The Mountain Story (30 page)

“Yeah,” Vonn answered uncertainly.

“You want help?” I called.

“No,” she called back emphatically.

After a short time she appeared again, her face blotchy from crying. I didn’t wonder if her tears were for any reason beyond the obvious. When I moved to embrace her she ducked my arm. “Come on,” she said. “We should look at Nola’s wrist. Change the dressing. Kinda miraculous, isn’t it? The sterasote?”

“You cleaned it. Getting rid of all that dead tissue had to have helped.”

“Don’t remind me,” Vonn said, cringing. “That’s worse than anything I’ve done at the Petting Zoo and they make me clean all the cages.”

“The Petting Zoo?”

“That’s the name of the pet clinic/animal rescue place where I work.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a dog,” I said. “I like dogs.”

“Me too,” Vonn said, “but I’m such a vagabond.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll come to the rescue place and get a dog. You know. When we get back.”

“That would seem about right. Balance the universe a little,” Vonn said. “I had a cat once. Sort of.”

“Stray?”

“Two boyfriends before my mother brought home the Idiot from Camarillo there was the Goof from Golden Hills. He had a cat. So I sort of had a cat. This fat, old black cat with a bitten-off ear. Sad cat. Lame front leg. One tooth. I don’t remember the guy’s name but the cat was named Midnight. I went on a junk food binge after Bridget told me Goof was moving in. I was feeling sorry for myself and then this fat, old black cat limps into the TV room and he nuzzles my leg, and he tries to jump into my lap but he’s too old and fat so I have to lift him up myself.”

“Can’t imagine Bridget as a cat person.”

“Bridget didn’t know the guy was bringing his cat. She didn’t even know he had a cat, which is pretty shocking because it shed over everything.

“They went away for the weekend and I fed Midnight these soft cat treats made for toothless old cats that I had delivered from the grocery store, and I just let him sit there in my lap eating for two days straight. Picked him up and set him down in his litter box a few times a day. I thought I was being nice.”

“Lucky cat.”

“I had gas. All that crap I was eating,” Vonn went on. “It was bad.”

Her chin was quivering, so I didn’t laugh.

“I was sitting there at Bridget’s with Midnight on my lap, and Bridget and Goof walk into the room with another couple and they hit this deadly wall of stink and they start to howl and gag and all I can say is, ‘Um, I think your cat’s sick.’ ”

She paused to swallow. “The guy sees the empty packages of cat treats and grabs Midnight off my lap and kicks him out the back door. I went out to the porch to apologize but he wouldn’t come near me.” Vonn sniffed, but she had no tears to spend.

“So you blamed the cat? That’s all?”

“On Monday when I got home from school Midnight was gone. My mother said her boyfriend had taken him to the vet. I felt bad because I knew I’d overfed him and I hoped they could give him some pills or something. When I refilled Midnight’s water bowl Bridget looked at me like I was crazy. That’s when she explained that Midnight was being put down.”

“Oh.”

“The Goof had said any animal that smelled as bad as that cat smelled must be rotting from the inside out. He said it’d be cruel to let him live.”

“Oh.”

“I jumped in the car and drove straight to the vet but it was too late.”

We walked on in silence for a beat.

“I killed Midnight.”

“You didn’t kill Midnight. You were just part of his story at the end of his days,” I said. “Besides, Midnight got to spend all that time in your lap. Paradise. I mean …”

“When I came up here to stay with Mim after Pip died, I saw they were hiring at the neighbourhood vet. It’s my job to pet the animals when they go.”

Closer to the cave we could hear Nola humming the concerto I’d heard her hum before. It was then that Vonn realized she’d left the shredded knapsack back at the fallen log where she’d gone to cry.

Without missing a beat I spun around and began to chug back through the bushes to retrieve the thing, calling, “Go back with the others.”

But I turned to find Vonn staggering after me in the wool socks and ridiculous green flip-flops. “I’ll go,” she said between breaths. “I’ll get it!”

“I’ll get it,” I insisted, turning into the wind.

Breathless, I came to the place where Vonn had excused herself to be alone. I saw the shredded knapsack right away and when I bent to scoop it up I saw something else—a sliver of silver the length and width of a toothpick sticking out from beneath a curiously set rock. I knew before I lifted it that I was about to find one of the granola bar wrappers from Bridget’s lost bag.

I took it in my shaking hands—one half of a granola bar intact inside the carefully folded foil.

Vonn had eaten the other half. I didn’t need to have witnessed the crime. The night before, when I’d pressed my dry, parched lips to hers I’d detected the merest whiff of cinnamon. That was the
something else
in her kiss. That was the something I’d noticed, and denied, and ignored, and knew I’d have to return to.

When I stood up, Vonn was there, wide-eyed. She had no words. I didn’t either, only thoughts and sounds and smells; cinnamon, oats, brown sugar. The crows cawed from the pines nearby as I stared at the slim square of granola bar.

Vonn dropped to her knees, looking up at me. “I found it here, beside this log yesterday. I called for Bridget, but she didn’t hear me. I looked everywhere for the bag, the other bars, the water, but it was just this one, just sitting right there.”

Together we looked up into the dense pines towering above our heads. Had the bag been hurled this far when we’d tumbled? It was possible.

“I waited for Bridget to get back and then I couldn’t … I was staring at the granola bar and then I opened it and I smelled it and I thought of how small it was to divide in four—such a tease, and no nutrition, being so small—but I still knew I shouldn’t eat it. Couldn’t eat it.”

“But you did.”

“I thought I’d have the tiniest nibble, and then I had another and a little more and little more.”

“And when we stopped earlier?” I asked. “A little more?”

“I’m so afraid to die,” she breathed.

Even as claws sprang from my fingertips, I forgave her. Even as I growled at her, ripping at the silver foil, I forgave her.

I opened my mouth and threw the morsel of that granola bar down my throat, and then began to gag.

“Keep it down,” Vonn begged. “Swallow it for God’s sake, Wolf.”

I swallowed the lump of sugar and oats. Then for the first time on the mountain I began to cry, and for the first and only time since my mother died, a beautiful woman took me in her arms and rocked me like a child.

When we returned to the cave, I took a long look at Bridget, who was sallow and gaunt and exhausted. There was no question that the water bottles and other granola bars had not been found by Bridget. Or Nola—she hadn’t been out of my sight. Most likely, I thought, the other granola bars had been found by the ground squirrels and dragged away. Maybe the bottles of water landed in one of the denser areas of brush or stuck on a pine bough too high up to see.

My shame over eating that fragment of food weighed on me heavily, but it fortified me too. Redemption is a powerful motivator.

Vonn and I avoided looking at each other.

The yellow canteen, containing a cup or so of water, sat between us. I felt nauseated remembering the red weed, and worse that I’d shared with the Devines the story of what happened to Byrd.

“I’m so hungry, Wolf. Can we eat grass? Can we chew bark?” Bridget asked.

“Don’t eat grass,” I warned. “It’ll just make you vomit and lose more fluid.”

“I’m so thirsty, I feel shrunken,” Bridget said.

I sniffed the air. It smelled of the rain to come. I’d been wrong before, though, and didn’t want to raise the Devines’ hopes again. I tried to stand, mumbling, “Gotta get back to the wall.”

“You’re dizzy, Wolf,” Vonn said.

“I’m all right.” But I wasn’t.

“I was thinking, maybe if I borrowed your shoes, Bridget, I could try the wall. We could let Wolf rest,” Vonn said.

“Because you think I can’t do it?”

“No, just to give you a rest,” Vonn said.

“Vonn, you’re a lot shorter than me. If I don’t have the wingspan for it you don’t either.”

“And my feet are half the size of yours,” Bridget said.

“And how would you find your way back to the Mountain Station even if you got up there?” Nola asked.

“I’ll worry about the wall, Vonn,” I said. “You and Bridget need to find what’s left of that blue bag.”

“What do you mean what’s left of it?” Bridget asked.

“Just find the bag,” I begged.

Bridget looked back and forth from me to Vonn. “Did something happen between you two?”

Vonn and I must have looked guilty.

Bridget spat on the ground at my feet, which was no mean feat considering our degree of dehydration.

“No!” I insisted.

“Bridget,” Nola soothed. “You’re being ridiculous. At a time like this? How could you think …?”

Vonn turned toward the morning sky and said, “I found one of the granola bars.”

I hung my head.

“Thank God!” Bridget cried.

“That’s wonderful, Vonn!” Nola croaked.

Vonn’s voice was not her own. “I ate it.”

Nola sat blinking while Bridget said, “I don’t understand.”

“I ate it. I found it and I ate it.”

“She’s not telling the truth,” I said, interrupting. “I ate half of it.”

The wind roared in then and spoke for all of us. Such a revelation, in different circumstances, with less fragile beings, or more fragile beings, might have elicited an entirely different
response: fist fights, screaming, pushing, hair-pulling. On the mountain, on that third day, the only rage came from the wind. A dubious gift to the desperate—clarity, charity, perspective.

“There’s some water left in the canteen,” I said after a while, grateful for their silent absolution. “Mrs. Devine, you and Bridget should finish it.”

Vonn cringed. “I need the water, too.”

Bridget grabbed the canteen and, twisting off the cap, brought it to her lips. After a fractional sip she passed it to her daughter, who took a grateful sip before passing it to her grandmother, who drank a small amount before she passed it to me.

“Now you only have to forgive yourselves,” Nola said to Vonn and me.

I took a small sip from the yellow canteen and thought of Byrd.

“Wolf?”

“I’m all right.”

“You said Byrd was in the hospital in a coma. You never said …,” Bridget ventured.

I felt my face redden.

“What happened to him?” Vonn asked.

“We have to get back to the wall,” I said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

Nola took my proffered arm and we moved together, slowly, over the rock.

I didn’t want to tell the rest of Byrd’s story, but I did.

All those weeks at Byrd’s bedside I prayed for him to come back without actually knowing where he was. Sometimes instead of talking to Byrd’s body under the white hospital sheets I spoke to the air, and sometimes I didn’t even talk out loud but tried to find him in some corridor of my wandering mind. Sometimes I sang to him. Sometimes he shuddered.

Frankie’s words haunted me.
Pull the plug
. I never considered pulling Byrd’s plug, but the way Frankie’d said it—like he wished it were him in the coma, like he’d rather leave the burden of his life to someone else, just have it done with. Pull the plug. I felt sorry for my father because I understood too well. While the mountain had changed me, made me stronger, brought me peace, the desert had been Frankie’s final ruin. Late nights, women, alcohol, drugs, gangs, gambling and all of that without leaving Tin Town. What he’d said about clean living? He’d gone from dirty to irredeemable within weeks, selling, buying, stealing, leaving for days at a time to go on a bender, or weeks at a time to laze around in the quiet home of some sexual conquest until she kicked him out. I saw Yago more often than I saw Frankie during those years in Kriket’s trailer. Yago kept his stash there. I was Frankie’s son.