The Mountain Story (27 page)

“Can I?” Gisele asked, then turned as if to leap. Byrd lunged for her. Byrd stumbled. And then my friend disappeared over the edge. It happened so fast.

Gisele dropped to her hands and knees, evacuating her guts, which saved her life. Lark sobbed.

Byrd.

I see myself looking down at him, the wreck of his body twenty feet below on the ledge where he’d fallen. But it’s a lie. The view was obscured by dense brush.

Might have taken me ten minutes to climb down to the place where he lay. I don’t remember that part, only that I was there, in those last rays from the setting sun, and I thought he was dead.

He opened his eyes when he heard me crying and worked up a crooked smile.

“You’re gonna be all right, buddy,” I promised, but my calm was obliterated by the girls on the ridge above us, screaming their bloody heads off. Beautiful Lark. My dream girl, costarring in my nightmare.

Byrd found my eyes. He tried to say something but blood poured forth instead of words.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “Your leg is broken. I know. I can see it’s broken.”

“Please,” Byrd mouthed. That’s when I noticed that his arms were both broken too. There was blood in a small pool on the ground at the nape of his neck. “Please.”

“Hang on, Byrd. Hang on. We’re gonna fix you.”

I looked around at the sweep of forest, the ragged upthrust rock, the wind-worn stone, calling upon the balm of nature to heal my friend. Byrd moaned. There was a massive wound on the crown of his head.

His eyes fluttered closed. I took off my coat and covered him with it. It should have been me. That’s what I thought more than anything. It should have been me. A glint of metal
caught my eye—his Swiss Army knife had fallen out of his sock. I picked it up.

The girls continued their desperate concerto on the ridge as darkness fell over Secret Lake. I waited with my quiet friend as the girls continued to scream for help.

The girls screamed. Byrd’s breath grew shallow. I’d given up hope by the time the rescue workers, alerted by some hikers, arrived a few hours later. I looked up and recognized the man climbing down a rope ladder, carrying a medical bag. Byrd’s uncle Dantay. “Red weed?” he asked.

“He didn’t drink it, Dantay,” I said. “He’s gonna be okay, right?”

Dantay opened his mouth but stopped when he saw Byrd’s twisted body splayed out on the rock. I don’t remember what Dantay told me after that. His face said everything.

Sometime later, I heard the sound of a helicopter. In this case it really was a helicopter with a screamer suit dangling from a thirty-foot cable. I don’t like to remember that night, that moment. Byrd didn’t scream. When that helicopter took my best friend away he made no sound at all.

THE
THIRD
DAY

T
HE WARMTH OF
the sun on my face confused me because the last moment I remembered was dark and cold and terror-filled. A dream. I opened my eyes to find Bridget and Vonn watching me expectantly.

“I thought you said you were from Michigan,” Bridget said.

“I am.”

I was surprised to see that Nola was awake and alert. “You look so much better, Mrs. Devine.”

Nola nodded. “The swelling’s down. So’s the fever.”

“The sterasote,” Vonn said.

“Or the prayers,” Nola said. “Don’t forget about the prayers.”

I didn’t.

Vonn put the parka over my shoulders. “You’ve been weird all morning, Wolf. You okay?”

I nodded, but I was confused.

“I remember reading all about the teenagers and the red weed in the newspapers when it happened,” Nola said. “My whole congregation prayed for you kids.”

“Red weed?” I said. “What red weed?”

Bridget shared a look with Nola and Vonn.

“The red weed you just told us about,” Vonn said. “You just told us the whole story.”

“Are you okay, Wolf?” Bridget asked. “See. I told you he seemed
off
.”

“I told you what happened at Secret Lake?”

“Don’t you remember?”

I did not. “I thought I was dreaming it. I’ve had such weird dreams. I dreamed about my mother.”

“I’m sorry about your friend, Byrd,” Nola said.

“That Gisele Michel sounds like a piece of work,” Bridget huffed. “How’d they keep her name out of the papers?”

“And that Lark person too?” Vonn said. “How does she get to walk away scot-free.”

I doubted that Lark was any more free from the memory of that night than I was.

“Why did you say you were from Michigan of all places?” Bridget asked.

“I am from Michigan. I moved to California when I was thirteen. Tin Town.”

Vonn reached down, offering a hand to help me to my feet.

“It was all over the news around Thanksgiving last year,” Nola said.

“Thanksgiving. Why weren’t we here for Thanksgiving?” Vonn asked, trying to remember.

“There was so much going on. Remember? You were
skipping school again. I had to make an appointment with the dean,” Bridget said.

“You chose that weekend to move, Bridget,” Nola reminded her.

“That’s right. That’s what it was.”

“It was Thanksgiving,” Nola said. “Who moves on Thanksgiving?”

“I remember now,” Vonn said. “You’d just met the realtor.”

“His wife was going to Maine,” Bridget recalled. “He stayed back to close my colonial.”

“Interesting euphemism,” Vonn muttered.

“Stop,” Bridget warned.

“You basically ate that woman’s turkey,” Vonn said.

“You’re disgusting,” Bridget hissed, then turned to Nola. “I didn’t know it was going to be Pip’s last Thanksgiving.”

“You never know. That’s the point, Bridge.
Carpe diem
,” Nola said.
Carpe diem
. My heart stopped, electrocuted by those words.
Carpe diem. Carpe diem. Carpe diem
.

“Wolf?”

“I’m all right,” I said.

“You’ve got that look again,” Bridget said, sharing a glance with Nola and Vonn.

We listened to the wind as we scanned the ridge for signs of life.

Vonn paused to meet my eyes before she said, “We all want to know, Wolf, what happened to your best friend? After the helicopter took him away with no sound at all?”

I was surprised, but not necessarily relieved to see the Gremlin parked beside Kriket’s trailer when the police drove me to Tin Town on the morning after Byrd’s accident. Frankie hadn’t been around the trailer in a few weeks.

My father must have seen the police cruiser through the kitchen window. He was out on the porch in a second. “What’d you do?” he called.

“Where were you?” I called back. “No one answered the phone all night.”

Frankie turned to the cops. “What’d he do?”

“Your son here found some red weed,” the officer told Frankie.

“He did.”

“That’s right. He and some of his friends brewed some tea and went up to the mountain last night.”

“You did?”

“I made the tea,” I said.

“You drink it?”

“One girl drank it,” I said.

“Red weed is not illegal,” Frankie told the cops. “You can’t arrest him for red weed.”

“We didn’t arrest him. Just had a few questions. They don’t think the other boy’s going to make it.”

“Other boy? You said a girl drank it.”

“Byrd,” I said. “He fell.”

“He’s in a coma,” one of the police officers said. “Just had word they’re airlifting him to Cedars.”

Less than an hour later, I’d packed my knapsack and was on my way to the bus station to catch a bus to Los Angeles, where they’d transferred my best friend. I found Frankie at the table taking a belt from a greasy bottle of Scotch, a few stray children at his feet.

“I’m going,” I said.

“Pull the plug,” he said darkly.

“What?”

“Pull the plug.”

“He’s not …”

“You don’t know.”

“He’s just in a coma.”

“Pull my plug,” Frankie said, “if I’m ever like that.”

“I will.”

“I’ll do the same for you. A father should do that for his son.”

“A father should do a lot of things for his son.”

Frankie followed me out of the kitchen, taking another long pull from the bottle in his hand. “You want a ride?”

“Ride? With you? To Los Angeles?”

“Course not.” Frankie snorted. “Just out to the highway so you can hitch.”

“I’m good. I’m taking a bus.”

“I’ll take you to the station. Going that way anyway.” He patted his pockets, looking for his car keys. I spotted the keys on a cluttered table and moved quickly to snatch them.

“Wolf?” Frankie said, stopping me.

“Yeah.” I hoped he hadn’t seen me grab the keys.

“I mean it—pull my plug,” he slurred.

“I’m trying, Frankie,” I muttered, as I tossed his car keys beside the trash bins outside of the front door.

“Wolf?” Frankie called one last time.

“Yeah?” I turned back, thinking maybe he wanted a proper goodbye.

“Could you loan me fifty bucks?” Frankie asked.

I shook my head and left the trailer, heading for the bus station with Byrd’s Swiss Army knife in my pocket.

The bus dropped me off near the hospital in LA. I entered through the lobby, got directions from a woman at the reception, then found the bank of elevators. I prayed as we rose that by some miracle Byrd would be sitting up, waiting for me, ready to crack a joke.