James Sarafin: Shadows on the Mountain

I hugged the rock, panting, and looked over my shoulder. A goat had come up right behind me and now stood just a few feet away, regarding me with those black marble eyes, his gleaming black horns sweeping up in a wide fork. His ears rotated forward, and his eyes looked almost sad.

“So, did you lose something too?” Now I was talking to a goat, and I realized there were tears running down my face.

I don’t know whether the goat understood my question, felt my pain, or had somehow shared my memory. But suddenly an image formed in my mind: of rushing through the stars, like running into a multitude of gleaming raindrops. The image changed and I saw a world, shining in colors against the darkness. The world grew—then something was wrong. The image was spinning, as if in reverse of my own imagined memory, only instead of that Wisconsin road, it was these snow-covered mountains coming closer….

A time of waiting, attempting self-repairs. I had the impression they were something formless then. Then the moment of realization: all that was known was lost.

The image changed again, and I had the sense of walking, admiring the strangeness of my feet… shiny black hooves, below the long white hair. Clumping metallically across the deck and out into the cold gas that burned inside the first breath, then clicking softer across the rocks. Learning to feed on the tundra, grasses, and lichens, to avoid or kill the predators, the four-legged and the two. Living in this icy, vertical world, and always, always looking up at the sky, to the stars. Waiting…

Waiting for what? I thought. The goat cocked his head, but the images came confused, as if he didn’t know or had forgotten.

“What are you waiting for?” Maybe Davis had caught spillover of the images, but his shout broke the mind connection, or spell—whatever it was. The goat and I both moved, I trying to find a safer position, the goat walking up the smooth rock like a spider until he disappeared somewhere above. I started again toward Davis.

“Don’t shoot, Rick!” I called. “I’m coming to help.”

“You’re an idiot, Carlson,” he yelled, hoarsely, as I drew near. “So eager to finish me, you just passed up a point-blank shot at the world record billy!” He was lying weakly with his back against the cliff face as I finally clambered onto the ledge, watching me but at least not pointing the gun.

“Pretty neat way to bump a guy, stampeding those goats over me last night. I got bruises from their damn hooves.”

“I didn’t do it.” I shed the pack carefully on the ledge. “Those aren’t normal goats.”

“That’s for sure. Every one’s a God-damn trophy. And you passed up the biggest.” He watched without movement as I jacked the bolt of his rifle; but there were no cartridges left.

“I’ve got to try to set that leg,” I said. “Maybe I can use your rifle for a splint.”

“I shouldn’t have wasted my last shot at those goats,” he said. “Why didn’t you shoot back? I know I’m a goner. If I can’t take you along, then the only thing I’ve got left is to hope they find one of your bullets in me.”

“Shut up, and have some water,” I said.

He closed his eyes. “If you’re not going to shoot that billy, let me. You can claim the one I shot yesterday.”

I figured he was half-crazy from the pain and cold, or else just talking to keep up his nerve, and let him go on. I gave him some aspirin with the water. I had never set a bone, but could feel the broken edge low on his right femur, just under the skin. He cried out and cursed me, but eventually I realized I couldn’t do it without hurting him. Too bad.

His face went white as I felt the bone grating together, and sweat beaded on his forehead, but he never passed out or stopped cursing me. When I thought I had his leg lined up as straight as I could get it, I lashed the rifle alongside with some cord from my pack.

Now all I had to do was get him off that ledge. I thought about staying put and trying to signal a plane; except we hadn’t seen one since leaving the coast. Or maybe I should make him as comfortable as possible, and walk out for help; except he’d be dead by the time we could get here with a helicopter, if the weather even allowed for flying.

I kept telling myself I didn’t care whether the son of a bitch died, I just didn’t want to have to explain it, especially to Cindy.

Sixty or seventy feet down, the rock leveled a bit, in a short stretch of loose boulders and scree that angled toward the easier route we had climbed. I told Davis that if he could help with his hands, I was going to try to lower him there with the climbing ribbon. I tied it under his arms, then wound the ribbon around a point of solid rock that jutted out of the ledge.

“You’re going to drop it, aren’t you, Carlson? Make it look like you tried to rescue me, huh?” But he was game, and helped me lower him over the edge. The ribbon burned my hands as I let it slide a foot at a time, the rock frayed the ribbon, and if the loop crept any higher it would slip free of the rock and we’d both go down. But finally the weight was gone, and I looked to see Davis parked securely below. I tied the line off on the rock, wished myself luck, and climbed down slowly and carefully.

“Okay, so now what?” he whispered weakly. He must have realized then that I wasn’t going to kill him; his body relaxed and his eyes closed.

“Good question,” I said, mostly to myself. “Only four thousand vertical feet to go.”

And it was starting to snow.

The descent blurs together as a series of painful, tedious moments. The last thing I remember clearly before we reached the base of the mountain on the second day was turning for one last look at the goats, but seeing an impenetrable wall of falling snow, winter’s first assault on their mountain. I imagined how they might still see us, two dark forms in that sea of white.

I once read that adaptability is a trait of intelligence, and that humans are the most adaptable creature on earth. I knew that last part wasn’t true. They had come long ago, so adaptable they had become the one creature fit to survive in that vertical world where they had crashed. And they spent the centuries or millennia surviving, eating, reproducing, just like real mountain goats, and all the time waiting. For reinforcements? Rescue?

But it was their adaptability that fascinated me, the will, the struggle to survive, one day at a time. Somehow, we did the same. At first I lashed our two pack frames together into a kind of sled for Davis and, with it tied by the ribbon to my waist, we slipped and fell downward, huddling together under my bag at night, eating and drinking a few crumbs and drops when we had the chance. The snowfall eventually turned to cold rain as we lost altitude.

Davis stayed unconscious most of the time. His leg looked pretty bad, even though I loosened the bindings to help circulation whenever I could. I never did get to tell him I’d left his cape and horns lying on top of the mountain. To be covered by the snow, that would also cover, maybe for another century, that metal craft in the ravine.

When we reached the flat stream bottom, I cut two young birch, stripped them into poles, and made a travois to haul Davis. Somehow we made it to the boat the following evening, and the motor started on the second pull—miraculously, since outboards had always given me trouble in the past.

The doctor in Homer took one look and ordered Davis flown to an Anchorage hospital. He said Davis would live, but looked pretty grim when he mentioned the leg. Somewhere in between that and giving a report to the police, I called Cindy.

I had to drive Davis’s car and trailer home, my body one-half step from complete exhaustion, but mind working clearly as I rehearsed. Still one thing, the worst thing left to do—what I had been hiding from ever since the phone message. When I reached town, I parked his rig in his driveway and left the keys under the door mat. His wife and kids were gone, probably to see him at the hospital. I started my own car and went home.