David Vann - Goat Mountain

What can never be understood is time, why a foot falls when it does. My grandfather waiting my entire life, and something in me waiting also.

It seemed possible that I would never sleep again. My mind as clear as the cold air, fully alert, and each moment expanded and nearly infinite. That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always slipping.

But eventually I heard the pumping of the lantern, Tom risen to cook breakfast, and the trees appeared above me, created in an instant, transformed absolutely from their shadows, made in the light, thousands of needles without true color, yellow-white instead of green, and their heavy cones and branches and the deep etchings of their trunks. All distance gone, the heavens erased. The world flattened.

I could not hear that soft roar of the lantern, a sound I loved, because the spring was too loud in the basin, but I could hear metal on metal, scraping and cutting as Tom worked, and I knew that I had passed into safety. My grandfather would not come for me now. Now the day had begun and we would all hunt together and all else that waited for us would be deferred.

I remained in my sleeping bag, in the warmth, and the breeze rose even though there was no sign yet of the sun. A prefiguring, the air itself impatient for the day. I do imagine the creation like this. A thing awaited, a restlessness.

The light of the lantern not steady but pulsing slowly enough to notice, a different kind of sun. And this camp become its own dwarf universe, separated from the darkness all around. I rose and pulled on my jeans and boots and jacket and hat, my shadow cast enormously against the slope and trees behind. Tom the largest giant of all, one swing of his arm covering my entire region in shadow and then gone again.

I rolled and tied the old sleeping bag and left it under the protection of the fallen trunk. I stepped sideways along the hill, rifle in both hands, that shell still in the chamber, ready, and came at camp from a different direction, close along the spring and its pipe and stream, the sounds of my footfalls covered.

Tom standing at the griddle backlit by the lantern. His camo baseball cap and jacket, mottled dark greens. One hand in his pocket, the other holding a spatula. He looked up and saw me.

Same as any other breakfast, he said. Same as any other hunt. Holding your rifle. But I know the difference.

Tom’s face in shadow but that voice the same as I’d heard all my life.

You don’t get to do something and have it be nothing. Soon as we’re back, I’m going straight to the sheriff.

You’re right, Tom, my father said. You should turn yourself in after shooting that man. It’s the right thing to do. My father on the other side of the table, downhill, his face revealed by the lantern. He had been visiting the dead man, perhaps.

I don’t believe I heard you right, Tom said. He turned away from me and the griddle, faced my father.

You heard.

No, I can’t have heard you right, Tom said.

Our work here is to collect the evidence, my father said. I’ve put that man in a sack, and I’ve apprehended you, and brought you back with the evidence. Three of us as witnesses.

You’d do that.

Yes I would.

You’re sure about that.

Yep. Though maybe there’s no need for anyone to visit the sheriff at all. That seems better, doesn’t it?

Well. Tom turned back to the griddle. First hotcakes are ready, he said. Time to grab plates.

I held my rifle down low, out of reach, and stepped just close enough to grab a plate. Tom put two pancakes on it and looked at me. I was in his shadow and could see his face now, stubbled and tired and his eyes distorted behind those glasses.

I sat at the downhill side of the table, steered clear of my father. Rifle butt between my feet and barrel coming up past my right shoulder, in close and protected. I grabbed the pot of cream of mushroom soup steaming at the center of the table and poured it over my pancakes, creamy white with dark chunks, half-moons. Thick gravy, condensed without the water added.

My father sat down opposite and yet managed not to see me. I was not there. He poured the gravy over his own pancakes and cut a piece with his fork. Roar of the lantern the primary sound now, close above us.

My grandfather ambled out of the darkness to the table, and my father got up to allow him room to swivel his legs across the bench. The sound of his breath working, lungs too small for all that bulk, a heart the size of a walnut. Everything inside him shrunken away, until finally you could cut him open and find only endless fat.

A plate put before him, and he poured the gravy and began chewing even before the food hit his mouth.

My father cutting perfect double-layered triangles, as he always did. Portioning the same amount of gravy on each bite, chewing for about the same length of time, everything ordered.

And then Tom joined, stabbing his legs in beside me. His plate piled with three pancakes, taking more. He poured the white gravy and then cut in a ragged way with his fork, working toward the center of the pancakes without trimming any edges. My father always annoyed by this, glancing over as he ate. And suddenly it seemed as if this could be any other hunting trip, rising early in the morning, before the light, my father glancing over at Tom’s plate and holding back from saying anything. The lantern and the spring. The wind coming up.

The dead man just playing, a joker tied himself in a sack, horsing around. I looked over my shoulder and he was there, swaying a bit in the breeze, holding back his laughter, his chin tucked into his chest, eyes closed.

I do understand that something has happened, my father said.

Hallelujah, Tom said.

But think about what the two of you have suggested. We have killing and burning my son as one suggestion, and that from his own grandfather, who apparently has lost his mind.

My grandfather said nothing in response. A jaw chewing as automatically as any cow’s, eyes vacant.

And then we have the bright idea of going to the sheriff, so that we can all explain how this happened and why we brought him here and put him in a sack and on and on. We’ll have lots of time in pajamas for the rest of our lives to get the stories to work out.

It’s not too late, Tom said. It’s still only one person committed a crime.

Not true, my grandfather said. Not true. He was staring now at the dead man, sighting him from farther off than seemed possible, and his fist on the table with the fork sticking up.

So what’s your bright idea? Tom asked.

We bury him, my father said.

Bury him, Tom said. A proper Christian burial. Do we invite his mother?

It’s easy, my father said. All this land, and no one here, no way to check all of it. We go out in the brush somewhere and dig down and bury him and forget about the whole thing.

As if it never happened.

Yeah.

And what happens when they come looking for him?

Let them look. We don’t know anything.

And what happens when they find that blood where he was shot?

Nothing. There’s no body. And we don’t know anything.

We don’t know anything.

Yeah.

And your son never says anything, never in his entire life. Doesn’t slip and say something at school.

Yeah.

That man in the sack is not the problem, my grandfather said. You take care of that and you still have taken care of nothing.

My zombie dad suddenly the fucking philosopher.

Zombie?

Yeah, Dad, as in you’re never fucking home. You’re as lively as a piece of wood. And now suddenly, when there’s a problem and I could use some help, you’re fucking Aristotle. Hooga booga. We know not what comes from our own arses. Doing something is doing nothing. Waa waa waa.