The Mountain Story (41 page)

“Bridget!” I shouted when I realized what she meant to do.

The look on Bridget’s face wasn’t fear. It wasn’t horror. Bridget knew before she leapt, when she raised her arms in that big red plastic poncho, before she cast off from that ridge and dropped to the rocks below, Bridget Devine knew that it was the single greatest moment of her life.

Clairvoyant after all.

Nola stared at the empty place where her child had been.

It all happened so fast.

Bridget must have looked like a giant red bird—that’s how I imagined her—gliding down to land on the jagged wet rock. She surprised the hell out of us all.

I crept toward the edge and peered down into the river to see Bridget’s body limp on a rock near the bank several yards from where the men in the orange vests had stopped to fill their canteens. That was a hell of a good jump if you can say such a thing about such a thing.

Even at a distance I could see where her blood splashed across the white rocks on the river bank. It looked like a fresh petroglyph. I imagined it said, in some uninvented tongue,
Bridget Devine was here
.

The three rescue workers in orange vests were staring, dumbfounded, at the oxblood lump that had shot down from the ridge and landed with a thud.

Finally, they looked up.

I waved.

I knew the men returned my wave but I could not take my eyes off Bridget and the red ribbons of blood.

The wind died down and the air was silk, more stable than anyone had ever seen it near Corazon Falls. I remember lying there quietly on the rocks, watching the helicopter hover and land. The sun was high.

I think it gave Nola and me a little comfort to know how much Bridget would have enjoyed being right.

I could barely muster a whisper of thanks when men appeared with water and chocolate. I kept lifting my head to check on Vonn and Nola.

The rescue is a blur. Odd-angled images as they loaded us into the gurneys. Nola first, then Vonn, then me. Nola was beside me in the helicopter. I heard her rasp apologetically to the pilot, even near death as she was, “We must smell
awful
!”

Nola Devine being sorry. I turned to look for Bridget. Then remembered.

Looking down from inside the helicopter, I spotted the red dot on the riverbank and watched it grow smaller and smaller until we were at such a distance that it looked like a push-pin in a topographical map. That was the last time I saw the mountain.

AFTER

I
WOKE IN THE HOSPITAL
four days later, missing three toes, thirteen pounds, and what had been left of my boyhood.

My first word upon gaining full consciousness after our rescue? “
Vonn
.”

A nurse appeared at my side, raising my bed, checking my vitals. The water in the glass she lifted to my lips tasted of bleach. I thought of Nola. I sniffed the air for something familiar—rock, earth, pine, snow—but could detect only the duelling qualities of ammonia and blood.

I fell back to sleep and woke some time later, smiling when Nola Devine appeared at my door, folded into a wheelchair pushed by an orderly. Her arm was set in a sling, the swelling down significantly.

“Vonn?” I said.

Nola wheeled closer to my bed. “She’s okay. She’s confused. She’s been in and out of it since we got here.”

“The baby?”

“A fighter. Everyone says so.”

Bridget
, I remembered. Nola seemed to read my thoughts.

“She hasn’t asked about her mother yet. She’s sleeping a lot. She really doesn’t remember much.”

“Has she asked about me?” I had no voice.

Nola shook her head. “She doesn’t remember the rock slide, or crossing over the crevice or being bitten by the snake. None of it. I haven’t known how to tell her.”

“Can I see her?”

“The nurse said we could go up and see her in a few hours. They’re doing some tests. In the meantime, the guys from Mountain Rescue are here,” Nola said.

I tried to sit up.

“They’ve stopped by every day since they brought us in. It was Harley Diaz, Wolf. He started the whole thing in motion. No one was looking for us.”

“Harley,” I said, when he entered. Harley wasn’t on the Mountain Rescue team and I was a little confused.

“You forgot your knapsack,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Harley leaned over, embracing me warmly.

“You saved us,” I managed to say. “Thanks.”

“Thank this guy,” Harley said as the next man entered the room. I knew it would be Dantay, who I thought I’d recognized, even at such a great distance, when he lifted the binoculars to survey the ridge.

Dantay embraced me. “Don’t try to talk.”

The third man was Native American also. I recognized him but couldn’t remember his name. He held a motorcycle helmet in his hand. “I’m Byrd’s cousin,” he said. “Juan Carlos. We’ve seen each other out at Harley’s ranch.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“There’s one more from our team,” Dantay said.

My eye stopped on the person who entered the room next. His posture was stooped, his expression solemn. When I realized who it was I couldn’t speak for a long time. “Byrd,” I said at last.

He approached my hospital bed with his crooked smile and drooping left lid.

“Yo,” I said, grinning.

“Arra fah ken ut,” Byrd said, without missing a beat.

Harley told us then that he’d been startled awake by noises in the early morning hours. He’d gone to check on Byrd, and found him sitting in the leather chair by the window, watching dawn break over the mountain. He was about to take him back to his bed, when Byrd said, “Wolf.” It was the first word Byrd had spoken in the year and four days since his accident. Harley couldn’t ignore it.

Byrd followed Harley out to the car and they drove straight to the gas station, where Byrd pointed out the accumulation of newspapers outside of the apartment door. Harley’s concern grew when they entered the small apartment and saw my knapsack on the hook by the door. Within the hour a team from Mountain Rescue had been dispatched to the mountain.

“Bridget,” I said, flashing back to the mountain—that moment. “Vonn doesn’t know.”

“I understand,” Harley said.

Nola gestured for Harley, Dantay and Juan Carlos to leave Byrd and me alone and so they did.

“Wilfred,” he said, grinning. There was a glimmer of the old Byrd.

Something in his face changed then and I had the sense my friend was gone, body surfing some parallel universe.

“Byrd?”

He blinked hard. “Wolf,” he said, taking a seat by the window. And that was the last word Byrd said for nearly a month.

Byrd’s been like a brother to me, but sometimes like my son, and sometimes, in the most irritating way, like a father too. That’s the beauty of Byrd—you don’t know, one moment to the next, where or who he’ll be.

I suspect, when he tilts his head a certain way, he’s on the mountain, taking in the view from the peak. When he talks to himself, when he’s incoherent, like he is sometimes, I imagine he’s standing on the spot where those fractures intersect, getting answers to questions he didn’t know he had.

That day I woke up in the hospital, after Byrd had gone, one of the nurses finally came in to say that Vonn was ready to see us. But when I attempted to roll into her room behind Nola, another nurse said, “Family only.”

Nola had me covered, telling the woman, “He’s the baby’s father.”

It was as if we’d been separated for ten years, instead of a few days, and known each other forever, instead of less than a week—at least for me. The fetal monitor at Vonn’s bedside beeped steadily. I played the role of dutiful father but it was more than an act, even then.

“Vonn,” I said, when I saw that her eyes were open. She
tracked me with a blank stare as I wheeled closer to her bed. Finally a smile began to pull at the corner of her mouth.

Intimate strangers that we were, I wasn’t sure if I should embrace her and was relieved when she reached for my hand, and then for Nola’s beside me. Finally she turned toward the door.

“Where’s my mother?” she asked.

Nola and I shared a look. Neither of us could find our voice.

“Is she coming?”

“You remember a little about the mountain, Vonn?” I asked.

“Not much.”

“The rock slide? You remember how Nola hurt her wrist?”

“I remember we were lost and it was cold and my toes hurt so much.”

“Do you remember the crevice?”

Vonn shook her head. “The doctor said I had a rattlesnake bite. I don’t remember the rattlesnake. Did I see it?”

I shared another look with Nola. “Maybe we should talk about all of this later.”

“You let me put my feet under your shirt,” Vonn remembered.

“Yes.”

“You let me wear your boots.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s my mother?” she asked.

I paused. “Bridget died on the mountain.”

Vonn turned to look at her grandmother, who could only nod.

“We made it all the way to Corazon Falls,” I said.

Vonn stopped me. “No.”

“Bridget saved us, Vonn,” Nola said.

“No,” Vonn said again.

“She was amazing,” I said.

“Don’t tell me,” Vonn said.

“I was so proud,” Nola said.

“Please.”

“It was just like her dream,” Nola said.

A nurse swept into the room, responding to a change in both of her patients’ vital signs. “We need to keep her quiet and calm,” she said.

“Should we go?”

“No,” Vonn said.

We were quiet for some time. Nola reached out with her good hand, squeezing Vonn’s leg. “The doctor said you’ll recover most of your memories eventually.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Vonn laid a hand on the gentle swell of her womb.

“We can fill in the blanks for you,” I said.

“No more talk about the mountain, okay? I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to know.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Whatever you need, Vonn,” Nola said.

We were quiet again, listening to a man whistling somewhere out in the hall.

“We’ll make rose sachets,” Vonn said.

I was doing well on my crutches, and Nola’s arm had improved significantly. We left the hospital within days of each other a week or so later. Vonn developed complications from our ordeal. The baby was at risk. Each day brought some new worry for
Vonn, another threat to the baby. Thanks to Harley’s generosity, she received the finest of medical care and spent the remaining weeks of her pregnancy at the hospital.

I took the morning shift at her bedside. She was restless and irritable, but I could usually distract her with a story, something I’d read, or remembered, or lived. Vonn told as many stories as I did, but most of hers were memories—not of the mountain, never of the mountain. She talked about happy family times—and referred to Bridget as “my mom” or “Mama.” She’d completely rewritten the story of their difficult past.

I wish I could do the same with Frankie.