The Mountain Can Wait (19 page)

“You should have just left us here. It was your ticket.”

Tom nodded slowly. “You really believe that's what I've always wanted.”

Curtis shifted away from him, hugged the pillow tighter to his body.

“Maybe one day you'll see it differently.” Tom turned sideways so he could face Curtis directly. A loose spring in the back of the couch jabbed at his knee. “But we need to figure out what we're going to do now.”

“There's nothing to figure out. This is what I'm doing.”

“How long you think you can keep this up? You've got to go to the police.”

Curtis got up from the couch, shaking his head. “I thought you were here to help me.”

“I am.”

“You gotta fucken help me hide.”

Tom stood, clenched, hot breath coming out of him like a bull. “You must have mistaken me for somebody else, thinking I'm going to help you hide. How could you leave her there? How could you do that? I've been going over this the whole way down here and I don't know when you became such a coward.” They faced each other in the middle of the room. “I'm not going to let you crawl under some rock,” he said, his feet hot in his boots.

“Thomas Berry!” Bobbie stood in the doorway wearing a green rain poncho and gripping a large, white-bellied salmon by its tail. “You're never far behind this boy, are you?”

“Bobbie.”

She slapped the fish on the kitchen counter and struggled to get her poncho over her head, and then came and stood between them, drying her hands on her dress. “Fish is big enough for three, Tom, if you're staying until dinner. Just traded it with my neighbor for hard labor. Curtis, you're helping him reshingle his garage roof tomorrow.”

“We won't be staying,” Tom said.

“I'm not going anywhere,” said Curtis. He stood by the fireplace now, holding the mantel with one hand, holding his stomach with the other as if he'd been punched.

Bobbie looked at Tom and then at Curtis. “What in hell's going on?”

“Tell her,” said Tom. “I'd like to hear you say it out loud.”

“Tell me what?”

“What the fuck, Dad?” Curtis said. “You suddenly give a shit?”

“Tell me what?” said Bobbie, her eyes large.

“Curt. Tell her.”

“Can you hear yourself? You? You want me to talk about my feelings while I'm at it? How about you listen to this? Only thing I can be sure of when it comes to you is that you've been trying to get away from me and Erin since we were born. Well, here you go: I release you. Now fuck off and let me figure this out alone.” Curtis stood there, breathless, eyes lit.

“I don't know what's going on here, gentlemen,” Bobbie said, “but you know, Tom, he's fine here, with me. How about this time you just let us be, eh?”

The sun had sunk below the trees now and the room was growing dark. Bobbie switched on a lamp in the corner and sat down at a spinning wheel. She threw the wheel into motion and began to pump the pedal, feeding dark wool onto a spool through pinched fingers.

“Just go,” said Curtis. “I already told you, I like it here.”

“He likes it here, Tom. You can't take him this time.”

“I can't go without you.”

“It wasn't my fault,” Curtis whispered.

The creak of the pedal under Bobbie's prodding foot and the hum of the wheel spun the thick air in the room until Tom felt that his ears might implode.

“What wasn't his fault?” asked Bobbie.

Tom looked at her. More than ten years had passed since he had last seen her, when he came down after Elka died, and she still blamed him. As he blamed her. He looked back at Curtis, clinging to the mantel. Shivers moved up the boy's body, like wind on water. “He hit a girl with his truck,” said Tom, his eyes steady on the boy's face. “And left her by the side of the road. The police tell me she lived through the night. If he'd stayed, got help, she wouldn't be dead.”

The wheel stopped spinning and Bobbie turned on her stool to face them. “That's why you look so haggard, boy.”

“You're lying,” said Curtis, his voice small, curled up at the back of his throat. “They never said that on the news.” He let go of the mantel and covered his face with his hands, and swayed. He leaned with his back against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting, pulling with him flakes of plaster.

“And I was beginning to think you were just generally feral.” Bobbie jutted her chin at Tom, her voice accusatory. “Why on earth would you tell him something like that? If he'd stayed, got help…Why make it worse than it is already?” The wheel was back in motion, her leg moving rhythmically under her big dress.

“Bobbie, he needs to turn himself in. The cops'll be knocking anytime now.”

“What good will it do to ruin his life over this? He's not a criminal.”

Curtis shook his head.

“If you hand this child over to the police he'll be slammed in a concrete box, not much bigger than a coffin, festering and totally disconnected from the world. And he'll hate you. I'm sure you want him to redeem himself in some way, but I don't see why it couldn't be accomplished at home. What he needs is a good lancing, like a boil.”

“I've been doing all kinds of work here, Dad. Bobbie needs me.”

“I wouldn't go that far, son,” she said, her hand raised. “But I've gotten used to having you around.”

“So tell me what he could do,” Tom said to Bobbie. He sat on the couch again, leaned forward with his palms on his knees.

“What do you mean?” The wheel wound down like a clock.

“You claim to have some sort of recipe for homemade redemption.”

She rotated toward him on the stool and shrugged as if these things were obvious. “Sweatbox. Vision quest. Community service. A vow of silence?”

“What the fuck is a vision quest?” said Tom. “How's that going to make it up to the girl? And what about her parents?”

“You're talking nonsense. There's nothing that can be done for that girl. Her parents, they don't need anything from him.”

“Curt, is there somewhere we can be alone?”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

Curtis's face locked. Some kind of haunting hung off the bones of his sunken cheeks. In the low-lit room, Tom could see what would happen to him, what was already happening. Curtis's young body shrinking until there was nothing left and you could pass your hand right through him. If he kept running, he would always be alone, he would always feel cornered, and the thought of your kid, scared and alone—well, he couldn't live with that. The thing to do now was step back and give Curtis an open pathway to the door. Tom relaxed back into the couch and turned his gaze around the room.

“I think he's made his decision, Tom,” Bobbie said, her tongue pushing at the corner of her mouth to block the smile. She moved behind him and into the kitchen.

“And I think I will have some of that fish,” Tom said, “if you don't mind cooking it.”

“Don't mind a bit. I was thinking of steaming it with lemon and thyme and salal berry. Elka used to put salal with everything.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I thought it fitting.”

Tom ate voraciously, mopping the juice from his plate with a hunk of bread. Curtis had gone out to his tent and Bobbie told a story about sending him out to Stoney Island to collect kelp.

“Do you remember what I told you about Stoney?” she asked Tom. She was bent over a bag of tobacco, tucking a cigarette paper into her fingers. “That's where I spread her ashes. You remember? Over the kelp bed.”

“Does Curtis know that?”

“No. I wanted to see if he said anything.”

“Said anything about what?”

“If he felt anything. If he felt her.”

“He hardly knew her.”

“She was his mother.”

A light with a burnt orange shade hung low over the table, casting shadows. “You got any coffee?” Tom asked.

“How about some huckleberry wine? Made it myself.”

“I'd prefer coffee.”

She made him a pot of bitter coffee and set it on the table in front of him with a bowl of sugar.

Tom cleaned and dried the dishes and wiped the counters, and then went out to Curtis's tent. It was a cool night; low clouds quickly sailed just beyond the tips of the tallest trees, lit by a high three-quarter moon. Tom knelt in the damp grass by the tent flap. “Can we talk?” he asked.

When no answer came, Tom opened the flap to a dark interior without any warmth. He stood and looked around the yard, at a long blue shadow at the foot of a silver cherry tree, an overgrown bush hung with ripe, black raspberries.

Back in the house, Bobbie lay on her back on the couch with a book open on her chest, a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose. Next to her, on the floor, a mug of what could have been huckleberry wine.

“He's gone,” Tom said. He stood in the middle of the room. “Any particular place you think he might go?”

Bobbie hoisted herself upright and took off her glasses, carefully folded the wire arms, and slipped them into the pocket of her dress. She closed her book and put it on the floor while he waited, flexing his toes in his boots.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

She rubbed her eyes and squinted up at him, smiling. “He's your son.”

“This isn't a fucking joke,” Tom yelled, the bark of it a surprise to them both.

Bobbie, her eyes wide, put a finger to her lips. She stood and moved past him and into the dark kitchen and pressed her palms against the counter and looked out the window, her face pale with moon. “Good news is, he can't get far.”

Curtis seemed to float over the trail to the beach, the rocks and the roots lit by the moon's pearly light. The island was helping him get away. It was all coming together now: with his tent and most of his belongings cast off, he could move faster. It didn't matter that he had no place to go, because, when the time was right, the destination would present itself. He tripped on an exposed root and landed on his palms, and wiped the grit and blood on his thighs as he ran.

The driftwood on the beach glowed, pulsed like embers, and the hush of the ocean and the tin can smell of it came up to meet him. He stumbled toward the little lean-to hut, wrenching his ankle in the lattice of wedged wood and rock. The red kayak, with its scar running down the hull, was propped against the back of the hut as before. The paddle lay on the ground. He turned the kayak over and set it on the rocks, hull down, and stuck the paddle into the cockpit. He tried to lift it by the gunnel but the boat was too heavy, so he wrapped his fingers around the looped bow rope and began to pull, dragging the boat over rocks and wood, the scraping of its plastic bottom a dry, hollow sound. Several times he had to stop, drop the boat, and shake his fingers to push the blood back into the joints where the rope bit deeply.

The water was calm, and surged slowly and rhythmically onto the stones. He could just make out the black shoulder of the island where he had gone to cut the kelp. He took off his shoes and slid them under the deck behind the cockpit, and pushed the boat off the beach. He clumsily sat down in it, taking on a gush of cold water, and began to paddle. Wondered where he would end up if he followed the moon trail on the water, that silver, shifting road that lay always just out of reach. He was hemmed in here, and no matter where he pointed the bow he would hit either the mainland, or Vancouver Island, or some other small, rocky island in the strait. It was disorienting, paddling in the dark, with the bow bobbing unpredictably back and forth. As he got farther from the shore, the wind picked up, and the harder he looked at the kelp island, the less it appeared to be there. One moment it was clearly in front of him; the next, a cloud would pass over the moon and the island would be shadow. The water he'd taken on when he got into the boat sloshed at his feet and his backside. He watched the white blade of the paddle as it went through the stroke, like some whale diving down to feed.

He approached the same side of the island that he had been to before and leaned forward, looking for the arm of rock that sheltered the kelp bed. Could hear the suck of the sea coming off the barnacles and mussels stuck to the rocks. He dipped the paddle tenderly into the water, moving slowly until he could see the arm, and then pointed the boat toward it. He paddled a few more strokes and then the bow reared up and a low scrape reverberated under his body and he was stopped dead in the water. He dug the paddle in deep and pulled hard but the boat didn't move. Tried the other side, and rocked from left to right, grabbed hold of the gunnels and shot his weight forward and back. The boat didn't budge. He stuck the paddle between his legs and dug at the water with his hands. He rested his head on his knees, pressed his skull hard against the square bones of his knees, and closed his eyes and listened to the night, which in this place was composed of wind, and suck, and, in the water lapping against the side of his kayak, the dead laugh of a girl. Pain shot through the bridge of his nose and he cried.

The level of water in the boat was rising. At first he thought he'd imagined it, but no, the water had been at his heels and seat but now it was past his ankles. It climbed like something amphibious, alive and cold, up the hairs on his thighs. He pressed his palm against the hull between his legs, and his arm was submerged to several inches above the wrist. All he could do was watch. After a few minutes, the kayak began to list to the side, and water flowed over the gunnel freely, and when the bow dipped under the surface, Curtis allowed his body to slip out of the cockpit. Barking the cold out of his chest, he swam toward the arm of rock, but when he got to it, he saw how steep its edges were and that he wouldn't be able to hoist himself onto it without slicing his hands and feet on the barnacles. He would have to swim through the kelp bed to the beach.