible. And that’s the way it was told to me. When I was too young to know.”

“Too young to know what?”

“Hargadon, listen to me. If you use that rifle, you’ll never get out of here alive. I know where we are. I know how to get us out.”

“I think you’re looking for the same thing he was looking for.”

“Maybe I am. But let me tell you something. Let me tell you why he’s here.”

“Him? He killed somebody.”

“He killed his wife and the man she was with. That’s true. That’s absolutely true. He went home one night, to the trailer where he lived, and took out a pistol, and fired nine times in the bedroom where he found them. That’s the God’s honest truth. But that’s not why he’s here. He’s here because two of those shots went through a very flimsy wall in that trailer, Hargadon. A paper-thin wall. And on the other side of that wall was a little girl. That’s why he’s here. Because of something he didn’t intend. That’s what I want you to think about, firing a shot you don’t intend.”

“You don’t have any idea where we are. You’re just walking, hoping for a miracle.”

“On the other side of that ridge is what you want. I swear. Just give us one more hour, and I’ll have you where you need to be.”

Hargadon raises the barrel slightly and clicks off the safety. Then raises it higher until the front sight is aimed at the moon and fires a shot into the air. Works the bolt without looking and fires another. And then a third. “There might be somebody out looking for us,” he says. “You can never tell.”

Snow falls from the limb of a spruce some thirty yards below them and sets off a cascade that clears the powder from one side of the tree. Then the uppermost branch bends again and launches a white owl that takes flight like a diver springing into the air, fluttering as it gathers the night beneath its wings and then settling into the slow rhythm of flight as it descends into the valley.

“Come on,” says Rifken. “We’re going to have to carry him now.”

4

Henley stops breathing on the upslope and then, somewhere between the ravine and the second spur, dies without a sound. Hargadon can guess what has happened when the weight becomes easier to bear, more like a load of wood than a sack of meal. Still he keeps going because he knows what the news will do to Rifken. They go until a patch of loose gravel stops them. It’s where Hargadon slips, loses his hold on Henley’s arm, and the body planks into the snow. Rifken doesn’t even look. He can do no more than bend at the waist and gasp, blowing out clouds of foggy breath like a spent runner. Finally he looks around to get his bearings before kneeling to feel for a pulse, as if it were all a foregone conclusion. After holding his fingers against Henley’s throat for a moment, he says to no one in particular, “I can’t hardly breathe anymore,” then begins to pull off the gloves he gave Henley back at the lake.

The younger man watches Rifken work the gloves back onto his own gray hands as if they are magic. Then, when Rifken shivers and buries his hands beneath his arms, Hargadon is sure he has seen a sign. He tries to unfreeze his mind. “What now?” he says.

“I’ll be honest with you. We ought to be able to see the town from here, the lights and all. Maybe the storm knocked out their power.”

“That’s not what I mean. What are we going to do about him?”

Rifken sits back on his haunches and rests his wrists on his knees. “I can’t hardly breathe. Or think. You might be getting your wish after all—to walk out of here alone.”

“Just rest a few minutes.”

“Why do you all of a sudden care about him? I thought you wanted off this mountain as fast as you could get off.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you see yourself.” The older man nods toward the body.

“No. He did wrong. But tried to get to the right place. You got to respect that, and maybe I wouldn’t mind being back up here again myself when spring comes.”

“Now who’s crazy?”

“I’m just thinking out loud, that’s all. Like we did what we had to do. And so did he.”

“It wasn’t real, kid. It was just a lake.”

“Yeah. I know. But if this body was to slip into a ravine or something, it probably wouldn’t be found. Maybe ever. And then he might get whatever it is he was looking for. I’m just wondering is all. Wondering if there’s something we owe, me and you. Like a debt that needs repaying. Anyway—I’ll tell you one thing for sure. I don’t have it in me to carry him over that ridge. And neither do you.”

Rifken rubs his face and sinks lower into himself, remembering how grateful his mother had been for heat and food. How that preacher, a Cherokee man himself, had treated them with respect, talking low and humble, without any hurry in the world until the day he said, “Miz Rifken, you ever thought about being saved?”

Hargadon unzips the parka and drapes it over the seated figure, stamping his boots clean before climbing a few steps higher to where a massive rockface meets the narrow trail. “All I know is you’re the
one who seems to have a problem with this, not me.” He finds a wide foothold and works his way up to a vertical split.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rifken stands, letting the second parka fall at his feet.

“I just thought that if one of us could make it up to that table rock, he could probably see if the road was down there. And that the other one could stay here … do what needed doing … and then take the trail around and down.” He inserts one foot into the slit and pulls with both hands until his knee finds a six-inch ledge. Then the fingers read the rock above his head and discover another handhold. He moves like a mechanical spider, slowly, feeling his way with all four limbs and keeping his body flat against the wrinkled surface. When he slips, he does not gasp or flail but simply pulls himself along as if climbing and falling were inseparable halves of the same thing. At the top Hargadon is no more than thirty feet from where he has started, but he falls forward and promises himself sleep, enough sleep for a lifetime, if he can just be allowed to see beneath the first painful sliver of light breaking beyond the next range. He takes one last breath, then stands on the tabletop and shades his eyes.

While from below an old man’s voice drifts up to him. “What do you see? Is there a cut bank and a stand of hemlock?”

“Yeah,” says Hargadon. “Yeah, there is. And I can see the road too.”

5

The truck is nearly covered under a mound of snow, but it starts as soon as Hargadon turns the key. For a few minutes he sits with his head bowed and his arms draped over the steering wheel, unmoving even though the first cold air from the heater stings his hands. Ice crystals in his three-day stubble begin to melt and trickle to the point of his chin. Still he doesn’t move, drinking in the growing warmth like a greenhouse orchid and gradually opening to the possibilities of the new day. The seat cover, after two days in the storm, creaks every time
he breathes; but the engine revs, and the radio works. So Hargadon stretches one or two muscles at a time and listens to the reports coming in from the first patrols headed back up into the mountains. Then he switches to a country music station and waits.

Looking out the passenger window he can see Windfield itself, gray as a castle and crowning the crest of the next range. It does not look like a prison. It is something more human, a cathedral perhaps, or a Tibetan lamasery, or refuge for the penitent, just above the level of clouds. There are no fences or guard towers. No rats or damp, dripping pipes in Windfield. It is clean and warm. He knows because, on most days, he works there with his friend Rifken and the others. Where the greenery, just outside the walls, is so thick and tangled you cannot run in a straight line, could not fall or fly or even skitter like loose stone down to the towns below.

Hargadon turns the defroster on high and steps out of the truck to begin brushing the snow away from the windshield with his arm. He hears a hissing sound behind him and turns to see a car from the state patrol. It rolls to a stop, idling with a low growl as the driver makes a quick radio call. Then steps out on the far side. He is a tall black man with close-cropped hair and a starched gray uniform. Campaign hat and polished boots. Jacket open and clear of his holster. “You doing all right?” he asks.

Hargadon sees him eyeing the Department of Corrections decal on the side of the truck. “Doing okay now. Had a hard night of it though.”

“You wouldn’t be one of those missing guards, would you? From Windfield?”

“Yeah. I’m Hargadon.”

“You look like you been through it.”

“Yeah, well … it got a little tricky.”

“They’re looking for you about as hard as they’re looking for Henley.” The trooper turns and regards the ragged furrow in the snow leading back up the side of the mountain. “You find anything?”

“Yeah. Rocks and snow.”

“What about the other one?”

“Rifken? We split up about an hour ago. I came over the top; he’s working his way around the ridge.”

“I’d call in if I was you. Anyhow, I’m headed up to the roadblock on 321. You need anything?”

“No,” says Hargadon. “We’re headed in.”

The trooper steps through the just-softening snow to his car and guns the engine before driving away. Hargadon follows with his eyes, noticing how the slush holds the impression of the tires and how the sun has found one or two patches of asphalt. The windows of the patrol car glisten as it recedes, and the engine fades to a soft purr, and then to nothing. There is only a clean, cold rush from the valley. As the car disappears around the last curve, Hargadon takes a long draft of pure mountain air and lets his eyes wander from the road. Up to the stand of hemlocks where he sees white movement, a bent branch, and a cascade of snow. Like a great white owl taking flight.

The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

David Walton,
Evening Out
Leigh Allison Wilson,
From the Bottom Up
Sandra Thompson,
Close-Ups
Susan Neville,
The Invention of Flight
Mary Hood,
How Far She Went
François Camoin,
Why Men Are Afraid of Women
Molly Giles,
Rough Translations
Daniel Curley,
Living with Snakes
Peter Meinke,
The Piano Tuner
Tony Ardizzone,
The Evening News
Salvatore La Puma,
The Boys of Bensonhurst
Melissa Pritchard,
Spirit Seizures
Philip F. Deaver,
Silent Retreats
Gail Galloway Adams,
The Purchase of Order
Carole L. Glickfeld,
Useful Gifts
Antonya Nelson,
The Expendables
Nancy Zafris,
The People I Know
Debra Monroe,
The Source of Trouble
Robert H. Abel,
Ghost Traps
T. M. McNally,
Low Flying Aircraft
Alfred DePew,
The Melancholy of Departure
Dennis Hathaway,
The Consequences of Desire
Rita Ciresi,
Mother Rocket
Dianne Nelson,
A Brief History of Male Nudes in America
Christopher McIlroy,
All My Relations
Alyce Miller,
The Nature of Longing
Carol Lee Lorenzo,
Nervous Dancer
C. M. Mayo,
Sky over El Nido
Wendy Brenner,
Large Animals in Everyday Life
Paul Rawlins,
No Lie Like Love
Harvey Grossinger,
The Quarry
Ha Jin,
Under the Red Flag
Andy Plattner,
Winter Money
Frank Soos,
Unified Field Theory
Mary Clyde,
Survival Rates
Hester Kaplan,
The Edge of Marriage
Darrell Spencer,
CAUTION Men in Trees
Robert Anderson,
Ice Age
Bill Roorbach,
Big Bend
Dana Johnson,
Break Any Woman Down
Gina Ochsner,
The Necessary Grace to Fall
Kellie Wells,
Compression Scars
Eric Shade,
Eyesores
Catherine Brady,
Curled in the Bed of Love
Ed Allen,
Ate It Anyway
Gary Fincke,
Sorry I Worried You
Barbara Sutton,
The Send-Away Girl
David Crouse,
Copy Cats
Randy F. Nelson,
The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men
Greg Downs,
Spit Baths