The Mountain Story (23 page)

“Does she have a dog?” I asked, panicked that there was some poor animal somewhere with no food or water.

“No,” Vonn said. “She’s talking about her pug, Brutus. He died a couple of years ago.”

Time passed. Five minutes? An hour?

“Do you think anyone is looking for us yet?” Vonn asked.

“Yes,” I said, though I had no reason to think so.

“Wolf, do you believe in … fate?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s just that if being here, on the mountain, right now, stopped you from doing something else, would you see that as a sign that you were not meant to do that thing? What I mean is, do you believe the universe—Mim would say God—is trying to tell you something? Maybe even punish you?”

“Trying to tell me what?” I asked, tensing.

She sighed deeply. “Well, if you were going to do something? But you couldn’t do it because you got lost, isn’t that a sign or whatever that you shouldn’t be doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“What were you going to do?”

It’s hard to describe my state of mind because there’s no parallel for this in regular life. My senses were duller, my reaction time longer, my grasp of reality a little tenuous but I was also acutely aware of my decline, which made me question everything in a spiral of paranoia.

We’d been deprived of sleep, water and food for two days, plus I’d begun the journey less than robust thanks to the pernicious habits of the depressed and suicidal (not sleeping, not
eating, negative thinking), all to say that I thought Vonn was baiting me about my plan to jump off Angel’s Peak.

“Who told you?”

“What?” She looked confused, hurt by my tone.

“Who told you what I was going to do?”

“Wolf?”

Something was scaring her. I realized it was me.

“What were you going to do?”

My mind was racing for a way to cover my blunder. “I was going to go hike off trail.”

“Hike off trail?”

“I was following some bighorn tracks.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s what I was going to do.”

“Follow a bighorn. By yourself? Aren’t those things scary?”

“They’re cool.”

“What if it charged?”

“It was a lamb we were chasing,” I said. I was aware that I was struggling to keep my thoughts on track.

“We?”

“I.”

“What were you going to do when you found the lamb?”

“When I found the lamb?” I pressured my abdomen with my fists to stop the muscles from spasming. “I was going to photograph him.”

“But you forgot your camera,” Vonn guessed.

“Yeah. You? What were you going to do?”

I was having trouble breathing.

“Why don’t you have a knapsack?” Vonn asked.

“I didn’t bring one.”

“I know. I’m asking why.”

“I forgot it at home.”

“You must feel so stupid. Do you think about it? Do you obsess about it? How much water had you packed? Food? A tent? Did you have a tent?”

Yes. Yes. Yes. “I don’t see this being positive, Vonn.”

“Are we going to die here?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe.” I was thinking about the lamb.

I’ve never told anyone about the lamb.

It was late spring and the meadow outside of the Mountain Station was painted in purple lupine and coral root, explosions of amber wallflower and scarlet snow plants busting up through winter decay. Byrd and I had stopped on our way to the peak to talk to a middle-aged birding couple about their morning hike. The husband was excited to share with us that they’d spied a peregrine falcon, rarely seen, in the meadow outside of the Mountain Station. He’d gestured at the saddle-peak beyond. “We couldn’t follow it off trail though,” he said with a shrug.

Byrd and I shared a look. The man was pointing in the direction of Secret Lake. We changed our plans and elected to spend the day searching for the peregrine falcon. With Byrd in the lead, we searched the pines for a sign of the rare bird. Then he stopped and I stopped too because in front of us stood the most magnificent female bighorn sheep and, behind her, careening comically into her rear because he was so coltish and clumsy, her lamb. Both animals regarded us sideways, all four of us in a quandary about our next step.

We were aware that any quick movement would cause them to bolt and that if they became separated from each other it would be disastrous for the lamb. We were so close I could see a tick moving on the ewe’s nose. We stood there with earsplitting grins, watching the pair sniff us on the wind.

The squawking ravens who settled in the pines overhead seemed to rankle the mother bighorn and she turned an eyeful of accusation on us. Her horns were not as long or curved as the males of her species but they could hurt pretty bad if they gored a guy in the ribs, or worse. The ewe lowered her head. Byrd and I muttered expletives.

Then the ravens began to heckle more insistently from the pines, spooking the lamb, who jetted off through the brush. The mother turned, sprinting after her baby.

Byrd and I could see that the lamb was heading toward a cleft in the rock that dipped into a short meadow that led to a deep drop. The mother had gone the other way, up into the dense pine forest where she’d lose track of her lamb’s scent altogether. We set off after it.

Then it happened. The lamb jumped too close to the edge, scrambled, then fell to a shallow ridge below. It was only an eight-foot drop, but it was enough. Byrd and I climbed down the rocky incline to him. It still hurts to remember the way it was lying there, both front legs broken, bleeding, bleating. I couldn’t read Byrd’s face. It was strange, he looked so calm.

“Can we save him? Byrd, can we save him?” I already knew the answer. It was unfair that I made him say it out loud.

I could hardly look at the bleating creature but the damn lamb kept finding my eyes. It was pleading with me. I didn’t know if it was for life or death. I watched Byrd reach into his
left sock for his Swiss Army knife. He pulled open the blade.

The lamb’s cries bounced off the granite. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, unprepared to bear witness.

“Help me!” Byrd shouted, pounding my leg. Reluctantly I bent down to hold the writhing animal still.

“Throat,” he said.

I held the lamb and closed my eyes, waiting for the sound of tearing flesh, preparing for the warm gusher of blood, eager for the silence that would follow. But there was a strange pinging sound, and when I opened my eyes I was confused to see the knife on the rock beside the terrified lamb and Byrd disappearing through the brush. I picked up the Swiss Army knife and with one swift cut performed the brutal act of kindness.

Heading down in the tram that night, we noticed some uneasy riders glancing our way. Byrd gestured at my blood-splattered jacket. “Maybe you should take it off.”

“Yeah.” I did.

“Guess you’re stronger than you think,” he said, focused on the white desert. To this day I can’t decide if Byrd had tested me or failed himself.

Nola was wheezing in her sleep. Bridget, snoring uncharacteristically softly.

“They sound like cats,” Vonn said, echoing my thoughts. “You said before there were mountain lions.”

We were not going to see a mountain lion or bear on this outcrop—I was sure of that. “There’s hardly a dozen ground squirrels here. Slim pickings for a mountain lion.”

“There’s us.”

“Don’t put that out there,” I said, half joking. “Don’t put that out in the universe.”

“You think the universe has ears?”

I shrugged. “My friend always said that.”

She hesitated. “You know how people turn to God in their darkest moments?”

“I guess.” I thought of the sunrise, how astonished I’d been, moved to tears.

“Isn’t that like being a fair weather fan in sports? Do you think—if there’s a God—He sees it like that?”

I shrugged.

“Can God see us now do you think? Does He know we’re stranded on this giant ledge?”

I paused for a long moment before I realized I didn’t want to speculate. I couldn’t bear to think God was aware of our suffering and couldn’t reconcile His nature if He wasn’t.

“Do you believe?” I asked.

I’d felt God on the mountain that morning when I rose but He seemed so far away now.

“I’m waiting for a sign,” Vonn said.

Bridget shifted in her sleep then, and rolled out a minute-long single-stroke snare-drum fart. Then she started snoring again, loudly, and Vonn and I nearly shared a seizure from laughing so hard. When we stopped, Vonn fixed her mother’s head.

After a pause, she said in a quavering voice, “I might have been the one that lost the keys. I’m not sure I gave them to Bridget.”

“It’s okay, Vonn,” I said. “It was just a mistake.”

“If we hadn’t gone to the spa for my stupid pedicure that I insisted on, we wouldn’t have lost the keys, and we would
have gotten up here earlier in the day when it wasn’t foggy. Maybe we would have found the lake. We wouldn’t have met you. You wouldn’t be lost, Wolf. It’s my fault. What if God is punishing me?”

“For losing the car keys?” I wanted to assure Vonn that what I felt in the sunrise had no judgment or wrath, but I didn’t. Even then I thought people should come to their own conclusions in matters of God. “That wouldn’t make sense.”

“Or other things,” she said.

Interpreting God’s motives—even ascribing motives—seemed absurd. “We’re here because we’re here,” I said. “Still, a few prayers couldn’t hurt.”

“My toes are numb again,” Vonn said, pressing her heel into my ribs sometime later. “You said to tell you.”

I could feel her stiff, frozen feet through the socks and was sickened to think of the deadly pathology at work on us all. I took her left foot in my own cold hands, rubbing vigorously, trying to restore circulation.

“Hurts,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I know,” I said. “Burns.”

“Burns,” she agreed. “Am I getting frostbite?”

Necrodigititis. I managed to coax the warmth back into the ball of Vonn’s foot but her toes were hopelessly cold. “If it hurts it means blood is circulating. That’s a good thing. Let me keep rubbing them,” I said.

“Why is it taking so
long
?” Vonn asked. “Why can’t they
find
us?”

I prayed to God they would.

“I’m so thirsty,” Vonn said hoarsely.

“It’s going to rain,” I said again.

Nola was groaning in her sleep, Bridget snoring in concert. Vonn fixed her mother’s jaw again and the snoring stopped. “I learned to do that when I was little. I slept with her for years.”

I nodded.

“How will the rescue dogs track us if it rains?” Vonn asked. “Doesn’t that wash our odour away? What about our footprints?”

“Depends how much and how hard it rains,” I said. “We need the fluid. We want the rain.”

The mountain made her mournful music: the howling wind, the hooting owl, those granite bass notes playing reverb with the canyon. I felt every cell in my body shrivelling, my muscles worn from the day’s futile climb. When I shifted I had the sense that my brain was quivering in my skull. All I could smell was sterasote. The lights from Palm Springs mocked us. Tin Town stared back at me like the glowing debris from an explosion.