The Mountain Story (38 page)

I limped along in the lead with my one excellent boot and my aching socked foot and my only remaining stick. Turning to
check on the Devines, I’d had to blink away visions of the coyotes and mountain lions and Yago attacking from behind. “Okay?”

Bridget behind me in the red poncho supported Nola from one side, while Vonn took the other, clomping in my hiking boots. No one answered.

The most successful people in the most impossible situations are the ones that are sure they’re gonna get out of it, and they go on thinking that, even if they die trying
.

“Okay,” I shouted again.

Vonn looked up, grateful. “Okay,” she said.

We carried on through the cold, bleak forest, intending to move to higher ground but finding ourselves at the mercy of the canyon.

We were alternately chilled in the long stretches between the rocks and baked on the bare ridges. We stopped to rest every quarter hour or so, but only for a moment, all of us knowing instinctively that our next stop could also be our tomb. Our pace was torpid. Our stomachs were empty. Our thirst was wretched. Our spirits were weak.

“I was dreaming last night,” Nola said.

“You bit me,” I said.

“Yes, I did. I remember why. I was eating anniversary cake. In my dream. Pip was feeding it to me. We always did buttercream frosting.”

“We have to keep moving,” I said.

“The vultures are back.” Vonn pointed at the black bird hunkered down on a nearby branch.

Bridget shivered.

“I dreamed about Pip being so happy to see me,” Nola whispered.

“We’ll rest a little. Okay?” I offered, hurling a rock to scare the black bird away.

The vulture fled the branch but found another.

“Stay with us, Nola,” I said.

“Come on, Mim,”

“I’m ready,” Nola said, struggling to keep her eyes open. “It’s okay.”

Bridget held up her hand then, shushing us. “Listen.”

I wanted to strangle her—I did. Especially because the air was still, and the mountain was quiet, eerily so. Nothing sounded like a helicopter or waterfall or rescue plane or barking dog.

The only sound, and it was crazy-making, was the rhythmic kiss of water hitting rock.

That’s what Bridget was hearing too, and now I could smell the water. I moved through the trees, trying to sniff out its source, and at last spotted a timid dripping stream moistening the fractures in the granite over our heads, then falling one drop at a time into a loose, glistening cairn of pebbles below.

We didn’t whoop. We didn’t celebrate. We helped Nola to the ground where she struggled into position with her head resting on the rock, and waited open-mouthed, like a baby bird, for the sandy, dripping water to accumulate on her tongue. After swallowing a few mouthfuls, she murmured a prayer and gave her spot to Bridget. Bridget took no more or less time than Nola to drink a mouthful, then made way for Vonn, who drank a few drops and made way for Nola again, who insisted Vonn drink some more.

After the women had several drinks, I took my turn. The water tasted sour, but the wetness on my lips and tongue and throat was inspirational. We took turns resting our heads on the rock to accept the dripping water—the process was interminably slow.

What prompted my urge I can’t say, but I was seized by the impulse to write my name on the found canteen’s yellow enamel. I couldn’t find a stone sharp enough to scratch the surface so I asked to borrow Nola’s diamond wedding ring, which Bridget had been wearing on her index finger. When I finished, Nola asked me to write hers too, then Vonn scratched her name, and finally Bridget. We were here. Damn it.

“We have to fill it,” I said.

“It’ll take all day,” Vonn said.

We set the canteen on the ground, propped up by a few rocks, to take the dripping water. Every drop was a second, a heartbeat, another grain of sand.

Looking around at my motley crew, I waited for a sign about what to do next. Drip, drip, drip. We were quiet and still for a long time.

Vonn was the first to double over vomiting, and then we all began to purge in tragically embarrassing bouts. The water we’d thought would save us might instead dehydrate us further.

“Oh, Wolf,” Nola said. I took her in my arms.

We needed cleaner water. I tore a piece of nylon from the pocket of my parka and used it as a filter over the mouth of the canteen. We watched the water. Drip, drip, drip.

We did fall asleep then, or maybe we fell unconscious. We were all in and out that fourth day. Mostly out of it.

When I opened my eyes, I was startled by our reality. Was I really on the mountain? Lost with three Devines? Were we
really only hours away from dehydration, hypothermia? I took a moment to look around, reacquaint myself with the rock, moved by the sky. I hoped, in taking that moment, the hallucination I was having—of three hungry vultures waiting out our lives—would fade.

But it didn’t. One of the birds was bobbing in a Coulter pine. Another, strutting on a rock. The third was flapping within two feet of Nola. It was no illusion.

“Nola,” I said, shaking her awake.

She saw the vultures and shrieked in terror. Bridget and Vonn woke, screaming when they saw the birds too. Amid the mayhem, I knocked over the yellow canteen, spilling a tragic amount of the carefully collected water. I looked at the spilled water, homicidal.

Vonn set the canteen back under the drip.

Stomping toward the biggest buzzard in my single boot, I hollered, “Get out of here!”

The vulture raised his crooked wings, flapping aggressively.

“Shoo!” Nola cried.

I charged at it, the pain of each step a shot to my skull. “GO!”

Finally, the bird took flight, hovering, smug.

Bridget hurled a rock at the pine branch where another was perched. She missed, and when the rock hit the ground all three of the vultures converged upon it for a taste of our scent.

“They’re like seagulls,” Bridget said. “Do they think we’re feeding them?”

Nola chastised them. “We’re not a food court.”

The birds were too close for comfort. I charged again, shouting, “Go! Git! GIT!”

The vultures cocked their heads. Do vultures laugh?

I picked up a large rock and threw it into their midst but that didn’t scare them away. They pecked at the rock like they’d hoped it was human sacrifice.

Vonn threw handfuls of dirt at the birds and, after that, just insults.

Bridget folded herself, sharp angles like origami. “Make them go away, Wolf,” she cried, covering her filthy face with her filthy fingers.

“GIT!” I shouted, charging toward the vultures again. I fell against a rock and some hard object slammed my hip bone. The Tabasco sauce from the dead hiker’s knapsack.

My first thought was that maybe I could drink the whole thing in a single gulp and kill myself—not suicide but sacrifice to the buzzards. My second thought was that the Devines might try to save me and I imagined it would all end quite badly. Not that, at this point, it looked like it would end especially well.

“Vonn,” I said. “I need Nola’s bandages. Give me the bandages.”

“They’re disgusting.”

“Not to vultures,” I said.

Then she saw that I was holding the bottle of Tabasco sauce in my hand and realized my intention. “Okay.”

She peeled the pus-welded bandages from Nola’s arm and handed the repulsive mess to me. I soaked the bloody, fouled fabric with the hot sauce, then I put a big stone inside to weight the rags and hurled it at the birds.

It was both disgusting and gratifying to watch them swarm the bloody Tabasco-soaked cloth. They pecked and shredded the bandages—oh and the sound they made, that horrible sound, only worse because of the Tabasco—and then you could tell they were confused and then they flapped away.

“It worked,” Vonn breathed.

Nola and Bridget grinned with the victory. Even the trees praised our gross ingenuity, creaking and clapping in the wind, blowing away the clouds and bringing back the sun to torch us. The temperature must have been twenty degrees hotter in the sun than shade. I was afraid to sweat and lose more fluid.

Nola’s wound was festering and I knew it had to be re-dressed right away. “We have to take care of your injury,” I said.

“Please don’t waste time with that. We have to keep moving,” Nola said.

“Vonn’s going to clean it, Mother.” Bridget struggled to speak. “She knows what she’s doing. Let her help.”

“It’s not like I’m a doctor.” You could see that Vonn was chuffed by her mother’s confidence.

“Come on, Mim. We can’t leave it exposed like that,” Bridget said sternly, turning to work herself out of her T-shirt. “Use this to bandage it back up.”

“That’s the only other layer you have under there, Bridget,” Vonn said, tending to Nola’s putrid arm. “You’ll freeze.”

“I’m numb,” Bridget said, more as a statement than a complaint.

Vonn found some fresh branches to use as splints, and with no time or space to crush them, took a fistful of the sterasote leaves and wrapped Bridget’s T-shirt around Nola’s injured wrist.

“You must have a high tolerance for pain, Nola,” I said.

“Perk of aging,” Nola said, trying to smile. She gestured toward the dripping water.

“We have to be patient,” I said, checking in with Bridget and Vonn. “Right? We’ll feel better when we’ve had some more water. And we’ll have some energy to get back at it. Right?”

Drip. Drip. Drip.

“Hot,” Vonn said, when she saw me watching her. She was unaware that her cracked lip was bleeding.

“Hot,” I agreed, noticing a branch beside Vonn moving in the wind.

“It’s going to take forever,” Nola said.

Drip, drip, drip. Nola was right. It would take all our daylight hours to fill the canteen and then what? The temperature in this part of Devil’s Canyon would drop to near freezing when the sun shifted. Not to mention that in the unlikely event there was a plane looking for us, we would not be spotted here.

I studied the slender septum in the varnished rock where the water dripped but I couldn’t see a way to climb up to find its source.

“We can’t stay here,” I said, finally.

“Three days without water, Wolf,” Vonn returned.

“We need the water,” Bridget said. “I think we should stay.”

“I’m staying with my daughter,” Nola said.

I turned to Vonn for a tie vote. “Vonn?”

“I’m with Bridget and Mim,” Vonn declared. The clouds were reflected in her pretty eyes. Her mouth was set defiantly. “What?”

I blinked when the branch moved beside her, and I went on blinking until I understood that I was not looking at a branch but a snake, slithering along the fracture in the marbled rock where Vonn was leaning. A Pacific rattler, olive and brown, and judging by the yellowish tail, young.

Rising slowly, I said, “It’s time to move on.”

“You just said to be patient,” Bridget pointed out.

I wanted to pull Vonn away from the snake without any of the women being the wiser. I offered my hand, along with a corny bow.

“Why are you being weird?” Vonn asked.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“I’m staying here,” she said, staring at my outstretched hand.

The young snake slithered in and out of the cracks in the rock beside Vonn’s head.

“We need to go now, Vonn,” I said, my hand waiting in mid-air.

“I’m not going.”

“Trust me, Vonn.”

“What’s with you?”

“Trust me,” I repeated, telling myself not to look at the snake.

“I do trust you, Wolf.” She held my gaze. “But I’m staying here.”

“Please.”

Bridget turned to Vonn then, promptly spotting the snake a hair’s width from her daughter’s neck. She shouted in her broken voice, “Snake!”

Nola shrieked.

Vonn turned, startling the snake.

“Don’t move,” I whispered as the snake reared up, caught between a rock and a soft place, and rattled his tail.

Bridget took a step forward. “Get away from her!” she growled, finding her voice in the moment.

“Bridget!” I shouted.

I saw it happen before it happened and I had no way to stop it from happening.

Bridget swiped at the snake with her bare hands.

“No!”

The slithering snake, striking at his tormentor, found Vonn’s upper arm instead.

People say snakebites are incredibly painful but Vonn didn’t shriek or scream. “He got me,” she said, holding her breath.

“Okay,” I said. “Stay still. The most important thing is to be calm. And still.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Bridget cried.

Vonn smiled reassuringly, reaching out for her mother. “Mama,” she said, and then fainted before any of us could catch her. She slumped and fell back and hit her head on the edge of a rock, before she fell to the ground unconscious. Just like that.

“Vonn!” I dropped to her side, my hands on her face.

Bridget murmured, “Oh my God.”

“Where’s the snake?” I whipped my head around but couldn’t see it.

“Vonn! Vonn!” Nola cried, squeezing Vonn’s leg.

Shot with adrenalin, I bent to lift Vonn to my shoulder. I wasn’t afraid of snakes anymore. I wasn’t afraid of anything, except maybe time. It felt like twenty miles but it was more likely twenty feet before I found a patch of soft earth where I could lay her down.