James Sarafin: Shadows on the Mountain

The top of the ravine was covered with fine scree and dirt, growing rockier further down. I followed a rough trail cut by many hooves. When I reached the snow I lit my white gas stove and opened my aluminum kettle. The narrow snowfield ran from a few inches at the top to many feet thick further down, where the ravine grew deeper and less exposed to the sun. The snow, I found as I tried to scoop it up, was actually hard, milky ice, granular and sun-rotted only on the top surface. I broke chunks free with a rock and let them melt on the stove. My hands, swollen by flies and thorns, stung from handhng the sharp, cold pieces of ice.

I drank the kettle dry and melted more ice, throwing the larger chunks in my pack. When I had enough water to fill my bottle, I struggled into the pack. Chmbing was hard up the soft, yielding scree, so I angled across the slope toward camp. The heavy load of ice dragged on my shoulders, and chilly meltwater began to drip under my wool pants. I rounded the mountain into a sharp wind and immediately saw the blue tent on the ridgeline, higher up and a thousand yards off. The most direct approach took me across and up the broad ravine, near the wreck, and curiosity made me stop, despite the darkening sky.

The metal hulk was about the size of a small plane, though unrecognizable as any aircraft, its surface weathered the same dull gray as the rocks, no breaks or tears showing where wings or tail had ripped off. No scattered bits of metal or debris as usually accompanied a plane wreck. The thing lay intact—crumpled and flattened, but in one piece, and there was no sign of any windows, doors, or openings. When I touched it I found it was not aluminum, for its surface was as hard and unyielding as the rocks too. I couldn’t scratch it, but it made a dull hollow sound when struck. I realized that, where it lay, it must have been scoured and crushed by the normal snowfield for a long time. It made no sense, being there like that, whatever it was.

When I reached camp, I dumped the ice in a plastic garbage bag. No sign of Davis and it was almost dark. Some big mountain hunter, needing me to find water. It was pretty hard to get lost or miss someone on the bare mountain, and I decided to go tell him he could stop looking.

I found him only a short distance west, where the mountain slanted down toward the coast, stooped over a white blotch in the darkness. He’d made a kill.

“Eleven and a half inches,” he said. “Unbelievable, for a nanny.” It was legal to shoot either sex, but he sounded disappointed he hadn’t shot a billy goat.

“I didn’t even hear the shot. I must have been pounding on the ice then.”

He looked at me, started to lick his lips, then stopped.

“Need some water, Rick?” I asked.

“God, I’m so thirsty I thought I would drink her blood.” There was a dark bloody patch near his mouth, but he may have just wiped it there with his hand. I gave him the bottle and he drank half, then looked at me.

“Go ahead. I found enough for camp.”

The goat scent was musky and strong, overpowering even the smell of the opened body cavity, as I helped him finish boning the meat. He had already removed the cape and head.

“She was crossing the ridge, maybe four hundred yards ahead, and just stopped to look at me,” he said. “Lucky for me—mountain goats can climb anything, and you usually have to shoot them off a cliff. I didn’t cape her all the way, ’cause my taxidermist will have to see that skull to believe it.” By the time we reached camp we were struggling through night, into the teeth of a strong, cold headwind. We found shelter behind the outcropping to cook our freeze-dried dinners. We both felt good to be warm, filled, and watered, and Davis brought out a flask of single malt whiskey. I mentioned the strange wreck I’d found in the ravine, and he speculated that it might be something military. After a while he made a comment about his wife, so I asked how long they’d been married.

“Fifteen years.” He laughed into the dark, cloudy sky; the whiskey, taking hold. “Hard to believe.”

“Got any kids?”

“Three. All girls.”

From our campsite the mountain dropped gradually to the west, and I could see the lights of Homer running out in a narrow, crooked line on the long spit across the bay. The lights twinkled from the distance. A nearly full moon hung just above the mountain to the south. I handed back his flask.

“Must be hard, leaving them to come out here like this.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The girls are big now. They don’t run into my arms when I come home anymore, just sit there in front of the TV.”

“What about your wife—don’t you miss her?”

He tilted back the flask, then wiped his mouth. “Isn’t like it used to be. I don’t think couples are necessarily supposed to stay together their whole lives. Serial monogamy, that’s the natural way. Sometimes people just outgrow each other, you know?”

My mouth was as dry as before the water, but something—maybe it was the whiskey or maybe it was always having to give him water—wouldn’t let me stop. “You sound like you’re thinking about a divorce.”

“Yeah, I think that’s actually in the cards. The girls are old enough to handle it, and I’d pay support and go for joint custody.” He hid his eyes behind another tilt of the flask. “How’re you and Cindy doing?”

Right then it all flooded in, through a dam that failed without warning: fragments and phrases of the telephone message I had been blocking for almost two weeks—his voice, speaking in close, intimate terms—how great last night had been, something about finding a house for them to live in.

I had no idea they were doing it until I came home early from a weekend fishing trip and heard the message on the machine. And now, sitting on the moonlit mountain with the wind moaning over the rocks and the clouds rushing close overhead, he saw it, the knowledge, written in my devastated face or maybe the slump of my shoulders or the wrack of my whole body.

He was stunned. They must have talked about it before the hunt, she must have told him I hadn’t a clue. No other way would he have put himself way back on this mountain, alone with me.

“Are you sure you came out here to kill a goat, Bruce?” For the first time, I heard a quaver in his voice and saw a trace of uncertainty, if not fear, on his face. I remained silent, wondering what else I might see. He put the flask away and dragged his gun into the tent behind him. I could hear the double metal clink of the bolt chambering a round.

“You going to sleep under the stars?” The false security of the tent must have brought the confident tone back in his voice.

“I guess.” There were no stars, only clouds scudding low overhead. I moved my gear up the mountain, behind the next outcropping, better sheltered and out of hearing of his tent flapping in the wind. The ground tilted vertical, then further, and I wanted to be sick, as the moment’s satisfaction gave way to the abiding knowledge of his confirmation.

They were really doing it, it was really true then.

And now that I had done it, brought it out in the open and was sure not to get any sleep, would the ground stay tilted all the time? How could I make it down the mountain if it did? Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

All night the wind attacked in rushes down the ridgeline. I could hear the fiercer onslaughts coming before they hit, roaring down the mountain from the glacier, then suddenly upon me, swirling gusts that pierced my bag through the zipper and seams. Near morning scattered drops of rain came flying with the wind. I lay huddled in the damp bag, waiting for the sky to show a light enough gray to get up.

The stove lit reluctantly in the cold wind, but I was finally able to warm my fingers and set the kettle to boil. When I stood up toward the camp, the tent was gone. No sign of Davis except his pack, where he’d left it behind a rock, and one of those green plastic boots sticking out on the duller tundra, twenty yards further down the ridge.